These days, AI can smooth out every communication challenge. But should it?

By Steve Sampson

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“Huh?”

A few years back, I left the one-word question above as a comment in a document I was editing. Next to the comment, I had highlighted a long paragraph of text that could frankly be described as gobbledygook. 

The writer of the document was not pleased with my “terse” editorial approach. 

“What I’m saying is clear if you read correctly,” he insisted. 

“Respectfully,” I replied, “it isn’t. But I’m willing to help you fix it if you can meet me halfway.”

With a bit more of an apology from me, he did, and we sorted it out. In the end, he admitted that the document we produced together was “significantly better” than what he had produced alone. And I admitted that I had maybe, just possibly, been a bit too terse.

After the fact, I also realized something important: Experienced writers recognize, in a way others don’t, that words are often misunderstood—even if everyone means well and tries hard. We know that writing is difficult, and that the human tendency toward misunderstanding is less about our tenuous relationship with reason (more on that another time) than a consequence of how our languages work.

Our Many Different Languages

People often think of language as if it were an independent, objective thing: a dictionary’s worth of well-defined words and a fixed set of rules for using them. But neither the words nor the rules exist anywhere except in our constantly evolving shared conventions—which is to say, in our collective heads. And we never entirely agree on what the words mean or which rules we should follow when putting them together. (If you doubt this, ask a roomful of editors when to employ the Oxford comma.)

In fact, no two human beings speak exactly the same language, and the language each of us speaks changes throughout our life. We continually add new words to our lexicons and learn new ways to combine and associate them. 

I continually add to my version of English, even as you add to yours. I sprinkle in smatterings of Italian, Spanish, Latin, Greek, and German, as well as heavier doses of philanthropese, business-speak, and the metalanguage of literary theory. You sprinkle and smatter differently. You may speak some French or know the Norse Gods or the lexicon of Minecraft or any of the many, many other languages and dialects that are basically foreign to me. 

Even if we share a dialect, you and I each have what linguists call an “idiolect,” a version of the language that’s unique to us. Anyone who pays close enough attention will notice that your idiolect includes words, sounds, flavors, and textures that mine doesn’t. And no matter how close we are, my words will resonate a bit differently for you than they do for me.

The Challenge of Shared Understanding

It follows that we should all expect to misunderstand one another all of the time, at least to some degree. 

We should assume that strings of words that are easy for us to grasp may be hard for other people to follow—especially if those people are distant from us physically, socially, emotionally, linguistically, or all of the above. And we should be patient with each other when we struggle to understand.

This struggle can be incredibly frustrating, but in the end, it’s a valuable thing. It enables us to work a uniquely human form of magic: the creation of shared understanding. 

We should also recognize that this magic rarely happens through the transmission of a single string of words: We almost never go from “you completely misunderstand me” to “you totally get me” in a single sentence. We can only travel that distance through ongoing conversation—through good-faith exchanges of incomplete ideas and imperfect interpretations that leave us both a little wiser for the effort.

The Temptation of Frictionless Communication

Over decades of work in media, writing, and communications, I’ve come to view such conversations as critical to complex human endeavors. They enable the sort of substantive connection and collaboration that makes “teamwork makes the dream work” a trite-yet-true cliche. They allow us to work through communication challenges and build shared understanding beyond the single-sentence variety.

Recently, I’ve begun to worry that the sophisticated tools we now use to make communication more expedient could wind up undercutting its most important outcome. Today, AI writing assistants can help each of us craft the perfect email for any audience. Social media algorithms can ensure that we mainly encounter people who already “speak our language.” And corporate communication platforms can sand down the rough edges of disagreements into maximally acceptable soundbites.

These tools offer the seductive promise of frictionless communication. Why struggle through the awkward process of explaining ourselves to someone from a different background when an AI can instantly rephrase our message in terms they’re more likely to accept? Why risk miscommunication when we can pre-test and optimize every message for maximum palatability? Why have a long, drawn-out, difficult conversation when ChatGPT can fire off an email?

Because sometimes perfect efficiency is the enemy of a higher good. 

When we outsource the work of bridging differences to bots and algorithms, we risk bypassing the process that often makes human communication meaningful and its outcomes durable. 

We lose the moments of surprise that happen when someone’s different perspective illuminates a blind spot in our own thinking. We miss the opportunity to discover that what we thought was a disagreement was, in fact, a productive tension between two partial truths. We forfeit the trust that comes from working through misunderstandings together, and the deeper wisdom that emerges from genuine dialogue.

We risk replacing shared meaning-making with sophisticated messaging exercises. Rather than grappling (and potentially growing) through encounters with difference, we risk talking past each other with ever-increasing “efficiency.” We might not even notice what we’re doing, until we find ourselves trapped within our own AI-addled idiolects. 

Perhaps the greatest communication challenge we face today isn’t how to eliminate misunderstanding, but how to preserve our ability and willingness to deal with it productively. 

Here, the right path may not be the easiest or most efficient one. Because here the right path has to keep us open to the sometimes uncomfortable but ultimately enriching experience of human dialogue—with all its messiness and misunderstandings, as well as its extraordinary eureka moments. 

Here, the right path has to be one that pushes us out of our idiolects and back toward each other.