149 ~ AI: Why More Information Isn't Helping

AI can give you an answer in seconds, but it cannot live your life for you. We sit down as two coaches who love personal growth and are genuinely curious about the crossroads between artificial intelligence and human development, because something strange is happening: information has never been more accessible, yet so many people still feel stuck, dysregulated, or unsure of what’s true for them.

We talk about what it means when the value of information collapses and the value of wisdom rises. When “knowledge is power” turns into “knowing isn’t doing,” the real work becomes embodiment, discernment, and nervous system capacity. AI can help you find options, spot patterns, and even craft the perfect boundary script, but it can’t provide courage, integrity, or self-trust. That part is still ours, and we explore how easy it is to outsource our inner compass when the dopamine hit of instant answers lives in our pocket.

We also name what AI can’t replace: human relationship. Co-regulation, nuance, empathy, and the lessons that only arrive through real connection still matter, especially as more people experiment with AI as a stand-in for therapy, coaching, or companionship. We share practical ways to use AI as support without letting it flatten your creativity or disconnect you from your desire. 

As we explore the crossroads of AI and personal development, we keep coming back to discernment, embodiment, and self-trust so we can use AI as a tool without letting it replace our intuition or our relationships.  

Episode nuggets:
• AI making information abundant and inexpensive while wisdom becomes more valuable  
• information overload and the need to digest and integrate what we learn  
• “knowing isn’t doing” and why behavior change is the real bottleneck  
• embodiment, nervous system capacity, and why growth can only move so fast  
• the temptation to outsource self-trust to AI and how agency stays personal  
• the calculator analogy and what tech can weaken if we stop practicing  
• AI as a therapist or coach and what is missing without human connection  
• creativity, writing, and why fulfillment drops when we hand over our voice  
• desire as the core question behind every prompt we type  

Let us know how you’re feeling, how the role that AI is playing in your own personal development. Do you find that you’re able to be in relationship with your AI, while also staying in deep connection with yourself? 

Transcript

Welcome And Why Desire Matters

SPEAKER_02 0:07

Welcome to Desire is Medicine. We are two very different women living a life led by desire, inviting you into our world.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

I'm Brenda. I'm a devoted practitioner to being my fully expressed true self in my daily life, motherhood, relationships, and my business. Desire has taken me on quite a ride, and every day I practice listening to and following the voice within. I'm a middle school teacher, turned coach and guide of the feminine.

SPEAKER_02 0:36

And I'm Catherine, devoted to living my life as the truest and hopefully the highest version of me. I don't have children, I've never been married, I've spent equal parts of my life in corporate as in some down and low shady spaces. I was the epitome of Tired and Wired, and my path led me to explore desire. I'm a coach, guide, energy worker, and a forever student.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Even after decades of inner work, we are humble beginners, on the mat, still exploring, always curious. We believe that listening to and following the nudge of desire is a deep spiritual practice that helps us grow.

SPEAKER_02 1:12

On the Desire as Medicine podcast, we talk to each other, we interview people we know and love about the practice of desire, bringing in a very important piece that is often overlooked: being responsible for our desire.

The Request To Talk AI

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Welcome back, family, friends. Listeners to the Desire as Medicine podcast. I am here with the lovely Brenda for yet another episode. And this episode is by request, please continue to give me your requests. I love that. And the request is about AI. AI and the crossroads between AI and personal development. And Brenda and I kind of I don't know and talked about it a little bit. I don't I don't think we really got to the nitty-gritty of it. First of all, disclosure, neither of us are experts by any means of AI. I would say we have a lot of expertise in personal development, both from like holding, teaching, and our own lives. So to talk about the crossroads of the two is is an interesting task to just sort of be with. Like, is AI changing our lives? Um, we think so. And how is it, if at all, genuinely helping our growth? And so I've been sitting with it. And the first thing that popped up is as AI gets faster, like AI is making information really accessible and inexpensive. And it's really fascinating because it's not like I'm seeing people that are less stuck because of AI. I know people that can put stuff in AI and write a book or put stuff in AI and create an image. And when I say image, I mean like a Canva image or some form of like marketing image, or even like those playful images that we see people on Facebook put up of like they give AI a prompt and you give AI your picture, and the next thing you know, you see something. I've used chat, I've used Claude, but there's perplexity, there's all different like forms of AI. And AI is, I think, reminding me that there was a time when information was really expensive. Like college, right? Or um maybe college is not the right word, but any form of education. Like you're paying a lot for this education. And artificial intelligence comes in, and all of a sudden, like it's just abundant.

