AI in Product Development: Are We Gaining Speed but Losing Soul?

“Artificial Intelligence is the most important thing humanity has ever worked on,” Sundar Pichai, Alphabet CEO, told the 2018 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “It is more profound than electricity or fire in terms of its impact on society.” Perhaps. I imagine that for most of you reading this, like me, AI has already impacted your life. My guess is, we haven’t seen anything yet.  

Ubiquitous AI 

AI capability has come a long way since John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky organized the relatively modest first AI conference at Dartmouth in 1956, and there has been no shortage of overhype and false starts along the way. That said, it has become the most potent technology of my lifetime. It reads, writes, answers questions, writes some code, “drives” our vehicles, beats us at chess or GO, recognizes faces, and writes music that fools expert panels.  Truly amazing.  

The potential gains in speed to market, cost, and precision are significant. Still, I wonder what might be lost as these tools take an even larger role in product creation.

But before you flash back to Hal 9000 saying, “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that,” remember that “it” is not a single entity; these are largely specialized tools, not a single, all-knowing force. At least not yet.   

AI in product development 

The same can be said for applying AI in product development. As far as I know, we are not yet able to provide a voice prompt and watch a finished complex industrial product emerge from a machine.  

But as I have written before, specialized AI tools in design, engineering, testing, simulation, and elsewhere are making impressive inroads into product development. They can be tremendous aids to developers when applied as part of a larger system of product and process development. And they will likely get even more powerful and capable. The potential gains in speed to market, cost, and precision are significant. Still, I wonder what might be lost as these tools play an even larger role in product creation. 

… my teammates shared this same passion for what we were doing, and we poured our hearts and our creativity into those products …

Passion  

Developing and launching successful new products requires equal contributions from both brain and heart. The emotional investment in new products shows in attention to detail, innovation through stretching the “art of the possible,” and excellence in product attributes that your customer truly values. 

I loved being a part of teams that created innovative new products. Many of my teammates shared this same passion for what we were doing, and we poured our hearts and our creativity into those products (like the Ford Mustang, F150, and the Rivian R1S). And I believe that our customers recognized and shared that passion for those products. We lose something when we offload more of the development workload to AI. After all, the best products strike an emotional connection with customers. Emotions that are foreign to AI.

Humanity 

Creating, building, and making are essential human activities. Despite all our failings, people working together to create new value is so much more than any algorithm. At its most basic level, product development is about humans creating value for other humans. 

That humanness underlies the appeal of excellent products. They exhibit a deep human understanding of how value is created through the product and the very human problem it solves. The diversity of views, the nuanced insights, and even the resulting conflict of highly skilled people working together on a development team create a magic that simply cannot be replicated with AI. 

First-hand experience 

The products we make are, by and large, for people; people like us. The insights and intuition gained through developing the product, manufacturing the product, using the product, and closely observing your customer using the product are crucial and will be difficult to replace with AI. It’s why going to the gemba is both invaluable and vital to human experience. 

There is also a connectedness, a totality of experience, that people bring to bear in improving each new product that is developed. This experience is rich and very often tacit in nature; it is not easily codified, and by extension, difficult to capture for machines. It’s why you just know a tool will not hold up in real-world production, no matter what the simulation tells you. It’s the exhilaration of driving a well-balanced performance vehicle –– or the precisely “calibrated butt” and engineering know-how required to achieve it.  

A big ask 

I am not against AI. Far from it. I have already learned many times the futility of resisting the irresistible (and have the scars to prove it). 

But more importantly, I believe AI will be a powerful competitive advantage and will help to develop higher quality, safer, and lower-cost products. So, this is not a rant. But I do have a big ask. Perhaps too big? I am asking us to be thoughtful about how we use this powerful tool; that together we consider all the implications of our decisions instead of racing headlong into an uncertain future. 

There is no question that we have a unique opportunity. The real question is, what will we do with it?

Thinking about the future 

So, are we hurtling toward the “singularity” predicted by Ray Kurzweil? Will AI pass the Turing test, exhibiting intelligent behavior indistinguishable from that of a human before 2029 and surpassing it by 2045, as he predicted?   

Well, as the saying goes, predicting is difficult, especially about the future. I am skeptical. There have been so many overhyped technologies in the past. Then again, with trillions of dollars being spent and the maniacal AI focus of big tech, it’s hard to bet against it.

The diversity of views, the nuanced insights, and even the resulting conflict of highly skilled people working together on a development team create a magic that will be hard to replicate with AI.

Regardless, there is no doubt that AI is rapidly changing the way products are developed and manufactured. So, we must prepare for and approach these changes in a more thoughtful way than we have so far, both as individuals and organizations. 

And that brings me to my latest favorite book. In his excellent The New Lunar Society author David Mindell argues that “industry stands on the threshold of a transformation … Yet at the same time, the nexus of energy, work, and technology that made industrial culture successful is failing the demands of the present and future … invention and new technology are insufficient on their own … what’s needed is a cultural movement aimed at transforming systems … including both those who manipulate symbols and those who make things … a new industrial enlightenment.” 

One can only hope.