We keep hearing that AI is coming for our jobs — replacing workers, transforming organisations and making vast amounts of human labour unnecessary.
But have you tried navigating a large organisation's digital systems?
Government agencies, banks, insurers, universities and telecommunications companies.
We live in a world where AI can write an essay, generate an image, analyse data, translate languages and write code.
Yet systems still make us:
• enter the same information more than once
• create different logins for different services
• download a PDF, complete it and upload it again
• navigate websites that aren't designed around what we're trying to do
• call because the online system can't handle an ordinary situation.
And then there's communication.
Being ghosted by an organisation.
Waiting on hold for periods.
Sending an email and waiting a week — or longer — for a response.
No acknowledgement that your enquiry was received. No automated response. No indication of when you can expect an answer.
I experience this all the time.
Recently I was forced to select a category from a government system before I could proceed. None of the options described what I actually do.
The closest fit apparently makes me a day spa manager. So that's how I'm now classified by the system.
And this isn't just amusing or annoying.
It's expensive.
Every piece of friction creates work.
Someone has to enter data. Check it. Answer the phone. Chase information. Fix errors. Explain the process.
We have effectively created jobs to compensate for broken systems.
So here's the contradiction:
We're talking about AI eliminating human work while maintaining systems that create unnecessary human work.
AI isn't the same thing as digital transformation. Putting AI on top of a fragmented or badly designed system doesn't solve the problem. It can simply give us a very intelligent assistant helping us navigate a broken system.
What if we redesigned services around the person trying to get something done?
What if systems shared information appropriately?
What if communication was treated as part of the service, not an afterthought?
Putting a bad process online doesn't make it a good process.
it just makes the bad process digital.
We repeatedly introduce new technology without redesigning the systems and processes around it.
We digitise the form rather than rethink the process.
We automate the task rather than question whether it needs to exist.
We add another platform rather than make existing ones work together.
And now we're adding AI.
The real test of AI isn't how much human work it can replace, but whether we're prepared to rethink the systems and processes that create so much unnecessary work in the first place.
