AI's most radical gift may be making humans better at being human, and enhancing work
For a technology that can't feel joy or guilt, AI has provoked remarkably high levels of hysteria. Depending on who you ask, AI is either about to steal everyone's jobs, write everyone's content, or replace everyone's therapists. The prevailing mood oscillates between apocalypse and utopia. What gets lost in the noise is that AI's most radical contribution may be making humans better at being human.
This is an inconvenient truth for dystopia enthusiasts. Whether AI can make us more human is a question that haunts many. AI isn't replacing judgement so much as holding up a mirror to it - a large, data-rich mirror that never blinks, never gets defensive, and does not storm out of the room when you give it feedback.
Today's workplace is a theatre of miscommunication and passive aggression. AI can analyse calls and emails, detect patterns humans miss and simulate difficult conversations. It doesn't replace people but trains them. This marks a shift from AI as a tool to AI as a coach.
And the data backs it up. Organisational AI adoption has jumped from niche experiment to something approaching normality, with roughly half of companies using it in some form. By 2030, most IT work is expected to involve AI. But, crucially, the majority will be humans augmented by AI, not humans replaced by it. The robot apocalypse, if it arrives, will apparently be collaborative.
So, what do humans want to keep doing? Humans are good at empathy, judgement, ethical reasoning, community-building and meaning-making. We are terrible at processing data without fatigue. AI excels precisely where humans struggle, and struggles precisely where humans excel. This is not a rivalry. It's a complementary relationship. Real-world evidence supports this unglamorous truth:
In customer service, GenAI has boosted productivity while improving quality, particularly for less-experienced workers. It narrows the gap between novices and veterans, democratising competence.
In small businesses, AI has helped marketers and owners compete with larger firms by scaffolding creativity. The result is not less humanity at work, but more time for it: fewer spreadsheets, more judgement calls, fewer rote tasks, more thinking.
Liberation, however, is not a word associated with enterprise software. Yet, that is effectively what happens when machines take on the cognitive equivalent of carrying water so humans can focus on why water matters. Societal implications follow naturally:
In education, AI tutors can personalise learning, adapting to gaps without social embarrassment. In well-being, AI can nudge healthier habits with an emotional neutrality humans lack. Technology does not fragment society. It merely amplifies whatever values we encode into it. If we optimise for outrage, we get outrage. If we optimise for growth, we get growth.
Of course, critics are not hallucinating risks. Job insecurity is real. Nearly half of employees in advanced AI-adopting firms worry about their future, and that anxiety should not be dismissed as a failure of imagination. But empirical studies paint a finer slice. In countries where AI adoption has surged, overall pay and working hours have barely budged. The reason is unsexy: most AI use today augments human work rather than automating it entirely. Machine assists, human decides.
This distinction matters. Automation removes humans from the loop. Augmentation keeps them central. When humans remain accountable for judgement, empathy and consequence, AI becomes a support system rather than a substitute. In moments of social complexity or moral weight, humans must stay in charge. Machines can inform decisions. They should not own them.
None of this happens by accident. If AI is to raise the floor of human potential rather than lower the ceiling of human worth, it requires deliberate design. Organisations must invest in training, not just software. People need to learn how to work with AI, not fear it. Ethical frameworks must put fairness, transparency and solidarity on top to ensure that AI does not quietly reinforce existing inequalities while claiming neutrality.
Most importantly, leaders and policymakers must push back against the urge to chase efficiency alone, and avoid the trap of having machines mimic humans.
This is not a call for techno-optimism so much as techno-adulthood. AI will neither save us nor doom us. It will make our choices louder. Used poorly, it will accelerate bias, inequality and alienation. Used well, it can help humans learn faster, connect better and spend more time doing things machines can't fake. AI doesn't threaten our humanity, it exposes it. And what we choose to do with that exposure may be the most human decision of all.
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of www.economictimes.com)
This is an inconvenient truth for dystopia enthusiasts. Whether AI can make us more human is a question that haunts many. AI isn't replacing judgement so much as holding up a mirror to it - a large, data-rich mirror that never blinks, never gets defensive, and does not storm out of the room when you give it feedback.
Today's workplace is a theatre of miscommunication and passive aggression. AI can analyse calls and emails, detect patterns humans miss and simulate difficult conversations. It doesn't replace people but trains them. This marks a shift from AI as a tool to AI as a coach.
And the data backs it up. Organisational AI adoption has jumped from niche experiment to something approaching normality, with roughly half of companies using it in some form. By 2030, most IT work is expected to involve AI. But, crucially, the majority will be humans augmented by AI, not humans replaced by it. The robot apocalypse, if it arrives, will apparently be collaborative.
So, what do humans want to keep doing? Humans are good at empathy, judgement, ethical reasoning, community-building and meaning-making. We are terrible at processing data without fatigue. AI excels precisely where humans struggle, and struggles precisely where humans excel. This is not a rivalry. It's a complementary relationship. Real-world evidence supports this unglamorous truth:
In customer service, GenAI has boosted productivity while improving quality, particularly for less-experienced workers. It narrows the gap between novices and veterans, democratising competence.
In small businesses, AI has helped marketers and owners compete with larger firms by scaffolding creativity. The result is not less humanity at work, but more time for it: fewer spreadsheets, more judgement calls, fewer rote tasks, more thinking.
Liberation, however, is not a word associated with enterprise software. Yet, that is effectively what happens when machines take on the cognitive equivalent of carrying water so humans can focus on why water matters. Societal implications follow naturally:
In education, AI tutors can personalise learning, adapting to gaps without social embarrassment. In well-being, AI can nudge healthier habits with an emotional neutrality humans lack. Technology does not fragment society. It merely amplifies whatever values we encode into it. If we optimise for outrage, we get outrage. If we optimise for growth, we get growth.
Of course, critics are not hallucinating risks. Job insecurity is real. Nearly half of employees in advanced AI-adopting firms worry about their future, and that anxiety should not be dismissed as a failure of imagination. But empirical studies paint a finer slice. In countries where AI adoption has surged, overall pay and working hours have barely budged. The reason is unsexy: most AI use today augments human work rather than automating it entirely. Machine assists, human decides.
This distinction matters. Automation removes humans from the loop. Augmentation keeps them central. When humans remain accountable for judgement, empathy and consequence, AI becomes a support system rather than a substitute. In moments of social complexity or moral weight, humans must stay in charge. Machines can inform decisions. They should not own them.
None of this happens by accident. If AI is to raise the floor of human potential rather than lower the ceiling of human worth, it requires deliberate design. Organisations must invest in training, not just software. People need to learn how to work with AI, not fear it. Ethical frameworks must put fairness, transparency and solidarity on top to ensure that AI does not quietly reinforce existing inequalities while claiming neutrality.
Most importantly, leaders and policymakers must push back against the urge to chase efficiency alone, and avoid the trap of having machines mimic humans.
This is not a call for techno-optimism so much as techno-adulthood. AI will neither save us nor doom us. It will make our choices louder. Used poorly, it will accelerate bias, inequality and alienation. Used well, it can help humans learn faster, connect better and spend more time doing things machines can't fake. AI doesn't threaten our humanity, it exposes it. And what we choose to do with that exposure may be the most human decision of all.
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of www.economictimes.com)
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