Lenny RachitskyHost of Lenny's Podcast | Author of Lenny's Newsletter

The AI Opportunity That Nobody's Building

10 Sept 2026 · 1 min

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In this monologue, the speaker argues that the AI industry has spent decades building tools that amplify human intellect—think better spreadsheets and productivity‑boosting features—while neglecting the deeper, emotional and spiritual needs that drive most consumer behavior. He points out that the world’s biggest products are entertainment and social platforms, indicating that people crave connection, love, fun, and a sense of progress more than mere time‑saving efficiency. The speaker frames this mismatch as a product‑design failure rather than a limitation of AI models or capabilities. He calls for a shift in focus: applying the powerful AI technologies we now have to fulfill basic human desires for connection, meaning, and joy, positioning this as the next, largely untapped opportunity in AI.

Chapters

We believe that people want to be more productive, but they don't. I think more people want to spend time than save time. There's a reason the biggest products in the world are entertainment and social. So we get at the heart of how do we sort of deliver the value to the consumer? It's really a product design failure. We have the capabilities to radically transform people's lives. In many ways, we spent 40 years building a technology that enables better spreadsheets. We built this technology that extends our intellect, but nothing to extend our soul. And I think that we have a little bit of a spiritual hunger, especially as a lot of these cultural institutions have gone away that fulfilled that. So I think that the opportunity for this technology is like, hey, the basics of consumer need. How do we feel more connected, more loved? How do we make progress? How do we have fun? The things that we all aspire to, the basics, how do we apply this technology to those areas? That's what I want to see more of. And again, I don't think it's a model or a capability challenge. It's just a product design challenge.