Every new technology changes what humans no longer have to practice—and eventually, what they no longer know how to do. Calculators changed arithmetic. GPS changed navigation. Search engines changed memory. AI is changing thinking. The question isn’t whether AI should eliminate mistakes. It should. The question is whether it begins eliminating the humanity behind our work. The goal isn’t to preserve outdated methods. It’s to preserve the human qualities those methods once developed.
Every Technology Changes Us
Tools have been shaping humanity from the beginning.
A stick. A rock. A flame.
People’s ingenuity and constant desire for improving one’s quality of life naturally creates more and better tools over time.
Technology is simply another class of tool.
Some feel like giant leaps while others are gentle enhancements.
The leaps can be scary or exciting.
The enhancements blend into everyday life and almost feel like they’ve always been there, even if they haven’t.
Can you remember a time without calculators?
How about spell check?
I remember when GPS meant having a Garmin map plugged into your car lighter port and you no longer had to carry around dad’s old paper maps.
Those vanished when the smartphone rolled out, yet few of us remember the early smartphone stages of the Blackberry and it’s sidekick, the stylus.
Technological tools have a way of disrupting life but then becoming part of life.
The best tools force their way into our lives not because they are mandated but because they bring so much value.
The internet is like that. The information of the world at our fingertips. The good and the bad.
The ability to communicate with anyone, anywhere, for any reason.
Sometimes we can handle these powerful tools responsibly.
Other times we can’t…or don’t.
And now, perhaps we have one of the greatest technological leaps in our generation: Artificial Intelligence.
Not because AI hasn’t been around for decades in various forms, but because now it has been easily accessible and more integrated into our daily systems than ever before.
While some may hope ignoring it will make it go away, they’ll be the ones still holding a paper map and struggling to get to their destination.
AI is here and it’s becoming more powerful and purposeful every day.
Every technology changes what humans practice.
Calculators reduced arithmetic practice.
GPS reduced navigation practice.
Search engines reduced memory practice.
AI may reduce thinking practice.
Whether that becomes progress or decline depends on what we continue practicing ourselves.
Technology can level up our skills, abilities, and efficiencies.
Or it can distract us, harm us, and reveal our inadequacies to the world.
AI Can Remove Friction—And That’s a Good Thing
Unlike previous tools, AI doesn’t simply automate physical work. It increasingly assists with intellectual work—thinking, writing, planning, researching, analyzing, and creating. That’s why this moment feels different.
AI is more than a search engine.
- It explains.
- It organizes.
- It summarizes.
- It brainstorms.
- It writes.
- It analyzes.
- It increasingly acts.
The biggest proof we have that AI is here to stay is the value it brings to the world.
As a professional engineer, father, and web developer, I’ve personally seen its value in improving grammar, formatting, brainstorming, summarizing, coding, and repetitive tasks.
AI has saved me thousands of dollars and countless hours in only a short time of use.
Using AI like this is wonderful.
It’s helpful.
It creates and adds value.
Responsible Freedom isn’t about resisting technology.
It’s about deciding what technology should—and shouldn’t—replace.
The value AI creates also introduces a new responsibility.
The easier it becomes to outsource thinking, the more intentional we must become about deciding what should remain ours.
By humanity, I don’t mean imperfection. I mean the experiences, judgment, creativity, responsibility, and relationships that make our work uniquely ours.
The Danger Isn’t Making Fewer Mistakes
Mistakes teach.
Struggle teaches.
Revision teaches.
Thinking teaches.
If AI eliminates all struggle…
What happens to growth?
In writing, AI can produce thousands of polished words in seconds.
But polished writing isn’t necessarily thoughtful writing.
Without careful revision, the words may sound impressive while saying very little.
In learning piano, I’ve gone through the struggle of practice.
But people don’t attend concerts to hear perfection.
They attend to witness mastery earned through years of practice.
In engineering, I truly believe AI may eventually perform most engineering calculations. But not human judgment.
Engineers will still be responsible for deciding whether those calculations should be trusted.
People must decide if the risk is acceptable for the health, safety, and welfare of other people.
Accountability cannot be automated.
Technology can assist responsibility. It cannot assume responsibility.
As parents, AI can provide tips, tools and ideas.
But without careful considerations to a child’s emotional and spiritual needs, AI suggestions can be too cold and calculating.
Children don’t simply need correct answers.
They need wise parents.
Machine companions cannot replace human friendship.
