Are you using AI or is AI using you?
In a world where algorithms shape thought and automation floods the creative field, Human Again is a field-tested playbook for staying awake, original, and alive in the age of machines. Part reflection, part practical guide, it invites readers to explore identity and inspiration in real time, learning to think with AI rather than be replaced by it.
Blending cultural insight, personal experience, and practical tools, Macpherson explores how artificial intelligence is reshaping creativity, work, and identity, and how to harness it without losing yourself.
You will learn how to:
-Ask sharper questions that create leverage, not noise
-Build a High Signal Question Engine to think deeper and faster
-Use the Socratic method and mindfulness to train deeper thinking
-Recognize “qualia,” the unspeakable textures of human experience, that no algorithm can touch
-Protect your authenticity, taste, and voice while others sound the same
Whether you are a professional, a creator, or simply curious about what is next, Human Again shows how to use AI better than anyone around you while keeping what no algorithm can replicate: your judgment, conscience, and imagination.
Are you using AI or is AI using you?
In a world where algorithms shape thought and automation floods the creative field, Human Again is a field-tested playbook for staying awake, original, and alive in the age of machines. Part reflection, part practical guide, it invites readers to explore identity and inspiration in real time, learning to think with AI rather than be replaced by it.
Blending cultural insight, personal experience, and practical tools, Macpherson explores how artificial intelligence is reshaping creativity, work, and identity, and how to harness it without losing yourself.
You will learn how to:
-Ask sharper questions that create leverage, not noise
-Build a High Signal Question Engine to think deeper and faster
-Use the Socratic method and mindfulness to train deeper thinking
-Recognize “qualia,” the unspeakable textures of human experience, that no algorithm can touch
-Protect your authenticity, taste, and voice while others sound the same
Whether you are a professional, a creator, or simply curious about what is next, Human Again shows how to use AI better than anyone around you while keeping what no algorithm can replicate: your judgment, conscience, and imagination.
I stare at the blinking cursor.
ChatGPT is open on my laptop. Maybe it’s curiosity. Maybe it’s desperation after a long day. Or maybe I just want to see what all the fuss is about.
It’s late. The house is still. Kids asleep. Dishwasher humming. I’m at the kitchen table.
I’m not chasing ideas, I just need a thesaurus.
Returning to work after my second maternity leave is like waking from a dream I half remember, like trying to flex a long-forgotten muscle. I know how to write. I can do this. But my mind is blank.
So, I type: “What’s another way to say highly effective?”
Words appear: “Extremely efficient, remarkably successful, exceptionally productive.”
Not groundbreaking, not revolutionary, but quick, clear, reliable. Like an impossibly smart, impossibly calm colleague just pulled up a chair. Wow, it actually helped. Is everyone doing this? What even is this?
Over the next few weeks, I keep experimenting. Copying and pasting whole sentences and paragraphs, asking ChatGPT to reword them, pulling the best from both and rewriting my work.
In my career, I live in the messy middle: translating complex ideas into words people care about. I work with words all day—press releases, speeches, strategy docs… stories and narratives meant to carry weight. And in that world, perspective is everything. As I use AI more, I find myself wondering how I can use it to find that perspective in my writing.
Questions are generic and cautious at first. I keep my personal information out of it. I’m nervous, worried even. About what, exactly? I don’t know. The government? The Russians? My dignity?
Most of my friends and colleagues seem to think AI is wrong. They say it’s terrifying. “The death of creativity... It will ruin the next generation.” They talk about AI like it’s the start of some societal collapse.
Nevertheless, I gain confidence.
What I find first is a sparring partner. I throw out raw material and AI shapes, refines, and polishes it into something more, and not just more, more me.
Then an old friend, someone I trust completely, tells me that she’s paying for the premium version. “Night and day,” she says. I believe her. In university, we called her The Oracle. If she’s doing it, maybe I should too.
I sign up. $20 a month for ChatGPT Plus, and everything changes. I start telling it more. I’m clearer about what I want and why. I tell it my goals and aspirations. Responses improve dramatically.
I realize AI’s power isn’t in answering questions but in revealing new ways of thinking about them. For any journalist, asking the right question the right way is, and always will be, the name of the game.
