⛩️ We Stand at a Threshold

The real question isn’t just how we use AI — it’s who we are becoming as we do. As artificial intelligence weaves itself into every corner of our lives, the call for conscious AI use becomes urgent. It’s not enough to adopt new tools faster; we must stay awake to how they shape our habits, choices, creativity, and humanity. The future isn’t being built for us — it’s being built through us. And the spirit with which we engage AI today will define the kind of world we create tomorrow.

Across every creative field — design, writing, music, art, invention — AI is catalyzing massive changes at an exponential pace.

For many of us, myself included, these changes aren’t theoretical. They’re reshaping our livelihoods, our identities, and our confidence as creators. Entire industries are being redefined. Departments are closing. Waves of layoffs are rippling through creative professions.

Amidst this upheaval, it’s natural to ask: “How do I use AI?”

It’s a practical and necessary question — but it’s not the first one we must ask. A deeper, more essential question must come first:

Who do I wish to become through my use of AI? 

Because when we focus only on how to use a tool this powerful, without reflecting on who we are becoming in the process, we expose ourselves to two quiet dangers:

✨ Enchantment — becoming dazzled by AI’s speed, scale, and generative power, mistaking output for wisdom or originality.
✨ Dependency — losing trust in our own creative instincts, outsourcing our vision to something that cannot feel, care, or follow the deepest guidance available to us — our human hearts.

If we wish to continue the upward trajectory of human evolution, we must anchor ourselves in an unshakeable connection to our hearts. And we must carry that connection forward as we reinvent and recreate ourselves within the future now being shaped by AI.

🔄 A Tool That Shapes Us Back

AI is not neutral.

It reflects, amplifies, and sometimes distorts the patterns we feed it. And if garbage is fed into it (such as training data that has implicit or explicit bias), it functions as a highly effective garbage-spewing machine. [For a deeper dive into this, read Trust and Transparency in the Age of AI.]

We humans are tool-makers. We create tools and in turn, are shaped by the tools we make. This has been true since we created our first tools. And it’s true in an utterly unprecedented way now that we’ve created the super-tool of AI.

Never before have we created a tool that was so useful, so effective, and so powerful that we had to start wondering if it’s still a tool, or if it’s become “a new digital species” (as the CEO of Microsoft AI, Mustafa Suleyman, suggested in his TED talk, What Is AI Anyway?).

In addition to changing our creative processes and calling into question our age-old understanding of individual authorship, AI accelerates our less-than-virtuous human tendencies to choose speed over depth, scale over soul, optimization over originality.

This is why the question of becoming is such an essential one.

Because standing as we are at this threshold, the choice isn’t whether we shape and are shaped by AI. The choice is:

1️⃣ Do we allow the co-shaping of AI and humanity to happen unconsciously to most of humanity, driven behind the scenes by titans of technology (whose explicit focus is to increase shareholder value), or

2️⃣ Do we power up as humans, as creators, and as a community to shape and be shaped by AI consciously, purposefully, and with the inimitable human wisdom of our hearts?

⚡️ Creative Powerup: A Place for Conscious Evolution—for Creators & AI

I founded Creative Powerup with this singular vision—to help humanity make the wise choice that supports our continual upward evolution, to help us make the conscious, purposeful, heart-led choice. Because we can’t just sit back and hope that someone else makes the right choice for us. Or that some influential CEO will finally see the light and start steering AI in this direction.

CP is a community of creators that recognize that creativity is our sacred human birthright—and we’re not giving that away or outsourcing that to anyone!

We’re not looking for cheat-codes. Nor are we trying to avoid the deep soul-searching thought and work that genuine human creativity requires. At the same time, we openly embrace game-changing new technology and are eager to put it to work to amplify the power and positive impact of our work.

We’re not just “using” AI. We’re not just learning better prompt engineering skills. We practice guiding AI with our own creative intelligence, enriching its output with our emotional intelligence, and steering its incredible power in wise, purposeful ways. Together, we are cultivating:

• • Creative Fluency, Not Automation. Fluency using AI-powered tools in ways that radically enhance, rather than diminish our human creativity

  • Purposeful Workflows. Creative workflows that support purpose, exploration, & creative growth—not just productivity

  • Human-Centered Standards for AI. A working, functional standard for ethical AI collaboration, guided by creators
  • A Culture of Generosity, Not Algorithmic Manipulation. CP is a meaningful community of real human creators who are growing, experimenting, and learning together. Our interactions aren’t manipulated by algorithms (ahem Facebook, Instagram, Twitter X, & TikTok)

We’re in the early phase of creating our community. This month, we’re welcoming founding members to join us. And so, I’m delighted to extend to you…

❤️‍🔥 A Heartfelt Invitation

It doesn’t matter what field you work in, what your current skill-level is, or many AI tools you already know how to use.

If you share our passion to support the upward evolution of humanity—and you want to actively participate in helping uplift it, and if you’d like to do this from a place of personal power and presence—then…

You are warmly invited to join us in the Creative Powerup community! 

If you’re interested, jump over to our homepage and check out our Community Guidelines. They help to ensure that CP remains a welcoming space in which everyone feels free to be themselves, experiment, take risks—all while respecting and supporting each other’s humanity.

The real power of AI isn’t just in what it can generate. It’s in who we become as we use it with clarity, a wise human heart, and all our might to create the biggest positive impact we can in the world.

We aren’t standing on the sidelines of this transformation. We stand at the threshold. The portal is wide open. Let’s step through—together.