I fear that today some of our leaders are not, in fact, leaders of good will but delusional ones.
When someone says "A whole civilization will die tonight," it says exactly what type of person they are. This type of person must be made accountable for their actions.
But I wonder why this happens. What systems allow these threats to be made public and posted like normal news? Have we become indifferent?
I do agree and resonate with your post humans are responsive adaptive not precise and also that AI is basicly a probability function whose parameters keeps getting refined by the minute thanks to us humans feeding it generously.
But i still desagree with the The delusional ape part i have a different set of beliefs there.
Hi Chaimaa, thank you for your comment, I would love to know your take on the post, anything to bring more clarity and also I have my own biases, and the many ways to tackle my bias is to listen to what others have to say.
I appreciate your perspective, and yes I cannot discredit that we all have a purpose towards a destination. Maybe something I need to reflect more upon. And perhaps rewrite that phrase. Thank you.
It says that organisations must deliberately preserve and build human expertise by reintroducing targeted friction, requiring active reasoning, and training people to critically evaluate AI outputs not because friction is good in itself, but because the struggle is what builds the judgment needed to work safely with AI.
Reading the news and I found out that there is an active legislative push against "Cognitive Manipulation" and "Dark Patterns." Regions in the Mediterranean (like Portugal and Spain) are at the forefront of the "Right to Disconnect" movements, which have evolved into discussions about "offline-first" urban zones to protect mental well-being.
This essay feels urgent right now because we're watching it happen in real time. Every organisation racing to deploy AI for 'efficiency gains' is essentially choosing the precision of the map over the territory.
But here's what I keep coming back to the rooftop conversation in Lisbon isn't just a personal crisis for that founder. It's becoming a systemic one. We're building entire institutions schools, healthcare, management around AI as a substitute for the responsive human presence. And we're calling it progress.
The dangerous part isn't that AI will replace human judgment. It's that we'll replace human judgment with AI not because it's better, but because it's cheaper and scales. We'll have optimised ourselves into a world where the responsive knife is considered an inefficiency.
Researchers tested 41 AI models on over 11,000 real workplace tasks. Most AI outputs barely meet minimum standards, scoring well below superior quality on complicated work. The models hit a "minimally sufficient" rating only about 65% of the time, and the probability of achieving a superior rating never exceeded 50%, even with unlimited time.
More striking the models struggled most with tasks requiring multiple steps or nuanced judgment, common in skilled roles like legal services and IT.
Still things will definitely change, and models will be better at predict things.
Should we be scare, fascinated by this? I'm not sure...
Strong piece. I write about AI too, but from a systems angle, and this hit a different nerve: the real risk is not just replacing human work, but quietly replacing responsive human judgment with scalable precision and calling that progress.
That’s the concern as well. Like the calculator most of us lost the capability of doing mental math, now when a tool does the “thinking” for you, is not hard to believe that also critical thinking could be lost…I fear is engineered for that or else we would not have chat bots that try to d the thinking for us by default…
Agreed. The difference is we’re not just offloading execution anymore, we’re offloading judgment loops. And once people stop engaging with the problem space deeply, recovery is much harder than with something like mental math.
Appreciate this framing. When optimization becomes the primary objective, it erodes the constraints that preserve alignment with reality. Proxies such as engagement, output, and precision gradually displace purpose, hollowing out the integrity of the systems they were meant to guide. Through this lens, AI is simply revealing how far our representations have drifted from what truly matters.
Agree, feels that we fall into a trap that all that matters is optimisation, being productive. And I feel “AI”, in these case deep learning models could grant us the space to breath and take the time to go over things, not just to speed up like an assembly line…
I just want to say how much this piece resonated with me.. The section about not wanting AI, automation, or even efficiency – but rather asking what the destination of all this progress really is – really hit home. I felt that same uneasy recognition you describe: the discomfort not of a difficult question, but of one I suspect I already know the answer to, and haven’t yet voiced.
It’s rare to see someone take a step back from the technical, the economic, and the procedural, and point straight at the core ethical and existential choice we’re making as a species. Your framing reminds me that all the debates about regulation, redistribution, or retraining are downstream – they only matter once we’ve clarified what kind of world we actually want to arrive at.
Thank you for naming this clearly! It’s uncomfortable, necessary, and exactly the kind of reflection that pushes us beyond reactive thinking toward conscious direction!
Thank you so much Mila. It means a lot that the piece resonated with you, especially that core question about where we're actually headed. Your point about regulation and redistribution being downstream that's exactly it.
AI is forcing a question that many avoid: what do we actually exist for? The productivity hype gave us a convenient answer to avoid the discomfort of going the deeper, existential route. AI is now dismantling that.
