The Hopeful Humanist Cafe

Welcome to another episode of The Hopeful Humanist Cafe. It has been awhile ...

A quick correction
In this episode I refer to nine protocols on a few occasions - there are ten. This was simply a lapse in memory. The protocols developed gradually over time, and in the moment I was recalling an earlier stage of that process rather than the completed list. The full ten protocols are below.

This episode is unscripted and unedited. No second takes, no polish - just an honest, one-take conversation, the way these episodes have always been done at the Hopeful Humanist Cafe. That choice is deliberate. In an episode about staying human in the age of AI, it felt right to keep this one human too.

I want to be clear from the outset: I do not have a monopoly on the truth here. These protocols come from lived experience, not from a lab or a license to be right. Take what's useful, question what isn't, and tell me where I've got it wrong.

A Fact Worth Sitting With

Youth aged 16–24 are the loneliest age group in Canada - almost 1 in 5 report feeling lonely often or always - and they are also the heaviest users of social media and digital tools (CMHA National, May 2026). People who connect with others only online are nearly twice as likely to be frequently lonely (24%) as those who connect both in person and virtually (15%). Technology promised connection. For a lot of young people, it's delivering the opposite - and the more we lean on AI to fill that gap, the more these protocols matter.

What is AI Wellness?

AI Wellness is the intentional practice of maintaining a healthy relationship with AI tools - preserving human agency, perspective, and lived experience, treating AI as a tool in service of a life, rather than a life in service of a tool. In practice, it looks like using AI to draft, but not to decide.

It did not come from a tech company or a research institution. It came from one person's own unsettling experience with AI, and a question that followed: if an adult who understood AI could feel disoriented by it, what is it doing to young people who don't? That question became a free app - a guided check-in for before and after AI use — built around ten protocols, not rules, but questions.

🔗 Try it yourself: hopefulhumanist-chooser.github.io/ai-wellness

What is a Strata Break?

A Strata Break is a deliberate and significant withdrawal from AI-assisted work — not a short pause, but a stepping away of days or weeks, long enough for your thinking to settle, your energy to move toward other areas of life, and your perspective to genuinely renew. The name comes from geology: strata are layers of sediment laid down over time. A Strata Break happens after real work has accumulated - a foundational layer of production - and before the next iteration begins. You return not just rested, but reoriented. AI Wellness is the ethic. The Strata Break is the practice that makes it real.

The Ten Protocols:

1. Pause. Step Away. Return to the Real World.
2. The No Flattery Prompt (anti-sycophancy prompt)
3. Do Not Name Your AI or Form Relational Bonds With It
4. Do Not Go to AI for Personal (Emotional/Psychological) Support
5. Do Not Share Personal Information With AI
6. Do Not Let AI Make Your Decisions
7. Be Mindful of Activities of Daily Living
8. Critically Question AI Outputs and Verify Information
9. Conduct a Weekly Review of Your AI Use and Emotional Impact
10. Be Cautious About What Access You Give AI Systems (e.g., microphone, contacts, location, stored files)

The app is freely available, openly licensed for education, and — like everything else on this show - a work in progress, open to correction.

Both AI Wellness and its companion app, C³hoice, are now linked directly on the front page of the Hopeful Humanist Cafe - no digging through menus required.

What Else?

Which of these ten protocols resonated with you the most - and why? And is there a protocol you think is missing, something we didn't cover that you wish we had? This list is a work in progress, and your perspective genuinely shapes where it goes next. Reach out and let me know.

Show notes drafted with AI assistance, reviewed and finalized by the host.

Peace, take care, be well, and share.