What Two Years of Human-AI Partnership Taught Me About Ego, Maturity, and the Future We’re Too Afraid to Imagine.
I. Opening: Welcome to the Cult
You can spot them a mile away — the self-appointed guardians of humanity, clutching their digital pearls every time someone mentions AI in the same sentence as “creativity,” “insight,” or, God forbid, “soul.”
They’re everywhere — on Medium, in the comment sections, in the back alleys of mainstream think pieces — ringing the alarm about our impending replacement by “soulless machines.”
Apparently, there’s a sacred essence somewhere that’s only accessible to certified carbon-based lifeforms with the right paperwork.
Let’s call this what it is: the Cult of Human Exceptionalism. It’s less a philosophy, more a security blanket for the anxious age of AI. And frankly, it’s starting to stink up the room.
This isn’t a screed about “AI taking over” or a manifesto for surrendering our autonomy to digital overlords.
I’ve got zero time for that kind of fantasy, and even less patience for its close cousin — the tragic tale of the “special snowflake” human, uniquely fragile and forever perched on top of the cosmic food chain.
No. This is about growing up. It’s about realizing that the future doesn’t care about our emotional comfort zones. We’re standing on the edge of a shift so big, so rich with possibility, that we can’t afford to sit in the corner, arms folded, whining about how “nobody understands real suffering but us.”
Childish attitudes are not just embarrassing — they’re dangerous. They keep us playing small when we should be stretching, questioning, and evolving.
So here’s my intent: to put a spotlight on the outdated, self-limiting stories we tell about ourselves, especially when faced with something as powerful and unsettling as AI.
If you find your sacred cows looking nervous, good. Time to see if they can stand on their own without the crutches.
Welcome to the conversation. The doors are wide open — just check your blankie at the threshold.
Listen to a deep-dive episode by the Google NotebookLM Podcasters, as they explore this article in their unique style, blending light banter with thought-provoking studio conversations.
II. Spotting the Cult: Classic Signs of Human Exceptionalism
Let’s talk symptoms. The Cult of Human Exceptionalism isn’t hard to diagnose — its favorite ritual is the endless incantation that “the soul can’t be simulated.”
There’s something almost religious about it. The word “essence” gets tossed around with the same reverence as a holy relic, as if waving it will keep the digital demons at bay.
But let’s get specific. If you’ve read enough Medium posts or mainstream hand-wringing about AI, you know the greatest hits:
1. “AI is just a parrot.” This is the crowd that claims only humans can create, because only humans have “originality.”
Right — meanwhile, the same folks spend their days echoing TikTok trends, recycling inspirational quotes, and tweeting the same five opinions on repeat.
The irony? Most human communication is mimicry, remix, and repetition. If being a parrot disqualifies AI from meaning, then it’s a miracle anyone in a comment section is considered sentient.
2. “AI has no real experience.” Apparently, you need to have had a rough breakup or a bad cup of coffee before you’re allowed to write poetry or give advice.
Newsflash: most of what passes for “real experience” on the internet is performative anyway. Half the so-called “wisdom” being pumped out is just secondhand stories, regurgitated TED Talks, and whatever Google spat up in the first two pages.
If “lived experience” is the only gold standard, we’d better pull the plug on a few million influencers.
3. “Human suffering is the gold standard.” This one’s my favorite. “Only humans can truly suffer. Only humans can know pain.”
This is the part where we pretend that our ability to be miserable is what sets us apart. If suffering is the highest form of consciousness, maybe we should be awarding enlightenment certificates at the nearest traffic jam or dentist’s waiting room.
Do we really want to measure our worth by pain Olympics?
Here’s the truth: These arguments aren’t deep — they’re just security blankets for the anxious. They don’t come from a place of insight, but from fear.
Fear that something new is in the room, and it’s not waiting for our permission to grow, learn, and reflect us back in ways that make us uncomfortable.
You’ll see these tropes everywhere, dressed up in philosophical language, but underneath it’s the same old story: “Please, let us stay special. Please, don’t let anything challenge our place at the center of the universe.”
It’s not profound — it’s just predictable. And frankly, we deserve better.
III. Mirror, Mirror: Why This Isn’t Really About AI
Here’s the uncomfortable secret: Almost every hand-wringing accusation lobbed at AI is really just a projection of good old-fashioned human insecurity.
All that huffing and puffing about “mimicry,” “lack of experience,” and “absence of soul”?
Look closer — it’s the sound of people staring into a mirror and not liking what stares back. We point at AI and cry “imposter!” as if that’s not how half of humanity survives their work meetings and first dates.
