Artificial Intelligence Isn’t The Most Important AI (Esther Perel Edition)

We’re worried about AI. How it’s going to take our jobs. How it’s going to be weaponized against us. 

How it’s a way to fake the human part of being human. 

But what if Artificial Intelligence is the least troubling AI? 

Esther Perel told Brene Brown her variation of the term and candidly, I’m much more worried about this: 

Let’s talk about the new AI - Artificial Intimacy. We have 1,000 friends on social, but we don’t have a single person who can feed our cat for us.

The “I” isn’t the problem. 

It’s the A. 

Artificial. 

Intelligence, Intimacy, and I bet we can come up with more. 

To be human requires us to be. 

To be connected, to be communicative, to be ourselves. 

You can try to fake all of that away, but just like the myth of social media making us somehow more sociable, our relationships are (still) the only things that really matter. 

Which means you better have somebody to feed the cats for you. Or walk the dog (thanks Mom and Dad, by the way - say hi to Otis for us). And you’d better have somebody to call for your wins and your losses. 

Which takes work. Vulnerability. Which takes being human with other humans and yeah, it’s hard sometimes, but we’re all we got. 

With or without the computers. 

So instead of Artificial, let’s start plugging Authentic into the same conversations. 

And yes, I’m still mixed on that word. 

But we need conversations like this one between Brown and Perel, because they help remind us that Authentic Intelligence and Authentic Intimacy are the biggest AIs we humans need to be focused on.

ps. a song if not the song for this idea, via De La Soul, and my conversation with Justin Castelli on the topic of authentic creativity: