All In on Face-To-Face

From Pinterest: "Some people make your laugh a little louder, your smile a little brighter, and your life a little better."

When we have enjoyed extended visits with friends, I always come away thankful that we were able to spend time together. When we come together with a group that clicks, the conversations flow; the stories appear, some rehashed, some new; and the laughs go on and on. Nothing can replace the belly laughing Face-to-Face human interactions of friends getting together. Running jokes. Soft jabs. Recounted memories. Shared experiences. Laughing so hard your belly hurts. Rubbing your sore face muscles which have been smiling for hours on end. Finding that comfortable cadence that lets you step right in without preamble or warm up. You ‘get’ each other and you relish the times that you are able to hang out together.

I hope you have friends like that. Or family. Or people who will always be there for you, and you know how to have a damn good time with them.

As we finished a recent weekend of fun with dear friends, for some reason, I started thinking about the hot topic of Artificial Intelligence in our world today. I was considering how people are starting to let AI services prepare written reports and documents. How people are letting AI draft contracts and solve complex problems. How people are letting AI do research and make predictions. How people are letting AI seep into many different areas of our lives. In light of this, I identified two areas of life where I hope we will keep AI at bay.

I want to leave AI out of the world of friendships and social experiences. Although there are some reports of people getting sucked into parasocial relationships with computer companions, I think, for the most part, we can understand the difference between an AI-generated interaction and a human interaction. Although it’s getting harder to tell the difference. Some computer-generated dialogue is intuitive, full of nuanced characteristics, which might lead one to believe they are talking to a bona fide person. I guess one can only be sure they are speaking with a human if they are having a conversation Face-to-Face. Or, almost sure. Apparently, there was a very sophisticated humanoid robot demonstrated at the CES convention of consumer electronics in Las Vegas 2025. One that seemed lifelike. I’m not a fan. Just because you CAN create something doesn’t mean you SHOULD. Stop, people. Just stop. Leave our organic friendships and social interactions alone.

I also want to keep AI out of the world of humor. As previously mentioned, the tie between people and humor is strong. Many of our relationships thrive when we share funny experiences and laugh about them. Perhaps humor can be generated by AI, but I don't think it would hold a candle to the smart, witty, relevant jokes and tales that we share day to day with people around us. I don’t think it would be sharp and clever in the way that groups of people can play off one another and extend a joke for as long as possible.

You are familiar with stick figure pictogram signage, no? The signs we see around the world which convey a simple message without use of words? Here are some examples.

There is a CAUTION sign on our boat which always makes me chuckle. It shows a stick figure pictogram of a person falling off the boat, with cautionary words about safety. I laugh when I look at the sign, because I always envision a hilarious scene as the sign was originally being designed. It probably didn’t go down like this, but here’s how I imagine things developing:

A group of people sitting around a room have been tasked with drawing stick figures to replicate a variety of body movements. To nail the shapes, someone in the group stands up to model and mimic the movements so that sketch artists can quickly draw the figure and capture the essence of the gestures. All join forces to decide on the final angles and poses of the human mannequin. Then they produce the final stick figure pictogram. What a hoot to be in the room when the model is mimicking falling off a boat. I can imagine the jovial atmosphere as they say, “Do It Again! Raise your arm higher! Lean further!”

Okay, I doubt very seriously that anything like that actually happened. But, I get a kick out of the CAUTION sign, nonetheless, because I love to think of the give and take that occurs when people are working creatively together. When people are being open, brainstorming, and bouncing ideas off one another. When people are having a good time and laughing. I love to think of the camaraderie that people might share. There is no substitute for the Face-to-Face human interactions and the laughter that would have occurred if people were involved in the birth of that boating CAUTION sign. 

You ain’t getting that with an AI bot.

When I see a particularly funny performance--be it a comedian's bit, SNL skit, Blue Man Group performance, comedy show, or whatever--I always think about the team who might have collaborated with each other as they wrote the script. The jovial group who fired one-liners back and forth, who discovered a theme that could be intertwined throughout the performance, the subtle laughs, the hard-hitting punches, the guffaws. I would so love to be a fly in the wall during a hilarious session like that. 

Then again, when I get together with my friends, perhaps I already am. Only I'm not a fly, and I'm not on the wall. I’m right in the middle of the buzz. The laughs and friendships are solid.  As one friend offered, "I love you, and there's nothing you can do about it!"

So, let’s limit Artificial Intelligence to technical topics, and leave affectionate familiarity and humor to Face-to-Face encounters.  In our quest to develop technology which makes our lives easier, let’s don't forget the humanness of being human.