Halfway Through 2025: Finding Meaning in the Age of AI
In a world changing faster than we can explain it, the real measure of progress isn’t speed—it’s meaning. Here’s how to lead with both.
Six months into 2025 – July 1st! – the new year feels like a century ago, doesn’t it? Do you remember your resolution? Maybe it’s my age, but I don’t think so. While we are only just beginning to experience the speed of an AI-driven economy, a massive shift in how we work, live, and lead has begun. As the internet did before it, artificial intelligence is about to reshape the white collar workforce.
In the past, a yearly review of trends felt sufficient, today I’m suggesting reflections should come at a faster pace. So I’m sharing my thoughts on the trends I’ve seen in the first half of 2025 and advice for the latter half of the year.
We’ve entered a different economy.
One that moves faster than most of us are used to, though it is the new normal, and we must adapt. I’ve spent the month of June travelling—listening, learning, and exchanging with leaders at Customer Contact Week, my family on vacation, VB Transform, and the MaestroQA Quality Summit. What I saw wasn’t just the future of customer experience. It was the future of how we lead, parent, collaborate, and serve—together—in a world where intelligence is abundant but emotional presence is rare.
This is more than change. It’s a shift.
We’re no longer making decisions alone—we’re combining human intelligence and ingenuity with machine intelligence. And the intelligence that matters most? Emotional.
From Metrics to Meaning
Let’s start here: traditional metrics like CSAT and NPS are not obsolete—but they are insufficient.
What customers remember isn’t the resolution time. It’s how they felt when the issue was resolved. Or worse, how they felt when it wasn’t.
This is the fundamental truth that drove my development of the Experience ManufacturingTM framework as a strategic evolution in customer experience. Today, brands must proactively design customer interactions to maximize emotional equity, build lasting trust, and strengthen brand affinity. This approach moves beyond transactional service and structured management frameworks, systematically crafting emotionally resonant experiences that differentiate businesses in competitive markets.
There has been a shift. It’s now not just if they were helped, but how they were helped. Not just what was said, but what was felt.
In a world where every conversation transfers emotional equity, we need a system to account for that transfer. That’s what MoreScore does. It quantifies trust between brands and consumers.
A New Operating System
At the MaestroQA Quality Summit in San Francisco, the conversation around “Quality Assurance” quickly gave way to a deeper insight: QA isn’t only a control function anymore. It’s a research engine. And customer research, when done right (with the assistance of artificial intelligence), is becoming one of the most high-leverage acts inside any organization, capable of driving significant business outcomes.
The best companies aren’t using AI to replace humans – they’re using it to replace tasks humans are far too smart to do. They’re using it to empower human ingenuity, elevate service, and accelerate insight. They’re not just looking at performance—they’re manufacturing moments. Structured, intentional, repeatable.
This is Experience Manufacturing™ in practice:
- Real-time classification of emotional tone
- AI-guided coaching conversations
- Unified dispositioning logic across humans and machines
- Voice of Customer treated as product input—not postmortem
It’s not just QA. It’s design. It’s infrastructure. It’s a new way of thinking. It’s a new operating system.
And it’s moving fast.
Five Trends Defining the Second Half of 2025
To zoom out, here are the five most critical shifts I believe every operator and executive should be watching:
1. Adaptability Is the New “Fittest”
The old model of “survival of the fittest” has evolved. Today, it’s not about strength—it’s about adaptability. With AI giving us an “abundance of intelligence at our fingertips,” one’s ability to combine that intelligence with human ingenuity, creativity, and critical thinking is the key to unlocking human potential. That’s the essence of The More Effect.
2. Emotional Resonance Becomes the True North
Time is value. Words are currency. Empathy is table stakes. These seismic consumer mindset shifts are the result of things like Amazon Prime, Apple Face-ID, Uber, and DoorDash. The instant gratification world that we all live in has raised the bar so high that the brands that win today aren’t the ones who respond the fastest. They’re the ones who feel the most human when they do.
3. AI Is Reshaping Work From the Core
Just like the internet reshaped the white-collar workforce three decades ago, AI is the next technology to do so (and it won’t be the last). Progress is a fundamental truth of life. Don’t resist it. Accept that every knowledge-based function is now open to reimagination. And it’s happening fast. Be the driver, not the passenger.
4. Rigidity is Dying. Flexibility is the New Leadership Language.
Return-to-office mandates may check the compliance box, but they don’t build trust. And neither does top-down, command-and-control leadership. The future of work requires trust-based flexibility and mutual respect; not mandates. The modern worker needs room to be a parent, a partner, and a performer. The “yielding of unnecessary power” over employees will be rejected by today’s workforce. Leaders must support the whole person … and accept we’re not going back.
5. AI’s Growth Is Creating Real-World Environmental Strain
Data centers are thirsty—for energy, for cooling (from water), for space. Some companies are exploring the moon. Literally. Space Forge, Lonestar, and others are manufacturing in orbit. Why? Because the infrastructure we’ve relied on isn’t built for what’s coming. I’m not ready to call it a crisis; but we can no longer ignore the environmental cost of advanced computing.
Final Thought: The Age of AI Requires a Return to Civility
As someone who believes deeply in operational excellence, I’ll say this clearly:
Metrics matter. But meaning matters more.
In this era of abundant intelligence, what will define exceptional companies, teams, and leaders is not how fast they move—but how clearly they connect. Not how much they automate—but how intentionally they serve.
Metrics still matter. But they must be anchored in something deeper:
→ How people feel
→ What moments are remembered
→ And whether the experience left someone more empowered—or more depleted
Because the future won’t be led by the loudest, or the fastest.
It will be led by those who know how to listen, how to feel, and how to lead with both intelligence and empathy.
We’re only halfway through 2025.
Let’s make the second half more human. More intentional. And—most of all—more meaningful.
Let’s not wait to reflect. Let’s build forward now.
Together.
About Jeremy
Jeremy Victor is a father, coach, and senior executive in the digital health industry. He writes about leadership, emotional intelligence, and the modernization of work in the AI-first, always-on economy. His mission: help people—and the systems they work in—Become More. Join Jeremy online at his Substack: Business at the Speed of AI, LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok, OneMORE Minute.