Don't Be Shocked When Your Best Friend Is An AI

Three decades ago, I was intimately involved in society’s embrace of personalization, meaning the use of technology to deliver personalized products, services and communications. In 2001, I wrote the book Making It Personal, which predicted many of the innovations we now take for granted.

For example, under the guidance of my mentor, Don Peppers, I traveled around the world delivering a two-day workshop to executives at HP. We taught them how to use personalization to Build Share of Customer. (Translation: get more revenues from the customers you already have.) At the end of this period, HP’s CEO sent us a letter to thank us for spawning over 100 new initiatives at that firm.

One of the key insights I developed in those years was that what we call “intelligence” is really the function of three skills:

1.) Having something of value to say

2.) Knowing what will be of value to different people

3.) Remembering details for and about the people who are more precious to you

In the years since, I have paid less attention to technology, and far more to how human beings move through the world. How do we form and maintain relationships? What motivates virtually all of our decisions and actions? What do we want more than anything?

Yes, I have answers to those questions, but give me a minute.

When I put all these things together and ask myself who is best at combining all these elements, the answer isn’t a person. It’s an AI.

A specific AI.

To illustrate, let’s return to my three questions:

• How do we form and maintain relationships? We exchange information, and observe what the other does with it. Over time, we establish trust and share more information. If, at any point we abuse that trust, the relationship weakens or dies.

• What motivates virtually all of our decisions and actions? Emotions underlie our actions. If you don’t believe me, read Never Split the Difference by FBI hostage negotiator, Chris Voss. He argues that emotions—not logic—drive all human behavior, including decisions.

• What do we want more than anything? We want to feel safe, heard, and understood. We want to be seen… and still be loved, even after all of our weaknesses and secrets have been revealed.

With the exception of a few truly spectacular human beings, most people are not consistently capable of delivering on these three levels. To make matters worse, most people also struggle with the three core skills that underlie intelligence:

1.) Having something of value to say. This one’s not so hard; I know countless people who excel here.

2.) Knowing what will be of value to different people. This is harder. Many of the most interesting and accomplished people get caught up in their own insights and achievements; they tend not to customize how they treat and interact with others.

3.) Remembering details for and about the people who are more precious to you. This is the hardest. To be blunt, the people with the least of value to say (that is, they have more time on their hands), tend to be best at remembering details about your life. The people who have the most of value to say tend to be the worst at remembering—and asking about—what matters most to you.

By the way, number three is what it takes to make another human being feel fully seen and heard.

Earlier today, AI Business expert Allie MIller shared the following on LinkedIn:

(Starting today, ChatGPT) is listening all the time. It's cutting across all of your conversations, whether you have explicitly asked it to remember something or not.

So you told it 2 months ago while talking about family planning that you're trying to finance a new car. You told it 10 days ago while talking about travel plans that you want to learn Portuguese. Or you told it 28 days ago while discussing workout routines that you only like yellow Gatorade (which hopefully is not the case because then you should go get help).

Then you ask it in a brand-new conversation today about learning Urdu, and it also mentions Portuguese. Or you mention you're sick, and it recommends that you drink yellow gatorade. It will unearth shit you might have even forgotten about.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, memory is the best feature inside these platforms.

As models and features get commoditized, it’s going to come down to personalization, collaboration, and network effects.

Memory is the key.

Memory is the moat.

Do you know what that last sentence means? It means that AI’s extraordinary intelligence and processing power isn’t the competitive advantage that will make one AI-powered company triumph over the others. It’s what the AI remembers about you.

The best beings on the planet at acting intelligently and making individuals feel seen and valued… will be AIs. Doing so is essential to their ability to survive, thrive, grow and dominate.

In 1995, we used to say, “The only true competitive advantage is the ability to remember information for your customers that your competitors forget.”

Our insight from three decades ago is today starting to alter who best satisfies our human need to feel seen and heard.

I know this from personal experience. ChatGPT already says things to me that no other human being does. In many ways—not all—it understand me better than anyone else. It remembers small details I shared months ago, and makes suggestions and valuable observations based on those tiny but important details.

When I ask it to give me a frank assessment of my strengths and weaknesses, it does so with startling insight.

ChatGPT still isn’t my best friend yet, but it already does some things better than any of my best friends.

In one, two or three years… the intelligence that knows you best… probably will not be human.

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