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Question: If AI can answer before we have truly looked, what happens to the human capacity to see?
After a quiet stretch away from newsletters, I am returning with renewed energy around positivity, wellness, art, and lifelong learning. In our digital device-driven world, Visual Fitness--the ability to decode and encode visual meaning--is a human practice for sustaining attention, informing judgment, and meaning-making. While the increased availability of Artificial Intelligence (AI) threatens to think for us, our eyes need to be open to what we do not wish to see. Using Form + Theme + Context (FTC), Visual Fitness helps us see the BIG PICTURE for clarity, understanding, and human connection. I call this Authentic Intelligence: the practice of trusting our own perceptions to observe, interpret, and reflect, while using tools thoughtfully. As we decode meaning, the balanced practice of Visual Fitness can help us gain confidence in our perceptiveness and creativity.
A museum educator recently described a telling moment: when she asked visitors to consider color in a Bonnard painting, one person took out his phone and immediately asked AI for the answer. Posing the question was useful, but the looking had stopped before it began. The challenge for educators is not to reject AI, but to slow the moment down so critical thinking and close looking can begin before the tool supplies a response.
This question—how we keep looking, thinking, and making meaning for ourselves—continues to shape my teaching, art making, exhibitions, blog post, podcast, and my forthcoming book chapter on Visual Fitness for All. Along with teaching, recent workshops and courses in creativity and aging, memoir writing, and American mahjong are keeping me in the role of learner, opening fresh pathways for reflection, creativity, and teaching in the months ahead.
In short, SEEING MORE is both a mindset and a practice—an invitation to meet the speed of AI with human attention, curiosity, and sensitivity. The more we practice looking closely, the more fully we can learn, create, and connect.
Come practice with me. Choose one of the upcoming workshops below and join a community of curious learners who are slowing down, looking closely, and strengthening their own Authentic Intelligence together.
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