In 2019, a supermarket in the Netherlands introduced an unusual checkout lane. Called the "Kletskassa" — loosely, the best lane for those who are not in a hurry — it offered something the nearby self-checkout terminals could not: a cashier who greeted customers and chatted with them.
We live in an age of hyperconnectivity. People are linked at all times through smartphones, cloud services and high-speed networks. Yet paradoxically, the kind of human connection that comes from meeting face to face, talking and building relationships is steadily eroding. Self-checkout lanes, restaurant kiosks and banking apps have made encounters with machines a routine part of daily life. As AI technology advances, automation is moving beyond simple tasks and into the realm of what might be called "connective labor" — work grounded in mutual communication, empathy and understanding.
The deeper problem is that this wave of automation and mechanization is spreading a new social cost: loneliness. Allison J. Pugh, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, diagnoses the phenomenon in her book "The Last Human Job" as "de-personalization" — a process by which individual behavior and preferences are reduced to data, gradually stripping away the distinctiveness that makes each person unique. Pugh argues that connective labor is the last profession capable of preserving humanity and achieving "re-personalization" in the AI era. Drawing on in-depth interviews with counselors, pastors, teachers, therapists, doctors, community organizers and hairdressers, she makes the case that connective labor carries a value algorithms cannot easily replicate.
In the book, connective labor is defined as the process of recognizing another person as a unique individual, sharing emotions, responding to circumstances and building mutual understanding. "Connective labor is an inherently human activity — and one that is difficult to reduce to an algorithm — precisely because it is emotional and improvisational," Pugh writes. What is striking, she notes, is that even as technology eliminates much connective labor, people still want to feel they belong to something larger than themselves. "The need to feel connected is as intense as the need to eat," she writes. "What we lack is the human connection that people must build together."
Some observers take a more optimistic view of automating connective labor. Automation, they argue, can deliver similar services at lower cost to those who would otherwise have no access, while freeing human workers to focus on more meaningful tasks. The logic goes that computers should handle information processing and analysis, leaving humans to concentrate on emotion and relationship-building. But Pugh warns that this reasoning could deepen inequality in connective labor. "A future may come," she writes, "where those lower in the social hierarchy provide connective labor directly to those above them, while they themselves receive only automated services."
There is also a need to reassess the value of connective labor in its many forms, including care work. Connective labor is far from simple, yet it resists being fully measured by quantifiable outcomes. As a result, connective workers navigating the gig economy are often treated as disposable, shouldering intense workloads alone under the banner of a sense of mission. "Connective labor is extraordinarily special and important work," Pugh writes, "yet it is understood only in fragments and receives neither the recognition nor the compensation it deserves."
The answer to protecting humanity and social health does not lie in driving out machines. Pugh is particularly emphatic that society must be alert to the inflated promises of technology that claims it can replace connective labor. "The task is not to eliminate computers and bots," she writes, "but to prepare for the effects they will bring."
balme@heraldcorp.com
