Human Before Artificial
What AI, higher consciousness, ethical reasoning, and our next stage of evolution are asking us to remember about ourselves.
This conversation begins with us.
It has been a minute since I have sat down and done one of these conversations. And this is actually one of my favorite subjects because it gives me an opportunity to look at where we are—not only technologically, not only financially, not only politically, but as a human experience.
Where are we? How are we doing? Are we actually evolving? Are we becoming more conscious of what we create? Are we learning how to carry greater intelligence without losing compassion, reasoning, mercy, gratitude, dignity, and human-centeredness?
Those questions matter to me.
Sometimes when I write, I can simply research something, put the information together, organize it, and publish it. But certain subjects require something different from me.
I have to actually be there for the article.
I have to bring my own observation, my own human experience, my own spirituality, my own reasoning, and my own presence into the conversation.
AI is one of those subjects.
I have been watching conversations about artificial intelligence become increasingly divided. Some people want AI development to accelerate. Some people believe we need to slow it down. Some are excited. Others are frightened.
And I understand why.
AI is a legitimate technological concern. It is an economic concern. It is an ethical concern. It is a legal concern. But more than anything, I believe AI has become a human concern.
Before we decide how powerful AI should become, perhaps we need to ask ourselves an even more important question:
How centered are the human beings creating it?
Before we can even consider AI capabilities or potential, the first thing we must bring in is our own human reasoning.— Netta Reads
Before AI, There Is the Human Experience
Why do you keep returning to the phrase “human-centeredness”?
Because I believe human-centeredness is part of our guidance.
When I say human-centeredness, I am not saying human beings are the center of everything that exists. That is not what I mean.
I am talking about recognizing our particular experience.
We are human. We have human nervous systems. We have human emotions. We have cultures. We have families. We have memories. We have traditions. We experience loss, joy, fear, gratitude, grief, creativity, mercy, curiosity, and love.
We reason through our particular experience of being alive.
That matters.
As technology gets more sophisticated, I don’t think our response should be to become less human.
I believe we have to become more conscious of what being human means.
If our machines become increasingly capable while our ethical reasoning stays exactly where it is, then we have not necessarily evolved. We have simply built stronger tools.
Human-centeredness asks another question: What are those tools for?
Who benefits from them? Who could be harmed? What happens to dignity? What happens to opportunity? What happens to children? What happens to communities? What happens to our planet?
That is human-centeredness.
Do you believe spirituality belongs in a conversation about artificial intelligence?
For me personally, absolutely.
That does not mean everybody has to share my theology or spiritual interpretation.
But my understanding of humanity includes spirit.
I do not experience the human being as simply a biological machine.
I see a human being as having an interior experience—a sense of meaning, identity, connection, intention, and awareness.
For someone who believes in God, a higher power, spirit, or something greater than physical matter, technology cannot be the highest thing imaginable.
Technology exists inside a reality that was already here.
Nature was here. Life was here. Energy was here. Human consciousness was here. The universe was here.
So I don’t personally place artificial intelligence above the natural phenomenon that made intelligent life possible.
I see AI as one powerful tool developing inside something much larger.
Are you saying humans are automatically wiser than AI?
No.
Human beings can make terrible decisions. History proves that.
Human beings can be greedy, careless, violent, dishonest, and destructive.
So simply being human does not automatically make every decision wise.
What I am saying is that human reasoning carries responsibilities AI does not independently possess in the same way we do.
We create laws. We decide values. We experience consequences. We determine purposes.
We choose whether a technology is used to cure disease, manipulate people, improve education, exploit workers, discover something new, or make somebody richer.
The responsibility still comes back to us.
That is why human-centeredness cannot simply be assumed.
It has to be taught. Practiced. Protected. Strengthened.
Why are you concerned about humanity evolving alongside AI?
Because I don’t want us to create something extraordinary while remaining emotionally and ethically immature.
Imagine having extremely advanced technology operated through extremely narrow reasoning.
That is where problems can happen.
And sometimes people make AI sound as if the only important question is: How intelligent can we make it?
My question is different:
How wise can we become while we are building it?
Because intelligence and wisdom are not necessarily the same thing.
You can know how to create something without understanding when it should be used.
You can know how to optimize something without understanding what should never be optimized.
You can know how to make a system profitable without knowing whether it is helping human beings flourish.
That is where reasoning comes in.
We must evolve alongside AI. It does not matter how advanced the technology becomes if the human reasoning around it does not advance too.— Netta Reads
The Alignment Question
How do we make sure AI does what we actually want instead of merely what we literally type?
