The Big Story: What the song “Ordinary” reveals about AI, trust and what must remain human
The more extraordinary AI becomes, the more healthcare must protect ordinary human connection.
James Cervantes
5-minute read
Few songs defined 2025 more than Alex Warren’s “Ordinary.” The love song reached No. 1 in more than 30 countries, reflecting just how universal its central idea is.
“Ordinary” is about finding something rare and extraordinary in one of the most familiar human experiences: loving another person. It’s been said the song grew in popularity due to the belief that true love can feel increasingly rare in a world filled with screens, social media and constant distraction.
That idea feels particularly relevant to healthcare’s AI moment.
Outpacing trust?
There is nothing ordinary about what artificial intelligence may make possible in healthcare. AI can reduce administrative burden, improve access, surface insights and return valuable time to clinicians, employees and patients.
But the more extraordinary the technology becomes, the more important it is to protect something remarkably ordinary: human trust and connection. Right now, that trust is far from guaranteed.
Healthcare is racing to pilot, purchase and deploy AI. But recent headlines, polling, and public debate show a growing gap between the pace of the technology and how quickly people are willing to trust it.
A September POLITICO poll found that 48 percent of Americans favor pausing the development of more advanced AI models, compared with 31 percent who favor continuing development. And 51 percent said they would be uncomfortable with AI providing an initial diagnosis for medical symptoms.
These are not abstract questions about the future of AI. They are questions about what happens when the technology meets a patient, clinician or employee.
The nurse wondering whether the technology will support her judgment or scrutinize it. The employee uncertain whether AI is changing the work or eliminating a role. The patient unsure whether a person or an algorithm reviewed the scan or recommended the next step.
Healthcare may already be moving faster than the trust required to sustain the transformation.
The people AI happens to
AI strategy often begins in conference rooms, innovation centers and vendor demonstrations.
But trust is decided somewhere else.
It is decided at the bedside. In the call center. During a conversation between an employee and a manager. Inside the patient portal. In the moment someone asks a reasonable question and receives a vague answer about what the organization is doing and why.
Patients are already signaling what they expect. In a June 2026 Pew Research Center survey, 72 percent of U.S. adults said it is extremely or very important for providers to tell them when AI is being used in their healthcare. Yet 46 percent were unsure whether their providers had ever used it. Meanwhile, Jarrard’s latest National Consumer Survey found that one in four consumers report their trust in local providers has decreased.
That is the trust gap: AI may already be present, but the social contract surrounding it is not yet visible.
Disclosure alone will not close it. Research from the Coalition for Health AI found that simply telling patients AI is being used may be insufficient, or even counterproductive, without clear explanations of human oversight, accountability and patient protections.
People do not just want to know that AI is involved. They want to know who is watching it, who is responsible when it is wrong and whether a human can still intervene.
When those questions go unanswered, AI begins to feel like something happening to people rather than something being built with them.
AI is the clay. Humanity must be the sculptor.
One lyric from “Ordinary” offers another useful way to think about this moment: “You’re the sculptor, I’m the clay.”
For healthcare, AI must be the clay. Humanity must be the sculptor.
AI is powerful, malleable and advancing at seemingly lightning speed. But it does not decide for itself what role it should play in healthcare. People do.
Every governance decision shapes it. Every workflow redesigned around it shapes it. Every boundary, dataset, outcome measure and human safeguard shapes it.
So does every decision left unmade.
If AI becomes the sculptor, reshaping healthcare simply because the technology can do something or because speed and efficiency demand it, the industry gives up agency over what healthcare becomes.
The responsibility is to shape the technology intentionally around the people healthcare exists to serve.
Healthcare knows how to do extraordinary things
That responsibility should not make healthcare timid about innovation. Healthcare has always done extraordinary things.
Vaccines have prevented disease across populations. Organ transplantation has extended lives. Researchers have sequenced the human genome, developed treatments for diseases once considered untreatable and continuously found new ways to relieve suffering and help people heal.
But healthcare’s extraordinary achievements have never been about technology alone. They happen when science, ingenuity and human beings come together around a common purpose.
AI should be no different.
Regulators can establish boundaries. Vendors can provide assurances. Industry groups can develop standards and frameworks. All of that matters. But no outside institution can manufacture trust inside a healthcare organization or decide what the human experience of AI should be.
Healthcare leaders must decide what will be automated and what will remain human, how employees are prepared and how patients experience AI-enabled care. They must establish accountability before a crisis or error demands it.
The goal is not to wait until every question about AI has been answered. It is to move fast enough to learn, slow enough to listen and deliberately enough to preserve what matters most.
Trust is infrastructure for transformation
Trust cannot be left to chance or treated as something that follows adoption. It has to be built into any AI journey from the beginning. There are practical ways to create and cultivate it, and communication plays an important role alongside governance, transparency, workforce preparation and accountability.
It starts with clear boundaries around how AI will and will not be used. It requires:
- responsible transparency with employees, clinicians and patients;
- preparing the workforce to understand, question and work alongside new tools;
- telling a clear story about what AI is intended to make better; and
- creating alignment and establishing accountability for every AI-enabled process.
Most importantly, it means involving people in the transformation rather than simply introducing the technology after decisions have been made.
These are not barriers to adoption. They are the conditions that help people understand, participate in and ultimately embrace change.
At a moment when people are increasingly questioning the pace and impact of AI, trust cannot be treated as an afterthought. It is one of the core conditions that makes successful transformation possible.
What must remain human
Part of what makes “Ordinary” resonate is its paradox: Something as familiar as human connection can feel increasingly extraordinary.
Healthcare should protect that.
Used well, AI can create more time and space for what patients, families and employees often need most: another person’s attention, judgment and presence.
A patient hearing the words no one wants to hear and searching a physician’s face for reassurance. A nurse noticing the subtle shift that indicates we’re making progress. A manager sitting with an employee afraid of what change means for their future. A family placing someone they love in the hands of a stranger and choosing to trust them.
AI may inform those moments, prepare people for them or create more space for them. But it cannot replace what gives them meaning: one human being caring for another.
The question facing healthcare is not simply how much AI can do. It is what kind of healthcare AI will help create.
Will extraordinary technology create speed without understanding, efficiency without empathy and innovation without accountability?
Or will it strengthen the ordinary human connections on which healthcare has always depended?
Years from now, the measure of this moment will not simply be how quickly healthcare adopted AI or how much efficiency it created. It will be whether healthcare intentionally shaped the technology around the people it exists to serve.
Whether something extraordinary was used to protect and strengthen the things that are beautifully ordinary: Love. Trust. Care. Connection.
AI is the clay.
Humanity must be the sculptor.
