Alison Pugh

And I do think that some of the kind of populist rage, et cetera, is stemming from people feeling unseen.

And so our democracy, our kind of social fragmentation

is reliant on whether or not people feel unseen or seen.

It's, I think, a vitally important kind of practice that underlies not just individual well-being, but social well-being.

So we go to technology at our peril, I think.

Yeah, people, it does feel like many early adopters are just running to embrace a technological replacement.

And I worry about that.

But while doing my research, I actually think there's other things to worry about that are equally problematic.

One is the idea that rich people will get artisanal connective labor from a human being and poor people will be the ones getting theirs from a bot.

And I think that's...

certainly implicated when people say, oh, it's better than nothing.

And I'm like, well, would you choose it for yourself?

So if the answer's no, then it's not better than nothing.

It's not something we should subscribe to as a society.

So that's one future that I see that is practically a present.

And then the other thing is this kind of triage model where the simple transactions, the simple interactions become automated.

And we already see that with like call centers and stuff like that.

When you finally get a human, it's after you've been shouting agent or whatever at your phone for some time.

Like the complex goes bumped, gets bumped to a human being.

And doctors talk to me about how they think that that's a potential.