Every generation believes it is living through the most consequential technological shift in history. Ours may have a legitimate claim. Artificial intelligence has escaped the laboratories and entered our daily lives with astonishing speed, transforming everything from software development and scientific research to marketing, filmmaking, medicine, and journalism. Depending on who is making the prediction, AI will either become humanity's greatest collaborator or its greatest disruption. I spend enough time talking with founders, researchers, and technologists to know that neither side is entirely wrong. Something profound is happening. The only thing we know for certain is that we're still in the first chapter.
During the past two years, I've had the privilege of interviewing entrepreneurs and researchers who are building what many believe will become the defining technology of our generation. Those conversations almost always begin with engineering. We talk about models, computing power, investment, product development, and the extraordinary pace of innovation. Eventually, though, the discussion drifts somewhere else. Someone begins wondering whether intelligence and consciousness are the same thing. Another person asks whether creativity can be reduced to prediction. Before long we're debating judgment, originality, ethics, authorship, and purpose. The technology remains extraordinary, but the questions become unmistakably philosophical.
My degree is in the humanities, and I have never regretted that decision for a single second. There were years when that felt almost unfashionable. Universities, parents, and employers understandably emphasized practical disciplines that promised measurable careers.
Engineering, computer science, finance, and business became the languages of progress, while literature, philosophy, history, journalism, and the arts were increasingly asked to justify their existence. Somewhere along the way, we started treating the humanities as enrichment rather than foundational.
The irony is difficult to overlook. Just as our technology has become more sophisticated than anything previous generations could have imagined, the questions that now dominate public conversation are the very questions the humanities have wrestled with for centuries.
The poet Mary Oliver urged us to "pay attention." Simone Weil believed attention was the rarest and purest form of generosity. Hannah Arendt devoted much of her life's work to understanding human action, responsibility, and the choices that define civilizations. None of them could have imagined large language models. All of them understood that technological change eventually forces people to confront questions that cannot be answered with engineering alone.
And, so that leads me to the present. I was sitting on my deck with a cup of coffee this morning, watching hummingbirds jostle over a feeder while the sun danced across the foothills. Living in Colorado teaches you a particular rhythm. Summer mornings begin with possibility, but they also begin with a glance toward the horizon. Is that a cloud hanging over the ridge, or the first hint of wildfire smoke? Beauty and uncertainty have always shared the same landscape here.
I've always loved summer because it gives me an excuse to spend as much time outside as possible. My friends know that I have an entirely unreasonable affection for activities that require helmets. Motorcycles, horses, kayaks — if I have to buckle something under my chin before leaving the house, there's a good chance I'm going to have an excellent day. Those pursuits don't disconnect me from technology. They do something else. They sort of reconnect me with focus. Riding a motorcycle through the twisty mountains leaves very little room for checking notifications or Slack. Horses have no interest in my productivity system or my ability to optimize content. A kayak has never once asked me to write Claude Code for a weather report. They all insist on the same thing: presence.
Artificial intelligence promises to make us faster, more productive, and more capable in ways we are only beginning to understand. History suggests that remarkable tools eventually become ordinary ones (the wheel, spell check, spreadsheets), and humanity benefits enormously when tedious work gives way to more meaningful pursuits. The unanswered question has never been whether we'll have more capability. The unanswered question is what we'll do with it.
It's not because the humanities oppose technology, but because they have always concerned themselves with the human condition. They ask questions. Like – what constitutes a good life, what responsibilities we owe one another, how communities flourish, why beauty matters, and what separates wisdom from intelligence. Those questions don't disappear because technology advances. If anything, they become more urgent. Every civilization has produced remarkable inventions. Every civilization has eventually had to decide how those inventions would shape the people who used them.
I’m an optimist, but I did go for a kayak this morning, so my perspective may impacted by an abundance of endorphins. It’s not because I believe artificial intelligence will solve every problem confronting humanity, and certainly not because I believe it won't create new ones. My optimism comes from recognizing that we've arrived at a moment when the humanities are no longer an afterthought to technological progress. They're becoming its essential companion. The more capable our machines become, the more valuable our distinctly human capacities become as well – judgment, curiosity, empathy, imagination. Moral reasoning. The ability to find meaning in experiences that cannot be measured by efficiency and process alone.
That realization has changed the way I think about my own summers. I still ride motorcycles without a destination, spend mornings drinking coffee on the deck, paddle stretches of Horsetooth Reservoir, and keep one eye on the wildfire reports because that's simply part of living in the West.
None of those experiences are an escape from the future. They are a reminder of what the future is supposed to serve. Technology has always been at its best when it enlarges our humanity rather than replacing it. If this remarkable new era encourages us to revisit the questions poets, philosophers, historians, and artists have been asking for thousands of years, then perhaps artificial intelligence isn't pulling us away from our humanity after all. --AC