Before and After the Mirror- How AI Revealed Who I Had Become

The provided text is an excerpt from an essay by Greg Twemlow titled "Before and After the Mirror: How AI Revealed Who I Had Become", which documents an AI-assisted self-analysis of over 500 of his own writings spanning nine years. Twemlow explains that his initial intent was merely to categorise his written work, but the AI's analysis unexpectedly created a personal portrait, revealing his moral tone and blind spots. He identifies 2023 as a hinge year, after which his writing shifted from system-focused, "civic engineer" essays to more introspective, observer-oriented pieces, prompted by the machine's ability to question the underlying fears of his self-protective frameworks. Ultimately, the author concludes that AI functions as a crucial "attentional prosthetic" that forces pause and friction, thereby transforming reflection from a solitary luxury into a necessary civic and intellectual discipline that restores coherence to thought. Read the article.About the Author - Greg Twemlow writes and teaches at the intersection of technology, education, and human judgment. He works with educators and businesses to make AI explainable and assessable in classrooms and boardrooms — to ensure AI users show their process and own their decisions. His cognition protocol, the Context & Critique Rule™, is built on a three-step process: Evidence → Cognition → Discernment — a bridge from what’s scattered to what’s chosen. Context & Critique → Accountable AI™. © 2025 Greg Twemlow. “Context & Critique → Accountable AI” and “Context & Critique Rule” are unregistered trademarks (™).