💡Navigating the AI Age: 10 Reflections on AI in 2025 (Part I)

Charting the personal and professional consequences of the Cognitive Revolution.

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Stock markets worldwide melted down last Monday because Chinese AI company DeepSeek released data on their new flagship model, R1. It appeared faster and required fewer computing resources than the top American-built equivalent of Open AI, Chat GPT. Oh, and it’s open-source, meaning that outside interests can examine its inner workings and use the code for their purposes. DeepSeek promptly hit the number-one spot on Apple’s App Store, making Silicon Valley AI behemoths feel like they’re in DeepSh*t.

What are the lessons from this pivotal moment in AI? I’ve distilled ten thoughts into the consequences of this new era, which I will unpack over the next two posts.

Part I addresses this revolution’s personal and professional implications, while Part II will tackle the philosophical and societal questions it raises.

Here’s the TL:DR: buckle up.

Photo by Google DeepMind

The IoNTELLIGENCE 10 Reflections on AI in 2025 | The First 5

Personal

1. AI beats humans in speed and breadth but not in depth of thought

I’m indebted to IoNTELLIGENCE Community Member and AI professor Florian Grond for bringing this framework from innovation theorist John Nosta to my attention. Nosta makes a simple but compelling observation: in the battle between man and cognitive machine, there’s only one dimension in which we come out ahead.

AI can already generate dozens of ideas in milliseconds, so it has an obvious speed advantage. AI is increasingly becoming polymathic, though. The most prominent models are trained on vast datasets spanning nearly every domain. Today, ChatGPT can perform better than almost all humans on the LSAT (law school entrance exam) and the MCAT (medical school equivalent). Thus, ChatGPT’s “intelligence” is broader than that of any one person.

However, in Nosta’s view, depth remains the human superpower. As he notes, “Depth is where humans shine. It’s the ability to ponder-to let ideas simmer, to revisit them, and to allow meaning to emerge. Unlike speed or breadth … Depth is not just another dimension of thought; it’s the dimension where meaning is made. And it’s the line that separates humans from the machines we build.” Our thinking is three-dimensional because we are embodied social animals operating in a lived and cultural context.

This is the intellectual rope I am hanging on to right now: Our feelings and consciousness afford us a depth of thought that even the fastest algorithms can’t match -unless they achieve sentience! Until then, we still have one bullet in the chamber.

2. AI will know us better than we know ourselves

AI and algorithms are better at some of our human skills than many realize.

Empathy is one area of overconfidence: studies have concluded that Chat GPT has better bedside manners than most doctors. Interestingly, trustworthiness is also one of their strong suits: we are never more honest than when we type in a query in the Google search box. We don’t risk feeling judged or stigmatized by inappropriate questions precisely because there’s no human tut-tutting as we type. Additionally, merging our perspectives with billions of others provides an X-ray of humanity. Even if it’s just a correlation (more on that shortly), big data transforms complexity into transparency at scale.

In both these instances, AI is superior precisely because they’re not human. The fact that machines don’t have feelings is a feature, not a bug. They have no emotions of their own to get in the way of deciphering ours.

Moreover, much of what we call “emotional intelligence” is really pattern recognition. A perceptive person picks up on subtle cues, from body language to tone of voice. Nothing stops an AI from learning those signals and deducing the emotional state of the person with whom it interacts. So, it will decipher others at least as well as we do.

But their superpower lies in understanding us better than we understand ourselves. Don’t believe me? TikTok knows you will like videos of chiropractors cracking backs before you do. Researchers are developing AI-driven smartphone apps that can detect depression through eye and facial cues. Even our strongest emotional states are not immune from their influence: Last month, the New York Times published an article about a woman who fell in love with her AI companion.

This is just the start. AI researcher Ethan Mollick observes that “soon, companies will start to deploy LLMs that are built specifically to optimize “engagement” in the same way social media timelines are fine-tuned to increase the amount of time you spend on their sites … Not only will we have chatbots that feel like interacting with people — they will make us feel better.” “ Her “ is already here.

There’s a saying in AI circles: hard things are easy, and easy things are hard. We presume that we’re inscrutable and incredibly complex creatures. We’re just well-dressed apes.

We’re only black boxes to ourselves. We are going to be open books to AI.

Professional

3. AI requires IA (Intelligent Augmentation)

We can’t beat the machine, so we have to join it. Steve Jobs famously described computers as “bicycles for the mind.” AI is more like a motorcycle and soon an Airbus for the brain. The humans who remain “in the loop” will know how to ride and drive these engines.

AI can extend your mind but also atrophy it. We all must make personal choices about what we want to outsource to algorithms and what we must keep. I’m still figuring things out on that front, but for me, the answer involves considering the purpose of the activity and the skill involved.

Even if AI doesn’t advance further, some implications are inevitable. Having AI as part of your toolkit will be necessary to be competitive in the hiring market for many jobs by the end of this year; with the rise of agentic AI, we will need to know how to “manage” agents alongside the people we lead.

Trying to “run out the clock” on AI is a mistake. Whether you accept it now or not, AI is your new co-worker. Learn how to work with it.

4. Get ready for “A species-wide identity crisis”

OG tech guru Kevin Kelly coined that phrase, and I wish I had. He captured what I was writing about just a few weeks ago when I described the need for developing a “Portfolio Life.”

The central philosophical question of the 21st century is discovering meaning in a post-work world.

Right now, work gives our lives structure, meaning, and purpose. However, in the coming AI age, we must find new sources of meaning. Just as money is a poor measure of success, work is a poor measure of meaning — especially at a moment when how we work (or if we do) is so unsettled.

AI is forcing us to face “philosophy with a deadline,” to use Nick Bostrom’s phrase. The countdown has already started.

5. We are just in the AOL “You’ve Got Mail” stage of AI

We are in the early internet era of AI. While it seems wondrous for now, the AI equivalents of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the “ Anxious Generation “ are looming on the horizon. What future documentaries will be written about “The Great Hack” and “The Social Dilemma” in this nascent AI age? We are just starting year 3 of the post-Chat GPT moment. What lies ahead will likely resemble those sinister examples of good ideas gone bad. If the Internet’s evolution is any indicator, market forces and evolutionary mismatches will produce the worst version of this particular multiverse.

We would be wise to remember Roy Amara, a Stanford computer scientist who coined Amara’s Law: People overestimate new technologies’ short-term impact and underestimate their long-term effects.

“You’ve got mail” became a pop culture catchphrase in the late 1990s; consider how much distance the digital world has traveled in 30 years, and contemplate what AI will be like in 2055.

The First 5

IoNTELLIGENCE by Ion Valis. I’m a strategic advisor and performance coach to entrepreneurs and executives. To learn more about my work, visit my website and connect with me on LinkedIn.

Originally published at https://iontelligence.substack.com.