Empathy: The Thing AI Can’t Fake

AI is changing how product teams work, no question. It listens, summarizes, predicts, and drafts. It’s efficient and, at times, eerily competent. But it also creates a kind of distance. The more time we spend reading summaries, the less time we spend listening.

That’s how empathy gets dulled. And once it dulls, everything else does too: judgment, curiosity, imagination.

Empathy isn’t about being nice. It’s about paying attention. About catching what people mean when they don’t quite say it. About noticing what frustrates them but doesn’t make it into the feedback form. It’s what keeps a product team connected to the living, unpredictable side of the work.

AI doesn’t notice the pause before someone answers a question. It doesn’t see the workaround they’ve invented to make your product usable. It doesn’t feel the gap between what they want and what they settle for. Those things still matter.

When the Tools Start Steering

I talk with a lot of teams who believe they’re closer to their users than ever because they have better tools. But the tools can’t feel confusion, disappointment, or relief. They only detect the residue.

Over time, that detachment shows up in the product. It gets cleaner but less human. The features make sense on paper, but you can’t feel the intent behind them anymore.

Where Catalytic Customers Help

Catalytic Customers bring the human layer back in. They’re not early adopters or super-fans. They’re the ones who’ve lived with your category long enough to see what’s missing, and who care enough to explain it clearly.

They’re tuned in. They notice where utility breaks down and they can articulate why. They’re the customers who help you feel what the dashboards can’t.

Working with them keeps empathy alive because they demand it. They don’t let you settle for patterns without meaning. They tell you why something matters—and how much.

How to Keep Empathy in the Process

• Spend real time with people. Watch, don’t just ask.

  
  

• Let Catalytic Customers into early reviews, even the messy ones.

  
  

• Use AI for what it’s good at—speed and sorting—but keep the interpretation human.

  
  

Empathy won’t make you slower. It’ll make you sharper. It’s what helps you see what AI can’t: where people struggle, what they hope for, and why they keep showing up anyway.