People increasingly use AI for major life decisions, making discernment a new human skill.

The efficiency of AI is useful, but the most meaningful choice is not always the most efficient one.

The usefulness of AI advice depends partly on how clearly we understand what we value in the first place.

AI can help us compare options, but it cannot determine what a moment should mean in the context of our lives.

This past week, I flew from Cleveland to Vermont so that I could be home for about 12 hours and there for my daughter’s last first day of high school. I recently started a new position in Cleveland while my husband and daughter remain in Vermont for her senior year, which has made “being there” a little more logistically complicated than it used to be.

By any definition, the trip was not an efficient use of time. After I got to the airport, flew to Vermont, slept for a few hours, got up the next morning, took the obligatory first-day photo, hugged my daughter, and headed back to the airport, I had spent far more time traveling than I had actually spent with her. There also wasn’t anything I particularly needed to do in Vermont. This wasn’t kindergarten or college drop-off, and she could have started her senior year perfectly well without me standing on the front steps that morning. I simply wanted to be there because, somewhere in the calculus of this season of our lives, that moment mattered to me.

The experience has me reflecting on how we know which moments are worth inconveniencing ourselves for. We make these calculations all the time, asking ourselves things like: Is it worth the drive? Can I afford the flight? Do I have time? Could we celebrate another weekend?

Increasingly, we are also........

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