Product Impact Podcast | Secrets to unlocking the value of AI

What does it mean when the largest consumer tech company in the world says AI isn't so intelligent after all?

Over the last week Apple has dominated AI headlines and not for the reason you'd expect. Their research team released a paper called "The Illusion of Thinking." (Authors: Parshin Shojaee, Iman Mirzadeh, Keivan Alizadeh, Maxwell Horton, Samy Bengio, Mehrdad Farajtabar)

This quote from Gary Marcus' newsletter sums it best:

"What the Apple paper shows, most fundamentally, regardless of how you define AGI, is that LLMs are no substitute for good well-specified conventional algorithms. (They also can’t play chess as well as conventional algorithms, can’t fold proteins like special-purpose neurosymbolic hybrids, can’t run databases as well as conventional databases, etc.)

In the best case (not always reached) they can write python code, supplementing their own weaknesses with outside symbolic code, but even this is not reliable. What this means for business and society is that you can’t simply drop o3 or Claude into some complex problem and expect it to work reliably."

This was then followed by Apple's developer event this week where Apple continued to under-deliver on market expectations of AI releases in iOS and beyond.

In this episode we explore what it means for builders and business users of AI that Apple is playing the spoiler role compared to OpenAI and Google's role as hypers of GAI.

We present a path forward for leveraging the increasing task accuracy and task accuracy of the latest LLMs. And we discuss the risk of the illusion of reasoning within LLMs as it relates to employers looking to reduce headcount.

-------

Thank you for listening to the Design of AI podcast.

We provide secrets for building AI products that customers value.

If you have guests you want to recommend or need help with your product, contact us [email protected] 

Remember to follow us on your fave podcasting app. It also really helps us if you leave reviews.

—----------

This episode was hosted by:

Arpy Dragffy Guerrero (Founder & Principal Strategist PH1 Research) https://www.linkedin.com/in/adragffy/ 

Brittany Hobbs (VP Insights, Huge)  https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittanyhobbs/

And if you want more AI strategy & research content, subscribe to our substack newsletter at https://designofai.substack.com/ 

This episode is brought to you by PH1 Research, a research & strategy consultancy specialized in mapping the future of your business & product. Get more info at PH1.ca 

Follow us here:

⁠Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/3O11vQKPpKI5ZlJhdRGwnf

⁠Apple Podcasts⁠ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/design-of-ai-product-strategy-innovation-career-growth/id1734499859
 YouTube⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@DesignofAI

There’s no doubt, AI will be able to automate product, marketing, and sales workflows. But GenAI’s greatest achievement could be expanding our creative potential. 

In this episode you’ll learn about:

➤ How AI’s ability to understand context and intent will change everything

➤ That communicating via visuals instead of words will innovate decision-making

➤ The differences in working in a design-led culture vs. production line orgs

➤ Preparing for a world of AI as a creative partner & provocateur 

➤ What creative AI products can do today and in the near future

Our guest, Tuhin Kumar, has worked on the bleeding edge of user experience design his entire career, creating some of the most memorable interactions on Facebook, Airbnb, and Apple’s platforms. 

In this conversation we explore why he decided to lead design at Luma, a GenAI platform challenging our perspectives on the creative potential of video and images. As we enter an era where anyone can create average assets, we must find new ways of pushing the boundaries of creativity. Pioneers, like Tuhin, are building a future that equips product teams and creatives across all industries with new capabilities to innovate how we design.

Thank you for listening to the Design of AI podcast.

We provide secrets for building AI products that customers love.

If you have guests you want to recommend or need help with your product, contact us [email protected] 

Remember to follow us on your fave podcasting app. It also really helps us if you leave reviews.

—----------

Tuhin Kumar has shaped everything from Apple’s macOS features to Airbnb’s global design system and was the first designer at LinkedIn Pulse.  At NVIDIA-backed Luma an AI video generator with 25M+ users that many find better than Sora, he’s at the forefront of AI's impact on reshaping design—not just as a tool, but as a creative collaborator—crafting modular systems that can adapt to rapid research breakthroughs. Tuhin’s work blurs the line between art and utility and how creative vision can thrive alongside tech.

