(This is the third in a series on generative AI content.
The phrase “adapt or die” is especially cruel in the context of gen-AI. It reframes systemic harm as a personal failure. It weaponizes the language of evolution and progress to justify displacement, exploitation, and the erasure of human labor. When used in discussions about AI, it suggests that artists, writers, and other creative professionals should simply “get with the program,” to learn to work alongside or through the very systems that are undermining their livelihoods. It offers no room to question whether the change is ethical, sustainable, or fair. It’s not a neutral observation; it’s a threat disguised as advice, delivered from a position of power to those being harmed.
This phrase assumes that those displaced have equal resources, time, or capacity to “adapt,” while those benefiting from AI face no comparable pressure to slow down, reconsider, or build responsibly. Worse, it implies that if someone can’t or won’t adapt, they somehow deserve obsolescence, as if survival in a rapidly shifting, tech-dominated economy is purely a matter of willpower or skill, not structural imbalance. It’s a mindset that dismisses entire careers, bodies of work, and creative identities as collateral damage for someone else’s efficiency.
Equally problematic is the claim that “human artists will never be obsolete since their new work will always be needed to keep training AI.” On its surface, this sounds like a nod to the enduring value of human creativity—but it’s deeply exploitative. It reduces artists to data sources, not creators. Their role isn’t to be respected as original voices, but to serve as raw material for machines to digest, remix, and monetize. It’s as if artists are being told: you’ll never go extinct, because we still need your blood to keep our machine alive.
This mindset strips artists of agency and reframes their labor as valuable only insofar as it can fuel automation. It’s the logic of the parasite: the host must survive so the leech can keep feeding. And when it’s presented as reassurance, it becomes especially grotesque—like telling a farmer, “Don’t worry, we’ll always need your crops… we just won’t pay you for them.”
Both attitudes reflect a deeper disregard for consent, compensation, and creative dignity. They treat human expression as infrastructure: there to be mined, absorbed, and replaced. They call it progress—but it’s really just appropriation with better branding.