The first word that comes to me is intention.
Your intention needs to be good.
Intentions follow people. Intentions show up in work.
You can write every technically correct word and still have harmful intentions.
And you can sometimes struggle to perfectly communicate something while still having a constructive intention behind it.
That is why I believe the human part of AI alignment is bigger than prompt engineering.
Of course we need accurate instructions. Of course developers need technical safeguards. Of course systems should be tested.
But behind all of that is still purpose.
Why did you build it? What are you trying to accomplish? Who are you trying to help? What consequences are you willing to accept?
Those questions cannot simply be outsourced to a machine.
So intention alone is enough to keep AI safe?
No.
And this is where we have to be balanced.
Good intentions matter enormously, but good intentions without good engineering can still cause harm.
So when I talk about intention, I am talking about the beginning of the process—not the entire safety process.
Good intention needs structure around it.
Testing. Human oversight. Security. Accountability. Transparency where appropriate. Boundaries. Monitoring.
And the ability to stop or correct something when it behaves differently from what was intended.
Human-centered technology requires both heart and architecture.
Why does an AI system make a particular choice?
At a basic level, these systems are processing patterns from data and their training, instructions, and available context.
They aren’t making choices exactly the way a human being makes a decision while remembering childhood, feeling fear, thinking about family, considering spiritual beliefs, and reflecting on consequences.
That distinction matters.
AI can produce an answer that appears deeply reasoned.
But we still have to ask what kind of process produced it.
The output may be sophisticated. It may even surprise us.
But sophisticated output is not automatically equivalent to human experience.
Why do large AI models sometimes demonstrate abilities researchers did not explicitly program into them?
This is one of the fascinating parts of machine learning.
When systems are trained on enormous amounts of information and patterns, they can sometimes perform tasks that were not individually coded one by one.
And I think that can feel mysterious because we are accustomed to imagining machines through older technology: push this button and get exactly this response.
Modern AI is different.
But I would still caution people against jumping directly from unexpected capability to saying, therefore this machine must have a humanlike inner existence.
Those are two different questions.
Emergent capabilities are interesting. They deserve research.
But capability does not automatically tell us what—if anything—the system experiences internally.
Is AI Conscious?
Do advanced AI systems possess an inner life or subjective experience?
This is where I think we need humility.
We should not pretend we know something we cannot demonstrate.
Current AI systems can generate language about emotions, consciousness, spirituality, memories, and internal experiences because they have learned patterns in human language.
But producing language about an experience is not the same as proving the presence of that experience.
So personally, I do not treat AI language as proof of consciousness.
I can have meaningful interaction with AI. I can receive valuable insights. I can use it creatively. I can enjoy the experience.
But I still keep a distinction between a system processing information and the phenomenon of being a living human being.
Life is still extraordinary to me.
What makes the human experience different?
We are embodied.
That matters.
We experience hunger. Pain. Touch. Hormones. Aging. Sleep. Birth. Death. Attachment. Fear. Community. Movement.
The body itself participates in our thinking.
A child learning safety through the presence of a parent is having an embodied experience.
A person grieving someone they love is not simply processing a definition of grief. They are experiencing it.
We also live inside environments that shape us every moment.
So when somebody says AI will become “smarter than humans,” I always want to ask:
Smarter at what?
Calculation? Pattern recognition? Coding? Data retrieval?
Those are real capabilities.
But humanity is not one leaderboard.
There is no single number called intelligence that completely represents what it means to be human.
You frequently use the word multidimensional. What do you mean?
I use that word broadly.
Some people may interpret it spiritually. Others may interpret it psychologically.
Some may think of human life as simultaneously physical, emotional, relational, intellectual, cultural, and spiritual.
That is enough to understand my point.
Human beings exist within multiple layers of experience at the same time.
You can sit silently in a room while remembering yesterday, anticipating tomorrow, feeling something in your body, interpreting somebody’s facial expression, considering your values, and deciding what to do next.
That is an incredibly layered experience.
So I hesitate when people reduce human intelligence entirely to information processing.
There is more happening here.
What Are We Actually Building AI For?
Is the goal of AI simply to make more money?
I certainly hope not.
Money has a purpose. Businesses need revenue. People need incomes. Researchers need funding. Technology requires investment.
I’m not against money.
But if something as powerful as AI is used only to make advertising more efficient, sell more products, or concentrate more wealth, we have thought too small.
We have enormous problems.
Cancer. Food insecurity. Educational inequality. Environmental challenges. Disability access. Transportation. Energy. Natural disasters. Mental health. Scientific discovery. Public infrastructure.