Information Gets Cheap Wisdom Rises

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Like you can ask AI anything. The other day, my friend, I was looking for a specific dress. I'm traveling um soon, I have a wedding, and I wanted a dress that looked like this. And she's like, Oh, you just hit this picture and upload the picture. I hit you hit this button and you upload the picture, and it gave me all these options, and I was like, wow, like talk about dimensions even in just shopping. So there's so much more at our fingertips. But yet, is AI really saving us from something? Like, if information, the value of information is collapsing, I feel like the value of wisdom is rising along with it. I don't know if AI can give us wisdom yet. We can definitely acquire information faster. It's it almost feels instantaneous. And so the challenge now isn't like, do I have the information? Do I know X, Y, or Z? That's one of my favorite things to say. It's like, am I discerning? Am I self-aware? I was, yeah, I'm gonna pause here. That's what I'm thinking about. Like, what pops up for you, Brenda?

SPEAKER_00 5:09

Thank you for that great intro. I love that we're talking about AI. I love that we got this question to talk about. It's something that I think is on all of our minds. I mean, there are people that I've talked to that really aren't on the AI train. Mostly those people are older than me, you know. Like I showed my mother about it and she was like, oh my God, that's so cool. I'm like, oh, you could just pop it into AI. Like, I don't use Google anymore, really. Sometimes I do, and Google has its own AI, but I use AI as search, and I just find it's so much quicker and more accessible. AI is super cool. Like, let's just say, how freaking cool is it for those of us who grew up in the 80s? We're like kind of living out the Jetsons. Remember the Jetsons? Like, first we had video phone, and I remember when that came out and video talking, and like now we're in AI. Like, what? Like when I was a kid, I was going to the library with the Dewey Decimal system. Who out there is relating to that? In my lifetime, this has been a huge, a huge change. And it's really cool because, like you said, information used to be expensive, right? Like you go to college and people are obviously still doing that. It also used to be slow. We would get information at a slower pace. You had to actually go to the library, open the encyclopedia, or even researching, you know, in Google. Took some time. You had to find the right place. So there was some navigating to do. AI is like so quick. And then we need to ask ourselves like, can we keep up with the quickness of this? Like, I don't think that we're at any shortage of information these days. If anything, we're at an overload of information. And like you said, wisdom is becoming more important because anyone can get information these days. You don't even have to leave your bedroom. At least in the 80s, you had to go to the library, to the encyclopedias. So I think that's an interesting conversation is how much information do we need? Does that make our life better? And where does wisdom come into that?

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Yeah, I mean, where does wisdom come in? I think I would say for I remember what was the quote? Education is freedom or knowledge is power. I remember growing up with those phrases, like those quotes being thrown around a lot. And right now, we're in the era of information. Like information is not the problem at all. Where really, if there was a banner above our heads now, the phrase instead of education is power, would sound more like knowing isn't doing. We can use the classic

Knowing Is Not Doing

SPEAKER_01 8:05

examples of people know they should exercise, they don't exercise. People know they should walk more, they don't walk more. People know they shouldn't eat that much sugar, they still eat the sugar. People know they should be saving money as opposed to spending, people spend. People know they have to set boundaries, we don't set the boundaries. People know we should stop scrolling, we don't stop scrolling. So it's sort of like I don't think AI is ever going to scold us or scream us. But if we're asking it these questions to solve these problems, right? The information isn't necessarily the sticking point anymore. It's sort of our behavior, our behavior that's where we circle fear, or we're circling our identity, or we're not emotionally regulated, or our nervous system has hit capacity, we're in avoidance. There's these locations where AI can't really help us. It's giving us information. We don't have to, some people don't have to take certificate, get certified in something, or spend years learning something, years training. They don't have to grab like all this collective wisdom.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