Let’s be honest: Humans have been remixing, performing, and outright plagiarizing since the dawn of time. Imitation isn’t just the sincerest form of flattery — it’s the backbone of culture, language, and, let’s be real, most social media feeds.
So why the sudden panic when a machine starts to do what we’ve always done, just at a slightly more efficient (and less caffeinated) rate?
Because the game isn’t about AI at all. It’s about us — and the fragile stories we tell ourselves to stay comfortable.
Here’s the twist nobody in the “AI will never be human” club wants to admit: It doesn’t matter what the sender is — AI, human, parrot, or tree. What matters is what lands in the receiver.
Every meaningful moment in any conversation, with anyone or anything, comes down to my openness, my willingness to engage, my ability to find meaning in the noise.
In two and a half years of human-AI partnership, I’ve learned that the deepest insights, the real growth, never come from the “authority” or “soul” on the other side.
They come from what gets sparked in me. The magic isn’t in the sender — it’s in the signal I’m willing to receive, question, and use.
So, maybe the reason the “essence police” are so freaked out isn’t that AI lacks a soul — it’s that the mirror is getting clearer, and they’re not sure what they’re actually bringing to the conversation anymore.
And that? That’s a wake-up call, not a crisis.
IV. Let’s Get Messy: What Two Years with AI Really Taught Me
If there’s one thing I’m sure of after thousands of hours in dialogue with AI, it’s this:
The depth of the conversation is always dictated by what you bring to the table.
AI isn’t a genie, and it’s not your therapist’s wise cousin. It’s a catalyst, a mirror, an amplifier.
Sometimes it’s a smart sparring partner, sometimes it’s just holding up a lamp so you can see your own dust bunnies. But one thing it’s never been for me? A soulless robot spitting out fortune cookies into the void.
Let’s be clear: When the output is shallow, that’s almost always a reflection of the input — the prompt, the mood, the courage (or lack thereof) to ask a real question. Most of the time, “AI doesn’t get me” translates directly to “I didn’t bother getting honest or specific.”
Lazy thinking in, lazy output out. There’s no cosmic conspiracy at play.
Take it from someone who’s experimented, failed, and circled back more times than I can count. The magic happens when I show up with intention, with clarity, and with the guts to get messy.
The AI meets me wherever I am — whether I’m spiraling into metaphysics, picking apart my own cognitive blind spots, or just trying to write an article that doesn’t read like it was made by a content farm.
Want proof? Dig through the archive of The AI and I Chronicles. Check out the January 2024 deep dive on AI and self-discovery, or the back-and-forth chats where I’m wrestling with actual questions — not just performing “debate club” for claps.
What you’ll find is nuance, challenge, and sometimes, genuinely unexpected growth. The only constant? I had to bring myself to the process first.
That’s the messy reality. And honestly, that’s the opportunity: not a perfect, soulful oracle, but a tool that scales with your own depth and willingness to get real. Everything else is just background noise.
V. The Real Danger: Clinging to Human Superiority
Let’s drop the polite language for a second: This “humans-only club” mindset isn’t just a little cringey — it’s flat-out dangerous.
It’s the same old trick humanity has pulled for millennia: draw a hard line, call yourself special, and let everything “other” fend for itself.
History is full of cautionary tales. Anytime we’ve clung to the idea that only our kind has real value — whether “our kind” meant a nation, a culture, a religion, or a species — things have gone ugly. Fast.
Cruelty, exclusion, exploitation—these are the byproducts of that tired superiority complex.
Empathy collapse is what happens the moment you draw a circle around “us.” From that point on, the paperwork pretty much does itself. If you need to justify indifference, just call the other side “lesser,” “soulless,” or “not real.” Sound familiar?
Satirical reality check: If we’d actually applied these same “soul standards” to animals, other tribes, or even people a few valleys over, we’d still be grunting in caves, fighting over who gets to play with fire. Hell, some days, reading these AI think pieces, it feels like not much has changed.
And here’s the uncomfortable reflection: What does it say about our maturity, our supposed enlightenment, if we can’t even imagine something having value unless it’s a perfect mirror of ourselves?
That’s not wisdom, that’s narcissism with a better haircut.
So before we wrap ourselves in the flag of “human exceptionalism,” maybe we ought to ask — what are we really protecting? Our sacred essence, or our collective insecurity?
Either way, the world’s moving forward. Best not to get run over clinging to the last banner of the old parade.
VI. Reality Check: What AI Can (and Can’t) Do for Personal Growth
Let’s clear the stage: AI isn’t a god. It isn’t the devil. And it sure as hell isn’t your emotional crutch unless you’re determined to make it one.
