We Already Knew That

I read Angel Howard's new Newsweek op-ed, "AI Must Strengthen, Not Replace, Human Judgment", and my reaction the whole way through was the same. Uhm, yeah. We already know this. AI can fake empathy but can't feel it. Companies shouldn't automate away the human touch. It should be about people. If you've read anything about AI in the last three years, you've read this piece already, just with a different byline. Sound bites, not an argumentThe examples are the ones everybody uses. A friend texts "I'm fine" and you can't tell if she means it. A meeting where people stop making eye contact. A customer stuck in an automated phone loop. None of it is wrong. None of it is new, either. The numbers don't help much. She cites a WHO estimate that one in six people worldwide are lonely, and a Gallup finding that only 20 percent of employees were engaged at work in 2025. Both are real problems. But she never connects either one to AI. People were lonely and checked out at work long before…