I was born in 1972. Machines were already part of our lives. We had television, movies, satellites, and rockets. The future had arrived, at least according to the commercials.

Still, I grew up in an analog world.

I remember arguing with my father about using a personal computer instead of a typewriter. I remember stretching a telephone cord under a door for privacy. I remember turning a pager upside down to read the message. Less than a decade later, I was selling Motorola StarTAC flip phones on Pine Street in downtown San Francisco.

I also got to play outside. I got dirty, got bored, made things up, read faces, survived awkward silences, and learned how to find my way home.

The danger is not only that machines may become more human. It is that human beings may become less human.

Technology once arrived as something we could point to. Now it influences what we see, believe, buy, say, and think about ourselves. We compare our unedited lives to edited performances. Increasingly, some of those performances do not belong to human beings at all.

At 34, I was diagnosed with Stage III colon cancer. Surgeons removed about three feet of my colon. A chemotherapy port was implanted in my chest. When it was accessed, I could taste something like dirty pennies.

AI can organize the medical facts. It cannot taste the pennies. It can define fear. It cannot feel your heart race while you wait for test results. It can outline the hero’s journey. It has never had to survive one.

Humanity is love, joy, grief, pain, challenge, laughter, failure, courage, contradiction, imagination, forgiveness, and growth. It is the scar and the story. It is knowing when someone needs an answer and when they need another person to sit beside them.

I use AI. I value it. It helped give structure to the rush of memories and questions that became this story. The memories are mine. The scars are mine. The meaning is mine. The responsibility is mine.

HumanKind AI will create classes, conversations, workplace service days, educator resources, and a human reviewed gallery for art, poetry, music, and stories. Our work begins with one urgent question:

How do we move forward with artificial intelligence without leaving our humanity behind?

AI will continue getting faster. Our task is to become more intentional. AI can help us say more. Our responsibility is to mean more.

Gina Honsvick
Founder, HumanKind AI