AI Isn't Just Artificial Intelligence. It's Ale's Intuition, Innovation, Ideas, and a Few More I's.

I've been using AI long before ChatGPT existed. Just with a slightly different definition.

I have a running joke. Whenever someone mentions AI, I say:

AI? You mean Ale's Intuition? Ale's Ideas? Ale's Innovations?

Of course, I know it stands for Artificial Intelligence. Technology can generate answers. But someone still needs to figure out which problems are worth solving, and what to do with those answers.

So here's my personal AI dictionary.

1. Ale's Intuition

Knowing where to look before you have all the evidence. A metric changes unexpectedly. A feature works exactly as designed, but people aren't using it. Not magic. Pattern recognition from years of working with customers, data and engineering teams.

Intuition tells me where to look. Evidence tells me whether I'm right.

2. Ale's Innovation

It doesn't have to be revolutionary. At Zapier, marketing depended on engineering to create new events. We built Events Salad Bar, a self-service tool that kept engineering review in place. Creating an event went from about 20 minutes to 2.

We didn't invent a new technology. We found a better way to use what we had.

3. Ale's Ideas

I have ideas all the time. Having ideas is easy. Choosing which ones to build is much harder. Before an idea goes on a roadmap, I want to know: who has this problem, and what's the smallest thing we could test?

An idea is a possibility, not a commitment to build.

4. Ale's Insights

I'm a former data scientist, so naturally I love data. But low adoption is a metric. Why adoption is low is the insight, and that's what changes what we do next.

Data tells us what happened. Insights help us understand why it matters.

5. Ale's Investigation

A customer asks for a new dashboard. After talking to them, the real problem is not knowing when something goes wrong. Maybe they don't need a dashboard. Maybe they need an alert.

The best product decisions often start with a better question.

6. Ale's Initiative

A good insight that never leads to action doesn't change much. Sometimes initiative means bringing engineering, design and business together on a problem nobody clearly owns. And sometimes it means stopping. If the evidence shows an idea isn't working, changing direction is progress too.

Taking initiative isn't about doing everything. It's about making sure the important things move forward.

7. Ale's Interpretation

A customer says: "Your data is wrong." Wrong how? Inaccurate? Outdated? Incomplete? Correct, but not relevant to their use case? At Clearbit and HubSpot, these distinctions mattered.

Interpretation is about making sure everyone is solving the same problem.

And then there's Artificial Intelligence

AI tools now help with almost every part of this: analyzing feedback, exploring ideas, prototyping, writing code. I'm excited about what's possible. I've also seen models hallucinate, and demos that don't solve a meaningful problem.

When building becomes easier, choosing what to build becomes even more important.

So, what does AI stand for?

Artificial Intelligence, obviously. And Ale's Intuition, Innovation, Ideas, Insights, Investigation, Initiative and Interpretation.

I've been using those for years. Now I just have a few more tools to help me.

And yes, I'm keeping the acronym. 😄

Send me one feature that isn't landing. In 30 minutes I'll tell you the first 3 things I'd check.