Victims, aren't we all? (We're not)
Most of the conversations about AI and humanity frame the relationship as something that is being done to us. An inevitable end that we can all see but are helpless to control.
AI is replacing us…
AI is eroding everything meaningful…
AI is making me irrelevant…
But that isn’t what I see happening. That is not what I observe. When you look closely at the decisions being made, you can see it. AI is being used to give us permission to lay down anything we don’t want to carry, and to do it surrounded by the comfort of our lies that are telling us there is no other way.
Before I explain, let me tell you why it matters. It is easy to assume the role of the victim. It seems painless and relatable. But it creates a foundation of helplessness disguised as wisdom. In the same way I told myself that aging was the inevitable end and that I had no power over my own body, we are giving up our place in the world so that we can rest as comfortable, powerless observers of our own downfall.
If you are a victim, you can appear stoic and wise. You can appear mature and accepting. In the same way I caged myself into believing I was no longer capable of running a mile. But if you believe in testing your stories the way I do, you can start to see another path where you are not a victim. You are a willing participant. Sam Altman might be shipping the tools that make you feel like a helpless observer, but he is not making your choices for you. That’s on you. And me.
The Architecture of Surrender
This framing is important. You need to decide if you are going to be a victim, or if you are going to take responsibility and claim your agency in this shift. My lies are our lies as a society:
- “I’m doing the best I can.” turns into “I have to use AI to keep up. I don’t have time to do it the old way.”
- “Decline is natural and unavoidable.” turns into “This is just the direction things are going.”
- “The stress in my life justifies these choices.” turns into “There is so much pressure to keep up that these choices all make sense.”
The architecture of what we are giving away is the same.
This is the part where I reiterate that I am super-pro-AI. I love it. I use it every day. This is not an argument against AI. I am against framing myself as a victim and blindly following the path the machines set out for me. There are plenty of choices I make to use AI and I don’t think twice about it. But the fact that I choose with intention makes all the difference. Let’s dig into what we are giving away in more detail.
Case Study: The Meaningless Meeting
I have a lot of meetings. I work remotely, so they are all online. In the past year, I have seen meetings really shift as AI tools become so much easier to use and access. In almost every single meeting, at least one person will show up with an AI note taker. Often, everyone will show up with one. They are amazing. They start the meeting on time. They capture every word spoken. They capture every todo. They capture every decision, every topic, and often even a few details you wish they hadn’t. Then they bundle it up into a nice summary and email it out to everyone.
When I was a scuba instructor earlier in life, something I told all of my students was that the number one equipment failure in diving is that the diver fails to read their air gauge. It was telling them how much air they had left the whole time, but if they never look at it, what’s the point?
Back to meetings. How many of these incredible AI-generated meeting summaries have you received in the last month? And how many of them have you read? Or did you copy and paste them into another AI? I’ll tell you right now, if you read them, you are in the minority.
Another meeting observation: when everyone knows that the meeting is being tracked by an AI and a transcript, guess how many people are giving the meeting their actual, focused attention for the entire meeting? Do you? Why listen or take your own notes? The AI will get it, right?
The space that we carve out in our day to make it possible for us to connect and exchange ideas is working 10x more efficiently than it did a year ago, but the humans in the loop are giving so much less of their attention that it makes you wonder whether there is any point having meetings at all anymore. We all show up on paper. But we are surrendering the one thing that we all need from each other the most.
Fractional Attention = Fractional Connection
Let’s make this personal. Think back over the past month. Imagine a moment when you had a thought or an idea that you really wanted to transmit to someone else—something real that you wanted to communicate to someone who actually matters to you.
Don’t bother calling. Who answers the phone anymore? If you send a voice memo or leave a message, do you think they heard or read your words, or did they just glance at the summary? How much of your message do you think they actually received versus the AI interpretation of what you “meant”? Neat little bullet points sound so much better.
Same question for an email or a text. What part of that important thing hit the consciousness of the intended target? Some of it? None of it?
How about when you are talking to someone and in the middle of your sentence you see the blankness in their eyes as you realize they are reading a text while they are “listening” to you?
When all you ever get is a fraction of someone’s attention in short, controlled bursts, what is it worth? If they respond, how much of your attention do you actually give them?
Efficiency at Any Cost
When we blindly optimize for efficiency, or efficiency at any cost, we choose the appearance of connection over the real thing. Why? This is the easy question.
- The real version requires presence.
- It is harder.
- It takes your time.
- Being present is uncomfortable.
We are racing toward a future where comfort at all times is the expectation. Anything less is just a missed efficiency we need to automate away.
We reach for the tool not because it is faster or better, but because we have forgotten that it is ok to be uncomfortable sometimes. It is ok to do the harder thing.
The Regret That Is Coming
The muscle for being fully present—for making something imperfect and real—for sitting in a hard conversation without a script or an “assistant”—it weakens when you don’t use it. This isn’t a theory. This is physiology applied to your mind instead of your body. And we can test it the same way.
The capacity you are not using is already slipping away. Every day you go without using it, it atrophies. The person who will feel this the most is not the person who never had it. Like me, it will be the person you used to be able to be—the person who can remember a time when they could do the hard thing. The person who can remember the stronger version of themselves, and who suddenly realizes that when they dig down to find that strong center, it isn’t there anymore.
Look at yourself. Right now. Look at your own behavior over the last several months. Is there anything you can name that is slipping away from you, but the slipping feels inevitable and out of your control? What do you miss? What do you mourn for?
Now let’s test. Let’s open the lab.
Decide to take it back. Today. Right now.
This is the hard part. Un-volunteering for this mess is not going to be easy. It goes against everything everyone is telling you. It will feel inefficient. It will feel slow. It will feel unwise and occasionally it will feel absurd. Like insisting on walking when everyone else drives, you will watch everyone around you speed past and you will feel like the only loser at the table. The people around you might not understand, and you won’t always be able to explain your choices to someone who has not yet reached for that essential thing and found it missing.
Now, think about the confidence you gain from knowing, and proving, that you can do the hard thing.
Then ask yourself this one thing: Am I sure I can’t keep it? Are you sure that giving it away is the only path?
It isn’t too late.
But it is almost too late.
The lab is open.