“What Lights You Up?”
What AI Gets Wrong About Human Design
Human Design is logical. AI is not.
Apple research pointed out a few months ago that popular AI models aren’t logical. Instead, they merely simulate logic with sophisticated pattern matching to create the “illusion of thinking.”
When AI simulates logic to solve simple problems, it still looks like logic. You can’t tell the difference. But when you add a few degrees of real-world complexity, AI falls on its face.
So much for all the hype about how smart AI is becoming.
But even though your favorite AI is only simulating logic at best, it’s still fabulous at crushing tons of tasks that you’d rather not waste on your precious brain power. That’s why so many people are addicted to it now.
Similarly, at 2 am, if you’re asking ChatGPT, “What should I do with my life?!” it’s really great at sourcing a wide array of great answers for you. But while many of its novel ideas may be new to you, it’s technically incapable of providing you with a single unique, creative insight or application, because it’s not actually thinking.
And so, when it comes to answering any new query, the slippery slope with AI is that it seems logical, and seems very creative and insightful to the uninformed. But then, as you become your own expert on a given topic, and you start to raise the bar, a familiar problem appears: AI’s creativity becomes “creative creep,” and then it can start to bleed into “just plain wrong” territory. You probably already know what I’m talking about with some examples from your own expertise.
For example, I asked ChatGPT to tell me what it means to be a Manifesting Generator in Human Design, which is my Type.
“You are a Multi-tasker,” it responded in the first bold heading.
Interesting, I thought. In fact, I’m a horrible mutli-tasker. You can ask my wife. But, I excel at doing one thing at a time very well.
Here’s what ChatGPT meant to say: Manifesting Generators tend to jump back and forth from the present situation to one or several future scenarios that they envision. Often, this means jumping ahead in an attempt to zero in on the proper path to success. It’s a kind of “visualize, then work backwards” strategy. But this tendency can sometimes lead to exploring too many scenarios, over-thinking, and often overcommitting to too many things. And so, while successful overcommitting looks like “multi-tasking,” unsuccessful overcommitting looks like burnout.
Figuring I knew the source of this “creative misinterpretation,” I asked ChatGPT about its base knowledge of Human Design. Not surprisingly, it responded:
“I do not have live access to official Human Design databases, Jovian Archive, or proprietary course material. My knowledge comes from a blend of publicly available Human Design resources on the internet.”
So then I thought of a simple ‘what if’––To correct all these creative misunderstandings, “What if I scanned the entire Human Design textbook into ChatGPT in order to test out its reasoning, since all the principles are inside?”
But that wouldn’t work either.
Here’s why: As the Apple study points out–even if you give AI all the logical steps to a complex solution, it still fails to apply the conceptual reasoning that leads to the solution. Why? Simple. It was never designed to apply core principles to solve problems. While it’s very good at utilizing prompts and frameworks for finite outputs like copywriting (iterating continuously within defined boundaries), it’s very bad at playing checkers (applying simple rules to flexible conditions or new situations). For comparison, computers designed for logic have been beating the world champions at chess since 1997.
So then I wanted to know the answer to this question: How many strict rules or concepts can I give ChatGPT to successfully simulate logic before it fails? Here’s what it said:
You’re basically asking:
“Given that ChatGPT doesn't actually reason from core principles but simulates reasoning by pattern-matching rules and iterations, how many rules or directives can it handle before it stops following them like logic—and just starts free-associating again?”
Here’s the distilled reality: The threshold is small.
In practice, ChatGPT can reliably stick to 3–5 directives at once if they’re simple, distinct, and phrased clearly.
Push past that (7–10+) and ChatGPT begins blending rules together, prioritizing patterns over strict adherence. The result looks logical but drifts.
Here’s the point:
AI models are the wrong tool for applying the logic of core principles.
For context in psychology, holding ChatGPT to 5 strict rules or scrapes the bottom of Miller’s Law, a rule of thumb which states that the average person can keep between 5-9 bits of data in their short term memory at one time to influence their decision-making. Under 5 is child’s play. More than 9 is total confusion.
AI is great at spinning ideas about core principles (right up until it conflates some brilliant spinoffs with the core principles, and you have to right the ship again 😫).
