Is AI solving the right problems for consumers?

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Megan McCarty-Corino (1:04)

AI can build custom software and crack the hardest math problems. But most of us just use it for silly memes and finding the best air fryer. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Megan McCarty-Corino.

AI is among the quickest adopted technologies ever. But there's a big gap between what these tools can do and what most consumers find useful. The vast majority use free versions of chatbots for searching the web, not running swarms of agents to manage their lives. Here with more on the adoption gap is Kate Moran, a user experience researcher at Gibbons and Moran.

Kate Moran (1:55)

There's this problem where if you just put an empty chat field in front of someone, you're basically saying, here's the technology, you figure out what to do with it. I think especially in 2024, organizations and companies were putting out these chatbots that didn't have any barriers, they didn't have any guardrails. Famously, Google for Google Gemini did a advertisement, where the example they were showing was a child using Gemini to write a letter to an Olympian.

SPEAKER_5 (2:25)

So Gemini, help my daughter write a letter telling Sydney how inspiring she is. And be sure to mention that my daughter plans on breaking her world record one day.

She says, sorry, not sorry.

Kate Moran (2:36)

And everyone was like, no, why? The examples that these companies were using just proved how out of touch they were from what people actually want and need.

Megan McCarty-Corino (2:49)

Yeah, so certainly this year, agentic AI has been all the rage. And the capabilities are truly incredible. I mean, in terms of being able to code apps and the amount of things that you can do with AI now are just almost limitless. But for the average person, I think there is a sense of like, well, what do I need to code my own apps and software for? Like, I don't have software-sized holes in my life. So I can see, you know, there's just, there's kind of a disconnect, it seems, for consumers. How do they use these things?

Kate Moran (3:24)

Yeah, I don't know if you saw this happen.

What was this? I think it was late 2025 There was this big panic that, you know, all of these software-as-a-service companies were going to go away because people would just build their own software. And I kind of laughed when that panic was hitting because I have spent my career studying normal people and how they use technology. And most normal people don't want to have to code their own software, even if it is easier. So that's yet another example, I think, where you can see that people who are building some of these AI products are so out of touch with how normal people think and behave, people who don't work in technology. And they're really struggling to appeal to them and explain to them how this could be useful. Now, where I think Meta's Muse is doing a good job with this is it's not selling you the ability to create software. Again, that's a tool, that's not the actual solution.

What it's giving you instead is offers like, I'll comb through your email inbox and I'll present you with a really clear summary of the actions that you need to take. And then you can tell me to go take those actions. So it's all focused on the actions, the assistance, the proactivity. It's not telling you you have to go learn how to vibe code. It's just sort of working in the background, which is what people really need these things to be doing.

Megan McCarty-Corino (4:53)

And yet I understand you are not using Muse, even though you do use some other AI tools in your daily life. Why?