The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.”
– Mary Catherine Bateson
There are probably a billion trillion reasons why I love storytelling. I’m addicted. Podcasts, audiobooks, talk radio. I love to be read to and I played all the voices when I read aloud to my kids. I’m really a content and media junkie.
But if I’m honest, I’m listening in for the metaphors.
Metaphors, and their sisters, similes, are the bridges that allow us to use other objects and ideas to explain new ones. It’s HUGE part of Innovation Storytelling.
It’s also why metaphors are the secret sauce of AI storytelling. In the era of AI adoption, the right metaphor does more than simplify a scary concept. It determines whether your teams trust the technology or fear it.
I’m spending most of my time these days helping innovative leaders “sell” AI to to their teams and leaders. Getting the metaphor right is crucial and every company needs a different one to succeed.
Here’s the tension: AI is frequently misrepresented by both camps. Overpromising leaders reach for metaphors of magic (“it just knows”), while skeptics reach for dystopian ones (“it’s going to replace us”). Both are wrong, and both create the same outcome, real disconnection between people and the tools meant to serve them.
Sometimes, irreparable disconnection, when confusion ensues, trust dies.
The wrong metaphor breeds the wrong relationship with AI. When employees are told AI is “a brain,” they either defer to it blindly or distrust it entirely, because brains are infallible (or threatening). When they’re told it’s “autocomplete on steroids,” they underestimate it, ignore its most powerful capabilities or downshifting into autopilot and leaving human discernment out of the equation.
Have You Dealt With This? Your teams are using AI tools inconsistently — some over- relying on outputs without judgment, others refusing to engage at all. The metaphors you’ve used (or haven’t used) may be driving that split.