Hi Reader,

AI is moving at a dizzying pace. That speed has unlocked new vulnerabilities and given bad actors some powerful tools. It is easy to stare at the headlines and picture a dystopian future. I recently attended a town hall Q&A put on by the CTO of the company I work for, and it left me with some thoughts that I wanted to share.

The discussion was centered around using and implementing AI responsibly and ethically, which naturally led to a lot of questions around all the bad possibilities the world is seeing unfold with AI (and admittedly, there are a lot of possibilities we don't even know about yet.)

Here is the choice I keep coming back to.

1. I can lean into fear and assume the worst.
2. Or I can remember the other side of the coin. If AI helps bad actors move faster, it also helps good actors move just as fast. That levels the playing field more than we think.

Since there is no data proving there are more bad actors than good, the future we anchor to is a decision. Perspective matters. Where do we place our hope and conviction?

When I zoom out, this moment feels a lot like the early internet. The dot-com era was chaotic. Fraud spiked. Privacy took hits. It was not smooth. And yet, the internet eventually matured and transformed how we learn, connect, and work. That same internet let me build a career I love, meet with doctors across state lines, and access resources that would have been out of reach before. Messy beginnings. Meaningful progress.

AI is tracking along a similar arc. A few steps back before bigger leaps forward.

• In medicine, AI is helping spot patterns humans miss, accelerating diagnosis and speeding drug discovery. Lives will be saved.
• In infrastructure, data centers use a lot of energy, but AI is part of the fix. Smarter cooling and predictive maintenance are already cutting waste.
• In cybersecurity, yes, scams get more sophisticated. At the same time, AI is catching fraud in milliseconds and flagging anomalies faster than rule-based systems ever could.

Yin and yang. Without the bad, we cannot fully experience the good. Without the good, we do not recognize the bad. There is no meaningful reward without some level of risk. If we believe AI might be one of humanity’s biggest risks, we also have to acknowledge the potential for outsized reward.

My stance is simple. This is not about superiority. It is about good vs. evil and human vs. AI-as-a-tool. Humans will learn to steer this. The good actors who want to enhance the human experience will outpace the ones trying to harm it. No one actually wants a dystopian world. We make that future less likely by learning, staying open, building conviction, and speaking up for what is right.

Try this this week

• Pick one useful belief about AI and practice it. Mine: “AI is a tool that amplifies intent. I will use it to create value.”
• Choose one tiny workflow to test. Draft a tough email. Summarize a meeting. Build a checklist. Measure the time saved.
• Share one hopeful AI use case with your team or family. We change the narrative when we share better stories.
• Look around you for how AI is being utilized and advocate for right vs. wrong. Advocate for ways to use AI that make humanity better, not worse.

Your turn

Where are you landing on this choice right now? What is one specific AI use case that gives you hope? Hit reply and tell me. I read every note.
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Have a great week!
Chelsea

Good reads and quick links

• ​Harvard Medical School: Artificial Intelligence and health care​
• ​World Economic Forum: How AI is transforming global health​
• ​Chase Insights: How advances in AI may change health care​
• ​Digital Realty: Data center AI and efficiency​
• ​Jurny blog, Wallaroo.ai, Publicis Sapient​
• ​Forbes analysis​
• ​W2S, DataDome, NYU IT​

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