Civilization risks future of species to avoid spending seven minutes drafting “Just circling back”
PALO ALTO – Historians investigating why humanity developed increasingly powerful artificial intelligence have discovered the civilization-ending technological race may have begun because office workers were tired of writing emails.
The broader debate about A.I. risks appears here.
For centuries, humans survived war, plague, famine, volcanic eruptions and meetings that should have been emails.
Then humanity encountered the actual email.
Resistance collapsed.
Eleven Seconds of Information, Seven Minutes of Politeness
Researchers estimate the average office employee spends a substantial portion of the workday composing messages that contain roughly eleven seconds of actual information.
“Can you send the spreadsheet?”
Becomes:
“Hi Jennifer, hope you’re doing well. Just wanted to circle back regarding the spreadsheet we discussed. When you have a moment, would you mind sending that across? No rush at all, but ideally before 2 p.m. Thanks so much!”
Every sentence is unnecessary.
Every sentence is mandatory.
Artificial intelligence arrived and offered liberation.
“Write a polite email asking Jennifer for the spreadsheet.”
Three seconds later:
“Hi Jennifer…”
Workers wept.
Nobody asked what else the machine might eventually become capable of.
It had solved email.
That was enough.
Workplace Anthropology: How Email Fatigue Drove A.I. Adoption
The Institute for Workplace Anthropology says professional correspondence is responsible for much of modern A.I. adoption.
Employees use systems to make messages warmer, shorter, friendlier, more professional, less aggressive, slightly more aggressive and “firm but not rude.”
Future archaeologists may conclude civilization developed superintelligence because adults lost the ability to say, “Where is the spreadsheet?”
Other uses quickly followed.
A.I. began summarizing meetings.
Then drafting reports.
Then creating presentations.
Then generating performance reviews.
Eventually workers realized software could produce the entire ecosystem of corporate communication without any participant knowing what was happening.
One manager requested a 20-slide deck.
A.I. generated it.
His employee used A.I. to summarize it into five bullets.
The vice president used A.I. to summarize the five bullets into two.
The CEO asked an assistant what happened.
The assistant said, “Something about customer engagement.”
The meeting was considered successful.
The Convenience Escalation Principle
Economic historians call this the Convenience Escalation Principle.
Humans rarely adopt dangerous technology because they want danger.
They adopt it because the dangerous technology also saves them nine minutes.
Automobiles kill people but eliminate walking.
Social media destroys attention spans but lets people see photographs of sandwiches.
Smartphones create compulsive behavior but prevent anyone from having to remember phone numbers.
Artificial intelligence may potentially alter civilization.
But it can also remove “Hope this email finds you well.”
Civilization considered the trade.
Civilization clicked Accept.
Safety experts attempt to explain long-term risks.
Office workers listen politely.
Then they ask whether A.I. can automatically schedule meetings across four time zones.
“Yes.”
“Great. Continue.”
From Wisdom and Salvation to Outlook Attachments
Philosophers find the priorities revealing.
Human beings have always sought transcendence.
The Greeks wanted wisdom.
The medieval world wanted salvation.
The Enlightenment wanted reason.
Modern civilization wants Outlook to stop asking whether we forgot the attachment.
Perhaps artificial intelligence will someday cure diseases, discover new physics and solve problems beyond human comprehension.
Perhaps it will also create serious risks.
But its original emotional appeal may remain embarrassingly mundane.
We wanted a machine smart enough to understand the universe.
Because writing “Best regards” was becoming exhausting.
How Workplace A.I. Adoption Is Really Changing Office Work
The email gag rests on a measurable trend. Generative tools built on large language models have spread rapidly through offices, and the Stanford A.I. Index tracks adoption, investment and capability trends each year. The underlying problem the jokes describe, drowning in messages, has a long academic history under the heading of information overload.
The risks are real on both ends of the scale. In the short term, researchers study cognitive offloading, or what skills we lose when tools do the thinking, while labor economists at the Bureau of Labor Statistics track how occupations change. In the long term, the debate over existential risk from A.I. continues. The satirical insight is that both conversations are driven by the same impulse: nobody wants to write the thank-you note.
Satire Disclaimer
This is satire. Humanity’s A.I. development has many motivations, not merely email fatigue, but office-worker dependence on automated writing provides a wonderfully small doorway into a very large technological debate. This story is entirely a human collaboration between two sentient beings – the world’s oldest tenured professor and a philosophy major turned dairy farmer.
SOURCE: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/03/opinion/letters/ai-threats-risks.html
Lowri Griffiths brings a distinct voice to satirical journalism, combining cultural critique with dry humour. Influenced by London’s creative networks, her writing reflects both wit and discipline.
Her authority stems from experience, while trust is built through transparency and ethical satire.
