The Smartest People in Tech Can't Tell a Story

Steve Jobs is often quoted as saying the most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. I couldn't find proof he actually said it — the only source is a blog by someone who says he heard it at NeXT in 1994. But whoever said it, I think it's true.

Stories shape human life on earth. They decide what people believe, what they fear, and even the words they use to talk about things.

Look at India

In India, people who never went to school can talk about duty, justice, karma and what it means to do the right thing. Not because they read philosophy, but because they grew up on the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

Arjuna standing in the middle of a battlefield, not wanting to fight his own family — that's one of the hardest moral questions there is. Millions of people understand it because they heard it as a story from their grandparents. When the Ramayan aired on TV in 1987, the streets went empty every Sunday morning. The Panchatantra taught kids strategy and politics through talking animals.

That's how powerful stories are. They carry complex ideas to people that no textbook ever could.

AI is getting the story wrong

Right now, the story most people hear about AI is about losing jobs, killer robots and the end of the world. Data centers are pitched as giant buildings that eat electricity and water and raise your bills. Towns are pushing back on building them.

Nobody is telling people why superintelligence matters. That it could help cure the diseases that killed our grandparents. That it could make energy and food cheap for everyone. That it could be the thing that finally takes humanity beyond one planet.

You can't build something this big without people's support. And people won't support what they don't understand, or what they're afraid of.

We get to write this story

We have a rare chance right now to craft the story — to change how people see a data center, and how they talk about superintelligence. A data center doesn't have to be a power-hungry box. It can be what it actually is: the place where humanity's next leap is being built.

The tech world has the builders, the money and the chips. What it doesn't have is a storyteller — someone who can change the conversation the way the epics changed how a whole country thinks.

Get the story right, and people will follow. Get it wrong, and the best technology we've ever made will be feared instead of welcomed.