Welcome.
Thank you so, so much for coming.
I'm Maz Karamean.
Head of Strategy for ustwo we're here to explore the real impact of generative AI.
What it means for businesses, individuals and society as a whole.
We're at a really extraordinary moment where AI is transitioning from
something we saw in news headlines and press releases to something that
we're using in our day to day life.
Whether it's helping us to get answers to questions, making decisions to outright
changing the way we work and live.
It's really clear that this technology is beginning to reshape the world.
But with this transformation comes questions and challenges and that's
what we're here to discuss tonight.
So we have a really distinguished group of panelists here who are on the
front lines of this transformation.
Each of them brings a really unique perspective on AI's
impact and future potential.
So please put your hands together and give a warm welcome to Kim Bost, Senior
Product Design Manager at Anthropic.
From Verizon, Dory Butler, Senior Vice President of Customer Experience.
And from Meta, Katherine Hahn, Senior Product Design Manager
focused on generative AI.
Excellent.
Okay, we don't have a decibel meter, but that was good.
I'm going to double it and be quicker on the applause next time I call for it.
Let's all take a seat, and what I'll do before getting into the
questions is give each of our panelists an opportunity to just
Introduce themselves and what they do.
so Kim, why don't we start with you?
Yeah, definitely.
Thank you.
Hi everyone.
Nice to meet you.
Kim Bost.
like he said, I am a design manager at Anthropic.
what does that mean?
I lead the team of user experience designers that are building Cloud.
which is our user experience for chatting with our models.
I also lead the team that is working on our developer tools.
So, if you're building first party API solutions.
doing prompt evaluation and output, we help, make that easy.
Hi, Dory Butler.
It's great to see you all.
so at Verizon, I lead our customer experience team.
So that involves the customer experience strategy, our insights team, as
well as our design organization.
And my team is responsible for looking across all the end to end customer
experiences, whether a customer is coming into our app on the website,
into a store, calling us and ensuring that they have the best experience
that they could possibly have.
I'm Catherine Han, Product Design, Senior Product Design Manager, at Meta.
I support a product called Imagine.
And, if you haven't seen it, it's in your hands for free, in any app that you have.
And you can imagine any image, now text to video.
And you can edit it, and also upload your own photos to
imagine another iteration of it.
So that's essentially it.
All right.
Well, thank you so much, gang.
I'm gonna get right into it with, a little bit of a question around, your,
personal journeys with Generative AI, and where I'm coming from here is
that many people have an aha moment where they realize AI's potential.
mine was when I had what I like to call my ratatouille GPT moment.
I listed random stuff that I had in my fridge, and I had chat GPT.
This is back in I think December of 2022.
Generate a recipe that, I still use to this day.
And in a fun full circle moment, we had ustwo actually recently launch Sproutiful,
which is an AI proof of concept app that uses multimodal capabilities to encourage
users to eat more plants, prepared plants, not just off the street or in a
forest, and improve their gut microbiome.
So if you're interested to hear more about Sproutiful, or more importantly,
my world famous date syrup chicken, let's have a chat after the panel.
But now I'm interested to hear a little bit about our panelists
personal journeys with generative AI.
I'm gonna go ahead and begin with you, Dory.
can you recall a moment of realization that this technology
was going to be a big deal?
And how has your perspective on AI evolved since then?
yeah, so I think personally when ChatGPT came out, it was, playing, letting my kids
write silly songs, write poems, check out what I could do with things in my fridge.
but I think the real aha for me came a bit more professionally when I
was actually at Walmart at the time.
And sitting in our sort of noidly form council on AI and thinking about all
the different things that we could do, I was completely blown away by how
quickly the ideas were just flying.
And how we could apply the technology to make our customers lives better, to make
our employees lives better, to improve our supply chain, our business practices, like
the, magnitude of impacts that it could have across all our different business
lines and our different customers, just for me was mind blowing at the time.
So that, that's probably what I'd say.
Awesome.
Catherine, how about you?
