AI mimics human intelligence?
Ha, far from it.
Does AI mimic human intelligence? Only if you are half-brained.
If you have any sense of embodied wisdom, experiences of oceanic feeling of oneness with All, any deep social and emotional intelligence understanding the complexity of face-to-face responsive human relationships, or any working creative artistic bones—all of which means your right hemisphere is working at some level—you likely cringe at the thought of people thinking that AI mimics human intelligence. Far from it.
AI is capturing the attention of many because we have so dumbed down human potential that it seems as smart or smarter than humans. It’s because we’ve been encouraged to lose half our minds.
In a well-functioning brain, the right hemisphere picks up, through a plethora of senses and whole-body immersed experience, how the real world works in relation to the self. (This requires lots of self-directed playing with diversity—different ages, genders, contexts—throughout childhood. Sitting with screens does not do it.)
The RH then passes these impressions to the left hemisphere (LH), an isolated ivory tower magician that picks out patterns and makes generalizations. The LH then passes those generalizations back to the RH for assessment of veridicality. The RH tosses out the distortions (but only with adequate life experience). Individual knowledge/wisdom/knowhow is transformed by this dynamic process.
RH is the seat of emotional intelligence, relational intelligence, self-control, embodied awareness, and the true self.
This back-and-forth process has been failing across industrialized capitalism for centuries. Left-brain confabulations have taken over—that the world is empty of spirit, that what is valuable can be calculated on a spreadsheet or through logical analysis, that humans are making life-enhancing progress, and so much more.
These days we so undercare for babies during critical periods that we’ve commonly impaired their brain development. For example, we distress them even purposefully (e.g., with sleep training; separate sleeping; out of arms most of the day) when their right hemispheres are scheduled to grow more rapidly (till age 3 years or so) in coordination with carers. But RH development is undermined by undercare (lack of the evolved nest).
Distressing babies by not providing the evolved nest undermines basic physiological functions, even the mitochondria that through ATP provide the metabolic energy for growth (Naviaux, 2008). Dysregulating events during accelerated right brain growth create alterations in metabolic energy, impairing the ANS, HPA axis, immune, and cardiovascular systems (McEwen & Wingfield, 2003).
This is the period when attachment is set up to be disorganized, organized insecurely or, hopefully, organized securely. Attachment scores are a superficial signal of whether the early months and years have gone well enough for social fittedness. Attachment scores are not measuring RH relational right-brain-to-right-brain functioning.
Virtually all mental illness comes from the undermining of the RH development prenatally (from maternal stress) or postnatally during this period, and boys are affected more (Schore, 2025).
After the critical period for RH growth in the first nearly three years, the LH growth spurt begins. This is the seat of ego consciousness, the confabulator.
If the foundations of the true self in the RH are weak from undercare and toxic stress, the LH takes over with a false self to protect the weakling, for better or for worse. Narcissism of various kinds emerges here.
We exist in a culture of increased confabulation and narcissism and decreased relational intelligence and wisdom.
To heal, we restore the evolved nest and revamp our worldviews.
References
McEwen, B. S., & Wingfield, J.C. (2003). The concept of allostasis in biology and biomedicine. Hormones and Behavior, 43, 2-15.
Naviaux, R.K. (2008). Mitochondrial control of epigenetics. Cancer Biology and Therapy, 7, 1191-1193.
Ray, D., Roy, D., Sindhu, B., Sharan, P. & Banerjee, A. (2017). Neural substrate of group mental health: Insights form multibrain reference frame in functional neuroimaging. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1627.
Schore, A.N. (2025). The Right Brain and the Origin of Human Nature. W.W. Norton.
This article resonates within my heart and my mind. Humans "playing" with AI at the current state of our mental-emotional-relational worldview-crisis with all the devastating consequences, we are facing is like small children playing with fire - or with iPhones ....
It makes me angry and sad when I hear the stories of clients in my project for unemployable people proudly talking about their "super-intelligent" kids playing with iPhones and -pads for several hours a day at the age of three or four. Parents who are hooked to their phones and pads as well, hardly willing to put them aside during the coaching we provide or while being with their kids.
It is almost impossible to convince them that this is not serving their and their children's development but violating it.
Your work provides me with the information, deeper understanding, and argumentation for dealing with these challenges.
It is another negative cycle that needs to be broken: these parents are, like most of us, already severely damaged (physically, mentally, psychologically, socially) by our own unnested upbringing. On top of this, we are constantly overstressed by the lack of support for parents and ruthlessness and dogmatism in our economic, political, and religious systems while we try to deal with permanent attacks of induced panic and negativity, serving the egocentric goals of the rich and mighty.
Thus they/we seek "support" and rest by giving the digital toys to their/our kids. And they/we
try to find "rest", "inner peace" and help using AI at work and at home: which only helps to keep sick systems going and growing instead of changing them, while our brains, bodies, hearts and souls keep shrinking by lack of holistic self-directed, connected use and by misuse.
The good news is: many of us are waking up, many of us start speaking up and many of us start acting differently. Self-nesting provides the strength to do so.
Thanks very much for this insightful, timely commentary, Darcia. You addressed with psychological wisdom the subject I tackled in one of my recent Substack essays, found at https://open.substack.com/pub/billschmitt/p/human-for-the-holidaysa-gift-that?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web . I bet you are already following the Vatican's campaign-of-sorts raising similarly profound questions about AI. It's a topic I write about frequently. I will save your essay as an important resource for my own endeavors, and I look forward to receiving more of your commentaries. All best to you and Dan. --Bill Schmitt