Cristina Capretta, APR, is the director of marketing and community relations for the Berea City School District, which serves 5,200 students in the Cleveland, Ohio area. She is president-elect of the Ohio School Public Relations Association and is pursuing a Master of Science in Communication at Purdue University, with a concentration in digital media and communication technologies.

There's a '90s music video that still lives rent-free in my head: Jamiroquai's "Virtual Insanity." In it, lead singer Jay Kay dances around a room on a floor that appears to be moving underneath him—except it isn’t. Instead, everything but the floor is in motion, creating a disorienting illusion that’s impossible to forget. Your eyes tell you one thing, but your brain knows another.

When Jamiroquai released "Virtual Insanity" in 1996—one of the greatest songs of all time, in my opinion—the title was meant to be a metaphor for technology disconnecting us from reality, about innovation spiraling beyond our control. It warned about creating artificial environments that would replace authentic human experience. 

Today, virtual insanity isn't a metaphor. We're living in it. Our human impulse to innovate is exceeding our ability to fully understand the consequences. But if we approach technology with curiosity and care, it can help us see new possibilities without losing our sense of what’s real—or our humanity. 

I’ve spent a decade as a one-person communications department. Whenever I give a presentation, I show a “Meet the Team” slide. It's eight identical photos of me, each labeled with a job title: “public relations,” “marketing,” “community relations,” “photographer,” “videographer,” “crisis communication,” “social media” and “webmaster.” If I were being honest, the list would stretch to over 50 roles. There's no one else down the hall for me to delegate something to.

AI changed that reality—not by replacing me, but by making it a little easier to meet some of my own high standards. It handles time-consuming tasks so I can focus on the strategy and human judgment that empower the thoughtful work I always aim to do. This work is grounded in relationships and trust—things AI can support, but never replace.

In 1996, Jamiroquai warned about moral blindness and environmental destruction obscured by technological advancement. Today we face a similar paradox—and I feel it daily. AI offers unprecedented creativity while raising questions about sustainability and the risk of losing genuine human connection. When I feel that tension between progress and responsibility, I remind myself to focus on intention, making sure my work stays grounded in people, not just progress.

For me, AI is not a replacement for judgment or creativity, but a teammate who sits beside me all day long—a teammate who pushes me to stay curious, think differently and see possibilities I may not have imagined on my own.

When I first started using AI in January 2023, I had no idea what I was doing. I just typed. Sometimes it gave me exactly what I wanted. More often, it didn't. But I leaned in. Why did it answer this way? What if I worded my request differently? The more context I provided, the better output I received.

I learned that AI's greatest value isn't in the answers it provides, but in the thinking it provokes. I don't give it a prompt and expect perfection, and I definitely never copy and paste the first output—or even the second or third. I talk to it. I ask it to revise, to explain, to compare, to challenge me and to ask me questions until it has all the information it needs. It's like working with a colleague who never gets tired of brainstorming, never gives up and is always willing to do better. And in a way, it’s training me. It has taught me to provide clearer context, set the right tone and define my purpose.

For example, I’ll often ask the model to rate its own response on a scale of 1 to 10. If I disagree with the rating it gives itself, I say so and explain why. That small move changes the entire interaction. It forces me to explain what is not working or why the output misses the mark. In turn, it teaches the model what I value in communication. The next version is almost always stronger because I became clearer. 

Over the last three years, this process has sharpened my instincts as a communicator. Every exchange forces me to slow down and clarify what I really mean, something that’s easy to skip in everyday communication. The quality of the output always reflects the clarity of my thinking going in. I catch myself applying the same mindset to human conversations, pausing to frame questions more thoughtfully, listening for nuance and choosing my words with greater intention.

The benefits of working with AI as a thought partner have carried into how I experiment with AI in my work. It’s what led me to explore using AI agents to audit my website for spelling errors, accessibility issues and broken links. I've even had it go through the site as if it were a parent, student or staff member, describing what they might experience and pointing out ways I could improve their journey. The conversation is the value. The back-and-forth is where the work actually happens. 

But Jamiroquai saw danger nearly 30 years ago, warning us of technology’s potential to disconnect us both from reality and from each other. The choice now is ours. We can keep our humanity at the center or risk losing sight of it. No matter how advanced AI becomes, when trust and credibility are on the line, human intuition matters. AI can predict patterns, but it cannot read the room. It can’t sense timing, nuance or tone the way people can. The heart of the work will always be human.

We live in a time when everything is optimized for speedy consumption. It's easy to slip into the "fast content" mindset: produce, post, scroll, repeat. When everything is digestible, consumable and forgettable, we stop being able to distinguish between content that is made to connect and content that is made to perform.

But here's what I've discovered: AI is a mirror. Fill it with shallow, performative content, and it reflects that. Use it to express depth, creativity and truth, and it can elevate our work. The technology itself is neutral. The insanity comes from how we use it. If we only use AI to move faster, we're missing the point. The real opportunity is to use it to think deeper, ask better questions and create something that connects long after someone scrolls past. 

