What AI Is Really Doing to Human Identity, Creativity & Trust with Bob Hutchins

Something shifted when AI got good at writing. You started wondering: did my coworker write that apology — or did the machine? Is this birthday message from my friend, or was it generated? Does it matter if you can't tell? Bob Hutchins has a name for what you've been feeling. He calls it proxy failure — and it may be the most important concept for understanding what AI is actually doing to human relationships, creativity, and trust. Bob is an executive AI consultant, doctoral researcher, and one of the rare thinkers who approaches artificial intelligence not with hype or doom, but with genuine psychological depth. In this conversation with Denise, he breaks down why this moment in history is different from every other technological disruption and what we actually have to do about it. In this episode, you'll hear: Proxy failure — why AI has broken the oldest social contract humans have: the assumption that language comes from a living, feeling person The University of Pittsburgh poem study: AI-generated poems outscored Shakespeare until readers were told which was which. What that reveals about where meaning actually lives. Why AI is different from every other technology wave (the printing press, the internet, the smartphone) and the one thing those waves never threatened The rise of the generalist: why being told to "stay in your lane" may have been the worst career advice of the last 20 years AI literacy vs. AI fluency and why knowing how to use it is completely different from knowing how it works on you How to use AI as a thinking partner without outsourcing your thinking Bob draws from media ecology, behavioral psychology, and systems thinking to offer something the AI conversation desperately needs right now: nuance. This is a conversation about what it means to be human when the machines get very, very good at pretending to be one. Subscribe to Bob's Substack for his ongoing research: https://bobhutchins.substack.com/ and follow him on IG: @bwhutchins You can follow this podcast @toomuchwithdlh and Denise @deniselovehewett