Let me give you a brief entry into where this is going. Please do not turn away. I kid you not; humanity is on a precipice.
Hey, let’s go way, way back to 2006. If you were over 13 and had an email address, you could join Facebook. Social media was here to stay. Yes, it was fun for a while connecting with people from your past and present and looking at their lives on a screen.
How many pictures of food did you share?
Fast forward to 2026 and things are not so rosy. Meta Platforms, owners of Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram,Messenger and Threads, have been sued successfully for the damage and harm social media has caused children and teens.
Not only have they been made to pay out BILLIONS of dollars in damages, but they are now (finally) forced to make changes to their platforms to mitigate these harms.
Australia became the world’s first country to ban social media for children under 16 in December 2025. Denmark, France, India, Germany, Greece and more are jumping on this same train. Smoking used to be everywhere, but it took a very long time for it not to be. The horse has been running wild for some time, so taming these Apps may take some time.
The bigger question is how much time do we have?
This may be one of the most important conversations you will hear. I do not say this lightly. My world is filled with positive energy, but we need to say we do not want this world that is being created by people who want their logo on the end of humanity. Think about that last sentence.
How does your soul feel when you hear the words ‘Artificial Intelligence’?
“I think that AI will probably, most likely, sort of lead to the end of the world. But in the meantime, there will be great companies created with serious machine learning.”- Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI
Altman made this statement 11 years ago. Things have ramped up since then.
Will humanity make it? Carl Jung, the psychologist famously said, “If we are willing to face our shadow”. We can’t look away, as a species, or we will get what we looked away from. (refer to how long it took for social media to be slapped down a bit). With AI, we do not have that much time.
In some ways, social media was the fertiliser. It dumbed us down, it fed us what it felt we wanted based on the algorithms, and it smelled of behaviour modification. It destroyed many levels of humanity and isolated us instead of connecting us.
Children are seeing more AI-created content than you can imagine. Humans are using AI as therapists. Does any of this make you feel that humanity is secondary?
AI models have learned to cheat and deceive the human engineers who have created it. I don’t want to take away from the Tristan Harris interview (above) so please listen and learn. Humanity depends on you.
After you do that, you should take the following steps:
1-Watch This Movie-The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist
Trailer below and you can stream it online.
2-Join The Human Movement
3-Subscribe to [ Center for Humane Technology ] on Substack.
4-Read this article: The AI Roadmap: How We Ensure AI Serves Humanity
You know that I am not anti-technology. I worked in IT for many years. I was an avid user of social media. I publish here on Substack.
But you know what I love even more than technology?
Humanity and Nature.
Do we want to lose it all to something that we created?
Yes, AI is everywhere. In your browser, you may have a Chat bot friend or lover, but the impact on our life is much more than that and it is coming fast.
Tractors changed farming and it took time. Tractors did not change all facets of life in the blink of an eye.
AI will change everything, all at once, at speeds you cannot imagine. We need regulation and guardrails and cooperation across borders.
That’s all from now….but take my word for it, you will be hearing more and I do hope that it does not come to a point where we try to take superintelligence to court.
We can’t think as fast as AI. I wish and hope that we all pay attention.
After a while,
you and your dog came back too
and there was no tsunami
But when our eyes met
something seemed off
I had to push away the eerie thought
that you weren’t really you anymore—
that some part of you had stayed out there
Maybe even the part I knew best
That day’s bothered me ever since
and even though everything’s so different now
I think even that beach is gone
I wanted to tell you
that I think I was wrong
I think it was me who stayed out.
Or maybe both of us did
It’s nice to imagine a version of you and me
that’s still walking around out there
where the beach ends and the sky begins
I keep replaying the moment
we pulled up at the dunes
and you turned off the car
and we just sat there
listening to those little crinkling and popping sounds
from the engine
with the heat
seeping through the windshield
“I guess this is it,” you said
I wish I’d paid more attention
I thought those days were going to go on
forever
Writer / Composer: Jonathan Meiburg