Creativity Squared: On Being Human in the Age of A.I.

Dear Creativity Squared Member —

Hope this finds you well ahead of the holiday weekend! I’m feeling the most human I’ve felt since returning home, after the busiest March of my life — and I can’t wait to share all the content from SXSW and Miami Music Week…soon…I promise! 😋

Now that I’m feeling human again, let’s dive into the subject itself! A hot topic these days with the onset of GenAI, having us all wonder: What does it mean to be human?

To state the obvious, we are human beings — not human doings — for a reason.

But we can often get caught in the Information Age trap, where our identities and self-worth are tied to human doing. Not simply, our being.

The Information Age is OBSESSED with measuring. Doing is measurable — productivity gains, ROI, and output.

Maybe it’s because being is a felt experience — and its totality can’t be measured or expressed, completely. Something that can’t be put into words.

Jason Schneider, beloved friend and Creativity Squared resident philosopher, shared that the act of measuring and expressing, no matter how brilliant, will never capture the totality of the lived experience. (Here’s a beautiful blog post examining the Grateful Dead song Ripple where he mentions it.)

LLMS — (and modern society!) — are all grappling with the subjectivity of being, and despite all their A.I. genius, even love.

The Information Age, and its emphasis on extraction and squeezing every ounce of value out of anything that can turn a profit, prizes human output produced by doing. Doing work. To a detriment.

Someone who I cherish challenged me last year on being versus doing and I’ve reflected on it a lot since that initial conversation, and have explored it on the show and included it in my #ImaginationAge presentation.

There’s an entire episode dedicated to this question with two A.I. luminaries, guest Dinesh Maheshwari and guest co-host Joanna Peña-Bickley, who converse about what it means to be human in the age of artificial intelligence, too. 

For me personally, it was actually hard to distinguish the act of doing from being. 

If someone does something, doesn’t that reflect their being? It does; however, how I currently am thinking about it is that doing is a condition. Being, existing as one naturally is, is inherently valuable in and of itself. The doing is part of the expression of being. Being, on the other hand, stands alone without doing. At least in the pure essence of the two in my mind.

Through my own personal development journey in 2022, I discovered Attachment Theory, which piqued my interest and helped me better understand my own behavior. In short, it recognizes that childhood experiences shape how we navigate the world, especially if there was any trauma that was never healed. If that’s the case (which, for most, it is!), then different modalities of survival emerge through insecurities, whether anxiously attached or avoidantly attached.

The best explanation tying childhood experiences with being versus doing comes from a more esoteric, personal development YouTuber, Aaron Doughty, whom I’ve met and did one of his retreats. In one of his videos, he does live coaching with a gal who didn’t feel worthy of love unless she was giving of herself — doing something. That her feeling accepted and worthy of love was conditional — and transactional. (Sounds very Information Age, to me!)  

Here's a snippet of the exchange where he explores this with the gal:

The baby is worthy for being a baby. The baby is worthy because the child exists.

The love for the baby is unconditional. There are no conditions that the baby must meet to receive love. Purely existing is enough.

Somewhere along the way, children learn to navigate environments where their needs aren’t met and can learn that they have to prove themselves or do something to earn love in return for their doing. And at such a developmental phase, the learning integrates into how they navigate the world, until they unlearn it or work on addressing it. 

Based on the number of YouTube videos and views on the topic, I can confidently say I’m not the only child of the Information Age who’s had to grapple internally with learning to celebrate my intrinsic value of who I am — my being. And nothing else. (And trust me, I’m a work in progress! 😉) 

While in the car in Austin with Holly Herndon, a Time 100 AI Most Influential Person, and Harry Yeff, a Grammy Award-Winning New-Media Artist and Director, as we were heading to the Imagination Age dinner, the topic of love came up. It also came up on stage at Holly and my SXSW Featured Session. As I mentioned before, because it’s subjective, LLMs struggle to handle the multidimensionality of love.

Harry asked me how I thought about love, as he’s been reflecting a lot on a question surrounding it for his own work and curiosity. 

I hope I’m not the only reader who’s been in the college situation, where a girlfriend held back your hair and lovingly crouched over you in moral support as you hug the toilet (and oh so grateful Facebook really hadn’t taken off at this point to document the scene!), and is gently and compassionately nurtured back to life after the worst hangover you could remember, swearing off alcohol…for a little while longer!

