Something Big Is Happening — And Experience Strategists Need to Pay Attention
By Dave Norton, Joe Pine, and Aransas Savas | The Experience Strategy Podcast
An article went viral recently on X (formerly Twitter). Written by AI expert Matt Schumer, it's been read 83 million times and re-shared nearly 38,000 times. The headline is a bit lame — Something Big Is Happening — but the argument is not.
Schumer draws a direct parallel between AI today and the weeks leading up to the COVID lockdowns in February 2020. Most of us weren't paying attention then either. And then, in three weeks, everything changed.
On the latest episode of The Experience Strategy Podcast, Dave Norton, Joe Pine, and Aransas Savas dug into Schumer's piece — and what it actually means for experience strategists. They bring the provenance that a viral post can't: years of original research on how people are actually behaving, changing, and transforming their lives. The conversation is candid, occasionally lost with colds, forgotten third points :), and very much worth your time.
What the Research Says
While Schumer's article is making waves online, Stone Mantel's own data from our most recent General Quantitative Research (n=1,574, March/April 2025) tells a grounded, human story about what's actually happening with AI adoption.
Daily and weekly AI tool usage have doubled in just one year. In 2024, 30% of people used an AI tool at least once a month. By 2025, that number jumped to 57%. Only 10% of people have never tried an AI tool at all. And today, AI is three times more likely to be used for professional purposes than strictly personal ones.
People aren't just dabbling. They're integrating. And given the pace of AI development and product releases since our survey closed in April 2025, it's reasonable to expect these numbers are already higher.
More Excited Than Anxious — But Cautious About Decisions
Here's what's nuanced and important: people express more excitement than anxiety about AI assistance across a wide range of life areas. But they're not handing over the wheel. What people most want from AI is the ability to brainstorm ideas (45%), present multiple options (43%), and help execute a plan (42%). They want AI to expand their thinking — not replace their judgment.
This is the human-plus-AI framing that Joe Pine articulates so well in the podcast. The most dangerous mindset, he argues, is the executive who comes to AI asking, "How do I get rid of people?" The most powerful mindset is “how does this augment what my people can already do?”
Three Things Experience Strategists Should Do Right Now
The podcast episode offers some of the clearest strategic guidance we've heard on navigating this moment. Dave and Joe each surface a critical priority:
1. Invest in provenance. If your insights aren't grounded in original, direct research with real people, you're already three steps removed from what's true. As AI-generated content floods every channel, the organizations that can point to genuine human data will be the ones worth listening to.
2. Build cross-disciplinary range. Experience strategy can no longer live only in journey maps and personas. The strategists who will matter are the ones who can think like marketers, planners, storytellers, and coaches — all at once. AI gives you the superpower to range across disciplines. Use it.
3. Have a strategic point of view. Not an opinion. A POV. The difference, as Dave and Joe make clear, is that a point of view is grounded in research and oriented toward what your customer will need next. Joe's entire book, The Transformation Economy, is a model for what this looks like at scale.
The Part Nobody Wants to Hear
Schumer's prescription is simple: use AI seriously, get your financial house in order, lean into what's hardest to replace, and get in the habit of adapting now rather than later.
That last one is the behavior change principle Aranza keeps coming back to. The more engaged you are with the change that's coming, the less likely you are to face a gap you can't bridge.
The Anthropic CEO recently predicted that AI will be substantially smarter than almost all humans at almost all tasks by 2026 or 2027. Joe calls this "tech bros believing their own hype." Maybe. But even if the timeline is off, the direction isn't.
The Human Element Isn't Going Anywhere
One last thing our research makes clear: even as AI adoption surges, people consistently prefer human-led guidance over digital-only solutions. When it comes to transformation and personal growth, 45% prefer primarily human interaction — compared to just 3-4% who prefer primarily automated tools.
The transformation economy isn't being automated. It's being amplified. The question is whether experience strategists will be the ones holding the amplifier.
→ Listen to the full episode of The Experience Strategy Podcast here
Stone Mantel's General Quantitative Research is conducted annually as part of The Experience Strategy Collaboratives. The 2025 Round 4 survey included 1,574 demographically representative U.S. respondents, fielded March–April 2025.