AI Is Not an Alien: What 50 Years of Technology Taught Me About Change

I was born in India in 1972.

During my lifetime, I have watched technology move from being something unusual that entered our homes occasionally to something we now carry in our hands every day.

I remember the arrival of fridges, black-and-white televisions and household appliances that gradually changed how ordinary families lived. I remember when making a telephone call could involve another human being sitting at an exchange.

You did not simply dial somebody directly. The exchange connected you. Sometimes the operator would speak to the person at the other end and tell them who was calling before putting you through.

Then those familiar voices disappeared.

The human operators were gradually replaced by automatic and later digital telephone exchanges. Calls became quicker, more private and easier to make. Today, we carry mobile phones that can connect us to almost anyone in the world within seconds.

That change made communication better for millions of people. It also changed an entire area of work and made many telephone operator roles unnecessary.

This is one reason I find the current conversation about artificial intelligence so interesting.

We often speak about AI as though an alien has suddenly landed on Earth. We are told it will change everything, remove jobs and leave businesses behind if they do not act immediately.

But technology has been changing work, removing particular tasks and creating new possibilities throughout my lifetime.

AI is not the beginning of that story.

We once imagined video calls as the future

I remember getting our first VCR around 1982.

Around that time, we were asked to complete a school project about how we imagined technology might develop in the future. One of the ideas we wrote about was being able to see somebody's face while speaking to them on the telephone.

At the time, it felt like something from the distant future.

Now I can make a video call from a mobile phone small enough to carry in my pocket. We can speak face to face with family, friends, colleagues and customers living on the other side of the world.

A childhood idea became an ordinary part of life within my lifetime.

We barely stop to think about it now.

That is what often happens with technology. It begins as something strange, expensive or difficult to imagine. Eventually, it becomes so normal that we forget it once frightened or amazed us.

Entering the computer room felt like entering a temple

My first proper introduction to computers was in India in 1991.

These were large white computers kept inside an air-conditioned room. We were not allowed to enter with shoes, food or drinks. Everything felt protected and serious.

Going into that room felt almost like entering a temple.

There was no familiar Windows screen. We worked through DOS, typing commands onto a black screen.

Today, somebody can open a laptop in a café and use technology more powerful than anything we could have imagined in that carefully protected room.

But in 1991, computers did not feel ordinary. They felt specialised and slightly intimidating.

People had to learn a new language and a new way of working. Many experienced workers must have wondered whether their knowledge would still matter.

That feeling is not very different from what many business owners are experiencing with AI today.

Perhaps we are afraid of becoming beginners again

People sometimes assume that anyone worried about AI simply does not understand technology.

I think the fear is more human than that.

AI can make an experienced and capable business owner feel like a beginner again.

Someone may have spent 20 or 30 years building a business, understanding customers and becoming good at their work. Suddenly, they are surrounded by unfamiliar language about prompts, agents, large language models, machine learning and automation.

Everywhere they look, someone else seems to be ahead.

They hear that every process now needs AI.

Then comes the warning that jobs will disappear and businesses that do not adopt AI immediately will be left behind.

It is not surprising that people feel anxious.

Perhaps we are not always afraid of artificial intelligence itself. What frightens us may be the feeling that everything we know has suddenly become less valuable.

We may simply be afraid of becoming beginners again.

My generation has already lived through enormous change

There is a contradiction here that I find fascinating.

Many people in my generation have lived through more change than we give ourselves credit for.

I moved from India to Kenya and later to England. I crossed oceans, entered unfamiliar countries and built a place for myself in completely different environments.

My generation has watched telephone exchanges become direct dialling, black-and-white televisions become smart screens, VCRs become streaming services and computing power once protected inside special rooms become something we carry in our hands.

We moved countries, learned new systems, adapted to new workplaces and found ways to begin again.

Yet a new tool appearing on a computer screen can still make us feel that the world is moving too quickly.

That does not mean we are incapable of adapting. Our own lives prove otherwise.

