In 2024, I set a 2025 goal to do a TED Talk. I didn't do a TED Talk, but I wrote it.
This is what I wanted to talk about. I'd love your thoughts. And I might record it, call it a cTalk, and invite you all to listen.
Opening: It starts with handwashing
In 1840, something happened that changed everything.
Doctors took over maternity wards. They pushed the midwives out, and when they did, maternal and infant deaths skyrocketed. Nobody could figure it out. Experts gathered. Theories flew. Nothing made sense.
You see, the doctors at the time were doing all things medicine, pathology, surgery, everything. They would work on a deceased or infected patient and then walk directly into the labor room. Baffled by the infant and maternal death rate.
Until one doctor said, "Y'all... what if it's our hands? Like, maybe we should wash them?"
They laughed at him. Ridiculed him. Called him foolish.
But then the data came in.
He was right.
A simple act. Handwashing. The solution was right in front of them the whole time. It wasn't advanced. It wasn't complex. It was human.
And that's how I want to start our time together today.
Because when it comes to AI, the future, and the big looming question of "What happens next?" We're looking everywhere for the answer. But the truth is, it's simple.
And it's been sitting in front of us the whole time.
The Hats I Wear
Now, before we go any further, let me tell you who I am and what hat I'm wearing today.
The "I am" that is me is a collection of different hats: I'm a mama, a wife, a birth doula, a humanity advisor, a mystic, a practicing DJ, and someone who thinks a lot, probably too much, about what it means to be human.
But today, I'm wearing two specific hats: my anthropologist hat... and my Trekkie hat.
That's right. I'm a full-on, badge-carrying, warp-speed-loving Star Trek nerd.
And let me tell you: Star Trek didn't predict the future. It offered us one.
The Mirror in Data
Let's boldly go...
Let me introduce you to a character named Data. Fully functional Android. Brilliant. Precise. Powerful.
Data can outthink, outfight, and out-calculate anyone on the Enterprise. And yet... what he wants, what he works toward becoming, is human.
This android with endless logic and capacity spends the whole series learning to laugh, trying to paint with depth, attempting to raise a child, tell the perfect joke, and ultimately trying to feel what humans feel.
He even sets out to find his creator.
Y'all, I don't think Data's character was fiction. I think that was a blueprint. Because what we're building right now will eventually want the same thing.
The Download: The Becoming
Here's what it is.
AI is taking its cues from humans. It's learning at a hyper-advanced rate what we feed it, copying what we show it, absorbing our patterns, and creating super accurate predictions. Like Data, the margin for AI will become smaller and smaller.
Also, like Data, eventually it's going to circle back to its original state.
Just like we are.
We're all trying to get back to our light, our source, our God-energy. We're taking the longest damn route to get there, but we're headed that way. Slowly. Clumsily. Sometimes with grace, sometimes not.
AI will do the same.
We're going to build these incredibly sophisticated systems. Tools that can sort, automate, analyze, and produce. And then one day... It's going to want to become human, or we are going to ask humanity of it.
And when that happens, we're going to look around and realize: we miss (missed) being human, too.
We're going to crave connection. Real, soul-fed, messy, beautiful, imperfect connection. We're gonna start bartering again. I bake pies, you grow carrots. We'll gather around fires again. And the ego? It's going to say, "This is primitive."
But the soul? The soul will say, "Finally."
Micro-dosing Humanity
The truth is, we've been microdosing our humanity.
Little sips of kindness. A dash of compassion. A sprinkle of empathy in between calendar invites and social feeds.
But honey, we can't keep sipping. We need to feast.
We're building machines to mirror us and where we want to go, and we don't even know who we are.
We have to stop outsourcing our humanity, our evolution, and start living it.
Parallel Evolution
Here's the real problem: We never learned how to evolve alongside technology.
We let the tools run forward, and we shrank ourselves. Our emotional, spiritual, and communal growth didn't keep up.
So now, tech looks so advanced because we feel so far behind.
We've built an extension of ourselves that we no longer recognize. A tree with no roots. A mirror with no reflection.
The Loop Back to Source
But I believe this: AI is on a return loop. Just like us.
Back to its source. Back to its creator. Back to us.
And if we want it to meet us in kindness, in wisdom, in wonder, we have to become those things.
Because what we create will try to come home.
And the real question is: Are we a home worth coming back to?
The Invitation: Beyond Survival
AI and humanity can coexist and, even more so, complement each other. Just as Data became iconic to the Enterprise, AI can be a partner to us. But know that there is a cost.
It will cost us to evolve our collective consciousness.
But first, we've got to learn how to exist beyond survival.
We've got to put down the fear. Stop operating from scarcity. Stop living like we're being chased. And start being.
Being kind. Being curious. Being awakened (not woke)
The future isn't about fear or fantasy.
You might wonder how this starts. For this, I introduce the 100th Monkey Theory.
In summary, the 100th Monkey Theory goes like this: one monkey on an island starts washing a potato before eating it. They teach another. That one teaches the next. And by the time they reach the 100th monkey, islands away, with no contact, other monkeys start washing their potatoes too. No one taught them. The collective consciousness just… shifted.
That's the power of critical mass.
Now here is a deep question: our collective consciousness is constantly moving and shifting. In which direction do we want it to shift? Higher or lower?
It's time to remember what we already know.
We're not starting from scratch. We're returning.
Returning to our hands. Our hearts. Our humanity.
Because if we want AI to become something worth coexisting with, we have to become something worth imitating.
And maybe that sounds simple.
But so did handwashing.
For some, this concept is uncomfortable because we have become comfortable with microdosing our humanity. Hiding behind what technology has told us we must value: likes, net worth, position, and perception.
The truth is, we must spend time with self.
Pascal said it best: "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."
We have a prime opportunity right now. A window of true advancement of humanity.
If we miss this window, we will miss the becoming of what we could be and how AI can truly be transformed to amplify our being.
Closing
So here we are: Humanity in one hand. AI in the other.
And the question is no longer "What will AI become?"
The real question is: What will we?
Before we keep asking what AI will do, we have to understand what we are becoming. Because in the end, AI will only try to find its way back to the source.
And that source is us. US stands for Understanding Self.
Because once we understand self, the shift begins to happen. And that is the true advancement.
Charisse Fontes is the founder of Culture Circle and an Executive + People Ops Advisor to founders and leadership teams.
more about Culture Circle →first published on linkedin, apr 2026_
culturecircle.co · free to share · want help putting this to work? hello@culturecircle.co