Fabrizio Pfannl

Over the past one, 2, or even 3 decades, technological development has accelerated dramatically thanks to the digital revolution.

But some technologies generate a lot of hype and still don t seem to have reached mass adoption or shown enough long-term potential. For example, that s how I currently see wearable glasses.

On the other hand, technologies and concepts like the internet, social media, artificial intelligence, and perhaps even Bitcoin have already had a profound impact on society.

Hot take: the next big UX shift won t be another app.

It ll be humans talking to agents, and agents quietly doing the work in the background.

The real question is: how much control are we actually willing to give them?

A CMO at a midsize enterprise software company had a moment recently.
Her team spent three years building top-of-page-one SEO dominance. Then someone ran a simple test: typed the company's core use case into ChatGPT and asked for vendor recommendations.
The company didn't appear. Not once. "We thought we had search figured out," she said. "Turns out we optimized for the wrong engine"

That scenario is playing out across industries. Most organizations haven't caught up.

The numbers that explain the shift

Generative AI has moved from novelty to primary research channel faster than almost any technology before it. ChatGPT alone has over 900 million weekly active users. Google AI Overviews now appear in more than 25% of all searches, up from 13% just a year ago .