Artificial Intelligence: Implications and Potential Benefits for Our Happiness

By Cristina Hernandez

Reflecting on the Past 

Reflecting on my journey into happiness studies, I noticed a recurring theme tied to big life changes and the feelings of uncertainty, fear, and curiosity that often accompany them. 

The first change and what initially brought me to Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar’s work was the COVID-19 pandemic. In the spring of 2020, while working for a global supply chain & logistics company, I faced not only uncertainty and fear from the unknowns tied to the pandemic itself, but also workplace uncertainty and fear, sprinkled with great curiosity. At the time, the company I worked for started furloughing my peers and hundreds of other employees, which piqued my curiosity about whether workplace wellbeing could be prioritized, measured, and improved. This led me to the Certificate in Happiness Studies, and thus began my journey in the field. 

Since then, life has presented me with other unexpected life-altering chapters, once again filling me with uncertainty, fear, and curiosity. 

The most personal and challenging one was the unexpected passing of my mother in the summer of 2022. The deep pain and grief that followed were unbearable for quite some time while I faced and embraced my new reality. By that point in my life, though, I had already acquired an understanding of the science of happiness. I regularly practiced interventions and methods such as loving-kindness meditation, expressing gratitude, and active acceptance, and was working towards strengthening my faith and relationships. I can wholeheartedly say that, because of happiness studies, the transformative strategies and interventions I’d learned up until that point, and the support of the HSA community, I was able to navigate that chapter in my life with a level of strength, courage, and resilience previously untapped, as well as a hopeful outlook for the future. 

From that point on, my interest in the science of happiness and how applying it helps one navigate moments of uncertainty grew significantly.

Just as the COVID-19 pandemic affected health worldwide, the spread of AI poses risks to our well-being, and these risks are scary. What I’ve learned, however, is that although uncertainty is often associated with uneasiness, hesitation, and fear, there are tools at our disposal to help ease it. 

One of the tools I turn to the most in moments of uncertainty is applying a lens of curiosity to the situation at hand. That is what I did to the topic of AI. I went on a quest to understand how it influences our behavior and to learn about its implications and benefits for our happiness. 

Artificial Intelligence: The Implications and Benefits

In the simplest terms, artificial intelligence (AI) is a system that attempts to perform human-like tasks, and generative AI (GenAI) is a type of AI that creates new content (text, images, audio, code) by learning patterns from existing data (Robbins & Miller, 2025). It offers new capabilities for knowledge access, emotional support, and decision-making, and provides gains in productivity and efficiency.

Not surprisingly, today AI’s presence can be felt in the simplest of interactions, such as personalized recommendations for music, movies, products, and even people to follow. These “enhancements” to our lives bring convenience and comfort. Because products embedded with AI contain algorithms that learn our preferences, they quickly learn to offer paths of least resistance toward perceived desires, influencing our state of mind through what we perceive as efficiency optimization (Sustainability Directory, 2025). 

We can see that AI-enabled products offer convenience and instant gratification, affecting our well-being much like the benefits associated with hedonic happiness. But as students of Happiness Studies, we know those benefits are not enough for our well-being. 

Though our modern societies have evolved extensively through technological advancements that improve our lives, the science of happiness tells us that discomfort and inconvenience also contribute to our well-being and should not be undervalued in the pursuit of it. In fact, heavy reliance on the ease-of-use AI provides can adversely affect our sense of agency and self-perception, leading to unhealthy comparisons and limiting our exposure to unexpected, serendipitous moments that often contribute to fulfillment and more sustainable eudaimonic happiness (Sustainability Directory, 2025). 

It’s important to understand the root causes of our internal states and be wary of relying solely on algorithms to tell us how happy we are. One of the biggest threats posed by AI’s algorithms is to our human agency, a core component of our happiness. If we allow AI to become too directive in suggesting life choices aimed at ‘optimizing’ happiness scores, it risks diminishing our sense of self-authorship over our lives (Sustainability Directory, 2025).

Insights From IPPA’s AI and the Future of Wellbeing Summit 

The International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA) held its first AI and the Future of Wellbeing summit last March. I noticed a shared theme of confronting the challenges AI clearly presents to our well-being, coupled with optimism for what lies ahead. I’m happy to share interesting takeaways on AI from a positive psychology lens. 

The first thing I learned is that Dr. Martin Seligman (“Marty”)—often referred to as the Father of Positive Psychology—is an avid user of AI! In fact, the convening of this specific summit was spurred by Marty’s perspective on AI. Topics covered during the 5-day summit included understanding what AI can do for wellbeing (and what it can’t), discovering how AI-driven insights can deepen therapeutic and coaching relationships, navigating algorithmic bias, balancing efficiency and empathy, and developing human-AI collaboration skills. 

Dr. Seligman sees AI as “the greatest technological advancement in our lifetime” and uses it daily to help write children’s stories for his two grandsons. He sees AI’s benefits for human agency as providing opportunities for more love and creativity and helping us realize what is uniquely human. His children’s book example is a great illustration of applying the ‘genius of the and’ to embrace AI for its productivity and efficiency benefits and then using the outcome to form a deeper connection with loved ones. 

