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How to tolerate uncertainty in a world that’s full of it

Not knowing what’s going to happen is the worst. It’s also really good for us.

At first, it seems innocuous. You’re burned out at work, and an influencer video promising the five steps to find the career you’ve always wanted catches your eye on Instagram. Perhaps you’re also anxious about a big birthday approaching, so while commuting home, you listen to a podcast host explain the seven essential habits you should start today to extend your lifespan by 20 years. Later on, you ask AI assistant ChatGPT to help resolve a debate with your partner.

In all of these moments, you are temporarily relieving your stress and anxiety. You might even be getting some answers. But with each path you go down, you’re also losing something important: the opportunity to sit with, and tolerate, uncertainty.

Being able to keep it together when an outcome is unknown is critical to enjoying your life. It’s what helps us manage friction in relationships, allows us to make considered decisions as opposed to acting on impulse, and empowers us to eventually take big leaps. But we’re collectively losing our ability to bear uncertainty.

The proliferation of the internet and smartphones kicked off the trend of reduced exposure, which a 2019 study suggested was linked to an overall decline in our ability to tolerate uncertainty. Now there’s emerging evidence from multiple studies suggesting that AI systems could be weakening our uncertainty muscles further. AI systems not only supply instant answers, but remove the need for us to make meaning of ambiguous experiences. They convert interpretation from something actively done to something that is outsourced, then passively consumed.

When we strengthen our uncertainty tolerance, what we’re really learning is a new definition of what it means to feel safe and secure.

One study comparing the responses of mental health professionals and chatbots found that the bots were more likely to provide advice than their human counterparts. Perhaps this is because they are designed to give us what we want, rather than what we need: Other research has found that people are more satisfied when their AI therapist provides advice instead of encouraging reflection, and are more likely to continue using it when it’s solution-oriented.

“It’s a skill to manage ambiguity and uncertainty, and if you’re not exposed to it, if you don’t know how to deal with it, you never learn that capacity,” Llewellyn van Zyl, a Netherlands-based wellbeing researcher and AI systems designer,........

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