If CES 2025 were an episode of Sesame Street, it would have been brought to you by the letters “A” and “I,” as they were used extensively in that order throughout the show. Marketers had a field day touting the AI-powered features of their latest products and the conference program was filled with AI-themed sessions. Topics included AI’s impact in mobility, transportation, commercial, smart home, retail… You get the picture.
I think we have passed a threshold of overexplaining AI to the masses. This is not coming from a “we-just-created-Terminators-and-the-machines-are-coming-to-kill-us-all” perspective, but more in line with the reasons why a magician never reveals his or her secrets.
I know that CES is a trade event, despite the “C” standing for “consumer.” However, there are plenty of mainstream consumer press outlets covering the show and sharing the language used at the event. You will certainly hear some of it repeated by your clients.
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We get it — AI is making everything better. But AI is not new and has been operating behind the scenes for some time, providing machine learning and algorithms that provide customization of services for clients. And in putting it so far front and center, we run the risk of taking the magic out of what we do.
In this month’s feature on working with luxury clients, Premier Automation and Design owner Kevin Qualtrough says, “A big part of our job is understanding what the clients need because most of them don’t know what it takes to make this one button do whatever they want. They just want it to happen, and they don’t care how.”
In that case Premier Automation created more than 100 scenes for the client — and not by using AI, just “I.” The point being that clients don’t need to know or even want to know how the system works — they just want it to work. And AI-this and AI-that, even though it is useful, takes the creative and hard work behind a system that performs away from integrators and places it behind a buzzword.
We may have also reached the point where AI in a product is a given. As a co-worker of mine from the B2C side remarked when we were discussing the issue at CES, “It’s kind of like bragging that the new TV you installed runs on electricity.” Will this new TV know what you like to watch? Sure, they all do now. Will it do it better than others? Sure. Does the client need to know which chip it is using to do it? Probably not.
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Magic tricks are not as fun to watch when you know how they are done. You hardly ever see a person sawed in half anymore. When you let people behind the curtain, they lose their sense of wonder and astonishment at the trick. It still takes skill to do the trick properly, and they may never be able to do it themselves, but they know how (or at least think they do), and so it is no longer special.
We should keep the magic in the industry for as long as we can.