Yeah.
similarly for Chat GPT, making just quick prompts.
that makes my life easier was one a ha moment, but the larger a ha
moment was the fact that people started using that over Google Search.
Now if you go to Google Search, you're usually seen up, you
usually surface a page full of all these different sponsor links.
You can't even get to the actual piece of information that you were
meaning to search for initially.
So it takes time, and that's friction.
And then not to mention the algorithm that actually feeds into your current biases.
But ChatGPT actually removes all that.
It almost simplifies to what Google once was.
And there's a conversation.
So it could provide a difference of opinion.
and there could be a back and forth versus a one way.
so that was probably the biggest aha moment.
And then from a creative standpoint, the fact that you could generate any image
quickly without going to an illustrator, or even to a copywriter, you could
essentially unlock your inner creative.
creator, creative director, which is pretty powerful.
And that spans the gamut of those who are super young to those who are super old.
and if like statistically from like ages five to eight or nine,
there's a burst of creativity that happens where it is fearless.
It is without any sort of curious, like it's full curiosity
without any fear of judgment.
By society, by your friends, by your peers, and then somewhere along the
lines, that kind of, like, falls off as you become a teenager, and you start
to filter yourself, and that actually reverses, like, these tools actually
reverse that and bring you back to a place where you could creatively,
freely, and, without bounds, which I think is really an exciting time.
Oh, . Kim, how about you?
Yeah, that's, that relates to my aha moment.
But before I share it, like, I do feel really lucky because I work in user
experience, and I get to watch people use Claud every day, which is a GPT like
experience, and I see people using the tool for the first time, and they're
like, help me generate email templates or, help me, create a, contract or help
me create a like custom fitness plan.
And they don't quite realize what's possible until they try.
And then once they have that first interaction and they have
that first artifact generated and you see the look on their face.
You just really start to feel the potential and the potential for us all
to benefit from this technology, but to your point about the power of, like the
youth and the power of their creativity.
My aha moment, was recently watching a video on X or on Twitter of an eight
year old who was using Cursor, which is like an assistive programming, editor,
and she used Cursor to build a website so she could chat with a Harry Potter.
And to have like an 18 year old, or sorry, an eight year old, like young
woman having access to that technology and making it so easy, in watching her
like explore her creativity and, refine the look and feel of it and refine how
she wanted it to respond is just again.
It's so powerful and so illustrative of the potential behind this technology.
Yeah, we tried to get the eight year old who uses Cursa as a panelist
tonight, but unfortunately she's in, yeah, she's deep in talks with
Andreessen Horowitz as we speak, so we wish her the very best and, yeah.
Well, that's actually a great segue, Kim.
Thank you, because I want to talk about sort of AI in daily life and
begin to open out into how we hear that AI is, becoming a part of our day
lives, but still feels, a little too integrated, maybe a little invisible.
And I'm curious.
I'd like to begin with you, Catherine.
That's okay.
What are some ways that you're seeing AI enhance day to day activities in your
professional or even your personal life?
Yeah, at least from a both professional and personal observations.
there's two buckets.
I would say two categories.
One is they're very utilitarian, like how does, Generative AI help your utilitarian
actions be faster, quick, or smarter, and on top of that, you have access to
information in like very niche subject matters that you wouldn't otherwise have.
For example, there's a mom whose son I read like they, they could not
find the actual disease that he had.
been diagnosed, but through her own proactive research using Generative
AI and Chat GPT, she was able to actually find the exact disease
and validate that with the doctors where they themselves couldn't do.
So it brings the power back to the person to, in a way, self advocate
or Get access to information that they wouldn't otherwise
have before, from a, productivity standpoint, we can, craft the emails.
I mean, even before, AI was immersive and invisibly through personalization,
We know this from, like, our emails get, like, fed into Google
search links and then, and Amazon.
So all that's within the same ecosystem.
But from a more powerful perspective, it can help generate
papers, research papers and codes.
So anyone can actually be a coder, which would previously require,
like, four plus years of schooling.
