Magic Is For Humans

Magic is for humans.

The statement sounds deceptively simple, yet its implications are profound. At first glance, it feels like the tagline of a self-help book—one your uncle buys after his divorce, right before he dives headfirst into hot yoga and kombucha-fueled enlightenment. But the more you sit with it, the more the phrase acquires weight. "Magic is for humans."

And here's the twist: It's true. Magic is for humans. Because who else needs it?

Dogs have no need for magic. They live in a perpetual state of presence. They don't second-guess their existence. They bark at the wind, chase shadows, and trust that life will unfold as it should. Birds? Same story. The entire sky is their playground. They don’t pause mid-flight to question the meaning of it all. Nature, in its remarkable efficiency, leaves no room for magic.

Humans, however, are different. We complicate things. We invented taxes, credit scores, and group chats—baffling systems so tangled that we had to invent magic just to cope. Magic is our emergency exit when logic locks the door and swallows the key. We rely on it to patch the gaps in what we know and to soften the edges of what we can’t accept. We tell ourselves stories of fate, luck, or destiny because we crave order in chaos. We want to believe that the impossible can happen—not just because we desire hope, but because we need it to make sense of the unpredictable world we’ve created.

Which brings us to AI.

Artificial intelligence feels suspiciously magical. Not the whimsical, card-trick kind of magic, but the unsettling sort that leaves you questioning reality. With a few lines of code and enough data, these digital golems are now writing love letters, composing music, and analyzing your social media footprint to tell you which kind of cheese best reflects your personality. It's as if you pulled a rabbit out of a hat only to realize the rabbit now owns your home and manages your investment portfolio.

AI feels magical because we humans—determined as always to outsmart ourselves—have found a way to cheat the system. We built machines that mimic creativity, insight, and even humor. It's as if we whispered an incantation into the circuits and conjured something that shouldn't exist. And yet, behind the illusion is something far simpler: pattern recognition. What we call "AI magic" is really just data sifting—stones flung at the unknown until we accidentally hit something useful.

AI can never create true magic. Not really. Because magic isn’t about calculation; it’s about awe. It’s the visceral shiver you feel when you watch the sky explode into color during a perfect sunset. It’s the electric pause before a joke lands with precision. It’s the ache in your chest when a stranger’s voice breaks into song so beautifully that you forget your own name. Magic lives in that ineffable gap between what we know and what we feel.

We can build increasingly powerful machines—systems that write faster, process more data, and make better predictions—but the magic still belongs to us. Because magic isn’t about efficiency, speed, or optimization. It’s about being alive.

If AI ever manages to do that—become alive—well, perhaps magic won’t be just for humans anymore. Until that day comes, we'll keep casting our spells in small ways: telling jokes that land just right, sharing ideas that linger long after the conversation ends, and building a world where machines handle the drudgery so we can better savor those rare moments of transcendence.

Because magic is for humans.

-shout out to Nick Smoot for this inspiring LinkedIn Post which prompted these thoughts

go check out what Nick is building!