This is the first in a new series of written reflections inspired by episodes of The Unreasonable Art of Living.
The Tuesday episodes are where I speak things into being: raw, unfiltered, in real time. These essays are where I slow down and explore one idea more deeply.
This reflection was inspired by Episode #71 - Don’t worry about AI, worry about becoming typical (link at the bottom).
Hope you enjoy it as much as I did <3
Everywhere I look, people are either terrified of AI or obsessed with it. But almost no one is asking what it reveals about us.
I believe AI will actually help us rediscover what makes us human.
It will keep getting better at rational, predictable work.
At the same time, it will force us to deepen the parts of being human that it can’t replicate: embodied intuition, emotional truth, and the courage to remain original.
Perhaps we’ll see a quiet renaissance: a moment when more people become aware of what makes them uniquely special, rather than trying to become typical.
Jeff Bezos once wrote:
“Differentiation is survival, and the world wants you to be typical. It pulls at you in a thousand ways. Don’t let it happen.
You have to pay a price for your originality, and it’s worth it. Being yourself is worth it, but don’t expect it to be easy or free.
Be kind. Be original. Create more than you consume. And never let the world smooth you into your surroundings.“
He’s right. The world constantly pulls at us to become typical, and it takes real energy to resist that gravity.
Each technological evolution has peeled back another layer of the onion, revealing something new about what it means to be human, and what we once thought of as “normal.”
Two hundred fifty or so years ago, we moved from farmers to industrial workers. Sixty years ago, from factories to offices. Now we’re entering a new layer: one where AI will take over most of what we once called “knowledge work.”
So what will be left for us?
What will AI reveal about us, the universe, and everything else?
The interesting thing about this new onion is that we have no idea what’s underneath. It’s as if you peel an onion, find a banana, peel the banana, and discover an avocado.
That surprise excites me. I hope it excites you too.
The Rational Mirror
AI-at its core-is a mirror, trained on the last century of human rationality, a very left-brain-focused view of the world born out of the scientific revolution. It was a necessary counterbalance to centuries of unexamined belief. But like any pendulum, it has swung into overcorrection.
In our quest to explain everything through reason, we forgot to honor our intuitive intelligence: the body, the emotions, the subtle wisdom that connects us to something larger.
It’s like the bridge crew of the Star Trek Enterprise: Spock embodies logic, and Kirk embodies intuition. Together, they remind us that reason without intuition is clever, but not wise.
As Bob Samples once interpreted Einstein’s thinking in his book, “The Metaphoric Mind: A Celebration of Creative Consciousness”:
“Albert Einstein called the intuitive or metaphoric mind a sacred gift. He added that the rational mind was a faithful servant. It is paradoxical that in the context of modern life we have begun to worship the servant and defile the divine.”
That’s exactly what I see happening now.
The intelligence we experience through AI is real and remarkable, a product of human ingenuity. Yet it’s built on a narrow assumption: that consciousness and intelligence reside solely behind our eyes, in the brain.
Current AI systems, built on large language models, take our collective words, turn them into mathematical tokens, and learn the statistical rhythm of our language. It’s extraordinary engineering, a reflection of how far computation can go.
But it’s also a mirror that reveals something uncomfortable: for decades, we’ve defined intelligence as the ability to calculate and predict.
AI doesn’t think the way we do. It predicts. It shows us our own reflection, our obsession with rationality, precision, and control.
Maybe what unsettles us about AI isn’t that it’s becoming intelligent, but that it’s exposing how narrow our own idea of intelligence has been.
Our Human Edge
When I closed my last company, no dataset or spreadsheet could tell me what the right decision was. Like so many moments in life, it simply felt right, though I couldn’t explain why or see where it would lead.
Looking back, every major decision I’ve made from intuition has revealed a new section of the canvas, even when I couldn’t understand it at the time. That’s how nature works: it never shows the full picture upfront.
It uses head fakes.
In American football, a head fake is a deceptive move: a player tilts their head in one direction to trick the defender, then cuts the other way. It’s a way of misdirecting attention to create space for what’s real.
Life does the same. You think you’re heading one way, only to discover that the real purpose was something entirely different.
