The technology keeps getting simpler. Changing does not

A morning in a residential care block of flats in Rotterdam. Building things is something we can do by now. The real work starts with the question of the boundaries within which we dare to begin. Around the table with the people from Aafje, Laurens, Humanitas Rotterdam, Lelie zorggroep and housing association Woonbron who work with residents every day.

We talked about something that sounds very simple on paper: connecting people who live together in a block of flats to each other more cleverly.

One resident needs help with a letter from the council, while a former Dutch language teacher three floors up could help perfectly well. Someone would like to go for a walk. Someone else is looking for company. Someone can no longer easily do a small repair job, while a neighbour used to be a carpenter. Or, a real example from practice this morning: a Russian speaking resident turned out to love chess. Someone living in the same block wanted to play chess with her. They now meet every week.

That is what we are experimenting with in our Maatjes Matching App. Residents indicate very simply: I need help, or I want to help someone. Behind that, AI helps to see combinations that are not literally the same. Not just connecting someone who asks for a walking buddy to someone who wants to walk, but understanding that someone who used to be a Dutch language teacher can probably also help someone understand a complicated letter.

The technology is not the hardest part

Technically I think that is fantastic. But this morning I was reminded again that the technology is actually not the hardest part at all.

This app, and other apps used in Rotterdam to strengthen social cohesion, were not simply put online. People literally stood next to residents to look at them together. Because people found it daunting. Is it safe? What happens to my data? Where do I have to click? Meetings about online safety were organised and people were helped again and again to learn to work with it.

And I think there is a much bigger lesson about AI in that.

We can build an incredible amount by now. In fact, technology is becoming simpler at high speed. With AI, builders can make new applications faster and users have to understand less and less about how complicated software works. Soon you will no longer need to know where information is stored or which button you need. You ask for what you need and AI helps you search, understand and act.

That makes technology more accessible, data more accessible and ultimately other people more accessible too. Because behind that data are people with knowledge, experience, time, talent, needs and the willingness to mean something to someone else. That is perhaps what I find most beautiful about this kind of technology: AI does not have to drive us further apart. It can actually help us find each other again.

Where the real work starts

But that is exactly where the real work starts.

Because as soon as you try that in a care setting, completely justified questions come up. Who is allowed to help someone with a letter from the Belastingdienst, the Dutch tax authority? What if someone gives the wrong advice? Do you let people contact each other directly or do you put a coordinator in between? Who is allowed into a home? How do you know who someone is? What do you do about privacy and liability?

During the conversation I noticed that I was immediately drawn into that complexity myself as well. My head then wants to come up with solutions, connect systems, cover risks and organise everything so that it will be perfectly right later on.

And suddenly I thought: perhaps that is precisely one of our biggest pitfalls.

We sometimes try to organise the future so well that we never get started on it.

Of course safety, privacy and responsibility have to be properly arranged. Certainly here. But this morning I also heard someone say: if we stop doing anything because there is a chance that something will go wrong, we might as well stop providing care altogether. Even with employees, procedures and VOG’s, the Dutch certificate of good conduct, things can go wrong.

The interesting question is therefore not how we can rule out every risk in advance. The question is within which boundaries we dare to begin responsibly, so that trust can develop.

You can see that in the way we have set up this Maatjes Matching App too. Technically we could connect residents directly to each other. Even so, we deliberately chose to let the actual introduction run through the Thuisplus coordinator for now. Not because the technology cannot do it, but because people know each other, trust has to be built up and we want to learn together what works.

That is implementation. Not knowing everything first and rolling it out afterwards, but starting small, seeing what happens, learning, adjusting and slowly widening the space.

People who believe in it

And for that you need people who believe in it.

People who can make clear why we are doing this in the first place. Because loneliness is a problem. Because the demand for care is growing. Because employees are getting busier and busier. But also because in a block of flats like that there is an enormous amount of talent walking around that we hardly see. People who may be receiving care can at the same time be of great value to someone else.

Then you suddenly look differently at a residential care block like that. Not just as a collection of residents with care needs, but as a community full of possibilities.

Perhaps that is what stayed with me most this morning. Successful AI adoption does not start with AI. It starts with people who long for something and are willing to stand up for it.

Not recklessly. Not by waving away justified concerns. But also not by answering every uncertainty with yet another working group, policy document or systems discussion.

We need changemakers who make room to try the new safely. Directors, care workers, welfare workers, residents, IT people, privacy experts and suppliers. Everyone can make the movement bigger or smaller from their own place.

As an AI evangelist I can tell wonderful stories about everything that is becoming possible technologically. But a morning like that, among the people who actually have to do it, gives me a good shake and wakes me up again.

The technology is moving fast enough.

The real innovation starts when we dare to start using it.