When AI Gets Human: Why the Future Belongs to Emotionally Intelligent Tech
For years, we believed something that felt a little ahead of its time:
The most powerful applications of technology wouldn’t be the ones that just solved the most challenging technical problems. They’d be the ones who understood and fulfilled human ones.
But belief alone wasn’t enough. For a long time, the tools weren’t there. AI could automate, calculate, and predict behavior, but couldn’t connect. It wasn’t built to understand nuance, emotion, or unmet needs, but that’s changing rapidly. A recent HBR study on AI use in 2025 revealed that the top use cases are no longer just about productivity or performance. They’re about emotional fulfillment.
Today, people are using AI to:
Navigate personal crises
Organize their mental load
Seek meaning and companionship
This shift isn’t a footnote. It’s a signal. AI has quietly crossed a threshold. Not just in power, but in proximity. It’s no longer just helping us write code or analyze data. It’s helping us feel seen, stay organized, find meaning, and cope.
At Decisions Studio, we’ve spent years decoding expectations, not as a soft metric, but as a strategic one. Expectations drive behavior, preference, and loyalty. They are often unspoken but always present. If a product delivers what people expect — technically and subconsciously — they stick around and adopt it fast.
So, what do people expect from AI?
People are looking for emotionally intelligent and highly context-aware AI that meets people in the messiness of life, not just in task lists.
The companies that succeed in this new era won’t be the ones that build the fastest models. They will be the ones who are experts in each domain and who listen better to what people hope, fear, and need. Those companies will use that insight to design tools that not only “feel” but are smart, safe, relevant, and emotionally attuned.
The Wharton School and Science Says just released an incredibly actionable Blueprint that uses the latest scientific research to answer some of our customers' practical questions to solve for the next phase of AI.
So here’s our take:
The next frontier of AI isn’t technical. It’s human. Companies that understand our expectations and build to meet them will lead.