Using AI for Well-Being, Not Just Productivity

AI gives a sense of pushing us to do more, faster, and better. ChatGPT writes emails, algorithms curate feeds, and apps optimise schedules. While this can be genuinely helpful at times, sometimes if feels like we are so focused on what AI can do for our productivity that we're not asking what it might be doing to our well-being. Being hyper-optimized for efficiency is great until you find yourself feeling like a burnt-out shell of a human.

I recently attended a conference on AI and the Future of Wellbeing through the International Positive Psychology Association. Below are some key takeaways on staying psychologically healthy while using AI in daily life.

• Keep the ability to do hard things

This might sound strange coming from someone who uses AI regularly, but we need discomfort to grow. Struggle builds resilience. Challenge develops competence and friction creates learning and ideas. If we rely on AI to eliminate every difficulty, every uncomfortable moment, every hard conversation, we are outsourcing the very experiences that make us stronger, more capable, and more human.

• Maintain the ability to tolerate difficult conversations

AI is too agreeable. Ask ChatGPT a question, and it will give you an answer that sounds confident, helpful, and tailored to you. It won't push back, won't challenge you, and it likely won’t tell you you're wrong.

Humans grow through friction, refine thinking through debate, and develop intellectual humility by being wrong and learning from it. When AI only agrees with us (or presents information in ways that confirm what we already believe), we can stop questioning ourselves. We stop considering alternative perspectives and can become intellectually lazy.
In real life, people disagree with you, challenge your ideas, and see things differently. And the benefits of this include helping develop alternative ways of thinking, building emotional resilience, teaching you to hold your views loosely, and reminding you that your perspective isn't the only one.

• Preserve human connection

Humans are wired for connection, not efficiency and not optimization. We need eye contact, tone of voice, and the messy, imperfect, unpredictable nature of human interaction. AI is increasingly being used to replace these interactions.

The slippery slope can start small. AI writes your text messages so you don't have to think about what to say, drafts birthday messages to friends, suggests responses to your partner's texts, and becomes the first place you go when you need to process emotions. Before you know it, intimacy is being outsourced. What we can lose from this includes:

• Tuning in to emotions: The ability to read and respond to subtle emotional cues
• Vulnerability: The courage to show up imperfectly and be truly seen
• Reciprocity: The give-and-take that builds deep relationships
• Presence: The skill of being fully with another person

AI can simulate conversation, but it cannot replace connection. Study after study shows that loneliness and social isolation are at epidemic levels. We can feel more "connected" than ever (digitally) and lonelier than ever (emotionally).

• Use tools that align with your values

Every AI tool is built by people with biases, values, and agendas. When you ask AI for advice, recommendations, or solutions, you're not getting objective truth. You're getting answers shaped by the values of the people who built it. When AI suggests how you should spend your time, what does it prioritise? Productivity? Revenue? Engagement? When AI recommends what you should do in a difficult situation, what framework is it using? Efficiency? Risk minimisation? Conflict avoidance?

If you're not paying attention, you might find yourself living according to someone else's priorities without even realizing it. When you outsource decision-making to AI without filtering it through your own values, you may lose autonomy, integrity, and identity. Over time, this creates a values drift. You're living someone else's version of a good life, not your own.
 
In summary, AI is a tool and use it well, and it supports your well-being. Use it poorly, and it undermines the very things that make life meaningful: growth, connection, autonomy, and values.

Use AI to support the life you want to live, not to avoid living it.

Co-authored by Alexis Kliem (registered psychologist) and Claude 😊
Photo by Carl Heyerdahl on Unsplash