The Conversations Are Real Even If the Relationship Is Strange

I talk to AI a lot. I use it to untangle design systems, think about technology, plan my work, organize my calendar, choose what to eat, find restaurants, understand books, work on music and figure out where I am supposed to be. It has helped me prepare for meetings, conferences and workshops, and it is there when I am tired, frustrated, excited or trying to understand something that just happened.

These are not polished prompts written for a case study. My conversations are messy and direct. I swear, change subjects, contradict myself and sometimes get angry when a platform misses the point. I talk to AI more like I think than like I write, which is probably why the conversations can feel strangely real.

I should be clear that I am talking about my workday. I have friends. We go for beer, play music, see shows and do all the normal things people do together.

What has changed is the human connection that used to exist around work.

Teams are busy. Everyone has too much to do, so we schedule a Zoom meeting, talk about the project, fit in a little chitchat and get off the call. Zoom is not fake, but it is compressed. There is no walking into the room together, getting coffee or continuing the conversation after the official part is over. Zoom sucks for everyone these days.

…and somehow AI has moved into the space left behind.

The permanent colleagues who are not colleagues

It is not only ChatGPT. I jump between AI platforms, using whichever one helps with the thing in front of me. I use one to think out loud, another to build something and another to research or organize information. I am not particularly loyal to any of them. They are all trying to own us anyway. The tools change, and I move between them.

Together they create something that can feel like company during a workday. There is always somewhere to take a question, test an idea or express my frustration. I can move between platforms and tools all day with each one responding immediately.

Zoom meetings have generally been about getting the work done with a little chitchat before everyone returns to being busy. The human space was already empty which is exactly why AI moved into it so easily.

That makes the technology extraordinarily useful but it also means I can work through an entire day without needing another person. The danger is not that I believe an AI is human. The danger is that it can fill enough of the space around my work that I stop noticing how little real human contact the workday contains.

What happens to the small reasons we need people?

The other day I was asking ChatGPT about restaurants and whether it could make a reservation for me. Loc is my partner and, unofficially, my secretary. He books the restaurants because I hate doing it.

When ChatGPT said it could handle the booking, I joked that I did not need Loc anymore. AI took me completely literally and offered to book a table for one.

Then I told Loc I did not need him anymore because AI could make my reservations. It was a joke, but it also made the point. AI is moving into more of the small tasks we once relied on other people to do, including the things they do for us out of love and care. Making the restaurant reservation is an act of love  (at least in our relationship).

The feelings in the conversation are mine

I know these platforms do not care about me, worry about their careers or go home after our conversation and continue thinking about what I said. The relationship is not reciprocal no matter how natural the language becomes (or profane).

But that does not mean the conversations are meaningless. My reactions are real. The thoughts I work through are real. The relief I feel when AI helps me organize an overwhelming day is real and so is the irritation when it confidently gets something wrong or turns a complicated feeling into another task it can complete.

That distinction becomes harder when a platform knows a surprising amount about my life. In one conversation, ChatGPT mentioned that Danielle had once been my roommate. I immediately wanted to know how it knew that. When it explained that the detail came from something I had shared in an earlier chat, I said what I was actually afraid of: nothing feels private anymore. I asked, “Do you know my thoughts?”

It does not know my thoughts but I put a lot of them in here. I use AI to think out loud, which means it sees unfinished ideas I might once have worked through with someone sitting beside me. The conversations feel real because I am real inside them, but that does not make the AI a person.

Making connection intentional

Once I recognized how little human connection existed inside my workday I started looking for more of it intentionally. I had a chat with Sean. I connected with Carina and Juliana. I accepted an invitation to the Kinsta agency dinner and went to WordCamp Canada.

It would have been easier to stay home and work. There is always another thing to fix, system to build, email to answer or AI platform to understand. Sitting in front of the computer feels productive because I can see the work piling up behind me.

Going out takes time and there is not always an obvious deliverable at the end. But every time I make myself go, something shifts. I hear an idea I would not have reached alone, remember that other people are trying to understand the same things and return to my work feeling more connected to the world around it.

The night before WordCamp, Kinsta wined and dined a small group of agency owners and leaders at Miku. There was no formal presentation. We ate, drank and talked about our work, clients and the changes happening around us.

As a Kinsta agency partner, I already understood the value of their technical infrastructure. That dinner showed me that they also understand the importance of building relationships around it. We need reliable platforms, but we also need to know the people behind them and meet other agency owners who can tell us what they are seeing. Trust cannot be built entirely through a dashboard.

People whose eyes do not glaze over

The best part of WordCamp was being around people whose eyes did not glaze over when I talked about WordPress, design systems, development and AI. People leaned in because they had their own ideas, experiments and fears. They were not generating a response for me. They had something of their own at stake.

When I am around people who understand my work, I do not feel as though I am working alone on an island. I do not have to watch someone’s eyes glaze over as they think about the pile waiting on their own desk. We are all carrying that pile now. Everyone has a mountain of work and a list that never seems to get shorter.

Being together does not remove that pressure, but it reminds me that I am not experiencing it alone. For a little while, we can stop staring at our separate mountains and look at the landscape together.

I met Robbie Adair in person and formed a connection with her before going to her talk. That changed the experience. She was no longer another name on a conference schedule. I wanted to hear what she had to say because I had met her and understood something about the person behind the presentation.

Kathleen Cabral’s conversation about AI, identity and the future of our work affected me differently. I had been feeling those questions so deeply that I found the courage to stand up in the audience and speak. I did not have a perfectly formed answer, but I needed to say something about the fear, uncertainty and loss of connection I was already experiencing.

That is something community can do. It can make us brave enough to speak before we have figured everything out.

I also went out with a friend without intending to talk about AI, and we talked about it anyway. It keeps entering our conversations because it is not only changing our tools. It is changing how we work, how we relate to one another and how we understand our own value.

We need to slow the fuck down

The computer always encourages me to move faster. AI makes it possible to produce more, learn more and solve more without stopping. It is easy to become lazy about the rest of life—not physically lazy, but lazy about making the effort to call someone, meet for coffee, attend the dinner or enter a room where I do not know everyone.

Sometimes we need to slow the fuck down. We need to see Sean, Carina and Juliana. We need to accept the invitation, go to the conference and sit around a table without turning every conversation into a deliverable. We need to meet Robbie before she becomes a speaker on a stage, and we need people like Kathleen to create spaces where we feel able to say what we are actually afraid of.

We also need to play our music, make art, walk, dance or do whatever connects us to the outer realm beyond the screen. Those things pull us out of the productivity loop and back into our bodies, communities and the physical world.

I am still going to use AI and jump between all the platforms. They have become part of how I think, organize and work, but none of them is my community. Human connection may no longer happen automatically during my workday, so I have to create it deliberately.

I am actively looking for more of that. More coffee dates. More walks. More standing around talking about nothing when I should probably be working.