And so that time of self education condenses dramatically.
through this technology, which is wonderful.
The second category, if I could, go on, is the creativity part.
So there's a lot of discussion in, with copywriters where chat GPT
actually can do their jobs faster.
And that's a very, important discussion to have in the creative field.
Similarly with graphic designers and illustrators.
A lot of their artwork is, scraped in a way.
They're perceived as scraped and without attribution.
But then where does that leave those who have spent years building
their brands and their styles and themselves to create an audience?
Gone already, like, because it's already, like, anyone can be that illustrator.
I think the, shift that we're seeing because of this acceleration
is the importance of art direction and creative direction.
Like, what are the words that you take to describe an image that hasn't,
doesn't exist yet, but you uniquely bring your own perspective to that.
And that is a different form of creativity that we're
starting to see that shift here.
Yeah, definitely.
I'm gonna go to Kim, and, you're more than welcome to take this question in any
direction you like, but you mentioned, the artifacts feature within Claude, which was
a real, unlock for me, if you haven't had a chance to, use it, strongly recommend,
Artifacts being able to essentially show you a, I say visualization
that's maybe underselling it.
But for example, if you're Coding a website, you can sort of see it come to
life in a pane next to the text input output box that you're, working in and
just that sense of, collaboration and real time creation is, really powerful.
So with that, Kim, I'll sort of pass back to you and ask, how are you seeing
daily AI enhance those professional and even personal activities?
Yeah, definitely.
personal activities, me personally, I used, Claude to prepare for this panel.
So, I, have a project with Claude, which just means it's an ongoing
kind of space, where I have context that's been uploaded about me and my
professional working style and my goals.
And I uploaded the panel questions and some, documentation from
our comms team and just did a little lightweight preparation.
I've also used Claude personally to, make a, a custom quiz to help
me learn Spanish before my vacation.
So I was going hiking, I was eating pinchos, I was, going to be drinking
wine, and so I just created like a custom interface very easily.
It took me 10 minutes, not even, so that I, could be conversational.
But I could, get by, in a professional context.
we see people using cloud in all sorts of ways.
it's really good at data analysis, really good at.
Coding, as you mentioned, really good at looking at, large corpuses
of data and finding themes.
so you see that, in like the healthcare sector, like we see companies
like Pfizer, using, Claude to look across, large corpuses of research.
And data to help, identify treatment plans sooner.
we see companies like Bridgewater, using Claude as a tool for junior
analysts, to help them build confidence in their decision making.
So again, like really just like the tip of the iceberg stuff.
And I think that.
What's so exciting about this is it is very, customizable, right, to a given
context, to a given organization, or company, or an individual, and extensible.
So it can, be valuable in any, different vertical.
Outstanding, yeah.
and I want to congratulate you despite your cool preparation.
You sound very human.
So that's a big win.
yeah.
Dory, how about you?
Love to hear about how, you're seeing AI impact, professional activities, personal
activities, things of that nature.
Yeah, I mean, I'd say, personally, similar to you all, primarily for
tasks, execution of things like that, you need to write a thank you note for
something, Oh, I could quickly just draft one up, very much, using a GPT.
so I'd say, probably more task utilization, that
type of thing, personally.
and then, professionally, I would say, Verizon has taken We've been using AI
for, over a decade, but it's more in some of the ways you were discussing
before we had the generative AI tools.
Now that we do, we've taken the strategic approach of starting with wanting
to reduce the cognitive load off our associates and employees so that they
can better Serve and help our customers.
We obviously will have tools.
We do have things that are more customer facing, but we prioritized the employee
experience, which translates into ultimately a better customer experience.
So things like you were talking about that Claude could do.
We've done internally of, taking You know, you normally, if you call a customer
service rep, you're having a problem with, say, your, phone plan or your phone bill,
that rep might say, okay, could you hold on a second, and they put you on hold,
and then they go back through a bunch of documents trying to figure out how
to answer your question, right, because they can't keep all of that information
about every different variation of a customer, different plans, different
phones, you name it, in their head, right, and it's also a job that might have a
lot of turnover, so with some training of associates, like you, You need tools
that let them reduce that cognitive load.
