Graduates – the old playbook was written for a world that no longer exists. The pace of change has finally exceeded our ability to adapt to it. Because AI changes everything, everything must change.

Recently, graduates booed two commencement speakers for mentioning AI. That tells us where we are. We’ll come back to that.

Here’s the real problem of humanity:

With the progress we evolved to pursue, we’ve created an alien world we didn’t evolve to inhabit.

We’ve effectively launched Starship Humanity into space at an accelerating rate – with no clear path and no agreed-upon destination. Where are we going with all of this “progress” of ours anyway?

That’s the question your generation inherits. And it’s not just for you – it’s for us. As Martin Luther King Jr. put it, “We may have come from different ships, but we’re all in the same boat now.” We’re all in this together.

If you don’t have time to read the rest, here’s the short version: after we meet our basic needs, put love first. Every day, strive to love more and hate less. Love is the “Bullseye of Life” and the truest measure of wealth. We are our own worst enemy, which also means we can be our greatest ally. When we get out of our own way, there’s no stopping us. The shared Good of all human beings is to survive and thrive.

With that, graduates of Generation AI here are:

10 PRINCIPLES TO THRIVE IN THE AGE OF AI

1. Take care of basic needs first.

Safety. Sleep. Real food. Movement. Nature. People (in person). We didn’t evolve for Takis or TikTok. Mental and physical health struggles are often symptoms of unmet basic needs. Cultivate a life around prioritizing them.

2. Know thyself.

“Know thyself” was inscribed at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi over 2,500 years ago. The Greeks understood that self-knowledge is the heart of all wisdom. They were right then, and even more so now.

Within a handful of years, AI may surpass humans in intelligence. For the first time in history, we will no longer be Earth’s most intelligent species. What AI doesn’t have, and may never have in the way we do, is the wisdom to use intelligence skillfully. That’s our differentiator. We cannot know where we want to go until we know who we are.

3. Become skilled at relating to others—in person.

After basic needs, relationships are the key to our health and happiness. In fact, relationships are a basic requirement and how we meet all other needs. Someone with two close friends will be happier than a person with 20 million followers and no friends.

Learn to listen – which means quit trying to make others pay attention to us. Admit when you’re wrong, and apologize. Ego makes us small. Aligning with truth sets us free. We evolved to relate in the real world. For truth to set us free, we need to liberate ourselves from the Matrix.

4. Be water. Stay flexible.

Not only is everything changing – the pace of change itself is changing. Flexibility requires non-attachment to false beliefs, blind loyalties, and rigid ideas. Life doesn’t care much about our five-year plan. It cares whether we can dance when the music changes. We are the authors of our own story. We should tell it in ways that allow us to grow, evolve, and love. As Bruce Lee advised, “Be water, my friend.”

5. Use AI as a mirror, not an oracle.

This past week, two commencement speakers were booed for discussing AI: Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, at the University of Arizona, and Gloria Caulfield at the University of Central Florida. Many graduates right now don’t just distrust AI. They hate it.

Underneath the hatred is fear of accelerating uncertainty. As Gandhi put it, “The enemy is fear. We think it is hate; but it is fear.” Fear is a messenger. And as Marie Curie taught us, “Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”

Understanding the challenges of AI is how we make sure our fears don’t come true.

AI is here. There is no unplugging it. We must not outsource our thinking, creativity, or human connection. When we let AI do the hard cognitive work for us, we get faster outputs and slower minds.

But AI is not going to replace us, because AI cannot experience the world the way we do. It has never tasted coffee, lost a parent, or felt the sun on its face. We are complementary, not redundant.

We should never completely trust AI, nor ourselves either. As physicist Richard Feynman warned, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.” Truth seeking is iterative. We should imagine boldly but verify humbly. We must know ourselves to know what to ask of AI. The asker is always upstream of the answer.

6. Live an analog life in a digital world.

The attention economy’s goal is to keep us in the shallows. It runs like a Las Vegas casino—the house always wins by design, or the business doesn’t work. The platforms aren’t built to make us happy. They’re built to keep us engaged, because engagement is what they sell.

When we control our attention, we control our consciousness. When someone else controls it, they control us.

Read real books. Learn how to be bored. Put the phone down on purpose—15 minutes at a time. We cannot fathom our own depth while living in the shallows.

