• by Steven Rosenbaum , Featured Contributor, Yesterday

We’re living in a moment where two forces—social media and artificial intelligence—have merged. Not metaphorically, but mechanically. AI now shapes what we see, who we hear from, what the trends are, and how we feel about it. And yet, most of the public conversation still treats them as separate.

Gen Z knows better.

They live at the intersection of identity, platform, and automation. They know when the feed is nudging them. They know when the “recommendation” is really a manipulation. 

But they’re not saying “shut it down.” They’re saying: Give us the controls.

The Merge is Real

AI and social media aren’t separate anymore. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Snap—all of them are now governed by AI engines: recommending, filtering, generating, reshaping.

As Luke Drago wrote in a prescient post: “When you interact with a recommendation algorithm every day for 10 years, it becomes a part of your brain. The things it rewards become the things you value. The feedback loop is imperceptible but profound.”

The line between what’s algorithmically surfaced and what’s authentically chosen has blurred. The interface isn’t just the platform—it’s the predictive engine underneath.

This is why we’re introducing a term that we believe frames what’s emerging: social intelligence.

Naming What Comes Next

Social intelligence is our name for the merger of social media and artificial intelligence—not as a threat, but as a design opportunity, governed by human-centered rulesets, transparent choices, and youth agency.

This isn’t a new product. It’s a new frame. It asks: What do we want the next digital layer to optimize for? If we’re not careful, the answer will default to speed, friction, and monetization. If we’re intentional, the answer could be: growth, wellbeing, learning, and trust.

Luke Drago’s essay series, “The Intelligence Curse,” outlines the stakes clearly. When general-purpose AI starts outperforming humans in most cognitive tasks, power concentrates in dangerous ways.

“When AGI can outcompete humans at everything, the social contract breaks,” Drago writes. “The risk isn’t just job loss—it’s institutional collapse.”

Drago makes the case that AI, left unchecked, doesn’t just automate labor—it erodes the legitimacy of democratic systems. When intelligence itself becomes a centralized, proprietary asset, everything from education to governance starts to buckle under the weight of asymmetric control.

His proposed path forward is a simple triad:

• Avert: Prevent catastrophic misuse or centralization.
• Diffuse: Spread access and literacy so the tools aren’t hoarded.
• Democratize: Reform institutions to reflect this new layer of cognition.

Social intelligence fits into that third category. It’s a way to build systems that reflect democratic values inside the tools that increasingly mediate how we see, connect, and decide.

What Social Intelligence Could Look Like

This isn’t hypothetical. We’re already seeing signals:

• Platforms where users can view why content is being shown—and retrain their feed
• Community-moderated spaces supported by lightweight AI assist, not black-box enforcement
• Local LLMs trained on user-curated datasets in classrooms or activist communities
• Tools that surface slow content—longform, contextual, verified—not just shortform flash

One example we’ve followed closely: Open algorithm marketplaces like the one being piloted by Bluesky, where users can choose recommendation engines the same way they’d choose a news source. It’s far from perfect, but it hints at a future where intelligence is portable, transparent, and user-directed.

And from our own conversations, a consistent theme has emerged: Gen Z doesn’t want to unplug. They want to participate. They want systems they can tune, understand, and challenge. What they’re asking for isn’t just access—it’s governance.

A Closing Thought

“The feedback loop is imperceptible but profound.” That sentence from Drago keeps echoing. We can’t afford to let that loop run on autopilot -- not in a world where the stakes are cognitive, social, emotional, and political.

SocialiIntelligence is just a name. But we believe it gives us a way to see what’s coming—and ask better questions about how to build for it.

So this is an open call: If you're building tools, platforms, classrooms, or communities, this is the moment to think differently—about structure, design, intent. Social intelligence isn’t a finished idea—it’s a framework in progress, one we’re testing, evolving, and pressure-testing with every generation that inherits it. We’re developing this framework out loud. We want feedback, pushback, collaboration.

Because the merge already happened. What comes next is up to us.