Hidden Cost of Automation
I was hardly two lines into the email when a strange feeling rushed through me. What is this? Something seemed odd about it. The hyphenated phrases, overuse of commas and run on sentences stood out at first. I read it through several more times and began to notice a few other things. Words of affirmation that didn’t seem to fit the personality of the person that sent it. Acknowledgement that was overly structured and mirrored the content of my original email back to me. Zero specificity, no follow up questions and nothing in the reply spoke to the matter that I had shared in my original message. It had the appearance of an email but was hollow; warm in tone but absent in presence. The email I read was written entirely by AI.
AI is an incredible tool. I use it frequently to generate creative ideas, help me think more deeply about a topic or perform preliminary research. I have been able to move forward on projects that were stuck, bring creative ideas to fruition that would have previously required outside help and it has saved me a lot of time. The characteristics that are built into AI enable it to excel at tasks like these.
I asked the AI tool I use to summarize its strengths as it relates to crafting emails:
AI is fundamentally built to:
Recognize patterns and reproduce them accurately
Process and synthesize large amounts of information quickly
Optimize for probability — generate the most likely correct or appropriate response
Maintain consistency in tone, structure, and format
Cover expected bases without missing standard components
Mirror and reflect input back in organized, coherent form
Minimize friction — producing something acceptable to the widest audience
What AI lacks by design:
Genuine curiosity
Lived experience
Emotional stakes
The ability to be changed by an interaction
Presence
The simplest summary: AI is exceptionally good at resembling understanding without actually having it. It produces the shape of thought, the shape of empathy, the shape of relationship — without the substance beneath any of them.
That summary statement is worth at least one more slow read. The work that AI can do is impressive but it cannot replicate or mimic human presence and that is what was noticeably absent from the email I had received. The leader that used AI to write a response to my email was striving for efficiency and that is understandable. Efficiency is important but it is only a virtue when the thing that is being optimized is a task or process. It becomes a liability when you are navigating a relationship.
What if you were to step into the recipients shoes for just a moment. They send you, their leader, an email that sought to create or strengthen human connection. Maybe they are facing headwinds, seem to be stuck in some way, are seeking clarity or help with something. The email response that they received from you seemed like it was written by a robot. You didn’t intend to communicate that the relationship and the person was somehow less important but that is now their perception. A single email doesn’t typically destroy a relationship but trust is built or erodes one interaction at a time. This one moved the needle in a direction you didn’t intend.
Saving ten minutes by having AI write an email reply seemed like a reasonable tradeoff in the moment but it came with a hidden cost: lost credibility. You can automate a task but you cannot automate something that is uniquely human: relationships.
