Staying Human in a Not-so-Human World

Purposeful Wanderings - Bradford L. Glass - May 2026

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“We make our world significant by the courage of our questions

and by the depth of our answers.” – Carl Sagan

Advances in technology over the course of my lifetime have been amazing:  computers, internet, cell phones, social media, artificial intelligence. Each has made our lives easier and expanded our sense of the world. Yet each has also left us – perhaps unknowingly at the time – losing a piece of our humanness… how we connect with ourselves, with others, with life, the world. We often fail to notice the loss, however, because it happens slowly compared to the gain. This is perhaps nowhere as significant as it is right now with Artificial Intelligence.

As with other advances, A.I. is here to stay. Whether you ‘like’ A.I. … or use it … or not – it’s crucial to understand what it is, what it isn’t, where it works and where it doesn’t … if only so you don’t unknowingly become a victim of it in some way. I’m neither “for” nor “against” A.I.  I’m for seeing with such unrelenting conscious clarity and objective perspective that we stop missing so damned much … mostly about ourselves.

A.I. does two things: 1) it accesses & compiles vast amounts of information in seconds. Value: the human mind can’t access that much, that fast. Risk: we’re easily lured, acculturated as we are to seek easy answers. And we miss that. 2) it interprets & delivers information, distilling it into “one answer” … like a Google search with just a single composite of all the results. Value: the human mind can’t distill that much, that fast. Risk: interpretation isn’t the same as fact. It’s a point of view – one of many, based on information previously fed into it and any bias in the program reporting it. Please note: how you view your life works the same way … it’s made up of your old lessons and experiences (information fed into you), as well as your intention in the moment (the bias in your “program.”) And, with both you and A.I., interpretation can vary wildly from truth. And … with both, we miss that.

A.I. is amazing when things aren’t personal to you. Ex: valuing antiques, finding financial details of a company, even writing a computer program. But this changes when the meaning and impact are personal to you. Ex: what do I do with my life, how do I handle a difficult conversation, can you write a letter to my boss, how do I charge for my services, how do I stop my neighbor from being a jerk, help talk me off the ledge, or “what do I tell my aunt when she asks if I’m single again.” (an ad for Co-Pilot, Microsoft’s A.I. program). A.I. will answer these questions; the answers may be helpful; they will all likely draw you in. Our minds are unconsciously hooked by what makes us “feel better.” But, feeling better isn’t the same as being better. And we miss that.  

With personal topics. it's easy to be trapped … by easy. It’s easy to be unaware when we’re trapped. It’s easy to find both comfort and convenience in something that offers help (only because we learned to believe this is so). And if your intention is to just get through each day, AI offers amazing stuff. But … and if you read my articles, I assume you want more in life than an “ordinary day” … it would help to know where you may unconsciously risk letting A.I. be a replacement for your own precious critical thinking, conscious awareness, heart, soul, spirit and personal power. Life may feel scary at times, but if you leave your path to the mercy of others, you leave yourself weaker, not stronger. A.I. may be able to define mercy, but it can’t offer it. And we miss that.

A path beyond? Nurture your own critical thinking & objective awareness … the part of you that you may have unknowingly given away … to others, or to an A.I. program. In the personal examples above, A.I. is seen as a life coach. But living authentically is not about “getting easy answers;” it’s about learning to see and think in ways that help you grow your capacity to find your own answers … where they live … inside you. A.I. may “help” for one encounter (a letter, conversation, upset, an aunt) but if you diminish your capacity to access your inner truth for the next time … and the time after that, this leaves you growingly dependent on the outside … which in turn denies your greatest assets – your humanness and potential, on the inside. And we miss that.

P.S. This article – like A.I., and like our habituated ways – is an interpretation, my own. Not pushing it as the only answer, but more as an invitation … for you to discover your own.

Exercise: Experiment in A.I.  I encourage discovering “what works for you” … including what you may gain … and lose … in your use of A.I. You might ask yourself if or how these gains and losses “make your life work” … or not.

Here’s a possible framework:  For a personal topic important to you, and about which you see yourself lacking in some way … either awareness, perspective, insight or how to proceed, take some quiet time to ponder … the topic, your thoughts about it, and just whereyou may feel lacking in terms of moving forward. The intention is to stop for long enough to get to know – consciously – just who and where you are on the topic. No right answer here; just learning. Stake out that piece of the territory that is all yours, no matter how small it may be. Stand firm in your awareness, however tenuous your grasp. It’s a start.

Then … pose your question to A.I. But before “doing” what the answer suggests, reflect again. Become the observer of the answer, not just the participant. Stop long enough to listen to what you hear. Specifically:  Notice … that what you heard was an interpretation, one of many possible. Your awareness alone allows you to calibrate how the answer “fits” – with your life, your ways of seeing and thinking, with what you know, with what you don’t, with the scenario at hand, with the other people involved (friends, family, co-workers). In other words, does it “make sense” – to you? Apply your interpretation to A.I.’s interpretation. Just asking these questions opens up new paths. Your next steps are far more likely to be based on who you are, not just an “answer” to the issue at hand.

Life Lessons from Nature: The principle guiding the unfolding of the universe, including all life here on Earth, is “constant becoming” … applying creative expression in the face of life’s inherent uncertainty to create order from chaos. Outcomes in nature aren’t planned in advance. Life creates its next steps as it goes. And because nature’s mind isn’t made up ahead of time, choices are “context sensitive,” responding to conditions of the moment, in the moment. She just keeps creating, regardless of what’s happening. Yet here’s the key: nature just keeps listening, too. What she hears is called feedback … an inherent attribute of all living systems. Every natural process, whether the inner workings of a human cell or birth and death of stars and galaxies, creates messages, real-time “status reports” about how things are going. Using this feedback, the creative process then chooses what to do next. This approach generates far greater possibility than plans or goals could ever offer. (Goals assume one right path, leading to one right answer. All else is systematically missed.) Creativity and uncertainty together create order, naturally. Science calls these complex adaptive systems. The order we observe everywhere, from the spiral of a galaxy to delicate figures of a snowflake, is just the adaptation of creativity to what’s happening right now. Chaos is nature’s way of sustaining creativity. Self-organization is nature’s way of creating order from chaos.

Book of the month:Radical Acceptance, by Tara Brach.Believing something is wrong with us is one reason we go search for answers outside of us. But that belief is a result of old lessons, NOT a result of who we truly are. What got poured into us is illusion. It’s just that we’ve come tobelieveit, without conscious awareness. Tara shows how you can rekindle that belief in your inner self and stand strong in what might be called your “not knowing” … the perfection of your imperfection … instead of trying so damn hard on the outside to “make life turn out.”