Hard Truths About Hardtech: AI Is Not Your Thought Leadership Savior

We were working with some early-stage deep tech founders this week on how to develop thought leadership programs for their companies. As expected, the topic of AI came up. 

So, we asked the question: is AI good for generating thought leadership content? Most agreed it was valuable, citing use cases for blog content creation, social posts, and even in some cases, social engagement (we’ll tackle that one another time).

But one contrarian founder turned up the heat in the discussion, asserting that “aside from editing tasks and light ideation, it’s pretty worthless.”

It was a spicy take that raised a few eyebrows in the room. After all, isn’t AI the technological advancement of this generation? Surely, it’s capable of producing more value than that, right?

The founder pressed on. 

“AI doesn’t understand our technology. It doesn’t understand our customers or their pain points. It doesn’t see the problems that we solve, and it especially doesn’t see the problems that remain. Only we can do that!”

She was right about all that.  

At the heart of an effective thought leadership campaign is a Point Of View (POV) – a unique way of understanding, looking at, and interpreting the world, informed by a person’s subject matter expertise in a field. 

It’s a special blend of personal and professional experience combined with the ability to assess situations on the fly while advancing vision for where an industry is headed. 

Despite AI’s progress, having an experienced, nuanced and compelling POV is still exclusive to the human domain. Consequently, this is what deep tech founders should spend their time cultivating.

Sure, AI can get you off the blank page, crunch a ton of data, and tackle many menial tasks, but the POV is the soul of your thought leadership program, and it needs to be architected by a human.