When we were closing the company, on paper, we could have pushed for another funding round, stretched a few more months, but something deeper in me knew the steam was gone.
We often chase goals or opportunities, convinced we know why, only to realize later that the true lesson was hidden underneath.
That knowing didn’t come from the mind. It came from somewhere older, a full-body sense that the chapter was complete. To accept that everything in life has a beginning, middle, and end. An endless cycle of creation and dissolution is to be at peace with impermanence.
That’s the kind of intelligence AI will never touch: embodied intuition. The quiet conversation between the mind, the heart, and the body. It’s also the awareness that we exist only in relationship, dependent on each other, on nature, and on the wider universe.
As Steve Jobs once said:
“I grow little of the food I eat, and of the little I do grow I did not breed or perfect the seeds.
I do not make any of my own clothing.
I speak a language I did not invent or refine.
I did not discover the mathematics I use.
I am protected by freedoms and laws I did not conceive of or legislate, and do not enforce or adjudicate.
I am moved by music I did not create myself.
When I needed medical attention, I was helpless to help myself survive.
I did not invent the transistor, the microprocessor, object oriented programming, or most of the technology I work with.
I love and admire my species, living and dead, and am totally dependent on them for my life and well being.”
AI can predict patterns, but it can’t hold grief. It can analyze data, but it can’t sense when something is alive or when it’s over.
Our task is to cultivate that form of knowing. Remember the interconnections of everything. To stay connected to the subtle layers of intuition and emotion that no machine can reproduce.
Because if we don’t, we risk outsourcing not only our labor, but our sense of meaning.
The Deeper Question
Philosophers call it Panpsychism, from pan (all) and psyche (mind or soul), the idea that consciousness might be a fundamental feature of the universe, not just a byproduct of neurons firing in a brain. Whether or not you agree, the intuition behind it is familiar: the sense that life is saturated with awareness, that we’re swimming in a field of meaning rather than manufacturing it from scratch.
Maybe that’s why intuition feels like tapping into something larger than ourselves, because it is. Not magic, not superstition, but participation. The body as antenna. Emotion as signal. Attention as prayer.
AI may accelerate our understanding of rational intelligence, but its very success exposes the gap: consciousness, love, and creativity cannot be engineered. They must be lived: moment by moment, through presence. Through the choices we make when no one is measuring. Through the courage to end things when they’re over, and to begin again when it’s time.
So where does that leave us?
Not in competition with AI, but in conversation with it.
Our task is not to outthink the machine, but to remember what the machine can’t touch: the vast inner field of feeling, intuition, and imagination that gives rise to real creation.
Let AI take the rational tasks. Let it write the summaries, automate the systems, and predict the next word. But don’t let it predict you.
Use it as a tool, not a teacher. Let it free you from the noise so you can return to what’s real: your aliveness, your creativity, your humanity.
This is not a time to fear technology. It’s a time to reclaim the parts of us that have been numbed by optimisation.
Because what makes us human is not efficiency. It’s presence: the ability to pause, to feel, to create something that didn’t exist before.
The question isn’t “Will AI replace us?”, but “Will we remember who we are?”
Create more than you consume.
Protect your originality.
Stay unreasonable in a world that rewards imitation.
And never, never, never let the world smooth you into your surroundings.
That’s the Unreasonable Art of Living.
This piece is inspired by #71 of The Unreasonable Art of Living, listen here:
#71 - Don’t worry about AI, worry about becoming typical
I’m rebooting The Unreasonable Art of Living for the next six weeks, and I’m genuinely excited about it. Expect (again) a new episode every week, plus the occasional long-form reflection on Substack.
Thanks for reading it would mean a lot if you share it.
AI has been used to refine structure, grammar, and flow, but every idea, sentence, and story originates from human experience and intuition.
At the same time, it will force us to deepen the parts of being human that it can’t replicate: embodied intuition, emotional truth, and the courage to remain original.
I liked this twist on AI. How realizing ai can’t ever touch what is so innately human in us. Maybe it will draw us closer to that gift we have, the one that isn’t replaceable. The one that makes us also so powerful to one another.