Dear reader,“I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep,” Alexander the Great supposedly declared, “I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.” History, it turns out, got this backwards. History’s most celebrated military genius was actually scared of cats, prone to alcoholic binges, lived a suitably blemished life, and died at 32 in Babylon under circumstances so mysterious that conspiracy theories persist even 23 centuries later. His empire crumbled within decades.Yet, we remember him and many like him not despite his flaws, but perhaps because of them.Today, as artificial intelligence promises us a world scrubbed clean of human error, we face an unprecedented question: What happens when the magnificent mistake-makers are finally perfected out of existence?The digital revolution, powered now by the AI juggernaut, has ushered in what we might call the Great Standardisation—a relentless march towards algorithmic perfection that makes even our heroes uncomfortable with their own humanity. The force is omnipresent now. And it’s made out to be omnipotent, too. Reports from McKinsey to Stanford tell us that already more than two-thirds of the globe is using AI, and its adoption in business surged about 80 per cent in 2024. We’re witnessing the fastest technological adoption in human history, yet ironically, the cost of this efficiency may be the very essence of what makes us human.Consider the modern predicament: To prove you’re human online, you must solve puzzles and identify traffic lights with mechanical precision. Make a mistake? You’re clearly a bot. Meanwhile, our culture increasingly demands the kind of flawless execution that would make even machines nervous. Perfect bodies sculpted by algorithms, relationships optimised for social media, and careers that tolerate zero learning curves. The irony is clear and present: in our quest to become more human, we’ve accidentally become less so.The psychology of perfectionism tells a sobering story. Studies show that constantly chasing the spectre of perfection may harm your mental health and well-being, with researchers finding that perfectionism is prevalent among adolescents and may be harmful in terms of its association with mental health problems. The most debilitating form—socially prescribed perfectionism—occurs when “individuals believe their social context is excessively demanding, that others judge them harshly, and that they must display perfection to secure approval”.Sound familiar? It’s the psychological blueprint of our AI-optimised world.Yet here’s where the plot thickens: human error is the secret ingredient in creativity’s recipe. Most of our choices are not motivated by curiosity but by errors caused by the brain mechanisms implicated in evaluating our options. Scientists discovered that “curious” choices were a result of the brain’s failure to reason, suggesting that our greatest innovations might spring from our most fundamental failures of logic.The artistic world has long understood this. Creative people have an orientation to error that is out of the ordinary, embracing mistakes as integral to the creative process rather than obstacles to overcome. When Van Gogh painted with irregular, textured, and thick impasto brushstrokes, the art world frowned initially. Shakespeare’s “imperfect” English (“most unkindest cut of all”) became the gold standard precisely because it bent rules with such charming audacity.Even the Bible, that most revered of texts, contains contradictions and inconsistencies that scholars have spent centuries trying to reconcile, yet these very imperfections have generated some of humanity’s most interesting theological insights.Sample our literary heroes. Don Quixote, literature’s most beloved fool, tilts at windmills in a quest so absurd it becomes transcendent. Raskolnikov commits murder based on a philosophical theory so flawed it destroys him—and in that destruction, Fyodor Dostoevsky reveals great truths about guilt and redemption. These characters stay with us because they fail spectacularly, authentically, and with such human complexity that we recognise ourselves in their wreckage.Our yearning for perfection has collateral damage too: the chase for speed. The speed obsession accompanying our digital transformation adds another troubling dimension to the whole problem. Everything must be faster, more efficient, and more streamlined. Businesses are embracing AI too, primarily to “lower costs and automate crucial business processes”.But is efficiency everything? The unhurriedness of life—the time spent fumbling towards understanding, the detours that become discoveries, the slow burn of wisdom acquired through repeated failures—these have an intrinsic value that our metrics-obsessed culture struggles to quantify.As AI becomes more human-like, humans are asked to become more machine-like. We optimise sleep, count steps, curate careers, and gamify relationships. Dating apps reduce human attraction to algorithmic matches. Even “candid” moments are carefully staged and “authentic” posts strategically timed.But—resistance movements are emerging. And in unexpected places. The slow-food movement prioritises process over efficiency. Vinyl records are outselling CDs. Last month, my father bought an old-school transistor radio with those short-wave switches. He says it’s perfect. It lacks the perfect digital voice, but I get his point.Neuroscience supports this intuition. Research has found that people who believe they can learn from their errors have a different activity in their brains in response to mistakes than people who think intelligence is fixed. The brain regions that are activated are the same ones that perk up during exploration and creativity. In other words, one can say the capacity for failure appears hardwired into human consciousness.We know this instinctively. Penicillin was discovered from contaminated bacterial cultures. Post-it Notes came from “failed” adhesive. The Americas were discovered while searching for a route to India.But chances are, as AI systems become more capable, the pressure for human perfection will intensify. And we might end up creating a world where second chances become extinct and third chances exist only in dystopian fiction. Already, a single social media post can end careers. A single algorithmic error can destroy a reputation. The margin for human error is shrinking daily.And that’s exactly why human imperfection is also becoming more valuable, not less. In a world of algorithmic predictability, the unpredictable human becomes the ultimate luxury. In an age of optimised efficiency, the beautifully inefficient human process becomes precious. As machines master perfection, the magnificently flawed human becomes irreplaceable.My most revealing moment came from a recent conversation with a friend. When I asked what was special about a new hire, she laughed: “There were two beautiful, very human errors in her CV, which showed she was original!” We’ve reached the point where our mistakes have become our authenticating signatures, the proof that a real human being—not an algorithm—created something.This suggests a radically different future than the one Silicon Valley promises. Instead of humans becoming more machine-like, perhaps they need to become more human-like. We can continue towards optimisation, creating a world where every mistake is corrected, every inefficiency eliminated, and every flaw smoothed away. Or we can recognise that our errors, our slowness, and our glorious imperfections aren’t bugs in the human system; they’re our defining features. They are what make us irreplaceably, beautifully human.Let machines handle the perfect world. We’ll take the lovely, imperfect one, thank you very much. After all, in a universe trending towards algorithmic perfection, the last rebels might just be the magnificent mistake-makers, and what a beautiful revolution that would be.With these thoughts, I welcome you to read this piece by the independent filmmaker Don Palathara that extends my thoughts, focussing on how AI is changing cinema and the very art of visual storytelling. Fair warning: It’s not for the faint-hearted.Read and, as always, get back with your comments.Wishing you a very human week ahead,Jinoy Jose P.Digital Editor, FrontlineWe hope you’ve been enjoying our newsletters featuring a selection of articles that we believe will be of interest to a cross-section of our readers. Tell us if you like what you read. And also, what you don’t like! Mail us at frontline@thehindu.co.inCONTRIBUTE YOUR COMMENTS