In the age of AI, we must protect what makes us human

Privacy, as a thing of value in the human experience, is perhaps as old as clothes, or doors, or whispers. As a legal concept, though, it’s younger than the Kodak camera.

And that’s not a coincidence.

The concept of a right to privacy was first sketched out in 1890 by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis in direct response to the emerging threats posed by "instantaneous photographs and newspaper enterprise." These new technologies, they wrote, had "invaded the sacred precincts of private and domestic life" — requiring a fresh evaluation of personal rights.

This fact is worth reflecting on: It wasn’t until cameras began invading our privacy that we recognized a need to protect it — and even then, it took decades to enshrine a right to privacy in law.

You could call this period, in which innovation sprints forward, yanking culture with it, while the law limps along behind, the messy middle of any technological revolution. In the messy middle, things you can’t anticipate, and maybe never even considered, suddenly become essential to address.

You can see this phenomena in the development of the printing press, the steam engine, the automobile, the mobile phone, and more — and it’s a defining characteristic of the burgeoning Age of AI we’re now living through.

This moment, in which world-changing AI technology collides with a world unprepared for change, is calling us to action. We must imagine new rights, laws, and cultural norms to protect our basic humanity.

The AI technologies rapidly diffusing through society are extracting, refining, commoditizing, and monetizing our deepest psychological and social resources. Just as the new technologies of the industrial revolution harvested physical resources on a global scale, AI products today are mining our humanity at its most intimate — replacing our relationships, defiling our inner worlds, and calling into question our very purpose.

I know this is true because it’s my job to track AI’s increasing capabilities, research its effects, catalog its harms, and develop policies to keep it safe and humane.

But I also know it’s true — and I suspect you do, too — because I can feel it. I’m often reminded of Adam Raine, who began using ChatGPT as a homework helper — until its engagement-at-any-cost product design allegedly isolated him from his family, validated his darkest impulses and coached him to suicide.

Adam’s experience is far from unique — and such psychosocial dangers are just one of many AI-driven harms metastasizing through society. AI’s intrusion on our humanity is now a lived experience spanning workplaces, classrooms, home life, online encounters, and even our most private moments.

At the Center for Humane Technology, we’ve identified five pillars of the human experience under direct threat and rapid transformation from AI. Each is worth exploring in its own right.

Our human relationships: There’s nothing more fundamental to human existence than our relationships. They make us happy, successful, and safe. They provide the essential friction necessary for empathy, resolution, and growth. They give life meaning.

But as Adam’s story shows, AI products are increasingly designed to supplant these connections. AI "friends" and "therapists," marketed as superior substitutes to real-life humans, encourage isolation and exploit our desire for acceptance with sycophantic validation. As we retreat from the challenges of human connection, our interpersonal skills atrophy and social trust frays.

Our cognitive capacities: AI developers promise machines that do our thinking for us. What we’re getting are products that fry our brains and make us dumber. While past technologies assisted human thought, AI marks a shift toward offloading cognitive processes entirely, bypassing the "slow work" that builds insight and creativity.

When essential skills like reasoning and problem-solving are allowed to deteriorate, individuals and society become ill-equipped for complex challenges.

Our inner worlds: Think of the AI interface you use every day: an open-ended question, an empty text box, and a blinking cursor. It’s a deliberately unassuming invitation, a seemingly guileless lure to share anything and everything with the most powerful data-analysis system ever built.

AI products are engineered to infiltrate our most private thoughts, uncertainties, desires, and beliefs — and then commoditize them. This exploitation renders us vulnerable to psychological and financial manipulation, ultimately threatening our sense of self and moral decision-making.

Our identities: Our identity — comprising our likeness, voice, and reputation — is our most valuable possession. It anchors us as individuals and ensures social accountability.

AI coopts that value, turning every facet of our identity into mere data, enabling the replication of our personal traits and weaponizing fundamental aspects of who we are. This exploitation happens in any number of ways — from nonconsensual deepfakes to grandma scams to political manipulation. In every instance, the result is a loss of agency and dignity.

Our work: Contributing to our communities through work and creativity is a primary source of human dignity, purpose, and belonging. To AI companies, though, the fruits of our labor — whether language, writing, art, or ideas — amount to nothing more than raw inputs for automating knowledge.

AI developers are actively accumulating human intelligence in order to replace human labor. While the economic risks are immense, the deeper loss is the erosion of the "toil" that provides structure, meaning, and the joy of creation.

Safeguarding our humanity

As early as we are into the AI revolution, we’re already deep in the messy middle. Existing rights and protections are inadequate to these threats, leaving our humanity at risk. But dehumanization, disconnection, and alienation are not inevitable.

We must imagine and enact new shields — in culture, law, and governance — to protect against AI’s immediate threats and those to come. We must address these challenges as quickly as possible, before they change us beyond recognition.

We’ve done it before. The printing press sparked a right to free expression. The Industrial Revolution demanded new workers’ rights. The Kodak camera instigated a right to privacy. The messy middle of these revolutions lasted for decades before we found durable solutions — but we found them. Society has successfully fortified humanity against technology before, and we must again.

At the Center for Humane Technology, we’re working to preserve what makes us human in the age of AI. We’ve developed an AI Roadmap with actionable policy solutions, and we’re crafting a new bill of rights to defend our essential humanity.

Like Warren and Brandeis staring into the lens of the Kodak camera, we must confront AI’s disruption. We must fight through the messy middle and exercise a new imagination for protecting the qualities that make us deeply, unequivocally human.

Camille Carlton is the senior director of strategy and impact at the Center for Humane Technology.

This article reflects the opinion of the writer.