Wisdom in the Age of AI

What is Wisdom when AI knows everything and can do it all? The answer is found in an earthly wisdom that might be our most advanced technology.

For as long as I can remember, my grandfather was uneasy around machines. I’m not talking about AI or robots. He never once boarded an airplane. He only stepped foot on a small ferry a handful of times in his life. He didn’t use a computer and never owned a cellphone. His engagement with machines and technology was limited to his tractor, a combine harvester, mower, hay baler, manure spreader, and the intricate plumbing and pumps of milking equipment.

But through this limited and simple use, he (together with my grandmother) ran a dairy farm for over 35 years, followed by a sheep farm, before retiring. They produced 3,000 liters of milk every week from their herd of twenty-two Holstein cows. They witnessed over 200 calves being born, their wobbly legs finding footing in the straw. They sent 180 cattle to slaughter, knowing each animal by name and temperament. They harvested 45 tons of hay each summer, baled and stored against the long winters. They spread 200 cubic meters of manure across their fields each spring, the cycle of waste becoming nourishment becoming growth becoming sustenance becoming waste again.

In thirty-five years, they never once had a machine fail them when it truly mattered. Perhaps because my grandfather treated each piece of equipment like a dangerous animal that required wisdom in the form of respect, careful handling, and vigilance. Or perhaps because he never quite forgot the sound of grinding metal and his father's scream.

August, 1959

The scythe moved in long, rhythmic arcs through the wheat, my grandfather and his father working side by side down the rows. The only sounds were the whisper of blade through grain, the soft thud of bundled sheaves hitting the ground, and the distant lowing of cattle.

Their backs ached, but there was something satisfying about the steady pace, the way his father never seemed to tire, the partnership between their movements. They'd been doing this since my grandfather was old enough to hold a scythe.

"Next year," he said during their water break, "we won't have to do this anymore."

His father wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. "Maybe that's not such a good thing."

My grandfather laughed. "You won't miss this when that machine does the work in half the time."

His father looked out over the field in silence; half-cut, golden in the evening light. “Half the time in exchange for what?"

Spring, 1960

The Bolinder-Munktell combine harvester gleamed red and yellow in the afternoon sun at the farm, a crowd had gathered around it, skeptics and dreamers alike. My grandfather pressed closer, running his fingers along the painted metal housing, while his father hung back near the fence, arms crossed.

"Look at the size of that cutting bar. Twelve feet wide. We could do the entire north field in a morning."

His father grunted. "Twelve feet of things that can break."

The demonstration salesman climbed aboard, and the engine roared to life, a sound like nothing any of them had ever heard before, drowning out the familiar creak of wagon wheels and snort of horses. The machine lurched forward and began devouring the test plot, spitting grain into the wagon behind it in a steady stream.

Later that evening

My grandfather spread the harvester brochures across the kitchen table like a poker hand, pointing to numbers and diagrams while his father sat silent, pipe smoke curling toward the ceiling.

"With this machine, we could take on the Lindqvist fields too. They've been asking for help with their harvest for three years now. And look—" He jabbed at a figure. "Thirty acres a day. Thirty. It would take us two weeks with the horses."

His father turned a page slowly. "These machines... they have no soul. A horse knows when to stop. A horse feels the stone before it hits it. I know these fields. I can tell when it's time to harvest by the look, smell, and touch of it all."

"But think of what we could do with the time saved. Maybe expand the dairy. Maybe you could finally build that wood carving workshop you've been talking about."

“Always more, and more, and more...”, his father muttered.

Summer, 1961

When my grandfather was seventeen, he saw his father cut up and crushed by their combine harvester. They had been working the wheat field since dawn, the machine cutting its path through the golden stalks that stretched toward the pine forests at the field's edge. The harvester was only two years old, a Swedish-made Bolinder-Munktell, bought with money borrowed against three future harvests, convinced it would save them from the backbreaking work of harvesting by hand or with a horse-drawn reaper. My grandfather was running alongside, clearing the stalks that clogged near the blade housing, when the machine lurched over a hidden stone. His father reached down to free the jam, the way he'd done a hundred times before. But the machine had something else in mind. It was a slow and excruciating death at the hands of a machine that promised relief.

Paying the Price, Reaping the Rewards

My grandfather knew that powerful things require rituals of respect. He never approached the combine harvester casually, never took shortcuts with the hay baler, never rushed when handling the bull. He understood that convenience and danger often wear the same face, and that the price of carelessness could be everything. He had developed, over decades, a way of working with machines that acknowledged their power while maintaining his agency. Each tool had its place, its purpose, its proper use. I’m jealous of my grandparents.

After spending about 9 years, or so, in the fields of AI and Machine Learning, I’m more conflicted about its use and purpose than I’ve ever been. Not because I’m a doomer (I’m not). Not because I fear the machine (I don’t). But because now, more than ever, the potential for both good and evil is more clear to me. I’ve seen, first-hand, how AI systems can deliver incredible value to a business and people. I’ve also seen how it can completely eradicate privacy, dignity, and autonomy, let alone destroy your life in a thousand different ways. I’m positive towards AI but acutely aware of the crossroads we’re staring down, and I’m doing what I can to influence positive, good use of AI. Because, contrary to popular belief, technology is not neutral. There’s a price to pay, trade-offs that we often don’t see until it’s too late. You give the machine something and it takes something in return. I’m jealous of my grandparents, who gave their life to their plot of land and animals, and got bountiful harvests in return.

