I might be the only person in our company who hasn’t found a practical use for AI in my job.
It’s not a knock on AI. I’ve discovered plenty of helpful applications for it in my personal life. The online search and product review summaries are handy.
I just don’t use it at work. I won’t even let humans rewrite my prose or presentations, let alone ask a machine to draft something for me. If there’s a robot out there who can capture my intrepid style and voice, I’d rather not know about it.
AI also can’t make the 100 decisions I have to make every day, despite the fact I probably get 20% of them wrong. Even if I wanted to, it would be impossible to bake all the necessary context for most of those decisions – the underlying humanity and emotions – into a prompt. Plus, I don’t want to share credit with a computer for the 80% I get right.
Anyway, that pretty much sums up the entirety of my job: Making decisions and communicating.
Seemingly, everyone else here is using AI to find efficiencies in their work. Whether drafting survey questions, summarizing data analysis, or writing code, it’s touching nearly every corner of our business. We even have a recurring company-wide meeting for people to share the latest tricks they’ve uncovered. I have nothing to add.
Bigger picture, the potential applications of AI for our business are massive. Let me rephrase that. The potential applications of our data for AI are massive.
With the mountains of information available to large language models, more of it than any of us can comprehend, it’s bereft of one specific kind: real-time, large-scale, and accurately representative data about humanity’s wants, needs, hopes, fears, and opinions. Come at me with your counterpoint, and I’ll shoot it down. Social media posts or online comments? Not representative. Amazon and Google? They have near-infinite knowledge about people’s wants and needs – at least the material ones – but they’ll never, ever make it available outside their walls.
We check all the boxes – billions of data points, updated daily, about the underlying context, emotion, and signals behind human behavior. When paired with empirical historical data, it’s extremely powerful. Equally important, we have the freedom to share it with whomever we choose, to make other people’s data and AI better and more responsible.
In a world increasingly reliant on machines to perform human tasks, we should all hope there’s some degree of humanity in the decisions they make. We’re here for it.
Here’s what we’re seeing:
People are feeling less lonely this year – at least most of us. After rising steadily since the pandemic, our collective loneliness appears to have peaked in 2024, with our January numbers showing the first decline in years. One sad exception, however, is Gen Z. Our youngest adults are by far the most isolated and are the only group who got worse in our latest read. Not coincidentally, reports of device addiction have reached an all-time high. Over half of Americans say they use technology as a form of escapism.
Household financial strain continues to show up in new ways. In our 3 Things to Know this week, we looked at the rising appeal of value menu offerings at fast food restaurants. After reaching a high point in November, then falling through Christmas, interest in deal meals is surging to start the year. In parallel, we’re also seeing declining interest among pet owners in various categories of spending related to their furry – or fur-less, if you’re weird – friends. Finally, and on a completely different topic, we examined trends in podcast listening in 2024 over 2023. Obviously, political pods were up significantly YoY, but not as much as sports.
In a perfect segue, women’s sports fandom keeps on climbing. A trend that took the nation by storm last spring shows no signs of a plateau, as interest in watching female sports – particularly among young adults – is still ascending. There are some notable changes, however, as the WNBA has nudged past NCAA women’s basketball as the most popular sport. I could explain why, but I trust you to figure that out for yourself. The trend also spans genders, with the number of men who follow the WNBA increasing by over 40% in the past year.
Frozen foods are having a renaissance. As someone who used to come home from school with my latchkey and eat more TV dinners than I can count, the idea of frozen entrees hasn’t been especially appealing in my adult life. But I guess I’m an outlier because the uptake of frozen meals and snacks has been on a steady rise since the beginning of the pandemic. It’s been a boon for certain grocery retailers as well. Sam’s Club and Walmart shoppers over-index as frozen entrée buyers, while frozen snackers are much more likely to shop at places like Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, or Costco. That should tell you something about the demographic differences between the two categories.
Dry January-ers are already falling off the wagon. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the record number of people who said they were planning to put down the bottle this month. Well, maybe it’s the frigid weather or the political circus of the past week, but the willpower isn’t keeping up with the good intentions. Among drinkers who embarked on Dry January, nearly half have given up. For those who’ve stuck with it, carbonated drinks and weed have filled the void. Meanwhile, nearly 1 in 4 January teetotalers say they plan to continue long-term, quitting altogether. Take all your money and put it on the under.
More awesomeness from the InsightStore™:
- Everything you need to know about the huge energy drink market and who buys them;
- Gen Z is also steering cruise interest.
The most popular questions this week:
How important is punctuality in your workplace?
Do you have a preferred sleeping position?
What is your favorite hot sauce brand, among these options?
Do you prefer to watch games live or through recaps?
Answer Key: Apparently more important to me than it is to everyone else; Not as often as I’d like; Right side; Among those, Cholula, but California Pepper Plant sauce is the best; Live, except soccer.
Hoping you’re well,
JD
