For all the attention being paid to what AI can do, the more significant question might be what humans should continue doing for themselves. Andrew Everingham, Founder and CEO of CAPITAL-e, believes the answer lies in protecting the qualities technology cannot easily replicate.

He describes the emerging opportunity as the “feel economy”, where organizations able to harness belonging, trust, empathy, meaning, wisdom and judgment can differentiate themselves as technology becomes more pervasive.

“The human element becomes critically important in not falling for an AI-only approach,” Everingham says. “There is a certain dumbing down of everything at the moment.

“There’s a vanilla-ization happening out there where people will defer to outsourcing their thinking and go with whatever the large language model serves up to them.”

Efficiency, in other words, carries a risk when it begins replacing judgment rather than supporting it. Everingham sees that distinction becoming especially important when people move from gathering information to making consequential decisions.

“They can go and do a lot of research. They can proof it, but they want to engage with somebody to have a real human interaction, so that they can build that trust and to make that final judgment,” he says on CEO: Behind the Scenes.

That need for trust helps explain why Everingham remains such a strong advocate for gathering in person. In an increasingly digital environment, he argues that physical proximity creates a different kind of connection.

“When we get together in a room, something happens. It’s not just a psychological thing; it’s a physiological thing,” Everingham says. “There is something that happens when we’re together and I believe that it’s not just connecting with people in a digital format. It’s connecting with people in person.”

For leaders, cultivating that connection does not necessarily require elaborate programs. Everingham points to simple practices inside CAPITAL-e, including a communal lunch table and designated office days that create room for informal conversations capable of sparking unexpected ideas.

“But I think the big shift there is that people are thinking about it less about a journey and more about a relationship, because that’s what you want to have with your customer. You want to have a relationship and one that’s based on trust,” Everingham explains.

Underlying that philosophy is a broader belief about what connection can achieve. Everingham calls his own sense of purpose “elevation” – using interactions to leave people better than he found them.

“Every moment that we connect with someone is a chance to leave them in a better place than we found them,” he says.

As AI reshapes how work gets done, Everingham’s argument is not to resist technology but to stay deliberate about what remains distinctly human: connection, judgment, empathy and the ability to make another person’s experience better.

Listen to the latest episode of our CEO: Behind the Scenes podcast with Andrew Everingham on Amazon, Apple or Spotify.