—----------

This episode was hosted by:

Arpy Dragffy Guerrero (Founder & Principal Strategist PH1 Research) https://www.linkedin.com/in/adragffy/ 

And if you want more AI strategy & research content, subscribe to our substack newsletter at https://designofai.substack.com/ 

This episode is brought to you by PH1 Research, a research & strategy consultancy specialized in mapping the future of your business & product. Get more info at PH1.ca

Follow us here:

⁠Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/3O11vQKPpKI5ZlJhdRGwnf

⁠Apple Podcasts⁠ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/design-of-ai-product-strategy-innovation-career-growth/id1734499859

 YouTube⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@DesignofAI 

We have two special guests. Dr. Emily M. Bender & Dr. Alex Hanna, the authors of The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want. This review best captures why you should read this book:

A smart, incisive look at the technologies sold as artificial intelligence, the drawbacks and pitfalls of technology sold under this banner, and why it’s crucial to recognize the many ways in which AI hype covers for a small set of power-hungry actors at work and in the world.

Get more info about the book at https://thecon.ai

This episode challenges the hype around AI and is a critical conversation for anyone working in technology or planning to leverage AI. In this episode we cover:

➤ Exaggerations and limitations of AI & LLMs

➤ Until we know how LLMs are trained, we can’t trust them

➤ Focussing on assisting users, not replacing workers

➤ Workers must stand up and  resist AI automation

➤ The damage caused by AI hype boosters & doomers

Dr. Emily M. Bender is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington where she is also the Faculty Director of the Computational Linguistics Master of Science program and affiliate faculty in the School of Computer Science and Engineering and the Information School. In 2023, she was included in the inaugural Time 100 list of the most influential people in AI. She is frequently consulted by policymakers, from municipal officials to the federal government to the United Nations, for insight into how to understand so-called AI technologies.

Dr. Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) and a Lecturer in the School of Information at the University of California Berkeley. She is an outspoken critic of the tech industry, a proponent of community-based uses of technology, and a highly sought-after speaker and expert who has been featured across the media, including articles in the Washington Post, Financial Times, The Atlantic, and Time.

Dr Bender & Dr. Hanna are also the hosts of the Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 podcast, where they take on the latest news from AI and technology.

—-------

Thank you for listening to the Design of AI podcast. 

We provide a pragmatic and practical deep dive into what AI can do and how it is transforming industries. We help designers, researchers, and strategists excel in a rapidly changing future.

Remember to follow us on your fave podcasting app. It also really helps us if you leave reviews.

This episode was hosted by:

Arpy Dragffy Guerrero (Founder & Principal Strategist PH1 Research) https://www.linkedin.com/in/adragffy/ 

And if you want more AI strategy & research content, subscribe to our substack newsletter at https://designofai.substack.com/ 

Thanks for listening to the Design of AI podcast

If you like this episode please follow us on your podcast app and leave us a review.

This episode is brought to you by PH1 Research, a research & strategy consultancy specialized in mapping the future of your business & product. Get more info at ph1.ca

Follow us here:

⁠Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/3O11vQKPpKI5ZlJhdRGwnf

⁠Apple Podcasts⁠ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/design-of-ai-product-strategy-innovation-career-growth/id1734499859

 YouTube⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@DesignofAI

Designers are overwhelmed with too many AI products that promise to help them simplify workflows and solve the last mile of design-to-code. With the announcements of Figma Site and Figma Make at the the Config conference, the amount of options to consider has increased even more. 

In this episode you’ll discover:

1. Ranking of which AI design-to-code products are recommended by a UX expert

2. Assessment of whether designers should rely on these tools

3. Learn more hacks on how to get better results from ChatGPT, Claude, and Manus, including deep research versions

This episode will help designers, product managers, developers, and anyone working with tech to elevate their design and production capabilities by leveraging the latest AI capabilities and the "Vibe-coding" trend.

