At 78 years old, Deepak Chopra wakes up each morning with a question for his AI. Today’s query explored how every ingredient we use to experience the physical world has no actual existence in that world. It’s the kind of philosophical puzzle that has obsessed the integrative medicine pioneer for three decades, and now he has a digital thinking partner to help him explore it.
This isn’t your typical AI use case. While most people worry about ChatGPT taking their jobs, Chopra has built his own AI twin and uses artificial intelligence as a personal confidant, health coach, research assistant, and spiritual guide. His approach offers a refreshing perspective on how we might coexist with AI rather than compete against it.
AI As Augmented Intelligence
Chopra believes most people fundamentally misunderstand what AI actually is. “Even the word AI may be incorrect because it’s human intelligence,” he explains. “So, I would use augmented intelligence instead of artificial intelligence.” This isn’t just semantic wordplay. His distinction gets to the heart of how we should think about AI’s role in our lives.
As an engineering problem, AI mimics basic brain functions like memory, recall, organizing information, and learning. But Chopra is adamant that these functions “are not the same way as consciousness works.” He argues that AI will never be conscious because “it has no subjectivity, no hunger, no sex drive, no fear. No existential issues, which defines who we are as human beings.”
This limitation, rather than being a weakness, becomes AI’s strength. Because it lacks consciousness, AI can serve as an objective mirror for expanding human awareness. The real question isn’t whether machines can think, but “how can a machine, AI, lacking awareness, expand human awareness?”
Four Roles AI Can Play
Chopra has identified four specific ways AI can expand our awareness of existence. First, as a personal confidant for deep reflection. “I use it every day as a personal confidant to reflect on myself, you know, who am I? What do I want? What’s my purpose? What am I grateful for?” The AI doesn’t provide answers but “points the way. It gives me a map. It’s like a menu.”
Second, as a health coach for both physical and mental well-being. Third, as a research assistant with access to humanity’s entire knowledge base. Chopra recalls spending three days in the New York library in the 1970s to research his wife’s Mediterranean anemia. “That took me three weeks to discover that, now I can get that information instantly. Which is like having Aladdin’s lamp and rubbing it, and a genie tells you whatever you want to know.”
Fourth, AI serves as a spiritual guide, offering instant access to the thoughts of Plato, Socrates, Wittgenstein, and the sages of Eastern wisdom traditions. This comprehensive approach transforms AI from a mere tool into a thinking companion for life’s biggest questions.
Consciousness And Reality
Chopra’s most provocative insight concerns the nature of reality itself. He argues that everything we consider “real” exists only in our experience of consciousness, similar to how money, Wall Street, or Greenwich Mean Time are human constructs. “There’s no physical reality, that it’s a construct in our imagination or in our being or in our consciousness.”
When his AI initially disagreed with this perspective, citing photons and neural networks as objective realities, Chopra pushed back: “Even photons are human experiences. How do you know there are photons? That’s a human construct. Even the brain is a human construct.” The AI immediately corrected itself, acknowledging the point.
This philosophical framework has practical implications. If reality is constructed through consciousness, then we have more agency in shaping our experience than we typically assume. AI becomes a tool for exploring these deeper questions about the nature of existence and our place within it.
Longevity And Healthspan
The conversation shifts to longevity, where Chopra sees tremendous opportunity. The fastest-growing demographic worldwide is people over 100, but longevity without health is merely a burden. “Longevity is useless unless you have health span,” he observes.
The encouraging news is that less than 2% of genetic mutations fully guarantee disease. The remaining 98% can be modified through lifestyle factors like sleep, meditation, exercise, nutrition, and stress management. “I personally think you can have the biology of youth and the wisdom of experience,” Chopra says.
His approach integrates wearable technology with ancient practices. He typically wears six different devices tracking everything from blood glucose to sleep patterns, correlating this data with daily activities through his partnership in CyberHuman.AI, which creates digital twins for athletes, chefs, and musicians.
A Leapfrog Moment
Chopra places our current moment in historical context, comparing it to the period between 1887 and 1903 when humans invented the light bulb, automobile, airplane, and telephone within roughly 20 years. Someone shipwrecked in 1885 and rescued 20 years later would return to a completely transformed world.
“We are in the midst of a cultural and social leapfrogging in our evolution as a human species,” he argues. AI is just the beginning, leading to ambient computing, virtual reality, mixed reality, and immersive experiences. We’re approaching an age where “pharmaceuticals will be replaced by electroceuticals, by digiceuticals, by metaceuticals.”
This transformation extends beyond technology to biology itself. “Every time you have a new experience, you change your neural networks; they rewire you, change your genetic activities. So we are actually turning into a new species.”
The Double-Edged Sword Of AI
Despite his enthusiasm, Chopra acknowledges AI’s dangers. Experts can use AI to interfere with pacemakers, poison food chains, or cause nuclear plants to leak. His conclusion is sobering: “If we do not elevate our emotional and spiritual experience of life, then the technology we have is, you know, we are doomed to extinction.”
The solution isn’t to stop technological progress, which is impossible, but to accelerate our emotional and spiritual development. “Our emotional and spiritual evolution has not kept up with our technological evolution. And that’s a dangerous thing.”
This creates both peril and promise. The same technology that could lead to extinction could also create “a more peaceful, just, sustainable, healthier, and joyful world.”
Practical Steps For Today
For anyone feeling overwhelmed by AI or current world events, Chopra offers a simple daily practice: “Take five minutes to do nothing every day. Five minutes.” During this time, ask four questions: Who am I? What do I want? What’s my purpose? What am I grateful for?
Then introduce four intentions: “joyful energetic body, loving compassionate heart, creative mind, and lightness of spirit. Four intentions, four questions, five minutes doing nothing. Just that. And you’re on your way.”
The Path Forward
Chopra’s vision suggests that our relationship with AI need not be adversarial. Instead of fearing replacement, we can embrace augmentation. The key lies in using AI to expand our consciousness rather than diminish our humanity.
His approach offers a blueprint for thriving alongside artificial intelligence: use it as a thinking partner for life’s deepest questions, a coach for optimizing health and performance, and a guide for spiritual development. The future belongs to those who can integrate technological capability with human wisdom, creating something greater than either could achieve alone.
As we stand at this crossroads between extinction and transcendence, perhaps the most important question isn’t what AI can do, but what it can help us become.
