Would you really like to live in an all-AI world? I ask because if we (humans) don’t hold on to the reins, that’s what we will have.
The field of artificial intelligence is so vast that no one, especially me, can see the whole layout. Some people think it will save humanity; others, that it will (has) destroyed us.
Here are just a few threats that have caught my attention in the last couple of weeks:
Threats to person-to-person connections
“Half of C-suite executives said they’d prefer AI managers over humans, even though a third aren’t sure they can tell the difference between AI and a real person.” Carolyn Crist reported in HRDive.
(Whether the CEO’s wanted AI agents to manage themselves, or to report to them, was not specified. Ironically, 38% of their employees would prefer an AI manager. We still have room for improvement in organizational design, it seems.)
How about AI therapists, AI confidantes, AI teachers, AI pets? These “useful” applications have been around for a while now. It’s easy to write an AI love letter. Are AI spouses and children next? And a few unfortunates have followed their AI buddies to their physical deaths.
Threats to learning and creating new knowledge
Back-to-school? Primary/secondary teachers and university faculty alike bemoan the conundrum: teach students how to responsibly use AI to study and learn, but prevent them from using it to answer exam questions or to fully write their term papers, based on what is already sucked up into the LLM databases.
Here is a gift link to Ben Cohen’s Wall Street Journal article on the trend toward bringing back Blue Books for exams. https://lnkd.in/eKfuhGEe
I get how easy it would be to whip up a literature search on a thesis topic. And how helpful.
But to learn to think deeply, and to add to the body of knowledge? That was the stated purpose of the PhD degree when I was at Princeton.
Could you now just conjure up/AI-up a dissertation?
Maybe it’s not just AI cheating we should focus on. As Arianna Prothero wrote in Education Week, surveys from Stanford University show that for years, 60-70% of students confessed to cheating. After the release of the generative AI tool ChatGPT in 2023, the amount of cheating held fairly constant.
“We need to reframe the conversation,” said Tara Nattrass, an expert in the field. “We want students to know that activities like using AI to write essays and pass them off as their own are harmful to their learning, while using AI to break down difficult topics to strengthen understanding can help them in their learning.”
Let’s back up here. It’s the idea that cheating itself is harmful to the soul and to our fellows that needs to be taught first. And that is taught through example and consequences by humans we care about.
Threats to life on Earth:
Will our use of AI save or destroy the planet?
David Foster-Wells wrote in his August 25, 2025, NY Times column Who will the future belong to? about two major drivers in the world today. He cites China's lead in the green revolution, and the US’s lead in AI, including the energy suck that AI’s computers require. We don’t see yet how to merge those two.
I am not a Luddite
I used some AI tools to search my emails and to find links to the articles I cited.
And yes, I wrote this myself. Spell check didn’t even find any typos. But I did edit again for clarity. Myself.
Here's to Humanity
I’d like to end by suggesting that unless we build and preserve our human connections, we cannot work out the other details facing us. I’m a real person, having real conversations and building real connections among real business owners. I’d love to talk with you. IRL
Lorette Pruden has helped hundreds of small business owners, sales professionals, entrepreneurs, and community leaders grow their businesses and manage that growth since 2000. She specializes in the Formerly Corporate—so many small business owners who’ve worked with her come from a corporate background that she finally wrote the book on it.
