Nick Smart

Elon Musk just told a story that should terrify every AI company on Earth. His son Saxon is autistic. Saxon couldn’t understand why the family went to restaurants. You can get the same food delivered. You can call your friends over. You can eat better at home for half the price. So why go? Musk: “He had an epiphany and said, ‘Oh, the reason people go to restaurants is to hang out with strangers.’” A kid who takes the world literally just decoded something the rest of us never thought to question. We like being around people we’ll never know. Look at what we already built. Delivery apps so you never wait in line. Remote work so you never share an office. Self-checkout so you never talk to a cashier. Every innovation of the last 20 years was a bet against human proximity. Every one paid off. Until it didn’t. Loneliness is now a public health emergency. Depression has doubled since the smartphone. The average American has fewer close friends than any generation in history. We didn’t remove friction. We removed the thing friction was hiding. Now look at what’s coming. AI agents that handle your emails. AI companions that replace your conversations. AI assistants that make every human interaction optional. Same playbook. Same bet. Except this time we’re not engineering out strangers. We’re engineering out humans entirely. The coffee shop where nobody knows your name. The subway where no one speaks. The restaurant where you’ll never see that couple again. Those aren’t failed connections. They’re the background radiation of belonging. We don’t just need people who know us. We need to exist in rooms full of people who don’t. That’s what a kid understood at a dinner table that billion-dollar companies still can’t grasp in a boardroom. We spent 20 years building a world you never have to show up to. AI is about to finish the job. And nothing it builds will ever replicate sitting in a room full of strangers and not feeling alone.