It may simply mean that change feels different when it arrives without context and is sold to us through fear.

The fear surrounding AI is being commercialised

There are genuine questions to ask about AI.

Some tasks will disappear. Some jobs will change and some roles may no longer exist in their current form. Data, privacy, accuracy and responsibility all matter. AI can produce confident answers that are wrong. It can be used badly, irresponsibly or without enough human oversight.

Those concerns should not be dismissed.

But fear is also being used to sell technology.

Small businesses are being told they must invest in AI before anyone has helped them understand what they need it for.

They are encouraged to buy systems because competitors may be using them. They are presented with impressive demonstrations without being shown how the technology will fit into their actual work.

The result is that businesses can feel pressured into adding tools they do not understand to processes that were already disconnected.

That is not progress. It is another expense and another system for somebody to manage.

A business should not begin by asking, "Which AI tool should we buy?"

It should begin by understanding what is happening in the business, where people are struggling and what genuinely needs to improve.

Understand first. Technology second.

Technology has always changed jobs

The telephone exchange is an important example because it stops us pretending that technology has never displaced people before.

When automatic exchanges replaced human operators, jobs disappeared or changed. The public gained quicker and more private telephone calls, but that improvement carried a human consequence.

The same pattern has appeared in factories, banks, shops, offices and almost every other part of working life.

Technology can remove repetitive tasks. It can also remove entire roles. At the same time, it creates different work, industries and possibilities that did not exist before.

AI will do some of this too.

It would be dishonest to promise that AI will never affect jobs. It already is.

But it is equally unhelpful to present every use of AI as an attempt to replace a person.

AI can replace a particular task without replacing the person whose judgement, experience and relationships still matter.

How a business chooses to use the technology makes an enormous difference.

An AI assistant does not have to take somebody's job

Imagine a business that operates from nine in the morning until five in the afternoon.

A potential customer arrives home at six o'clock and visits the company's website. They have a question and want to explain what service they need, but the office is closed.

An AI assistant such as Katie or Molly can acknowledge the enquiry, answer appropriate initial questions and collect the information the team will need.

The following morning, the employee arrives to find a properly recorded enquiry and useful information ready for them.

The AI assistant has not necessarily taken work away from that person. It has kept the business door open after normal working hours and prepared work for the human team to continue.

The person still brings judgement, empathy, experience and responsibility to the conversation.

The value is not in pretending the AI is human. The value is in giving it a clear and limited role within a process that people understand.

That is very different from installing an AI tool and hoping it will somehow improve the business on its own.

AI should support life, not take it over

I see AI as another tool in the long history of technology.

It is more powerful and accessible than many tools that came before it, so it deserves sensible boundaries and serious thought. But it is still a tool.

AI should help scientists examine information, support medical professionals working with evidence, take on repetitive tasks for businesses and give people back time they currently spend copying, chasing and remembering things a connected process could manage.

But it must never become the reason we stop thinking.

People must remain responsible for the decisions it influences.

Businesses should not force it into every process simply because AI is currently fashionable.

The question is not whether a business uses AI.

The better question is whether the technology genuinely improves the work, supports the people doing it and creates a better experience for the customer.

Are we afraid of AI or are we afraid of change?

I have watched voices disappear from telephone exchanges, DOS screens become windows into the world, and a childhood idea about seeing someone's face on a call become entirely ordinary.

I have crossed oceans, entered unfamiliar countries and learned to build a life again.

AI is another change, and it will alter how we live and work. New kinds of work will emerge alongside what it removes.

We should have honest conversations about those consequences.

But fear should not make our decisions for us, and neither should hype.

AI is not an alien that suddenly appeared on our planet. It is another stage in a much longer story of human beings creating tools, adapting to them and deciding what kind of future they want those tools to support.

Perhaps the real challenge is not learning how to use AI.

Perhaps it is remembering that we have faced unfamiliar change before and that none of us is too old, too experienced or too established to become a beginner again.