Artificial intelligence is increasingly framed as a revolutionary tool poised to transform society for the better, or as an imminent threat to replace human workers. Headlines about “robot nurses,” rogue chatbots, and indomitable virtual assistants can make this technology both exciting and deeply unsettling.
But experts in business, medicine and ethics at the University of Rochester say the reality is more nuanced. For Daniel Keating ’05S (MBA), Kathleen Fear, and Jonathan Herrington, the more important question is not whether AI will replace humans, but rather which parts of human work should not be consuming so much human attention in the first place.
Keating, a clinical associate professor of information systems and AI at Eurochester’s Simon Business School, sees AI not as a wholesale replacement of workers, but as an agent that will fundamentally change the way people spend their time and energy at work.
Although this technology excels at repetitive cognitive tasks, human judgment, leadership, and creativity are still essential.
“You need to use it as a creative palette to bring in your best ideas and refine your most powerful questions,” says Keating. “The instruction is to let the AI improve your idea.”
More than a machine
“There’s so much hype around AI around the world,” says Fear, senior director of digital health and AI at the University of Rochester School of Medicine. “AI can sometimes feel like something is happening to people; it’s something they can’t control, and it’s changing their lives and work without them knowing what to do about it.”
At the same time, experts see a future where AI is most useful not when it imitates humanity, but when it makes more room for uniquely human abilities such as empathy, creativity, judgment, and connection. And even some of the more troubling human elements, such as mistakes, emotions, intuition, and uncertainty, remain features rather than bugs.
“AI can sometimes feel like something is happening to people; it’s something they can’t control, and it’s changing their lives and work without them knowing what to do about it.”
Herrington, an assistant professor of health humanities and bioethics in the School of Medicine and Dentistry, said public conversations about AI often oversimplify the nature of human intelligence.
“It’s just a mistake to think that AI can replace all the different cognitive tasks that humans are good at,” says Herrington, who also serves as an assistant professor in the philosophy department.
While AI is increasingly able to perform creative tasks once thought to be uniquely human, some aspects of human thinking remain difficult to replicate, Herrington says.
“Some flair and style are still important, including developing the right questions, choosing the most salient sources, and finding the perfect metaphor,” he says.
Keating’s course explores current opportunities to advance important AI initiatives in the workplace. “AI can make decisions, piece together correlations, and find new connections,” Keating says. “It’s not a tool. It’s an agent. Tools just do what humans intended them to do. AI doesn’t. It can do things humans didn’t intend them to do.”
He encourages students to treat AI not as a final authority, but as a collaborative brainstorming partner that can present unexpected connections and alternative approaches. Keating sees AI becoming deeply integrated into everyday workplace functions, from marketing and finance operations to customer service, project management, and even higher education admissions. He said the technology helps organizations generate ideas, identify patterns, analyze large amounts of data, and reduce repetitive tasks. This integration gives employees more time for creativity, judgment, and relationships.
Less “pajama time” and more connections with patients
Despite its promise, AI cannot compete with humans in two different areas: emotional labor and human discernment.
“When you think about where we’re in short supply, whether it’s child care, elderly caregivers, nurses, doctors, teachers, we still don’t have enough human empathy,” Herrington said. “It’s actually really rare.”
Ironically, he argues, many modern workplaces force people to spend vast amounts of time on administrative and cognitive tasks, which undermines opportunities for meaningful relationships.
“When you think about where we’re in short supply, whether it’s daycare centers, elderly caregivers, nurses, doctors, teachers, we still don’t have enough human empathy.”
“Many of us have jobs that force us to behave in ways that don’t leave us time to engage in human empathy because we have to engage in all these cognitive tasks,” he says. “The positive vision for AI is that such tasks will become less important aspects of our jobs and we will spend more time connecting with other humans.”
Fear sees AI applications such as Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX), which records appointments with patient consent, as a tool to reduce mechanical administrative burden, create more space for human interaction, and reduce the risk of burnout due to too much “pajama time” (a term used to describe the unpaid administrative tasks that doctors and other healthcare professionals undertake after hours).
embrace the chaos
At the same time, all three experts caution against treating AI as if it were inherently neutral or infallible.
“As healthcare organizations, we have a significant responsibility to properly manage the AI, data, and information provided by our patients,” says Fear.
One major concern concerns bias and system performance over time. An AI tool trained under one condition may behave differently when the population, workflow, or environment changes.
“The biggest risk is how the tools behave as conditions change over time,” Fear says. “We need to monitor.”
Herrington sees another danger in the social dynamics of AI systems themselves. Because many AI platforms are designed to maximize engagement, he worries that they promote affirmation and dependence rather than honesty and accountability.
“These systems are built to maximize engagement,” he says. “They’re almost always goofballs, because that’s what attracts people.”
For him, meaningful relationships involve friction, independence, and moral challenge. “Dating someone who doesn’t have your interests and ambitions is ultimately very unsatisfying,” he says. “What you want is to be with someone who has messy ambitions and interests.”
This also applies to education, research, and medicine.
“You never speak truth to power,” Herrington says of AI systems. “And that’s what you want in a good teacher, boss, doctor.
Engagement to overcome anxiety
Fear believes the best response is informed engagement, rather than discounting or avoiding AI altogether.
“The most valuable thing people can do with AI is to engage and play with it,” she says.
Part of her job includes helping clinicians, staff, and patients better understand both the opportunities and limitations of technology.
“Once you understand something, you can make it happen,” she says. “The more you know, the more in control you will be and the better you will be at differentiating between hype and reality.”
Fear also allows AI to lower the barriers that have historically prevented many good ideas from gaining traction. “I’ve been working in innovation for 10 years and there’s a community of really smart, creative and passionate people here,” she says. “Obstacles often have less to do with the quality of the idea and more to do with resources and technical skills.”
Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, and Claude have the potential to democratize innovation by empowering more people to prototype ideas, build software tools, and streamline workflows without requiring coding expertise.
“A sustainable future for AI at UROchester Medicine depends on developing a culture where everyone is educated about AI,” says Fear.
“Junk code” or genius?
While experts increasingly debate whether AI acts as a tool or an autonomous agent, all three researchers agree that human judgment remains central. The future of artificial intelligence is not about replacing humans. It’s about redefining what human work should look like in a world increasingly shaped by machines.
They argue that if AI can absorb or reduce repetitive documentation, technical bottlenecks, and administrative overload, people may be able to focus more on the parts of work machines that are still difficult to reproduce.
“We only have a fraction of the information that AI has, and yet we can make such huge leaps forward as a species with just a little bit of information and some weird human ‘junk code,’” says Keating, quoting a phrase used by author Yves Poole.
He points to “human confusion,” qualities such as uncertainty, free will, storytelling, and error, as being intentionally excluded from AI systems but central to human achievement. “We write the works of Shakespeare, create the art of Picasso, and cure polio. In Rochester, we brought about extraordinary social change through the works of Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass. Sometimes we learn to take flight.”
He adds, “These seemingly ‘flaws’ are actually what enable us humans to make incredible leaps.”
