Sure you think you’re Brad Pitt.
I watched 45 minutes of the OpenAI announcement about GPT-5. I wanted more “whoa.” I wanted more. I wanted a different paradigm in thinking.
Don’t get me wrong, the GPT-5 enhancements are actually super impressive. Some of the reasoning and security updates? About time. The coding capabilities? Yep, I see you. And yet, the strategic integration of AI hasn’t changed. We chat. We ask. We hope it doesn’t hallucinate too much this time.
And that’s the problem, babes.
Why Current AI Tools Don’t Solve Real Business Problems
When I built my first AI in 2012, it felt like magic. Fast forward over a decade, and I’m watching Sam Altman demo features that still require us to be the strategy layer while the AI does the execution layer.
So when I watched that announcement, I wasn’t impressed by the tech flex. I was looking for something else entirely. Because here’s what I learned after all these years building systems and software: impressive tech that doesn’t solve real human problems is just tech bros showing off.
The UX Problem: AI That Makes You Work Harder, Not Smarter
Steve Krug hammered home this lesson in his classic UX book Don’t Make Me Think: make it obvious and easy as hell for the user. We are not there with AI. Not even close.
The thing about chat-based AI systems is they require us to know what we want, what we’re looking for. But small business owners are often exploring things they don’t know, and these tools hallucinate. Without lived experience and context, we may not always know when it’s happening.
I saw a glimmer of hope when they showed AI calendar integration with Gmail. But then the example was just… providing a summary of your day. Don’t get me wrong, helpful, but it lacks the real intricacies. Why didn’t they show us automated task scheduling that automatically shows up in your calendar? Now we’re getting closer to “don’t make me think.”
A demo is one thing, but real life application is another. My calendars are not so simple that one login tied with Google captures my reality. Multiple platforms, multiple identities, multiple contexts. As Don Norman teaches us in The Design of Everyday Things, well-designed tech experiences are rooted in solving real life user problems, and sure, solutions are limited by business and tech requirements, but that doesn’t mean we should stop thinking bigger.
The Real Problem: Who’s This Really Serving?
The thing with these well-funded tech companies – as Shoshana Zuboff shows us in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, they don’t care about our wellbeing, what’s happening to our personal relationships, our physical health. They’re collecting that data and using it on us to reach their goals. Which, you best believe, are not aligned with my goals.
AI is built on biased datasets anyway. We’re adding a plethora of additional data to our world that we don’t even know the accuracy of, from systems trained on information that wasn’t created with us in mind.
A few companies dominate the space and the amount of time we interact with it. We’ve gotten out of hand with tech, and now we’re supposed to be excited about chatting with it even more?
How to Build AI That Actually Serves Your Business Goals
Maybe you are thinking “okay Sam, I see your point, but what can we do about it?” Work with me.
I want to see AI act as a tool of sovereignty. Not a tool that adds complexity, but one that creates genuine freedom. What happens when we can begin to untether? When we can use one of the most innovative inventions to redefine our current world, our current life, to better align with our dream life – the way we want to be feeling and living?
It is not so hard to imagine, AI automation that learns your work rhythms, your actual rhythms, not some productivity guru’s idea of optimal. Technology that helps you streamline business operations because it’s handling the background noise of digital life. AI systems that amplify your intuition rather than replacing it.
AI workflow automation that schedules around your energy patterns. That knows when you’re in a creative flow and protects that time. That handles the mundane business tasks so you can focus on what matters. That’s AI that serves your business, not the other way around.
Building Human-Centered AI Systems That Scale With Your Business
AI is going to advance in wild ways over the next handful of years, and that is exciting. But I’m not one to just wait and see what happens. I’m here to help build that. To build the underlying foundation that supports current you and future developments of the technology.
To build the AI systems and automated workflows that integrate into your business to provide support. With the goal of letting you focus on strategic work because we’ve designed AI tools to serve your actual business needs, not some algorithmic version of productivity.
I believe this is possible, and that it’s more possible now than ever before. We just need to stop being impressed by flashy demos and start building technology that serves liberation instead of dependence.
The revolution isn’t in the model capabilities. It’s in how we choose to integrate these AI tools into business systems that honor our humanity while amplifying our power.
Ready to explore what human-centered AI could look like in your business?
I offer 90-minute AI strategy sessions where we design automation systems that serve your actual rhythms and goals.
The future of artificial intelligence isn’t about being impressed by what it can do. It’s about designing what it does for your business.