Our special guest is Roger Wong. He is a forward-thinking design leader with extensive experience in cultivating brand loyalty and enhancing customer experiences for prominent tech companies like Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, and Intel. His career spans over two decades during which he founded Wong.Digital, led design at two startups, and managed significant creative teams, notably for Samsung Mobile. His passion for innovation is demonstrated through his cofounding of Transported VR, a pioneering venture in virtual reality real estate, and his side project of developing an AI tool to assist designers in crafting brand strategies. His contributions to the design field have been recognized by Communication Arts, Graphis, One Show, Clio Awards, and Cannes Lions. Holding a BFA in graphic design from the California College of the Arts, he has also contributed to academics as a professor and advisory board member at San Diego City College.

He writes about design, AI, UX, and technology on his blog: https://rogerwong.me

Read his full analysis of the design-to-code AI products: https://rogerwong.me/2025/04/beyond-the-prompt 

What you need to know about this evaluation:

“If you're wanting to close the design-to-code gap, consider Subframe. While AI is part of its feature set, it is not the only selling point. In my opinion, its strength is in being able to design with and manipulate React components visually.

Finally, for quick ideas and prototypes, check out v0. Because the output is mostly unstyled, it makes for great wireframe-like prototypes that are shareable. By playing with working prototypes, it's very quickly apparent what you should incorporate into your designs.“

This episode was hosted by:

Brittany Hobbs is VP of Insights at Huge, a global design and technology consultancy. I lead research initiatives to build the next generation of consumer and business applications for the world’s biggest brands. My focus is on humanizing technology at scale, often leveraging AI to discover breakthroughs in human-computer interaction.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittanyhobbs/ 

Arpy Dragffy Guerrero is the Founder & Principal Strategist at PH1 Research. He researches and maps how organizations should leverage emerging technologies to improve products and services. By combining behavioral science and service design methods with UX strategy, he won clients such as Spotify, Microsoft, Mozilla, the National Football League, and dozens more across the private and public sectors.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/adragffy/ 

—-------

Thank you for listening to the Design of AI podcast. 

We provide a pragmatic and practical deep dive into what AI can do and how it is transforming industries. We help designers, researchers, and product managers excel in a rapidly changing future.

If you find this strategic content helpful, make sure to follow us on your fave podcasting app. It really helps us if you leave reviews.

Follow us here:

⁠Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/3O11vQKPpKI5ZlJhdRGwnf

⁠Apple Podcasts⁠ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/design-of-ai-product-strategy-innovation-career-growth/id1734499859
 YouTube⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@DesignofAI

Employers and the media are pressuring us to adopt AI quickly. But overreliance on large language models poses huge risks. Not only is GenAI highly likely to make mistakes, we’re putting the entire data set of our businesses at risk if we take AI results as immediate truth.

In this episode we discuss and debate the risks and remedies for businesses rushing to adopt AI for core work flows and services. Listen to this episode to learn about:

➤ The impact of time pressure on teams on production & quality

➤ Risks of over reliance on technology that’s frequently incorrect

➤ Importance of focused use cases and training data

➤ Recognizing the importance of expertise & critical analysis

➤ Pinpointing how to best leverage AI to improve workflows

Today we’re trying out a new format which we plan to include between quest episodes from time to time. This allows us to share our own experience as consultants and practitioners, and to bring together learnings across multiple interviews. If you want to see more episodes like this,please reach out and let us know.

Brittany Hobbs is VP of Insights at Huge, a global design and technology consultancy. I lead research initiatives to build the next generation of consumer and business applications for the world’s biggest brands. My focus is on humanizing technology at scale, often leveraging AI to discover breakthroughs in human-computer interaction.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittanyhobbs/ 

My co-host is Arpy Dragffy Guerrero. He is the Founder & Principal Strategist at PH1 Research. He researches and maps how organizations should leverage emerging technologies to improve products and services. By combining behavioral science and service design methods with UX strategy, he won clients such as Spotify, Microsoft, Mozilla, the National Football League, and dozens more across the private and public sectors.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/adragffy/ 

—-------

Thank you for listening to the Design of AI podcast. 

