The True Story of AI
An interview with Bill Bourdon
Anyone worth their salt in AI knows that the technology is only one part of the equation.
Although this may sound controversial at first, I have a clear reason behind my bold statement.
The purpose of AI is to drive beneficial human impact. You can have the most beautifully engineered AI innovation, but if it is not reaching that critical factor of impact on the human level, all you have is a solution without a problem to solve.
And in order to reach the human, you need to understand that there are far more layers to AI than simply just the technology. One such layer that often goes under appreciated, and in fact is a key factor of humanity, is communication.
Without communication, we humans remain disconnected, unfocused, and directionless. Without communication, AI follows an eerily similar path.
Which is exactly why I asked a skilled AI communicator, Bill Bourdon, to join me for an interview exploring the true story of AI and how his value of curiosity has helped drive his strategic communications agency to success.
TL;DR - Watch the interview with Bill Bourdon here
The following is one-part summary of Bill’s interview, one-part my reflections on the conversation. To listen to the full discussion, check out the recording here.
Who is Bill Bourdon?
In his own words, Bill is a professional storyteller.
Bill has more than 25 years of experience in strategic communications and public affairs advising technology companies at every stage — from stealth to Fortune 50. Bill specializes in helping companies navigate major moments of inflection and transformation with integrated corporate communications programs designed to grow reputation equity and create new categories.
When he’s not advising clients, Bill focuses on developing Mission North’s award-winning culture and experimenting with new storytelling techniques. He is a frequent commentator and contributor on the future of technology, media and communications. His articles have been published in Adweek, Harvard Business Review, TechCrunch and VentureBeat.
What is Bill’s driving value?
To answer this question, we have to travel back in time to Bill’s childhood. As the saying goes, we eventually reach a moment in time when we realize that we have become our parents, and Bill is no different. When asked about his underlying values, Bill’s mind immediately goes to his father and what that relationship has imprinted on Bill from the start.
From ownership to ambition, kindness to punctuality, humor to honesty, the list goes on. Although Bill has no shortage of values driving his work and life, there is a connecting piece that underscores his entire career: the value of curiosity.
Thanks to his father’s knack for interrogating five-year-old Bill’s friends, Bill learned early on the importance of asking questions with the intention of expanding your experiences, learning more about those around you, and understanding how to move with purpose. Fast forward to today, and Bill has taken that same value of curiosity to heart in his professional career as he shows that the best communicators are the curious ones.
Why is this? In the world of AI and beyond, why is the value of curiosity a differentiating factor for communication?
As Bill explains, the world runs on communication. Whether or not an AI tool is adopted depends less on how the tool functions and more on the story being told to its potential user base. At the end of the day, we are creating AI solutions in order to drive human impact, which means we need to get clear on what this impact is, and be able to communicate this to those we are intending to bring that impact to. As Bill so eloquently put it, without great stories, innovations will only ever remain ideas.
Great, so we now know the importance of communication in AI, but what does curiosity have to do with it all? In order to really be able to tell the true story of AI, we need to be able to fully understand the problem we are trying to solve by unpacking it from every angle. And this deep questioning is fueled by, you guessed it, curiosity.
What does Bill’s value look like in action?
So how does this curious communicator bring his value to life in his work? As co-CEO of Mission North, Bill has embedded the value of curiosity into both the culture and processes of the company.
Quick sidetone to give you some background on Bill’s company - Mission North is a strategic communications agency that strives to help its clients solve really big problems with communication. Awarded ‘Most Innovative Companies’ for 2024 by Fast Company and serving top tech companies such as Canva, Zoom, and Snowflake, Bill explains that all their clients are important, but it’s Mission North’s job to make them interesting.
And in a world flooded by AI-product announcements, this is no easy task.
Unless, you use your curiosity. As Bill explains, the default he has instilled into his company’s culture is to seek to learn what a client is trying to achieve before leaping into action.
Case in point, everyone wants to be featured in the New York Times, and Bill’s clients are no different. However, instead of moving immediately to execute on that request, Bill brings his value of curiosity to life by exploring through intentional questioning the real motivator behind his client’s request, and in some cases discovering that a feature in the NYT actually isn’t the best path to take.
Great communicators are not order takers, they are really councilors and advisors. Their job is to ask good questions to guide their clients, building trust, growth and the invitation to ask deeper questions along the way.
To help guide communicators in providing good advice, Bill explains that Mission North advises their clients on a simple set of communications principles:
Always be humanizing
AI is not a technology story, it is inherently a human story.
The default for technologists is often to focus on the how, when truly the real story of AI is in the why.
Always be educating
AI is overwhelming.
Your audiences need to be educated with research, success stories, and accessible information that extends beyond high levels of digital literacy.
Always be showing
AI is really abstract.
Make it as concrete and believable as possible.
Always be proving
AI is hyped.
Root your story in tangible actions and hard evidence to prove that it can do what you say it does.
How can you bring Bill’s value to life in your own work?
Not all questions are equal. We’ve all been on the receiving end of a bad question, the kind that makes your groan and toss your hands in the air of out frustration. Instead, we need questions that open our minds and engage our thinking, helping guide us through a creatively intellectual process fueled by curiosity. If questions are essential to bringing curiosity to life in your work, how do you ensure that you are asking good ones?
As Bill explains, there is no silver bullet question to solve all your problems. The key instead is to understand the intention behind your questions. For example, by asking something as simple as ‘what should we do?’ leads to structured and singular pathways as the answers will focus in on trying to find the one best solution. This intention works in some instances, however in other cases you may want to shift to asking ‘what could we do?’ instead, leading to a diversity of pathways in the answers. Knowing which subtly different question to ask comes down to understanding what intention is needed in that moment.
And when it comes to AI, the intention is to uncover the true story of how AI is changing our lives. When the whole purpose of AI is to help solve real problems, it then becomes a matter of asking the right questions to discover the human story beneath it all.
To help get you kickstarted in uncovering your why in AI, here are a few of Bill’s go-to questions:
Who are the people that built the AI innovation?
What were the motivations for building it?
What mistakes did you learn along the way of creating this AI innovation?
What happens if you’re not successful, what are the risks?
And my personal favorite:
How will the world change if the idea is successful?
Bill Bourdon’s definition of good tech
“Any technology that is way more helpful than harmful. To accomplish that, its tech that from the beginning the people behind the technology contemplate the unintended consequences from day one and they embed trust and safety at the core of how they’re building that technology.”
P.S. If you’re using the Values Canvas methodology, Bill’s curious communication approach to AI aligns perfectly with the Communicate element *hint hint*.
Say hello to the human
Connect with Bill on LinkedIn, check out the work Mission North, or subscribe to the Dispatch newsletter for insights between the lines (you’ll find a familiar face there 😉)
