The Interface Is Still the Product (But Now the Customer Is You)

There's a story I love about Steve Jobs. In the early days of the iPod, he obsessed over how long it took to scroll to a song. Not the battery life. Not the storage capacity. Just: how many thumb flicks does it take to get to Bob Dylan?

He knew something that doesn't just apply to consumers. It applies to every company trying to adapt to AI:
The interface isn't just for the end user. It's for you. Your employees. Your teams. Your future.

Because if you can't see how your people are actually using AI, you're flying blind.

Dashboards Won't Save You

Most companies rolling out AI think the answer is a dashboard. Number of queries. Number of users. Average response time.

But dashboards are averages. They tell you nothing about how AI is being used day to day, in the messy, brilliant, unpredictable ways that actually drive—or destroy—value.

You don't need more KPIs.
You need windows into reality.

What documents are employees relying on?
What kinds of questions do they ask the AI?
When do they abandon it? When do they fight it?
Where does it become a sidekick—and where does it become a bottleneck?

Those aren't data points you'll find on a leaderboard. They're buried in the edges of behavior.

The Leverage Is in Seeing Clearly

Here's the paradox:
The most impactful AI investment isn't a bigger model.
It's clarity.
Clarity about what your people actually do with the tools you give them.

Small, almost invisible UX choices—like logging context, mapping queries to outcomes, surfacing bottlenecks—make the difference between a company that uses AI and one that transforms with it.

Without clarity, you get mythology: stories about what's working and what's not, distorted by perception and politics.
With clarity, you get truth—and truth compounds faster than hype.

Forget "Artificial" Intelligence. Focus on Useful General Insight (UGI).

We keep chasing AGI like it's the finish line.
But most companies don't even have UGI—Useful General Insight—into how AI fits into the real workflows of real people.

UGI is what actually matters:

Knowing where AI accelerates decisions—and where it creates confusion.

Understanding how employees improvise around AI limitations.

Seeing which parts of your business are quietly being reimagined without permission—or even awareness.

UGI doesn't come from bigger training runs. It comes from building visibility into how AI is actually lived inside your organization.

When you know that, you don't just manage AI.
You harness it.

Final Thought

If you want to lead in an AI-driven world, don't just ask whether your models are good enough.
Ask whether your understanding is clear enough.

Clarity is the rarest resource in business.
And the companies that see the clearest, move the fastest.

The interface is still the product.
But now the customer is you.