I recently listened to a McKinsey panel discussion on AI meant to critique the hype around the new technology. Most of the sitting were aglow with AI’s potential to reshape productivity and spur a new era of what they believe will be creative, individual genius. Each of us will adopt an AI agent that will backfill our deficits in self-expression (e.g., AI will ghost-write our book idea), research (e.g., AI will rapidly output correlate possibilities), coding (e.g., AI will write the Python for our app idea), any area, really, where we are lacking.
If we don’t adopt, we will become “technological dinosaurs.”
As I listened, I remembered Instant Messenger and Facebook’s beginnings, when platforms appeared to advent new eras in social connection and communication. AIM and Facebook allowed us to instantaneously connect with people around the globe and share glimpses of how we were living or what concerned us in the immediate moment. It was said the technologies would create a new global society—that we could break down geopolitical walls of difference and experience our shared humanity.
While Instant Messenger died a sad, aching death and Facebook’s use is in decline, their fingerprints are all over our productivity suites—looking at you Slack and Microsoft Teams—and our social media platforms. But the outcome isn’t quite as grand as we hoped. We are more lonely, more insecure, our worlds appear to be getting smaller and more of us are more alone than possibly ever before.
When I doom-scroll my Instagram feed and catch curated glimpses of someone else’s living, I’m left wondering what I’m doing wrong in my own life that keeps me paycheck-to-paycheck. Paradoxically (but likely the platform), consuming other people’s lives digitally leads me to think more about myself and feel unhappy with that person.
This technology meant to expand human potential in fact contracted our belief that a good life is possible for someone like me. It always seems just beyond reach.
And so, we come to artificial narrow/general/super-intelligence’s possibilities, and I’m struck by the brazen aggrandizement of The Individual (capitalization is intentional). The focal point of so many discussions is what I, alone with my ambiguous AI agent, can accomplish and what untapped potential exists within me.
I find humans to be funny creatures. We are socialites who desperately want and need one another, but we can be incredibly quick to cynicism about another’s capacity to help me, work with me or improve my work. “Getting rid of toxic employees,” “Taking the blame for other’s mistakes” and “Crucial Conversations” workshop advertisements bombard my inbox, making it seem like the world is awash in poorly performing employees trying to bilk the company. Several prominent figures haphazardly fire people because either they believe the random layoff leads to fear and greater output or they believe people are perpetually not trying.
In other words, despite being social creatures, we seem to have a predisposition toward believing other people can’t do something as well as I could … if I had the right tools … Like I think I have now.
AI, because it works so fast and doesn’t talk back, offers the mirage of never letting us down. There are no Crucial Conversations with an AI agent—you just get a different output whenever you want it. Fitful sleep at night because you forgot to build a report for tomorrow’s executive meeting? AI’s got you covered, and you can get back to bed in less than 15 minutes. Struggling to find a fresh design idea and your design team’s work feels stale? AI will deliver the weird, beautiful and compelling in minutes, so you can leave that design team behind. Your app idea that engineers said was too complicated to tie into the existing stack? AI can get you all the feasibility data you need to get the project going again.
In every example I hear from ai-vangelists, I’m struck by the primary selling point of doing more, doing it faster and doing it alone. This new era of technological efficiency could very well advent higher average productivity. But I have a sneaking suspicion that we’ll actually get more digital noise, louder inboxes from fewer voices (because the bigger companies with the better ad spend will dominate our attention) and a hotter, less pleasant world.
Worse—I think we’ll be lonelier than ever before.
A juxtaposition—one that I realize could be a rare gift—is my collaboration with Erika Randall. Since 2022, Erika and I have co-thought a plethora of ideas and made one another’s work stronger, more creative, more professional and more compelling. Some outputs—like our podcast, immersive experiences, college rebrand and more—stuck and have made lasting change. A lot of possibilities found their way to the bin, or (a better take in my view) became flagstones on a walkway to better ideas. The work has been fulfilling, challenging and just so stinkin’ fun.
This isn’t “do this for me” collaboration. It’s a spiraling up of ideation, choreography and production that gets the best out of both of our minds. Alone, we probably would have done some neat things. Collaborating, we’ve blown away our expectations for what we believe is possible.
The tricky bit is finding your collaborators, which seems unfortunately random and reliant on context. I don’t have a good solution to this other than meeting a lot of people (which, full disclosure, is unbelievably daunting for this introvert). But it also requires hope that the person you meet could potentially make you better. You have to assume the best in that person’s capacities and open yourself to feeling let down. Optimism for what people can achieve might go far toward mending our fitful society. I hope it will.
But this is vulnerable. It’s emotionally hard. And AI lets you taste something close to this collaboration without opening yourself up. But what you miss is the profound opportunity to build better ideas out of a whirlwind of conversation and connection. In my case, I’m fortunate to now be surrounded by people (my partner, my family, my friends) who love leaning into whatever idea spurs my mind, talk me through their thinking and let that compass spin us toward a better tomorrow.
It’s the antithesis of isolation. It might also the best of what it means to be human.
Tim Grassley 