What If the “Real Person” Was Just a Slower AI?

I had a thought while waiting for a customer-service chat to respond, which is apparently what happens when you leave me alone with a blinking cursor. I had asked to speak to a real person, and now I was waiting for that person to help me. Then I started wondering: What if they just transferred me to another AI, but this one was told to respond more slowly?

Think about it. The first chatbot answers almost instantly, so naturally, we’re suspicious. We ask for a human, get transferred, and suddenly everything takes longer. A few minutes pass before we see, “Let me check that for you.” We settle into our chairs, relieved that we’re finally talking to a person. Meanwhile, maybe the second robot is sitting there with a perfectly good answer, waiting for its little timer to run out.

I can imagine someone setting it up: “This response is excellent, but you answered too quickly. Give Brandt enough time to wonder whether he should start making dinner. Then thank him for his patience.” Maybe there’s even a button that adds a typo for extra credibility. We’ve spent years trying to make computers faster, and here I am imagining that the secret to making one feel human is a slight delay and an apology.

Of course, this is just an amusing what-if. I have no evidence that anyone is doing this, and slow replies don’t prove anything. A real person might be handling several chats, checking records, or waiting for someone else to answer a question. They might be using AI to help write their replies. They might also have stepped away for a sandwich, which I consider a reasonable human activity.

Before I get too carried away with my clever little theory, I should mention that this very article was polished with AI. 😉 I took a wandering thought about customer-service robots, handed it to a robot, and asked for help making it readable. There’s probably a joke in there about asking the suspect to edit the police report, but honestly, I’m quite happy with the arrangement. The pictures are AI-generated too, and yes, I specifically asked AI to make me ridiculously lean and muscular. I wanted the muscles to be part of the joke, so I gave myself the superhero upgrade. Apparently, typing “bigger biceps” is easier than doing push-ups. Womp womp.

That’s something I’ve been enjoying about AI lately. I can show up without a finished idea. I can ramble, think out loud, go down a side road, and then realize the thing I actually wanted to say was somewhere back near the beginning. Sometimes I’ll explain something and then immediately say, “Wait, that’s not what I mean.” Being able to work through that without needing to have everything organized first feels surprisingly freeing.

Then AI can help shape those thoughts into something clear. It can gather the useful pieces, untangle a sentence, and point out that I’ve explained the same thing three times. The part I care about is reading it afterward and recognizing what I meant. I still want my humor, my opinions, and the occasional detour in there. When that comes together, I find something beautiful about the collaboration. An unfinished thought becomes something I can share.

I don’t think every interaction needs to be entirely human, and I certainly don’t think AI is bad. I also don’t pretend to know how all of this will turn out. Maybe we’ll discover downsides later that we aren’t thinking about enough today. I’m leaving room to change my mind as we learn more. Right now, though, I’m really enjoying having a place to explore an idea, even one that starts with me getting impatient in a support chat.