Two groups are emerging. One is using AI to do more; more output, more speed. The other is using it to be more, protecting the bandwidth to do what AI never will. Sense the room. Feel the weight of a conversation. Show up fully present. Sit in the mud with someone and know that offering an answer is the exact opposite of what you should do.
In my opinion, the leaders who will matter most won't be the ones who produced the most. They'll be the ones who doubled down on what makes us human and lead effectively from that place of purpose.
Maybe the real test of 'sitting in the mud with someone' isn't just showing up present it's also having the spine to name when someone's operating in bad faith. Presence without accountability might just be complicity dressed up as wisdom.
Also agree - it's both AND. Operating in the tension between empathy/compassion and accountability. Still, I think the first action is to listen and understand before anything else.
Yes, listening and understanding are a must. A few believe that takes time, and since taking time, feels like a waste of time, assumptions are often chosen to "speed up things". I keep asking why the rush?
I feel the leaders who'll have real influence are probably the ones comfortable sitting with ambiguity and resistance rather than rushing to solve it. There's something deeply counter cultural about choosing presence over productivity especially when the systems around us are built to reward the opposite.
I agree - the absence of solving or fixing it immediately and sitting in the uncertainty usually leads to more of a team approach to handling whatever it is.
In tech, sometimes I feel we suffer from "solution oriented mode only", no matter what is told to us we almost immediately come up with a solution, and sometimes without knowing all the facts. Perhaps due to our environment that keep pushing us to deliver more in less and less time. Feels we have become like CPUs...
Got it, yes, indeed, like he mention, best thing a friend can do is to listen, and not to try to solve it straight away. Sometimes I think there are no solutions and that's fine I suppose. Not everything is a problem to solve...
I fear that today some of our leaders are not, in fact, leaders of good will but delusional ones.
When someone says "A whole civilization will die tonight," it says exactly what type of person they are. This type of person must be made accountable for their actions.
But I wonder why this happens. What systems allow these threats to be made public and posted like normal news? Have we become indifferent?
Feels like a bluff, but playing with millions of life...we should not ignore this. I feel you.
My concern is that we are normalising this. Just because is happening out there, doesn't mean we should not care.
I do agree and resonate with your post humans are responsive adaptive not precise and also that AI is basicly a probability function whose parameters keeps getting refined by the minute thanks to us humans feeding it generously.
But i still desagree with the The delusional ape part i have a different set of beliefs there.
Great post, thank you
Hi Chaimaa, thank you for your comment, I would love to know your take on the post, anything to bring more clarity and also I have my own biases, and the many ways to tackle my bias is to listen to what others have to say.
"We are biological creatures who arrived on this planet through a process that had no intention and no plan."
I only desagree with this part.
I do firmly believe that we are human being we came for a purpose and we are heading towoard a defined destination.
I appreciate your perspective, and yes I cannot discredit that we all have a purpose towards a destination. Maybe something I need to reflect more upon. And perhaps rewrite that phrase. Thank you.
This one is alarming: Adults Lose Skills to AI. Children Never Build Them.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-algorithmic-mind/202603/adults-lose-skills-to-ai-children-never-build-them
This is a great info you should read as well:
It says that organisations must deliberately preserve and build human expertise by reintroducing targeted friction, requiring active reasoning, and training people to critically evaluate AI outputs not because friction is good in itself, but because the struggle is what builds the judgment needed to work safely with AI.
https://cognitiveworld.com/articles/2026/3/19/skill-atrophy-frictionless-ai-and-cognitive-debt
Reading the news and I found out that there is an active legislative push against "Cognitive Manipulation" and "Dark Patterns." Regions in the Mediterranean (like Portugal and Spain) are at the forefront of the "Right to Disconnect" movements, which have evolved into discussions about "offline-first" urban zones to protect mental well-being.
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/03/how-cognitive-manipulation-and-ai-will-shape-disinformation-in-2026/
This essay feels urgent right now because we're watching it happen in real time. Every organisation racing to deploy AI for 'efficiency gains' is essentially choosing the precision of the map over the territory.
But here's what I keep coming back to the rooftop conversation in Lisbon isn't just a personal crisis for that founder. It's becoming a systemic one. We're building entire institutions schools, healthcare, management around AI as a substitute for the responsive human presence. And we're calling it progress.
The dangerous part isn't that AI will replace human judgment. It's that we'll replace human judgment with AI not because it's better, but because it's cheaper and scales. We'll have optimised ourselves into a world where the responsive knife is considered an inefficiency.
