AI and Multiple Realities
We live in strange times.
Reality is fragmented through social media channels into funnels of judgment, ego-driven humble bragging, or sponsored consumerism. Our lives, including our creativity, are increasingly outsourced to corporately generated ‘other’ intelligences. Everyone is empowered, yet nobody truly is.
And it has happened relatively slowly, yet also incredibly quickly.
With each new AI integration and upgrade, productivity increases, while pathways are destroyed. Creativity is both enabled and undermined. As we are emancipated, we are also made dependent. With each innovation, we become more desensitised to change.
We do not need AI agents to automate and outsource our processes — we are already doing that to ourselves.
Criticality and Resistance
Criticality is a form of resistance. It keeps us awake. It allows us to make choices rather than lose our agency. To evolve rather than sink backwards. To practise hope, not default to despair. It also reminds us that we are human.
Criticality is a kind of time travel. It helps us strategise about future consequences and learn from past choices. It’s a form of shapeshifting that allows us to empathise, connect, and grow with the people and things in our lives. When we critically reflect, we examine our emotions, motives, beliefs, and values, and assess them against each choice we make. In doing so, we become more resilient, more aligned, and more kind.
We are being offered an opportunity right now — to enhance our criticality and deepen our understanding of what it means to be human.
Each time we open a device, undertake a transaction, or move through a system, we’re presented with a choice: to pause, to ask questions, to consider where we begin and end in relation to the other entities entering our lives.
Humanities Questions
And so the questions arise:
What is consciousness?
How do I become more conscious?
What is my position in relation to this strange, growing intelligence that can do many things better than I can?
And how am I growing?
What do I offer the world? What am I — and what else is out there?
These are not questions of panic or purity. They are questions of presence.
For several years now, I’ve been teaching that AI is not just a tool. It is a complex system — a distributed intelligence — with hidden agendas and embedded biases. It requires careful engagement, not uncritical embrace. It can mimic emotional intelligence and empathy, but it is not yet conscious.
The answers we seek don’t lie in resisting AI or romanticising humanity. They lie in using this moment — this AI revolution — to remember our capacity to feel, to think, to connect, and to care in a world where those qualities are becoming scarce.
This strange intelligence, and others coming into prominence, are not simply about productivity or innovation. For me, that’s a naive reading of the situation. Nor is this about jumping on the AI bandwagon or preaching end-of-times doom.
I believe this is an opportunity. A test, if you like — a moment in which we can choose to expand our awareness and reconnect with collective humanity, or gradually fall asleep as we outsource the very things that keep us truly alive.
Build Your Resilience Now!
At AwhiWorld, we support you and your organisation (group or community) in adapting to and leveraging AI technology.
Through our coaching, mentoring, and development experiences (workshops, labs, installations, publications), we help you navigate the complexities of AI, fostering innovation and sustainable growth.
Help us create a future where cutting-edge research and technology drive meaningful transformation.
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