A Human Connection

With the rapid rise of Artificial Intelligence - AI - we’ve been asked a number of times if Someone To Tell It To would consider using AI to “listen” to people or to form the messages about listening that we put out into the public sphere. 

Our answer to that question has consistently been “No”. 

It’s not that we are against technology, nor is it that we think technology is inherently bad. We absolutely value and appreciate the technological advances that can enhance the work we do. It can enable us to reach more and more people with our work and our messages about the vital, transformative power of listening to form deeper and stronger human connections. 

In fact, we use as much technology as we possibly can to reach people and to listen to them, and to train and educate them in what good listening can do. We use email, social media platforms, texting, the phone, video conferencing, What’s App, and other platforms to connect with others, based on their preferences for engaging with us.

We want to embrace every positive means possible to give others the opportunity to be noticed and heard, and to be trained to listen better. AI can certainly help to provide information, suggestions, and assist us in our work. We want to embrace the best parts of it because it’s here and isn’t going away. Yet, we also know that real live human beings cannot be replaced in fulfilling our mission. 

Providing and promoting human connection is what Someone To Tell It To is all about. Listening and teaching about listening is how we enhance the connections. We’ll use whatever positive means necessary and available to meet our objectives.

But there is one aspect of AI, in particular, that can be difficult to find, especially when responding to people in distress, in grief, or who are lonely and feeling disconnected and isolated. 

It is heart.

Heart is the strongest gift that humans possess among all other forms of life.

There is little doubt that humans’ social discourse over the last several decades, and more, has demonstrably deteriorated. The tone of our larger cultural communications is often more mean, more angry, more vengeful, more pessimistic, and more negative.

There is less optimism, less empathy, less kindness, less positivity, and less grace for one another. 

There is less love demonstrated and expressed.

The human spirit and heart are capable of caring, recognizing another person’s feelings, and in turn feeling empathy and compassion for those feelings. It’s a profound and awesome gift we have to do this - and to do it masterfully well. 

To pick up on the nuances, on body language, on the energy someone projects, on expressions, and on the tone of someone’s speech. Those nuances, when we recognize them, can be a magic superpower in our relationships. 

But AI cannot do that very well, if at all. AI is not human and cannot replicate real human emotions and feelings. And it’s those human feelings that we humans share, that makes the difference between good listening and listening that falls short of truly connecting well with one another. It is the human capacity to notice the deeper meanings of what another person needs or is expressing that is the connective tissue that bonds us as human beings. 

AI may be able to pick up on a great number of facts. But it is not capable - at least not yet, if ever - of picking up on the feelings and intangible concerns and needs between individuals. Listening to truly connect and to better understand requires more than just the facts. It takes not only the ears, but also the eyes, the spirit, the soul, the mind, and the heart to connect in the most meaningful ways. 

We believe that a real-live human being must be involved for a listening interaction to become a true listening connection. Human beings can connect through technology, if we are genuine and our spirits are empathetic. However, AI cannot do that. It can respond in some helpful\, generalized ways. But it cannot respond in the ways that touch a heart, lift a spirit, or recognize a deeper, more profound need, within another’s life.

We never want to lose that human response in the work of human connection through listening that we offer.