Researchers tested 41 AI models on over 11,000 real workplace tasks. Most AI outputs barely meet minimum standards, scoring well below superior quality on complicated work. The models hit a "minimally sufficient" rating only about 65% of the time, and the probability of achieving a superior rating never exceeded 50%, even with unlimited time.
More striking the models struggled most with tasks requiring multiple steps or nuanced judgment, common in skilled roles like legal services and IT.
Still things will definitely change, and models will be better at predict things.
Should we be scare, fascinated by this? I'm not sure...
Strong piece. I write about AI too, but from a systems angle, and this hit a different nerve: the real risk is not just replacing human work, but quietly replacing responsive human judgment with scalable precision and calling that progress.
That’s the concern as well. Like the calculator most of us lost the capability of doing mental math, now when a tool does the “thinking” for you, is not hard to believe that also critical thinking could be lost…I fear is engineered for that or else we would not have chat bots that try to d the thinking for us by default…
Agreed. The difference is we’re not just offloading execution anymore, we’re offloading judgment loops. And once people stop engaging with the problem space deeply, recovery is much harder than with something like mental math.
Hopefully this is a phase, like many others and soon we will acknowledge that are certain things we must still do and not delegate easily.
And thank you Alireza.
Appreciate this framing. When optimization becomes the primary objective, it erodes the constraints that preserve alignment with reality. Proxies such as engagement, output, and precision gradually displace purpose, hollowing out the integrity of the systems they were meant to guide. Through this lens, AI is simply revealing how far our representations have drifted from what truly matters.
Agree, feels that we fall into a trap that all that matters is optimisation, being productive. And I feel “AI”, in these case deep learning models could grant us the space to breath and take the time to go over things, not just to speed up like an assembly line…
I just want to say how much this piece resonated with me.. The section about not wanting AI, automation, or even efficiency – but rather asking what the destination of all this progress really is – really hit home. I felt that same uneasy recognition you describe: the discomfort not of a difficult question, but of one I suspect I already know the answer to, and haven’t yet voiced.
It’s rare to see someone take a step back from the technical, the economic, and the procedural, and point straight at the core ethical and existential choice we’re making as a species. Your framing reminds me that all the debates about regulation, redistribution, or retraining are downstream – they only matter once we’ve clarified what kind of world we actually want to arrive at.
Thank you for naming this clearly! It’s uncomfortable, necessary, and exactly the kind of reflection that pushes us beyond reactive thinking toward conscious direction!
Thank you so much Mila. It means a lot that the piece resonated with you, especially that core question about where we're actually headed. Your point about regulation and redistribution being downstream that's exactly it.
Incredibly thought-provoking.
AI is forcing a question that many avoid: what do we actually exist for? The productivity hype gave us a convenient answer to avoid the discomfort of going the deeper, existential route. AI is now dismantling that.
Two groups are emerging. One is using AI to do more; more output, more speed. The other is using it to be more, protecting the bandwidth to do what AI never will. Sense the room. Feel the weight of a conversation. Show up fully present. Sit in the mud with someone and know that offering an answer is the exact opposite of what you should do.
In my opinion, the leaders who will matter most won't be the ones who produced the most. They'll be the ones who doubled down on what makes us human and lead effectively from that place of purpose.
Maybe the real test of 'sitting in the mud with someone' isn't just showing up present it's also having the spine to name when someone's operating in bad faith. Presence without accountability might just be complicity dressed up as wisdom.
Also agree - it's both AND. Operating in the tension between empathy/compassion and accountability. Still, I think the first action is to listen and understand before anything else.
Yes, listening and understanding are a must. A few believe that takes time, and since taking time, feels like a waste of time, assumptions are often chosen to "speed up things". I keep asking why the rush?
I feel the leaders who'll have real influence are probably the ones comfortable sitting with ambiguity and resistance rather than rushing to solve it. There's something deeply counter cultural about choosing presence over productivity especially when the systems around us are built to reward the opposite.
I agree - the absence of solving or fixing it immediately and sitting in the uncertainty usually leads to more of a team approach to handling whatever it is.
In tech, sometimes I feel we suffer from "solution oriented mode only", no matter what is told to us we almost immediately come up with a solution, and sometimes without knowing all the facts. Perhaps due to our environment that keep pushing us to deliver more in less and less time. Feels we have become like CPUs...
When you say sit in the mud with someone are you talking about vulnerability, shared struggle?
Yes, I love Simon Sinek’s thinking on this, which is where I borrowed the phrase from:
https://youtu.be/9sV8trjqpQU?si=7QsJntxKReR-xOcb
Got it, yes, indeed, like he mention, best thing a friend can do is to listen, and not to try to solve it straight away. Sometimes I think there are no solutions and that's fine I suppose. Not everything is a problem to solve...