On Monday, a paper describing a “speculative scenario” about how AI’s great success could, ironically, entail the hollowing out of 10% of white collar work was released. The result was that software stocks fell sharply. Yesterday, Josh Barro, in “Good Things are Good,” rebutted this scenario, arguing that, if anything, AI’s massive increase in productivity could be especially good for, for instance, nurses.

If you think that I’m going to weigh in on who’s right and who’s wrong in this debate, think again. The AI disruption game is not one I know anything about, and it’s likely that if you’re reading this post, you don’t either.

In fact, once we pan out, we find that we’re in a position to say something more general: it’s not clear that most experts even know what and how AI disruption will unfold. After all, the felt sense of one piece is that “I know”; that of the second piece feels like: “No, you don’t; I do.” And on and on it goes.

My view is that we should, to begin with, grant our Pyrrhonian skeptical moment its due. My impression (notice that I didn’t write: “I know”) is that nobody seems to know what’s happening right now (maybe Dario Amodei knows a thing or two but does he know “enough”?), and I’m inclined to believe that we’re all flying by the seat of our pants.

If my impressions resonate with you, then the next question is: “How is one to live during a time in which something significant is afoot, and yet what that is doesn’t seem to be pin-down-able?”

My suggestion is that we engage in an ascent by going from manomaya kosha (“the mental sheath”) to vijnanamaya kosha (“the intellectual sheath”). The former is subject to endless likes and dislikes, yes’s and no’s, doubts and more doubts, desires and more desires. In a word, the mind is restless. I like to think of it as a vritti (“thought-vibration”) sine curve. Let’s say that the intellectual sheath, by contrast, is where we experience intuition.

Making the ascent to intuition, what do we discover? An openness to receiving from the Source. A patience with regard to being receptive. A simple clarity. And when we look out from this clarity, we stay on the same level, experiencing a good world.

If we want to, we can always go back down to the mental sheath and experience the ups and downs, the volatilities, the doubts, the fallenness of the world. It seems to me, however, that now is a time to attune ourselves to what is divinely clarifying and, with some ongoing adjustments, to live from intuition.