The AI to worry about isn't robots. It's the feed.

When people ask me what worries me about AI, they expect me to say robots. Machines taking over, something out of a movie.

That's not it. The AI that worries me is already in your pocket. It's the feed.

The quiet kind of AI

The feed doesn't look like AI. It doesn't talk to you. It doesn't have a face. It just shows you the next thing. And the next. And the next.

But behind every scroll is a system paying very close attention to what you do. What you stop on. What you watch twice. What makes you comment. What makes you upset enough to share.

It learns you. Then it gives you more of whatever kept you there.

That's behavioral data. What you do, not only what you say. And in a feed, the way I see it, it's pointed at one main goal: keeping you on the screen as long as possible, because your time there is worth something to someone else.

I know a little about conditioning

Before I was a coach, I was a runner. Four time All American at the University of Oregon. So I know a little about conditioning.

You run the same workout enough times and your body changes. Your lungs change. Your legs change. Your mind changes. You become what you repeat.

That's a beautiful thing when you choose the workout. It's a different thing when someone else chooses it for you and you don't even know you're training.

That's what a feed does. Feed me enough of one kind of story, and I start expecting that story. Feed me enough of one kind of person cast as the villain, and I start seeing that person as the villain everywhere. My world gets smaller, and it feels bigger, because there's always more to scroll.

Over time that builds bubbles. Everyone in their own version of reality, getting more certain and further apart. Then we wonder why it's so hard to talk to each other.

It was happening to me

I'll be honest. I didn't spot this from the outside. I noticed it in myself.

I'd catch myself reacting to people I'd never met. Getting heated about things that had nothing to do with my actual life. Feeling sure about stuff I'd only ever seen one side of. And when I looked closer, I realized I hadn't really chosen a lot of what I was thinking about that week. It had been chosen for me, one post at a time.

That's not a comfortable thing to admit. I'm an executive coach. Human behavior is my work. And I still got pulled in.

That's the part that bothers me most. The feed doesn't care how smart you are or how much you know about it. It just needs you to keep reacting.

The answer is older than any app

I don't think the fix is a better app. I think it's simpler than that.

Go outside. Literally. Put the phone in your pocket and walk somewhere with no plan.

Get other perspectives on purpose. Talk with someone who sees the world differently than you do. Not in a comment section. Face to face, where you can see they're a person and not a headline.

Find real community. A place where people know your name, notice when you're gone, and show up for each other in ways that have nothing to do with going viral.

I pulled way back from daily social media. Not perfectly. But enough to feel the difference. I'm listening to people again, instead of listening to a version of them that was served to me.

Underneath all of this, I think a lot of us are lonelier than we admit. The feed is very good at filling that space. It's just not very good at filling it with anything real.

The twist: we use behavioral data too

Now here's the part I have to be straight with you about.

At TNRM, we use behavioral data. It sits at the heart of the community platforms we build. So if I'm going to stand here and worry about feeds, I owe you a clear line.

Here it is.

A feed uses your behavior to keep you scrolling, for someone else's benefit.

A community platform uses your behavior, with your consent, to help a real person reach out to you.

Same ingredient. Opposite direction.

A feed asks, "What will keep this person here longer?"

A community asks, "Who here needs someone right now?"

That line has to live in how the thing is built, not just in what we say about it. So on the platforms we build, behavioral features stay off until a member opts in. Members are told what's noticed and why. Only the owner sees the insights. It's never sold, and it's never used to train anyone's AI. And the client owns the platform, the code and the data.

What we pay attention to is the moment someone starts to drift. The member who stopped showing up. The one who went quiet after a hard week. When that happens, the platform doesn't push more content at them to pull them back in. It tells the owner, so a real person can reach out and say, "Hey, I noticed. You good?"

For me, success isn't more time on a screen. If a member logs in, gets what they need, and gets back to their life, that's a win.

That's the difference between being conditioned and being cared for.

What I'm asking

I'm not asking you to delete your apps. Feeds aren't evil, and the people who build them aren't villains. A feed is very good at what it was built to do. I just think we should be honest about what that is, and notice when it's shaping us.

So here's my ask. Notice what's training you. Get outside. Sit down with someone who disagrees with you and really listen. Join a community where people would notice if you disappeared, and be the person who notices when someone else does.

That's the kind of technology I want to build. The kind that sends you back toward people, not further away from them.

If you're building a community and you want it to bring people closer instead of keeping them scrolling, I'd love to talk with you.