Thank you to everyone who completed the survey from the last newsletter! Your response was so quick it didn’t stay open for long before the stickers ran out! Thanks also to everyone who wanted to submit after that point. I’m sure there will be more chances in the future.

It looks like the book, short videos, courses, and a podcast are the big winners from the survey. I’ve got my work cut out for me. 😅

Some people kindly asked how they can help Compassionate Coding grow. Thank you! No pressure, but here is a genuine answer to that:

• Sharing Compassionate Coding posts, talks, quotes, photos, podcasts, newsletters, etc. with people who might benefit

• Recommending a training at your company [happy to supply a past client list upon request]

• Making introductions to people who may benefit

• Supporting the merch (helps me keep the lights on and give back more freely to the community)

• Putting compassion into practice in your daily life 💙

I hope to continue this work long into the future, but with the fracturing of social media and the withdrawal of people into their dens, I will admit it has become much more challenging to run this small business. I appreciate your help.

Now for the main topic today: protecting our human moments from the encroachment of AI.

Protecting our Humanness from AI

I haven’t talked much about AI in this newsletter for a few different reasons. Although I have educational and professional experience with it, I’ve found the public discourse around it pretty alienating. Like most issues these days, this one has become so polarized.

For example, I saw a post on the social media platform Blue Sky recently that asserted that any use of generative AI is unethical. A bit extreme, no? And on the other side, of course, we have those who think any attempts at regulation are equivalent to literally killing people since we’re holding back the power of AI to save humanity.

If you’ve been following this newsletter for a while, you know I’m not a fan of this kind of extreme black-and-white thinking, regardless of the side.

Also, there are certainly people who have different types of experience with AI than I do, and there’s often this pressure from certain corners online: how dare you talk about this without referencing x, y, z?! It’s enough to scare someone into silence on the issue entirely.

But I don’t believe in living in fear, and I actually believe everyone’s perspective is valuable in its own way, so we’re going there. However, today I don’t want to talk about whether AI will bring about the apocalypse or debate the intellectual property or bias issues. I’d like address something else that’s been on my mind—the little moments where AI has already started to encroach upon our lives and take away bits of our humanity.

No big deal.

I received a Google alert with that AI-generated summary of my recent keynote in Singapore. It was seriously painful to read this. It’s like reading a sterile description of a song instead of listening to it and letting it move you.

Communication is not only about efficiently relaying data. It can be about inspiring, motivating, connecting, reassuring, loving. None of that comes across in this AI summary.

Sure, you may get a rough overview of what was covered, but you could probably guess that from the original abstract. In the actual talk, there were jokes and emotional flourishes and subtle facial expressions—all invisible here.

I couldn’t help but think once again of that David Byrne insight: “Human interaction is often perceived, from an engineer’s mind-set, as complicated, inefficient, noisy, and slow. Part of making something ‘frictionless’ is getting the human part out of the way.”

I believe we must actively oppose this tendency if we are to hold on to our humanity as a society. I often feel so alone among engineers as someone who views the full human experience as sacred and worth protecting… but I do know I’m not the only one.

Here is another AI encroachment from a recent podcast interview planning meeting:

These numbers seem completely arbitrary to me. I do not trust AI to assess any of these very human factors. Not to mention, one of the guys joining kept having technical problems and that could have thrown off all of these.

I understand the intention behind these services, but they evoke a visceral negative reaction in me. We are not meant to measure everything like this! Sometimes we just need to let humans be human.

Anyway, no doubt there are many powerful applications for AI to serve humanity; I support and encourage many of those. However, I sincerely hope we don’t use AI to turn ourselves into efficient worker robots instead of the messy, complicated, confusing, creative, spontaneous, imperfect, emotional humans that we are.

I know we’re in an experimental phase, so we can all do our part by asking in each case: do I really need AI for this? What am I gaining and what am I sacrificing by introducing AI in this situation?

Upcoming public events

• April 24 - Keynote at php[tek], Chicago

• May 20 - 21 - Conference - Malmö, Sweden

• July 21 - 24 - 📣 Just announced! Keynote at CPP North - Toronto, Canada

More to come! ✈️

I’ve also been scheduling my usual private client training events on communication, engagement, emotional intelligence, etc. for tech companies. Feel free to reach out if you’d like to schedule one.

Compassion Around the Web

• Employers are still looking for strong communicators

• The delicate balancing act of caring about social issues while working in corporations

• Staying passionate without burning out (via Center for Compassionate Leadership)

• How ranking content on metrics other than user engagement might lead to more pro-social tech

Talk to you soon!
💙 April

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