Weekly Nugget: Can AI Save Humanity?

Hi friend,

If AI saves humanity, it will not be by automating our lives.

If it does so, it will be by helping us remember what we have forgotten, that is, what it means to be a human being, and how to work and live together.

Let me explain.

Our worlds are in the midst of a profound change. Many people struggle to cope and often get stuck in bad moods. 

Some of these moods are historical: 

• the mood of entitlement (“something should have been given to me”),

• the mood of victimhood (“something was done to me”),

• the mood of resentment (not getting what you wanted),

• and the mood of resignation (imagining you’ll never get what you want).

These moods fuel the epidemics of loneliness in personal life and disengagement in teams and enterprises. 

When people see their moods clearly, transformation becomes possible. That’s the work I’ve been doing for years through my writings and coaching. Two years ago, my team and I began experimenting with whether this could be done with AI. To our shock and surprise, the answer was yes—but only with a very different kind of AI. Not like ChatGPT. An AI that perturbs language, introduces new spaces for reflection, and opens the way for change. 

We built that AI. And now we’ve captured our thinking in a recently updated paper: Can AI Save Humanity? We discuss how AI, used in a very particular way, could alter the trajectory of people's personal and professional lives. 

I’d love for you to read it and write me back with your thoughts—especially after reading the last section, where I invite various kinds of roles to join us: investors, engineers, entrepreneurs, leaders, teachers, and mobilizers. I look forward to hearing from you. 

With care,
Saqib