Why the AI Debate Needs More Than Engineers

What's interesting about so many of these AI podcasts and panels is that most of the people around the table are engineers.

And engineers, by nature and training, tend to look at things scientifically. Technically. Through data, systems, probabilities and outcomes.

We absolutely need that.

But sometimes I listen to these conversations and feel like an enormous part of the equation is missing:

The human being.

Our heart. Our spirit. Our emotions. Our needs, wants and fears. The reasons we actually do the things we do.

You cannot design a future for human beings while ignoring what human beings are.

There is something in us that wants to move forward. To explore. To create. To discover. To push boundaries.

It's the same life force that has taken us to the tops of the highest mountains and the depths of the oceans. The same thing that has made us invent, build, risk, fail, try again and keep expanding what we thought was possible.

You are not going to engineer that out of us.

And I don't think we should try.

Of course we need the technical minds. We need to listen to the data. We need to understand the risks, the probabilities and what the science is telling us.

But every policy, restriction and decision we make around AI also has to account for human nature.

Who are we?

Why do we do what we do?

What makes people comply? What makes them rebel? What makes us take risks? What makes us create something even when someone tells us not to?

Because if we don't understand the human being sitting on the other side of all these policies, we may end up designing solutions that look brilliant on paper and fail completely in the real world.

So maybe the AI conversation needs fewer rooms filled almost entirely with engineers, and more psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists, artists, spiritual thinkers, historians and people who spend their lives trying to understand human beings.

The technology matters.

But so do the people using it.

And perhaps this is the part of the conversation we keep skipping.

We spend so much time asking what AI will become, what it will be allowed to do, how powerful it might get, and how we should control it.

Maybe we also need to ask what kind of human beings are creating it, using it and making decisions around it.

Because technology does not exist separately from us. It is shaped by our fears, our desires, our ambition, our need for control, our curiosity and our willingness to push beyond what already exists.

And the better we understand ourselves, the better chance we have of making wiser decisions about what comes next.

Before we try to control the future, perhaps we need to understand the human beings creating it.

A question to sit with

When you make an important decision, how much of it comes from logic, and how much comes from something deeper within you?

Fear. Intuition. Desire. Curiosity. A need to grow. A need to feel safe.

We often think we make decisions rationally. But being human is hardly that tidy! Understanding what is really driving us can change the decisions we make.

You don't have to do it alone

Sometimes the hardest thing is seeing ourselves clearly when we're right in the middle of something.

An Orykl Session gives you 60 minutes with a vetted spiritual practitioner to explore what is happening beneath the surface, what you may not be seeing, and what your own deeper knowing may already be trying to tell you.

60 minutes · $75

Find your match