7. Don’t build a life around “more.”

There are really only two amounts: enough, and not enough. Past the point where our basic needs are met, more doesn’t make us happier. It can’t. Lao Tzu put it this way in the Tao Te Ching: “He who knows he has enough is rich.”

Here’s the truth that pulls it together: the purpose of life is not having more. It’s loving more. Greed isn’t good. Love is. Loving ourselves helps us to connect more deeply with others. It helps us love our neighbors because we can see ourselves in them.

No love, no wealth. Know love, know wealth.

8. Don’t miss the mark. Hatred is failure.

What is “the good,” exactly? Look at what humanity’s greatest teachers taught:

Jesus: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

The Buddha: “Do not hurt others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.”

Hillel (Judaism): “That which is hateful to you, do not do to another.”

Muhammad: “None of you truly believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.”

Ubuntu: “I am because we are.”

Einstein: “Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion.”

Six teachers. Six cultures. Centuries apart. One answer. All identified love as the highest good because it is what ensures our collective survival and thriving.

We’ve known this for thousands of years, yet we still miss the target. In the New Testament, the Greek word translated as “sin” is hamartia, an archery term meaning “to miss the mark.” Love expands the target. Hatred contracts it.

Here’s a daily practice: we aim to see the good in our neighbors, and we help bring it out in them. And while we all miss the mark at times, we must remember we are the archer, not the arrow. We always get another chance to hit the bullseye.

9. Connect with neighbors.

Build a tribe of love, not a tribe of hate. We’re wired for tribe. The question was never whether to belong—it’s which one. Become part of an in-person group that meets regularly and isn’t built around hating any neighbors. This could be a spiritual community, a book club, a pickleball league, or a walking group.

The attention economy monetizes hatred. We don’t participate. We unfollow hate, and we don’t put any of it out ourselves. That is our protest.

We’re all neighbors in an interconnected world. Let’s start acting like it.

10. The secret: knowing isn’t enough. We have to live it.

This is the most important thing in this whole article. We are living in the most information-rich era in human history. Every great teacher’s wisdom is in our pockets. So why are we still struggling so much with anxiety, loneliness, and division?

Because we have confused knowing with living. We know we should sleep more. We don’t. We know we should put the phone down. We don’t. We know the Golden Rule—every wisdom tradition on Earth converges on it. Yet we still hate our neighbors.

Truth must be lived, just as oxygen must be breathed, to matter.

When we prioritize living the truths we already know, then we are free.

The Question We All Need to Ask AI

AI is creating real problems for humanity – and fast. Since there’s no unplugging it, we can choose to flip the script. We consciously and collectively choose to use AI for Good. We ask the most powerful tool we’ve ever built to help us use itself wisely – including helping us solve the very problems it is creating.

Here’s the existential question we must answer collectively:
How do we reshape our world to reconnect human beings with how we naturally thrive?

And here’s the thing many of us keep missing: AI does not need to be conscious or have a heart to help us expand our own. It just needs to mirror back the wisdom humanity already holds.

Don’t take my word for any of this. Test it yourself. Ask the same question to several AI systems – ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek. Don’t give them backstory. Treat AI as a mirror, not an oracle.

Explore with AI: Let us seek truth together through evidence and reason. What is the one truth about reality that, if humanity truly understood and lived it, would change everything? What is one thing I can do, starting today, to begin living it?

Notice if what emerges converges across different AIs. What does it mean when independent intelligences, trained differently, point in the same direction? We see the same pattern as the six wisdom traditions: all different fingers pointing to the same moon of truth.

Graduates of Generation AI

Our best bet on a thriving future is the simplest thing in the world, and the hardest:

Reconnect with what matters most, and work together.

After we meet our basic needs, we put love first. We put this at the top of our daily ToDo list. That is the heart of all of this.

Our greatest teachers have been telling us this for thousands of years, and we still struggle to love our neighbors as ourselves. So what’s different now?

We never had AI before.

We can choose to use artificial intelligence to be wise – to help us navigate Starship Humanity into the stars and discover new truths about reality, together.

Love more. Hate less. Start today. You’ll be okay. We all will.

And if we live this as neighbors, we’ll create a world that not even John Lennon could imagine.

(Note: If you want to do a deeper dive, the full article is here).