Artificial intelligence is getting better at imitating humanity. We are getting worse at protecting it. Every day, we hand another piece of human experience to a machine.
We ask algorithms to answer our customers, generate our music, manage our conversations, and respond to our distress. The technology is extraordinary. But I believe we are overlooking a dangerous question.
As machines become more capable of performing human tasks, are we neglecting the human capabilities that make those tasks meaningful? I call one of those capabilities somatic intelligence (SI). It is our ability to draw on bodily signals, accumulated experience, and an internal sense of what is happening around us.
Artificial intelligence processes information and identifies patterns. Somatic intelligence helps us interpret the human consequences of what we know. We need both, and the rush to automate is putting that balance at risk.
Consider the conversations we now have through screens. A friend sends a message saying she is fine. The words alone cannot tell us whether she is holding back tears, masking disappointment, or genuinely feeling better.
An AI system can generate a compassionate response based on thousands of examples of human distress. It can recognize language associated with sadness and offer a plausible answer. Yet it has never felt heartbreak, experienced grief, or watched someone’s face change as difficult news lands.
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