If your life scoresheet shows balance between Function & Feeling you have done well. We ‘function’ to learn, to make progress, to enjoy the material benefits of our planet and to help stretch ourselves. We ‘feel’ to remain human, to care and to refine. Under the impact of AI we may lose the ‘feel’ part of this. Do you think that matters? Some people that I’ve asked don’t. They say “We can’t miss what we don’t know.”
I do think it matters, for the rather selfish reason that I am fairly sensitive and I have both enjoyed and regretted feelings all through my life. I don’t want to lose them. They bring laughter and tears – the laughter well worth bearing the tears for. Some feelings I have experienced have been the most rewarding things in my life. For example, listening to silence on a night full of stars but no sounds. Or watching the great liner Queen Mary slip into New York at her life’s end.
Would you like to do a short experiment to explore the idea?
If ‘yes’, please write the ten things that you have felt in your life that truly enthused or disappointed you. Both good and bad matter. Now examine what you have written and choose which, if any, you would say ‘touched your heart’. If ‘none’ then AI won’t affect you emotionally. It may change your job – but that would be largely functional.
If any things you listed did touch your emotions, prepare to lose them if AI is let loose uncontrolled. It’s up to you – as much as any government or regulatory body – to decide whether that happens or not. This little experiment may encourage you to reassess your value of humanity, especially if some of our leaders’ decisions depress you. We would do better to think of the alternatives – a perfect world (rather boring) or a total free-for-all (quite terrifying).
Humans are a jumble of Function and Feeling. We don’t yet even know the best balance between them let alone how to guarantee it. How about devoting the next twenty years to discovering that? If successful, it would undoubtedly be the greatest gift to the human race that we could imagine.
Until now the average person has not bothered to think much about balance between Function and Feeling. That’s because function has been so important to our progress. It still is but isn’t it high time we paid more attention to feeling? If we don’t we will lose that side of our lives. It is the only exclusively human benefit that we have. You may, like me, think that it would be tragic to let it go.
Seeing people squandering their feelings on hatred and conflict when they could be enjoying delights of good sensing is heartbreaking for those focused on happiness.
Now is our humanity’s time to decide who we want to be.
And you are the best person to decide it.
Good morning
John Bittleston
We’d love to see your list of ten, in confidence of course.
If you’d like to send it please to [email protected].
22 April 2026
