In her book Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting (2018), philosopher Shannon Vallor rightly points to one of the central puzzles we face today. This is that there’s, in her coinage, a stunning “epistemic opacity” with regard to how technology is and will unfold and, of course, with what consequences.

I was reminded of this term recently as I read an email that a friend and CEO sent to me recently. It reads in part: I “thought of our conversation the other week this morning [February 6, 2026] because since then AI narrative has accelerated even faster — if that’s possible to believe. Everyone I know (myself included) is trying to make sense of what life will be like.”

It makes no sense for you and me to try to parse the hype in an effort to separate gloomy predictions and utopian predictions from sensible ones. Frankly, we just don’t know.

It seems to me, then, that we have to default to a pragmatic stance: think, live, and act as if AI (of various kinds) is already here. We use AI as a “forcing function” whose point is to generate robust inquiry. In this spirit, consider any of the following philosophical questions:

• Where is a home or a homebase?
• What does right and robust livelihood look like?
• What sorts of existential matters–yours and, most especially, others’–are you helping to address?
• What is my life generally about? What is its shape?
• Who am I?

Perhaps another way of putting these points is to say that here is an invitation to find a life-energy–a go-getterness–that could enable you to break through your longstanding stuck points and constipation. What have you been putting off? Too long neglecting? Too readily setting off to the side?

Even if everything surrounding AI is hype, how to actually live with vibrancy, intensity, direction, and cheerfulness is not.