Human Again: In the AI Age (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781069862136)

WINNER OF THE 2026 ERIC HOFFER MONTAIGNE MEDAL

What happens when the most powerful thinking tool ever created starts doing some of our thinking for us?

Human Again: In the AI Age is a field diary from the frontlines of artificial intelligence.

Canadian journalist J.D. Macpherson began experimenting with generative AI expecting a productivity tool. Instead, she found herself confronting much bigger questions: What happens to creativity when machines can create? To judgment when answers become effortless? To identity when an algorithm can imitate our voice? And how do we use AI aggressively without quietly outsourcing the very abilities that make us human?

Part memoir, part cultural investigation, and part practical field guide, Human Again explores AI through fifty fast-moving chapters on creativity, work, critical thinking, relationships, burnout, originality, productivity, misinformation, attachment, and the future of human intelligence.

Macpherson doesn't argue that AI will save us or destroy us. She argues that how we use it matters.

Drawing on real-world experiments with ChatGPT and other generative AI tools, Human Again shows readers how to use AI as a thinking partner without surrendering judgment; ask better questions instead of accepting easy answers; protect creativity and individual voice; recognize the psychological traps of frictionless technology; and build skills that become more valuable as intelligence becomes cheaper.

Winner of the 2026 Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal and a Literary Titan Gold Book Award, Human Again has been praised by San Francisco Book Review, Midwest Book Review, Readers' Favorite, Literary Titan, and Reedsy Discovery.

For readers interested in artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, creativity, technology and society, the future of work, and what it means to remain human in an increasingly automated world.