The question is, who will be on the receiving end of such technology? While the educated are often first adopters of technology, they even know the value of individual attention. One spring day before the pandemic, I visited an experimental class in Silicon Valley, where—like a flood of different schools popping up that sought to “disrupt” regular education—kids used computer programs for personalized lessons in several subjects, from reading to mathematics. There, students learn mainly from apps, but they are not entirely on their own. Since its founding a few years ago, this fee-based school has spent more and more time with adults as the limitations of automated education became clear. The kids now spend the entire morning learning from computer programs like Quill and Tynker, and then move on to brief, small group lessons on specific topics taught by a human teacher. They also have 45-minute one-on-one meetings weekly with “advisers” who track their progress, but also make sure to connect emotionally.
We know that good relationships lead to better outcomes in medicine, counseling, and education. People are made to feel” seen,” and that feeling underlies both their health and well-being as well as valuable social goods like trust and belonging. For instance, one study in the United Kingdom—titled” Is Efficiency Overrated” ?—found that people who talked to their barista derived well-being benefits more than those who breezed right by them. Researchers have discovered that people feel more socially connected when they engage in deeper conversations and make more of their disclosures during interactions.
However, many workers have been overloaded by fiscal austerity and the desire to lower labor costs, who are now tasked with forging interpersonal connections and slamming the amount of time they have to be fully present with students and patients. This has led to what I refer to as a “depersonalization crisis,” a sense of isolation and loneliness that is prevalent. More than half of primary care physicians report feeling stressed out as a result of time pressures and other work conditions, according to US government researchers. As one pediatrician told me:” I don’t invite people to open up because I don’t have time. You know, everyone deserves as much time as they need, and that’s what would really help people to have that time, but it’s not profitable”.
The rise of personal trainers, personal chefs, personal investment counselors, and other personal service workers—in what one economist has dubbed “wealth work” —shows how the affluent are fixing this problem, making in-person service for the rich one of the fastest-growing sets of occupations. But what are the options for the less advantaged?
For some, the answer is AI. Engineers who created artificial assistants or artificial nurses frequently claimed that their technology was “better than nothing,” making it especially useful for low-income people who can’t, for instance, catch the attention of busy nurses in community clinics or who can’t afford therapy. And it’s difficult to disagree when we live in what John Kenneth Galbraith, the economist, referred to as “private affluence and public squalor.”
Some businesses in the socio-emotional AI space are working to address these common issues, but the typical concerns about AI are privacy, bias, or job loss. Hume AI, based in San Jose and New York and valued at$ 219 million, recently developed technology that can sense emotions based on a user’s voice’s tone of voice. It is used in hospitals to monitor patients ‘ mental health and in some new” AI companions.” At the same time, however, Hume has also established a nonprofit called the Hume Initiative, coming up with guidelines to” chart an ethical path for empathic AI”, which focuses on consent, equity, and transparency. However, no one is discussing what occurs when we restrict contact with those who can afford to pay a premium. Technology does not arrive on a blank slate, but intersects with existing inequalities, and in this case it amplifies the stratification of human connection. The wealthy will receive their connective labor from humans in 2025. The rest will receive theirs from a machine.