A week later, I’m writing about a startup company, full of potential but under the radar. My words feel flat and uninspired. Frustrated, I type something more thoughtful, more specific:
“I’m describing a startup. I need a metaphor for hidden potential.”
The little circle blinks twice.
“A seed buried beneath frozen soil—unnoticed yet gathering strength, ready to break through.”
Vivid and metaphorical, exactly the imagery I couldn’t reach. In that moment I wasn’t hunting for synonyms anymore, I started seeing new ideas with fresh perspective.
AI isn’t magic, it’s leverage.
The first time you hit that sweet spot, when a prompt brings back a response that pushes your own perspective, you stop wondering if AI is “good enough” and start wondering what else can it do? Research that feels impossibly out of reach suddenly yields precise and actionable results. Missed opportunities become obvious advantages hidden in plain sight.
My mindset shifts. AI transforms from fancy Google search engine with a personality, to a strategic advantage sharpened through careful experimentation.
As I start figuring this out, a realization hits like a slap in the face. The risk of losing my job, my place, my very livelihood, to technology? Nope, that doesn’t seem likely. So why is everyone talking about that?
Two teenagers stand hunched over their phones, thumbs scrolling and tapping in a rhythmic choreography. One looks up, sighs, and says, “I dunno, ask Chat.”
Not “Google it.”
Not “Look it up online.”
“Ask Chat.”
The phrase slips into vocabulary. It’s small and easy to miss, but language never lies. New verbs signal deeper shifts. Remember how “Google it” went from novelty to reflex? This is that moment all over again, only bigger.
At home, “Did you ask Chat?” starts as a joke. Something that gets tossed around whenever we struggle with a tricky email or difficult wording. Asking AI to solve everyday tasks feels silly, a novel inside joke, but soon the phrase, this idea of “asking Chat,” becomes second nature.
Words don’t just describe reality, they also announce its rewiring. Language is a living record of what matters to us. When it changes, it’s because our habits and the power structures around them have shifted.
“Google it” marks the moment the world accepted that answers live online.
“Text me” reflects the migration of conversation from voice to screen.
“Ask Chat” signals something more radical: that intelligence itself, or at least the ability to summon it on demand, is no longer bound to human memory, or even human effort.
Job applications. Financial decisions. Professional communications. Creative projects. Health advice. Parenting questions. Everything improves dramatically when I frame clear, strategic questions to ChatGPT.
Yet mention ChatGPT to friends or colleagues and their reactions are largely negative. Many people see AI as distant or intimidating, as if it belongs somewhere far away. Futuristic, difficult, untrustworthy. But the opposite is true. AI is neither distant nor difficult. It’s here now, and it’s astonishingly effective. While others hesitate, losing precious time and opportunities, those who act now gain an advantage.
Even when “Ask Chat” becomes a reflex and is adopted into daily speech, most people will still be asking the wrong questions. And that’s the real gap—not access, but framing. “Did you ask Chat?” isn’t just catchy, it’s your advantage hiding in plain sight, ahead of everyone still ignorant or unaware.
So let’s use this to leap ahead. From curiosity to competitive weapon. Because by the time everyone’s asking, the only question left will be who’s asking best?
Knowledge—once locked behind enormous resources—is now in everyone’s pocket. In this new reality, where data, information, and knowledge are everywhere, democratized and accessible to anyone with a smartphone, something else is emerging that matters more. Something deeper.
Insight isn’t found easily, it’s earned through asking sharper questions, noticing subtle patterns, and acting decisively. I’ve spent years chasing the perfect phrasing, the nuance.
Here’s a twist reporters learn early: getting more often means asking less. There’s an old-school technique I learned in J-School (the cool way to say studied Journalism), the pause technique. Wait. Just wait. Ask a question, let them answer, then let the silence hang. Most people find silence uncomfortable, so they rush to fill it. That’s often when a golden nugget appears. Think hidden information, contradictions, or unguarded details that wouldn’t have come out otherwise.
This idea, that a great interview can pull out a murder confession or a hidden motive... I became obsessed with it. What if I could do that with AI?
