The Things AI Can’t Teach: The Value of Huamnity

Reference:

DeSchryver, M., Henriksen, D., Leahy, S., & Lindsay, S. (2024). Beyond automation: Intrinsically human aspects of creativity in the age of generative AI. Central Michigan University & Arizona State University.

Annotation:

In a world where GenAI is getting better at writing, designing, analyzing, and even “creating,” this article asks a surprisingly grounding question:
What parts of creativity are still fundamentally human and why should we care?

The authors argue that while AI can mimic creative output, it cannot replicate the experience of creativity. They highlight six intrinsically human creative capacities:

1. Curiosity

2. Intuition

3. Mindfulness/Patience

4. Imagination

5. Empathy

6. Embodied Thinking

Each of these capacities is shown to stem from lived experience, emotion, bodily awareness, and cultural or ethical context, things AI cannot meaningfully possess.

The article concludes with a bold call for education and training programs to prioritize these human strengths, especially as workplaces adopt more AI tools. What makes this article compelling for L&D practitioners is how clearly it demonstrates that the deepest forms of learning transfer rely on human senses and embodied cognition, not just content delivery.

Even in corporate e-learning or hybrid training, learners use their:

• sense of movement

• perception of space

• emotional resonance

• curiosity-driven discomfort

• intuitive pattern recognition

• empathetic social awareness

• reflective stillness

These are not “nice to have” elements. They are the mechanisms through which information becomes memory, memory becomes understanding, and understanding becomes real-world behavior change. AI can support training, but it cannot replace these body-anchored processes.

The article’s strengths lie in its clear framework of six human creative traits, which provides educators with a practical structure for evaluating AI’s role in learning environments. It also connects theory to real educational practice, offering concrete implications for classrooms and instructional design.

The authors thoughtfully distinguish between AI’s ability to mimic creative outputs and the uniquely human experience of creativity, and they incorporate cultural and embodied perspectives that highlight AI’s current limitations. However, the article can be dense at times, relying heavily on academic theory, which may feel abstract for practitioners seeking immediate application. Its cultural analysis leans largely on Western research, leaving room for broader global insight, and while it acknowledges that AI may evolve toward more human-like traits, it stops short of fully exploring emerging areas such as embodied robotics and multimodal agentic systems.

The article does not explicitly frame creativity in terms of the body’s senses—but it could, and doing so makes the implications for learning transfer even more powerful.

Below is a reframing of the six traits through the lens of innate human sensory faculties, capacities AI cannot authentically replicate.

1. Curiosity → The Sense of “Cognitive Hunger”

Linked to dopamine systems, orientation reflexes, and the brain’s drive toward novelty.
In training, curiosity sparks attention — the first gateway to learning transfer.

2. Intuition → Gut Sense (Interoception) + Pattern Experience

Humans feel intuition physically: tightness, ease, resonance.
AI has no interoceptive system and no lived experiences to shape intuitive judgment.

3. Mindfulness/Patience → Temporal Sensory Awareness

Humans perceive time through emotional and physiological regulation.
Incubation, the moment when learning quietly consolidates, depends on embodied calm, not computational speed.

4. Imagination → Mental Imagery + Visuospatial Processing

When we imagine, sensory cortices light up as if we are seeing or hearing.
AI recombines text and image data but does not experience imagery.

5. Empathy → Emotional Resonance (Affective Sensing)

Humans detect microexpressions, tone, posture, and relational energy unconsciously.
AI can label emotions but cannot feel them or use them for moral discernment.

6. Embodied Thinking → The Entire Sensorimotor System

Creativity is deeply body-based: gesture, movement, rhythm, weight, balance.
These physical cues are essential for problem-solving, skill acquisition, and long-term memory encoding.