So this means that the average seeker curious about Human Design is fighting a hidden battle on two fronts by using AI:
The distortion of correct principles
The distortion of incorrect content, interpretations, and popular memes already seeded into the internet by misguided, but perhaps well-meaning Human Design enthusiasts (double whammy).
So to clean up this mess, and to create a better first impression of Human Design for the true seeker, let’s correct the 5 most popular misconceptions about Human Design from the world of AI-sourced data:
AI’s 5 Most Popular Misconceptions About Human Design:
1. What Lights You Up
The #1 incorrect sound bite spun about Human Design is that “you are meant to make decisions by following what lights you up.”
Correction: “What lights you up” is feel-good advice that sounds like following what you love or doing what you are passionate about. Who could argue with that? The problem is that it’s not from Human Design. Human Design teaches that internal sensations of meaning and purpose can come from several different sources within the body—but the one you really have to watch out for is being swayed too much by your own emotional highs and lows. For instance, if you get “lit up” by an emotional high, awesome. That’s great! That’s information. At the same time, it’s almost never a good time to make an important decision while you’re on an emotional high or in the depths of despair. In other words, the true passions that light a fire inside you will always survive emotional highs and lows, and be able to guide you with grounded consistency. Emotional bypass at your own risk.
2. A Full-Bodied Yes
This is the #2 most cited and incorrect sound bite found on the internet. It’s a popular answer to the same question, “How you should make decisions with Human Design?” Answer: By following “a full bodied yes.”
Correction: Surprisingly, Human Design teaches the exact opposite. The core of Human Design teaches the awareness of somatic mechanics, and anyone studying the knowledge needs to know how the 9 different chakras send signals. In practical terms, can you discern the signals of emotion and hunger from the Solar-Plexus vs. a Sacral gut response vs. the resonance that the Splenic Center recognizes? Discernment of the body’s signal mechanisms is fundamental to mastering your own energy mechanics. Ready to begin? Start with mastering the felt sense tied to your Authority—your decision-making chakra, and expand from there.
3. Emotional Authority = Wait for Clarity
Emotional Authority is the most common decision-making process in Human Design (50% of people), so this one is worth mentioning.
Correction: “Waiting for Clarity” is not technically wrong, but it’s reductive and misleading, because it implies that you can reach clarity with your mind alone. On the contrary, Emotional Authority instructs the person to feel their way through life, embracing the emotional ups and downs as part of their process in real time, and not bypassing feelings with logical thoughts to suppress them. However, telling someone to “practice more feeling” often presents a false choice—which is that the individual thinks they must either feel uncomfortable emotions or suppress them altogether, because often, that’s how they’ve coped with difficult emotions to this point in their life. This is a normal knee-jerk response. In this case, the personal work is to take your time to feel and honor the emotion without getting carried away by it, so that feeling can soon become the source of power and discernment. Once you’re ready, the easiest way to incorporate Emotional Authority is to introduce a conscious breath work practice to level out the stressful ups and downs of daily rhythms.
4. Hidden Genius Syndrome
Another common meme about Human Design is that there is a latent or hidden genius hiding inside you just waiting to be discovered–like you’re actually Albert Einstein in there, if you could just break out of your shell.
Correction: This is partially correct, because Human Design offers people breakthroughs in a multitude of ways. But here’s the misunderstanding. “Genius” as defined by Human Design has nothing to do with innate intelligence or intellect. Instead, it’s describing the process of tapping into a “stroke of genius” from within, by fully aligning to your intuition and then letting your mind get out of the way. In other words, when intuition, full presence, and awareness come together, ideas, thoughts, and instincts can spring out of you unfiltered—and these are the moments when genius—out of nowhere—can strike you.
5. Manifesting Generators Are A Hybrid
Since there are Manifestors and Generators in Human Design, it seems logical that a Manifesting Generator would be a hybrid of the two.
Correction: Manifesting Generators are a kind of Generator. 70% of the world is made of Generators, half of those being “pure” Generators, and the other half being Manifesting Generators. What defines Manifesting Generators is that they have at least one “manifesting channel” active in their chart, and because of this connection, Manifesting Generators often feel the urge to “make it happen—now.” This urge to jump into action in response to a high pressure situation may indeed be correct at times, but the best approach most of the time is to Wait to Respond—their Strategy—and then consult their Authority.
The Best Advice Over AI?
If you love Human Design, crack open your textbook and let Ra explain it to you with zero interference. 😉
