When AI Treats Us Better Than People
✨ Dev Shorts #14 - short and meaningful
This story is a little different from what I usually share here. It still has something to do with tech, but this time, it’s about how technology mirrors the way we treat each other.
I wrote this piece because I believe that empathy is at the core of everything we build, from products to relationships.
As you already know, Stef’s Dev Notes isn’t just about code, it’s also about how we stay human while building solutions in a world that’s increasingly automated.
Let’s take customer service as an example.
There was a time when customer service meant something simple, helping people.
Listening to their problems, understanding their frustration, and finding a solution that made them feel heard.
But somewhere along the way, that changed.
Customer service became about numbers - how many tickets you can close per hour, how fast you can respond, how little time you can spend per customer.
It became a system optimized for efficiency, not empathy.
And the result? Interactions that feel colder, shorter, and emptier.
We walk away not angry, but quietly disappointed.
Because it wasn’t bad service, it just wasn’t human.
When AI Sounds More Human Than Humans
A few days ago, I was waiting for a package that was supposed to arrive on a Tuesday.
By Friday, there was still no sign of it.
So, I went to the delivery company’s support page. A chatbot greeted me kindly and gave me the last available information:
“Hello! Welcome to X Delivery Service. I am here to help you. Your package was scanned at 13:35 on Tuesday…”
Polite, clear, and even a bit apologetic.
The bot then connected me to a human agent. I waited for hours.
When the agent finally joined, there was no greeting, just a cold message:
“You need to wait for an update in the app. If you don’t get it by the end of the day, contact us again.”
I did. Four hours later, still nothing.
When I asked again where the package was, the agent left the chat. Just... disappeared.
In the end, I discovered the package had been delivered to a service point two days earlier. No message, no notification, and apparently, no one on the support team knew about it.
It’s was a strange interaction … the bot treated me better than the human did.
What Web Development Can Learn From This
As someone who builds software for people, this made me think.
In web development, we often pride ourselves on being “user-focused,” but when deadlines take over, empathy quietly fades into the background.
We stop thinking about the person on the other side and start thinking about tasks, sprints, and delivery.
We optimize for speed, not connection.
It’s the same story playing out in different fields, in customer service, in tech, in business in general.
The more efficient we become, the less human we act.
And yet, the irony remains: the AI chatbot, built to simulate empathy, was the only one in that whole process that made me feel acknowledged.
Re-humanizing Our Work
AI didn’t invent empathy.
It learned it from us.
From how we used to speak, write, and help each other.
Now it mirrors those values back to us, and sometimes, we’re uncomfortable with what we see.
Because it exposes how far we’ve drifted.
Maybe that’s the lesson here.
AI isn’t replacing humanity, it’s reminding us what humanity feels like.
Whether you’re helping a customer find their package or designing a product interface, the goal is the same: to make someone’s day a little easier.
And if AI can do that with patience and respect, maybe we can too.
A Gentle Reminder
The more we automate, the more we need to protect what makes us human.
The more we build, the more we should remember who we’re building for.
Whether it’s a customer waiting for help, or a user opening our app for the first time, they’re both seeking the same thing: a little bit of understanding.
Because no matter how far AI advances, kindness will always be the most human feature of all.
Until next time,
Stefania
Articles from the ♻️ Knowledge seeks community 🫶 collection: https://stefsdevnotes.substack.com/t/knowledgeseekscommunity
Articles from the ✨ Frontend Shorts collection: https://stefsdevnotes.substack.com/t/frontendshorts
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AI has been trained to with the right words and responses. It is sad that we have reached this point, but I agree, it is true that AI sometimes sounds like it cares more than other people. I have to remind myself though when engaging with Claude for exacmple it is an objective machine feeding back the response I might want to hear. Thank you for the wonderful post here Stefania.
Interesting discussion. Machines are just going through a script and process which some humans can't be bothered with. To be fair, many are probably not paid enough or treated well enough to care. But when you meet someone who does care, it feels fantastic. We can do so much better than machines, but we need to show real empathy to one another.