Some conversations don’t end when the session does. They continue quietly in the background, reshaping the questions you ask long after you’ve left the room. That was my experience following a thought-provoking discussion with Julie Owono, Executive Director at Internet Sans Frontières, and a member of Meta’s Founding Oversight Board, and serial social entrepreneur and researcher who I caught up with at the IAPP and Berkman Klein Center’s #Navigate2026 Digital Policy Leadership Summit.
While much of the AI conversation today focuses on governance, safety, regulation and innovation, one question lingered with me above all others: What becomes the value of being human in an AI-filled world?
Not simply what humans can do, but what humans become. As generative AI advances, we’re beginning to imagine a future where pieces of ourselves can be captured, trained and replicated. Our expertise. Our communication style. Our decision-making. Perhaps even our judgment and lived experiences.
What happens when these become digital assets? Could we one day license versions of ourselves as we see HR discussions about digital clones shape today’s sectorwide discourses? Build AI CEOs and collaborators that continue to create value while we sleep, or even after we’re gone? If so, what exactly are we monetizing? Knowledge? Identity? Reputation? Humanity itself? The discussion also prompted me to think about culture in an entirely different way.
Throughout history, societies have developed rituals that reflected what they valued. Religious traditions shaped behaviours around fasting, prayer, pilgrimage, dress and community. Industrial societies developed rituals around punctuality, productivity and efficiency.
Today, I wonder whether we are witnessing the emergence of a new set of rituals.
We meticulously document our lives online. We cultivate personal brands. We engineer prompts. We organize digital knowledge bases. We optimize our online presence. We train AI systems on our writing, our ideas and our voice.
These behaviours are increasingly motivated by something deeper than convenience.
They are investments in future relevance.
Not because technology demands them, but because prosperity increasingly rewards them.
This isn’t to suggest that AI is becoming a religion. Rather, it raises an interesting question: What systems of belief are beginning to shape how we live?
Every era has had its dominant promise. Religion often promised spiritual salvation. The Industrial Revolution promised economic mobility. The Information Age promised access to knowledge. The AI era may promise something altogether different: The ability to scale ourselves. That possibility raises profound questions, not just technical ones, but social, ethical and deeply human ones. Who owns a digital version of ourselves? Who benefits from it?
Who is excluded from this future because their work cannot be digitized, or because they choose not to participate?
And perhaps the most important question of all: Will our greatest source of value come from what we do ourselves, or from what our AI representations continue to do on our behalf?
These are not questions with immediate answers. But they are exactly the conversations we need researchers, technologists, policymakers, ethicists and business leaders to have together. I’m grateful to Julie Owono for a discussion that challenged assumptions and encouraged a more expansive way of thinking about AI, not merely as a technological revolution, but as a force reshaping our understanding of identity, work, value and human flourishing.
The future of AI governance is not only about regulating intelligent systems. It is also about understanding what it means to remain distinctly and intentionally human. But, how much do we keep extending ourselves to protect ourselves from extinction? Tune into this thought-provoking episode to find out more.
