AI and the Hero’s Journey: Are We Masking Our Diverse Selves?

When I was 12 years old, I discovered The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley—a book where a girl, not a boy, slays dragons. As a young reader, I was exhilarated. It felt like a thrilling departure from the traditional stories I’d known: girls were finally allowed to take on the heroic journey, just like boys. For a long time, I saw this as a moment of empowerment, a break from the past where girls were usually confined to more domestic adventures, like in The Secret Garden.

But it wasn’t until I reached college, after studying folklore, mythology, and children’s literature at Virginia Tech and Hollins, that I began to question this perspective. I wondered if I had been too quick to celebrate the idea of a girl following the same path as a boy. Some feminist critics argue that stories like The Hero and the Crown don’t necessarily break gender barriers; instead, they ask girls to adopt boys’ roles rather than carving out a new narrative. In this view, the Hero’s Journey—a framework traditionally reserved for male heroes—may still be limiting, even when girls take on the quest.

This idea has stayed with me, and it has resurfaced recently as I’ve begun to think more deeply about artificial intelligence (AI) and its influence on our society. AI is being celebrated for its ability to level the playing field in many ways. At a recent AI Salon in Denver, I met inspiring people who shared stories of how AI is being used to help Latinx entrepreneurs in El Paso overcome language barriers, how it’s supporting ESL and special needs educators, and how professionals are using generative AI to communicate more effectively at work.

These stories are heartening. AI, it seems, is helping people unlock new opportunities, much like the female hero slaying dragons in McKinley’s tale. But I wonder if there’s a parallel to the feminist critique of the Hero’s Journey here. Are we asking diverse groups—those who speak different languages, those from different cultures, those with unique ways of communicating—to step into a framework that wasn’t built with them in mind?

In other words, is AI asking us to mask our true, diverse selves in order to succeed in a system designed by others?

AI: Empowerment or Conformity?

At the AI Salon with Susan Adams , Melissa Whitaker , Chuck Aikens , Summer DuBois-Lenderman , Marian Pulford , and Thea Zimnicki , I was struck by the potential for technology to empower. One person shared how AI is helping her refine her emails to communicate more effectively with leadership, which has led to positive feedback. One is helping educators use AI in assisting in developing personalized strategies to reach students who might otherwise fall behind. These examples show how AI can be a powerful assistant, offering tools that help people overcome barriers and find success.

But there’s a deeper question here, one that I believe we must discuss as a society. If AI is teaching us to “communicate more effectively,” what does that really mean? Are we learning to speak the language of power? Are we being trained to adopt a standardized way of communicating—one that may not reflect our true selves, our unique cultural expressions, or our diverse experiences?

Much like the feminist critique of girls in hero’s journeys, we have to ask: Are we being asked to adapt to AI in a way that erases our identities, our voices, and the richness of our diversity?

The Hero’s Journey and AI’s Cultural Influence

Just as the Hero’s Journey has shaped how we think about stories and who gets to go on adventures, AI is shaping how we think about communication, success, and professional behavior. AI tools, particularly those that assist with language and communication, often encourage a kind of standardization. They offer suggestions for better phrasing, for clearer or more concise messaging. In doing so, they may implicitly push people toward a uniform way of interacting with the world—a way that may not reflect their authentic selves.

For Latinx entrepreneurs in El Paso, for instance, AI tools can help overcome language barriers and give them a leg up in competing for venture capital. But does the AI also subtly suggest that their language, their way of communicating, isn’t good enough as it is? Does it ask them to conform to a more “standard” professional voice—one shaped by different cultural expectations?

In the case of the educator using AI to assist ESL and special needs students, AI may help students thrive, but we should also ask whether it’s nudging those students to fit into a mold that may not celebrate their unique ways of thinking and communicating. Is it leveling the playing field by helping them adopt the language and behaviors of the majority?

Should We Be Asking Different Questions?

These are not easy questions, and I don’t claim to have the answers. But I do think they’re important to ask. Much like the feminist critiques of the Hero’s Journey, which invited us to reconsider who gets to be the hero and how, or even to review our thinking of what a hero even is, we need to consider how AI is shaping our journeys today. AI offers us incredible tools, but we should be deliberate in asking what kind of influence it’s having on our identities, our communication, and our ability to express ourselves authentically.

We need to ask: Is AI helping us express our diverse selves, or is it subtly teaching us to mask who we are in order to succeed?

A Call for a Collective Conversation

Ultimately, this is a question that society must answer. AI is becoming increasingly woven into the fabric of our lives, and with it comes the opportunity for us to shape how it influences us. We should be having this conversation now, asking ourselves whether we want AI to push us toward a more uniform way of being or whether we can harness its power to support and celebrate our diversity.

Just as the Hero’s Journey shaped the stories we tell about ourselves, AI will shape the ways we express ourselves and interact with the world. And, much like those who questioned the traditional narratives of who gets to be the hero, we must now question how AI is shaping our stories.

Let’s be sure that the future AI helps us create is one in which we can all be the heroes of our own diverse and unique journeys.