When Trust Breaks, What's Left?
In early October 2026, a company launched a video avatar that talks to you in real time. According to its developers, in a one-minute trial, 26 out of 54 participants (48%) thought they were talking to a person. One important detail: the participants hadn't been warned that they might be facing AI. These are results the developers published, not an independent test.
Everyone will write about that news. I want to talk about something else. Not what the machine has learned. What's happening to us.
Something is happening to trust
I feel that more and more people don't trust people, and trust algorithms instead. Take the news. Every newspaper and every channel is accused, again and again, of leaning one way or another. Why? Because the editor is a person, and people have opinions. But when an algorithm decides what we'll see, hardly anyone suspects it of bias. It feels neutral, with no agenda.
Dating apps are a good example. We feel we're choosing, and believe the algorithm is fair and has no agenda. But it decided who to show us. Our choice is limited to a small group it picked in advance. And there's another concern: the app benefits when we stay. So perhaps it shows us not the person we need, but the person it thinks will keep us there longest. I'm not claiming every app does this. But it's a question we hardly ever ask.
The more it gets right, the more we trust it
This is what really worries me. We build trust gradually, based on how often someone is right. We trust Waze because it has taken us home many times. At first, these tools made mistakes, invented things, and we were cautious. But if they keep improving and get more and more things right, in career advice, financial advice and other areas, we'll transfer our trust from people to them without noticing. Not because anyone forced us. Because they were right.
That's exactly why we need to pause. Trust built on someone getting things right can make us stop checking. And when we stop checking, we won't notice when the interests of whoever is behind the system start pulling in a different direction.
Now our eyes and ears, too
Until now, we had one last thing to hold on to: what we see and hear ourselves. A video call with someone is almost proof that they're there.
In 2024, a finance employee at Arup in Hong Kong joined a video call with what looked and sounded like the company's chief financial officer and other colleagues. According to police, they were all fakes. He transferred about $25 million. It's important to say that this wasn't AI holding a free-flowing conversation in real time, and it's still not entirely clear how the fake was made. But the lesson is already there: familiar faces and voices are no longer proof.
Now imagine, if these tools keep improving, a video call with someone who looks like your child or your wife. The same face, the same voice, the same laugh. How would you know? And if you can't know, what's left?
Why this matters so much
Because trust is humanity's greatest asset, and we barely notice it. Without trust, there's no economy, no currency and no trade. Almost everything around us rests on it. And if that trust starts falling apart, there's no small fix. Everything falls apart with it.
It's not hopeless
Before we panic, this doesn't have to end in catastrophe. We've been through changes like this before. There was a time when creating phishing text messages or emails took advanced technology. Today they're sent by the millions. Scammers don't need everyone to click. A tiny fraction of the people receiving those millions of emails and texts is enough for a very good result. So we learned not to click every email link and not to share a code sent in a message. We'll learn this, too. The problem is that deepfake scams used to be complicated and expensive. As we can see here, they're getting really simple and cheap. So we need to start now, not after the first time we get hurt.
There are simple things we can do today. Agree on a family code word for emergencies. If someone asks for money on a video call, hang up and call them back on a number you know. And keep asking who chose what you're seeing, even when the answer is convenient.
Now it's your turn
Who do you trust more today, a person or an algorithm? Does your family have a code word? Tell me in the comments, and if this post made you think, share it.
If this topic stirs something in you that's hard to put into words - a feeling that this revolution is exciting and frightening at the same time - you're not alone. I feel it too. Let's build Humanity-Fit together, a gym for our humanity, and protect what makes us human. Write to me.
Comments