In the Age of AI, Trust Will Live in Small Human Circles

A small whiskey tasting (Về Để Đi Distillery) gathering with senior execs in Ho Chi Minh City

Over the past three decades, technology has steadily pushed human interaction online.

Email gradually replaced letters. Messaging replaced phone calls. Social media replaced gatherings. Then Covid accelerated something that had already been quietly happening for years: work itself moved online, and remote offices became normal.

Each wave promised efficiency, scale, and convenience. And in many ways it delivered. Communication became faster, information became easier to access, and entire industries reorganized around the idea that distance no longer mattered.

But something else quietly eroded along the way: the depth of human connection.

Now, as artificial intelligence moves from novelty to infrastructure, we may be approaching an interesting paradox. The more intelligent machines become, the more valuable human presence may become.

Not because technology fails, but because it succeeds so completely that many of the reasons we used to interact with each other may simply disappear.

The disappearance of functional interaction

A large share of the conversations people have today are not particularly meaningful. They are simply transactional.

Customer service calls. Routine meetings with colleagues. Basic professional advice. Administrative communication. Even parts of education.

These interactions exist because information or coordination had to pass through another human being. AI is beginning to remove that requirement.

Research from McKinsey suggests generative AI could automate 60–70 percent of tasks involving language and analysis. Customer service is increasingly handled by AI agents. Coding assistants now generate significant portions of software in many engineering teams.

I saw a simple but telling example recently. My friend Tammy Phan, who previously worked in senior leadership roles at Google Vietnam and Masan, recently launched her venture Blank Space Studio. She built her own website in just a few hours using AI-assisted “vibe coding,” despite having no engineering background. Five years ago that would likely have required hiring a developer. Today it can be done alone in an afternoon.

The world has changed faster than most people realize.

As these systems improve, a large amount of human-to-human interaction will quietly disappear. Not because people want less connection, but because many of the practical reasons we used to talk to each other will simply vanish.

The rising value of presence

When digital communication becomes infinite, physical presence becomes scarce. And scarcity tends to create value.

Luxury brands understand this principle well. Companies like LVMH have built enormous value by carefully crafted artificial scarcity through supply control. A Birkin bag or a limited watch becomes desirable precisely because it is difficult to obtain.

Something similar may happen with human interaction.

We are already seeing early signs of it. Over the past decade the live events industry has grown dramatically. Even though streaming made music universally accessible, demand for concerts has surged. People are not simply paying to hear music. They are paying to experience something together.

The same pattern is appearing in smaller settings as well.

Private dinners. Curated communities. Membership clubs. Founder circles. Executive retreats.

Across cities like London, New York, Singapore, and Dubai, these communities have expanded steadily. Their value is not access to information as information is already abundant.

What they offer instead is proximity.
Proximity to people. Proximity to ideas. And proximity to trust.

When algorithms increasingly mediate our digital lives, the simple act of sitting across the table from someone becomes surprisingly valuable again.

The return of small circles

For most of human history people lived in relatively small communities. Anthropologist Robin Dunbar famously suggested that humans can maintain stable relationships with roughly 150 people.

The internet expanded our networks far beyond that scale. Today many of us have hundreds or even thousands of online connections.

But scale does not necessarily produce depth.

As AI expands digital communication even further, people may begin gravitating back toward smaller circles. Not massive networks, but trusted groups, people whose judgment matters and whose presence cannot easily be replaced by a machine.

This is not nostalgia. It may simply be a response to technological abundance.

A quiet divide

The future will probably not move in one single direction.

As AI companions, tutors, and conversational systems improve, some people may become increasingly comfortable relying on artificial relationships. AI therapists already exist. AI tutors are improving quickly. AI companions are becoming surprisingly responsive.

For some individuals these systems may even feel easier than human relationships. They do not judge. They rarely disagree. They are always available.

Over time this may create a subtle divide. One group of people will spend more of their time interacting with machines, while another will deliberately invest more energy in human networks.

And in the long run, the latter may hold greater influence.

Because economic and social power still flows through trust. And trust remains stubbornly human.

The quiet rebalancing

For decades technology pushed society toward scale. More reach. More followers. More connections.

Artificial intelligence may push the pendulum slightly back toward depth.

When machines can generate unlimited content, analysis, and conversation, what becomes rare is not intelligence but authenticity. Not communication, but presence.

As I get older, I notice something interesting in my own life. My circle of friends has gradually become smaller, but the relationships themselves have become deeper. Instead of large crowds, I increasingly value meaningful dinners, long coffee conversations, and the occasional trip abroad with a small group of people I genuinely enjoy spending time with.

Maybe that is simply part of getting older. Or maybe it reflects something broader happening around us.

If artificial intelligence continues to expand the way many people expect, we may discover something slightly ironic.

The more capable machines become, the more valuable simple human presence may turn out to be.