Lately, when people talk about AI, they can skip past the part that feels most important: the human side of it all. Of course, “the human side of AI” can mean many things depending on someone’s experiences, biases, and the roles they play in life. But at its core, it comes back to this: our very human, very organic bodies—still carrying around a brain shaped by over 200 million years of mammalian evolution—are trying to work with a technology that is distinctly not human.And everyone’s wondering: how can this living, breathing, feeling brain collaborate with AI?
We know AI didn’t spontaneously invent itself. It’s built from everything humans have created—the good, the bad, and everything in between. In that way,AI is human-informed, if you count its origin story. But it’s also alien to us.
Another question that keeps surfacing is this: what do I think of this augmentation of my own intelligence? How do I stay aware of its limits and my own? And how can I educate myself to interact with large language models in ways that make the collaboration more useful, more productive, and maybe even more humane?
A few days ago, the New York Times ran a guest essay by an octogenarian therapist reflecting on his partnership with GPT. It struck me how sharply he could see its biases, its illusions, and yet—overall—he seemed genuinely fond of it. He’d found it useful, even enriching, in his own intellectual life. That article inspired me to try using ChatGPT differently:not just as a work tool, but as a way to probe my own mental blocks, to dig into my discomforts around work and purpose. I figured, unless the data somehow gets turned against me, I have nothing to lose by using this technology to help me sort through my own thinking as I continue my path as a teacher of adults.
And that path matters. Adults need help. They need community, truth, and clarity. At a minimum, the incredible power of these language models should be accessible to all—not just the privileged. I’m lucky to have the space to experiment, to puzzle out what AI education could be, to imagine how it might help more than it harms.
So here I am—embodied, educated, and deeply motivated to help people navigate this AI frontier. When I say, “the human side of AI,” I don’t mean one thing. I mean the whole messy, curious, fragile, and determined way humans think, learn, and adapt. My work in adult education and in critical and creative thinking feels like a good foundation to begin mapping new kinds of learning experiences for this age. Ultimately, this isn’t just about how AI works—it’s about how we work, how we think, and how we face a technology that some people fear might harm more than it helps.
We’re all on this journey together. My hope is to make it a little less frightening—and a lot more human.