Professor Llewellyn E. van Zyl introduced the AI-IARA model for designing AI systems to protect human agency (van Zyl, 2026). It consists of six capacities he deems critical for constituting agency under algorithmic conditions—a great framework to keep in mind when engaging with AI tools: 

1. Awareness (the ability to detect when AI influences us); 

2. Interpretation (the capacity to generate our own meaning from experience); 

3. Intention (the ability to choose our own values); 

4. Action (the capacity to sustain effortful choices); 

5. Relational Agency (the ability to maintain authentic human connection); and

6. Autonomy (the capacity to consciously manage our AI reliance). 

   
   

Dr. Seligman and Dr. Van Zyl’s main focus was on how we can regain, or simply not relinquish, our human agency while interacting with these tools. I also found the following best practices from summit experts useful for embracing AI with a sense of curiosity: 

• Use AI for role-playing difficult conversations and circumstances.

• Use AI as a preparation tool to clarify thinking (e.g., before a coaching session).

• Work with AI to provide relational feedback, emotional insight, and meaning making.

• Work with AI to deepen your understanding and challenge assumptions.

My Outlook on AI and the Future of Happiness

I will be the first to admit that I’m grateful for products embedded with AI algorithms. Some of them, like Microsoft’s Copilot, help me to organize my workday, prioritize tasks, and derive meaning from large datasets. Grammarly, an AI writing assistant, helps me check for errors and improve my writing structure, and I recently started using Google’s NotebookLM, an AI research tool, to elevate my academic presentations.  

I plan to continue expanding my AI knowledge base, particularly in GenAI, to build on my capacity for understanding and innovation. At the same time, I’m well aware that overreliance on and unintentional use of AI can be detrimental to my ongoing, lifelong pursuit of happiness. 

While AI can expand our capacity for learning, challenge our thinking, and facilitate virtual conversations, there are things it simply cannot do. 

In Happier, No Matter What: Cultivating Hope, Resilience & Purpose in Hard Times (Ben-Shahar, 2021), Tal reminds us that studying the science of happiness is more vital and relevant than ever in challenging times. AI alone cannot contribute to the #1 predictor of happiness—the time we spend with people we care about and who care about us (Schulz & Waldinger, 2023). Nor can it elevate the ordinary to the extraordinary like walking in nature, gardening, or playing with a child does. It cannot replace our natural curiosity or original creativity. It also doesn’t have the capacity to cultivate strength, courage, resilience, and antifragility in us as real-life experiences can.

Dr. Arthur Brooks’ recent take on embracing AI was quite interesting. At the virtual Meaning of Your Life event, based on his most recent, eponymous, book, he said, “when you use AI as an expansion of the right side of your brain with the how-to and what, that will free up the left side of your brain for love, happiness, and meaning.” This line of thinking is similar to Dr. Seligman’s and his use of AI to help him create children’s books personalized for his grandsons. 

I’m excited and cautiously hopeful about what the uncertain future in this space holds and the many opportunities it’ll bring for us to grow and flourish as humans. A favorite summit quote from Professor Lyle Ungar highlights key non-negotiables for flourishing. He said that “to enhance flourishing, AI must preserve human agency, build competence, support meaning-making, strengthen relationships, and respect cultural context.” 

As a student of Happiness Studies, I know that the pursuit of sustainable happiness is multifaceted. It requires work to achieve wholebeing. This comprises more than just a comfortable, “easy” life as AI seems to promise. Though the big life changes I’ve encountered have been marked by uncertainty, fear, and great discomfort, applying a lens of curiosity, a growth mindset, and the science of happiness has created opportunities for immense meaning and growth. I intend to maintain that approach as I face what lies ahead. 

References

Ben-Shahar, T. (2021). Happier, No Matter What: Cultivating Hope, Resilience, and Purpose in Hard Times. The Experiment.

Mucci, T. (2024, October 24). The history of AI. Retrieved from IBM: https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/history-of-artificial-intelligence 

Robbins, M., & Miller, A. K. (2025, November 6). How to Use AI to Make Money, Save Time, and Be More Productive [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64qXq8AG_9M Robbins, M., & Miller, A. K. (2025, November 6). How to Use AI to Make Money, Save Time, and Be More Productive. Retrieved from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64qXq8AG_9M

Schulz, M., & Waldinger, R. (2023). The Good Life: Lessons From the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness. Simon & Schuster. 

Sustainability Directory. (2025, April 27). How will AI reshape our understanding of happiness? https://lifestyle.sustainability-directory.com/question/how-will-ai-reshape-our-understanding-of-happiness/ 

van Zyl, L. E. (2026). The AI-IARA framework: How to cultivate human agency before artificial intelligence optimizes it a(ny)way. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2026.2632939 

About the Author

Cristina Hernandez, born in the Dominican Republic and now residing in South Florida, has built her career in corporate sales within the supply chain, logistics, and tech sectors. She holds a B.S. in Business Management from Indiana University and an M.A. in Happiness Studies from Centenary University, where she's also pursuing a Ph.D. in the same field. She enjoys traveling (her favorite HSA retreat was in Finland), spending time with her 7-month-old nephew Elias Cyprian, and cooking at home.

Connect with her via LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/cristina-hernandez25