There is something unique about people made in the image of God.
Friendship isn’t built through information exchange. It’s built through shared life.
The seasons of friendship between two people must be lived to grow into something deep and long-lasting.
Relationships aren’t valuable because they’re efficient. They’re valuable because they’re shared.
The Skill You Stop Practicing Is the Skill You Begin Losing
Human ability follows practice.
If you stop writing, your writing weakens.
If you stop solving problems, your judgment dulls.
If you stop navigating, your sense of direction fades.
Every technology asks us the same question:
What are you willing to stop practicing?
AI simply asks that question on a much larger scale.
Whatever we repeatedly outsource eventually becomes harder to do ourselves.
Convenience always has a cost.
The question is whether we’re willing to pay it.
Preserve Humanity, Not Imperfection
Responsible use of AI is all about appropriate leverage.
It’s not OK to leave spelling errors in a body of text with an excuse that it shows it was written by a human.
It’s not OK to refuse reviewing better ideas because those ideas come from AI.
Mistakes, errors, and laziness should be eliminated.
What we don’t want to eliminate are the human elements:
- Preserve curiosity.
- Preserve judgment.
- Preserve wisdom.
- Preserve creativity.
- Preserve empathy.
- Preserve discernment.
- Preserve conviction.
Those are the qualities worth protecting.
Not because AI lacks intelligence.
Because AI lacks humanity.
The Difference Between a Mistake and a Human Element
There’s a natural tug-of-way between what feels human and what is simply wrong.
Human beings are imperfect.
Humanity isn’t found in our mistakes.
It’s found in the meaning behind our work.
Here’s the difference.
Mistakes:
- typos
- grammar errors
- factual inaccuracies
- awkward phrasing
Human elements:
- stories
- experiences
- observations
- opinions
- lessons learned
One should be edited.
The other should be protected.
Mistakes are not evidence of humanity.
Meaning is.
What AI Does Well
AI is built with data so it naturally excels in proofreading, restructuring, finding gaps, improving clarity, and generating ideas.
It is an information engine – able to easily and near instantaneously process, gather, and generate.
It feeds on knowledge, on requests, on conversation.
AI excels at processing information.
Humans excel at assigning meaning.
Processing information isn’t the same as understanding significance.
What AI Cannot Replace
As an information engine then, it cannot replace your experiences, your failures, your relationships, your stories, or your perspective.
No AI can tell the story of my military school experience.
No AI can explain what it felt like to build my website over the years.
No AI can replicate a conversation I had with my son, or daughter, or wife.
Those aren’t information problems.
They’re life experiences.
In our quest for protecting human elements, here is a better way to leverage AI for fixing mistakes.
AI Should Be Your Editor, Not Your Author
The order matters.
Think first.
Write second.
Edit with AI third.
The closer AI gets to the beginning of your creative process, the greater the risk that your perspective slowly disappears.
The closer it gets to the end, the more it acts like a trusted editor rather than a ghostwriter.
Don’t outsource the first spark.
Don’t outsource the final responsibility.
Let AI improve everything in between.
A Better Editing Framework
When reviewing a piece, ask:
- Is this wrong? Fix it.
- Is this repetitive? Condense it.
- Is this confusing? Clarify it.
- Is this unmistakably mine? Protect it.
If you’re not careful, AI will turn your essay, blog, proposal, or email into everyone else’s. Not because it’s best but because it’s what fits the mold.
I’ve seen this in the engineering industry already.
Someone writes a paragraph. Runs it through AI. Thinks the AI paragraph sounds so much better. Smarter. Polished. They let AI create the next paragraph from scratch. Also brilliant. Sounds too smart not to use.
The finished page is done. Or so they think.
Then an expert reads it.
Technically polished. Professionally dangerous. Not aligned with intent. Not accurate or true descriptions of past experiences. Not unique enough to stand out.
But I’ve also seen AI used well.
An expert tries their best to remember, to explain, and to tailor the message to the intended audience.
They run it through AI. Fix some run-on sentences. Change from passive to active voice. Condense a few repeated ideas. Identify a gap that needs more work.
The page is brilliant. Powerful.
What was the difference between the two?
Responsible freedom.
The bad example used their freedom to rely too heavily on AI and the result was slop.
The good example responsibly allowed AI to enhance their experience by reducing the friction that comes with mistakes.
Why So Much AI Content Feels Empty
Many writers fear AI because they’ve seen what happens when a machine generates or rewrites everything.
