A Practical ABCD: Beyond AI Augmentation to Amplification

"In Part 1 of this series, we explored how AI simultaneously automates and augments the same roles, creating a paradox that threatens to homogenize human creativity and identity. The solution lies not in rejecting AI, but in deliberately curating what it amplifies about who you are. Moving from theory to practice requires introspection and continuous curation. Here's an active ABCD framework for identifying and amplifying your unique footprint."

"Assess Your Purpose Anchors: List four professional situations where you felt most alive, most aligned, most yourself, regardless of outcome or recognition. What were you pursuing? What made it matter? These moments reveal your purpose anchors, the deep drivers that AI cannot replicate. MIT research shows that hope, vision, and the grit to pursue long-odds ventures remain uniquely human. As work identity becomes increasingly threatened by AI's capabilities, grounding your professional identity in intrinsic purpose rather than task performance becomes existential."

"Now ask: which of these purpose-driven moments could AI accelerate without diluting their essence? Which requires conscious protection from AI's efficiency-maximizing logic? The answer maps your amplification territory, where to invite AI in, and where to keep the gates closed. Build Out Your Emotional Range: For one week, track moments when you experience emotions that surprise you, that don't fit neat categories, that feel contradictory or complex. These are data points AI struggles to process. They're also often signals of growth, insight, or necessary change."

Curating AI's role requires identifying which human traits to amplify and which to protect from automation. Purpose anchors are revealed by recalling professional moments of aliveness and alignment, and grounding identity in intrinsic purpose resists task-focused displacement. AI can accelerate certain purpose-driven activities when invited deliberately, while efficiency-oriented logic can dilute essence and must be guarded against. Emotional complexity and contradictory feelings are uniquely human signals that AI struggles to process; tracking surprising emotions surfaces growth and insight opportunities. The ABCD framework combines assessment, curation, and continuous introspection to map amplification territory and guide selective AI adoption.

Read at Psychology Today