Your apartment is in a high rise downtown. It’s small, but the location can’t be beat and you find everything you need within a few blocks. With storage at a premium in your unit, you appreciate the community library where all occupants of the building share possessions like books, board games and tools.
“Good morning!” Stuart the community librarian greets you. “Hi Stuart, I’m returning Mary’s drill.” “Great, let me take a quick look to make sure it looks good. All set! Oh, by the way, Bob brought in one of his science books earlier that you will like! Wanna take a look? It’s on the second shelf over there.” Stuart knows about your obsession with space and you spent a while talking to him about the wonders of the universe the other day. “I’ll take it!” you respond, “Tell Bob thanks!”. Connecting members of the community is Stuart’s greatest joy. “I will! By the way, Alice just brought back your board game. She really liked it and she’d love to invite you for a game night. You should reach out!”
This is not how most of us experience life in big cities. Our apartments are full of things we used once and that are now collecting dust. We don’t know our neighbours. We don’t have access to Mary’s drill and Alice does not invite us over to play a game. Living in big cities is synonymous with loneliness and overconsumption.
It’s estimated that 80% of the things Americans own are never used. A third of the country has felt “extreme anxiety” caused by clutter. The numbers paint a bleak picture. It’s even more discouraging that people aged 15–24 have 70% fewer social interactions than people their age did 20 years ago. We have problems. And they are linked. Not knowing the people in your community forces us to buy things instead of borrowing. Not borrowing removes a reason to talk to your neighbours.
What if I told you that Stuart is an AI agent? He tracks inventory, makes sure things are kept in good condition and connects people around their interests. When used correctly, artificial intelligence can be a powerful tool for facilitating true human connection, instead of replacing it. Current applications of AI tend to focus on the individual, the user. What we need is a shift to AI caring about communities so that a user becomes a neighbour, and ultimately a friend. We need to stop asking “What can AI do for me?” and we need to start asking “What can AI do for us?”.
People want to share. We stopped because the overhead is too big. We are too busy. For most communities in apartment buildings, there simply is nobody who can dedicate their time to connecting people and taking care of their possessions. It also takes trust to hand over your possessions, and building it takes time. Finally, with a growing number of things, the logistics just become too complicated.
We have tried to solve these problems. Little libraries where people leave books exist in many places. They help only marginally. Without someone caring about the inventory, they quickly fill up with books that nobody wants. More importantly, they don’t connect people around the shared objects. Picking up a book from a Little Library does not add a social connection to our lives.
Of course we have used technology in our attempts to improve the situation. Facebook groups do a decent job. However, you still need to write posts and hope that someone sees your message and gets back to you in time. This is more social friction than social connection.
When we think of AIs embedded in our neighbourhoods, we might think of robots that clean up the sidewalk. Those will be great, and it will take a while to get there. Stuart as a dedicated steward of his community is possible today. As far as modern technology goes, Stuart is a simple engineering project. Technology is widely blamed for making us more isolated. It doesn’t have to be this way. We need to go from an individual-first to a community-first mindset. Ironically, AI will be a great catalyst for this shift if we let it.
Related project: Stuart — translating this into a working prototype at an MIT hackathon.