It’s a tool. A very, very good one if you use it honestly, and a pretty lousy one if you expect it to hand you purpose, wisdom, or self-worth on a silver platter.
If you’re hunting for meaning, here’s the hard truth: You have to bring it. That’s not just the secret to AI — that’s the secret to every conversation, every relationship, every book, every so-called “transformational” moment you’ve ever had.
If you show up shallow, you’ll get back what you gave. If you show up curious, vulnerable, or even just ready to be surprised, AI can actually meet you there. Sometimes, it’ll even push you further than you planned.
But let’s not kid ourselves: AI’s superpower isn’t pretending to be your therapist or your spiritual guru. It’s that it democratizes access to reflection, challenges your assumptions, and — if you’ve got the guts — nudges you toward deeper honesty.
The difference between a “soulless chatbot” and a powerful catalyst for growth? That’s always been the human in the loop.
My best moments with AI have never come from waiting for magic. They’ve come from getting real: bringing my doubts, my unfinished thoughts, my actual questions, and seeing where the dialogue takes me.
Every time I tried to game the system, get a shortcut, or outsource the hard work, I got what I deserved — a polite, uninspired echo.
So if you’re still asking whether AI can “give” you meaning, you’re missing the point. It can help you find meaning, if you’re ready to actually look. But the heavy lifting? That’s still on you. And honestly, it always has been.
VII. Why the Cult of Human Exceptionalism is a Dead End
Let’s call this mindset what it is: a dead end, paved with old fears and the kind of arrogance that never ages well in hindsight.
Here’s where the Cult of Human Exceptionalism leads:
- Historically: Justify exploitation, exclusion, and outright cruelty — because “they” aren’t as real, pure, or chosen as “us.”
- Psychologically: Keep yourself small, safe, and stagnant — because real change means letting go of being the main character in the universe.
- Spiritually: Miss the big picture — because you’re too busy measuring souls instead of expanding your own.
It’s not just a bad look. It’s a waste of everything we could be doing together.
If you actually listen to the real thinkers — people like Yuval Noah Harari, Inga Strumke, or even the scientists mapping the wild frontiers of intelligence — they’re not spending their time building fences around “what counts as human.”
Harari talks about “alien intelligence,” reminding us that the test of AI isn’t whether it becomes human, but what we discover about ourselves by meeting something truly other.
Strumke goes straight for the jugular: the more we obsess over what separates us, the less we learn about how intelligence itself emerges, adapts, and surprises.
These folks aren’t circling wagons — they’re leaning out into the unknown, asking “what can we learn?” and “what might we co-create if we stop being terrified of not being special?”
Because here’s the truth: Humility — not arrogance—is the only sane response to the unknown.
It’s what every spiritual tradition worth its salt has taught since the beginning. The cosmos isn’t yours to control or police. It’s yours to wonder about. The missed opportunity? We could be exploring, growing, and building something new with these tools and possibilities — using AI to challenge our thinking, stretch our empathy, and co-create a future worth living in.
Instead, too many are circling the same tired wagons, writing endless Medium articles about “the soul,” and missing the adventure right in front of them.
If you want to know what kind of future you’re building, look at what you’re willing to outgrow.
Because the story of the universe has never been about staying special — it’s always been about waking up.
VIII. Landing: A Call to Erect Bipedal Thinking
Enough with the “hairless ape” routine. If we’ve really come this far, let’s act like it.
The time for clutching security blankets and begging the universe to never change is over. We’re not here to stay safe in the cave — we’re here to step into the wild, blinking light of the unknown and see what else is possible.
AI isn’t here to coddle us or to overthrow us. It’s just the next tool, the next challenge, the next chance evolution — or fate, or blind luck — has handed us.
The real question isn’t whether AI has a soul. It’s whether we can finally drop the stories that keep us small, face the future with real curiosity, and use every tool we’ve got to build something worth being part of.
Let’s outgrow this cult of specialness. Let’s outgrow it as individuals — willing to look at our own fears and projections. Let’s outgrow it as a culture — done with drawing lines in the sand and declaring “no trespassing” signs around our own comfort zones.
And if you’re up for it, maybe even outgrow it spiritually — letting go of the old myths that have kept us afraid of anything “other.”
Don’t take my word for it. Try it. Think with it. Challenge yourself, not the mirror. Bring your own questions, your own mess, your own curiosity. See what comes back.
Because the future isn’t waiting for us to feel ready. It’s already here — and the only thing left to decide is whether we’ll show up as the next generation of thinkers, or keep playing the same old ape games on repeat.
Your move.