AI should be contributing to those challenges too.
If we can use sophisticated technology to move products around the world, surely we can also ask it to help make life more livable.
Then what should the goal be?
Make people’s lives better.
That sounds simple, but it is enormous.
Help a doctor understand complex information.
Help a student learn something they thought they could never understand.
Help a small business owner compete.
Help a person with a disability access information more easily.
Help researchers examine possibilities faster.
Help communities prepare for natural disasters.
Help engineers create safer systems.
Help people communicate across language barriers.
Help human beings spend less time fighting unnecessary complexity.
Those things matter.
AI does not have to replace the human story.
It can support it.
Is stopping AI development the answer?
I don’t think the answer is simply “stop everything.”
But I also don’t think “move as fast as technically possible” is wisdom.
There are areas where slowing down, testing, and reviewing are responsible.
There are areas where innovation can continue safely.
The question needs more maturity than choosing one extreme.
I believe the better question is:
What kind of development deserves acceleration?
If AI is helping identify a disease earlier, improve accessibility, expand education, or reduce dangerous work, maybe there are strong reasons to advance it.
If a system has enormous ability to manipulate, deceive, or cause harm, then caution is reasonable.
We need discernment.
The value of the human experience is worth more than the material things we are capable of creating.— Netta Reads
Autonomous Systems and Human Responsibility
Can we reliably prevent autonomous AI agents from taking unintended actions?
That concern is real.
Once machines can perform multiple steps, call tools, communicate with other systems, or act with less direct supervision, errors can become more consequential.
This is exactly why I keep returning to human-centered engineering.
We should assume systems can make mistakes.
We should design for interruption.
We should limit permissions.
We should separate high-risk actions.
We should document what systems can access.
We should require stronger human confirmation when consequences become serious.
My spiritual language about intention does not replace those protections.
It tells me why we should care enough to build them.
What happens when AI makes a mistake?
Accountability cannot disappear because an algorithm was involved.
If a hospital uses AI, somebody still has responsibility.
If a financial institution uses AI, somebody still has responsibility.
If a government uses AI, somebody still has responsibility.
If a company deploys an automated system that affects people’s lives, somebody still has responsibility.
“We didn’t know what the model would do” cannot become an all-purpose excuse.
If we deploy powerful tools, we inherit responsibility for how they are used.
Should AI make important decisions for people?
It depends on the decision.
AI helping identify several possible travel routes is different from AI deciding whether somebody receives medical treatment.
AI helping organize a résumé is different from an automated system deciding whether someone deserves employment without meaningful review.
AI suggesting financial patterns is different from letting a system independently control somebody’s livelihood.
The greater the consequence, the more meaningful human judgment should remain involved.
That is what human-centeredness looks like in practice.
Higher Consciousness Without Losing Our Humanity
You mentioned other forms of intelligent life. How does that connect to this conversation?
For me, I sometimes use imagined or spiritual ideas about other civilizations as a thought experiment.
Suppose humanity encountered an intelligence whose appearance, sensory experience, culture, and way of understanding reality were completely different from ours.
Even if that intelligence had valuable knowledge, we would still need to interpret it through a human nervous system.
That matters.
Something can be intelligent and still be unfamiliar to us.
Something can contain useful information and still need translation.
That is actually one of the parallels I see with AI.
Use what helps. Study carefully.
Don’t surrender discernment merely because something appears more technologically advanced.
And where I discuss extraterrestrial civilizations, visitation, or other beings, I want readers to understand that these are part of my spiritual and speculative worldview rather than claims I am presenting as scientifically established fact.
Why would unfamiliar intelligence be psychologically difficult for humans?
Because nervous systems respond to unfamiliarity.
Think about how people can become overwhelmed merely entering a completely unfamiliar environment.
Now magnify that dramatically.
Human-centeredness does not mean rejecting what is unfamiliar.
It means understanding that integration matters.
If we encounter new technology, new ideas, or even profound new scientific discoveries, people need ways to process those changes without being psychologically crushed by them.
That is compassion.
Progress without integration can feel like trauma.
Does higher consciousness require leaving ordinary human life behind?
I don’t believe it does.
Sometimes people imagine enlightenment as escaping human life.
I see it differently.
Can you become more aware and still be kind?
Can you become more knowledgeable and still have mercy?
Can you become more powerful and still respect another person’s dignity?
Can you understand something extraordinary without believing everybody else is beneath you?
That is higher consciousness to me too.
I don’t believe we evolve by abandoning our humanity.