I told Holly and Harry that I have felt the most loved in situations like this, when I’ve been at the lowest of the lowest points of my life and still have had space where I just existed, regardless of the state, and only had love poured into me. No judgment, purely love.

Unconditional love, from my perspective, is an embodied, felt sensation and a deeply individualized experience. And for me, the greater the contrast, when it is felt at such a rock-bottom dip — or celebrating the highest of the peaks, too! — along the journey, it’s also felt more deeply. The greater the contrast. The mirror and life’s reflection back. The yin and the yang.

Thinking of one particularly bad night in college…and some epic fuck-ups since, I know that…

I’m only human, too, with flaws, bad decisions, and all.

And one curious thing I’ve found is that when people say they don’t judge, to me, I can feel the difference when it’s meant with good intentions, but not quite free of judgment. Often, from my experience, more people aspire to be truly nonjudgmental than in practice or are more prone to be within their comfort zones, when secure, or feel emotionally safe — and I write that as something I’m actively reflecting on and exploring more for myself to improve on, too.

And when I say I’m going to have an epic memoir one day with some of these more not-internet-ready moments, trust me when I say it’s going to be a page-turner! I’ve got to write my Imagination Age book first, though! Become a supporter, and pre-order your copy today as a crowd-funded advance, enabling this independent female voice the financial support to write it. And it is greatly appreciated — thank you to everyone who’s already ordered yours!

So as we go into the weekend, I’m reflecting on with so much of our day-to-day consciousness being so transactional, how do we get back to appreciating all that exists around us?

Einstein wrote this as a letter of condolence in 1950 and is one of my favorite quotes from him on the subject:

When was the last time you stopped to smell the roses? Or appreciated them just for existing?

I hope you get the chance to this holiday weekend.

Thank you for being here…and for being you, a supporter of Creativity Squared and the #ImaginationAge! 🪄✨ 

-Helen

p.s. Our 2025 podcast season will kick off again in April, but we’ll keep the newsletter going between now and then, aside from the holidays and major conferences.

Helen Todd (she/her)
Human behind Creativity Squared
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How creatives are collaborating with A.I.

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🗞 PRESS & PODCAST INTERVIEWS

🖥 SXSW Conference Community Newsletter (December 5, 2024) — SXSW 2025 Speaker Helen Todd talks Digital Twins

🎙 AI Explored with Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner (November 5, 2024) — Using AI to Expand Your Ideas and Creativity 

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📖 Movers & Makers Magazine (October 1, 2024) Notables in AI + Print

Listen: Ep.75 BBL Drizzy, A.I. & Manifesting A.I.: Discover How Will Hatcher Manifested His Way to a Time100 A.I. 2024 Honoree

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“If you're trying to play life safe, then I don't think you can fully experience life, you know. So you gotta go to places that you never been before, be in uncomfortable situations, because that's where the real growth is.” -King Willonius

Discover the magic of manifesting in a Creativity Squared exclusive interview from the ONLY comedian (and one of two artists!) who’s a Time100 AI 2024 honoree in the Innovators category: King Willonius. 👑 

His real name is Willonius Hatcher (his first name is pronounced “Will-OWN-ee-us,” and he also goes by Will). 2024 has been a breakout year for Will after his “BBL Drizzy” comedy song went viral — the first song made in collaboration with A.I. that became a cultural phenomenon, transcending genres and mediums!  

What do Burning Man, Dune 2, and the Frost Planetarium have to do with his story? Listen in to our 75th episode — and the last one for 2024! — to find out.

Creativity Squared interviewed Will live at the FilmGate Miami Interactive Festival XI, one of the top ten immersive festivals in the world! You’ll hear why it’s so special from the festival’s Head Curator, Co-Founder, and Executive Producer, Diliana Alexander. 

On opening night, the FilmGate Miami audience got a preview of the “BBL Drizzy Musical Dome Experience”. Next year, Creativity Squared will be back to see the full production and host another time capsule conversation with Will. 

Once you check out the interview, you’ll know that Will is just scratching the surface of what’s possible — he’s ahead of the entertainment industries, and is definitely one to follow!

Why did he make the Time100 AI 2024 Innovators list? 

For Creativity Squared Founder and Podcast Host, Helen Todd’s take, check out the dedicated blog post accompanying this episode (we recommend starting with this first 😉):

Our 2025 podcast season will kick off again in April, but we’ll keep the newsletter going between now and then, aside from the holidays.

Here’s to manifesting more magic in the new year — enjoy! 💝🪄✨

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