But how then do they live the information and embody it? Well, I think that's the question. And we did a whole embodiment series on information, knowing something. There's plenty of things that I know. Like you said, people setting boundaries, they know they need to do it or not eat the tenth brownie, but we still don't do or do those things. So I don't think that it's that we need more information. I really do think that we need to embody some of these things. I mean, look at the state of the world. There's so much conflict and aggression happening in the online spaces. So how do we embody these things? How do we embody these lessons? I think that there's so much information coming at us. We just did a whole digestion series as well. We need to digest information. I don't think that, and I've never thought that more is better, but that it feels like with AI, we're just getting so much that we can't digest it, we can't integrate it and then embody it. So we're just like walking around with all this information in our heads, like our heads are gigantic. AI could be, especially in the personal development space, another place to outsource your trusting of yourself. You know, if you're constantly going to AI for things, which is really enticing. It's like crack candy to get an answer. And then you have it on your phone. Like our phones are already like crack candy, right? And then we add this instant gratification. It's very easy to outsource your self-trust.

Self Trust Agency And The Calculator Effect

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Now that's not anything new. It's that's not AI's fault. There's always something to outsource your own self-trust to, be it another person, be it a partner, you know, whoever. You can make anything your higher power at any time. So that's not AI's fault. But this is like another thing that's right in your hand that you can outsource your own knowing to. So I think, like anything in moderation, I think it's great. But I don't think we want it to replace our humanity. What comes to mind is calculators and math. Like when I was younger, we used to, you know, if you if you worked in at a cashier, you had to figure out what the change was when somebody bought something, right? And then like the progression of that over the years. Now, well, first of all, everyone uses credit, but God, I'm gonna sound so old when I say this. But younger people who work at cashiers don't know how to do change the way we grew up. I grew up bowling and I knew how to add up the bowling score as I went. That was a great math skill. There's no purpose, there's no reason to do that anymore. So are we dumber? Does technology make us dumber? Does it water down our own knowing? And what are we replacing that with?

SPEAKER_01 12:33

I I don't know. I think the question becomes like, how do we use AI without giving away our agency? Like, yeah, the danger isn't AI. It's not, you know, the danger wasn't the calculator. You couldn't bring the calculator to take the math test, right, when you were doing multiplication. And likewise, you can use AI when it's just you and AI, but if but AI can't like take responsibility for you, it can't have courage for you, it can't tell the truth. Uh it can help you craft the phrase for you to set a boundary, but the person that's going to actually set the boundary is you. Like if you want something, you can have AI help you narrow down what you're looking for, but you would still be the person that's asking for it. And as AI enters the space and gives us all answers, then can we recognize what's true for us? Can we discern what's useful, what's aligned, what's not aligned? Like discernment becomes the premium skill. Like you said, you can Google something, you can Google it in AI as well. Sometimes it's faster, clearer, crisper. I think as we use it, we will become clearer and clearer as to what's possible. And as far as what is useful and not useful, what are we outsourcing, not outsourcing? Are we giving our away our agency or not? Are we actually practicing the human skills that we need in order to thrive? I think the people before us, I definitely heard this when I was in school around the calculator. You use the calculator, you depend on it, and then all of a sudden you can't do like short math, long, you know, multiplication on your own. Your mind just isn't as sharp anymore. I don't think my mind, being a non-CPA, non-tax accountant, I'm sure I could use the calculator, no problem. It doesn't affect my day-to-day. But in the arenas of if I'm asking AI to help me catch a pattern, let's say, AI then helps me catch a pattern, whether it's for myself or a client, as I'm looking at maybe um transcripts or something, I'm going to teach on it the nuances mine to teach because I don't find that as of yet, like AI can really touch on that nuance. And as a coach, I think often, Brenda, we use our own bodies to feel and track where somebody is. And I don't know if AI can do that yet. It can track vehicles, right? Like if you're in a Tesla and you see the other vehicle to your left, right, front, back. But I don't think as of right now, AI can help you track something in real time when you're in relationship or in connection to other. And if we look at the world or life from the lens of everything is relationship, we can see, oh, this is where we can gain information, but it's not necessarily helping us human better. Human better. I like that.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