So we've created tools where they can go in and it can just, serve
up what the customer needs based on that customer's need at that exact
moment and really personalize that experience and speed up that phone call.
So we've drastically reduced the time that customers are spending dealing
with issues because our customer service reps can better serve them.
So it's just one example of something we're doing, but it's an application
that's impacting customers daily lives and certainly the employees daily lives
because they're much happier on the job because they're able to better serve and
more easily answer customers questions.
Yeah, that's awesome.
I actually wanted to continue on that.
That theme.
are you seeing sort of, changes in customer expectations when it comes
to that kind of a I assisted service?
a lot of folks, I think, have the sense of, Bots or chatbots being something of
a step down, but what you're describing sounds like more Turbocharging what
employees are able to do and saving them the kind of very highly manual tasks.
How are you seeing that impact?
Folks's expectations both employees.
It sounds like as well as customers
Yeah, I mean, to me, I mean, all of many of you are from customer businesses,
right at the expectations of customers to me are just rapidly intensifying
and continuing and they probably will continue to grow all the time, right?
So to me if you're providing an incredible experience you're helping resolve issues
for them and you're personalizing the experience, that's what they expect.
Can we use generative AI to do that more easily and give them a better experience?
I think we can.
So, I don't know that it's their expectations around how we use AI tools.
I think it's their expectations around the experience and the products
and services they're provided.
And if we can use the AI to improve that, then that's, absolutely
what we want to be doing.
so that's probably what I'd think.
Excellent.
Yeah,
I wanted to, give, Kim a sort of a option to answer that question.
I'd love to hear, from the perspective of, Anthropic and your daily
life, obviously we've talked about artifacts and what, you're rolling
out as far as enabling people to, to create, to be assisted, et cetera.
there's a real funny kind of trend going on in AI where.
Some kind of like world shattering development will drop and by the end of
the day, we're like, okay, what's next?
So I'm really curious, how are you if you could provide any reflections on Customers
that you work with be they enterprise or maybe even internal customers.
How are expectations around AI changing as people use the models and use the features
that you all are building on top of them.
How are you seeing that kind of?
Expectations evolution play out.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's a great question and one that's obviously
Very top of mind for us.
we're in working in a space of emerging technology.
And, as a designer in the space, it works against how I've been
trained in a way because you are always user needs first, right?
You are always, trying to not the, solution in search of a problem, but
in emerging technology, the technology is always going to come first.
And so a big role of design is translating these powerful capabilities to, to end
users and to making that, understandable to end users and, valuable to end users.
So actually, Things like artifacts and things like these cutting edge features
that we develop, while very powerful, when you look at a general audience,
are still in the expert level domain.
So a lot of the work that we do is trying to make it more accessible to a broader
audience and, help the general public, I think, be more comfortable with AI and
sort of have a lower barrier to entry so that they can have that aha moment sooner.
Great.
Yeah, I'm happy to pick up on that.
But Catherine, did you want to add anything to that?
Yeah, absolutely.
So, with regards to the lower barrier of entry, what we found in the beginning,
is with prompt engineering, a lot of people couldn't get over that hurdle,
because they're faced with, like, They don't understand syntax or even
the principles of coding to even get over that hurdle to start creating.
But with Imagine, you could literally just imagine and use text to whatever image.
So imagine me in a space suit riding a horse, with the stars going over them.
It's like the going back to that place where, there's no guardrails.
and so one of the ways to start your imagination there is where imagine
doesn't require prompt engineering.
You could literally just text to that image and just a couple weeks ago, you
can now text to movies with movie gen that we released in our research paper,
so you could see that lower barrier to entry means that everyone can fully
express themselves and the inner seeds of creativity and we start to see that
in entertainment and even in the creative realm where you don't need so many
revisions to get to the idea that you're trying to express or illustrate anymore.
you, using generative AI and imagine and meta AI, you could be able to
get there 80 percent of the way much faster and get to a decision or a
pivot or, just more clarity because you have that at your fingertips.
