AI, PEOPLE — AND THE LIFE BETWEEN
ISSN 3029–2026
The inquiry
Questions without
easy answers.
Each question is presented as a debate: the strongest case on both sides, followed by the tension that remains.
Attention
Who chooses what deserves our attention?
AI can protect our attention by filtering the world. It can also decide what reaches us before we have chosen what matters.
Creativity
Is choosing enough to make something yours?
When a person prompts, selects, and edits a generated work, where does authorship begin—and where does it end?
Identity
Are we free to become unexpected?
Systems learn who we have been and return that history as the most likely version of who we will become.
Judgement
What should we refuse to delegate?
Better predictions can improve decisions without answering whether the decision was ours to hand over.
Learning
Should learning remain difficult?
AI can remove confusion almost instantly. But confusion is sometimes where independent thought begins.
Memory
Do we have a right to be forgotten by our machines?
Perfect machine memory can support us—and make every earlier version of us permanently available.
Moral status
Can a machine make a moral claim on us?
A machine may ask not to be switched off long before we know whether anything is there to be harmed.
Public life
Can public life survive personalised reality?
AI can explain the world differently to every person. Democracy still requires something held in common.
Solitude
Can synthetic company make us less alone?
The feeling of being accompanied can be real even when the apparent companion experiences nothing.
Time
What should we refuse to optimise?
AI can remove friction from a human day. Yet a slow walk, a difficult first draft, or an unhurried conversation may be worth the time they take.
Voice
Whose voice is it when anyone can speak with it?
A voice can now be separated from the body and made to say words its speaker never chose.
Work
Where does expertise come from when AI does the work?
AI can produce expert-looking work before a beginner has learned how to recognise its hidden failures.
Human value
What should remain human?
Not everything that can be automated should be. But on what grounds do we draw the line?
Agency
Should AI make decisions for us?
Delegation can reduce bias and burden. It can also hide responsibility behind a system.
Power
Who gets to shape the future?
AI is presented as inevitable, yet every system contains choices about whose future counts.
Truth
What counts as real?
Generated things can create authentic emotions. Does their artificial origin diminish what they mean?
Intimacy
Can a machine know us?
If a system predicts us accurately and responds sensitively, is that knowledge—or only a convincing map?