I stumbled across a video of a delivery robot stuck at a crosswalk. It wasn’t broken or confused. It was waiting for a human to press the WALK button.
It had already navigated sidewalks, avoided people,
delivered a package like a polite little mule with Wi-Fi. But when it got to
the road, it stopped and asked a human to press the button.
And the human got annoyed. Understandable. But was this the robot's fault? It didn’t fail, it just hit the edge of a system that was never built with it in mind. The
short story: We keep building these eerily capable systems and then act
surprised when they trip over something dumb we forgot to redesign.
So we keep getting frustrated because AI, or platforms, or
whatever tool didn’t magically fix our workflow this week. “It doesn’t work.”
“It feels off.” “It’s too robotic.”
Maybe.
Or maybe it’s our assumption that if you just add
enough tools -- AI for writing, automation for outreach, analytics for
everything -- you’ll eventually hit some kind of frictionless flow. But what
you usually get is a faster version of a clunky system. We’re forcing new
capabilities into old systems and acting surprised when it feels like wearing
dress shoes to run a marathon
Consider this: If AI were actually native to how most people
work, a lot of those workflows wouldn’t exist in their current form. Steps
would disappear. Roles would shift. Some things we treat as essential would look unnecessary.
The robot getting stuck at the crosswalk isn’t the problem. It’s just pointing at one: We keep waiting for smarter technology, when what we actually need are systems that make sense for it.
NOTE: The person's actual reaction/response to the robot will be the subject of another post.
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