Another method is using statements instead of questions to help draw out more information from the other person. For example if you say to a cab driver, “Wow, it’s really raining out there!” They might respond with something like, “I know right? Last time it rained like this my basement flooded.” Statements invite elaboration instead of defense.
What happens if I pose statements to Large Language Models (LLMs)? Will it also get distracted? Be disarmed? Start bumbling and reveal too much?
I found myself using FBI-vetted journalism techniques to pull even more out of my interactions with AI, and they worked. They worked like they would work on a human.
I kept coming back to the same conclusion. It’s people, not algorithms, who change the game. AI is only as powerful as the human who knows how to wield it. That’s the real disruption: not machines replacing us, but humans reshaping entire industries by using AI differently.
It’s the question. The posture. The pause. The nerve. To ask something sharper, stranger, more specific than the person beside you. That subtle but electric difference is hard to name. Which is exactly why AI can’t replicate it. If it were easy to describe, it would already be automated. It’s precisely because it’s hard to name that it stays human.
That’s what separates great journalists from average ones. Not degrees or credentials, but an instinct for what’s missing. A sixth sense for the follow-up that cracks something open. The act of knowing how to listen sideways, and in an increasingly AI-centric world that human instinct is everything.
Think of the teacher you had in high school you’ll remember forever. The feeling when something is undeniably cool. The reason thousands of people try to climb Mount Everest. The adrenaline from riding a motorcycle. Belly butterflies from a first kiss. Those are human moments.
That’s why this book isn’t called Smarter, Faster Machines. It’s called Human Again.
If you’re reading this, you likely sense this subtle yet urgent shift. You’ve felt that quiet and unsettling tension. You’re right to feel it.
What comes next isn’t vague theory or empty hype, it’s actionable strategy distilled from real experience and tangible results.
You’re not just here for knowledge. You’re here for insight. The kind that creates opportunities, sharpens competitive edge, and decisively transforms what’s possible for you financially, intellectually, physically, and emotionally.
Most people think the big AI revolution happens in conference rooms, code labs, or billion-dollar board meetings. It doesn’t. It happens here—at a kitchen table, on a couch, or on your commute. It happens in the stolen moments between work and the rest of your life.
This nonfiction book on human-computer interaction and AI semantics is centered on understanding and utilizing AI. The author presents AI as a tool, a partner, a co-thinker, an assistant, a force multiplier, and more. The author, a journalist first and foremost, delved into AI use as part of the research for this book. Along with personal experience, the author combines thorough research, providing citations throughout.
Although the author says they aren’t explicitly pro-AI or anti-AI, the tone of the book is distinctly AI-forward. The author challenges readers to keep an open mind and offers a wide range of examples showing how AI is already useful, and increasingly necessary to understand and adopt. The concept the author returns to most often is intention in the use of AI.
This book is a journalist’s take on AI. The questions the author poses are uniquely searching and deep, often reading more like a research paper in many parts, complete with references at the end of each chapter.
Intertwined with the philosophy and nature of AI in our current moment are practical tips and tools such as avoiding the “AI ick,” creating an AI profile, and having deeper conversations with AI. The book’s real strength lies in the broader context it provides. Rather than a step-by-step guide, it functions as an instruction manual for what thoughtful use of the paid version of ChatGPT can look like and how to use it better.
The author makes a compelling case for AI’s real-world applications: AI tutoring can increase student engagement, AI brainstorming can help creatives become more innovative, and AI tools at work can improve both enjoyment and focus. The examples are concrete and easy to imagine applying to your own use of tools like ChatGPT and adopting them into your own life.
The core argument: the future belongs to those who can balance AI efficiency with human insight, appears in different forms throughout the book. This repetition reinforces the idea that AI defines the current era, but meaning still belongs to humans. As the author puts it, “You’re not just shaping text, you’re curating meaning. Welcome to your new role: You, The Editor.” The book argues that AI doesn’t replace who you are but amplifies it. But as AI filters into everything technological and its competitive advantage erodes, intention becomes the true differentiator. Or perhaps, as Syndrome from The Incredibles famously said, “When everyone’s super, no one will be.”
This book is for anyone who hasn't been paying attention to AI beyond headlines and social media rants. This book is also for anyone wanting to start using Chat, level up their game using Chat, or level the playing field with intention.