How AI Could Help End Social Awkwardness and Help One Get a "Good" Job!

As quoted by Avery Smith “AI won’t replace you, but someone using AI will.” How to true this may very well be and this is not just in the Data Analytics field but also in the Medical field and Psychology field as well.

As someone who has been highly suggested to be neurodiverse, I can see how this has probably contributed greatly to not having the best of interviews despite being referred and even being considered a top candidate before the interview. It’s also probably why I struggle with networking.

Most of us know that networking is crucial these days and if one is socially awkward this can make it quite difficult to establish connections, especially when communicating face-to-face.

The potential for data analytics and AI to change lives drastically for the better is one of the big motivators of me pursing this field. So how could AI potentially end social awkwardness?

Keep in mind, this is just a rough outline of the steps involved. Too much detail will turn this post into a novel. :sweat_smile:

  1. This is probably the most challenging step as you would have to provide enough sample communications between two random strangers in a lab setting for the machine learning model to be able to predict whether or not these two random strangers would be willing to be friends with one another based on a few minute conversation. One would also have to consider the sample demographics as results would only be applicable to the demographic studied hence multiple studies encompassing several demographics would be needed. For a model to better predict an outcome you’d probably need to be in the hundreds if not thousands of participants, hence why this first step is probably the hardest yet most crucial.

  2. Once you have a model that can predict friendship outcome, you then design an earpiece similar to those you see people wearing on a daily basis, only it has a camera that can detect your non verbal and verbal communication and the other person’s verbal and non-verbal communication.

  3. Because of privacy and ethical issues, the earpiece would take the information based on conversations you’ve had with other people throughout the day and it would record data and at the end of the session, day, or recording it will delete ALL images and audio of the interactions you’ve had and only keep the results of the conversations you’ve had. In other words, there would have to be zero liability and no risk of people’s faces or voices being leaked.

  4. The therapist would then receive this information and work with their client to work on a strategy to improve social skills. The therapist would work alongside AI to help a client overcome the barrier to social awkwardness. Examples might be: You lack eye contact when speaking with people and tend to speak about yourself too much in kind of a narcissistic and or egotistical way. You tend to glance at people for too long when not engaging in conversation and this can make people uncomfortable. The recordings determined that you tend to speak too fast as if you are overly anxious. It was also observed that you hardly let the other person speak and showed very little to no interest in the other person. These are just a few of many examples. The therapist would tell the client that these social obstacles need to be worked on and practiced.

  5. Overcoming social awkwardness would then lead to meeting people with greater ease. This would result in fostering relationships with people. This will result in helping to build a better network.

  6. Building a strong network, having good social skills, and being fun to be around will increase the chances of finding a great job that will allow one to live a better life.

This is how AI could potentially change the lives of many who struggle with social interactions to live more fulfilling lives.

Having good social skills can translate to having great interviews with positive outcomes, maybe even job offers!

What do you guys think? Could therapists working along with AI be the key to ending social awkwardness?

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First off, great article and pointers on how AI can be useful.

Regarding your question about therapists using AI to help ease social awkwardness, I can see that happening, though I’m not sure if it’s allowed. Ultimately, it may vary by therapists.

I can definitely relate to the challenges of interviews. I’ll admit that I haven’t always been the best at them. I try to ease the awkwardness by showing my personality and using some humor at the beginning. In my experience, this approach helps break the ice. It can feel awkward when you meet the interviewer for the first time and they don’t know you well. So, finding ways to make them comfortable is important so you’re not just seen as a random candidate. That’s my opinion, but I’m sure others would have opinions about interviews.

Speaking of AI, I actually practice with it to do some communication practice because I can talk the talk, but I wanted to improve my communication skills so that others can understand data visualizations and speak to the point where what is doing in Tableau for someone who has not use it, I had experience doing with data engineers at my work. They understood what I was doing in Tableau since I was walkthroughing them for a specific issue for a project.

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I love that you considered privacy and ethical issues with #3 especially since it involved recording conversations and analyzing personality/behavior.

I’m really curious how this idea could potentially work.

Do you have any experience building models on this sort of thing? It could be a really fun Collaboration Lab project. We would probably have to get involved with a university or something to test it out in the real world but it would be cool to have a theoretical model to play with some test data and see outputs.

I can relate on the neurodiverse piece too, by the way. I think a lot of people in our profession/other technical careers can probably relate to it.

It would definitely require some studies for it to be done ethically. I’d be really curious to see what a model would look like though!

Practicing communication with AI is a good idea, but I struggle with making sure it’s critical enough whenever I use it for feedback. Have you dealt with that? I personally even prompt it to be less “affirming” and challenge me, but it still doesn’t do it as much as I’d like.

Maybe it doesn’t want to upset me. Maybe I’m just overcritical of myself! I’m always starving for truly actionable feedback.