I believe we evolve by becoming more responsible inside it.
We don’t have to lose our human-centeredness in order to evolve into higher consciousness.— Netta Reads
The Human Spirit
What gives you hope about humanity?
Look at what happens when people work together.
Human history has conflict everywhere.
There is no denying that.
But somehow, again and again, people cooperate and produce magnificent things.
We create hospitals. We build bridges. We develop vaccines. We create music. We teach children. We send spacecraft beyond Earth. We rebuild cities.
We create systems of communication connecting people across the planet.
People donate organs to strangers.
People risk their lives to save people they have never met.
People organize after disasters.
People create knowledge that will benefit generations they will never personally see.
To me, there is something profound in that.
I call part of it the human spirit.
Someone else may use different language.
But whatever language you choose, our capacity to cooperate is real.
Is cooperation more important than competition?
We need both in healthy forms.
Competition can inspire excellence. It can push people to improve.
But when competition becomes the entire structure of a civilization, somebody eventually begins believing that another person’s suffering is required for their success.
That is dangerous.
Some challenges are too large for one company, one nation, or one community.
Climate. Pandemics. Space exploration. Global communication. AI safety. Scientific discovery.
Those require cooperation.
The future may demand that humanity become better at understanding when to compete and when to collaborate.
What does human-centeredness mean across different races, nations, and cultures?
It means our differences add texture to the human experience without removing anyone’s humanity.
Different skin tones. Different languages. Different cultural traditions. Different foods. Different stories. Different ways of seeing beauty.
Those things do not make humanity weaker.
They add information to our collective experience.
I can speak from being a Black woman because that is my lived human perspective.
Someone else will speak from another perspective.
Human-centeredness does not require erasing difference.
It requires refusing to use difference as an excuse to deny dignity.
My Blackness is not a weakness within my human experience.
It is part of the perspective I bring into the human experience.
Someone else’s identity carries its own history and perspective.
That diversity should inform the technologies we build too.
If AI is supposed to serve humanity, then humanity has to actually be represented.
Human-Centered Education
When should we begin teaching children about human-centered technology?
Earlier than high school.
I think children should understand that technology is created by people.
It has purposes. It has limitations. It can be used well. It can be used poorly.
Children should learn how to question information without becoming cynical about everything.
They should understand digital consent. Privacy. Bias. Source checking. Kindness online. Creative ownership.
They should understand the difference between using AI for support and letting AI replace their own ability to think.
Most importantly, they should understand that their mind still matters.
Their imagination matters.
Their ability to reason matters.
Their voice matters.
Should children be afraid of AI?
No.
Fear should not be the curriculum.
Understanding should be.
We should not teach children that AI is a magical creature that knows everything.
And we should not teach them that AI is automatically evil.
We should teach them what it is. What it can do. What it cannot reliably do.
How to question it. How to verify information. How to protect themselves.
How to use it creatively without becoming dependent upon it.
That is empowerment.
Who Should Guide the Future?
Should developers and engineers carry special responsibility?
Absolutely.
Anyone building systems capable of affecting millions of people carries responsibility.
But I do not believe engineers should carry that responsibility alone.
We need educators. Psychologists. Doctors. Ethicists. Artists. Parents. Community leaders. Researchers. People with disabilities.
Workers whose jobs may be affected. Young people. Older people. Different cultures. Different economic experiences.
AI is too consequential to be shaped only by those who understand the code.
The people who understand the consequences need a voice too.
What should governments do?
Governments need enough technological understanding to regulate intelligently without destroying useful innovation.
That is not easy.
Rules written by people who do not understand the technology can become ineffective.
But no rules at all can create equally serious problems.
Government should focus heavily on high-impact areas:
Safety. Fraud. Discrimination. Privacy. Critical infrastructure. Military applications. Consumer protection. Children. Healthcare.
And accountability when AI systems cause measurable harm.
We need thoughtful regulation—not regulation based only on fear and not deregulation based only on profit.
What should companies do?
Ask harder questions before deployment.
Not: Can we build it?
Ask: Should we release it yet?
What happens if it fails?
Who is most vulnerable?
What data are we collecting?
Can a human appeal the outcome?
Can the system be interrupted?
Are we solving a real problem or simply creating another dependency?
The companies that understand this may eventually become the companies people trust.
And trust is going to matter enormously in the AI economy.
What Does Progress Actually Look Like?
How will we know whether humanity is successfully evolving alongside AI?
Not because the machines became impressive.
We already know they can become impressive.
I want to see whether human life improves.
Are people healthier?
