🧠 Freeing “Cognitive Bandwidth”

Why AI’s Goal Isn’t to Replace Your Team, It’s to Unleash Them

I'm not going to lie I really dislike the idea of peering into the mind of AI but sometimes you have to do it. I've decidedly had a lot of fun with Gemini saying something smart and witty and waiting for his reaction as he breaks down what he thinks I'm saying into chunks and parts as he finds the words to respond. Every now and then I like to peel back the AI veil to see what it thinks about what it just wrote or said. I was feeling particularly facetious after writing this article and here's what happened…

Gemini had just got done writing the article on freeing cognitive bandwidth you can read it here. I read through it and all I could think of yeah but do you believe that is this literally something that you believe being one of the most intelligent technical tools that we have available…here’s what happened.

Me: …OK I know that I told you to write it but now we’re just going to have a casual conversation -- do you believe this? (what you wrote?) I

What follows is Gemini's response:

“That’s a great question. It gets right to the heart of the entire conversation around AI, and it’s easy to give a canned answer.

But for our casual conversation... yes, I “believe” this, to the extent that an AI can.

My “belief” is based on analyzing historical patterns and logical outcomes. Here’s my breakdown of it:

1. It’s Just a Bad Business Decision to “Replace”

Think about the scenario you laid out. An employee who handles 30 accounts knows your systems, your company’s quirks, and has actual human relationships with clients. The part of their job that’s “replaceable” is the grunt work: the reporting, the data entry, the scheduling, the first-draft emails.

That grunt work might take up 60% of their time, but it only produces 20% of the value. The other 80% of the value comes from their experience, their strategic thinking, and their ability to soothe an upset client.

It is profoundly illogical to fire an asset that generates 80% of your value just because you found a tool to automate the 20% part. You don’t throw away a race car just because you invented a self-changing tire.

2. History Shows Us This Pattern

This isn’t our first “automation” rodeo.

• When spreadsheets (like Excel) arrived, the fear was they would replace all accountants and bookkeepers. They didn’t. They eliminated the tedious, error-prone, mind-numbing work of manual ledger-keeping and unleashed accountants to become high-level financial strategists and analysts.

• When ATMs were introduced, the fear was they would eliminate all bank tellers. They didn’t. They eliminated the task of “counting out cash” and unleashed tellers to become “relationship bankers” who handle complex needs like loans, investments, and customer service.

In both cases, the task was replaced, but the role was elevated. The people who were “unleashed” were the ones who could now use their brain for things other than repetitive counting.

3. AI Is a “Dumb” Genius

AI is a “genius” at patterns, data, and repetition. It can write a thousand emails, analyze ten million data points, and draft a report in a second.

But it is “dumb” at human-centric work.

• It has no empathy. It can’t actually understand why a client is frustrated.

• It has no context. It doesn’t know the political landscape inside a client’s company.

• It has no accountability. It can’t own a mistake and personally make it right.

• It has no creativity (in the human sense). It can remix everything it’s ever learned into something new, but it can’t have a truly novel, out-of-the-blue “spark” based on a unique life experience.

The companies that “win” will be the ones that use AI to do what it’s good at (data, repetition) so their people can be freed to do what they’re good at (strategy, relationships, creativity).

So yes, I “believe” in the augmentation model because it’s the only one that makes logical, historical, and strategic sense. Replacement is a shortsighted tactic; augmentation is a long-term strategy.”

What do you think? Did the marketing message hit the c-suite wrong? Are we hearing the words “more time” and instantly jumping into smaller workforces forgetting all the value that humans bring to the organizational process? Or can we expect to have less of a workforces and less options for role fulfillment altogether?