Can Magic Survive the Age of Artificial Intelligence? - The Media Line

Steven Ganot

06/02/2026

Matan Rosenberg, a magician who performs across Israel in five languages, is not panicking because a robot might soon palm a coin better than he can. His worry is darker, stranger, and more human: Artificial intelligence may not replace magic by mastering sleight of hand. It may replace the appetite for wonder.

In this sharp, personal opinion piece, Rosenberg begins with Arthur C. Clarke’s famous line that advanced technology can look like magic, then flips the idea from the magician’s side of the table. Magic, he explains, is not mostly about speed. It is about micro-muscle control, timing, misdirection, humor, improvisation, and the fragile chemistry between performer and audience. A robot may someday dance, flip, or even handle a deck of cards, but reading a nervous volunteer and making a roomful of strangers gasp together is another trick entirely.

Rosenberg’s real fear is not that artificial intelligence will learn how to vanish a coin. It is that AI-driven devices will train people out of wanting to gather in the first place. The algorithms already know how to hold attention, trigger emotion, and keep users scrolling. The next danger, he suggests, is that theaters, comedy clubs, opera houses, and magic shows may begin to feel like quaint interruptions from a perfectly engineered dopamine loop.

The piece broadens into a warning about work, art, and passivity. Rosenberg invokes Martin Niemöller’s famous “First they came” warning to argue that AI’s march through factories, writing, design, coding, and other professions should not be treated as someone else’s problem. The question is not only whose job comes next, but whether people will still value experiences that require presence, risk, and another human being standing 2 feet away.

For now, Rosenberg takes comfort in the fact that people still leave home to be surprised. They still want to sit together, look toward a stage, and feel something impossible happen in real time. Read the full opinion piece; Rosenberg is really asking whether magic can survive machines—or whether humans can survive without magic.