So I think that's pretty powerful because it's, powerful for businesses
in terms of productivity, it's also very, valuable for people, especially
creators who want to be able to learn AI, without being a prompt engineer.
Yeah, great.
I wanted to, for that.
I wanted to pick up on something, maybe start back with you, Kim.
you mentioned this idea of it.
still a little bit the, power users who are those first adopters, those
first experimenters with those more, cutting edge, but ironically, much more
accessible features and capabilities.
I, I'd love to understand, from, all three of you, but maybe starting with
you, Kim, how do you think about in practice, making AI features more
accessible, driving adoption, maybe overcoming some skepticism, not just
unawareness, but outright skepticism.
I'm curious how you will approach, making it more accessible in general.
Yeah, that's a great question.
And that's a lot of what we think about.
And I think what all of us think about, when it comes to, I think, adoption, you
do have these hurdles around trust, which is a lot of what you don't control, right?
That's like the public narrative.
And there are many things that Anthropic does to, improve trust, which I'm
happy to talk a little bit about.
but then on the user experience side, what we can control and
help is, understanding, right?
And so a lot of what you were talking about, Catherine, when you're using,
like, an Imagine tool or using something like Claude, like, that sort of cold
start problem, is really intimidating, but also, is what, I think represents
the possibility of, right, because you don't want to sort of arbitrarily limit
someone's imagination or limit kind of the experience that they could have.
we often talk, about this experience as being a non deterministic experience,
meaning that it's so powerful and people can do so much with this tool.
the outcomes are almost truly, like, limitless.
so really thinking about, giving people, like, clear jumping off points.
almost like nothing novel there, but another saying that we have on
the team is, show don't tell, right?
because, this technology can be so personal, so catered to your use case.
Offering you something like a template?
It really, like undermines it, shortchanges it.
So how do we try to anticipate or understand or just know more about
you and what your goals are so that we can visualize the different types
of outcomes or different types of artifacts or different types of
experiences that you might have?
And really think of it, to your point around like turns and iterations,
like think of it as a collaborator.
It's not just a tool, it is really like an ally that is someone, or that
is trying to, help you do your work.
Amazing, yeah.
I wanted to, turn to you, Dory, and talk about, in a little bit more
depth, you touched on it previously, but Verizon's efforts in this space,
and how you think about, driving adoption, among employees who, maybe
not coming at it from, particularly a I aware or a I forward standpoint, how
do you think about driving adoption?
What kinds of hurdles or obstacles have you faced?
And how have you tried to overcome those so far?
Yeah, so just like a customer.
And another customer base, the employees, and these are primarily
the employees answering the phones and in the stores serving our customers
that are using the tools right now, you have your early adopters who
jump in and are like, let me have it.
I want to learn everything about it.
And then you have those users who are a little more.
I'm a little more cautious.
I'm not sure.
I like how I do my job.
so we have that wide spread as well, what I'd say is we've been really
floored by how excited and engaged the employees have been in using the tools
and the adoption and has actually scaled much more quickly than we anticipated
across a variety of different tools that we've released to our employees.
And the other thing that I'd say is we've looked at what segments of
employees are more ready for them or find more usage out of them.
Right?
So if you're brand new and you don't know and don't have all the knowledge
around our products and services and how things work and you're onboarding,
they're relying more heavily on those tools our much more tenured employees.
They have a lot more knowledge, they don't need to rely on the tools quite as much.
So we're learning how to bring them in and help them find value with it too.
the other thing that we've done that's been incredibly valuable is we
bring those employees along with us in the product development process.
So they're very much involved in testing, using, giving us input
as we refine the tools before we release them and then continuing to
enhance them based on their feedback.
So that's been a really successful strategy for us also.
Excellent.
Yeah.
