Is Artificial Intelligence - AI the Next Doorman Fallacy?

At the entrance of their office building sat a doorman. Every day he welcomed visitors, opened the door, guided guests, watched who entered and left, and quietly helped solve dozens of small problems.

One day, management looked at him and thought, "Why are we paying someone just to open and close a door?"

Technology had advanced. An automatic door opener and closer could do the same job. People would simply walk up, and the door would open automatically.

So the company removed the doorman and installed the new system.

At first, it looked like a brilliant decision.

The doors opened.

The doors closed.

Nobody complained.

The company proudly congratulated itself for becoming more efficient.

But after a few months, things started to change.

Visitors wandered into the wrong departments.

Delivery personnel left packages in the wrong places.

Salespeople and unwanted visitors walked in without anyone questioning them.

Guests who were visiting for the first time felt confused and unwelcome.

Employees found themselves spending time helping visitors and handling issues that never existed before.

The automatic door was doing exactly what it was designed to do.

Open.

Close.

Open.

Close.

But the doorman had been doing much more than opening a door.

He was providing security, guidance, human connection, and preventing problems before they happened.

The company had only noticed the visible part of his job. They never noticed the invisible value he created every day.

This is often called the Doorman Fallacy. We assume a person is doing only the obvious task, while completely missing the many unseen benefits they bring.

Now think about today's AI revolution.

AI can write emails, create presentations, answer questions, generate images, analyze data, and even hold conversations.

Many people look at these abilities and conclude that humans may soon become unnecessary.

But what if we are looking at AI the same way the company looked at the doorman?

What if we are focusing only on the visible task?

Today, AI is replacing many routine activities. Just as the automatic door replaced the physical act of opening and closing a door, AI is replacing the physical act of writing, searching, calculating, and organizing information.

But are those activities the whole job?

When a teacher teaches, is the job only about delivering information?

When a manager leads a team, is the job only about assigning tasks?

When a doctor meets a patient, is the job only about diagnosing symptoms?

The most valuable part of human work is often invisible.

Judgment.

Trust.

Empathy.

Experience.

Responsibility.

Common sense.

The ability to understand people, not just data.

AI may become extraordinarily good at performing tasks. But humans are often valuable because they understand context, relationships, emotions, and consequences.

The lesson of the doorman is not that technology is bad.

The automatic door was useful.

The lesson is that we should be careful before assuming that a visible task represents the entire value of a person.

As AI continues to grow, perhaps the real question is not whether machines can do what humans do.

The real question is whether we fully understand what humans actually contribute.

Because sometimes, the most important part of a job is the part nobody notices until it is gone.

And that is exactly what happened to the doorman.

Anu Thomas

Raipur | Chhattisgarh | India

Saturday, 6 June 2026 | 11:58 PM IST