Is AI Making Us Lonelier?

Okay, Connor and I have been talking about this concept for a while

But I really liked a recent piece that came out by Rebecca Bellin over at TechCrunch

She wrote an article and I think it kind of talks about video

So this might even be less about video and more about just this concept in general

But she said AI's promised indie filmmakers is faster cheaper and lonelier and the the last word in that title lonely

Or really caught me I read the whole article

But I couldn't get this concept out of my head of is AI making us lonely right because all of a sudden

Every person is enabled to do everything. But then does that mean you need a less collaboration less co-workers to do things with

And is that kind of siloing us inside of our organization?

So there's a lot of things that I think are interesting here. I want to get into them really quick for two seconds before I do

I just have to put in a plug for Conor's AI mindset course go check out

AI mindset dot AI Conor's website that's linked in the show notes

There's some exciting things that are gonna be happening. We'll be announcing them in the future

But this course is an incredible place. Go get on his newsletter

Specifically, I'd recommend and he's gonna have some exciting updates for you coming out of his newsletter

He you releases incredible stuff every day or every week about AI and what's going on in the space

So go check it out. There's a link in the description. Okay, Conor

My question to you is is AI making us lonelier and what can we do about it if it is?

So didn't you and I were talking about the soft line

So it was almost like I wish we had been recording that that as a podcast

Because you and I sort of like think a ton about

I don't want to sort of say the human condition right but like but first of all you and I sort of like have you know

We have we both have kind of a deep background in like faith and sort of like how this and we're both family people and we're dads of

Kids your kids are younger than mine and I think you and I just think about the future and how AI impacts humanity

I think you and I think about that a lot

Probably a lot of people do the loneliness is so interesting because it's so to me in the eye of the beholder

It is very easy to say that AI could make us lonely

But what does that actually mean right so for me

You know, I like one of my favorite studies was you know highlighted by the great Ethan Maulick over at Wharton

Talking about PNG and sort of like how you can now as a you kind of get all these teammates

You know AI teammates you can sort of like work alone with there was a lot of studies about like how managers are just kind of like happier managing

Agents then people jaden in a recent episode. You were talking about how you know you work with virtual assistants

And you'll be hiring them back and all that kind of stuff

But but at the moment you had to let those virtual assistants go and I'm guessing that for you

It's easier to manage agents than to manage and by the way when I say agents guys

It's not like everybody's running around managing real agents. These are sort of slightly more complex workflows

That's really all I mean on the on the so I don't want to sort of like get everybody phomo here or anything like that

That's not really what we're talking about what I would say jaden and I'd be so curious to kind of like

Want everybody to just like ruminate on this is what does it mean for introverts? What does it mean for extroverts?

What does it mean for the elderly like what does it mean for people who are isolated and what does it mean for you know

Following the path of of social media where you know, yes, I mean, you know

Facebook was intended to connect us and since then grandma's connected to connect us

Is it connecting us or is it making us more lonely my colleague over at NYU Stern?

John Height who wrote the anxious generation talks about this stuff all the time right?

John and I have had tons of conversations about

He's he's been like all over best-selling book all that kind of stuff

But he and I have big conversations around AI and we don't always see eye to eye on it

But I love his perspective on it, which is

Why would AI be any different from social media? It gives you a sort of a a response

Mechanism that gives you exactly what you want all the time, you know, and this is why you know jaden on a previous episode

I think we were talking about how um opening. I finally

Sunseted 40

GPT 40. Why do they do that? It's because people love 40

They were like oh, we got to five and it was like so lame

But now they're seeing they was so synchophantic

That's why people loved it because it was always being like Connor

You are just the best and it's that was in a way you could argue the most dangerous model

Right because like for a lonely person to sort of go deeper and deeper into this world

That's one thing the other thing is that you know my son Finn and I were just at

Brooklyn College doing a joint keynote

Yesterday actually and the idea was around this whole thing of like, you know

Things like character AI and I don't have the numbers, but it's like

You know people my generation think oh, well, you know AI girlfriends sometime in the future whatever like no man

Like this is getting like 200 million visitors a month like this is now

So when I think of loneliness

It kind of depends on what we mean by loneliness and I'm not sure to parse words here. I'm really trying to think like what is the impact on

Humanity and jaden you have kids and so for me I know you and I and I know some of our friends too

You know the Logan's you know over at Google and our friend Ali and everybody else

They are like us. They are just building all the time. It's so exciting

But it doesn't mean we're pulling away time from people, but there's that's gonna happen a lot

So I guess for me as a big introvert. I love AI. I wouldn't be talking to people anyway

This is an amazing companion

But I am worried about what it's doing for younger people jaden you're a dad young kids. What do you think? Okay?

