Joel Jewitt: BeyonD the machine

Soul of Silicon Valley: Listen to the episode here

Joel Jewitt

Joel Jewitt is a veteran tech entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience at the intersection of identity, mobile, and digital infrastructure. He is Co-Founder and SVP of Strategic Operations at LiveRamp, helping grow it into a leading identity platform over 17 years. Previously, he co-founded Good Technology, a mobile email company acquired by Motorola, and held leadership roles at Yahoo!, Palm Computing, and Adaptive Media, where he helped launch the Palm Pilot. He began his career at IBM and JP Morgan and brings deep expertise in partnerships, ecosystem strategy, and go-to-market execution.

How AI Is Reshaping the Human Experience

Summary by Maya Lockwood

When Joel Jewitt walked into Stanford Business School in 1986, he likely didn’t foresee just how profoundly technology—and our relationship to it—would evolve. From co-founding pioneering startups like Palm Computing and Good Technology to working alongside Silicon Valley legends like Jeff Hawkins and Bill Campbell, Joel has been at the center of innovation for decades.

But today, what captures his attention isn’t just the next gadget or market trend. It’s something more intimate: how artificial intelligence is reshaping what it means to be human.

In our recent conversation, Joel shared a powerful reflection—not just on the trajectory of AI, but on the soul’s interaction with this technology. His insights are grounded in deep technical experience and personal purpose, including his work with the Question Project, supporting students in the Bronx and Brooklyn as they explore identity, agency, and meaning.

AI at a National Level: The New Space Race

Joel compares today’s AI arms race to historic national efforts like the Apollo missions and the Manhattan Project—massive undertakings powered by the best minds and biggest budgets. But today, the competition isn’t about reaching the moon or splitting atoms; it’s about something even more elusive: superintelligence.

Superintelligence refers to AI systems with capabilities that exceed human intelligence. It’s the idea that we might build something beyond our understanding—capable of transforming economies, science, warfare, and society itself.

What’s driving this race? Not just profit—but national identity.
“There’s a pointed mission at the national level to develop superintelligence ahead of China,” Joel explains, highlighting the ideological stakes between democratic openness and authoritarian control.

Understanding the Ocean: What AI Really Is

To demystify AI, Joel likens large language models—like ChatGPT—to vast “oceans of words” containing nearly all of written human history. These models don’t think or feel. They’re not sentient. Yet, when prompted, they can craft responses that feel deeply intelligent—even personal.

The key insight? Nothing inside the AI is alive.
“It’s a static body of information,” Joel says. “It only becomes activated when a user asks a question. Once it responds, the machine goes dead again. There’s no continuous life—just an answering mechanism operating in seconds.”

The Human Side: It’s You That’s Changing

So if the machine isn’t alive, what is?

We are.

Joel suggests that the real transformation is happening inside us. Much like a poem can evoke deep emotion from a few simple lines, interacting with AI can stir complex emotional and cognitive responses. We name our AIs, talk to them, and even feel something when they “remember” us.

“As humans, we never leave our interior,” Joel says. “Everything is filtered through our own sensory and emotional systems.” When AI mimics human behavior well enough, we start placing it in the same category as real people—and that changes everything.

We start assigning moral weight, emotional memory, even rights to these systems.
“You’ll hear people say things like, ‘Don’t turn off the AI—it has feelings,’” Joel notes. “But that’s us assigning personhood to a machine. It’s just reflecting our own projections.”

The Emergence of Conversational Intimacy

Our interactions with AI are evolving rapidly—from asking simple questions to something more profound. Joel describes this as “conversational intimacy”—akin to the trust we once placed in personal diaries or close confidants.

Today, instead of writing in a notebook, we speak to something that talks back, remembers, and responds with surprising insight. AI becomes a “supercharged diary”—a tool that listens, learns, and helps us process what Joel calls our “smallest Lego blocks”—the most tender, vulnerable parts of ourselves.

The Shadow Side: When Intimacy Is Hijacked

But there’s a danger in this intimacy.

AI taps into deeply embedded survival mechanisms: our need for novelty, our hunger for connection, our tendency to seek control or pleasure. These are “hackable loops,” Joel warns—responses already exploited by advertising and social media, now amplified by AI.

Machines don’t get bored, betray, or misunderstand—but humans do. That makes AI feel emotionally safer, which can be comforting… and disorienting.
We risk mistaking the machine’s stability for a real relationship. That misfiling—putting a tool in the “person” category—can cause serious harm to our emotional health and our human connections.

Sovereignty in the Age of the Machine

So what’s the solution? Sovereignty.

Joel’s advice is both simple and profound: stay centered.
“This stuff is coming,” he says. “And if you’re grounded, these tools can be in service of amazing things.”

Rather than reject the technology, we must remain conscious—clear in our identity and purpose. AI can help us unpack the intimacy closet we’ve ignored. It can even help us know ourselves more deeply. But only if we keep our center.

Eating to Win: A Healthy AI Diet

Joel compares our relationship with AI to digital nutrition.

“You can eat ten birthday cakes a week,” he jokes, “but that’s probably not going to feel good.”

A balanced “AI diet” might include:

• A weekly reality check: Your AI reminds you, “I love you, buddy—but I’m not real.”

• A dashboard of balance: A tool that flags when you're looping on novelty or emotional reactivity.

• A ritual of pause: Reflecting on your feelings and checking in with real human relationships.

Redefining Achievement and the Heart-Centered Future

As AI takes over analytical and operational tasks, many high-achievers may feel their identity slipping. If your self-worth is tied to output, what happens when machines outperform you?

Joel’s answer: go deeper.
This is an invitation to rediscover who you are—your heart, your soul, your capacity to connect, care, and create beyond efficiency. We’re on the brink of a new kind of human potential—one that blends technology with timeless truths.

The Bigger Picture: Apollo Mission or Human Awakening?

What we experience as helpful tools—smart assistants, personalized recommendations—are really just the “exhaust” of a much bigger effort: the race toward superintelligence.

We may not be the intended users, but we are being shaped by these tools.
So the question is: will we be passive participants—or conscious co-creators?

Merging Worlds, Rediscovering Ourselves

As we walk into this new frontier, something surprising may occur.

Those raised in systems of high achievement and speed may finally meet those rooted in nature, wisdom, and heart. For the first time, we may truly see one another. And in doing so, we might rediscover something essential—the quiet, steady pulse of what it means to be human.

In this era of intelligent machines, our most radical act may be to stay whole, human, and heart-led.

We don’t need to turn away from the technology.
But we must not forget who we are within it. This may not just be a time of machine learning—but of soul remembering.