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The irony is hard to ignore.
Artificial intelligence was supposed to eliminate writers first. Pundits predicted marketing copy, blog posts, and emails would be automated away. Instead, generative AI has shaken the foundations of entry level coding jobs. Companies discovered that AI systems can produce basic code faster and at lower cost than junior developers.
The result has been painful for young programmers.
Computer science graduates are facing a 6.1 percent unemployment rate, according to 2023 data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That is higher than the 5.8 percent unemployment rate for recent college graduates overall. Coding bootcamps that once promised guaranteed six figure careers are watching enrollment stall as hiring freezes spread.
At the same time, companies are waking up to another reality.
The internet is drowning in machine generated noise.
LinkedIn, once a professional networking platform, has turned into what many insiders describe as an AI content swamp. Users scroll past endless motivational stories, recycled buzzwords, and robotic posts that all sound the same. One communications expert bluntly observed that LinkedIn is filled with posts written by AI in a style that makes eyes glaze over.
Research suggests that more than half of long form LinkedIn posts are now created with AI tools. Users have developed what some call “AI blindness.” If something feels synthetic, it gets ignored.
Businesses are realizing that unlimited content is worthless if nobody reads it.
That is where human storytellers come in.
Andreessen Horowitz has launched a “New Media team” dedicated to helping founders shape online narratives. Microsoft has revived the old fashioned print magazine, seeking relief from digital overload. Adobe is recruiting an “AI evangelist” to spearhead its “artificial intelligence storytelling,” a tacit admission that even AI products need a human voice to earn public trust.
According to reporting from the Wall Street Journal, job postings mentioning “storyteller” doubled between 2024 and 2025. Corporate executives referenced “storyteller” or “storytelling” 469 times during earnings calls in 2025, up from 359 the year before.
The message is unmistakable.
Companies that poured billions into building AI systems capable of producing infinite text are now spending millions to hire humans who can cut through that very flood of content. As one communications consultant put it, there is so much trash in the system that firms will pay a premium for anyone who can credibly claim to break through the noise.
Even academic research is challenging the hype. A 2025 study from Columbia Business School concluded that large language models do not truly reason. They generate outputs without a creative process, display a bias toward “Option A” in decision making, and produce words without understanding their meaning.
Machines can follow patterns. They excel at rules.
But they cannot grasp what people actually care about.
For decades, liberal arts departments were gutted as universities transformed into coding factories. Writers and philosophers were dismissed as relics of a bygone era. The smart bet, we were told, was on programmers inheriting the future.
Yet the AI revolution is reshaping that landscape.
Korn Ferry research shows that the median compensation for a chief communications officer at a Fortune 500 company jumped $50,000 between 2023 and 2024, landing in the $400,000 to $450,000 range. The number of CCO roles that combine communications with broader executive responsibilities nearly doubled at Fortune 1000 companies from 2019 to 2024.
These are not incremental raises. They represent a structural shift in how corporations view value.
Brilliant technology means little if no one understands it, trusts it, or feels compelled to use it.
One tech industry analyst captured the moment bluntly: in the AI era, creatives are becoming the high value person in tech.
The robots may write the code.
Only humans can explain why anyone should care.
