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·Hass Dhia

The Year We Learned to Read Signals

AIneurosciencecustomer experienceoperators

There's a breakthrough happening in neuroscience labs that perfectly mirrors what's unfolding in business.

Researchers at the Allen Institute just developed a protein sensor called iGluSnFR4 that can detect incoming signals between neurons - something that was literally impossible before. For decades, scientists could only measure what neurons were sending. Now they can finally see what neurons are receiving.

The lead researcher put it beautifully: "We're adding the connections between those neurons and by doing that, we now understand the order of the words."

That phrase - "the order of the words" - captures something profound about where business is heading in 2025.

The Listening Gap

Concept: The gap between sending and receiving signals

For years, businesses have been broadcasting. Marketing messages. Brand campaigns. Product launches. Loyalty programs.

But listening? Actually understanding what customers are telling us through their behavior, their friction points, their silent departures? That's been the hard part.

American Airlines just revealed how they're closing this gap. Their VP of Digital Customer Experience, Sam Liyanage, describes a shift from rigid systems to conversational AI that lets travelers ask questions like "blue-water beaches for a week in December" instead of clicking through filters.

The insight isn't the AI itself. It's that customers have been trying to communicate naturally for years, and businesses finally have tools to understand them.

Automation Frees Humans to Listen

Concept: Automation handling routine while humans handle connection

There's a tempting trap in all this talk of AI and automation: the assumption that technology replaces human connection.

American's approach suggests the opposite. They automate the predictable stuff - check-in, bag tagging, routine notifications - specifically so their people can focus on complex issues and emotional moments. As they put it: "Automation creates efficiency, our people create trust."

This is the neuroscience insight applied to business. When researchers can finally see incoming signals to neurons, they don't just see data - they see the context that determines whether a neuron fires at all. The incoming signals are what matter for learning, memory, emotion.

For operators, the parallel is clear. The "incoming signals" from your customers - their frustrations, their moments of delight, their questions - are what determine whether they come back. Automate the noise so you can hear the signal.

Infrastructure as Competitive Advantage

Concept: Open platforms enabling smaller players to compete

The travel industry is having its own signal-reading moment. A company called OnArrival is building what they call "accessible infrastructure" - essentially giving non-travel brands the ability to offer travel services without building complex systems.

Their CEO, Ankit Sawant, points out that "incumbents maintain dominance through accumulated technical barriers rather than superior technology." Translation: the old players aren't winning because they're better at serving customers. They're winning because they've made it hard for anyone else to even try.

This matters for operators beyond travel. The businesses that thrive in 2025 will be the ones that can plug into modern infrastructure quickly - whether that's for payments, inventory, loyalty, or customer communication. The 30-day integration is replacing the 6-month project.

The Consistency Problem

Here's where it gets interesting. Digiday just published their rankings of generative AI tools, and the verdict is clear: no single tool dominates because none of them have solved consistency.

Google's Nano Banana gets an A for hyperrealism. VEO excels at video. Sora has cinematic qualities. Midjourney is increasingly "unreliable" for client work.

But across all of them, as one marketing exec put it: "Consistency is probably the number one thing that you'll need to give people."

This is the signal-reading lesson hiding in plain sight. Customers don't just want quality - they want reliability. They want to know that the experience they had yesterday will be the experience they have tomorrow.

The best technology in the world doesn't matter if it's unpredictable.

What This Means for Operators

The neuroscience breakthrough with iGluSnFR4 isn't just academic. Disrupted glutamate signaling - the inability to properly receive and process incoming signals - is implicated in Alzheimer's, autism, schizophrenia, and epilepsy.

In business terms, the inability to read and respond to customer signals shows up as churn, negative reviews, declining foot traffic, and the slow death of relevance.

Three practical takeaways:

First, audit your listening systems. What signals are customers trying to send that you're not equipped to receive? The friction in your booking process. The questions your staff gets asked repeatedly. The requests that fall outside your current offerings.

Second, automate the predictable so humans can handle the meaningful. If your team is spending time on tasks a system could handle, they're not available when a customer needs real help.

Third, demand consistency from your tools. The flashiest AI demo means nothing if it can't deliver the same quality every time. Reliability beats novelty for operators.

The businesses that will win 2025 aren't the ones with the most advanced technology. They're the ones that finally learned to listen.

Hass Dhia is Chief Strategy Officer at Smart Technology Investments, where he helps operators apply neuroscience and AI to grow their businesses. He holds an MS in Biomedical Sciences from Wayne State University School of Medicine, with thesis research in neuroscience.

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