IDO LEKOTA
There are few things more reassuring in modern life than bank app telling you, in neat digital language, that your credit card application is underway. The buttons are obedient, the uploads are orderly, the progress screen looks official, and the final SMS arrives with all the confidence of a handshake. For a moment, one feels accepted into the brave new world of efficiency.
Then the future sends a second message.
In my case, the bank’s app took me through the entire application process with impressive smoothness – making me feel I am part of the future. I uploaded the required documents, completed the steps, and received confirmation that my application had been submitted. Mission accomplished, I thought. The, the next day, another message arrived saying I had not supplied all the required documentation. Which was strange, because according to the app I had done exactly that. They system had apparently developed a temporary case of amnesia.
This is the comedy of the age we now live in. A machine can guide you through a process with flawless confidence, then turn around and accuse you of not doing what it itself supervised. It is the digital equivalent of being taught how to tie your shoes by someone who later insist your shoes were never tied in the first place.
Naturally, I called the bank’s help desk. A real human answered. Already this felt like a small victory for civilization.
I explained the problem: the app had taken me through the processes, the SMS had confirmed the application, and yet the next message behaved as if some essential document had vanished into electronic wilderness. The consultant listened carefully, checked my file and confirmed that, in fact, I had loaded everything required. There was no argument, no robotic insistence that the system must be right because the system is the system. Instead, there was calm, clarity and a tone of professional decorum that made the whole exchange feel less like a complaint and more like a rescue operation.
She then asked me to resend the documents, promising to intervene so that the system would recognize what had already been sent. That, in itself is a perfect illustration of the modern world: the machine handled the paperwork, but the human handled the truth.
This is why stories like mine should calm some of the anxiety around artificial intelligence. There is a growing fear that machines will render human beings unnecessary. But real life is proving something more subtle and more hopeful. AI is not replacing human intelligence so much as exposing where human intelligence is still essential. The machine can move fast, process data and automate routine tasks, but when something goes wrong, when judgement is needed, when context matters, when a customer is frustrated and a system is confused, it is still the human being who restores order.
In truth, the best future is not where machines replace humans, but one where machines take over the repetitive work and people do the work that only humans can do.AI can sort documents, detect patterns and trigger alert. But it cannot yet reassure a worried person with empathy. It cannot decide that a file is complete even if the automated process has temporarily lost its memory. It cannot combine technical competence with warmth, patience and decorum. It cannot say, “I see the problem, let me help”, and make the customer instantly fee less like a number and more like a person.
That is the human advantage
In the service sector, where most South Africans work, this matters more than ever. Customers may appreciate speed, but they remember how they were treated when something went wrong. They remember whether a person on the other end of the line sound irritated or kind, dismissive or respectful, mechanical or human. A consultant with good judgement and good manners can save a company far more goodwill that the smartest chatbot in the world.
That is why human capital remains so important in this AI driven world. Far from being obsolete, human being are becoming the essential complement to automation. The future will belong to businesses that understand this balance. Let the machines do the heavy lifting, but let the people do the healing, the interpreting, the reassuring and the deciding.
My own experience was a small experience but useful reminder of that. The app did its job, at least until it forget it had done its job. The system sent its warning. The consultant stepped in with patience, professionalism and human decorum, and the matter was sent back on course. In that moment, the fear that machine will simply sweep humans aside looked less like reality and more like an overstatement.
The truth is simpler and better. Machines are good at process. Humans are good at judgement. Machines can accelerate. Humans can understand. Machines can accelerate. Human can understand. Machines can compute. Humans care.