The human compass in an AI World: Navigating transitions, preserving traditions

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to expand its reach and importance in our day-to-day living, the conversations around its use almost always carry strong emotional undertones — unease, anxiety, fear, cautious acceptance, sense of wonder, and “no big deal.”

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In boardrooms, workplaces and classrooms, the same questions echo: Will jobs disappear? Can people adapt fast enough? Will machines take over? It is dividing society between those who master the new tools and those who are left behind.

These are not trivial concerns but valid ones. There is no denying that the profound technological shift is changing the world as we know it. On the other hand, AI is not the first disruptive force humanity has faced. The power loom threatened weavers, calculators unsettled mathematicians, the Industrial Revolution once threatened traditional craftsmen. Each time, the turbulence created by these developments was painful — and yet societies adapted and integrated them into day-to-day living. The difference is not whether humanity will survive this transition, but how we navigate it.

A GENERATIONAL TRANSITION

One key to understanding today’s anxiety is to see it as a generational phenomenon. I belong to a generation that remembers what it was like to use a typewriter and are now working with AI-powered tools. Perhaps that is why I see both the unease and the excitement so clearly. One foot remains in the analog past, and the other is already stepping into the digital future. For the boomers, Gen X and millennials, the acceleration feels disorienting because there is a “before” and an “after” to compare.