We provide a pragmatic and practical deep dive into what AI can do and how it is transforming industries. We help designers, researchers, and product managers excel in a rapidly changing future.

If you find this strategic content helpful, make sure to follow us on your fave podcasting app. It really helps us if you leave reviews.

Follow us here:

Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube

Tell us about your AI product experiences:

Go to https://designof.ai to share your AI product recommendations and product ratings.

Please make sure to subscribe to our Substack to never miss an episode. On the Design of AI substack you’ll also receive more strategic insights and recommended products.  https://designofai.substack.com/ 

AI is changing how we design and the types of products we build. 

It’s still unclear exactly what the future of design looks like, but architecture reveals important lessons about how AI will transform the creative process and how it can improve the efficiency of major development projects. 

Matt Krissel, the Co-Founder of the Built Environment Futures Council, joins us to discuss how AI is disrupting architecture and lessons for digital product teams. He really struck powerful points many times during our conversation about questioning the role of time and permanence in a world when we want more, faster.

We covered a lot of topics:

➤ Flipping the creative process on its head

➤ Incremental growth is fine but let’s reimagine processes

➤ What should we be doing with more productivity?

➤ Getting punch-drunk on complexity & novelty

➤ The value of modelling complex project operations

Matthew is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects and a principal at Perkins&Will, a global, interdisciplinary architecture and design firm. For over two decades, he has led transformative architectural projects across North America and internationally. His portfolio ranges from iconic, institution-defining buildings to small homes with big ideas.

Drawing from his extensive work and deep interest in design and technology, Matthew co-founded the Built Environment Futures Council (BEFC) in 2023. This diverse national group of designers and builders works to advance the discourse and opportunities for design, technology, and artificial intelligence in architecture and construction. He is also an adjunct faculty member at the Carnegie Mellon School of Architecture, where he works to help shape the next generation of design leaders.

Follow him and his work: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-krissel

https://www.thebefc.org/ 

https://www.creativelab3.com/matthew 

—-------

Thank you for listening to the Design of AI podcast. 

We provide a pragmatic and practical deep dive into what AI can do and how it is transforming industries. We help designers, researchers, and product managers excel in a rapidly changing future.

If you find this strategic content helpful, make sure to follow us on your fave podcasting app. It really helps us if you leave reviews.

Go to https://designof.ai to share your AI product recommendations and product ratings.

This episode was hosted by:

Arpy Dragffy Guerrero (Founder & Principal Strategist PH1 Research) https://www.linkedin.com/in/adragffy/ 

Please make sure to subscribe to our Substack to never miss an episode. On the Design of AI substack you’ll also receive more strategic insights and recommended products.  https://designofai.substack.com/ 

What seemed unimaginable a few years ago is now possible because AI is becoming cheaper and more accessible to any entrepreneur. Unlocking your data & building point solutions are the key.

By focusing on high value, repeating business problems you can leverage AI’s predictive capabilities to solve any use case.

This is episode 30 and our guest is Tyler Hochman, CEO of FORE Enterprise. We’re discussing how you can take control of AI’s predictive power. This episode is a roadmap for product teams and entrepreneurs looking to unlock their data’s disruptive potential. 

In this episode we cover:

➤ Focus on AI’s immense data structuring capabilities

➤ Hacks of get the data needed to train your model

➤ Why Entrepreneurs should focus on building point solutions

➤ AI can predict when you’ll quit your job & how to keep you

➤ Data privacy becoming a major differentiator of workplaces

➤ How OpenAI collected so much data to train their model 

Tyler Hochman is the Founder and CEO of FORE Enterprise, an AI workforce analytics platform that predicts which employees plan to leave their jobs and recommends strategies for retention. Hochman, who was recently acknowledged on Forbes 30 Under 30 list for social impact, and is at the forefront of AI innovation. Prior to founding FORE Enterprise, Tyler founded multiple consumer and B2B apps and companies, such as TH Analytics, VELLA, Modern Memoir, and SafeStop. Tyler holds a B.S. in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford, with a focus on Data Science and Finance.

