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HUMAN Discussion Guide
A conversation about artificial intelligence becomes meaningful when it moves beyond what technology can do and asks what people should protect. Use these questions with a book club, leadership team, classroom, family, or community.
How to use this guide
Book clubs
Choose six questions and leave room for personal stories, disagreement, and reflection.
Leadership teams
Connect each question to a real decision about AI, customers, employees, culture, or accountability.
Classrooms
Ask participants to argue both sides before writing their own standard for responsible technology use.
12 discussion questions for HUMAN
- What does the word human mean to you after reading the book—and did that definition change?
- Which human capacity feels most vulnerable in an increasingly automated world: attention, empathy, judgment, courage, responsibility, wonder, love, or meaning?
- Where has technology genuinely deepened your relationships, and where has it replaced presence with contact?
- What should people never outsource to artificial intelligence, even if a machine can perform the task faster?
- How does the attention economy influence the way we work, parent, learn, love, and understand ourselves?
- Can greater efficiency make a life or organization less human? What would that look like?
- What is the difference between an AI system recognizing emotion and a person truly caring?
- Which forms of friction are worth preserving because they develop patience, skill, responsibility, or connection?
- How should leaders balance automation, performance, dignity, and human judgment?
- What responsibility belongs to the person using an AI recommendation when the outcome harms someone?
- How might childhood and education change when answers are immediate but sustained attention becomes harder?
- What is one practice you want to protect or recover after reading HUMAN?
Close the conversation with action
Ask every participant to name one human capacity they will practice deliberately during the next seven days. The commitment should be observable: a device-free conversation, a decision made without hiding behind an algorithm, an apology delivered personally, uninterrupted time with a child, or a difficult truth spoken with care.
Questions about the guide
Is HUMAN a good book-club selection?
Yes. HUMAN is designed around questions that affect everyday life: artificial intelligence, attention, relationships, work, education, empathy, judgment, courage, responsibility, love, grief, wonder, and meaning. The themes support discussion across different ages, professions, and views of technology.
Is the discussion guide suitable for leadership teams?
Yes. Leadership teams can use the questions to discuss AI adoption, automation, accountability, customer experience, employee dignity, judgment, culture, and the human consequences of organizational decisions.
Do participants need technical knowledge about AI?
No. HUMAN is not a technical manual. The discussion centers on human choices and values, so readers do not need a background in artificial intelligence or computer science.
Where can groups buy HUMAN?
HUMAN is available in paperback and hardcover on Amazon, through independent bookstores via Bookshop.org, and through Ingram's global distribution network for bookstores, libraries, schools, and retailers.
Continue the conversation
HUMAN: Being Human in a World That Is Becoming Less Human
Justin Thomas examines attention, connection, work, childhood, judgment, love, mortality, and the choices shaping our shared future.