I Became an Algorithm Before AI Could Replace Me

The gamification of work turned us all into optimization machines—and we barely noticed

Last Tuesday, I caught myself refreshing my dashboard for the fifteenth time in an hour. Not checking email. Not looking for breaking news. Just staring at numbers: page views, engagement rates, social shares, time-on-page metrics. I wasn't writing anymore—I was feeding a machine that measured my writing. That's when it hit me: I'd already been replaced. Not by artificial intelligence, but by something worse. I'd replaced myself.