Follow him: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-hochman-83b547130

—-------

Thank you for listening to the Design of AI podcast. 

We provide a pragmatic and practical deep dive into what AI can do and how it is transforming industries. We help designers, researchers, and product managers excel in a rapidly changing future.

If you find this strategic content helpful, make sure to follow us on your fave podcasting app. It really helps us if you leave reviews.

Go to https://designof.ai to share your AI product recommendations and product ratings.

This episode was hosted by:

Arpy Dragffy Guerrero (Founder & Principal Strategist PH1 Research) https://www.linkedin.com/in/adragffy/ 

Brittany Hobbs (VP Insights, Huge)  https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittanyhobbs/

Please make sure to subscribe to our Substack to never miss an episode. On the Design of AI substack you’ll also receive more strategic insights and recommended products.  https://designofai.substack.com/ 

Which products and services should we trust? How can brands earn our trust? As we enter the AI agentic era, we’re going to be faced with increasing concerns about trustworthiness. Our guest was described by John Maeda in 2024 as "the great mind of our time for services earning trust."

This is episode 29 and we’re discussing: Trust is a double-edged sword: How AI will Transform Services with Sarah Gold. We’re providing you with a roadmap for increasing the trust of your products & services:

➤ Importance of civic tech in delivering equitable services

➤ Responsibility to focus on helping people and human KPIs

➤ Principles for increasing trustworthiness

➤ Risk of over-relying on, and trusting services too much

➤ AI agents will change our relationship with services & each other

Sarah Gold is a digital leader with extensive experience in conceptualising, designing and building trustworthy, high stakes products and services with emerging technologies across private and public sectors. 

Currently applying this expertise to build and grow Projects by IF, a specialist agency that she founded in London. IF helps clients, including the UK Government, Virgin Media O2 and Telus Health grow in new markets, and deepen existing relationships, through greater customer trust.

She advises the Mayor of London's Data for London programme, and the UK Design Council on digital. Her work on legibility of complex systems has won several awards, including Forbes 30 under 30 and The Observer's New Radical.

Follow her https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahtgold/ 
Find her work and resources https://www.projectsbyif.com/

-------
Please make sure to subscribe to our Substack to never miss an episode. On the Design of AI substack you’ll also receive more strategic insights and recommended products.  https://designofai.substack.com/

--------

Thank you for listening to the Design of AI podcast. 

We provide a pragmatic and practical deep dive into what AI can do and how it is transforming industries. We help designers, researchers, and product managers excel in a rapidly changing future.

If you find this strategic content helpful, make sure to follow us on your fave podcasting app. It really helps us if you leave reviews.

We’re on a mission to collect examples of how you’re using AI to elevate how you work. Share your examples at https://designof.ai 

--------

This episode was hosted by:

Arpy Dragffy Guerrero (Founder & Principal Strategist PH1 Research) https://www.linkedin.com/in/adragffy/ 

Brittany Hobbs (VP Insights, Huge)  https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittanyhobbs/

AI may replace many of our jobs. UX Research is one of the roles most at risk because the technology is increasingly automating many of the tasks.. John Whalen is one of the researchers working at the forefront of leveraging AI. He joins us to map out the future of research and how anyone in product can ride the AI-augmentation wave to better individual and team results.

