CLOSED ROOM

WHEN THE RIVER CHANGED COURSE

By Emerson Sam Navaya

There is a story I often remember whenever people declare the death of human creativity.

When Facebook first arrived, many people predicted the funeral of newspapers. Some condemned it from pulpits and public platforms. Others called it satanic, believing that no decent society could survive such an invention. They thought newspapers would disappear, journalists would become irrelevant, and reading would become a thing of the past.

Time has passed.

Newspapers still exist. Journalism still exists. Books are still being written. What changed was not the value of writing, but the way writing reached people. The wise learned to publish in both print and digital spaces. Those who resisted every change spent years fighting yesterday while tomorrow quietly arrived.

Now history has introduced another visitor: Artificial Intelligence.

Again, panic has become louder than understanding.

Some insist that AI has come to bury creative writing. Others dismiss every good article by saying, "Bukhu limenelo lalembedwa ndi AI." If a newspaper publishes a polished feature, someone whispers, "Newspaper ya AI." If a student writes fluently, another quickly concludes, "Akudalira AI basi."

Perhaps we have forgotten something important.

A hammer never replaced the carpenter.

A calculator never replaced the mathematician.

A camera never replaced the artist.

A computer never replaced intelligence.

Likewise, Artificial Intelligence will never replace imagination. It has no childhood memories to draw from. It has never buried a loved one. It has never fallen in love. It has never cried through Malawi's economic hardships. It has never watched the Shire River flood villages or listened to an old grandmother narrate folktales beneath a mango tree.

Those experiences belong to human beings.

AI processes information.

Human beings create meaning.

The danger is not Artificial Intelligence. The danger is refusing to learn while the world keeps moving.

Our greatest weakness as Africans has often been fighting one another while others are busy building the future. While some nations invest in research, robotics and innovation, we waste precious hours arguing whether technology should exist at all. It resembles xenophobic violence, where energy that should build communities is instead spent attacking fellow human beings. By the time the dust settles, those who chose innovation have already crossed another bridge.

Technology has never waited for permission.

It simply arrives.

Those who embrace it responsibly become stronger.

Those who reject it entirely are eventually forced to catch up.

The question is therefore not whether AI has come.

It has.

The question is whether we shall use it wisely or spend years complaining about those who do.

A good writer using AI remains a good writer because ideas, judgment, ethics and originality still belong to the human mind. AI can suggest words, but it cannot replace wisdom. It can organise paragraphs, but it cannot manufacture lived experience. It can imitate style, but it cannot inherit a soul.

The future will not belong to those who fight Artificial Intelligence.

Neither will it belong to those who surrender all thinking to machines.

It will belong to those who understand the partnership between human creativity and intelligent technology.

History has always rewarded those who adapt.

When the printing press arrived, some feared books.

When radio arrived, some feared newspapers.

When television arrived, some feared radio.

When Facebook arrived, some feared the internet.

Today they fear Artificial Intelligence.

Tomorrow there will be another invention, and the same fears will return wearing different clothes.

Progress has never asked for our approval. It only asks whether we are willing to learn.

Artificial Intelligence has come to stay. The sooner we stop seeing it as an enemy and start treating it as a responsible tool, the sooner we shall discover that machines do not replace human ability. They simply amplify the abilities of those who are prepared to think, create and adapt.