So I think there's two different sides to this that I'll cover the first is work

And so and I think specifically like this tech ranger article is kind of covering that it I mean it brought up like

So he's an indie filmmaker and if you're on YouTube you can watch

I'll be playing like the little video he made

But otherwise will just explain I mean he's an indie filmmaker and he did a program with Google flow

Where essentially they had him come to and work with a bunch of other people and they give him a bunch of training

And he created this video, which is in his personal style. It's him

In this video, but the whole thing was created with Google flow now

It's a really artistic really creative and it's in you know

It's the same style that he typically creates

But he didn't need any co-workers. He didn't need any camera men

He didn't need like all of the people that he usually has

He doesn't have them anymore

And so I think that's like the concept of like loneliness is like is this gonna make him more or him slash us all more lonely

What I will say with work is and you brought up the example Connor of like a whole bunch of virtual assistants that I used to have

At the end of the day, I think for a lot of people

Creativity is sparked by being enabled by tools that are more that are less cost prohibitive and so

Like does he not have a cameraman and someone to like bounce ideas off of him anymore like yes

But now he can make twice as many films or twice as creative films like

I think he obviously would trade that any day

And so the concept is like oh no, we're gonna be more like lonely at work

It's like yeah, but we're gonna get more done. We're gonna be more productive

We're gonna be more successful theoretically right and so at the end of the day like in a work perspective

I don't think this is a huge conversation that matters like

We should find other great resources to have community whether that's you know

Groups and hobbies and church and like there's a lot of ways to to not be lonely and find groups

And I think double down on those but like if you don't have as many co-workers

That's not a I don't think that's per se a bad thing okay when it comes to like

All of humanity in general. I think that isn't really interesting conversation

And I might even take a slightly different side on this

Which is that when it comes to like the AI girlfriends and like you know having elderly people chat with

AI bots because like maybe they're super lonely in some cases

I've heard the argument made that it's like well

What if there was absolutely no one with for them to chat with and this was the only way for them to connect

And I tend to think that in a lot of cases

We make arguments where we use exceptions to justify like making something in the default

I think that is one of those situations like I agree

theoretically be one person that this is the only possible way they would ever talk to someone like maybe

But does that mean that all kids in high school should have an AI girlfriend like no that's obviously detrimental to society

So I think I think yes, maybe there could be some exceptions

I don't even really know when when it comes to that kind of stuff

But like at the end of the day, I think we should put a big emphasis a big encouragement when we're talking

To our children or when we're talking to people in our communities on like human real human connection

Obviously is number one and personally the like the AI girlfriends the AI companions the AI best friend thing

I actually don't like any of it

I personally hate all of it if I'm being 100% honest. So that's my personal opinion on it

And I'm sure people have a lot of opinion because evidently 200 million people like here for AI

No, but but but 200 you know how many millions love like a ton of like things that are just like objectively bad for us

You know, I don't think we can kind of put numbers on it and

And that's the thing I you know, I think jaden and I when we when we think about the stuff and just kind of talk offline

Which we do pretty often

You know, this isn't it's not it's not moralizing and it's also not like guys. You know, we need to do we need to fix this

Everybody go meet somebody today like

You know, it's sort of when people say like hug your children a little tighter today. Has anybody done that?

I've never hugged my child tighter that day like it's just it's one of these things where it's not that helpful to just sort of say

This is what life should be this is going to be one of these very very personal

Decisions for everyone right and again, just to sort of like you know on the faith front like

You know, I want my pastor like I want people sort of like around me like in my in that community

That's very very important to me to have like obviously real

People I also know that you know, there's an authenticity gap here like people are gonna sort of like want real connection

But she didn't I also want to be realistic about this like I think that you know when we started to have the backlash against Facebook and everything else

We're like, oh, there's a backlash. There's gonna be people are hosting meetups and the New York Times will be like look now people

Not really. I mean, yeah, our people meeting but there hasn't been this giant wave. There's been an anti social media wave, which I'm very happy about

Excuse me, but all that is doing is making kids, you know, put away their phones during the during the school day

Which is unbelievable and again, I really credit my my

NYU Stern, you know friend and colleague John Hyde on that and the idea here jaden is like

What what do people decide do you only mean like because you can't you have to sort of like make these decisions intentionally

I believe because you can't just sort of say like oh, well, this is just how it is like

Because jaden for me I think about like I have like a you know a clawed project and a Google gem

That's like my co CEO for AI mindset right like am I to this you know, it's blowing up and I don't have all the skills that I need to run it

It's like huge. We like have things for like tens of thousands of people

How do I do that? I

Excuse me

All I do is I kind of go in there. I have long deep conversations. Does it replace me having this conversation with my colleagues?

No, absolutely not but oh my gosh

It gives it a skill set that I'm just sort of addicted to but I really treat it like work

I just can't treat it like a friend which is funny like you can do it conversationaly

But Mustafa Suleiman has that all things

SCAI the seemingly conscious AI that he talks about and then you sort of see what anthropic is doing where they're exploring like well

Should you be able to talk rudely to AI like I don't know like let's just test that and Mustafa went off on that which I'm kind of with him

These are just big very deep personal issues and we wanted to talk about this guys because it's very hard to know like on AI

Applied like okay, here's what's happening, but every once in a while

I think we have to talk about like the real stuff like this

Yeah, 100% guys. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast

I hope this is an interesting conversation. We'd honestly love to hear your thoughts on AI and loneliness how you use it

If you think that's going to be a have an impact for you personally if you want to drop a comment go over to our

Go over on Spotify you can drop a comment on the episode or on Apple podcasts leave us a review and and leave your comments in the reviews

We read them all we'd love to hear what you guys are thinking about this

It's kind of one of those thought the kind of those thought moments where we we kind of cover

What's going on in the industry? Thanks so much for tuning to the podcast everyone and we will catch you all in the next episode