Catherine, I'd love to hear your thoughts on, adoption barriers to it and how
you've thought about overcoming it, as an organization and obviously is
a really giant platform that reaches even more people than Verizon, which
is very few companies can say that.
Yeah.
I think, Mark and other C suite leaders have talked about this in the past
that, We've gone through regulation and global regulatory requirements.
We've been through Congress.
We know what it means to be compliant.
And also gone through, compliance with the Digital Markets, Act.
And that is great.
I mean, like, it's great because AI is so nascent, and really needs to be
thoughtfully done, like measure twice, cut once approach, especially because it
can provide access to many, Age groups.
So how can we make that safe?
How can we make it trustworthy?
And it comes through transparency.
and also understanding not only from a global perspective, but from
even from a state level perspective.
What are the pain points that communities have from parents to schools to
government officials who are, that's sort of the scale at which we think
and from a macro and micro level.
a lot of it, is just coming through, coming from experience,
from a, like, company level.
And we have annual trainings of, like, what we need to comply with
so that we don't forget what we need to, what we agreed with, in terms
of the Federal Trade Commission.
Excellent.
Yeah, that's, a really great theme around safety and reliability.
and the fact that you will mention the word safety has like the
Manchurian candidate triggered another plug for me for us two's work.
So, in our ongoing work with organizations like the Cancer Awareness Trust in
the UK, helping build day to day knowledge and a guide, helping build
a day to day knowledge and guidance platform for cancer patients, safety
and reliability has been really top of our minds for a very obvious reason.
So, turning to you, Kim, obviously Anthropic really
emphasizes, safe and reliable AI.
I'd love for you to sort of unpack what that means in practice.
Yeah, that's a great question.
And again, I'm a user experience expert.
I, am not an engineer or a researcher, but,
I think safe and reliable for us, is really, I think
about understanding, right?
Like you understand what's happening.
We talk a lot about, I is human in the loop, right?
So you understand what's happening.
You can correct or make iterations if you need to.
I think the reliable and trust piece comes into play.
Like, it's reliable because it meets my expectations reliably, repeatedly.
Like, I, trust the output that I'm getting, things like that.
Excellent.
Yeah.
I want to turn to you, Dory, thinking about, brand perception,
but also differentiation.
a lot of.
in the AI space to date have had a little bit of a copycat feel, there've been a lot
of instances of, chatbots, the sort of.
Slapped on top of knowledge bases that have had somewhat
middling and differing results.
So I'm really curious when you think about providing the kind of
differentiating service that really matches the Verizon brand promise.
How have you thought about differentiating yourselves in
customer service and in other spaces?
Through ai.
Yeah.
So I'd say we, we very deliberately did not take the approach of saying,
let's just throw a chat bot on, let the chat bot help you find
the best phone you could find.
there's obviously value in those tools in different industries and
in different areas of experiences.
but we leaned heavily, as I said, into let's leverage the tools so that our
associates and our front line can make the experience better for the customer.
and I think that's been really, really the right approach for us and for continuing
to differentiate against the competition.
Because it lets us focus on what we foundationally believe is the most
important thing to our customer, which is that they're receiving the best
experience that can the best product they can if they have an issue that we're
able to quickly resolve it and help them that builds trust that builds loyalty.
And then from there, you can do more interesting things.
You could try out new technologies and customers are more forgiving of sort of
learning into some new technologies and new ways of either shopping or being
serviced or using your products because you've built that foundational trust.
So that's where we've started and I think that's where we'll
continue is to very much focus on providing that right experience And
then building on that over time.
Excellent.
Yeah, I wanted to switch gears a little bit to how AI is showing up and
thinking a little bit about how form factors devices might be influencing
that so, I'll sort of open this out to anybody who wants to grab it.
But AI tools and systems, of course are cropping up across a range of devices
we've had the text generator input output piece and we're really seeing
evolutions beyond that and we ourselves as us to we've been working with a
really pioneering company in the brain computer interface space to enable folks
with upper limb paralysis to control the computer more effectively and
expressively using only their thoughts.
