Imagine if your refrigerator started giving you health advice. Yes, that same burly-doored confidante that never spoke, but served tirelessly. It’s non-judgmental temperment, once kept your milk cold and your secrets safe; is now leveled-up to be your wellness sensei, guiding you through existential crises and making you question why you ever bought that extra-large tub of ice cream in the first place. Welcome to the world where artificial intelligence isn’t just about keeping our hands-free, or boosting our self-esteem in a game of 8bit chess — it’s actively training our collective human sentience.

After years of learning from us, it has come of the age (or not) to be able to hang out with you and your friends. But the irony is not missed on anyone that AI can be only as good as we are, much like how parents continue to be blamed for their problem-child. But here’s where it gets interesting, AI is learning in data terms, not accounting for human whim. It consumes information and conjugates it to merely present newer expressions of it. It is like a mirror with superhuman abilities, presenting a figment of our reality that we never noticed, or were too afraid to confront.

The AI revolution is no longer ‘underway’ it is set in motion without an OFF switch, and it will continue to represent humanity’s ingenuity – but also bring to bare, our stupidity, our biases, our reservations, and over-subscription to certain ideologies and expressions. All this to say, perhaps looking at a non-binary twin in a machine, could help us be more human.

The work using Artificial Intelligence, especially in the advertising world, is already starting to reflect a certain self-awareness muscle we’re beginning to grow. The E.V.A. initiative by Volvo, Contrails and Project Understood by Google, Dot Translate, The AI President by AnNahar, AI-Shu by Olay, and even Heinz AI ketchup – these are just some of the examples of how the objectivity of an algorithm is rewriting the relative terms of the human experience.

We are living in a dual reality without us even realizing it. The real world and the whimsical world where AI isn’t just assisting us—it’s actively reshaping how we think, behave, dream, and occasionally even laugh at ourselves. Because if AI has the power to turn our biases into learning opportunities and challenge our most basic assumptions, then who knows; we might become a little more human along the way.

This piece isn’t a verdict or an ordination, not by a stretch, and neither is anyone really an expert in this shapeshifting reality, but it is absolutely our interest to be keen observers that keep this dialogue accessible.

Authors: Nishant Shah and Andre Couto, Executive Creative Director and Creative Director at Serviceplan Middle East – written with or without the aid of AI. Does it matter?