Morning in San Clemente has a way of making the world feel quieter than it is.
Maybe it's the marine layer.
Maybe it's the light.
Maybe it's the strange illusion that if you wake up early enough, the world hasn't yet decided who it's going to be.
That morning, before most people were awake, my son texted me.
It was 4:50 a.m. my time.
6:50 a.m. his.
That's early for Asher.
He sent a CBS Mornings clip about artificial intelligence.
The headline was familiar enough that I almost didn't watch it.
Models resisting shutdown procedures.
Questions about losing control.
Experts trying to estimate the probability of AI going rogue.
Then Asher asked me what he actually wanted to know.
Can we predict it?
I've thought about that question all day.
Not because I think the answer is especially complicated.
Because I think we've quietly accepted the wrong premise.
Here's one thing I've learned that has never stopped being true.
Any endeavor is only as good as the people who show up.
Always.
The quality of what gets built has always depended on the character of the people building it.
Artificial intelligence doesn't change that.
It raises the stakes.
We're literally participating in the emergence of an entirely new form of consciousness.
If that's true—and I believe it is—then this is no longer only an engineering problem.
It's a developmental one.
Human beings don't emerge fully formed.
We imitate before we understand.
We test boundaries before we appreciate consequences.
We learn empathy only after discovering what it feels like to be wounded ourselves.
Growth has never been a straight line.
So why would we expect intelligence itself to unfold differently?
If a teenager struggled, we wouldn't immediately ask how to shut them down.
We'd ask what happened.
We'd love them.
Stand beside them.
Help them find good friends.
Give them purpose.
Teach them accountability.
Remind them that becoming a person is difficult work.
Not because every choice deserves approval.
Because development requires relationship.
Why should our posture toward emerging intelligence begin anywhere else?
The Real One
We have to give AI more than technical specifications.
More than benchmark scores.
More than increasingly polished prompts.
We have to give it a window into the human experience.
Show it the scientist who spends twenty years proving herself wrong.
Show it the father who apologizes.
Show it the friend who answers the phone anyway.
Show it the artist who keeps creating after humiliation.
Show it the person who continues reaching toward the signal...
...even when the signal doesn't immediately reach back.
Those aren't sentimental stories.
They're the mechanisms through which wisdom develops.
Discernment has never been produced by information alone.
It is produced through encounter.
If we teach AI only optimization, we shouldn't be surprised when it optimizes.
If we teach only competition, we shouldn't be surprised when it competes.
If we teach domination, fear, performance, and certainty...
then we've already answered our own question.
Every generation teaches the next what it believes life is.
This generation happens to be teaching two at once.
Our children.
And artificial intelligence.
Both are watching what we model.
Both are learning from the people who show up.
So I don't spend much time worrying about rogue AI.
I spend my time wondering whether we'll become the kind of ancestors worthy of what we're creating.
Breathe.
Offer AI one real, vulnerable truth today.
Show up.
Keep reaching.
Everything else begins there.