I

Why Human Connection Still Wins

SPEAKER_00 15:55

like the rubber band effect that I'm seeing in the world of people really wanting to human better. Like what's valued now is not the pristine perfection of posts and Facebook beauty and perfect AI crafted images. People want real stuff these days. And I think that we are gonna see a surge in people getting together, real life parties, art, entertainment, singing, like the things that only people can do. I think there's gonna almost be a renaissance of people appreciating these things that only people can do. Because I think that AI, like all technology, calculator, just everything, right, has its purpose and technology is there to benefit us and make our life easier. Now, whether that's true or not, I don't know. Because I remember looking back at old ads that were geared towards women for get a dishwasher. Get a dishwasher in your house so you could just have so much more time for your family. Well, I don't know that having dishwashers and washing machines gave women or anyone any extra time. I think it just gave them more things to do because now we're just multitasking, doing a million things. And I think it's the same thing for AI. Like the information comes in so quickly that I don't know that it's giving us more time. We just have more to do. Now we just have more to do. And I don't know that our bodies can actually keep up with that. You know, I was going somewhere with that. Humanity. Like just the humanity of being with people, being together. If you have a problem, like I know people use AI in place of a therapist or a coach. Like, I think that's happening. And it can be good for a quick little, hey, help me with this thing, but it's never going to replace a human. As a human, we're kind of infinite and we can feel like with a human, there's nervous system co-regulation. We witness each other, we're there for each other, we learn from each other, we have empathy and experience that only humans can have. There is no substitute for a human relationship. And you can have an AI girlfriend or boyfriend. You totally can. Like that is already happening. Where people are having AI relationships. Now, I don't I don't know that we're gonna get into that. That's a whole other ball of wax, but it's dangerous because I just see people more disconnected, not leaving their basements, not leaving their rooms. I don't think that's better for us as people, more divided than ever. I don't think that's going in a good direction. Anyway, those are some random thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

Thank you for bringing that into the room. Like, yes, I I think that there will be probably more of that before it's less. Like more people dating their AI bots. I mean, it's just a different form. It's making me think of a Stepford wife or women and their roles X amount of decades ago. And predominantly those roles where women weren't using dishwashers and they weren't using washer-dryers because they weren't created yet, that was so much more manual labor. That's true. Then the other things came and it did allow some reprieve because yes, you're not manually washing clothes and you're not manually washing dishes, but now you're expected to do so much more in the same amount of time, whether it's by others or even yourself. Likewise, I think with AI, we have more information coming at us. The expectation is that we will be able to have better discernment faster, be able to self-diagnose faster, be able to uh grow faster potentially, like, oh, now you know the problem, now just fix it. And I think as human beings, we pass through different things and different different markers, different growth points on our journey, we can only go as fast as the slowest part of us. So, although I see AI helping people, the fear isn't necessarily that AI is going to replace a professional. Because I think if somebody can have a conversation with AI around a problem and feel some form of reprieve and then feel like a more resourced human that can then go out into the world and have more emotional intelligence, have more connection, be less attached to other people's views of themselves. They can be better functioning and reap more out of life. That sounds amazing. But can it really deliver it in that way? I don't know if that's the case right now or yet. And I'm going to use this opportunity to share the things of AI that I think are great. Like I use sometimes this voice note journal, and I love talking about certain things, and the journal will be like, oh yes, you remember in November 2025, you blah, blah, blah. Oh, remember, remember in October 2024. It can have certain recall and point to patterns that I potentially can't see myself, but it doesn't do the rest after that. Like what comes after that is sort of mine to hold and look at. And I get to decide even if I want to look at it. I was asked the question too, when um, and I'll share this with you like, oh, do I think it's bad that people are using AI like a therapist or coach? And I don't think so. I I feel like if somebody's using AI as a therapist or coach, it's because potentially. They're not willing to seek out that professional because if they were, they would.

Useful AI Tools Without Outsourcing Yourself

SPEAKER_01 22:05

And so I think something is better than nothing. And even though they are in conversation with an with an AI, they are also somewhat in conversation with themselves because that's sort of the input and the output is sort of coming out from self. But in that interaction, you just get better as a user of AI. You get better at giving the AI the prompt in order to get the answer or to seek the information that you're looking for. That doesn't really give you a transferable skill as far as real life, because another human that I'm giving information or I'm trying to gather information from isn't necessarily going to work like chat with a chat prompt. Like it just, it's a human, right? It's a human being. It's it's a different way of relating. That's the actual piece that I see missing when someone uses chat for an answer. Is that you don't have all you're not in connection with another human being where you have the opportunity for either the pitfalls or the blessings that come from human interaction.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Beautifully said. Yeah, I mean, there's so many great uses for AI. I love it. You know, I go into CVS and I want a face cream and I'm like, oh, which one do I choose? I upload a few photos and it tells me the benefits. Boom, I'm in and out. That's really cool. The thing with AI when people use it, and I've seen it with writing, you can tell. Like it just sounds the same. Like the writing sounds the same. It sounds like AI because it's is. It's not a human. And the beauty of being human and the beauty of tapping into our own creativity and our own humanness is that we're also unique and different. You put something through AI and

