Super Bowl, AI, and The Zag of Hospitality

Hey Beloved,

So the Super Bowl eh…

I am not here to talk about the game or the halftime debate, just something I noticed and that is AI was everywhere.

23% of the commercials featured AI. Fifteen out of sixty-six ads.

Claude promising no ads. ChatGPT showing you how to code. Google's Gemini helping you design your home. Amazon's Alexa+ managing your life. Meta's AI glasses turning you into an instant content creator.

Everyone zigging toward this brilliant artificial future.

And I've been zigging too.

Building AI Agents workflows with Relay.app and Manus.im. Chatting with iMessage agent to organize email and my calendar with Poke.com. And, yes, I went down the rabbit hole to understand what Openclaw is and why people are fascinated with AI Agents having their own reddit like social media.

I've even caught myself thinking: "This could make my hospitality work more efficient. More scalable. More impactful."

The tools are impressive.

The potential is really incredible.

But something keeps tugging at me.

As I sit here designing welcome experiences and teaching others to be unreasonably hospitable... I wonder if we're—if I am—missing something profound.

What if the most revolutionary move isn't to zig with everyone else?

What if it's to zag?

As the world rushes toward artificial connection...perhaps our most radical act is to become stubbornly, unreasonably, magnificently human in how we welcome others.

Let’s Dive In…

AI can process.
AI can optimize.
AI can personalize at scale.

But AI can't be present.

Hospitality—real hospitality—requires presence. The kind that notices when someone's voice drops. When their shoulders tense. When the pause after your question means more than their answer.

This is human work.
The kind that requires attention, not automation.

When someone walks into Refuge Foundation, no algorithm determined how loud to cheer. No AI calculated the optimal level of enthusiasm. People decided—in that moment—that this arrival mattered enough to celebrate.

That's the thing AI can optimize around but never replicate: the decision to show up fully for another human being.

Here's what has been running through my mind this month.

Every time I automate a response, I gain efficiency.
Every time I template an interaction, I save time.
Every time I scale through technology, I reach more people.

And every time, I risk losing the thing that makes hospitality matter.

The handwritten note.
The remembered detail.
The unexpected call.
The moment that says: "I was thinking about you specifically."

AI can send a thousand personalized emails.
But it can't decide that this person—this specific human—deserves my actual attention right now.

Will Guidara tells a story about a table at Eleven Madison Park who mentioned—just in passing—that they were visiting from out of town and hadn't had a classic New York hot dog yet.

The team sent a runner to a street cart, bought hot dogs, and served them on fine china as an extra course in their $300+ tasting menu.

For one table.
One night.
Wildly inefficient.
Completely unreasonable.

That's hospitality.

And no AI would ever suggest it.

In a world optimized for speed, presence becomes your edge.

The long conversation. The unhurried meal. The lingering goodbye.

These aren't slower. They're faster in a different direction.

I think about my kids coming down the stairs in the morning. AI could probably optimize that interaction. Calculate the perfect greeting based on their sleep patterns and mood indicators.

But that's not what they need.

They need me to look up from my phone. To see them. To be present enough to notice if something's off. To make "good morning" actually mean something.

This is the zag.

While everyone else rushes toward artificial intelligence, we sprint toward genuine humanity.

While everyone else scales through automation, we scale through attention.

While everyone else optimizes for efficiency, we optimize for presence.

It's not about doing less. It's about doing what matters more—with everything you've got.

Here's the paradox.

The better AI gets at connection, the more valuable real connection becomes.

When everyone can automate their welcome, the handwritten note stands out.
When everyone can personalize at scale, the personal conversation matters more.
When everyone can optimize efficiency, the inefficient act of caring becomes radical.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells his followers they are salt. In a world that preserves everything digitally, salt reminds us what preservation actually means—keeping things from losing their essence.

Hospitality is salt.

It preserves what makes us human.
It adds flavor to what could be mechanical.
It keeps relationships from spoiling in the name of efficiency.

So here's what I'm learning.

Use AI for what it's good at.
The scheduling. The reminders. The analysis. The processing. The workflows. Heck, maybe even noticing emotions, patterns, etc.

But double down on what only humans can do.

The presence.
The unreasonable care.
The flavor we add.

As everyone else rushes toward artificial intelligence, maybe our competitive advantage is genuine humanity.

Not as a strategy.
As a posture.

What if 2026 is the year we zag?

The year we sprint toward humanity when everyone else rushes toward AI. More present when everyone else automates. More human when everyone else optimizes.

AI can handle efficiency.

Let's focus on being unreasonably, magnificently, stubbornly human in how we welcome others.

Here's to the zag. 🧂

With gratitude,
Nathan