The future contradicts the present

The AI debate has two halves. Nobody says so. The people leading it would probably deny it. But if you lay the arguments side by side, they tell two different stories.

The first story is one of partnership. Humans and machines, side by side. AI supports. It takes over routine work. It delivers data that humans interpret. It suggests, humans decide. That’s the reassuring picture. The picture shown at every keynote. The picture that fills conferences.

The second story sounds different. Here, AI starts acting on its own. It runs campaigns. It negotiates with customers. It makes decisions. The human provides “impulses.” He “curates.” He “refines.” The verbs give away what has shifted. In the first story, the human acts. In the second, the human reacts.

The transition happens without announcement. No talk that says: From here on, things change. No sentence that marks the shift. Instead, a slow slide from “AI assists” to “AI takes over.” So slow that you don’t notice unless you’re paying attention.

I think most people haven’t noticed it themselves. Not because they were careless. But because the transition mirrors reality. In practice, AI implementation follows the same path. First the pilot project: Small tasks, clear boundaries, human control. Then the scaling: More tasks, fewer boundaries, less control. Then the normalization: The machine does it, nobody asks why anymore.

This pattern isn’t new. It happens with every technology that takes hold. The first stage is always the promise of control. You’re in the driver’s seat. The machine is just a tool. The second stage is the creeping handover. The machine does it better, faster, cheaper. Why would you still do it yourself? The third stage is acceptance. That’s just how it is. That’s how things work now.

What bothers me about the debate isn’t that it describes this trajectory. What bothers me is that it describes it without noticing. At the start, there’s the assurance that humans remain at the center. At the end, there’s the description of a world where they don’t. Both are told by the same people, without the contradiction being addressed.

There’s a reason for that. The debate wants to be both things at once. It wants to reassure and to excite. It wants to say: Everything stays the same, and at the same time: Everything changes. It wants to reach the manager who’s afraid of losing his people, and the manager who dreams of cutting his costs. It wants to bring employees along and convince the board. And because it wants both, it says both. Without noticing that both don’t go together.

The beginning is the sedative. The end is the truth. Or the other way around. Depending on which version you prefer.

I prefer the version that’s consistent. The one that says: Either humans remain at the center, and then we have to explain why and how. Or they don’t, and then we have to say what that means. A discussion that claims both and thinks neither through to the end helps no one. It confirms those who want to hear that everything will be fine. And it confirms those who want to hear that everything will change. And it leaves those looking for an honest answer with two stories that don’t fit together.

The break is right there. You just have to count the verbs.