Humanity At Risk

This post was originally featured in our December 17th, 2025 newsletter found here:INBOX INSIGHTS, December 17, 2025: What We Learned About AI, Humanity at Risk

Your humanity is at risk.

Quite a bold statement to wrap up the last Trust Insights newsletter of 2025. But it’s a statement that I stand behind. Your humanity is at risk. Not because of artificial intelligence and all that it has achieved this year, but because artificial intelligence makes it too easy to outsource the best parts of being human.

Here’s what I mean. Executive function is composed of four major activities, which I call PODS:

Planning
Organization
Decision-making
Solving problems
These four activities are part of critical thinking. When we give them to a machine, we lose a part of ourselves in the process. when you say, “Hey, ChatGPT, go do this thing” and that’s all the thought you give to it, you are de-skilling yourself. Those executive functions become weaker. You lose the abilities, in the same way that many of us have lost the ability to navigate using a compass and a paper map because tools like Google Maps just make it so easy for it to do it for us.

If there is one skill that I could leave you with as we close out the year, it is this:

Stop asking AI for the answer.

At a minimum, ask AI to give you three answers and perhaps its justifications for them, and then you make the decisions.

You look at the outputs.

You preserve your executive functions.

For example, in preparing the Letters from the Corner Office eBook for Katie, I didn’t have AI draft the foreword. I had it draft three different candidates and then I gave it to Katie and said, “You decide”. In doing so, I’m helping preserve her executive function by making her think as opposed to just handing over finished work.

As we close out the year and look to the year ahead, generative AI is only going to get more powerful. It’s becoming more capable every day. The temptation to simply accept what it gives us will increase every day as we get busier, as we’re asked (perennially) to “do more with less”.

If you want to increase your value as an employee, as a business owner, as a functioning human being, resist the temptation to simply have AI do things for you that are in your wheelhouse. For sure, have it do your expense reports or other things that don’t add value to your career, but when you find yourself just reaching for the easy button, know that it comes at a cost.

We wish you a happy and healthy holiday season and a happy, healthy and prosperous new year.

Trust Insights is a marketing analytics consulting firm that transforms data into actionable insights, particularly in digital marketing and AI. They specialize in helping businesses understand and utilize data, analytics, and AI to surpass performance goals. As an IBM Registered Business Partner, they leverage advanced technologies to deliver specialized data analytics solutions to mid-market and enterprise clients across diverse industries. Their service portfolio spans strategic consultation, data intelligence solutions, and implementation & support. Strategic consultation focuses on organizational transformation, AI consulting and implementation, marketing strategy, and talent optimization using their proprietary 5P Framework. Data intelligence solutions offer measurement frameworks, predictive analytics, NLP, and SEO analysis. Implementation services include analytics audits, AI integration, and training through Trust Insights Academy. Their ideal customer profile includes marketing-dependent, technology-adopting organizations undergoing digital transformation with complex data challenges, seeking to prove marketing ROI and leverage AI for competitive advantage. Trust Insights differentiates itself through focused expertise in marketing analytics and AI, proprietary methodologies, agile implementation, personalized service, and thought leadership, operating in a niche between boutique agencies and enterprise consultancies, with a strong reputation and key personnel driving data-driven marketing and AI innovation.