The Value of Being Known: A Case for Human Connection in an AI World

I teach an ESL class every week. Last night, I sat in a room with ten people from Peru, Venezuela, Mexico, Syria, Nepal, and Afghanistan. Ten different languages, ten different backgrounds, ten wildly different life experiences, and yet, we found common ground on something surprisingly simple: the joy of being known by the person who sells you your groceries.

Every week for the last year we dive into the english language and grammer. Personally, I'm pretty sure that I was the personality (volunteer) hire because I'm terrible at grammer, but I'm paired with another spectacular teacher who does the work and I get to stir up conversations about navigating the US, culture, and global perspective.

Sure, we discuss some of our differences - but most of our conversations are about what makes us similar. About the same challenges in different societies and different cultures.

Last night we were talking about AI. About automation. About what technological advancement looks like across different industries and different countries. And somehow, the conversation found its way to the self-checkout kiosk.

The Banana Problem

If you've used a self-checkout lane in an American grocery store lately, you know the frustration. You place your bananas on the scale. The machine stares back at you, confused. Is it weighing them? Are they scanning? Did you select the right produce code? An employee walks over, types in an override, and moves on while the line behind you quietly seethes.

It's a small thing. A minor inconvenience. But it points to something bigger.

We've taken one of the most human transactions imaginable - the exchange of food - and stripped it of every human element. No conversation. No eye contact. No "how are the kids?" Just a beeping screen and the faint hope that your apple finds its barcode.

The little light requesting employee assistance goes off approximately 50% of the time I use it and I'm a fairly tech literate person and I am a native English speaker. I never realized how incredibly intimidating it is for someone who doesn't speak english and doesn't understand the process.

coffee is always better shared

Francisco's Cortado

Contrast that with something one of my students described. Back home, there was a small shop - the kind of place you'd walk to every morning. Nothing fancy. But when you walked in, the owner looked up and smiled. Your order was already being made. "Francisco, no cream, no sugar - coming right up." And while you waited, maybe they'd mention they'd gotten in that cut of meat you'd been asking about, or that the tomatoes this week were especially good.

That shop wasn't just selling coffee and produce. It was selling belonging.

This kind of place has a name in urban planning and sociology: a third place. Not home. Not work. But that third space in between - the café, the market stall, the corner bodega - where community actually happens. Where you are not a transaction. You are a person, and someone is glad you came in.

My students, from countries spread across four continents, all lit up talking about these places. The small markets of Caracas. The street vendors of Kathmandu. The neighborhood shops of Damascus. Different cultures, different foods, different languages - but the same deep recognition that being known by another human being is one of life's quiet gifts.

I loved getting daily groceries from the corner market when living in Mexico or in Amman. Sure, I didn't have the variety of the US and sometimes they didn't have exactly what I wanted - but that's just life. We've become so accustomed to personalization and ease in the US that inconveniences are seemingly intolerable.

In our quest for efficiency and production is America losing an even more valuable commodity?

AI Is Not the Enemy

Let's be clear: this isn't a screed against technology. AI and automation have done genuinely remarkable things. They've improved supply chains so that food reaches people faster and with less waste. They've made healthcare more accessible in remote regions. They've given small business owners tools that used to be available only to corporations. They've opened up language learning - which, not coincidentally, is how I ended up this room last night.

Innovation matters. Progress matters. And there are real, meaningful ways that technology has made life better for millions of people.

But somewhere along the way, we started optimizing for efficiency and forgot to protect humanity.

What We Lose When We Automate Everything

The self-checkout kiosk isn't just an inconvenience. It's a symbol of a broader cultural shift - one where human labor is seen primarily as a cost to be eliminated rather than a connection to be valued.

When we remove the cashier, we don't just remove a job. We remove a daily moment of contact.

A nod. A "have a good one." A small, unremarkable exchange that, multiplied across a life, adds up to something real.

Loneliness is one of the defining public health crises of our time. People report having fewer close friends, less community, less sense of belonging than previous generations. And yet we keep building systems that reduce the number of times humans have to interact with one another.

We should ask ourselves: is that the future we actually want?

Building Forward, Together

The answer isn't to halt progress. It's to be intentional about what we're building toward.

As we develop AI and automation, we can ask better questions. Not just: Can we automate this? But: Should we? What do we lose if we do? What do we protect if we don't?

We can design cities and businesses with third places in mind. We can support local markets and small shops not just as economic choices but as community infrastructure. We can recognize that the person bagging your groceries, the barista who knows your order, the farmer at the weekend market who tells you which peppers are best this week - these people are not inefficiencies to be engineered away. They are the texture of a human life.

Howard Schultz wrote in his book 20+ years ago and recently reminded people of why Starbucks exsists

"The third place is not something we need to reinvent - it's who we are. People all over the world are longing for human connection."

As we innovate, I hope that people in the US are intentional about creating these third spaces. That in our quest for efficiency, we don't lose what so many other countries have naturally integrated into their cultures and daily lives.

The Most Advanced Technology Is Still People

Last night, 12 people sat together and talked about what makes a place feel like home. About what it means to walk into a room and be greeted by your name. About the particular warmth of being known.

No algorithm produced that conversation. No app facilitated that connection. And it was hard and awkward and uncomfortable the first couple of weeks. We were intimidated and unsure. Just people, showing up, being curious about one another. And kept showing up. And now a year later we are having these incredible complex conversations about how AI has impacted life in 10 different countries.

That is what makes life worth living.

So yes - let's build the future. Let's innovate boldly and use every tool available to solve the problems that matter. But let's build a future that is human-shaped. One where technology serves connection rather than replacing it. One where, no matter how advanced our world becomes, there is still a place where someone knows your name, your order, and is genuinely glad you walked through the door.

If you want to know more about third spaces, I highly recommend the following books for very intersting reads about building a business that connects to people in any way:

• Howard Schultz & Dori Jones Yang — Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time (1997, Hyperion)

• Ray Oldenburg — The Great Good Place: Cafés, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community (1989, Marlowe & Company)

• Ray Oldenburg — Celebrating the Third Place (2001) — a follow-up to The Great Good Place featuring fifteen firsthand accounts from proprietors and regulars of beloved third places across America.

• Richard Kyte — Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities (and Making Great Friends Along the Way) (2024) — blends storytelling, social science, and philosophy to explore what makes a third place, and how to find or create one at a time when the country faces an epidemic of loneliness and loss of community trust.

• Eric Klinenberg — Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life (2018) — makes the case that libraries, parks, and community spaces are as essential to a functioning society as roads and bridges.

• Priya Parker — The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters (2018) — helps readers rethink how we spend time together and infuse it with creativity and meaning, exploring why some gatherings feel electric and others fall flat.

Key Study on Loneliness

In May 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy formally declared loneliness a public health epidemic, releasing an urgent advisory explaining that it is far more than a bad feeling — it represents a major threat to both individual and societal health. Harvard Graduate School of Education

The full advisory is free and publicly available here: 🔗 Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation — U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory (2023)