AI is not the real threat.

The deeper worry is that bureaucratically structured organisations are turning us into AI—efficient, optimised, and emotionally regulated in our very being. Efficiency is no longer just a tool; it has become the measure of how we’re expected to live and relate.

From internet banking to the workplace, human complexity is being flattened into streamlined protocols. We are expected to perform emotional labour with a smile—be civil, be polite, be reasonable—even as our agency and individuality are eroded. Big banks, for instance, now pressure customers and staff alike to engage in “polite” interactions, but this politeness masks a deeper power structure. It ensures that efficiency is not resisted, questioned, or disrupted. Behind the courtesy lies a form of control—where being human means never being inconvenient.

What’s being lost is not just time or texture—it’s spontaneity, messiness, slowness, contradiction, vulnerability, and depth. In short, the very qualities that make us human.

The real danger is not that AI becomes human, but that we are being asked to live as if we were AI.