How AI Can Actually Bring People Together (If We Design It Right)
Technology was supposed to bring us together. Too often, it scatters us. We bounce between apps, tabs, portals, and policies, then wonder why nobody feels present.
On a recent episode of Talk About Your Community, I spoke with Nasya Kamrat, CEO and founder of Nia. She had a sharp take on this topic: stop treating AI as a bolt-on tool and start designing it as an experience that removes friction, restores presence, and makes space for real connection. This post is my reflection on what she shared and why it matters for leaders building communities, customer experiences, and digital workplaces.
The blocker isn’t apathy—it’s friction
Belonging doesn’t fail because people don’t care. It fails because systems make connection hard.
Nasya describes today’s reality as a noisy “fourth space”—the blend of digital and physical that follows us through the day. It’s fragmented and full of competing interfaces. Every “quick check” pulls attention away from people and into a maze.
Her premise is to remove the maze so presence can return. When we design friction out, the fourth space starts to feel continuous and more caring. That’s when community takes root.
Treat AI as an experience, not a tool
Most teams optimize AI for output: faster, cheaper, more efficient. Nasya’s team optimizes for what happens after the answer: the ability to put the phone down and be with the person in front of you.
Nia’s “Concierge AI” pulls scattered systems and data into a single, human conversation. It feels voice-first. It feels like care. The technology does the routing backstage—across CRMs, POS systems, event platforms—so the foreground can be a calm, natural interaction.
That ethos comes from experience design and storytelling. Her team includes leaders who’ve spent careers crafting how things feel to use. The goal isn’t a clever demo. It’s relief.
What this looks like in real life
Picture family travel with small kids. Booking. Allergies. Lines. Directions. Check-in. Activities. Normally, you juggle apps and miss the tiny moment your child is doing something you’ll never get back.
Now imagine a single conversation:
“Find a lunch spot that works with my daughter’s allergies and has a playground.”
“Our flight’s delayed—rebook the best option and message the hotel.”
In a recent deployment, Nasya’s team ran a simple test. One person asked Nia. Another hunted through the app. The Concierge answer arrived in ~10 seconds. The app path took ~2 minutes. Two minutes vs. ten seconds is the gap between presence and preoccupation.
Safety and ethics belong in the design brief
We’ve seen what happens when powerful technology ships without guardrails. Nasya’s approach is deliberately different:
B2B first. Working in business and event contexts creates clearer boundaries than wide-open consumer platforms.
Guardrails built-in. Constrained reasoning, sources, and tone reduce “creative” errors. The system is trained around boundaries to “do no wrong” as a default.
Ongoing vigilance. New risks emerge. Safeguards evolve. This isn’t a set-and-forget discipline.
Values lines. The founders have explicit agreements about who they won’t serve. The world they want to help create shows up in product choices.
It’s hopeful, not naïve—eyes open, sleeves rolled up.
Clear-eyed about AI and work
AI can humanize or dehumanize. Some leaders will use it to replace people. The better path is to free people for the work only humans can do.
Think hospitality: less time buried in stale dashboards, more time with guests. Think community management: fewer admin loops, more high-impact conversations. When the busywork shrinks, service quality rises.
Nasya also pointed to a direction that matters for access and agency: a SaaS model that lets small businesses build their own concierge experiences—the “WordPress for Nias.” More teams can design connection-first journeys without a custom build.
Community is belonging, not points
The word “community” gets thrown around casually. Loyalty programs and broadcast channels are often mislabeled as community. Nasya’s standard is higher: create spaces where people belong—online and off—so they feel connected and honored.
That requires continuity across contexts and less cognitive load. When we reduce friction, we create conditions where people show up for each other instead of fighting the interface.
How I’m applying this
Three takeaways from our conversation are shaping my client work:
Measure connection by the time you give back. If you compress a two-minute hunt into a ten-second answer, you’ve created space for presence. Track that.
Orchestrate the experience. Treat AI as the front door to your systems. Make the interaction human, simple, and—when possible—voice-first.
Design safety in from day one. Establish boundaries and guardrails early. Revisit them often as new use cases emerge.
These aren’t abstract ideals; they’re design choices you can make now.
If you’re leading a community, event, or digital workplace
Belonging grows where friction shrinks. The fourth space can feel like a calm throughline instead of a noisy scramble. Tools won’t get you there. Thoughtful experiences will.
If you want help mapping the friction in your member or customer journey—and designing it out so people can be more present with each other—I’d love to talk.
Ready to explore how thoughtful technology design could transform your community? Contact Clocktower Advisors to discuss strategies that put human connection at the center of your digital experience.
ABOUT NASYA KAMRAT
Nasya Kamrat is an entrepreneur and innovator transforming hospitality through AI-driven, human-centered experiences. As CEO of Nia, she is pioneering Concierge AI to create seamless, intelligent service experiences at scale. With over two decades at the intersection of technology, experience design, and storytelling, Nasya has built and exited companies that redefine how people connect, engage, and experience the world.
Show Notes
Why Nia Now? (5:24): Nasya Kamrat chronicles her journey to community. Starting in theater, she moved to advertising and eventually started her own storytelling and design company. Now, she is the CEO of NiaXP, a concierge AI service. AI is being thought of as a tool, not as an experience to remove friction.
Fourth Spaces (12:32): Much of Nasya’s life has been how to bring humans together with a shared goal. Beyond third spaces, fourth spaces merge physical and digital community. We live in a technologically noisy world. So how do we begin to reduce the friction of being pulled in so many different directions? How can we get people what they need faster so they can get off the phone and be present?
An Intelligence Company (24:26): Nia stands for Neural Intelligence Agents. There was consideration to making it humans working with AI, not humans against AI. There is an acknowledgement that AI can be created and used in ways that do not follow the same fundamental moral compass, but there’s always hope that people will do good things.
Designing for Belonging (33:34): Tactical use cases of Nia include considering a family vacation. This could include a myriad of ‘little things’ that all add up, booking airports and hotels, ordering Ubers, food recommendations, allergy warnings and more. The discussion moves to creating the guardrails to protect against abuse of such technology.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
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Think of it as a helpful host members can ask in plain words. “Where do I introduce myself?” “Which template do I use?” “Who’s working on X in Chicago?” Instead of bouncing between pages and apps, they get the right next step fast—and spend more time talking to people, not wrestling tools.
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I track a few simple signals:
Time to first hello for newcomers
Time to first answer on questions
Replies per thread (not just likes)
Return visits after 7/30 days
Fewer “where do I…?” posts
When those move in the right direction, people feel welcomed and find each other faster.
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Start where friction is loudest:
New member onboarding (first week)
Event logistics (registration → follow-ups)
“How do I…?” questions (resource finder)
Pilot with a small group, keep a human in the loop, measure before/after, then expand.
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Set clear guardrails from day one:
Only the data the assistant truly needs; nothing more
Show sources or routes to official docs when answering
Built-in escalation: “Hand this to a moderator” is always an option
Obvious opt-out controls and an audit trail for admin review
Regular reviews of prompts, blocked topics, and tone
Safety isn’t a feature you add later; it’s part of the setup.
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No. It takes the busywork off their plate—repetitive questions, link-fetching, simple routing—so they can do the human work: welcoming new folks, connecting peers, facilitating tough conversations, and closing feedback loops.
