Mixed Signals: The Uneasy Feeling Of Living With AI

Dealing with disorientation, dizziness, and despair.

To say I have mixed feelings about AI is an understatement. It sits somewhere between anticipation and dread. Like the vertigo you feel when the ground beneath you is shifting faster than you can adjust your footing.

I hear it in conversations with corporate leaders, fellow creatives, and parents like me. A wary pause before they answer when I ask them about AI. Some say LinkedIn is ruined. Others fret for their kid’s future. Many just don’t recognize the world we now live in.

What I’m sensing is this: we’re not just adapting to new technology. We’re being asked to reconceive who we are.

Beyond the utopian promises and dystopian warnings, there’s a third experience that’s quieter and pervasive. A deep disorientation.

This isn’t about economics alone. It’s about identity. About a slow, creeping question: What parts of me are still uniquely human?

As Matt Schumer wrote, “something big is happening” where multiple impossible things become possible simultaneously, and the pace of change outstrips our capacity to integrate it.

Something else can’t be ignored. People are leaving. AI leaders with a privileged line of sight. Engineers, researchers, and safety officers at the companies building the most advanced AI systems.

Last week, Mrinank Sharma, an AI safety officer at Anthropic, resigned with a stark message: the world is in peril, and the industry isn’t taking safety seriously enough. These aren’t technophobes. They’re the people who built this, firing warning shots as they leave. What do they see that we don’t?

Meanwhile, the train keeps accelerating. Sam Altman recently laid out OpenAI’s vision, a roadmap so ambitious it makes previous revolutions look incremental. Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft, every major company is in an arms race.

What troubles me is the gap between ambition and restraint, between the speed of development and the maturity of our governance, between the confidence of builders and the caution of those stepping away.

Neither panic nor blind optimism will help us. Active participation will. We’re not passive recipients. The choices we make now will determine which version of the AI future we inhabit.

So we must preserve human judgment, protect relational depth, and demand transparency. Slow down where it matters. Align incentives with humanity, not just shareholder returns. Build governance before scale. Teach discernment, not just adoption.

Feeling uneasy is actually positive. It’s a sign we’re paying attention and not numb to the significance of the moment.

The future isn’t something that happens to us. It’s a story we write every day. And while AI is breathtaking, so is our own capacity for wisdom, restraint, and moral imagination. It just might be the most important work of our lifetimes.

#ArtificialIntelligence #AIEthics #FutureOfWork #ResponsibleAI #Leadership

(Photo: Mishal Ibrahim, Unsplash)