Stakes Is High: Life With Machines in 2025

As AI grows more powerful, this Substack will be a space for curiosity, critique, and co‑creation.

Hi you,

One year ago, we kicked off this Life with Machines effort. Back then, my own energy was driven primarily by curiosity. If you never saw the original trailer, it’s worth a look:

I wondered if we could make sense of AI together without smashing all the machines or surrendering to them like The Matrix? We set out to explore the messy space in between.

Now, I’m sitting in this space in between seasons of the show, contemplating where I am and where we are. I believe in people and our ability to weather all kinds of storms. I’m the type of person that would rather focus on possibility than just threat. I don’t think technology will save us. I believe we will save ourselves and that technology can play a role in that effort. And, as I wrote about in the early days of AI (nearly two entire years ago), we have the benefit of hindsight when it comes to what not to do with technological power — unleash it unsupervised on children, monetize its deployment solely through an ad model, reserve its financial benefits for the already financially well-off, define success as attention and efficiency and thus create a corporate-backed surveillance state. These are things we know we shouldn’t do, and my hope was that we’d use the AI moment to make different and better choices in the narrow window of rules- and norm-setting around this disruptive tech. I knew we were on a fast-moving train, but I’m still shocked by just how fast, and now, I think we are running out of time.

Personally, AI has become a general contractor for my home life, a trainer and nutrition guide, and even an assistant bar director. And yet, these systems don’t “know” anything. They’re brilliant idiots. Baby Superintelligences. Jon Snow with convincing and often-useful autocomplete.

Meanwhile, the world we inhabit is very different from one year ago.

• U.S. immigration raids snatching people from courtrooms and baseball fields;

• A mass starvation campaign in Gaza;

• Climate disasters woven into the nightly weather report;

• Military parades and National Guard deployments on U.S. soil;

• U.S. institutions under attack by people chosen to lead those very institutions.

As De La Soul once put it: stakes is high.

And on the AI front…

Agents and “agentic AI” are all the rage, but they’re not even close to James Bond, or a flight attendant from the 1980s. See this (paywalled, but gifted because I like you) Bloomberg piece for an overview of where we really are.

Over 70 percent of U.S. teens have used AI chatbots for companionship, about a third do so regularly with one teen in this CBS article saying she thinks kids are using them to “get out of thinking.”

Concept by Baratunde. Execution by ChatGPT + Unacknowledged Human Artists. See prompt exchange

President Trump announced his AI Action Plan which feels more Corporate First than America First. It’s not all horrible, but it’s got a lot of horrible in it. It undoes so much of the thoughtful work that Alondra Nelson, guest of the show and chief architect of the now-scuttled AI Bill of Rights, did. This is a thoughtful roundup of reaction put together by Tech Policy Press.

Elon Musk’s chatbot declared itself to be “Mecha Hitler,” and now the disgraced former government employee and ketamine-enthusiast has promised to make Baby Grok, for the children

And Mark Zuckerberg is hiring anyone with “AI” in their LinkedIn profile. I should probably add more to my own… just in case.

This moment is not just about technology. AI is a form of power. That makes it social, political, moral — and personal. I still believe we should all decide how (and if) we want to deploy that power.

And I’ve seen glimmers from our guests and in my own travels of good ways to do that.

At an AI and Creativity Expo in Palm Springs, where I live, hundreds of regular people showed up to get hands‑on, ask questions, and imagine better ways forward. In D.C., I joined the Shared Futures gathering hosted by Aspen Digital and the McGovern Foundation, where scholars, civic leaders, and technologists focused on the futures we want and shared examples like Bowling Green, Kentucky, where AI is being used to strengthen small democracy. In Spokane, Washington just last week I met teachers deeply committed to keeping education human while also being committed to evolving what the learning experience is, including with the use of artificial intelligence.

This all reminds me: there are still communities trying to shape this future together.

That’s why I’m inviting you into this next phase of Life with Machines — right here on Substack.

This will be:

• A place to experiment with AI in our daily lives — whether that’s silly, mundane, time‑saving, or ominous.

• A place to share more raw, unfiltered takes that wouldn’t always fit in our RSS feed.

• A place to process together — with curiosity, clarity, critique, and connection — and sometimes push back on the AI future being deployed at us in favor of one we choose for ourselves.

We’ll point toward good examples of living with machines and highlight the creative and absurd along the way. We plan to post newsletters weekly as well as offer up community prompts, for you the people, not the machines. I want your doubts, your hopes, your experiments. Tell us what’s working in your town, in your school, on your block. Share the weird, helpful, or disturbing ways AI is showing up for you and stories, analysis, and coverage of this moment you think we should be paying attention to.

And because this is an experiment, we reserve the right to adjust and evolve this space all summer. So let us know what you want to see and be part of as well.

We spent our first season sprinting through 30 episodes. Now, I want to catch my breath with you, to digest what we’ve learned, and to highlight others working toward a human‑centered, life‑affirming future, occasionally with machines.

Let’s keep finding our way through, together.

With gratitude,

—Baratunde, definitely human.