The Intent Map: Making Your Values Visible Before AI Decides For You
Priya was under pressure to ship. A competitor’s chatbot had just told a user to “end your worthless life,” and the whole industry was in crisis. Her investors wanted Namesea’s product live — now — to fill the vacuum. The market was wide open. Every day of delay cost money and market position.
This is the moment the Intent Map was designed for: when momentum and urgency threaten to make decisions that your values should be making instead.
The tool is a simple four-quadrant grid — values, desired outcomes, guardrails, metrics — that you can draw on a napkin. It sounds almost too simple. But its power is in making visible what pressure keeps hidden. Priya used it to clarify that transparency wasn’t negotiable, even when it cost engagement. Mateo, a student developer in São Paulo, used it after a seven-year-old asked if his research tool would read to her — and realized he’d been building for the wrong people entirely.
What strikes me about the Intent Map is how it changes the sequence of decision-making. Without it, most AI decisions start with “what’s possible?” or “what’s fastest?” The Intent Map insists you start with “what matters?” — and that difference in starting point changes everything downstream.
Download the Intent Map from the book’s website, or explore it in full in AI and the Art of Being Human.
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The Intent Map is one of 21 practical tools from AI and the Art of Being Human by Jeffrey Abbott and Andrew Maynard. The characters and narratives in the book are fictional — designed to reveal truths about AI and being human that only stories can capture.