The Unmet Promise of AI – Neural Impact

The Unmet Promise of AI

Are you happier with AI in your life? Are you making promises to customers that AI will make their work lives better? How many times have you heard, “AI will automate boring, repetitive aspects of our jobs and free us to have more time for more rewarding work”?

Agreed — AI can absolutely be leveraged to write fantastic blogs (though maybe not quite as good as this one, hahah), respond to customer queries, make decisions, create invoices, conduct bank reconciliations, and much more. As a business owner, I still haven’t figured out how to train my copilot agent to leverage “intuition” when making decisions — but that’s a topic for another day.

But here’s the real question: Is AI actually making us happier at work? Is your job truly easier and more rewarding now?

The Problem With Promising “Happiness”

Here’s the challenge. Happiness is an emotional state. What motivates one person and makes them “happy at work” may not motivate another at all. It’s easy to assume that more free time, greater task variety, higher profit, more acknowledgement, or more strategic and creative work will make every employee happier. But that simply isn’t true.

My generation (let’s say 55+ — hee hee) didn’t worry as much about fulfillment; we were grateful to have a job. My three kids in their 20s, however, will quit perfectly good, high-paying roles if they don’t feel “fulfilled.” Times have changed — and so have expectations.

We Can’t Assume What Satisfaction Means

So how can we confidently promise that AI will increase employee job satisfaction? The truth is, we can’t — not without deeper understanding. Satisfaction means different things to different people.

Sure, most of us would love an assistant to offload the “crappy” parts of our jobs. But even that differs from person to person. I love spreadsheets and analyzing data; my business partner absolutely hates that work. If I automated those tasks away for myself, I’d actually be removing something I enjoy.

Happiness is personal. It’s dynamic. It’s a moving target.

The Missing Step in AI Adoption

The only way we can honestly promise that AI will improve someone’s job is by asking each individual what they want to do in their role. Then we support them with tools and agents that align with their needs and desires.

Why aren’t we doing more of this during AI discovery sessions, workshops, and planning? Too often, we assume we know what will make the team happy — instead of involving them in the design of their augmented future.

The Nature of Happiness

Happiness is an internal experience. It can be elusive. Anyone who has worked years toward earning a degree — or watched their kids do so — knows the joy of achieving that goal is often fleeting. Almost immediately, a new target appears: finding a relevant, high-paying job.

So what truly makes us happy? Having what we want in each moment. Getting our needs met. Those needs might include freedom, creativity, contribution, learning, safety, survival, belonging, or challenge.

A More Thoughtful Promise

If you’re creating an AI agent for your team or your customers — and you want buy-in, commitment to training and tuning, meaningful usage, and high satisfaction — think more deeply. Ask more questions. Build users into the conversation. Make promises carefully.

I would be happy all the time if only the world — and everyone in it — acted exactly the way I wanted. But it doesn’t. And they don’t. So I focus on what I can control in each moment and choose acceptance over resistance.

We can fear and resist AI, or we can take ownership and make it work for each of us — in our own personal way.

Have a happy day. Hugs,
Sharka