1. Thou shalt not outsource thy soul. Use Al to enhance, not replace. If it writes for you, it thinks for you. The danger is the Al effect, one step beyond the Google effect, where your brain no longer expends the energy needed for cognition and creativity-and these skills atrophy.
2. Thou shalt suffer for flow. The struggle of creation is signal. Flow requires challenge. Effort drives focus, and focus drives us into the zone. If we let the machines remove all the friction, we stop growing, stop flowing, and stop becoming.
3. Thou shalt keep sacred the first draft. Let AI critique your work but never conjure the original spark. Creativity is associative: We draw connections from vast, messy networks of memory and intuition. If Al drives the process, you short-circuit your retrieval system and risk losing access to the deeper and weirder part of your imagination.
4. Thou shalt use Al as a challenger, not a crutch. A good tool makes you think harder. Forcing the brain to work triggers the neurochemistry required to activate memory. If it’s too easy, you’re not learning. AI has to elevate your edge, not erase it.
5. Thou shalt preserve the joy of creation. If Al removes the satisfaction of making, you’ve automated too much. That satisfaction feeds motivation, meaning, and purpose. If Al erases it, life feels empty.
6. Thou shalt set boundaries for digital influence. Keep parts of your life untouched by algorithms so your thoughts remain your own.
7. Thou shalt not mistake efficiency for depth. Faster is not always better. AI should deepen thought, not just speed up output.
8. Thou shalt train thy mind alongside thy machine.The sharper the tool, the sharper the brain must become. Let AI steer you toward the right research papers, but if you don’t read them yourself, then you’ve stunted cognition and creativity, abandoned foundational motivators like curiosity and mastery, and limited your shot at flow. AI needs to stretch skills forward, not siphon off drive.
9. Thou shalt honor serendipity and chaos. Don’t let Al’s predictive patterns strip your work of surprise, randomness, and the unexpected. Novelty is the seed kernel of creativity. We need the unexpected to drive the brain into new directions; it’s the basis of all innovation.
10. Thou shalt remain the master, not the servant. AI is a choice. We can choose to unplug it whenever we want.

From We Are As Gods by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler.

I ran these by Perplexity and it suggested some ways to integrate these into our interactions. (PDF) As expected, Claude had a somewhat different take.