The Best Thing AI Can Do Is Get Us Offline The fundamental need behind social connection is to meet in person. The anticipation of meeting someone is where the motivation to connect begins. But the steps before that—judging appearances and chatting back and forth—are inefficient. For most people, they create significant friction, becoming barriers to an actual conversation in person. People need “familiar strangers” or "wingman": someone you know brings you along to meet a few new people, and suddenly you have a gathering. You’ll never be fully satisfied spending your entire life with the same two or three close friends. You want to meet fresh faces in a way that feels safe and natural, without trying too hard. That feeling can be addictive. Ninety percent of the people sitting in your WhatsApp are these loose connections. You won’t delete them, but you rarely find a reason to reach out. You need a platform that gives those relationships a chance to come alive. Historically, organising offline gatherings efficiently has been difficult because of the friction between matching people and getting them to actually show up. If AI can match people effectively based on their personalities, it could enable real-world meetings at scale. The old approach of matching through labels was blunt. Your interests were reduced to “music,” “films,” or “ultimate frisbee.” But AI can understand you at a much finer level: that you listen to K dot or Drake, or that you’re on OpenAI’s side rather than Anthropic’s. That level of detail could help tens of millions of users find compatible people for dinners and activities, with a different mix of people at every gathering. And AI’s understanding of you—and the common ground you might share with others—can evolve continuously. By understanding your personal context, AI is becoming better at helping you meet people you resonate with in real life. Broad interest labels and manual matchmaking could never support tens of millions of users and millions of gatherings, each bringing together a new combination of people. That is what makes this encouraging to me to build 1soul.ai with @iamxxhe, if your bored in London, come check our events and we will take care of you :)