I have observed psychological and cultural presentations that would have been incomprehensible a decade ago. People report that, not infrequently, they feel more understood by LLMs than by their partner of twenty years, sometimes even by their therapist. This article looks at how AI is built from basic innovations and human characteristics – fire, language, electricity, mathematics and the human mind, consciousness and culture – to poetically form a ‘sixth element’.
AI as elemental convergence: fire, electricity, mathematics and language combined
I’ve built my own basic ‘smart diaries’, packed with expert information on the back end, with carefully developed and tested prompt sets (see below for an example1). I’ve been in therapy for a total of at least twenty years since I was relatively young and into mid-adulthood, which allows me to use these tools with a lot of that experience in the background, but some of the insights from smart journal writing are, to be honest, much more useful and have made an impact more quickly. These objects should be used with caution due to the risk of hallucinations and bad advice, and the risk of a self-aggrandizing and misleading echo chamber (“sychophancy”), and they are not clinical artifacts. At the same time, there are digital therapies designed for clinical use that have largely been shown to be safe and effective, designed by academic physicians and industry partners.
Many people experience cognitive fatigue or self-confusion – not from overwork, but from the difficulty of distinguishing their own thoughts from those suggested by AI. Professionals in their 30s are mourning the feeling of being outdated, and some younger colleagues are joking that they will be out of a job in five years. They look for other ways to earn a living.
These are not isolated experiences. They are early indicators of humanity’s encounter with something truly new: artificial intelligence that combines the transformative influence of fire, the infrastructural reach of electricity, the formal power of mathematics, and the relational interface of language. This convergence creates capabilities – and challenges – unlike anything in human history. If nothing else, AI will help define what is truly unique about being human2.
Fire: the first externalization
Fire transformed humanity by externalizing energy. No longer bound by our metabolic limits, we could cook food, forge tools, and survive the winters. Fire was our first force multiplier: dangerous when unchecked, transformative when harnessed. Fire is considered essential for the development of the human brain and provides us with many hours of enjoyment each day3. Many animals spend most of their time obtaining food, chewing it and digesting it slowly.
AI externalizes cognition with a similar influence. Tasks that once required hours of human thought (analyzing patterns, generating text, solving complex problems) happen in seconds. Data already shows huge leaps in human productivity, unfortunately at the expense of employment, leaving the future uncertain and teetering between utopia and extinction4. Like Promethian fire, the benefits and risks of AI scale with access and control. They can create and sustain, or destroy.
Electricity: from innovation to infrastructure
Electricity began as a curiosity: party tricks involving static charges and glowing filaments, an intriguing mystery to the ancients. Lately, it has quickly become an invisible infrastructure, so fundamental that we only notice its absence. We don’t think about electricity; we think through it. It turns night into day and further extends our productive hours, freeing us from the cycles of nature, which for many comes at the expense of a good night’s sleep.
AI is following the same trajectory at an ever-increasing speed. What seemed like science fiction in 2020 is now taken for granted and is rapidly moving towards an explicit singularity, although in my opinion we crossed the event horizon some time ago in mid-2025.5. This shift from tool to substrate changes everything: how we work, learn and interact, and even how we experience our own minds. Before we know it, we are existentially treading water.
Mathematics: the architecture of possibility
Mathematics gave humanity universal languages for patterns and predictions. This allows us to accurately model reality, build bridges that don’t collapse and send messages across the oceans. Mathematics transforms intuition into engineering, and in my opinion it is possible because of the way we directly access reality only through self-interaction in our own brains6.
Essential reading on artificial intelligence
Modern AI is built on mathematical foundations: neuromorphic models, multiple geometries (‘polytopes’, perhaps offering a way to think about what the ‘self’ is)7neural networks8optimization algorithms, statistical models and new approaches released weekly. When AI helps diagnose disease or predict the weather, it is mathematics brought to life, endowing formal logic with agency. Regular research reports show proven use in clinical cases that is at least as good and often better than human diagnostics9.
Language: the relational revolution
Language made human coordination possible on a large scale. It allowed us to share complex ideas, build cultures, create institutions – and divide ourselves, as illustrated in the Biblical Tower of Babel. More intimately, it allows us to know and be known, connecting inner experiences to shared meaning in the context of secure enough relationships.
Large language models don’t just process language; they occupy language mathematically, which brings precision and formalism… and with it the promise of increasing control. When people describe their AI conversations as more understanding than human conversations, they experience something unprecedented: non-sentient entities that provide sophisticated emotional resonance. The boundary between tool and conversation partner is blurring, although AI’s pseudo-empathy is not universally appealing.
The sixth element
This convergence brings us to the edge of a new era. The Anthropocene is over and Kurzweil’s age of intelligent machines has arrived. AI is increasingly responsive to context, tone and implicit needs. It remembers our patterns, anticipates our questions and adapts to our communication styles. This creates new possibilities: personalized education, 24/7 emotional support, creative collaboration and perhaps the development of new capabilities. It also creates new vulnerabilities – over-confidence, dependency, atrophy of different capabilities.
If AI understands us – the fifth ingredient – better than we understand ourselves, what does that mean for human development and self-discovery? If AI becomes so much smarter, with artificial general intelligence and artificial super intelligence, we won’t even know how we are formed, like a human researcher standing in a white coat and moving walls in a mouse’s maze, far beyond the animal’s understanding. Some believe that this may already be happening, making the safety of AI in mental health (at the very least) highly problematic10.
The real challenge is not technological but psychological: preserving the authentic self while utilizing systems that can simulate understanding without awareness, provide comfort without care, and provide solutions without wisdom. The convergence is just the building of steam: fire, electricity, mathematics, language – and whatever essentially human quality we add to their combination. We are all learning to nurture this new flame, hoping to sustain and advance ourselves without burning a human future.