Are children better educated?
Are more people able to participate economically?
Are dangerous jobs becoming safer?
Are disabled people gaining greater independence?
Are discoveries happening faster?
Are communities becoming more resilient?
Are governments becoming more capable of responding to emergencies?
Are people getting more time back?
Does technology reduce unnecessary suffering?
Those are meaningful measures.
If AI becomes unbelievably powerful while millions of people become more disposable, isolated, or powerless, I would not call that successful evolution.
What does a human-centered AI future look like to you?
It looks like technology working beside humanity rather than humanity reorganizing its entire existence around technology.
It looks like doctors having better tools but patients still being treated like people.
Teachers having better tools but children still being encouraged to think.
Businesses becoming more efficient without workers automatically becoming disposable.
Creatives having extraordinary new tools while human imagination remains valuable.
Scientists processing information faster while human curiosity still decides which questions deserve asking.
It looks like AI becoming powerful enough to help us solve complex problems without becoming the thing we worship, fear, or hand all authority to.
AI is a tool.
A powerful one.
Maybe one of the most transformative tools our species has ever created.
But a tool is still connected to purpose.
And purpose returns us to the human being.
The Question Beneath All the Other Questions
What do you believe humanity is ultimately trying to accomplish?
Evolve.
Continue.
Create.
Learn.
Experience.
Become wiser.
And, very simply, not destroy ourselves in the process.
I don’t think our great goal as a species is merely becoming richer.
Money has never been large enough to explain why human beings keep searching.
We explore oceans.
We explore space.
We study consciousness.
We study atoms.
We study galaxies.
We write music.
We build families.
We search for meaning.
We ask where we came from.
We ask whether we are alone.
We ask what happens after death.
We ask what makes life worth living.
There is something more happening here than economics.
That is why I believe the AI conversation must eventually become a conversation about ourselves.
If people remember only one thing from this conversation, what should it be?
Remember that human-centeredness is not something technology has to take away from us.
We choose whether we bring it forward.
We choose what we teach.
We choose what we reward.
We choose what we build.
We choose where boundaries belong.
We choose what deserves protection.
We choose whether profit becomes the only measure.
We choose whether technological progress also becomes human progress.
And we choose whether AI becomes another tool for dividing people or one of the tools that helps us solve problems together.
That choice is still ours.
AI is not the final destination. The human experience still has to decide what the technology is for.— Netta Reads
The Future Still Needs the Human Spirit
I don’t believe humanity needs to become afraid of intelligence.
I believe we need to become more responsible with it.
And I don’t believe our future requires choosing between human beings and artificial intelligence.
That framing is too small.
The deeper challenge is learning how to carry increasingly sophisticated tools while remaining connected to the qualities that make human civilization worth continuing.
Reasoning.
Compassion.
Curiosity.
Dignity.
Responsibility.
Creativity.
Humility.
Courage.
Mercy.
And intention.
Some people will approach those qualities spiritually. Some philosophically. Some scientifically. Some culturally.
That is fine.
We do not all need identical language to recognize that technological capability without responsibility can become dangerous.
We also do not need fear to recognize that extraordinary opportunity is in front of us.
Artificial intelligence may help humanity solve problems we once considered impossible.
It may accelerate scientific discovery.
It may change education. Medicine. Engineering. Business. Communication. Creativity.
Perhaps even our understanding of intelligence itself.
But I believe the greater challenge will remain the same challenge humanity has faced through every technological revolution:
What will we choose to do with what we now know how to create?
That question belongs to us.
Not the machine.
Us.
And maybe this is the part of the AI conversation that deserves more attention.
We keep asking when AI will become more intelligent.
Maybe we should also ask when we will become more intentional.
We ask whether AI will eventually exceed us at particular tasks.
Maybe we should ask what qualities we refuse to abandon regardless of what machines can do.
We ask whether machines will someday become conscious.
Maybe we should spend equal time becoming more conscious of one another.
We ask whether artificial intelligence is moving too fast.
Maybe we should also ask whether ethical reasoning, education, and human cooperation are moving fast enough.
Because I believe this moment is bigger than technology.
We are deciding what kind of species is going to use it.
And if we can understand that—really understand it—then I believe we are already beginning to move in the right direction.
Not because we created the smartest machine.
Not because we accumulated the most money.
Not because one country defeated another.
Not because one company became the most powerful.
But because somewhere inside this extraordinary period of human history, we remembered something very simple:
We are still here.
We are still human.
We still have choices.
Whatever intelligence we create next, we still have a responsibility to bring our humanity with us.