This is episode 28 and we’re discussing how AI will transform product research with John Whalen Ph.D. We cover a topics that are hugely important to anyone working in product and agencies:

➤ How to gain more influence with stakeholders and leaders

➤ That’s it IS possible to do 7 weeks of work in 7 days thanks to AI

➤ Researchers must be curious about AI or get wiped out

➤ How we work has already been disrupted every time a new tool arrives

➤ Why synthetic users are actually immensely powerful, and when to use them

John Whalen leads Insights & Innovation at Brilliant Experience, where he helps global brands understand the psychology behind their customers' behaviors and bring successful products to market.

Initially skeptical about AI, John and his team conducted extensive “AI vs. Humans” studies to pinpoint precisely where AI-enhanced research excels—and where human judgment remains irreplaceable, and became convinced that AI will transform how research will be done.

Now he regularly interviews pioneering founders in the AI-for-UX space and leverages the latest AI tools to deliver rapid, scaled, global insights for top brands.

With a PhD from Johns Hopkins, John combines academic rigor with real-world pragmatism to help UX researchers and product leaders harness the new realities of AI-powered research.

Follow him https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnwhalen/ 

Learn about his work at https://brilliantexperience.com  

—-------

Participate in our AI product recommendations database here https://airtable.com/appeE4oGqKJ17Rwum/pagFmrnUrIkAdHg4n/form 

Thank you for listening to the Design of AI podcast. 

We provide a pragmatic and practical deep dive into what AI can do and how it is transforming industries. We help designers, researchers, and product managers excel in a rapidly changing future.

If you find this strategic content helpful, make sure to follow us on your fave podcasting app. It really helps us if you leave reviews.

We’re on a mission to collect examples of how you’re using AI to elevate how you work. Share your examples at designof.ai

This episode was hosted by:

Arpy Dragffy Guerrero (Founder & Principal Strategist PH1 Research) https://www.linkedin.com/in/adragffy/ 

Brittany Hobbs (VP Insights, Huge)  https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittanyhobbs/

Please make sure to subscribe to our Substack to never miss an episode. On the Design of AI substack you’ll also receive more strategic insights and recommended products.  https://designofai.substack.com/ 

How are the world’s largest brands leveraging AI? Where are they getting the greatest ROI? What are the biggest fears and barriers to adopting AI at scale? To answer these questions we invited one of the world’s leading AI consultants to explain what’s happening today and shifts he expects in the near future.

This is episode 27 and our guest is Jan Emmanuele, Director of Generative AI Consulting at Superside. We’re discussing implementing AI at-scale in creative teams and cover:

➤ Where businesses are getting the most value from AI

➤ GenAI’s ability to massively scale creative outputs

➤ Processes and strategies for implementing AI effectively

➤ Addressing the challenges and fears of leveraging AI

➤ AI’s adoption as a creative multiplier will surge in 2026

This episode is perfect for business, product, and design leaders who want to get details on how to best implement AI to augment and automate workflows.

Jan leads Superside’s AI Consulting department, working intimately with some of the leading companies - incl. several Fortune 500 companies - to integrate AI into their creative workflows. Prior, he was leading investments into AI startups at a venture capital fund and has 3 years experience as a McKinsey consultant working on tech and software topics. He also holds a PhD on AI for cancer treatment and developed AI solutions in a medical device company, including several patents.

Follow him and Superside:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-emmanuele-4a13a3118

https://www.superside.com/ 

Thank you for listening to the Design of AI podcast. 

We provide a pragmatic and practical deep dive into what AI can do and how it is transforming industries. We help designers, researchers, and product managers excel in a rapidly changing future.

If you find this strategic content helpful, make sure to follow us on your fave podcasting app. It really helps us if you leave reviews.

This episode was hosted by:

Arpy Dragffy Guerrero (Founder & Principal Strategist PH1 Research) https://www.linkedin.com/in/adragffy/ 

Brittany Hobbs (VP Insights, Huge)  https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittanyhobbs/

Please make sure to subscribe to our Substack to never miss an episode. On the Design of AI substack you’ll also receive more strategic insights and recommended products. We’ll also be announcing events soon too.  https://designofai.substack.com/