In the 1400s, Johaness Gutenberg invented the printing press in Germany. 

Despite my love of hard-copy books and persistent habit of asking for handheld menus while my friends scan barcodes at restaurants, Gutenberg’s contemporaries did not react to his innovation with the same affection, Rather, the world erupted into chaos. 

Scribes chased printing presses out of town, fearing for their jobs and livelihoods. Knowledge that had once been tightly controlled by elites suddenly became accessible to the masses (once someone taught them to read). Ideas could spread without centralized authority, destabilizing institutional power structures almost overnight.

The history of fear, backlash, and apocalyptic prediction in the face of new technology, feels uncomfortably familiar.

Centuries later, people are reacting to AI in the same way. In the past two years, generative AI has moved from novelty to broad experimentation across knowledge-work tasks. Potentially even the technology that would undo social trust, creativity, and purpose. Its existence could finally end our humble, human experiment. 

And yet, even I, an unwavering advocate for in-person connection, know that AI will be a part of tomorrow’s society. AI is not a passing trend. It is a relentless, unavoidable reality of the future. It is already being integrated into workplace tools, procurement plans, and productivity stacks.

The real question is not whether AI will exist in our workplaces and community infrastructure, but how we will choose to use it, and what foundational skills humans must first have to use it effectively. 

Like the printing press, AI can either deepen human connection or erode it. The difference lies in whether people have developed human intelligence skills required to use it well. Because after all, you can’t deploy artificial intelligence without human intelligence to guide it. 

AI can reduce friction and enhance efficiency for some communication and coordination tasks, but it does not replicate the incentives and social cues that shape trust in teams. In fact, if we are serious about addressing the social and financial crises of disconnection, burnout, loneliness, and cultural erosion in our workplaces and communities, a hybrid in-person & digital approach is not optional; it’s imperative. 

For example, The Magnet Collective partners with organizations to solve their $2 billion problem and prepare them to retain who will soon be 30% of their workforce. A company’s early-career professionals build communication, collaboration, and decision-making skills by leading a real capstone project for their tenured colleagues. Self-understanding and awareness, what Manhattan University Dean of Engineering, Kathryn Jablokow, calls an “AI-irreplaceable human skill,” is core to the curriculum.

Individual employees improve leadership & interpersonal skills necessary for an ever-evolving workplace, organizations can effectively succession plan, and tenured colleagues see early-career employees in a new light, one earned through responsibility, coordination, and implementation. Credibility is built through something real and tangible: an experience led by early-career employees for their more tenured peers.

Then, AI tools extend that work beyond the room; tools like Tuffy that reinforce reflective practice, expand access, and allow skill development to continue over time, at scale. They aren’t leveraged instead of human intelligence, but in service of it.

A 2025 World Economic Forum white paper highlights that employers continue to prioritize skills like analytical thinking, creativity, resilience, and leadership, while also noting uncertainty about which of these skills genAI will meaningfully improve. This supports a cautious approach: assume some skills will not be ‘automated away’ in how people actually work together.

AI can support some interpersonal skills and will serve as a facilitator for better communication, but it can’t replace human sense & intelligence. Not yet. 

In Eliezer Yudkowisky & Nate Soares forewarning book, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, they state it plainly: 

“Intelligence is about two fundamental types of work: the work of predicting the world, and the work of steering it.”

Steering only works if humans choose to act. Intelligence has no power on its own. 

It matters only when it changes behavior.

AI should not replace the human discomfort of interpersonal capacity-building; it should scale the skills people practice together first. Trust, decision-making, and collaboration must be learned locally, relationally, and in person, through real conversation, shared responsibility, and imperfect attempts at working together. Technology leverages efficiency and effectiveness after that in-person work, not in place-of. 

By the mid-18th century, after public debate, generational turnover, and hard-earned institutional norm-setting, the printing press became one of the greatest equalizers in human history. Legal frameworks and cultural expectations emerged, not to suppress it, but to integrate it responsibly. Literacy expanded. Accountability increased. Public discourse transformed. 

But we cannot wait centuries to adapt this time. Unlike past transitions, AI adoption is happening on organizational timescales, which makes measurement and governance decisions more time-sensitive.”

As The AI Collective Co-Founder and Executive Director, Chappy Asel, aptly puts it, “Trust isn’t restored through intention—it’s earned through participation.” 

Just as with the printing press, ideas alone are not enough. We must flex our human intelligence muscles before we ask technology to carry the weight of what makes us uncomfortable. 

The near-term outcomes will depend on human strategic implementation: what workflows are automated, what gets measured, and who is accountable when outputs are wrong. Not only within workplaces, but how we regulate the bad, solve for the destruction, and recognize its human-informed pitfalls. 

AI does not absolve us of responsibility. Just because AI could replace all of our human-to-human connections, as prophesied in this Tony-award-winning Broadway musical, doesn’t mean it should. 

There’s a very daunting fork in the road.

One side avoids discomfort, outsources responsibility, and simulates human connection. The other clings to the past and refuses the innovative tools of the present. 

But there’s a third road, one less traveled. It’s one that respects our biological need for real human connection while leveraging the benefits of the technological era we were born into. 

The future of our workplaces and community infrastructure will not be decided by what AI can do.

But by what we demand humans do first.

Roam is the virtual workspace our team relies on to stay connected across time zones. It makes collaboration feel natural with shared spaces, private rooms, and built-in AI tools.

Roam’s focus on human-centered collaboration is why they’re our Premier Partner, supporting our mission to connect the builders and leaders shaping the future of AI.

The AI Collective is a community of volunteers, made for volunteers. All proceeds directly fund future initiatives that benefit this community.

Thank you to the thousands of volunteers around the world who make this work possible. We truly could not do this without you.