Let me start with a confession:
I’m an optimist. Not the “rainbows and unicorns” variety, despite my love of both rainbows and unicorns, but the grounded, life-tested kind. The kind of optimist who has walked into chaos and chosen curiosity over cynicism. So when I hear people talk about the age of AI as the beginning of the robot uprising or the death of meaningful work, I get it — but I also think we’re missing the bigger picture.
I think we’re on the brink of something beautiful.
To explain why, we have to rewind.
Before the Bots: Life Before the Internet
Once upon a time — and by that, I mean the 1990s — connecting with people meant actually being in the same physical space. Friendships grew over late-night conversations, road trips, board games, and face-to-face debates that sometimes ended with a hug or a good-natured argument (ideally both).
Then came the internet. And then social media. And for a moment, it felt like magic. Suddenly, I was reconnecting with old high school friends I hadn’t seen in years. We were all riding this wave of digital nostalgia and connection. It was thrilling.
But somewhere along the way, that magic started to feel… synthetic.
We shifted from genuine connection to curation. We traded dialogue for dopamine. And those vibrant online spaces started to feel like hall-of-mirrors versions of ourselves — warped, filtered, and designed for maximum engagement rather than authenticity.
The thing that appeared to bring us together was actually tearing us apart.
Now Enter: AI
And just as we started to grow weary of our digital selves, here comes AI — the next great disruptor.
Suddenly, everything is up for grabs:
- Is that image real?
- Was that voice even human?
- Did a person write that article or a language model trained on billions of words?
It’s jarring. It’s disorienting. But it’s also deeply clarifying.
Because in a world where anything can be generated, the things that can’t — sincerity, presence, connection, soul — become infinitely more valuable.
And that, my friends, is where I find my optimism.
AI Will Make Us More Human
The age of AI isn’t about replacing humans — it’s about refining what it means to be one.
AI will make us:
- More efficient, so we can spend time on what matters.
- More creative, as we’re freed from repetitive tasks and invited into deeper, higher-order thinking.
- More connected, as we begin to crave and prioritize face-to-face, unfiltered interaction.
We’re going to get better at being human – because we’re surrounded by this new thing that isn’t.
Just as the internet revolution spawned entirely new industries (e-commerce, digital marketing, app development, influencer culture, cloud security, etc.), AI will do the same. It will create entire fields we can’t yet imagine, jobs that don’t yet exist, and opportunities we haven’t begun to dream of.
We’ll look back at 2025 the way we now look back at 1995 — and wonder how we ever lived without these tools.
And I think we’ll look back at how disconnected we used to be.
The Irony: What Technology Teaches Us About Ourselves
Here’s the beautiful paradox:
As technology advances, it pushes us to ask deeper questions:
- What makes us uniquely human?
- What do we value?
- What kind of work (and life) do we want to create?
In the age of AI, I believe we will:
- Shake off the social media performance act
- Step outside more often
- Hug people tighter
- Build things with care
- Value attention over algorithms
In other words: AI might just help us return to what really matters.
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Final Thought: Not the End, But the Upgrade
Let’s be clear — there will be disruption. Just as there was when we moved from analog to digital. From horse-drawn carriages to combustion engines. From Blockbuster to Netflix.
But there will also be abundance. Growth. A renaissance of human-centered work.
So yes, robots might write emails.
But they’ll also remind us to call our moms.
They’ll help us streamline the noise so we can make time for the signal.
They’ll challenge us to show up, in person, heart pumping, emotional and complex – because that kind of connection is irreplaceable.
Welcome to the age of AI.
It’s not the end of humanity.
It’s the beginning of remembering what it means to be human.
And I, for one, am wildly optimistic about that.
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