You asked ChatGPT to write your resignation letter. It nailed the tone perfectly—professional, firm, gracious. You sent it without changing a word. Later, you wondered: did you actually quit, or did the AI quit for you?
Welcome to 2026, where outsourcing decisions to AI isn't science fiction—it's Tuesday.
The Convenience Trap
AI handles our uncomfortable conversations now. Breakup texts, salary negotiations, difficult emails to family members. The logic seems sound: AI writes better than most of us, removes emotional volatility, and saves time. What's not to like?
Here's the problem: decisions carry moral weight precisely because they're hard. When you craft that resignation letter yourself, you process the emotions. You own the choice. You feel its edges. Outsourcing the articulation often means outsourcing the reckoning.
Research from MIT's Media Lab shows people feel 34% less responsible for outcomes when AI assists with the decision process. That's not a feature—that's ethical erosion dressed as efficiency.
When Automation Becomes Avoidance
There's a difference between using AI as a tool and using it as a shield.
Tool: "Help me organize my thoughts about this difficult conversation."
Shield: "Write the conversation so I don't have to think about it."
The shield version lets us dodge discomfort. And discomfort, awkwardly, is where moral growth happens. Every time you navigate a hard conversation yourself, you build capacity for the next one. Outsource too many, and that muscle atrophies.
Consider AI-driven investing. Algorithms now make buy/sell decisions faster than humans can blink. But when your AI sells a stock that tanks a company's pension fund, who bears the moral responsibility? You clicked "approve." The AI executed. The line blurs until accountability disappears entirely.
The Responsibility Question Nobody's Asking
Here's what we're avoiding: if AI makes a choice that harms someone, and you delegated that choice to AI, are you off the hook?
Most people intuitively say no. But our behavior says yes. We're building habits of delegation without building frameworks of accountability. The more we automate, the easier it becomes to say "the algorithm decided" instead of "I decided."
This isn't anti-technology. AI assistance is genuinely useful. The ethical question is about *which* decisions deserve your direct engagement—and which ones you're automating because they're inconvenient, not because they're unimportant.
Finding the Line
Some guidelines worth considering:
Decisions affecting other people's wellbeing? Stay involved.
Decisions requiring emotional labor? That labor might be the point.
Decisions you'd be embarrassed to admit you outsourced? There's your answer.
The goal isn't to reject AI decision-making ethics entirely. It's to stay awake to what you're trading when you hand over the keyboard. Convenience is real. So is the slow drift away from owning your choices.
The uncomfortable truth: automated choices in 2026 aren't making us more efficient. They're making us more comfortable. And comfort, when it comes to moral responsibility, might be exactly what we can't afford.