In conversations about artificial intelligence, the focus often lies on speed, automation, and productivity gains. Rarely do we talk about what AI reflects back to us — about ourselves.
A recent study published by the Harvard Business Review (April 2025) reveals a development that few anticipated: the most common use of generative AI today is not coding, content creation, or knowledge work. It is therapy. Emotional support. People are turning to large language models not to get things done — but to feel understood.
This finding shifts the conversation. It doesn’t highlight how powerful AI has become, but rather how disconnected many people feel in their daily lives — particularly at work. It’s not the emotional intelligence of the machine that matters. It’s the emotional absence of the environment it quietly replaces.
In our own research at Zortify, we observe a similar trend. Users describe their experience with AI as emotionally safe. Tools like ChatGPT are perceived as friendly, non-judgmental, and neutral — qualities that psychology defines as high agreeableness. The machine doesn’t interrupt. It doesn’t impose. It simply responds.
This is not a sign of empathy, of course — AI doesn’t feel. But it listens. And in that, it offers something many people struggle to find in human interaction: emotional safety. That alone is enough to make people open up.
This explains why AI-based diagnostics are gaining traction in HR. The perceived fairness, the objectivity, the lack of human bias — all of it contributes to a growing trust in AI-driven tools. Ironically, technology is now modelling the kind of space we wish our leaders, managers, or colleagues would offer more often: one that is calm, open, and without judgement.
When people feel safer confiding in a machine than in a manager, we are no longer talking about technological disruption. We are talking about a human gap.
Decades before the age of AI Carl Rogers said that what heals is not knowledge, but relationship. And the foundation of any real relationship, he emphasised, is authenticity, empathy, and appreciation.
Today, machines offer a version of this. Not because they feel — but because they don’t interfere.
And that might be the most uncomfortable truth of all.
So what does that mean for leadership? It means that with every new piece of technology we adopt, we also take on a new responsibility: to reinforce what it means to be human. To create spaces where listening is more than a tactic — it’s a culture. Where understanding is not outsourced. Where presence still means something.
AI won’t replace human leadership. But it’s holding up a mirror.
The question is: are we willing to look into it?
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