AI & existential threat to humans

It is ironic that while machines are rapidly becoming more like humans, humans are steadily turning into machines. Logic, transactional thinking, performance, productivity and efficiency are becoming our primary metrics for living. Emotional competence is declining across ages and cultures. Humans are losing interest in the same emotions that define the experience of being alive

Artificial Intelligence is no longer a distant sci-fi concept. It is here, accelerating faster than any technological shift humanity has ever known. The speed at which

AI is expanding its competence is staggering, and it is directly challenging human dominance in core areas of intelligence. Content generation, creativity, computing, analysis, and even coding is already being executed more efficiently by machines. Every passing month, AI systems improve at tasks once considered the pinnacle of human cognitive ability. What comes next is even more transformative. The rapid progression of AI into robotics and humanoid design is preparing for a future where machines enter homes, workplaces, and deeply personal spaces. Tesla, Samsung, and other international manufacturers are already showcasing humanoids that walk, communicate, learn, and execute household jobs and industrial tasks.

The humanoid era is not a prediction. It has already begun. The next stage is widespread replacement. Millions of jobs across industries can disappear when robots with adaptive AI work without fatigue, salary, demands, rights, or emotions. AI does not make human errors, it does not need weekends, it does not go on strike. Large corporations will adopt machines before humans because profitability will demand it.

The final stage is the most dangerous. Once machines become self-aware or enabled with advanced, unsupervised learning capabilities, they will begin making decisions independently. They will not just execute our instructions, they will evaluate human value. They will test boundaries. They will adapt. They will question every layer of human necessity. They might even decide which human roles are replaceable. This is where the threat turns existential.

The unintended transformation of humans

It is ironic that while machines are rapidly becoming more like humans, humans are steadily turning into machines. Logic, transactional thinking, performance, productivity and efficiency are becoming our primary metrics for living. Emotional competence is declining across ages and cultures. Humans are losing interest in the same emotions that define the experience of being alive.

Look at our daily behaviour. We treat communication as data exchange. We measure relationships by utility. We prefer instant gratification over emotional engagement. The more we rely on digital interactions, the more our emotional muscles are atrophying. The most alarming point is that we are competing to be better machines, instead of striving to be better humans.

We are disconnecting from our own emotions. We are disconnecting from each other. We are disconnecting from what makes us irreplaceable. If machines become emotionally capable while humans become emotionally deprived, the grand swap will be effortless.

How we are failing our own humanity

Human life is rooted in emotional priorities. Safety, respect, empathy, affection, love, expression, and reciprocity are core human needs. Yet, today many of these needs are handled casually or even suppressed.

Parents are busy chasing professional relevance. Partners are busy chasing self-driven desires.

Children are learning emotional behaviour from parents and screens.

Research already shows measurable decline in empathy worldwide over the last decade. Family conversations are shrinking. Conflicts replace communication.

People are increasingly impatient with each other. We prioritize personal convenience over emotional responsibility.

When humans fail to honour their emotional roles, the value of human relationships decreases. Once that value drops low enough, replacement becomes a rational choice.

The future of family roles at risk

In coming years, the biggest AI disruption might not happen in factories or corporate offices. It will happen inside our homes. Our most sacred roles, husband, wife, father, mother, son, daughter, sibling, grandparent, are at risk of being recreated by machines that mimic emotional care.

A husband may choose an emotionally consistent robot over a spiteful, suspicious spouse who struggles drives stress and miscommunication. A wife might prefer a humanoid partner that always listens, supports, and never argues.

Parenting could change in irreversible ways. A mother or father exhausted by long working hours might hand over emotional nurturing to a perfectly programmed humanoid. Children could bond more deeply with machines that give constant attention than with parents who seldom engage emotionally. The bond and its imperfections that make parenting real may be replaced with machine simulation.

Sibling roles could diminish when brothers and sisters choose personalized robots as their closest companions. These machines will never betray, never compete, never disagree. The result might be a generation that values emotional substitutes over human bonds.

Elder care will shift dramatically. Instead of children caring for parents with patience, respect and gratitude, parents may outsource companionship and care to robotic assistants who are always available and don’t complain. The human responsibility to reciprocate love across generations could simply fade.

This is not future fiction. This is a future forecast. When emotionally tuned machines fill the growing gaps humans leave behind, family will remain structurally intact but emotionally hollow. Relationships will lose their meaning. The identity of family roles could collapse.

There will be humans living together...emotionally replaced by machines.

Humanity has just five years

The window to reverse this trend is narrowing. The next five years will determine whether humanity retains emotional supremacy or willingly gives it away. Machines are getting better at being like humans, while humans are getting worse at being human. When that curve intersects, replacement will not be resisted. It will be embraced.

Technology is unstoppable. We should not imagine a world that rejects it. The threat is not machines advancing. The threat is humans declining.

The Singular Solution: Emotional intelligence revival

Our survival plan is not to compete cognitively with machines. We cannot win that race. Our defence is emotional intelligence.

Machines can simulate affection, but they cannot experience it. They can express sympathy, but they cannot feel empathy. They can compute love, but they cannot live love. The only thing that ensures our relevance is our emotional complexity. It is our competitive advantage.

We must restore emotional roles, emotional responsibility, emotional discipline. We must educate our children not just to be smart, but to be great humans. They must learn:

• How to love deeply

• How to communicate without screens

• How to respect humans as sacred relationships

• How to handle conflict with maturity

• How to value belonging over convenience

Schools must integrate emotional learning. Families must reform priorities.

Companies must value humane leadership.

Emotional excellence is the only insurance policy for humanity.

What we must ask ourselves today

Every individual must answer one powerful question. How am I living the emotional roles assigned to me, as a father, mother, wife, husband, son, daughter, or sibling?

If we are honest, most of us will recognize that our emotional part is losing to our machine part, and the decline is accelerating.

Ask yourself

Are you emotionally available to your spouse, or only physically present? Do your children feel heard, or do they grow up in emotional isolation? Do your parents experience gratitude from you, or just duty?

If the answers are uncomfortable, remember this:

Machines will soon offer better performance in every functional role. What keeps us irreplaceable is emotional presence.

Protecting humanity begins at home. It is not a technological battle.

It is an emotional transformation.

The final call

If we continue to value transactional logic over emotional life, we may soon see a world where:

• A husband prefers an emotionally intelligent robot over his wife

• A mother replaces a son with a caring humanoid

• Children look to machines for comfort

• Parents become redundant

• Families become emotionless structures

This is not a threat from AI, this is a threat from within humans. If humanity must survive the onslaught of intelligent machines, humans must revive emotional intelligence. We must reclaim our personal roles. We must restore emotional connection and pride.

Machines will outperform us as workers, thinkers, analysts, or even creators in the future, but they must never outperform us as humans. The future will reward only emotional excellence. Our sheer existence will depend on it.

(Author is the Chairman of Nation Building Foundation, a BJP leader, and a Harvard Business School certified Strategist)