Pragmatic AI vs. “Science Projects”: How to Fix Broken Customer Experiences

In an era where data breaches are daily headlines, how a company handles a mistake matters more than the mistake itself. Brad Anderson, President of Product Engineering and Security at Qualtrics argues that “radical transparency” is the only way to survive a security misstep.

In this interview with Nicole Willing, Anderson warns against the common corporate instinct to minimize the impact of a breach (“only a small number of users affected”) before having the facts.

He explains that modern trust is built on clarity: telling customers exactly what happened, who was affected, and what is being done to fix it. If a brand cannot prove it is protecting data, it cannot build loyalty.

Beyond crisis management, Anderson details how to build trust proactively by using AI to detect “digital frustration” signals—like rage-tapping—and intervening to help customers before they abandon the brand. There is a clear difference between AI “science projects” and AI that actually solves problems, Anderson argues, making the case that leaders must shift focus to “pragmatic AI” tools that actively close feedback loops and repair broken journeys in real-time.

Don’t miss this conversation on the critical trust barrier for enterprise AI adoption, and the rise of AI-enabled “synthetic research” to cut insight time from weeks to hours.

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