I spent 48 hours in Las Vegas and all I got was a revelation about creativity.

When I kicked off my AI journey this past July, I was bursting with excitement about exploring its creative possibilities. I was gonna teach AI to write killer headlines! Coach it to imagine new worlds! Partner with it to produce great advertising! 

It never quite worked out that way. 

I was green. At the dawn of my journey, we were at peak “AI will replace the Creatives first” freakout.  

Months passed. (Years in AI time.) Turned out I, and plenty of other business leaders, overestimated AI’s powers of imagination. And we didn’t possess nearly enough awe for the sheer mysterious, messy power of human creativity.  

I’d been sitting with this for a while, but it struck me viscerally last weekend in Las Vegas. Two wildly different experiences — “The Wizard of Oz” at the Sphere and “Omega Mart” by Meow Wolf — helped clarify the line between what AI can do and what only humans can create. 

We’re Off to See The Wizard 

We started the day with the “Wizard of Oz.” And a huge question: how do you adapt a beloved, 85-year-old film for the most advanced, immersive venue on the planet?  

For the audience, the experience is a lot like Dorothy’s — with the help of advanced technology, you enter a whole new world. 

The production team used AI to upscale the film until it looked crystal-clear on a ginormous screen. AI and VFX were used to conjure a world outside the 1939 frame and extend it to the horizon in every direction. 60%-70% of what's on screen is AI/VFX. 

The results are spectacular. The worlds of Kansas and Oz wrap around you. In the Emerald City, you have to crane your neck to gaze up through the emerald towers. The digital tornado hits hard thanks to practical effects: industrial fans blow leaves in a vortex around the audience; the seats shake and rattle as the twister grows close and then swallows you up.  

But in the end, technology is used to enhance, not reinvent. The things we remember about the movie — “Over the Rainbow,” the tornado, Munchkinland, the characters, the freaky flying monkeys — were conjured by human creativity, storytelling, and craft. The new technology engages more of our senses, but the stuff that makes me laugh and cry hasn't changed in 85 years. (Yes, I still choke up every time Judy Garland uncorks that velvet contralto of hers to dream of a life beyond Kansas.)  

“The Wizard of Oz” is a great model for AI’s role in creative work: it empowers, it supports, it enhances. But the humans still imagine. 

Omega Mart: You, Too, Can Be an Interdimensional Detective 

After “Wizard,” several members of the group wanted to go to Omega Mart. 

And if “Wizard” shows how AI can enhance art, Omega Mart is a stunning reminder of what humans have been capable of without it. 

I knew nothing about the place. I’d heard of Meow Wolf; several Salesforce teammates had visited and come back inspired. That was it. 

My ignorance made the experience 10x better. I was dropped into it blind. I had to make sense of it as I went along. It reminded me of the early digital game MYST. You wake up in a new place. No notes. No rules. You have to figure it out. 

Omega Mart presents itself as a bizarrely cheerful grocery store, full of cheeky, bent versions of familiar things. Tattooed chickens. Sentient daikon plushies. A children’s marshmallow cereal called “Oh. Those.” Do any old farts remember “Wacky Packages,” 1970s-era trading cards that parodied household consumer goods? Kinda like that, but 3D.  

There was also a hint of something darker: a cult-like reverence for the chain’s founders and a “join our team” video that weirdly used the term “ascension” instead of promotion. I didn't know it yet, but this would matter. 

I was unimpressed. Until. 

At the rear of the store, I spotted a display for camping supplies. There was a tent. At the rear of the tent there was a crawl space. I got down on my knees, crawled through, and emerged in a warehouse-sized space that held worlds. Dark rocky passages. Candy-colored stairways. An abandoned desert cabin full of notebooks and snapshots. A steampunk-ish factory full of hand cranks, flashing lights, and metal catwalks. The staid Omega Mart “corporate offices,” filled with schematics, handbooks, and PCs full of internal communications.  

I wandered, crawled, and climbed, and after 30 minutes, I started to spot patterns. Recurring names, faces, characters. They started to resolve into a story. Maybe several connected stories. The corporate offices revealed a succession drama between the founder and his daughter, the new CEO. The desert cabin revealed that her daughter had vanished while looking for an interdimensional portal. It wasn’t a funhouse; it was a mystery. 

I thought I'd stay for 45 minutes. I stayed for three hours. I was an interdimensional detective, and I was obsessed. 

The whole time, I was in awe at the thought, planning, craft, and attention to detail. How long does it take to construct such a joyful, layered explosion of creativity? Months? Years? 

There’s Hope for us Creatives 

I’ve learned to hedge my AI pronouncements — everything changes too fast. But I’ve grown more comfortable declaring that creativity is one of the few things humans still do better.  

I can't adequately express how hard I tried to get an AI to generate something I'd have presented to one of my ECDs, or that I’d have approved if my teams had presented it to me.  

I created personas based on ad legends and comedians. I’d have them riff on ideas and crank out headlines by the hundreds. I’d have them generate visual prompts for surprising ideas and feed them into Midjourney and Gemini. I’d patiently give direction until evening arrived, and I figured I’d earned a drink. I failed. Or it failed. There was failure. 

Funny. Just one year ago, everybody was terrified that AI would come for the creative jobs first.  

Smart leaders don’t talk like that anymore. Leading-edge companies understand that when every business can generate bottomless, competent, forgettable content, creativity, storytelling, and inspiration become unfair advantages.  

The AI companies know exactly what their creation is good at, and it’s revealing. AI does the lion’s share of their coding. But they won't let it near their storytelling. 

Also, this is galaxies bigger than business advantage. It’s existential. I’ve spent an entire career channeling creativity into commerce, so sometimes I can lose the plot. But the fact is, humans need to create and be inspired by creativity. It's a reward we give ourselves, and each other. The creator channels every emotion on the spectrum into the artwork; the audience responds with everything from a shrug to a cathartic breakdown.  

For the time being, I think you need to be human to fully appreciate what makes us human — and what creativity reveals about that. 

I’m sure that all over Moltbook, AI agents are having a whale of a time talking about everything they can do better than humans. That’s fair.  

At least we have creativity, myth, storytelling, song, and the ability to crawl on all fours through a wormhole at the back of a grocery store.