Everyone's mother's timeless advice - "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" - has unexpectedly found new relevance in today's AI-obsessed business world. Let me offer a modern spin: If you can't AI anything useful, don't AI anything at all.
This hard truth hit home recently when Google Workspace, after months of dangling their Gemini AI features as a premium upgrade, suddenly made them available for free. You know what they say - better to let them assume you're a fool than open your mouth and prove them right? Well, Google might want to take note.
The Promise vs. The Reality
Like many business leaders, I spent months imagining the possibilities. I visualized my team leveraging AI to transform our workflow, automate tedious tasks, and unlock new levels of productivity. The potential seemed endless, and I was genuinely excited about the prospect of investing in these capabilities.
Then reality crashed the party.
What did we get? Email summarization and basic draft composition - features that feel more like AI 101 than the groundbreaking tools we were promised. It's the equivalent of hiring a highly qualified executive assistant and asking them to only sharpen pencils.
The Missing Intelligence in Artificial Intelligence
Here's what makes this particularly frustrating: Google has access to our entire digital workflow. They see how we process emails, manage tasks, and organize information. They understand our patterns, preferences, and pain points. Yet, they've delivered features that barely scratch the surface of what's possible.
Imagine if instead, we got:
Intelligent email prioritization that learns from your response patterns
Automated action item extraction that creates and schedules tasks
Smart archiving that understands your organizational system
Predictive tagging based on content analysis and historical behavior
These aren't pie-in-the-sky features - they're practical applications that could genuinely transform how we work. The data is there. The technology exists. What's missing is the commitment to delivering real value.
The Broader Lesson for Business Leaders
This situation perfectly illustrates a crucial lesson for any business looking to integrate AI into their products or services: Don't AI for AI's sake.
Your customers, like me, don't care about checking the AI box on your feature list. They care about solving real problems and improving their workflows in meaningful ways. If your AI implementation isn't making their lives noticeably better, you're just adding complexity without value.
This applies whether you're:
Developing new products
Upgrading existing services
Integrating AI into internal processes
Making strategic technology investments
The Question Every Leader Should Ask
Before greenlifting any AI initiative, ask yourself: "Is this solving a real problem, or are we just playing AI theater?"
If you can't clearly articulate how your AI implementation will make your users' lives better in specific, measurable ways, it might be better to do nothing at all. Your customers will respect you more for waiting until you have something truly valuable to offer than for rushing to market with half-baked features.
Remember, the goal isn't to be first - it's to be useful. And sometimes, the most innovative thing you can do is choose not to innovate until you can do it right.
In the meantime, Google, I'll be here, still manually flagging my important emails and dreaming of what could have been. But hey, at least I'm not paying extra for the privilege.