Will AI Ruin the hiking experience forever?

The philosophical debate in the outdoor community has moved past "Should we use AI?" to "How do we use AI without ruining the experience of being in nature?" It’s here and it’s coming on stronger. So, how do we deal with it? 

In my previous article, I talked about about what AI will likely do for the hiking and backpacking in the coming years. AI, for instance, will soon tell us what pace may be best for each of us individually, based on the terrain and biometric data. It might suggest the perfect hike for today, how much hydration we should have at any particular moment, when we should rest, specific micro-weather forecasts for specific GPS coordinates, augmented navigation, adaptive clothing, etc. 

But if we allow AI to make every decision for us, we become passengers in our own lives. We forfeit opportunities to develop "grit", decision making skills, and critical thinking. 

With the ever-presence and increasing dependence on tech, our reasons to seek or experience "solitude" – to be alone with our own thoughts – to have our own thoughts – is chipping away. All this, it seems, is diluting the essence of the human experience. Maybe, if we allow it, AI will make us less human. What, then, separates us from animals or machines.

The Machine vs. The Human

The Machine can be defined by certainty. It wants to eliminate every variable and it’s purpose is to ensure a 100% predictable outcome. Sounds efficient. But humans need the presence of uncertainty and imperfection to help us grow, learn, understand, and thrive.

For instance, If you remove all risk from a thru-hike, you remove the personal transformation and growth of that experience. The human experience is found in ambiguity. It’s in the moment you aren't sure if you can make it, but you choose to try anyway.

AI should give us data, but humans must retain the right to ignore it.

The Animal vs. The Human

The Animal is defined almost exclusively by instinct and survival. While humans also have instinct and survival mechanisms, we also have the unique capacity for awe and reflection.

AI can identify a rare wildflower like an animal is aware of it’s surroundings, but only a human can feel a profound sense of connection, a spiritual significance, or creative inspiration in that wildflower. 

We must ensure AI remains a "lens" that helps us see more, not a "blindfold" that tells us what to think or feel about what we see.

Protecting the "Unmachinable"

In current discussions, experts are focusing on "Unmachinable Dimensions". Here are a few of them:

Solitude: The ability to be alone with your own thoughts, without a digital "voice" interrupting or influencing how our thoughts flow or the process we use, what emotions we feel, or spirituality we invoke.

Intuition: The "gut feeling" developed through years of experience. Intuition is a unique force in our decision making process that can neither be calculated or adequately explained. Where data and intuition compete, intuition should have measured input. 

True Agency: The moral and physical weight of making a choice that has consequences is uniquely human. Feeling what others feel – empathy – is too full of faults for the machine and beyond the nature of the animal. Only humans have consideration for things sacred. 

Some elements that make us uniquely human, the things that are being defined as “unmachinable”, should also be “untouchable” – forbidden from becoming machinable. 

I know that with quantum computing being so close to invading our everyday lives and quite likely capable of making the unmachinable, machinable – now is the time to have this conversation and make the decision to treat the unmachinable as sacred. It needs to be protected.

The "Mature" Balance

A mature hiker in 2026 uses AI as Infrastructural Support, much like we use a paved road to get to a trailhead, the use of AI can be our helper and safety tool. 

We can use AI to handle the "animal" data – for instance when we are in eminent danger of having a heatstroke – AI is very useful to help save our lives. 

AI can also be used for "machine" logistics, like locating the next water source or calculating our time of arrival based on biometrics, terrain, and weather data. 

But the middle ground is for the human —the struggle, the wonder, the silence, the human experience. 

If we let the "essence" of human existence dilute, we’re just biological sensors moving through a digital simulation. We’re data. We’re 1’s and 0’s in a decision machine.

But if we use AI to stay healthy enough to keep hiking into our 80s, we are using the machine to serve and preserve the human experience.

That’s my take on all this. What’s yours? Where do you draw the line? When and where should we say no to tech, especially in regard to our time in nature?