Krawczak

In the movie, Erin Brockovich, which is based on a true story, Erin was working as a legal clerk when she discovered that Pacific Gas & Electric had contaminated the community’s groundwater with a carcinogenic chemical they were using in their cooling towers. Initially it was difficult for the law firm to get community members to sign up to the direct-action lawsuit, but Erin gets to know the people in the community on a personal level, spending hours with them to learn their stories and earn their trust. The case resulted in a $333 million settlement in 1996, which is one of the largest direct-action lawsuits in United States history.

I was reminded of the Erin Brockovich story recently when I watched another movie, Worth. This movie is based on a memoir, What is Life Worth? by Kenneth Feinberg, who was the appointed Special Master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund at the 2001 attacks. Feinberg was responsible for determining how much money victims and their families would receive from the fund. He very quickly learned that putting a dollar value on lives lost or negatively impacted was not as easy as a simple formula. It wasn’t until he started seeing people as more than numbers in a formula that he started having success getting people to sign the paperwork with their proposed dollar amounts outlined.

It was shortly after I watched Worth that I was interacting with a business leader who shared his perspective on employee training. There was a topic that employees were eager to learn more about, but his response was that since AI was widely available, they could use it to learn on their own. While I understand wanting a team of people who will dig in and learn on their own, I also understand that not everyone was taught how to do that and might need a little help to get there.

These three examples led me to think that perhaps we, as a society, are starting to forget that people still matter, even in an age of AI and other technologies. People are not, and never will be, technology.

Developing personal relationships was key to Erin Brockovich’s (and the attorney she worked for) success in the lawsuit. Just as getting to know people as humans and not just numbers was key to Kenneth Feinberg’s success in his work.

It doesn’t matter what happens with technology, people are born wired to desire human connection. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs still holds true – we want to feel like we belong and that we are valuable and valued. It doesn’t matter how much AI advances or how much work robots can do; people still matter and are created as unique individuals. They still have emotions, can provide value, and have the capability for independent thought. People will always be more than a number. Thus, they should be treated as such.

People who work remotely are human. Your neighbors are humans. The voice on the other end of a phone call is human (when it’s not a robot). The homeless man we stumbled across on a hike one afternoon is human. People in jail are human. The people you pass on the sidewalk as you bike or take a walk are human. Employees who want to learn more but don’t know where to start are human. The child struggling in math is human, just as is the child who excels in it.

They all matter and they all deserve respect, patience, and compassion. Just because information is becoming increasingly accessible, and we can do more while seeing people face to face less, does not change the fact that humans are complex beings who all come from different backgrounds and have unique needs.

It is a concern when we start to confuse humanity and technology. We must continue to see people as the unique and special creations they are, and we must see technology as a tool they can utilize and not as a replacement for humanity. People matter. Relationships matter. The less we believe that the more divided and resentful we will continue to become. Technology won’t fix that. We can only fix that through coming back together as people who care about one another and understand everyone is a unique being.