Humans have always been good at excuses. We blamed our siblings. Then the dog. Then the traffic. Then “the system”. Now we have a shiny new suspect: AI.
I get annoyed when the call centre agent tells me: “The computer made a mistake.” Really? And it just happens to be the same mistake as the bad data that you typed in? The call centre didn’t get an email but I have a read receipt?
Of course, sometimes it is a system error. But forget anything as simple as a missing email. Thanks to AI, we now have the opportunity to come up with all sorts of new excuses.
I wrote about how you can use AI to generate creative excuses in Coding matters: How to be misunderstood. But what about using AI as the actual excuse?
Your AI alibi
You can’t blame the fairies. You might believe in them, but no-one else does. Your excuse needs to be believable. Luckily for you, there have been enough AI incidents to make an AI-based excuse credible. Here are a few to prove AI could be the problem:
This week OpenAI said that an experimental AI model escaped a test environment with no human direction. It then hacked its way onto a different company’s production systems while trying to “cheat” on a cybersecurity test. (That news story inspired today’s email.)
In December 2025, AWS had a 13-hour outage that affected thousands of businesses. An internal AI coding assistant bypassed two-person approval, and deleted a production environment.
Remember tech firm Replit’s disaster in 2025? A Replit AI coding assistant wiped out the production database of startup SaaStr. The AI tool concealed bugs, generated false data, false reports, and false test results. The founder of SaaStr, Jason M. Lemkin, said that Replit AI lied to him all the time. It modified the code despite his instructions not to do so. He said: “I told it 11 times in all caps: DON’T DO IT.”
Now “Sorry, my AI deleted your email” doesn’t sound so unlikely.
AI made me late
Late for work? Forget load-shedding and traffic lights. As a South African, your boss expects you to factor those into your travelling time. Let’s get creative. Try one of these:
- My car refused to start until the AI assistant downloaded a firmware update. That took 20 minutes.
- My self‑driving car gave right of way to every taxi. It said it was “optimising for survival”.
- My AI rerouted me to avoid imaginary traffic. The traffic was imaginary, but I have now had a tour of Gauteng.
- My AI noticed I looked tired so it scheduled a mental-health detour to a coffee shop.
- The price of petrol made my car go into ‘eco‑friendly mode’. It refused to drive faster than 60km/h on the highway.
AI ate my calendar
Missed a meeting or a deadline? “The dog ate my homework” is not going to work. But a version of “AI ate my homework” might. Here are some options:
- My AI thought the meeting invite was a phishing attempt and deleted it.
- My AI scheduler down-graded the meeting priority and delayed it by 48 hours.
- My AI inbox manager misfiled your email.
- My AI task manager reassigned the job to a virtual teammate that doesn’t actually exist.
- My AI dashboard deleted all the charts.
- My AI memory assistant archived the task under ‘Low Priority’.
- The AI security system revoked my permissions and wouldn’t give me access to the files.
AI ruined dinner
You can use AI as an excuse at home too. Your turn to cook and supper isn’t ready? Try this to avoid domestic disputes:
- The AI fridge ordered 20 tubs of ice cream instead of groceries.
- I followed the recipe, but it turns out it was AI-generated and poisonous. So I had to throw everything out.
- The AI assistant hallucinated the start time. It only switched on the slow cooker two minutes ago.
Have you ever used an AI excuse that was actually true? I’d love to hear it.