This paper investigates this complex interplay between artificial intelligence (AI) and human well-being, covering mental health, work-life balance, and ethical government. Adopting a qualitative research ap-proach, it encompasses a literature review and ten semi-structured interviews of students, teachers, IT professionals, and researchers. The findings illustrate AI’s double-edged nature: It deepens access to sup-port systems and improves efficiency while also increasing stress, isolation, and burnout among profes-sionals. Ethical implications, including data privacy, algorithmic bias, and transparency, are increasingly well-understood, yet remain insufficiently addressed within practice. Interviewees expressed distrust in current regulatory mechanisms and called for greater public awareness and simpler, more locally relevant governance models. Contrasting strategies from India’s development-focused approach to international principles like GDPR and IEEE’s frameworks highlight the gap between theory and application. This re-search addresses key population and methodological gaps in AI studies by amplifying diverse lived expe-riences and advocating for context-sensitive, ethically grounded AI governance.