The grammar improves.
The readability improves.
The fingerprints disappear.
It could have been written by anyone.
Which means it was written by no one.
Readers remember people, not perfectly generated paragraphs.
Regrettably, the allure AI brings to many people is a hands-off approach.
It’s tempting to let AI do it all because it’s so easy.
I’ve experienced this firsthand.
Let the AI write a story. A poem. An article.
Thousands of words strung together beautifully, more accurate than most people could ever articulate, and yet completely devoid of that which draws a reader in.
In fact, even being the one to oversee the work, and I use that term loosely, brings recognition that no actual effort was put into it.
No lived experience.
No human judgment.
No matter the length, AI content is easily disregarded.
Easily deleted.
Yet, a short poem, an essay that comes from inner turmoil over several days or weeks due to the effort of expressing how one thinks or feels, this is treated like gold.
Even a few misspelled words strung together with disproportionately large or small letters and missing punctuation from a 5-year old learning to write is a prized artifact. A keeper. A family heirloom hung from the most public of private places- the fridge, the pantry door, the office bookshelf, and most certainly the baby book.
Why?
People don’t connect with perfection.
They connect with authenticity earned through experience.
Ask Better Questions Before Using AI
How then can we transition AI from undervalued slop to a treasured tool?
Instead of asking:
Can AI do this?
Ask:
Should AI do this?
- What will I stop practicing?
- What skill am I preserving?
- What skill am I outsourcing?
- Am I becoming more capable…
- or merely more efficient?
I started this website in 2017. It is the culmination of five personal websites and one of eight that I have brought into existence.
When AI tools became easily accessible, I began leveraging them to help me better understand the body of work I had created.
In 2026, I had nearly 160 articles that covered a wide range of topics. Each was at its own unique stage of development.
Honestly, I had forgotten more articles than I remembered.
Instead of replacing my voice, AI helped me hear it more clearly. It revealed underlying themes, connecting ideas, frames of reference, and a laughable amount of spelling and grammar issues I either never knew I had or was too lazy to fix.
Ironically, AI helped me discover patterns in my own thinking that I hadn’t noticed after nearly a decade of writing.
Having AI simply re-write everything would have been a big mistake. On the surface, my philosophies, worldview, and contextual experiences would have been erased. The value and perspective contained within each article gone forever.
Instead, I have meticulously leveraged AI as a sounding board. A professional editor. A brainstorming confidant. A research scientist. A content planner. An SEO mentor. A data synthesizer. A link examiner. And most enjoyably, a web programming tutor.
You see, I found early on that delegating the first draft to AI left me and the article feeling hollow and boring.
But when I first poured out my own thoughts, feelings, and experiences, AI was able to evolve my work into something evergreen.
Something unmistakably mine.
Better organized. Better communicated. Still unmistakably mine.
Something that allowed the message to shine instead of the mistakes.
And over time, I have gotten better at capturing professional without abandoning perspective.
Every time I open AI, I ask myself one question:
Which part of this should remain mine?
Responsible Freedom Means Choosing What We Practice
Freedom isn’t having AI do everything.
Freedom is choosing intentionally what only you should do.
The people who thrive won’t be those who use the most AI.
They’ll be the people who preserve the most humanity while using it.
We become what we repeatedly practice.
If we repeatedly practice thinking…
We become thinkers.
If we repeatedly practice outsourcing…
We become dependent.
The ideal outcome of a tool is not for it to become the master, but for it to be wielded by a master to create a masterpiece.
A calculator should replace arithmetic mistakes.
It should not replace mathematical understanding.
GPS should replace getting lost.
It should not replace knowing where you are.
Spell check should replace typos.
It should not replace careful thinking.
AI should replace unnecessary friction.
It should not replace human judgment.
If we’re not careful, our pursuit of delegation and automation can lead us down a path not of freedom, but of slavery.
Slave to tools, devices, and technologies. Slaves to outsourced thinking and doing.
Or, through responsible intentionality, we can leverage these things to give us more time, energy, and financial freedom.
Final Thoughts
AI may become one of the greatest tools humanity has ever created.
But tools should expand our humanity—not quietly replace it.
Methods change.
Technology changes.
Tools change.
Human nature doesn’t.
Preserve curiosity.
Preserve wisdom.
Preserve responsibility.
Preserve relationships.
Preserve creativity.
Let AI remove the friction.
Never let it remove the humanity.
