Reclaiming Our Humanity Today

In the age of artificial intelligence, how does AI affect us? And what does it mean to be human?

Five Core Mandates for the Age of AI

Center for Humane Technology convened a working group of leading experts across law, technology, and philosophy to examine where AI genuinely helps us and where it costs us; whether and how this technology differs from technologies of the past; how it is shaping some of the most intimate and important parts of our lives; and what researchers, policymakers, and culture must do to protect these pillars of human life.

Center for Humane Technology, along with this report’s panel of experts, present five core mandates that should guide AI design, deployment, and governance in order to preserve our humanity:

Dangerous and deceptive anthropomorphic designs should be prohibited

so that human relationships are best positioned to remain the primary source of connection in our lives.

AI products should prompt our thinking instead of defaulting to thinking for us

so that we prevent cognitive atrophy and preserve our capacity for judgment.

Our thoughts and emotional states should not be surveilled or steered by AI

so that we preserve our ability to think freely and with privacy.

AI companies should not copy or use our identity without consent

so that we maintain our individuality, dignity, and safety in the world.

AI systems should be built to augment, not replace human work

so that humans retain access to the work that gives our lives purpose.

Together, these mandates point to a higher-order shift: companies that build products reshaping how we think, relate, and become owe the public a fundamental duty of care, or in other words, a legal and moral obligation to take reasonable steps to keep our humanity safe.

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Background and Key Takeaways

The arrival of AI has begun to reshape how we relate to one another, how we think, how we work, and even how we form our innermost beliefs. And the impacts have been unfolding faster than our ability to name what is happening to us, individually and collectively. AI is also raising novel questions across research, law, and philosophy about what needs to be protected as we continue to live with this technology.

In April 2026, our panel of leading experts examined five pillars of fundamental humanity:

Relationships
Cognitive capacities
Inner worlds
Identities
Work and contributions

In exploring how AI affects these pilars, the following throughlines emerged across all five domains:

Intangible abilities underpin our humanity.

The capacity to reflect on ourselves, to exercise agency and intuition, to be vulnerable and embodied, and to form our own judgments, among others, are what make us human. And while AI can give the perception of demonstrating these capacities, it cannot. Therefore, when these intangible capacities are eroded by AI, we risk losing what makes us uniquely human.

Friction is an essential element of our humanity.

Friction is the effort, difficulty, and discomfort that meaningful things require of us. Our relationships, our ability to problem solve, and our contributions to society all contain — and even require — friction. It's friction that makes these things feel earned — and what's earned through effort and difficulty carries a weight, and a worth, that is particularly meaningful.

Preserve processes, not just outcomes.

Process is the path we take to reach an outcome — the act of doing, not just the final product. When we partake in a process, we gain not just the outcome, but everything the act of the process builds in us. Working through different processes not only enables childhood development, it also helps build resiliency, granting adults meaningful, fulfilling lives.

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