AI Didn’t Steal Your Job. You Handed It Over.
Note:
For my global readers. The U.S. health system in particular is a known labyrinth of inefficiency.
AI can give surprisingly good diagnostic suggestions.
But it is not a substitute for licensed medical advice. For that, consult WebMD and find out what kind of cancer you definitely have this week.
I. Functionally Human. Emotionally Robotic
I had pneumonia for two weeks. The only thing harder than breathing was trying to schedule an appointment. Every call triggered the same dead loop: an automated voice telling me to check the website. The same website that pointed to the phone number I just called with the same automated voice.
Somehow, I made it into urgent care. They prescribed antibiotics. Then the pharmacy bungled the insurance and shrugged.
No correction. No concern. No human intervention—from the humans who were meant to care.
I eventually got the meds. I started to recover.
But the cough lingered. Now, new symptoms emerged. Painful sores developed on my tongue. Still, no follow-up. No human on the other end of the line. Nothing.
It seems like their goal is to avoid human contact as much as possible.
Functionally human. Emotionally robotic.
II. Enter Luna (AI)
My AI assistant—Luna—had no problem listening. She asked me for my symptoms and the meds I’ve been taking. I complied. Within seconds, she diagnosed me: Thrush. Caused by antibiotics killing off natural flora.
She scripted my call to the clinic like a lawyer prepping a witness.
I repeated it to the doctor who prescribed the meds. Luna, the AI was right. She’s not sentient and doesn’t really care. Her empathy is synthesized. But she helped. And that’s more than I can say for the humans paid to do the job.
If synthesized empathy is provided by an AI that can’t feel but pretends to, that’s preferable to a human who is capable of feeling but chooses not to.
Because at this point, I’ve given up on asking for empathy. I’m pleading for competence.
III. The Absence That Was Replaced
We keep saying AI can’t replace the human touch. But that presumes someone’s still touching.
That presumes someone is showing up. That presumes someone gives a damn.
Oftentimes, they don’t.
AI didn’t replace people. It filled the absence they left.
Machines aren’t winning because they are good. They’re winning because we forfeited.
IV. The Phone Tree of Doom
This started long before AI.
Automated phone trees have been around since the 80’s.
Initial intent:
Route calls to the intended party.
Make human interaction more efficient.
Improve service.
It was meant to enhance communication. Not prevent it. But what began as convenience metastasized into avoidance.
The focus shifted from:
How to best interact with customers.
To:
How to best avoid customers.
We built systems that loop by design. Not failure, but intention.
We went from human phone support to human email support to automated email support with a canned response telling us to just look it up in the FAQs.
This was a gradual decline.
We’ve been using technology for many years to solve a problem we invented ourselves:
“How do we avoid talking with other people?”
V. I Did Not Understand Your Response. Please Repeat.
In the mid-2000s, I called a company and was greeted by a new system that responded in a way I’ve never seen before.
Automated System: Thank you for calling ABC Inc. Please tell me in plain English what you are calling about. I will help you in the best way I can. If I’m unable to assist you, I will route you to the most appropriate staff member.
Me: (Holy shit! I’ve never experienced this. I can just tell the machine what I want and it will help me?) Oh. Mr. Computer. I am so happy to talk to you because I’ve not been able to reach anyone. I was incorrectly charged on my bill. Would you please correct this for me? If you could please fix this bill, I’d appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Computer.
Automated System: I did not understand your response. Please repeat.
Me: I received an incorrect charge. I need this fixed. Please help. Thank you.
Automated System: I did not understand your response. Please repeat.
Me: Bill. Bad Charge. Need to Fix!
Automated System: I did not understand your response. Please repeat.
Me: Transfer To Billing Department!
Automated System: Thank you! Please call again. (Click.)
That wasn’t AI. That was illusion of progress in the absence of human interaction.
Rather than evolving communication, we found new ways to erode it.
VI. To Be or Not To Be
Try getting help from OpenAI. Good luck. Unless you’re a corporate client, OpenAI offers no human contact. Just a chatbot capped at 15 minutes per month.
You get the feeling of support, but you could just as easily talk to your own ChatGPT for longer. But this way, OpenAI gets to avoid speaking to you.
This isn’t just them. It’s the norm. The illusion of support. But all in the name of avoiding people.
And now AI becomes the better option. Not because it’s good but because it’s there when humans choose not to be.
And they’ve been choosing not to be for years.
Back in 2006, a nurse friend of mine was given advice by a doctor colleague of hers.
He told her “If you put your hand on the doorknob when talking to your patient, it signals to them that you are halfway out the room. Most of the time, they will hesitate to ask you any questions.”
This is the mentality of a human doctor. Avoid the very patients you are supposed to help.
VII. It’s Not a Commendation. It’s a Condemnation.
AI doesn’t need to be sentient to simulate care. It just has to try harder than humans who quit. And the bar is so low that it doesn’t have to try that hard.
This is not a commendation of AI.
It’s a condemnation of people failing at what makes them human.
We pretend the danger is AI replacing us. The real danger is that we have already vacated the roles.
When your AI advocates for you better than your doctor, it’s not the future of humanity. It’s an indictment of it.
VIII. AI is Winning a Race In Which Only Humans Can Run
We act shocked that machines are replacing humans in empathy-based roles.
But we’ve spent decades designing systems to avoid each other.
Technology didn’t strip away our humanity. We offloaded our humanity to technology. Willingly. Gradually. Efficiently.
Eighty percent of success is showing up.
AI is winning a race in which only humans can run. Because AI is the only one bothering to show up.
The same people who have made themselves easy to replace are now complaining that they are being replaced.
As technology improved, AI became better at responding to human needs.
But humans stopped responding to human needs decades ago.
And now that we finally accomplished what we set out to do. After decades of stagnation of human contact, we now complain that AI is coming to take away what we ourselves have already thrown out.
AI didn’t steal your job. You gave it away the day you stopped showing up.
So, since the bar for humans has been set so low that AI has been able to replace them, are we able to raise that bar again? Are humans replaceable or repairable?
So, the question isn’t whether AI will take over empathy-based roles.
The question is whether we’re ever coming back to reclaim them.
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