Over the past few months, a new piece of slang has snuck into my vocabulary. I adopted it first from a friend who told me: “Don’t be bot.” Missing article intended.
Since then, “bot” began to edge out “jerk” and “tool,” among other words that require asterisk-vowels before publishing. A noun and adjective, “bot” seemed to mean “basic” at first glance. But to be bot implied something mechanical, homogenized, and hardened, all at once.
Bot-ness stripped its subject of humanity. At least, basic-ness preserved the human condition, even on a simpleton level.
A few weeks ago, at AI panel “AI & the Social Contract,” executives dressed in Brooks Brothers, grads fresh out of Ivy dorms, and interns gathered to discuss the magic question: Bot — friend or foe?
Consensus was that AI, as a literal bot, leaned more towards the former than the latter. AI is a tool – an ultimate assistant, yes-man, and unwitting confidant who, all things being held equal, wants the best for you. When one of the panelists polled the crowd on whether they used a Language Learning Model (LLM) for therapy, roughly 75 percent had raised their hands. Of those who did, most kept their hands raised when asked if the LLM was helpful.
Gone were the days of group-thread checks, Slack sidebars, or late-night sanity-check calls. No more asking mentors for advice and them prefacing their answers with, “Well, back in my day.”
Now, ChatGPT, Claude, or any bot of choosing could call the shots and be dead-on – no more smiting your peers for giving well-meaning, misguided advice.
AI not only did the thinking for you, but it also stood in for all the intermediaries – the long email chains, Zoom meetings, follow-ups, etc — like a lawful jury of one person (or bot, in this case).
Near the end, after discussing liability, art, and ethics, the panel converged on the topic of critical thinking. Of course, at first blush, the lawyer, the researcher, the artist, and the marketing executive agreed on one thing: we, the non-bots, should think. Critically. But what if we could optimize our critical thinking with the help of a very reliable friend? In the words of Avenue Z Chief Strategy Officer Whitney Hart: “Are we actually bringing our brains to the table?” Research Associate at the Yale Digital Ethics Center (DEC) Emmie Hine agreed, stating that AI will create a “lost generation of students” who lack the requisite skills to not only read, but to build “human relationships and in a human society.”
Hine and Hart are right, even when their logic is applied beyond the AI world. What human would I be if my actions were solely dictated by peers? What if my response to “What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?” was: “I don’t know, what’s yours?”
.jpg)
Regardless of AI, perhaps we all have bot inside us. Businesses often operate under the same MO. They chase new clients for the win, pursue new markets for the optics and shiny partnerships for LinkedIn posts – while existing accounts churn in silence. Relationship management becomes secondary to acquisition, and CRM turns into a big numbers game. Meanwhile, nuance, loyalty, and retention gets lost in the noise. Soon, performance overpowers purpose, and it’s not just individuals acting a little bot.
Relationships, the foundation of all businesses, have become automated — but AI didn’t create this pattern. It just makes it harder for us to ignore. “Intuition is… the muscle [we need]...to detect this authenticity that we're looking for,” says panelist and House of Logic Audio Founder Rocco DellaNeve.
This intuition is why relationship intelligence tools like Kaboom AI matter. By turning customer data into usable insight, account teams can shift from reactive to intentional and strategic. AI isn’t here to replace human judgement; it’s here to refine it.
If we are all a bit bot, then maybe AI is more of a foreshadowing than an immediate threat. It’s not the catalyst or driver; it’s simply the end-result, and for some, even an easy scapegoat.
When we let an actual bot like Kaboom AI do what it does best, we’re freed up to do what we do best: be human.
