Thought Bubble 2: Will Gen AI Change How Humans Connect?

Jenna: For this week’s Thought Bubble (TM), I wanted to ask a simple question: Will generative AI change how humans connect?

Dave: Oh man, absolutely! The internet has always, at its core, been about human-to-human connection — from its start as an asynchronous communications network, to the rise of webpages (which enabled communication at scale), to the explosion of social media. Chatbots, automated trolls, deepfakes, and so on have started to change that. But generative AI is really accelerating that change — making the internet more individual and less communal. What do you think?

Jenna: Agreed. I’ve been thinking a lot about how we can take some of the lessons we’ve learned from the advent of the internet, the world wide web, social media, and keep doing the things that are working and change the things that aren’t working. I really do think that we can and should be using these tools to support what we’re doing and to make it easier to connect with other people, but I want to find ways for us to bring these lessons forward. How can we make sure we’ve got the right balance of human connection and use of these tools to amplify our work?

Dave: Right, how we use generative AI is going to lay the groundwork for how everyone in the future uses it — kind of how early security standards put in place by early web creators set crucial precedents to protect users in ways we all benefit from. We want to be those creators, laying a good groundwork for future generations.

Jenna: I agree in theory, but I think you might be a little idealistic here. We're so early in this journey that we don't know what we don't know. With only 56% of US workers reporting that they’re using generative AI tools, we’re still learning how it will be used, and not just at work, but in education, healthcare, banking, even... online dating.

David, you just shared this article with me about how AI is changing online dating and all I can think about is, what happens when you meet in person and the AI isn’t there to help you flirt?

Dave: Haha, yeah, at some point the tool becomes an impediment. Now, I don’t want to overstate things here: social and cultural change is often less dramatic than we imagine. Years ago I wrote about voice assistants, and readers constantly worried that kids were going to become rude and demanding by talking to Alexa or Siri. It’s true that how we learn to talk to people (or virtual assistants, or LLMs) socializes us. But half a decade later, it’s pretty clear that phones and social media have had a much more significant impact on how kids and now young adults exist, socially.

So the social side is one thing, but a more immediately troubling version of the flirting problem is students using ChatGPT to write their school essays. The purpose of those essays isn’t to be good; it’s to facilitate learning for the students. So when students lean on generative AI in that way, they’re actually depriving themselves of real educational value.

Jenna: But just like with the graphing calculators of our youth, we have to help people learn to use the tool. It’s here, and we can’t avoid it at this point, so educating people on how best to use it, where it works, and where it falls down is a way to make people successful. This is why we’re seeing some universities adopt policies allowing the use of generative AI in the classroom, with limitations of course. Obviously, this doesn’t solve the problem of cheating, but I wonder if it gets us closer to a more mainstream use of this tool for the right reasons.

There are positive ways generative AI will help people connect and collaborate, too. We connect with others through storytelling and through empathy. We shared last week about OpenAI’s announcement of Sora, a text-to-video tool. What if generated video enables individuals to share their own stories and experiences through video, people who may not have the means to do so? I am definitely not a video storyteller and I don’t run a video production studio, so while there are still some kinks to be worked out with this technology, it makes me hopeful that I will be able to share my own stories through video.

And if an AI can help with flirting, could it enhance a dating profile, bringing out the best in that person so they do get more matches? Could those who are not graphic designers by trade, generate better images to tell their stories? Will generative AI help businesses automate the mundane or repetitive tasks so they can collaborate with their teams and focus on their core business problem? To me, the real power is the opportunity to collaborate with each other so we can invent new things, solve new problems in new ways, and tell our stories better, not just the time saved with automation or generated content.

Dave: Yeah, honestly, these are all super important questions... but I don’t know that we have time to get into them today! That said, I’d love to hear what readers think about how generative AI is changing how humans connect — or any of the other related topics we’ve touched on here. If you have thoughts, make sure you drop them in the comments below!

Jenna: And speaking of connecting with humans, check out some of these in-person and virtual opportunities to meet people in the AWS community and learn and build together.