The Promise of AI is Superpowers
The promise of ecommerce was the ability to buy anything, whenever you wanted to. That promise has been realized. The promise of Internet of Things was smart tools that could do far more than what they had been originally designed to do. I called this phenomenon, “a watch is not a watch.” Smart watches do far more than tell time—so much so that it seems odd to even call them watches.
Unfortunately, smart refrigerators never did much more than let you set the temperature of your fridge remotely. Smart household devices could have done so much more for people but no one figured out how to create an ecosphere that created real value for customer and company alike. Smart cars, smart watches, and smart phones did deliver on the promise. You can do far more things with these tools today than you could a decade ago.
So, what is the promise that AI is making to customers? Certainly, it’s not ‘do my homework for me.’ Or, ‘do my job for me.’ People recognize that not becoming smarter or more productive is a dangerous place to be in. And while many students do use AI to help them do their homework, most recognize that they still need to learn their subjects—if they want a place in the world.
As I mentioned in my previous two posts, the promise of AI is also not greater efficiency for companies. While that certainly will happen, it’s a bit like being able to set your refrigerator temperature remotely. The promise is too small, too incremental.
Our research team at Stone Mantel has been asking people for eight years now what they want from AI. (Actually, we don’t ask the question exactly like that because if you do all you will get is ‘faster, easier, simpler’ answers.) A better way of saying it is that we’ve been exploring with people what their near future needs are and how intelligent solutions can help them. And the promise that AI makes is that people will gain superpowers.
If ‘superpowers’ sounds sci-fi to you, then good! Movies and comics have helped to shape the cultural understanding of what gen AI should be able to do. A personal assistant that can also help you fly? You can thank Tony Stark/Iron Man for that. I think it’s coming. Probably a drone/OpenAI feature in the near future.
How about a clairvoyance, the ability to foresee risks and anticipate what steps you can take to avoid them? You can thank Doctor Strange and his precognitive abilities. For years now, we’ve been telling companies that their customers want them to anticipate their needs. AI promises more than simply anticipating needs, it promises the ability to run scenarios, predict possibilities, and recommend a path forward. This is not an incremental improvement to ecommerce. This isn’t a better dashboard. It’s clairvoyance, a superpower.
Heretofore the language we have used when describing customer needs is ‘jobs to be done.’ Our friend, Clayton Christensen, popularized the term and Joe Pine and I have written extensively on how jobs to be done related to experiences. But a superpower is something more than a job to be done. A job to be done is a specific need that a customer is willing to hire a company to do for them. A superpower is an ongoing ability to do things far beyond what is humanly possible without assistance. People will hire AI to help them gain superpowers. Unfortunately, many companies will deploy AI to help them deliver a faster, simpler solution.
What these companies do not grasp is that just doing a job for a customer faster and simpler commoditizes the job to be done. AI will lead to certain solutions being faster and simpler, but not more profitable. And that is not what customers really hope to be able to accomplish with AI.
The question that companies should be asking themselves today is what superpower can we create for our customers. Go big, leaders. Stop focusing on low hanging fruit. Get your best experience strategists in a room and build a bigger vision.
Here are some of the superpowers that people tell us they want:
Mindfulness Master: The ability to be fully present and focused on the moment, not overwhelmed or multitasking.
Hyper Understanding: The ability to completely understand complex situations and what others want. Almost as if you can read people’s minds.
Mind Shifter: The ability to flip a switch and suddenly be in a different mode or mood. Go from stressed to relaxed instantaneously. Boost willpower instantly.
Truth Detector: Able to sense if someone or some company is truthful and trustworthy. Instantly evaluate the credibility of information.
Time Warper: The ability to manipulate time so that everything the person needs to get done is finished before activities with family and friends begin.
Super Organizer: Things come together almost as if from an unseen force, and they are seamlessly coordinated with different areas of people’s lives.
Future Self-Empathizer: The ability to know what a person will need in the future and make the changes now to be a better version of their future self.
Beast Mode: The ability to perform at a high level. Adjustments to mood, determination, and endurance. To be able to get things done with power and strength.
Harmonizer: The ability to invoke a sense of calm to everyone in the room. To help people get along.
Instant Learner: The ability to absorb and apply knowledge instantly.
Each of these superpowers were generated and validated by regular people talking about their near future needs. Notice how they focus on self-improvement. But they go far beyond goal attainment, which is where most companies set their sights.
Notice also that people want the ability to turn on and off these superpowers. No one wants to walk around all day warping time and detecting truth. They need these superpowers for specific situations. As the situation arises, people want the ability to tap into their superpowers. Or, put another way, they want to get into a mode, like Beast Mode, and have all of the capabilities they need to maximize that mode.
The other thing to note is that these superpowers are very general. We’ve done specific research in healthcare, banking, retail, travel, home management, and other aspects of people’s lives. There are superpowers to be created in every industry.
I was impressed by the vision of startup company, Abridge. Today in the Wall Street Journal, the company announce $300 million in backing from Andreessen Horowitz for it’s ‘ambient listening’ AI solution that will help doctors take real-time notes when they meet with patients. This super solution promises to do more than note taking. It will reduce the doctor burnout. It will empower doctors to be better at every aspect of their work. And this is the type of thinking that all companies should be focused on.
Your company needs to focus on how to take something that arduous or unattainable and turn it into a superpower that aligns with the modes that people already get into.
Ready to design experiences that make people more powerful—not more passive?
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