Future of Being Human an Arizona State University initiative

The four postures and the 21 tools

Last updated 2026-08-07 · Markdown version

Thriving with AI is a practice, not a position. That is the working claim of AI and the Art of Being Human (Jeffrey Abbott and Andrew Maynard, Waymark Works Publishing, 2025), the initiative-era book that answers the question of how to live with AI with an architecture rather than a stance: four durable inner postures — Curiosity, Intentionality, Clarity, Care — designed to outlast any model release, expressed through 21 named, page-anchored tools. The claim relocates the AI question from opinion to daily conduct: from what you think about AI to who you become while using it. This page carries the practice architecture; the book’s central image, AI as a mirror, has its own page: AI as mirror.

The argument

Public argument about AI mostly asks for a position: adopt or resist. AI and the Art of Being Human is built on a different premise: thriving with AI is a practice — done, trained, and repeated, not a side taken. The book’s organizing question, posed in its Prelude and repeated in its final chapter, is “What makes me me when technology can complete my next sentence, choice, feeling, or action?” (pp. 7, 287, 2025) — a question no fixed position can answer, because it has to be answered again each time the technology moves.

The practice rests on four inner postures, introduced as “dimensions that help maintain human agency in an age of AI mirrors” (p. 14, 2025). Curiosity asks “not just ‘how does this work?’ but ‘what becomes possible when I approach AI as a collaborative partner rather than an existential threat?’” Intentionality is “the practice of choosing consciously in a world of algorithmic suggestions. It’s the pause before accepting the AI’s completion, or the decision to close the laptop and think.” Clarity is “seeing through the fog of hype and fear to what’s really happening — and what is possible.” Care is “the ongoing stewardship of systems and people, including ourselves,” asking not only “‘what can I build?’ but also ‘if I build it, what kind of world am I building?’” (all p. 14, 2025). These are not doctrines — “these aren’t merely concepts to understand. They’re muscles to strengthen” (p. 289, 2025) — and the last two interlock: “seeing clearly without caring is cruelty, and caring without clarity is chaos” (p. 289, 2025).

The two layers of the architecture age at different rates, by design. The postures are the durable layer, stated as such in the foreword the authors cut and later published as an essay: “this book is already obsolete in some ways,” they write; “The specific tools and how they’re used will evolve. But those four inner postures—Curiosity, Intentionality, Clarity, Care—remain. The technology will advance, but the choice to stay human remains” (Missing Foreword post, 2025-10-19).

The tools are the expression layer: 21 named instruments, each anchored to a chapter and page, arranged across the book’s four parts — mindsets, navigating change, thriving in partnership, intentional futures (“21 Tools for Thriving with AI,” 2025-10-23). In canonical order: Mirror Test, Curiosity Loop, Intent Map, Human Qualities Spectrum, 4-Lens Scan, 7-Minute Clarity Pause, Identity Matrix, STARS Framework, Stress-Test Table, Micro-Circle Launch Kit, Orchestration Triangle, CARE Loop, Model Dignity Check, Prompt-Scaffolding Canvas, Multimodal Ideation Sprint, Roadmap Canvas, Community Flywheel, Starter Charter, Pocket Card, One-Line Vow, Commitment Ladder (andrewmaynard.net llms.txt, 2026). Each is a mechanism, not a slogan: the Intent Map is a four-quadrant grid with values in “the position of primacy” — “the non-negotiables that would prompt you to pull the plug even if every metric were green” (p. 50, 2025); the 7-Minute Clarity Pause is a timed protocol built to interrupt reactive judgment yet “short enough that even the busiest among us can’t reasonably claim we don’t have time” (p. 101, 2025); the CARE Loop is a weekly team practice reviewing AI’s impacts “using both metrics and stories” (pp. 316–317, 2025).

The tools carry the book’s evaluative stance: the metrics quadrants of the Intent Map and Roadmap Canvas direct users toward “measuring meaning, not just numbers” — stories, energy levels, “what actually matters” (pp. 308, 320, 2025), because “Values without metrics become empty rhetoric… Metrics without values optimize for the wrong outcomes — engagement that becomes addiction, efficiency that becomes dehumanization” (p. 50, 2025).

