Human-like isn't the same as good: Rethinking Conversational AI's North Star

There's an assumption baked into most conversational AI roadmaps that nobody really questions anymore: more human-like is better. Friendlier persona, more natural turn-taking, more emotional mirroring, all treated as obvious improvements, the same way 'more accurate' or 'faster' would be. But is that actually true? Or have we been chasing a proxy for quality and calling it the goal itself? Why…