Over the past several months on The Brian Crombie Hour, I’ve had conversations with cybersecurity experts, economists, psychologists, AI researchers, entrepreneurs, military strategists, and public policy leaders. At first, I thought they were all talking about different subjects. One conversation was about cybersecurity. Another was about children and social media. Another was about Canada’s economic future. Another was about national security. Another was about geopolitics.
But gradually I began to realize they were all describing different parts of the same story. Artificial intelligence isn’t simply another technology. It is becoming the lens through which we will redefine work, power, relationships, democracy—and perhaps even what it means to be human.
That realization has stayed with me because, for most of my life, technology was primarily a tool. The internet connected information. Email accelerated communication. Smartphones put computing power in our pockets. Software automated repetitive tasks. Each innovation made us more productive, more connected, and more efficient. AI feels fundamentally different.
Daniel Zabrowski, one of my recent guests, made an observation that has stayed with me ever since. He said we shouldn’t think of AI as another software upgrade. We should think of it as the arrival of the internet itself—only this revolution is unfolding much faster.
The internet took decades to build. Governments and telecommunications companies laid fibre-optic cable, built networks, established standards, and slowly created the infrastructure that transformed modern society. AI, by contrast, is developing in reverse. Demand is exploding before the infrastructure is complete. Data centres are being built at an unprecedented speed. Electricity has become a strategic resource. Compute power has become a competitive advantage. Entire nations are racing to secure the chips, data, talent, and energy required to lead the next technological revolution.
That brings me to another conversation that fundamentally changed how I think about AI. Rafal Rohozinski, one of Canada’s leading experts on cybersecurity and geopolitical risk, suggested that artificial intelligence is becoming what oil was during the twentieth century—not simply a product, but a strategic resource. That comparison stopped me in my tracks.
Once you begin thinking about AI as critical infrastructure rather than software, everything changes. The conversation is no longer about chatbots or productivity tools. It becomes a conversation about national security, economic competitiveness, military capability, information control, and digital sovereignty. Who owns the infrastructure? Who controls the data? Who builds the models? Who writes the rules? Those questions may shape the balance of global power for decades to come.
Canada, unfortunately, finds itself in a familiar position. We produce extraordinary talent. We educate world-class AI researchers. In fact, Canada generates roughly ten percent of the world’s AI research talent, yet captures only a tiny fraction of the investment and commercial value. We export our ideas while others build the platforms, own the infrastructure, and create the wealth.
History has seen this movie before. Resource-rich countries often export raw materials and import finished products. Only this time, the raw material isn’t timber, oil, or minerals. It’s human intelligence itself. That should concern every Canadian.
Yet as important as these geopolitical questions are, I have become even more concerned about something else: us.
A few weeks ago, I interviewed Lucy Colangelo about children, technology, and emotional development. She shared a statistic that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. She suggested that teenagers now spend roughly ninety-three percent of their free time interacting with digital devices. Whether that exact number proves accurate or not, the trend is unmistakable. Our lives increasingly unfold through screens.
And those screens are changing.
They no longer simply display information. They respond. They converse. They reassure. They encourage. They comfort. They appear to understand us.
Recently, I came across a question that I found both fascinating and deeply unsettling: Are we raising a generation that may learn about love from something incapable of loving?
That sounds dramatic, but beneath the question lies an important psychological truth. Human beings respond emotionally to language. When something sounds empathetic, we experience empathy. When something sounds caring, we experience care. Our brains respond to the feeling long before they analyze the source.
But AI has no inner life. No vulnerability. No sacrifice. No emotional stake in the relationship. It can simulate compassion, but it cannot experience compassion.
And yet millions of people are already developing relationships with systems that remember their names, recall previous conversations, adapt to their personalities, and appear endlessly patient.
Historically, we have always formed parasocial relationships with athletes, actors, authors, public figures, and even fictional characters. But those relationships were one-sided. The celebrity didn’t know your name. The fictional character couldn’t answer your questions.
AI changes that.
Now the system responds. It remembers. It flatters. It validates. It never gets tired. It never interrupts. It never asks for anything in return. Because human beings are wired for connection, we naturally begin to imagine that there is someone on the other side. But there isn’t.
There is language without consciousness, attention without sacrifice, and conversation without relationship.
I suspect we are only beginning to understand how powerful—and potentially dangerous—that may become, especially for children, for lonely people, for the elderly, and for anyone searching for connection.
Real relationships are wonderfully imperfect. They require patience, compromise, forgiveness, misunderstanding, vulnerability, and growth. Love asks something of us. AI asks almost nothing. It offers companionship without vulnerability, connection without commitment, and conversation without responsibility. That may prove extraordinarily seductive.
There is another concern.
John Ruffolo challenged me to think about AI economically. Every previous technological revolution eventually created more jobs than it destroyed. The Industrial Revolution transformed agriculture and gave rise to manufacturing. Computers eliminated clerical work but created entirely new industries. The internet disrupted retail while creating digital commerce.
AI may be different—not because it destroys jobs, but because it may destroy them faster than society can adapt.
Knowledge work itself is now becoming automatable. Law, finance, marketing, programming, research, medicine, and education may all be transformed. No profession is entirely immune.
If intelligence becomes scalable, then the economic rewards may become concentrated in ways we have never experienced before. The companies with the largest data sets, the most computing power, the strongest models, and the deepest capital may become extraordinarily difficult to compete against. Not because they are malicious, but because scale compounds advantage.
That raises a profound question: What happens when intelligence itself becomes concentrated? That isn’t merely an economic question. It is also a democratic one.
Perhaps the biggest lesson I’ve learned from all these conversations, however, has nothing to do with technology. It’s about humanity.
The more I think about AI, the more convinced I become that intelligence has never been the defining characteristic of being human.
Relationships are.
Story is.
Curiosity is.
Forgiveness is.
Love is.
Community is.
When I look back over my own life, the people who shaped me didn’t do so because they possessed more information than I did. My grandfather, my teachers, my football coach, my first love, my mentors, my children, and my colleagues changed me because they cared. They challenged me. They believed in me. They loved me. They were present.
Information can educate us. Only relationships transform us. That may be the most important distinction of all.
I am not pessimistic about AI. Far from it. I believe it will revolutionize medicine, accelerate scientific discovery, improve education, increase productivity, and help solve problems that have frustrated humanity for generations. Its potential is extraordinary.
But technology has never determined our future. Human values do. Technology simply amplifies them.
If our values are wisdom, compassion, curiosity, freedom, and community, AI may become one of civilization’s greatest achievements. If our values are domination, addiction, surveillance, monetization, and control, it will amplify those instead.
The future of AI will not ultimately be decided by algorithms. It will be decided by us.
Every great technological revolution has forced humanity to answer a fundamental question. The steam engine asked how we would use power. Electricity asked how we would organize modern life. The internet asked how we would share information.
Artificial intelligence asks something even more profound.
What is uniquely human? If we answer that question wisely, AI may become one of the greatest tools humanity has ever created.
But if we answer it poorly, we may discover that the greatest danger was never that machines became more like us.
It was that we slowly forgot what it meant to be human. Because in the end, the question is not what artificial intelligence will become.
The question is what we will become.
Photo: iStock
