- Throughout life, we quietly crave to be deeply understood. Yet this kind of understanding usually comes slowly, if at all. Social norms limit how quickly and fully we reveal our true selves.
- Friendship and romance follow a subtle funnel: initial sparks, surface-level chats, gradually deepening trust, eventual true intimacy—slow, often incomplete, occasionally miraculous.
How Connection Usually Works, Friendship as a Funnel
- Initial interactions are performances—brief auditions for deeper connection.
- Real understanding takes months or even years. (Example: dating someone deeply often takes six months before the true person appears.)
- Friendships like Michelle’s—initial friction, proximity enabling slow trust-building—highlight that deep connection often relies heavily on convenience or chance.
AI as New Interface into the Soul
- AI is radically changing this dynamic by offering a new, richer, higher-bandwidth “interface” for understanding each other.
- Voice, emotion, natural conversation are suddenly accessible to computers. Typing a detailed bio into a dating app is awkward; rambling comfortably for 30 minutes into a voice assistant feels natural, authentic, and profoundly revealing.
- AI turns casual conversations into profound personal insights. Your hidden personality traits and interests—ones you’d never list explicitly—surface naturally.
How AI Makes Deep Compatibility Scalable
- Historically, deep connections emerged slowly through prolonged exposure—expensive in terms of time and opportunity cost.
- Now, AI allows massive-scale understanding and matching. Niche identities and hyper-specific interests become easily searchable and discoverable.
- Imagine effortlessly matching with people who exactly share your intricate quirks—like finding people who read the same obscure blog, share identical obscure hobbies, or hold identical nuanced perspectives.
Community and Individuality Reimagined
- Current society incentivizes conformity because finding like-minded souls is historically expensive. It is lonely. And it is not societally stable to have a ton of weird people that feel alone.
- But what if the cost of deep understanding approaches zero? We might see radically more individualistic, authentic, and diverse expressions of identity flourish.
- Imagine the math genius in Idaho who loves anime and CS:GO suddenly finding global community instantly, or the Tarantino film buff in India discovering fellow enthusiasts who also share niche passions. AI could unlock unprecedented human flourishing and belonging.
We Should Build AI to Connect Souls
- AI is dangerous, disruptive, and potentially isolating. Yet its most powerful capability is this new, profoundly human one: bridging the invisible gap between souls.
- We’re entering an era where being fully, truly yourself might become not just possible, but easy. AI, in its best form, isn’t about shallow dopamine hits or maximizing profit—it’s about effortlessly reaching into the unseen heart of another.
- That’s why I’m building tools like Bagel Bot—because deep human connection deserves the richest, most generous interfaces we can create.