My post the other day AGI Isn’t Just On The Doorstep, It’s About To Walk Right Through Our Front Door
sparked some very interesting discussions. Honestly, reading and responding to the comment section of this post was the most fun I’ve had on Hive in recent memory. The experience was a good reminder of how valuable places like Hive really are.
Hitting that - PUBLISH - button on this platform can be just the tip of the iceberg of a much larger, deeper, and more rewarding process. Those creators who don’t realize this are truly missing out. If we’re lucky, some of the articles we write become the catalyst to open up larger discussions that take on a life of their own. Perhaps these articles might stir feelings and begin an internal dialogue in the reader, getting them to think in ways they might not have thought before. In turn, the reader's thoughtful comments give us all so many different perspectives on certain topics and glimpses of different viewpoints—there’s immense value in this intellectual cross-pollination.
From the moment I first tried ChatGPT around two years ago I was already astonished by its capability (it’s way more capable now). In 2023 I used the AI platform to create an itinerary for a trip we were planning to Ireland. When I saw a detailed itinerary ChatGPT created in just a handful of seconds I realized what a beast humanity was dealing with regarding artificial intelligence.
“I’m more frightened than interested by artificial intelligence – in fact, perhaps fright and interest are not far away from one another. Things can become real in your mind, you can be tricked, and you believe things you wouldn’t ordinarily. A world run by automatons doesn’t seem completely unrealistic anymore. It’s a bit chilling.” —Gemma Whelan
It’s now apparent to most of us how addicted people have become to mobile phones. Evidence is everywhere—the world’s divisiveness, drivers continually drifting out of their lanes, cars sitting idle long after the traffic light turns green, people walking about like zombies staring at their devices. Now imagine everyone walking around using an AI-assistant that’s more intelligent than the smartest human. As we begin to interface with AI like we do our mobile phones at scale this will get much worse.
In the comments of my previous post about AGI linked above @kriszrokk mentioned a Cornell University study entitled Your Brain onChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task. It’s no surprise that we’ll experience temporarily decreased brain activity when we’re not using our gray-matter but what is more concerning is the long term toll this will take. I believe our collective cognitive decline probably began a while ago—the moment mobile phones were widely adopted. Everything in life is a tradeoff. For all of the convenience mobile devices and the internet have provided us they’ve also taken a fair amount of really important and valuable things away.
If you’d like a huge eye-opener, just take a gander at vintage video clips from The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson.
I like to use this show as an example because Johnny didn’t just invite intellectuals and celebrities on his show he also interviewed average people. Now compare the speech, humor, and social interactions with anything on television today. After watching a few of these vintage clips compare them to any from the last decade (2015-2025). You’ll soon realize, on average, it seems clear that people in the pre-mobile phone world had larger vocabularies, greater social intelligence (especially non-verbal communication skills), and collectively a better sense of humor. Not that everything was great in these past decades, for one everything smelled like an ashtray, but watching these old clips made me nostalgic for some of the positive things from that old world I remember.
“Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior, but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex every time he looks at a flower.” —Alan Kay
The buzz in Silicon Valley circles these last few weeks is that greater-than-human artificial intelligence could be released by OpenAI to the public this month (July of 2025). Considering even a remote possibility that this prediction is true there’s no time like the present to start thinking about and establishing personal boundaries regarding our use of AI. We may not get another chance because creating these boundaries will be far easier to do BEFORE AGI is released than it will be AFTER we begin interacting with it.
Here’s what I came up with:
My Personal Manifesto for Interacting with AGI
- Limit Over-Reliance: Consider AI as a tool, not a crutch. Challenge yourself to solve problems independently before seeking AI assistance to preserve critical thinking abilities.
- Curate Inputs Mindfully: Engage AI with clear and specific queries instead of broad ones to avoid information overload and maintain your mental clarity.
- Prioritize Original Thought: Create first drafts or ideas with zero AI input to nurture and maintain our own personal creativity and unique voice.
- Set Time Boundaries: Determine specific times for AI-interaction to prevent continuous engagement from dulling our mental initiative.
- Reflect and Validate: Cross-check AI outputs with your own reasoning or external sources to sharpen analytical skills.
- Engage in Non-Digital Creativity: Practice analog activities regularly like writing, drawing, or brainstorming to sustain creativity and mental elasticity.
- Continually Question AI Assumptions: We mustn’t put AI on a pedestal and instantly believe its answers are superior to our own ideas, intuition, and feelings. Challenge AI responses to avoid passive acceptance, preserve independent judgment, and lessen our own personal confidence.
I encourage you all to start building your own specific list right now. Keep this list handy to use as a reference in the days to come. Share it in the comments below if you’re so inclined, this could be helpful to others (myself included).
One thing is for sure, our world is about to change very drastically and as we’re swirling around in the vortex of chaos the age of AGI will bring with it we must never forget one thing…
We have within us the power to choose to interact with AI. The time is now to determine what, exactly, these boundaries will be.
Here’s a great video explaining past cycles of innovation/reinvention and the future we’re poised to step into.
All for now. Thanks for reading.
