Picture the last time you called a service hotline and found yourself stuck in an endless loop of automated responses. Or consider a healthcare clinic that deploys chatbots to manage patient intake, offering quick answers that may skirt a deeper diagnosis. How did you feel?
These scenarios illustrate the growing reliance on AI systems that look helpful on the surface — yet lead to chronic consumer disempowerment and latent dissatisfaction. “Placebo AI” can seem like a convenient, cost-effective fix. But it risks normalizing lower standards of care, sidelining genuine human expertise, and quietly chipping away at the dignity and rights we depend on, individually and as society.
In the current context, adopting “placebo AI” as a fix for unavailable or costly human labor is a prime illustration of austerity in practice. Unfortunately, there is “no free lunch” – austerity measures canquality of life when budget considerations trigger a shift from human-centered care toward automation that mimics support rather than delivering tangible human assistance.AI’s potential for cost reduction is significant.
Instead of using AI merely to cut costs, forward-thinking companies can harness AI to do routine work more efficiently and reallocate human workers to roles that emphasize empathy, creativity, and genuine human connection. Imagine a call center that uses AI to handle simple queries but trains its freed-up staff to handle complex, emotionally sensitive calls with better care.