CIO Article: The More Efficient AI Makes Us, the More Human We Must Become.

WHEN EVERYONE GETS BETTER, BEING BETTER ISN’T ENOUGH.

AI will make almost every organization smarter, faster, and more efficient. That’s the good news. The challenge is that it will do the same thing for your competitors.

As extraordinary capabilities become widely available, they also become less differentiating. That’s when the competitive advantage shifts.

I recently explored this idea in an article for CIO.

We spend enormous amounts of time thinking about how AI can eliminate friction. And we should. But I’ve come to believe there’s an important distinction … reducing friction isn’t the same as creating preference.

Making something easier doesn’t necessarily make someone choose you. And when extraordinary technology is available to everyone, things that can’t be easily replicated become considerably more valuable. Important, differentiating things like trust, judgment, meaning, memory, and human connection.

I’ve spent much of my career thinking about why people don’t simply buy from certain brands, but become loyal to them. Recommend them to friends. Forgive them when something goes wrong. And continue to come back.

AI doesn’t make that question less important. I think it makes it one of the defining competitive questions of the next decade.

My new article for CIO is “The More Efficient AI Makes Us, the More Human We Must Become.”

I’d love to know what you think.