Three years after his first Invisible Machines visit, Don Scheibenreif returns with a sharper read on the trough: everybody knows generative AI, almost nobody has answered what it does to the business model. He led Gartner’s Autonomous Business research, the successor to digital business, and co-authored When Machines Become Customers. The through-line is that AI is a tool, the harder question is how to create value with it.

Josh and Robb press him on token maxing as a vanity flex. Don calls it a lazy metric, pointing to more interesting questions: where are you more productive, which processes were reinvented, what happened to talent, and what are you doing with the investment? 80% of CEOs see it as the #1 transformative tech and want disruption, but most are settling for efficiency theater and middle-manager cuts while boards ask for more tech-savvy leadership. In Don’s framing this comes with rolling up your sleeves, not mandating from above.

Also in this episode:

The hyper hype cycle (peak → trough → peak loops as the tech moves faster than before);
Organizational bullwhip vs organic individual use;
Fear as brakes on the system;
Crisis engineering and the plans that are lying around;
The risk that AI in the hands of people eliminates companies before AI in companies eliminates jobs;
Machine customers and retailers already blocking agent access while Amazon’s Buy for Me goes outside the walls;
Agents that work for you vs agents that work for the vendor;
Human brand vs machine brand;
Service design and customer effort score;
Frontline managers as the linchpin; and
The next research wave Don names at the close: implementation platforms, ethics, and safeguards.

When Machines Become Customers (book): https://www.gartner.com/en/publications/when-machines-become-customers

Customers Don’t Reject AI...They Reject Being Dehumanized: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6ZqXVXRWIw

--------- Support our show by supporting our sponsors

This episode is supported by OneReach.ai

Forged over a decade of RD and proven in 10,000+ deployments, OneReach.ai's GSX is the first complete AI agent runtime environment (circa 2019 — a hardened AI agent architecture for enterprise control and scale.

Backed by UC Berkeley, recognized by Gartner, and trusted across highly regulated industries, including healthcare, finance, government and telecommunications.

A complete system for accelerating AI adoption — design, train, test, deploy, monitor, and orchestrate AI agents.

Use any AI models
Build and deploy intelligent agents fast
Create guardrails for organizational alignment
Enterprise-grade security and governance

Get in touch:

https://onereach.ai/contact/?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=s7e16&utm_content=1

--------- The revised and significantly updated second edition of our bestselling book about succeeding with AI agents, Age of Invisible Machines, is available everywhere: Amazon — https://bit.ly/4hwX0a5

#GenerativeAI

#AIAdoption

#MachineCustomers

##AIInEcommerce

#AIAgents

#DigitalTransformation

#FutureOfWork

#BusinessStrategy

#InvisibleMachines

Selling to Machines with Don Scheibenreif

Invisible Machines podcast by UX Magazine

Selling to Machines with Don Scheibenreif