The Missing Link in AI Progress: Intent, Not Innovation
- Nicolas Genest
- Nov 6
- 4 min read
Written by Nicolas Genest, CEO and Founder of CodeBoxx
It took me the past 12 months to cope with an uncomfortable truth: AI is no longer a frontier or an aspiration, it has already turned into a commodity. The models are here. The platforms are powerful and the entire technology industry is mobilizing to meet demand. The compute power is accessible and scaling. And yet, to many business leaders, the real breakthroughs they were promised still feel out of reach.
Why?
Because what’s missing isn’t more innovation. It’s more intent to best leverage current capabilities.
We’re being distracted by the race between OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, X.ai, Meta and Microsoft to outdo each other on model size, latency, cost to train, coolness, and benchmark performance and we’ve neglected the most essential question: how can we reliably exploit this new power so it serves us? Is everyone currently equipped to be true to the intent for which we are building these systems in the first place? What problems are they ready to solve today not just technically, but so that humanity benefits?
Most organizations today are executing AI out of FOMO, without conviction nor competency. They plug in LLMs as features, not foundations. They optimize for output, not outcomes. Their internal knowledge is not even properly structured to feed these models with relevant context. Companies who claim not getting the promised returns yet in spite of massive reckless investments might have overlooked a powerful lever for progress: purposeful design aligned with real-world stakes.
Even though new bells and whistles are announced every other week in a wide variety of forms, the slow pace of adoption of AI platforms and features shows that too frequent releases feel like more noise to users and decision-makers. Humans need more time and training to absorb such massive innovation so they can work backward and architect business-first solutions that will keep the user, the mission front and center.
Intent Builds Trust
Generative AI can now write software, generate art, pass medical exams, give solid legal advice and venture predictions to market behavior. But all of that capability means nothing without trust. And trust at this point needs to be earned through clarity, transparency, verification and critical thinking. Humans need to instill, guarantee and maintain consciousness across the entire AI value chain.
Clear documented intent is what separates helpful systems from harmful ones. It’s what tells customers and regulators what your AI needs to be optimized to do, what data it runs on, what rules it abides to, and what tradeoffs you’re willing to make.
When we design intelligent systems for humans, we don’t start with the model capabilities. We start with the purpose. We break down the bullet points of The “job description” for the AI agent. Because only then can we engineer intelligence that behaves with context, constraint, and consequence in mind.
When AI reflects intent, it’s accountable by design and that’s what imperatively keeps humans in the loop.
Innovation Without Intent Is Just Noise
We’re in an era where almost any company can deploy a chatbot, integrate a model, or spin up a pilot. Many studies published this year revealed that most of these efforts fail. I believe it’s not for lack of resources but for lack of purpose and alignment.
Purpose of systems are not philosophical luxuries if they are to be handed to vibe coding. They’re design requirements. If you skip them, your AI might still work but it won’t be trustable hence not adopted.
The Real AI Breakthrough? Business Fluency
The AI that wins in 2025 won’t be the flashiest. It’ll be the one built by business-first technologists who understand how success is defined, context, workflows, and outcomes. Value needs to stem from operationalizing intent at scale. Upstream and downstream from code generation.
What Happens Next
If you’re a leader investing in AI, don’t chase or even anticipate the next shiny model. Train your workforce to chase clarity and make critical thinking one of your core principles. Make intent your architecture. Make trust your benchmark. And make sure every AI-powered system you build can answer, without hesitation, the most important question of all when you ask it:
What are you here to do?
Because in the end, it’s not the intelligence that matters, it’s now a commodity. It’s the intention behind it.
About the author
Nicolas Genest is a technology executive, serial founder, and former multi-exit CTO who has built and led companies generating over $1 billion in annual revenue.
Nicolas is the founder and CEO of CodeBoxx Technology, an AI-first education and software company that trains and employs technologists from all walks of life.
Previously, Nicolas served as CTO at The RealReal, ModCloth, and Full Harvest, and led digital transformations at Walmart, Microsoft, and Pfizer.
An early adopter of applied AI, machine learning, and automation, Nicolas is known for his focus on “AI Done Right”—building human-centered, high-quality technology.
Nicolas holds degrees in Business Analytics from Harvard University and in Business and Public Administration from the University of Phoenix, and is recognized as a U.S. EB-1A Extraordinary Ability Permanent Resident.
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