The Bardo of the AI Age

In Tibetan Buddhist psychology, a bardo is an intermediate or transitional state — most famously the interval between death and rebirth, but more broadly any gap between the ending of one condition and the beginning of the next. Pema Chödrön extends the concept to ordinary life transitions: the loss of a job, the end of a relationship, the dissolution of a belief system. The bardo is characterized by disorientation, groundlessness, and the specific vertigo of a consciousness suspended between two worlds. In the context of AI, the bardo is the transitional state in which the old paradigm — human effort as the primary engine of value creation, professional identity anchored in technical execution — has dissolved, while the new paradigm — human judgment as the engine of value direction, identity anchored in discernment rather than doing — has not yet stabilized. The vertigo Edo Segal describes as 'falling and flying at the same time' is the accurate perceptual report of a