In school communications, stories cut through the noise. They remind us who we are and help us make sense of what is happening around us. No matter how fast technology evolves, there will always be a need for storytelling that makes people feel something. That heart is what will continue to be important through all the change that is happening now.

Everything I create must reflect care and intention because ultimately, I am responsible for the message and its accuracy. AI can assist, but it cannot assume accountability. The technology doesn’t understand what’s at stake. I do.

Quality in communication is inseparable from credibility. Every message is a reflection of values and community confidence. This kind of trust cannot be automated or outsourced. It comes from showing good judgment, owning the message and taking responsibility for the outcome. That is the human side of communication.

At this point, most school communicators are using AI in some way—but simply using it is not the differentiator. It's developing the instincts to know when to trust the output, when to refine it, and when to toss it and start over. 

I've learned to recognize when AI can support my work and when it can’t, what to delegate versus what to keep human. I use it to pressure-test decisions and think through challenges before they happen—to get ahead of problems rather than react to them. I ask it to look for blind spots, offer alternatives and show how a message might be received from different perspectives. My goal is never to sound more polished. It's about thinking more critically, seeing more clearly and making better choices—choices I can stand behind when my name is attached to them.

When technology blurs the line between real and artificial, curiosity becomes our filter for credibility. It reminds us to pause before we publish, to look closer at what AI generates, to think critically about whether the output truly serves our purpose and to take ownership of every word that reaches our community. For me, curiosity transformed AI from a tool into a conversation partner, and it’s curiosity that keeps me always questioning rather than simply accepting. 

Curiosity grows when we learn from others—not just fellow school communicators, but professionals in corporate marketing, agencies, tech startups, healthcare and beyond. Some of the most valuable practices I've adopted come from watching how B2B and B2C companies solve challenges and interpret data. For example, I use persona testing to better understand how people in our community experience our communications. With AI, I can simulate how messages might be received by families, staff or community members, refining them until the messages feel clear, respectful and relevant to each group.

Many school communicators tend to stop at the surface. It’s easy to rely on vanity metrics such as likes, reach, follower counts and page visits because they’re visible and simple to track. Those numbers look good in reports, but rarely show real impact. 

AI changes that, taking us from measuring attention to understanding it. It’s not about reach; it’s about resonance. AI can analyze the tone of comments, identify which messages sparked genuine discussion, and even show which stories resonated most with our audiences based on the language used in responses. It doesn’t know those identities or personas by name, but it can infer them through patterns. Differences in phrasing, tone and context reveal who’s engaging and why.

These kinds of insights move communication from surface numbers to human understanding. AI turns engagement into evidence, showing not just how people react, but who they are and what they care about. And that kind of learning shouldn’t stop with our audiences. It should extend to us.

The communicators who will thrive are the ones who see AI as a shared learning opportunity and seek out others to learn with. When I help others, I deepen my own understanding. Explaining how I use AI forces me to slow down and examine my thought process. Every conversation sharpens my thinking and gives me new ideas to bring back to my own work. 

I often share effective prompts, approaches that failed and the reasoning behind both. I present in my own district and at conferences, contribute to professional groups and connect with communicators in other districts who are navigating the same challenges. I’m part of a network of people who are experimenting, sharing and refining AI practices together. Through these conversations and collaborations, it’s clear that curiosity and connection are what build AI literacy. They help us use the technology more responsibly and effectively.

The best way to build AI literacy is to start understanding what is possible, and the way to get there is by staying curious and exploring. Try tools, test ideas and observe how others in different fields are using AI to solve problems. Notice patterns, workflows and outcomes. Each experiment, even the imperfect ones, reveals a little more about where this technology can help and where it cannot. But it’s key to remember that we are all students and educators of AI. Being curious and sharing what we learn matters because that is how we build understanding. None of us should be learning in isolation. 

Curiosity can show you how to combine what humans do best with what machines can do faster. AI expands our capacity, but it is our judgment, empathy and creativity that give the work integrity. If we, as school communicators and even as districts, approach AI with the same transparency and thoughtfulness we bring to every other decision in schools, we will preserve what matters most: our humanity in how we teach, lead and communicate.

We're living in the future “Virtual Insanity” warned about. The test now is whether we'll wake up to it or just keep dancing while the room spins around us. The question isn't whether AI will continue to transform our work, but whether we will remain human enough in using it.

At the heart of it all, AI changed my how, not my why. It helped me see how technology and creativity can work well together. Curiosity is what started that shift for me, and it is what will keep school communications departments of all sizes moving forward—one question, one story, one thoughtful message at a time. As school communicators, we can’t control how fast technology evolves, but we can control how we use it.

Maybe "Virtual Insanity" was more than just a great music video. Maybe it was a time capsule, waiting for us to finally understand what Jamiroquai already did: Even as the walls move around us, the ground beneath us—our humanity—needs to remain, still.