Why AI Can’t Replace You
Most people are allergic to conflict. They want harmony, safety, and "best practices."
I recently got to chat with Singaporean advertising legend Tay Guan Hin, and he was saying that instinct for safety is the enemy of great ideas.
He said, if everything is in harmony, we tend to come up with the most predictable piece of work, and that work is almost always boring.
I met up with Tay (the Regional Director for The One Club APAC ) when we found ourselves on a speaking gig together in the heart of the old Silk Road, Uzbekistan….thats a story for another blog post in itself :)
We ended up talking a lot about his new book published by Penguin, Collide. It’s essentially a masterclass in creative ideation, so I thought I’d share some of the highlights of our chat here with you.
Below is why you need to stop playing it safe and start seeking out collisions.
The Caveman Method
Innovation doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens when you force two unrelated things together.
Tay said, a caveman didn't just stumble upon a spear. He took a stone, collided it with a stick, and suddenly he had a new tool. The Swiss Army Knife? A collision of a toolbox and a knife.
When you embrace tension, you find the "spark" that makes ideas stick.
When a Ring Becomes a Weapon
Tay shared a brilliant example from his own career. Tasked with a campaign against domestic violence, his team didn't go for a soft approach.
They collided the ultimate symbol of love (the engagement ring) with a symbol of violence (the knuckle duster). The result was a diamond-studded brass knuckle sitting in a velvet engagement box. It was shocking, uncomfortable, and impossible to ignore.
The Super Soaker Accident
Sometimes a "failed" collision is just a brilliant invention in disguise.
Did you know the Super Soaker was a mistake?. A NASA engineer was actually trying to invent a heat pump. When it started leaking water across the room, he didn't see a broken pump; he saw the world's most powerful water pistol.
Tay said, "Every failure is always an opportunity to learn something.”
Why AI Can’t Replace You
With algorithms getting smarter every day, everyone is asking: Will I be replaced?.
Tay’s advice? Stop trying to be perfect. AI is great at being perfect, which is exactly why it feels "fake" and "cheap".
The human advantage is that we are "imperfectly beautiful". It’s our weirdness, our flaws, and our erratic thinking that make us authentic.
If you try to compete with AI on perfection, you lose. If you compete on humanity, you win.
