Will AI make us lonely?

AI can feel like a companion while making work more solitary. Eric and John ask how to use it to strengthen human connection.

Eric accidentally told the principal at his kids' school, “I'm actually gonna go sit in an office alone and talk to AI all day.” That's not the most inspiring description of a workday, but it's accurate, and that should give us pause.

AI seems to follow the same shape as social media, with a grand promise that it doesn't always deliver on. Social media was supposed to increase our connection with each other, yet many of us feel more isolated. AI could follow the same path, and potentially be worse. The current user experience of AI is deeply individual, and it can give you a false sense of connection because it is conversational, but that could end up making us more isolated, not less.

AI has become a core part of our modern technological toolset, but we need to be intentional in how we use it and how it shapes our thinking, so that we increase our capacity for human connection.

Mind the gap between man and machine: AI can seem like a human, but it isn't. As we use it, we need to be careful about how the medium subtly shapes the way we view the technology and frame our relationship with it.

Efficiency isn't the ultimate outcome: AI can often mean we don't need to collaborate as much as we did before, but that can mean we lose out on the best form of collaboration available, which is with other humans.

Make human relationships the goal: How can you use AI to make your human relationships deeper, not just more efficient?

John shares statistics from a Pew Research Center study about U.S. adults on TikTok. About half have never posted a video, and the top 25% by posting volume produced 98% of the publicly accessible videos from the users studied.

Eric and John note that isolation isn't a new problem, citing Robert Putnam's classic book, Bowling Alone, on the decline of social connection before social media.

John also cites CDC research about adult loneliness. In its 2022 survey across 26 states, 32.1% of adults reported feeling lonely always, usually, or sometimes.