AI for Connection: Building Community in a Digital Age

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So much of our technology promises us freedom from friction. One click, instant results, fewer awkward conversations with strangers. But what if friction—the messy, human kind—isn’t the problem to be solved, but the very thing that makes life worth living?

In this episode, Sophie Tidman talks with Rob Chapman, co-founder of Neya, a young AI company with a countercultural aim: not to make us faster or leaner, but to help us belong. Together they explore what happens when we resist the cult of efficiency and instead design tools that deepen trust and weave people back into each other’s lives.

It’s a conversation about community, leadership, and the strange paradox that in trying to make everything smoother, we risk sanding away the very rough edges that give our connections—and our organizations—their meaning.

If you'd like a reading list(!) here are the books we refer to in the podcast:

1. The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
2. The Age of Heretics: Heroes, Outlaws, and the Forerunners of Corporate Change by Art Kleiner
3. Uncharted: How to Map the Future by Margaret Heffernan
4. Machines of Loving Grace by Dario Amodei

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