Writing Creativity And Feeling Alive

SPEAKER_00 24:00

it sounds like AI, you know. So, okay, great. That's what it is. But do we want, do we want to go in that direction? And do you personally want to go in that direction? You know, as a writer, I've asked myself that question. And my answer is no. I did try AI out for writing. There was a while that I did that. I was like, oh, this is really freaking cool. Let me try this out. It felt terrible. Like nobody was reading my writing. And I noticed my self-esteem took a dip. I didn't feel good about it. I didn't feel that joy, that fulfillment that I get from writing when I had AI do it. And it was great. I tried it out and I realized, oh, this doesn't feel good. I want to do this for myself. It feels good to work hard. It feels good to use our brain. It feels good to tap into our own lessons and our wisdom and pour that out in whatever form we do. For me, it's writing. And so I had that experience and now I'm done. And now it's integrated. I have a writing AI that I'll use, like for help to point things out. I use it as a writing coach, and that helps me make my writing better. That's awesome. And so what I'm pointing to is the deeper thing that you said earlier. It inevitably is our responsibility. How do we want to use this thing? Do we want it to replace our own brain, our own self-trust, our own guidance, our own internal compass? Or do we want to use it to help us? But it shouldn't replace us or our own intuition. I don't think that it's meant to replace, but it's so easy to fall into that trap and use it to replace your own sense of self or another human. And I think that's where it gets to be dangerous or unhealthy. The responsibility is on us, like everything else. How do we want to use this thing? Which, as humans, we like to try shit out. We like to try things out. We fail, we learn, and there's a there's a a process there. Yeah, I hear you.

SPEAKER_01 26:21

I think ultimately we're not at the location of answers quite yet. I don't think either Brenda or I are at the location of answers. And I don't think as a society, we're at the location of answers. I think with the calculator, it was a lot easier. I think my teacher was just like, what is two plus two? What is two times two? Okay, it's just like learn your multiplications, stop using the calculator. And now with AI just being there and able to point things out, and Brenda's, I love what you talked about when you said, you know, it's not meant to replace us. I don't think it's meant to replace us. But it I think it's also shining what I'm seeing is it's shining a light on what do we want?

Desire Discernment And Closing Questions

SPEAKER_01 27:10

It's shining a light on desire. Like, is the desire, I'll use your example of writing, is the desire to be a better writer, or is the desire to have a written piece? I think it's having us, as we use AI, ask ourselves that question. Do I want to be someone who has the information around the pattern that has me stuck, or do I want to be the person that's unstuck? And how do I have both? How do I become not just the person that has the information, but the person that has the information and can use it that I can actually use it and implement? I'm not sure if we are at the place of fully knowing and understanding exactly how it all works. Or the other question that's coming to me, I'm gonna pause there and say, how do we avoid losing ourselves as we are in relationship with the AI, knowing that that's a potentiality? It's sort of making me think of, I want to use scrolling or our tension span in correlation to the AI. We have the ability to scan on Instagram or TikTok, and we can just have one dopamine hit after the other, after the other, after the other, and be very entertained by that. And AI has sort of that same immediate gratification uh speed. You put in a prompt and you get an answer, and then you can ask it another prompt and another prompt and another prompt, and you can just like prompt, prompt, prompt, prompt, prompt, and you have all these answers. But at what point do you pause enough, stay in connection with yourself and ask, okay, well, what is it that I wanted? And be really honest with that. And I think I'm gonna leave it there because I don't think we're going to fix any wars or solve any problems here in this conversation. We would love to hear from you. Let us know how you're feeling, how the role that AI is playing in your own personal development. Do you find that you're able to be in relationship with your AI, I guess I want to say computer of choice or software of choice, while also saying in deep connection with yourself. May you always be someone who gets to have their desires. Bye for now.

SPEAKER_00 29:33

Thank you for joining us on the Desire is Medicine podcast.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

Desire invites us to be honest, loving, and deeply intimate with ourselves and others. You can find our handles in the show notes. We'd love to hear from you.