The rewards of AI are, and can be, incredible. It diagnoses diseases that killed my grandfather's generation in silence. It predicts weather patterns with an accuracy that would have saved countless harvests. It translates languages in real-time, connecting people across cultures in ways my grandfather could never have imagined. It accelerates the discovery of new medicines, solves scientific problems that have puzzled researchers for decades, and optimizes farming techniques that could have made my grandfather's work more efficient while using less water and fertilizer. The very AI systems I use daily to write, research, and think, might help preserve endangered languages, assist people with disabilities, or provide mental health support to those who have nowhere else to turn. These are not trivial benefits. They are profound improvements to human welfare, the kind of progress that previous generations could only dream of. But we have created tools that can solve problems my grandfather never imagined, while simultaneously losing the kind of deep, embodied wisdom that allowed him to truly live within his so-called limitations.

Is existing with fewer limitations and more convenience a better life? I am not living, I am generating data. I check my phone 144 times a day. I know this because an app tracks it. My location is recorded every few minutes. My purchases are analyzed for patterns. My searches become suggestions. My conversations with AI assistants train algorithms to sound more human while I become more algorithmic in response. Every choice I make feeds back into systems designed to predict and influence my next choice. I have become both the subject and the object of a vast experiment in behavioral modification, and I am not sure I consented to be. How much of ourselves are disintegrating with every bit and byte of data we give up? Every scroll, tap, and swipe chips away at who we are, what we like, dislike, want, and fear. If you can’t opt-out, who’s in charge of your life?

My grandfather knew exactly what his equipment could and couldn’t do, what it should and shouldn’t do. He understood its limits, its dangers, its proper use. I’ve used artificial intelligence every day without thinking about how it works, what it's optimized for, or what unintended consequences it might have. I have traded his careful competence for convenient incomprehension. I'm jealous of my grandparents, who were masters of their tools rather than servants to them.

Their mastery extended beyond tools and into habits of living. Every morning for thirty-five years, my grandfather woke at 5:00 AM. No alarm clock. His body knew. Coffee first, black and bitter, while watching the sky lighten over the pine forest. Then to the barn to check on Astrid, the cow with the bad leg, and Gunnar, the bull who only trusted him. He lived ten thousand mornings like this. Not one of them was photographed. Not one was posted to social media. Not one trained an algorithm or became a data point in someone else's analysis of human behavior. They were simply lived, fully and completely, then allowed to fade into memory. Meanwhile, every question I've ever asked ChatGPT is stored on a server somewhere, waiting to train the next model. Every search, every email, every idle thought typed into a search bar becomes eternal, retrievable, analyzable. We are the first generation to have our confusion preserved forever while our grandfathers' wisdom dissolves like morning frost. According to the vast databases that AI companies have scraped to train their models, my grandfather never existed. No social media profiles. No online purchases. No location data from smartphones. No digital footprint beyond a few official records, like a birth certificate, marriage license, and death certificate, but I’m not entirely sure they were fully digitized or added to a database anywhere. He was a ghost in the machine before there was a machine to be a ghost in. Yet he was more real, more present, more fully himself than most of us ever will be. He knew every stone in his fields, every sound his equipment made when it was working properly or when something was wrong. He was not optimizing for efficiency or scale or data capture. He was simply living a human life at human scale, with human capabilities and human depth. I'm jealous of my grandparents, who existed completely outside the datasets that now define our existence.

This is why I am jealous of my grandparents. Not because their lives were easier (they were not). Not because their technology was simpler (though it was). I’m also jealous because their lives were entirely their own. They belonged to themselves in a way that seems impossible now. Their thoughts were not harvested. Their attention was not commodified. Their choices were not A/B tested. They could be bored, inefficient, even wrong, without those states being optimized away by algorithmic intervention. They lived in the last age when human life could still be fully human, bounded by mortality, limited by geography, rich with uncertainty. They experienced the world directly, not mediated by apps, phones, or systems designed to show them an improved version of reality. They drank milk and ate food without asking ChatGPT what the calorie count might be. My grandfather died knowing that some knowledge dies with us, and this is as it should be. Some thoughts are meant to be thought once and then released. Some experiences are meant to be lived, not recorded. Wisdom can only be earned, not downloaded. My grandfather's invisible life was the most present life of all.

What should our lives look like, as we engage with AI? What practices of attention, intention, and wisdom might help us strengthen our humanity while benefiting from inhuman intelligence? How do we work with systems that can process information faster than we can think, without losing our ability to think for ourselves? My grandfather's wisdom was not just what he knew, but how he knew when to trust his tools and when to trust his instincts. In an age when our tools are learning to mimic our instincts, this distinction becomes, perhaps, the difference between wisdom and intelligence.

Good, proper use of AI requires perspective, discernment, judgment, curation, articulation, taste, all of which are guided by your wisdom. It’s a complex, interwoven, ecosystem that we live in, move in, and have our being in.

Wisdom is not whether we should use these tools, but how we can use them without letting them use us. This is the key question of this age that has also become a cliche. My grandfather knew that powerful machines require respect, boundaries, and the wisdom to know when to turn them off. This earthly wisdom might be the most advanced technology we have.

Talk again soon,
Samuel Woods
The Bionic Writer