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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.
Just this past week, graduates booed two commencement speakers for mentioning AI. That tells us where we are. We’ll come back to that.
The short version, in case you don’t read the rest: after we meet our basic needs, put love first. Love is the bullseye of life and the truest measure of wealth.
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.
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 really 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.
