Talking to Ourselves

In the essay Who Designs the Future from January’s Full Moon, I wrote:

“My Whoop health wearable is not an AI device in my mind, but there is an AI chatbot in the app interface called Whoop Coach – already pretty good and likely to get even better. I chat to my coach. Maybe in future I will think I am chatting to my health. In this case, AI is not everything (the product) but it’s a very useful feature, and perhaps soon to be critical.

The product or feature question matters to how we design AI into products. Is it dominant? Do we lead with it? What would a bank that led with AI look like and do? Should Whoop, for example, focus on conversation in each interaction? I’d argue not: currently it offers glanceable data (a key feature), which is what I want before any chat. Most of the time I do not want to chat, but I do want to know, at a glance, if I had a good night’s sleep, and how my resting heart rate is doing.”

Since writing this, I’ve been thinking more about it. Recently, a great friend and ex Fjord colleague has uploaded his CV, some writings, his Clifton Strengths finder analysis and some thoughts on his next work direction to an LLM. I’ve copied him. The conversation you can have is extraordinary – where should I focus? What should I prioritise this week? What should I learn next? I have only just started playing but it is strongly insightful and actually useful. What’s happening here? Am I talking to my career?

Elsewhere my new car has a voice activated AI. The old car I had (2011) – had one too but I might as well have been talking to a brick. This one is quite impressive – it can open the sunroof, find navigation points, turn up the heating. But it is limited – if I ask what the tyre pressures are it has no idea and comes over all sorry Dave I can’t do that. The (first world) problem is that I expect it to. Claude, for example, is getting so good that it is setting expectations of response quality which apply to every AI encounter you have. At Fjord and Accenture we gave that effect a name back in 2015 - Liquid Expectations (thanks Baiju Shah – that was yours). Our theory was that a great experience you had digitally with say a hotel, shaped your expectations for banks, retailers, airlines. Well this is entering a new intense phase with AI.

What does this mean for you?

·              What customers or employees expect from your AI enabled experience will be set maybe not by your direct competitor, but by someone in an entirely different sector.

·              If you are in a business whose naming can be easily related to a core life need (not “banking” but “my money”, not “insurance” but “my risks”) – consider that at some moment someone will try to seize that category and own it e.g:

“I want to talk to….my money, my health, my career, my risks, my travel, my learning.”

I call these personal Life Channels that transcend industry boundaries. The opportunity space is giddy making.

Health warning – all of these are, of course, very hard in practice to deliver. You need a robust personal data set and permissions to deliver on the promise consistently. They will not happen for some time but they are the direction of travel. If I am right, you better think hard about that that means for the business you are in.

Of course not all conversations need to ladder up to a personal life channel. If I could talk fluidly to my car and get the data I need, that’s progress too.

Are You The Next Tobacco Business?

 When we kicked off Full Moon we agreed I would do the first two major essays - as I had a lot to say on design, looking back, looking forward, and the pieces felt like they should be consecutive.

Our third Full Moon piece, Zombies At the Theme Park, published at the Cold Moon last Sunday, is from David and it was and is - in my view - well worth waiting for, and exactly why I wanted to work, write and think with him.

Publishing on the Full Moon every 29.5 days is fun but of course sometimes we go live at a weekend which is not ideal for visibility! So in case you have not read it, here is what really struck me about it.

Capitalism has become really really good at fulfilling our lizard brain preference for immediate satisfaction. Digital technology has delivered hyperconsumption. You could say that wave one was physical product (Amazon, Doordash). Wave two was content in a never ending stream of compulsive viewing - Netflix, TikTok. Wave three may well be upon us with AI - immediate and, intimate if you wish, conversations without the need for a human. Combined, it's a theme park - we wonder around, jaws agape, looking for the next thrill of now, today, immediate, faster.

And yet we are two selves as Daniel Kahneman describes in his landmark book Thinking, Fast and Slow. The "little self" as David calls it, wants it all now. The "unlimited self" is looking for much more. This has strong echoes of the Acceunture Life Trend from last year - Social Rewilding and David puts forward a heap of evidence for it.

And now GLP1s are part of this - and that's ironic. They both help break addictive/compulsive cycles AND might perhaps be a quick fix in themselves. Welcome to the hall of mirrors.

Why does this matter to business? As David says....

Here's a question. How many people would embrace a banking app that makes impulsive spending harder rather than easier? How about a retail app that enforces a cooling off period? Which bank or retailer will be first to partner with one of the independent apps that offer this kind of service?

As rising numbers become awakened, established brands will have to reposition around this shift. And here's a thought that may be uncomfortable for some.

For a surprising number of industries, the future looks something like the present of the tobacco industry.