Lesson 10 · Original 2024 edition
Redefining AI
Original book · printed p. 30 onward ↗About this edition
The teaching below preserves the original book’s wording, with page footers and layout whitespace removed. The AI practice and reflection are new adaptations.
The object-and-relationship framing is the author’s philosophical interpretation. Tool design and limitations also shape an interaction; the adaptation does not place all responsibility on the user.
Historical and scientific claims in the source have not yet undergone a complete evidence review.
Source teaching · Alex Julian, 2024
The original lesson
It is never the object that is the problem, but rather it is the relationship with an object that becomes a problem. Unfortunately, we are often the problem. However, never beat yourself up. You are innocent. Without all the stresses and traumas of life, everything — including relationships with objects — would be easy. However, objects are objects. They are not out to get you, but are just simply and purely being themselves.
Consider the object of tobacco, or cigarettes. Depending on the relationship, the object will have totally different effects on a person. Think about a person who has never smoked once in their entire life. When they go to a gas station and see the wall of cigarettes, and when they see people smoking out in public, it doesn’t have any effect at all! This person is completely neutral towards the object of tobacco, and it is almost like it doesn’t exist in their reality.
Now, imagine a person with a tumultuous relationship with tobacco. This person smoked on and off for a decade and is trying to quit for good. Every single time they go to the gas station and see the wall of cigarettes, and every time they see someone smoking in public, they are probably highly triggered and filled with urges to smoke. The cigarettes are like shiny objects that they can’t look away from.
How crazy is that? The same object has totally different effects on different people — all depending on their relationships with the object. Again, the object is just being itself. It is not actively trying to manipulate you. It can’t. It’s just an object, or a cigarette in this example. It is not talking to you, expertly persuading you to buy a pack. It all comes down to the individual’s relationship with the object. This is an obvious example, and life gets more complex and subtle, however the same dynamic is at play with all objects you interact with.
AI is an object, and it is probably the most important object we can interact with in 2024 and beyond. What will most determine our success with AI is our relationship with AI — how we use it and who we are. “What” is just part of the equation. Don’t forget about the “who” and “how”.
© 2024 Alex Julian Yoga. All rights reserved.
New contemporary AI application
Try it in your next AI session.
Before your next AI session, name one useful role for the tool and one boundary you want to keep. Choose a task that fits both, and notice how you relate to the output.
Reflect afterward
What changed when you considered your relationship with the tool, rather than only its capabilities?
Bring this teaching to the Practice Studio →Developed with AI assistance for this digital edition. Reflect privately; nothing needs to be submitted or shared.
Music and teaching
The original song and video
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