{"slug": "the-more-efficient-ai-makes-us-the-more-human-we-must-become", "title": "The more efficient AI makes us, the more human we must become", "summary": "As artificial intelligence becomes more accessible, efficiency is becoming commoditized, and the competitive advantage shifts to creating lasting emotional memories, according to a business commentary. The author argues that organizations should embrace AI for productivity gains but must focus on human experiences to stand out.", "body_md": "Artificial intelligence is rapidly [reshaping the business landscape](https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/themes/8-mckinsey-insights-on-how-ai-is-reshaping-business).\n\nIt can summarize meetings, generate presentations, personalize communications, analyze customer behavior, automate repetitive tasks and uncover insights that once took teams days to uncover. Organizations that embrace AI thoughtfully will almost certainly be [more productive](https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2025/0624) than those that don’t.\n\nThat’s the good news.\n\nThe challenge is that every meaningful technological advantage eventually becomes widely available.\n\nAs AI becomes more accessible, efficiency itself becomes increasingly commoditized. Organizations that once distinguished themselves by being faster, smarter or more responsive will soon find those capabilities are no longer unique. They will simply be expected.\n\nThe competitive advantage doesn’t disappear. It shifts.\n\nThat raises a more pressing leadership question. If AI is making every organization more efficient, what will make one organization stand out from another?\n\nI believe the answer has surprisingly little to do with technology itself. Instead, it has everything to do with what technology enables people to do.\n\nBusinesses often say they’re [competing for attention](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/the-attention-equation-winning-the-right-battles-for-consumer-attention). Attention matters. Without it, nothing else happens. Yet attention is fleeting.\n\nEvery day, we’re exposed to thousands of messages: advertisements, emails, websites, social posts, videos and conversations. Most capture our attention for only a moment before disappearing. Attention opens the door, but it rarely determines who earns our loyalty. Organizations that confuse attention with preference often spend enormous amounts of money to generate awareness without building lasting attachment.\n\nThe organizations that endure compete for something far more valuable. They compete to create lasting memories.\n\nNot memories of products. Not memories of technology. Memories of experiences.\n\nThink about the companies you recommend most often. It probably isn’t because they had the fastest website, answered your email 20 minutes sooner or had a more sophisticated AI assistant.\n\nYou recommend them because of how they made you feel.\n\nSomeone solved a problem they didn’t have to. Someone stayed late to help. Someone took ownership when things went wrong. Someone made you feel respected, not just processed.\n\nThose moments stay with us.\n\nThe mind remembers information, while the heart remembers meaning. I believe many organizations overlook this distinction.\n\nAI is increasingly capable of helping organizations inform, predict, analyze and optimize. These capabilities are remarkable. But information alone rarely changes human behavior. People assign meaning emotionally.\n\nWe remember confidence, relief, gratitude, belonging and trust. We remember the organizations that made us feel understood long after we’ve forgotten the details of the transaction.\n\nThose emotions become memories, and those memories quietly shape future decisions.\n\nThe mind may justify many of our choices, but the heart often makes them.\n\nNone of this diminishes AI’s importance. In fact, it reinforces it.\n\nOrganizations should embrace artificial intelligence enthusiastically. It will improve productivity, uncover insights from vast amounts of data, eliminate repetitive work, accelerate learning and free talented people from administrative tasks that consume valuable time.\n\nEvery leader should become proficient in these capabilities, but fluency alone is not a differentiator.\n\nThere’s a temptation in every technological revolution to confuse the tool with the strategy. Technology is an extraordinary enabler, but it’s rarely the solution.\n\nAI can help us understand customers more deeply. It cannot make customers trust us more. It can personalize a message, but it cannot make that message authentic. It can recommend a course of action, but it cannot exercise judgment. It can automate a transaction, but it cannot create a relationship.\n\nThose outcomes still depend on people.\n\nAI excels at reducing friction. It shortens wait times, simplifies processes, anticipates needs and eliminates unnecessary effort, all of which creates real value.\n\nBut reducing friction is not the same as creating preference.\n\nReducing friction makes doing business easier. Creating meaning makes people want to do business with you again. These are fundamentally different outcomes.\n\nConvenience is increasingly available everywhere, but preference is not.\n\nPreference is what leads someone to recommend one organization over another, to [remain loyal even when a competitor offers a lower price](https://hbr.org/2015/11/the-new-science-of-customer-emotions) or to overlook an occasional mistake because trust has already been established.\n\nEfficiency delivers convenience. Emotional connection earns preference.\n\nThat distinction may become one of the defining leadership challenges of the AI era.\n\nCreating meaning has never depended on technology alone. It comes from keeping promises, listening before responding, owning up to mistakes, showing empathy when someone is frustrated, recognizing an employee who quietly goes above and beyond, and helping a customer solve a problem no algorithm could anticipate.\n\nTechnology can support each of those moments, but people ultimately determine whether they happen.\n\nFor years, businesses have debated technology and humanity as if one must come at the expense of the other. I believe that’s the wrong conversation.\n\nThe organizations that define the next decade won’t simply have the most sophisticated AI. Nor will they succeed simply because they have a people-first culture.\n\nThey will insist on both.\n\nThey will use artificial intelligence to reduce friction and enable people to spend more time listening, coaching, solving problems, innovating and strengthening relationships.\n\nTechnology will make them more capable. Humanity will make them more memorable.\n\nTogether, they become extraordinarily difficult to replace.\n\nFor decades, business leaders have measured success by market share, share of mind and share of wallet. These measures remain important. But in a world where efficiency is increasingly accessible to everyone, I believe another measure deserves greater attention: what I call SHARE OF HEART™.\n\nSHARE OF HEART™ isn’t created by a clever marketing campaign or a single memorable interaction. It’s earned over time through promises kept, problems solved, trust built and moments when people feel genuinely valued.\n\nThose experiences create an emotional connection. That connection creates memories. Those memories shape preferences and, ultimately, loyalty.\n\nThat is extraordinarily difficult for competitors to copy because it can’t be downloaded, licensed, automated or replicated overnight.\n\nArtificial intelligence will continue to make organizations smarter, faster and more efficient. Every leader should embrace that future.\n\nBut the organizations people remember won’t simply be those with the best technology. They’ll be the ones that understand technology’s highest purpose: not replacing human connection, but creating more opportunities for it.\n\nEfficiency may get you into the consideration set.\n\nMeaning earns a lasting place in people’s hearts.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-more-efficient-ai-makes-us-the-more-human-we-must-become", "canonical_source": "https://www.cio.com/article/4212019/the-more-efficient-ai-makes-us-the-more-human-we-must-become.html", "published_at": "2026-08-21 09:00:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-21 09:12:52.978287+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence"], "entities": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-more-efficient-ai-makes-us-the-more-human-we-must-become", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-more-efficient-ai-makes-us-the-more-human-we-must-become.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-more-efficient-ai-makes-us-the-more-human-we-must-become.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-more-efficient-ai-makes-us-the-more-human-we-must-become.jsonld"}}