Our changing relationship with AI: from a tool to a partner?

This article was co-written by Santeri Kallio (Reaktor) and myself.

AI is now an active collaborator in our work, creativity, and decision-making. But as AI becomes more embedded in our daily lives, what does that mean for us as humans? How does it shape our confidence, learning, and even our sense of what is true???

Here are three key shifts happening in our relationship with AI.??

Empowerment and self-doubt: What do we want from AIs?

AI has an interesting effect on confidence. On one hand, it empowers us: we can write, code, and analyze faster than ever.?

Need a business strategy? AI drafts it in seconds.?

Struggling with an idea? AI helps refine it.?

Suddenly, we can produce high-quality work with minimal effort, making us feel more capable.?But at the same time, AI introduces a new kind of doubt. If an AI can generate ten different ways to solve a problem, which one is actually the best??

Consider this situation: You are assigned to write a report about your team's project. In the past, you might have spent hours carefully thinking and writing about the progress. But now, knowing how powerful generative AI is at writing long texts, you'll probably use it from the very beginning. AI only needs vague instructions in a prompt to report on the latest feature addition or a tricky problem the team managed to solve.

This workflow creates a paradox: it can make us feel both empowered and doubtful. First, we feel empowered that we can generate such impressive text from simple ideas. But then self-doubt creeps in, as we've delegated a large chunk of work to AI. Did I choose the most relevant examples of our team's work? Should I keep refining the text to sound more authentic? What started as a boost in self-confidence becomes a cycle of self-doubt. Do you end up saving any time or mental energy by using AI in this way? It’s likely, but you need to come to terms with the fact that AI is now doing a portion of your work.

With the help of AI as our supporter we can execute tasks that we never dreamed of doing alone, yet at the same time, we can develop analysis paralysis from all the possibilities that we are presented with. To use AI meaningfully, we must learn to balance the feelings of empowerment and self-doubt it creates.

The human in the loop: How should we work with AIs?

AI's expanding role is making us reconsider its place in our lives. It is no longer simply an app or a simple , but an increasingly influential force shaping our processes. As AI takes on tasks we once found meaningful, we must confront the changing nature of work and our own motivations.?

The question is, are we prepared for the rapid transformation of our job descriptions and the potential for work to become something entirely different?

Let’s take an example from healthcare. Previously it was hard to handle patient messages and requests without an actual person responding to them.?

Now, instead of an expert writing messages to patients it’s possible to use generative AI to draft different types of messages and utilize humans to only approve and fact-check these messages. In this case the person becomes a gatekeeper for messaging between AI and the person seeking for help.

This magnitude of change requires us to ask some hard questions:?

• What does expertise mean when AI can produce expert-level work in seconds???
• How do we build knowledge when AI can generate infinite, often conflicting, versions of reality
• Are we using AI to enhance our abilities, or are we letting it replace them???

Our relationship with technology and knowledge has changed permanently. It will be interesting to see how we continue to build our identities, our skillsets and interactions with each other when there’s an alien, yet very human-like being among us.?

The identity shift: Who are we when AI is everywhere?

AI doesn’t just change what we do; it changes how we see ourselves.?

We used to define expertise by years of study, trial and error, and deep immersion in a field. Now, AI can simulate expertise instantly, especially with the latest generative AI reasoning models.

When AI can replicate not just the conclusions but the entire reasoning process of experts, how does that affect professionals who spent decades honing their skills??

Here are some examples that are happening already:

• While financial advisors value face-to-face interactions with clients, AI is streamlining financial services by offering online advice and investment recommendations for routine cases, effectively reducing the need for in-person consultations.
• Academics might enjoy the process of discovering new connections and suggesting interpretations, but AI's ability to analyze datasets is eliminating the need for this lengthy process.
• Legal professionals are experiencing a shift in their practice as AI can now instantly generate complex legal arguments and reasoning chains that previously required years of expertise to develop.

These changes force us to examine not just how we work, but deeper questions about our identity.

What makes us uniquely human? How do we find meaning and purpose when AI can replicate our professional skills??