While AI can generate fluency to the tune of trillions of words if we so wished, only humans can provide the meaning.

**Unstuck: **AI as a Catalyst for the Unblocking of Creative Momentum

This collection of articles may give the impression that we are against AI in the workplace and in society at large. We are not. We are only trying to figure out where the human figures in AI discourse and the actual use of AI. We identify areas of concern where we could overly depend on the machine and not realise the cost that this will have on ourselves, our cognitions and our societies at large. This does not cancel out the fact that we are also in awe of what AI tools can do. It is not a zero-sum game. We can embrace and be comfortable with holding both points of view at the same time.

This article is about something quieter and more hopeful: the ways AI can help us when we are stuck. You know exactly what we mean: when the ideas will not come. When the inbox feels impossible. When the calendar holds no space at all, not even for a toilet break. When we cannot quite articulate what we mean or do not know how to start the first sentence.

Here, the human is still the hero of the story. But the hero, at times, needs a companion. A Tardis for Doctor Who. This is not a replacement, but something to prompt, to provide a spark. A tool that meets us at the exact place where we are block and helps us move forward.

This is about the everyday uses of AI that do not make the headlines but make a difference. The uses that make us not just work faster but feel less alone in the effort. It is about AI not as an existential threat or a flawed oracle, but as a partner in helping bring clarity to the human worker, to give enhanced energy and unblock places where, for one reason or another, we cannot see a way forward.

Start Me Up

Everyone who creates anything knows the fear of the blank page. The blinking cursor, the pressure to start, the inner critic whispering that it is a poor piece of work before you have written the first word. You have even reverted to pen on paper and that led you nowhere.

AI cannot remove that fear, but it can nudge you to take the first step, to write the first word. It might offer a sentence, a structure or a starting point. Often, it is not the right one, but that is not the point. It’s something. A seed of an idea that you can run with. It is enough to keep you going.

When we say AI unblocks us, we do not mean that it gives us a finished idea. We mean it removes the pressure of perfect beginnings. It gets us moving and, once we are moving, we remember that we can write, argue and evaluate. We remember how to think.

A Mirror, Not A Crutch

Some of the most useful AI applications are not about the generation of ideas at all. They just reflect ours back to us. They summarise, clarify and find the thread we lost in a tangle of drafts, false starts and deletes. They help us articulate what we are really trying to say.

Used well. AI becomes a conversation partner, not in a Turing-test kind of way, but in a practical one. It sharpens our thinking by holding a mirror to it. And when we are overthinking or overwhelmed, a mirror is often the kindest thing we can be offered. That is, so long as you train it to give a proper critique, be devil’s advocate, rather than saying “This is a rich and timely seam of genius thinking”, and so on. When AI flatters you — in a mirror, mirror on the wall scenario — it is no use at all, apart from to your own ego. Just don’t start believing the praise it is heaping on you because it will not survive the first contact with the enemy. You will be laughed at.

The Shape of Burnout

If you have ever had burnout, it is awful. It is not always obvious. There is no dramatic, cinematic nervous breakdown-type scene that announces it. It is a quiet creep, like Japanese Knotweed. You open the file, stare for a few minutes and close it again. You reply to an email with three lines and feel like you have run a marathon. You find small tasks difficult and you avoid them, so they snowball into something unmanageable and unbearably stressful. Brain fog rules the day. And it can last for months, even years.

In these moments, AI can take you by the hand and keep you going. It can cut away through the fog and give you clarity. It can be a companion. It provides structure when our thoughts are scattered. It helps us articulate complexity when we feel cognitively numb. It offers reassurance, answering without judgement, without needing explanation. We can work together through the fog.

And that is what recovery looks like: not full restoration, but the ability to function, to think and write with a fluency that resembles before the burn.

A Platform for Permission

What AI offers in these moments is permission. Permission to start badly, to begin anywhere, to try something even if you do not know where it is going. This is especially the case for people whose perfectionism masks as procrastination (or is it the other way round?). These are the people who feel they have to get it right on the first attempt or not attempt it at all. AI says: here’s the mental map or scaffolding you can use to get started. Make it yours. This helps make the cost of beginning less onerous and pain-free. Sometimes that is what we need most

Steer, Not Oversight

The narrative that humans now merely “oversee” AI is an impoverished one. It suggests passivity and compliance. It means all the human is doing is correcting, which, in fairness, is true when we consider what has become of the human translator. But real use of AI in applications involving creativity and intellectual use needs a far more active human role than that. We need to steer, to intervene and to challenge the machine.

Just like a GPS system in a car, AI may propose the route, but we decide where we are going and why. Our role as steer — helmsman — is not a lesser role. It is the same role, only augmented by an AI tool. It is the most important role. While AI can generate fluency to the tune of trillions of words if we so wished, only humans can provide the meaning. Only we can know what matters and what ‘enough’ feels like. Trillions of words is more than enough.

Cognitive Hygiene

Some worry that AI makes us lazy thinkers. That we stop remembering things because we know we can just ask. But there is another side to this: AI does not just retrieve, it can help us reflect.

When we ask a model to summarise an article or rephrase a confused email or to distil five pages into one paragraph, we are not outsourcing thought but engaging in meta-cognition: thinking about how we think. This is cognitive hygiene, rather than cognitive erosion.

It can help us zoom out, reassess and reorganise. It gives us tools to be more deliberate, not less.

Therapy of a Different Kind

By therapy, we do not mean psychotherapy. AI can never do that, despite a proliferation of apps: a lot of this is snake oil. We mean that AI can be therapeutic, in the sense that it can hold rambling thoughts and disentangle chaotic statements. It can help us get words out when the words feel stuck.

This can be a lifeline for some people. It is not a substitute for interaction or human connection, but it can be a bridge to self-awareness, motivation and momentum. Sometimes, a bridge is all we need.

The Hero, Still

The human is still the hero of the story. We are the ones who choose to begin, the ones who steer, question and compose.

We are the ones who feel the block and who seek the breakthrough and who, ultimately, do the work of coming back to ourselves. AI merely helps, prompts, supports and organises. But that is all it can do. It cannot care or believe or create meaning.

And this is what the story is really about. It is not the rise of the machine, but the return, the reassertion, of the human. Energised, supported, and yes, still flawed, still tired but still here, at the centre. Still the hero. And sometimes still stuck.

Thank you for reading,

Mark Gibson, Blackburn, United Kingdom

July 2025