Seven things we’re thinking about AI this week

Blog
Listicles
30th May 2025

Sharon Tanton

Sharon is Content Director at Cohesive, and co-author of Valuable Content Marketing | Fascinated by the power of stories in making change | Loves gardening | Lives in Bristol

Andy Williams

Co-founder, the wordy 'other half' | Intrigued by good content, and what it achieves | Bit of a nerd, quite creative, loves to write | Father, cyclist, activist | [ he/him ]

7 things about AI

1. Trust issues | Data privacy, security, accuracy.  AI can divide a room as sharply as Brexit.  Don’t assume added AI is a vote winner when it comes to your product or platform.  For every person who thinks ‘wow, great, that’s going to make my life easier,’ there’s another one feeling threatened and anxious. From a marketing point of view, tread carefully.

2. Clarity | It’s time we all got clearer about which kind of AI we mean, and how we use it. AI is coming up on its 75th birthday and it’s gone through lots of phases – so not all AIs are created equal. Machine Learning’s job is to analyse existing data to spot new patterns. That’s the kind of AI that can spot a tumour on an X-ray – or a cyber attack in progress – with at least the accuracy of a human expert. In contrast, Generative AI’s job is to synthesise new data from old – hallucinations and all. Clarity on exactly which processes you’re augmenting with what class of AI can reassure the sceptics and excite those already on board.

3. The Plausibility Trap | Ask ChatGPT  – a Generative AI – about its own accuracy and reliability and it will say: “Plausible, but not always factual.” The plausibility is the problem, because it’s so tempting to take the results at face value. To use Gen AI safely, you still have to be the curious, fact-checking, knows-what-good-looks-like professional you always were.

4. Turning search on its head | Google has lost about 10% market share to Generative AI-powered search like ChatGPT, Perlexity and Bing. In the blink of an eye. And it’s still sliding. Google has responded with its own Search Generative Experience – which now commands the top third of Page 1 for most searches. The job of AI here is to provide cut-and-paste answers, not links to sources. So how does your site, and your content, get found? We’ve written about that, here

5. Human-first | AI is never going to be able to do everything, and people need jobs, so the smartest companies are thinking long term. Doing the work is how people learn to do the work. We learn from our peers. It makes no sense to de-skill your organisation from the inside out. Make human creativity and experience the first line of action in any process, and AI comes next.

We came up with the idea of ’the weave’ to describe a way that AI and human intelligences, intertwined, can work alongside each other at all levels in an organisation. To create the confidence and frameworks for humans to learn faster, achieve more, and share more easily with peers.

6. Greedy | Hard to get your head around the amount of power AI datacentres use, the amount of training data it hoovers up  and the emissions it creates. Leaner and greener AI is coming, but how much greener and when isn’t yet known. So use it consciously, purposefully. Does the world really need another AI-generated meme of the Pope riding a skateboard?

7. Ubiquity | AI is every-bloody-where. We’re quickly reaching a tipping point where the AI in your solution won’t be an express train to fame and fortune. Like trying to sell a car by saying ‘now with added wheels’. Of course, not mentioning AI can make you stand out for the wrong reasons too. What we’re really saying is that the thing that makes the experience of you stand-out, even unique, is bigger than AI. Tell the whole story.

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