This spring, every graduation speech seemed to pick a side on AI.
Either AI is threatening everything that makes us human, and we should be afraid. Or human creativity is irreplaceable, and we should be hopeful. Both takes have produced standing ovations and nearly the same advice: stay curious, stay human.
But despite the thoughtful speeches about the future, we all continue to miss a fundamental question: what is the impact of AI on how we know ourselves and what we believe?
We are not choosing between a human future and an AI future. We are already living in an augmented one. GPS reroutes us before we notice we are lost. Autocomplete finishes our sentences. Algorithms decide what news we see, what music fits our mood, and which products we didn’t know we needed.
Often, we are influenced by AI without even knowing it. When we log in to our emails, AI summarizes our messages and schedules our meetings. When we turn to our phones first thing in the morning, our social media feeds decide what we are angry about before we’ve even had our morning coffee.
The question is not whether AI will change us—it already has. The question is what it’s already doing to our sense of who we are.
Much of the conversation surrounding AI so far has focused on attention. We worry about distraction, the attention economy, and what AI might do to creativity. And to combat this, there is a wellness countermovement on the rise—meditation and mindfulness apps, digital detoxes, trendy podcasts about the benefits of boredom. My friends and I even have a group chat called “hardcore chill” to share our relaxation hacks. The instinct is right, but the response is shallow and short-lived. Taking a break from your phone doesn’t tell you what years of algorithmic curation have already done to how you think and what you believe.
We must focus not just on how we can consume less, but also on what it actually means to consume consciously. We must notice, in real time, how the media and information we take in is changing who we are—even down to the words we use. Researchers have found that people increasingly use words such as “delve,” “realm,” and “meticulous” in everyday speech because they appear so frequently in AI-generated text. We are being shaped in ways we are barely noticing.
Growing up, a few shows like Saved by the Bell, Dawson’s Creek, and Beverly Hills 90210 told my entire generation what American kids were supposed to look and act like. That was mass media, built for everyone at once. What’s different now is that the stories shaping us aren’t designed for millions. They’re designed for each of us alone, calibrated to keep us engaged 24/7. Media has always constructed identity, but we have no idea what happens when we take in nearly 13 hours of it a day, much of it generated by systems that profit from customizing content based on our insecurities, fears, and wants.
And yet, we are all hungry for exactly that understanding. We check our horoscopes. We take personality tests. We even take the Harry Potter sorting hat quiz, as if these evaluations could explain who we really are.
To be sure, this desire is not new. Psychologists have long known that people crave self-definition and that social identities give us a sense of belonging, especially in times of uncertainty. The difference is that we have little idea how AI is shaping what we want, what we like, and who we think we are, or to what ends.
Take how at the end of each year, we obsess over our Spotify Wrapped, an annual algorithmically-generated portrait of who we apparently are. We internalize this reflection, arguably more readily than our own self-knowledge, because it came from our data. Instead of asking ourselves who our favorite musician is, what kind of music we like, or what kind of music fan we are, we ask Spotify. Too often, we’re unsure of who we are and what we’re becoming, and then we look for answers from big tech, rather than in the one place that might actually have them: ourselves.
What would a “media diet wrapped” look like? If you are what you eat, we need to consider not just what we consume, but what it does to us. What did your AI usage nudge you toward believing, fearing, wanting? What version of yourself was quietly built?
Computer science researchers and legal experts call this the “Algorithmic Self,” in which identity is co-constructed not through reflection but through recommendation loops and outsourced introspection. Sociologist Sherry Turkle saw where we were headed years ago when she labeled this the “I share therefore I am” style of being. The result: too often, external validation is replaced by internal reflection as the primary source of self-knowledge.
Perhaps the most important question facing us is whether we are losing the capacity to know our own minds, to define our own values, and to make our own decisions, even as we are simultaneously shaped by systems we never chose and cannot see.
The truth is that humans are already augmented, and it will only continue. If we want to play a role in who we are becoming, we need to decide now.
