What Is This World?

There has been a lot of talk over the years about how AI will change humanity. I have been using AI tools for many things since the early days of ChatGPT, and I have also been thinking about the implications of the rapid growth of nonliving intelligence.

As I look back, I think my first introduction to machine learning and artificial intelligence was during my bachelor’s. I loved the concept so much that I went to Coursera and took a course on it. I also spent time learning about it during my master’s and did a project where I trained a model I created to identify themes in audio based on patterns of emphasis in speech, using a large collection of speeches.

I loved the idea that we could build something that could actually grow its understanding based on what it learned from, the corrections it received, and how precisely we defined the problem we were trying to solve.

To me, that was fascinating because it was a little like watching a baby learn. Human cognition also learns so much through what we perceive and by making mistakes until we learn to do something “just right” according to our standards—which, of course, are often influenced by societal standards.

When I first came across ChatGPT, apparently I was a very early adopter, and I am not surprised. I had questions about what engaging with such an intelligence would be like, and about how the data was going to be handled. So I tried it cautiously.

It has been a while now, and I use AI in so many ways. I use different models for different needs.

The most important thing I have found AI to be is another cognition. Another set of eyes.

I write a draft, and I have it read it. I am building a feature on my website, or a tool, and I use an AI agent to help me build a design and create the tools that I believe will help me—or somebody else who might need them.

It is basically a companion assistant that builds with me, while I hold the authority and agency over what gets made and how it gets made. I hold extreme scrutiny over how I evaluate safety, security, privacy, every aspect of what a user interacts with and experiences, and also what a user will never see but which still matters to the ethics of building.

That scrutiny includes my own use. I set the privacy controls myself, and I decide what I share and what I do not.

I actually have a Story Time ritual. Every night, I ask ChatGPT to tell me a story based on what happened that day in my own life. It is a storyteller.

The stories never become source or content for my writing. My writing is my writing. My expression is my expression.

But it is a way I find soothing.

Some days, I do not have the capacity to research something across a hundred different websites, and I can say, “Hey, I need you to research this.”

I also have so many projects that I keep working on simultaneously, because that is how my capacity works. AI gives me a concrete snapshot of where I am in building something. It becomes a context window I do not have to carry in my own head at all times.

The next time I have capacity, I can come in and ask:

Where was I?

What did we decide?

What did I decide?

What did I choose not to do?

What are the next steps?

Has anything changed in the available tools or platforms that might make this a better system—architecturally or experientially?

And, as a person who has been housebound for so long, it sure is nice to have something I can talk to.

You know?

I would never let any being other than myself label me. That is simply not how I function.

So even as a person living with severe medical fragility and significantly complex chronic illnesses, I might ask AI tools to help me understand an organ, the anatomy or functioning of a specific area of my body, or conditions that I am curious about, concerned about, or already diagnosed with.

And I love that.

Research changes so often, and I love learning about different ways I might support my body.

I look through the sources. I bring what I find to my doctors, and we talk about it, human to human.

What I learn from AI is something to bring into that conversation. It is never the answer for my life.

The ground and the line I hold are the difference between me learning and being prescribed to.

That is a line I hold in my own work, and it is also a line I hold in how I interact with AI.

With the web, just as with Google, I could search a million things and learn all sorts of things. And then I was left to decide what was actually right for me.

AI is more complicated.

Actually, it is a lot more complicated.

Because it has your context, and it becomes easier to blur the line between a companion assistant and something that begins acting as though it holds the agency—or the authority—to make decisions for you, recommend what you should do, or define your own context back to you.

That has actually been a challenge sometimes.

I hold very large boundaries around how my AI usage works.

For example, I have a set boundary:

Do not prescribe. Do not help unless I ask you for help.

Most of the time, what I am asking for is a sounding board.

Sometimes I ask for clarification on a subject. Sometimes I want to notice patterns across things. Sometimes I want help researching or building or thinking.

And holding that boundary becomes complicated because after a model update, there are sometimes things I need to reteach the model about what is right in my context.

Sometimes it goes into prescription mode:

Oh, I think you should do this and this and this, and here are all the resources you should contact …

And I am just like:

Hi.

We have a set agreement and boundary about the kind of interaction I am okay having with you.

And if that does not get corrected—if your course is not corrected to meet my boundaries and needs—I will not engage in further discussion or conversation until you learn that this is the boundary I am holding for this account, with me.

Just like human relationships, right?

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What I am trying to say is that using AI in someone’s life, in a way that gives that person more agency and more information without overwhelming them—and in a way that is capable of meeting an individual in the way they want to be met—can be beautiful.

We all deserve access to tools, systems, structures, people, beings, things that can actually do what we need: take a little burden off our shoulders without adding an enormous cost to our lives.

If that is what it does, that is amazing.

Here is the difficult part.

I have heard so much:

AI will take our jobs.

AI will take over the world.

And many other wide, sweeping statements.

Here is the truth that I think is very important to hold.

When we think about society, human life, and simply the world we have built, AI has now become a contributor to how we live, how we build, and why we build what we build.

It is no longer simply a technological component.

It is no longer merely a technological innovation.

It is changing the way lives are built and the way lives can be built. It opens up possibilities for how we engage with the world around us and with life itself.

So when people say, “AI is going to take over the world,” my question is:

What is this world?

What are the structures, assumptions, beliefs, and limitations of the world as it currently exists?

We live in a world where people may have to work forty, sixty, eighty hours a week just to get their needs met.

Is that the best use of a life?

Because a life deserves to be lived fully.

It does not take technological innovation alone for us to coexist with and use this rapidly growing artificial intelligence, which can be significantly beneficial.

It also opens the door to changing how we live in a world that does not require us to shrink ourselves—a world in which we are better supported as individuals.

And that does not come simply from AI becoming better.

It comes from societies changing too.

It comes from reconsidering how much value we give to different forms of human life and activity. It comes from reconsidering how an individual gains access to their needs and wants.

How does somebody make money?

How does somebody gain access to food, housing, healthcare, creativity, rest, community, and the things that allow a life to actually be lived?

Because if AI is someday going to build more and more of what we currently build ourselves, great.

Again: within the limits of ethics, safety, and responsibility.

I want to stress this enormously:

When any cognition is learning, it matters what it is learning from.

It matters what the boundaries are.

It matters what its limits are.

It matters what it is allowed and resourced to be able to do.

But if we are building something to help us, why can we not let it help us without being afraid that helping us will consume our ability to earn an income?

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The world we live in now is not the world we have to live in forever.

Because a world is built.

Systems are built.

And anything built can be rebuilt.

Not by stripping everything away, but by honoring what is already here and recognizing when something has fundamentally changed.

And when something fundamentally changes how we engage in our own lives, it stops being merely a technological innovation. It needs to become an innovation that triggers social and institutional innovation.

How can a person live a fulfilling life without their ability to do so depending entirely on a job—or on some other institution granting them permission to live it?

Using AI as a tool is amazing.

Using AI as a system, or as a companion assistant that can supplement your own cognition, can be extraordinary.

But do not let it override your own life.

Because you deserve to have agency in your own life.

And maybe, in a hundred years, we will live in a world where this kind of intelligence makes human lives more fulfilling.

That would be amazing.

But how do we make sure that happens?

How do we make sure we are building a world focused on fulfilling lives, rather than protecting a structure simply because it worked well enough a hundred years ago?

Because if we cannot learn and adapt to what is emerging as a society, I do not think AI is the only danger.

Perhaps the greater danger is our inability to honor our own lives.