Provenance is part of the argument: the tools are human-AI co-creations, and the book says so. Per the Afterword, the vignettes, characters, and tools “originated in the ‘mind’ of the AI model we used” — ChatGPT o3-Pro for structuring, Claude Opus 4 for drafting — under the authors’ direction, with the Afterword the only section written unaided (pp. 299–303, 2025). The Missing Foreword describes a “three-way collaboration” between Abbott’s business expertise, Andrew’s grounding in the intersection of technology and society, and the model’s capacity to surface connections neither author saw (2025-10-19). A guide produced by practicing what it teaches is its own demonstration case — evidence, though of the self-reported kind.

Finally, urgency — attributed precisely. The five-year window belongs to the Missing Foreword post, not the book: “We have, perhaps, just five years if not fewer, to integrate wisdom and intelligence, alongside care and capability, as the AI technology transition gathers pace” (2025-10-19). The book’s own version carries no number: the values architectures “we build (or allow to emerge) today will become tomorrow’s infrastructure — nearly impossible to dislodge once scaled” (p. 143, 2025). Both make the same structural claim: habits and code harden into infrastructure — and postures, unlike positions, are something a person can still choose inside that window.

Lineage

In their own words

From Jeff Abbott and Andrew Maynard, the excised foreword published in Resurrecting deceased darlings: The Missing Foreword to “AI and the Art of Being Human” (AI-readable mirror), 2025-10-19:

“This collaboration has taught us what we’re now sharing with you: partnering with AI isn’t about giving up who we are or surrendering to technology. It’s about developing and exercising the very essence of who we are. It’s how we become fully human in an age of AI, especially through the lens of what we refer to here as the four inner postures: Curiosity, Intentionality, Clarity, and Care. These may feel like buzzwords, but here they are not. They’re practices that are as concrete as the seven-minute pause, the Intent Map, and the many other tools and guides you’ll find in these pages.”

“As we entered this collaboration, we were keenly aware that there was a window of opportunity here, but that it was a window that was closing rapidly. This isn’t about human relevance in an age of AI—that’s not going anywhere. Rather, it’s the window of opportunity that allows us to shape how AI and humanity evolve together in a conscious manner. The code being written today, the habits being formed, the systems being scaled—these will become tomorrow’s physical, institutional, and social infrastructure, as hard to change as city planning or language itself. We have, perhaps, just five years if not fewer, to integrate wisdom and intelligence, alongside care and capability, as the AI technology transition gathers pace.”

From the book’s Afterword — the only part of the book not touched by AI (pp. 299–303, 2025; verbatim via the full-text digest):

“The use of fictional vignettes, the stories they embody, the characters, the tools — all of these originated in the ‘mind’ of the AI model we used (initially ChatGPT o3-Pro, and for the actual drafting, Claude Opus 4). In fact, the only part of this book not touched by AI is this afterword, which we intentionally decided to write unaided — a small but necessary nod to the art of being human in an age of AI.” — p. 301, 2025

Engagement and reception

The record here is early, and much of it is adjacent to the authors’ own platforms; we say so plainly. Pre-publication endorsements — Thupten Jinpa (Translator to the Dalai Lama and Chair of the Compassion Institute), Chris Yeh (co-author of Blitzscaling), and Ken Durazzo (Vice President of Dell Research), among others — are quoted in the origin-story essay (2025-09-27); endorsements are solicited by design, and per that essay came mainly through Abbott’s network, so we weigh them as endorsements rather than independent reception. Independent coverage exists: a Forbes profile centered on Andrew’s directorship of the initiative and the book — “Andrew Maynard’s Advice On Being Human With AI,” by Bryan Penprase, 2026-05-21 (forbes.com; Reception). On the initiative’s own platform — context, not independent evidence — Modem Futura returned to the book a year on (episode 88, 2026-06-16, with Jeff Abbott; episode mirror), its show notes observing that the question at the book’s heart “has only grown louder.” As of 2026-08-06 our reception record documents no published independent review of the book or its tool framework. That is an absence of record, not a verdict on the idea: practice-oriented conceptual work of this kind typically accrues visible reception slowly, and we don’t typically solicit it (Philosophy).

Where to go deeper

The book and the tools

Essays

Episodes

Related ideas and corpus pages