In this video, Julia Freeland Fisher, Director of Education at the Clayton Christensen Institute, explores how AI could unintentionally shrink our networks from the outside in. Drawing on research about social capital and the power of weak ties, she warns that while bots may be efficient helpers, replacing human conversations with AI interactions could cost us opportunity, connection, and even happiness.
Transcript
AI is becoming a powerful engine for helping ourselves at work and in life. But does that mean we’re entering a time when self-help starts to disrupt human help? Where we choose to turn to AI instead of reaching out to friends, colleagues, or new connections?
Relying on AI too frequently could help us solve all sorts of short-term problems more efficiently and effectively. But long-term, it risks shrinking the size and scope of our networks. Here’s how that could play out and how to avoid it.
Think of your network as concentric circles. We have some very strong ties who provide care and resources to help us get by. Working outward, we have many more weak ties, acquaintances, and one-off connections whom we interact with far less frequently.
Many people are talking about how AI companions and romantic apps risk disrupting our strong ties, especially among lonely individuals seeking out intimacy. But today, I want to talk about something else: how AI productivity tools could disrupt our networks from the outside in.
While tools like ChatGPT may not immediately replace your closest confidants, they already have a competitive advantage over your weaker ties who you’re less invested in and who are often less invested in you. For example, workers report AI is more present and efficient than many of their colleagues. And a survey found that half of Gen Z users actually prefer turning to ChatGPT rather than their managers for career advice.
This isn’t just happening in the workplace. Patients have reported that bots are more effective, compassionate, and empathetic than experts and doctors. And parents are even leaning on AI for parenting advice.
AI’s competitive advantages over humans are particularly pronounced as compared to our weak ties. While we seek help across a spectrum, from strong ties to casual acquaintances, a well-trained bot can feel more supportive than a distant connection. Put differently, our weak ties are especially susceptible to getting disrupted by AI-powered help.
Unfortunately, swapping a human conversation for AI isn’t trivial, because even our trivial ties are immensely valuable. Research has long shown that you’re much more likely to get a job through your weak tie networks than your strong ties. Our weak ties are more plentiful and diverse, offering us more new information and opportunities than our strong ties can.
In other words, if you want to have job options and opportunities, it pays to invest in a large and diverse weak tie network. Now, consider if people, especially younger generations, start turning to AI rather than humans to explore careers or seek out help and advice on the job. The outer rings of their networks could shrink or not get built in the first place — in turn shrinking their options in the labor market, where an estimated half of jobs and internships come through personal connections.
What’s more, this could cost us happiness and satisfaction, which are driven by interactions with strangers, not just close friends. Given the strength of weak ties, if bots become our go-to supports for on-demand help, are we sacrificing more than we realize?
We could find ourselves building a better work product, but a smaller network. A better approach to parenting, but a smaller village. We could be getting more advice, but ending up with fewer people invested in our long-term success. None of this will happen because AI is bad, but because there are hidden costs that users aren’t considering when they trade connection for convenience.
Now, the good news is that this doesn’t have to be zero-sum, and it’s far from inevitable. But that requires discipline and intentionality in the results we’re seeking when we integrate AI into our lives.
If we’re using AI to solve short-term individual problems, we should also be using it to make long-term investments in our relationships. Let’s use it to strengthen team communication and start to expand cross-team collaboration in new ways. Let’s use it to power collaborative learning and to expand students’ access to real-world experiences and feedback. And let’s use it to seek out new connections with people who share our interests and our goals.
That way AI won’t just scale self-help. It will scale human connection. It won’t just help us succeed more alone, but accomplish far more together.