So, I'm curious, when you look at AI and how it's showing up across different
form factors, how do you think that form factor, if at all, influences
how AI is showing up, should show up?
I'm curious whether there are any thoughts from any of you.
I could speak to that.
well, show of hands, how many have, Ray Ban glass, Ray Bans?
Few, yes.
Okay, so you understand, actually, you viscerally understand the value
of AI in this form factor, where you can be present in the moment, and you
could still get the information you're looking for out of your curiosity,
and it actually adds value to that very micro moment in your life, right?
So that, that's just like one use case, but in a more, like, other use cases in
terms of health, those who are visually impaired can actually use it as a tool
to, give them sight when they don't, when they lack that, through the Ray Bans.
So I think those are just like two main use cases, but, on a day to day, it's hey,
Meta, look at this, tree, what, family thisis from you bring more education
without having to look on your phone or even go to the desktop, which feels so
archaic in this day and age of mobility So it's just a an area that will develop
further obviously from public reports
Yeah, I agree.
I think this is an area that's going to continue to mature the same way
that two years ago It was all about the chatbot and that was the only thing
we knew was typed into a box and now you know there's so much more voice.
There's so many more different applications.
So I think this is one that's going to continue to really take
off over the next couple years.
Yeah.
Yeah, I would agree You know To speculate things that I am excited about.
I'm really excited about voice input.
Personally.
I'm someone who Is constantly on my phone using voice input for everything
from like sending messages to friends and family and colleague to just
journaling and recording my own thoughts.
And so I think there's a ton of potential there And I think there's also a ton
of potential for what this technology unlocks in terms of mobility and in
terms of freeing us from browser windows and desktop software applications
as it becomes more and more capable.
I think we're just going to be working in completely transformative ways.
Yeah, I think the, points that you are making around sort of that
frictionlessness and how it's not about going to a place to use a, an AI tool
or services is really powerful in that kind of interweaving into, preexisting
behaviors, sort of the elevation of those behaviors, whether, on the part
of employees in a store or in a call center or folks in their day to day
life, in a document, in a workflow, in a meeting, really powerful and,
sort of freeing up that space, that time to, to focus on the human versus,
digging through files or what have you.
So on that note, I wanted to speak to a sort of, an area of AI that, that we
as a product studio have found really interesting, which is, emotive AI.
It's sort of a really interesting frontier to us.
it's essentially around this idea that.
AI tools and systems can be emotionally sensitive insofar as they can sort of
understand, pick up on emotion, but also respond in kind and provide, for
example, coaching services or other types of outputs that feel really
emotionally resonant for, users.
So I'd really love to understand maybe some opportunities and challenges to.
businesses looking to integrate more emotionally sensitive AI,
perhaps in the context of voice.
Perhaps in the context of customer service applications.
what might be some opportunities and challenges for that more, emotionally
sensitive, emotionally resonant AI?
And I'll sort of toss that up for anyone to grab the bouquet.
Well, I think a very clear use case is in the customer service realm.
Because it's such a stressful role to begin with when day in and day out you
receive complaints from customers all day.
And there's never a thank you.
It's more like, solve my problem now or yesterday.
And there's a lot of anger behind it.
But with the emotive AI, there's a patience that's incorporated.
There's a lack of judgment and there's a deep empathy, which it's really hard when
you're receiving that emotional force.
That I feel like the emotive AI can certainly help in that way.
Yeah.
And it's, I mean, it's huge focus.
And I think we've taken a very human in the loop approach, which allows
us to leverage the technology to understand the sentiment, understand
what we're, hearing and then use that to improve the experience in the moment
or even later on in coaching, right?
So we'll often, be able to leverage back what the sentiment analysis, what we
heard and what that customer was sort of expressing to us to then train and help
customer service reps or reps in the store be able to improve how they serve
that customer and help them understand what they Were hearing and experiencing.
So I think it's incredibly important to make it a more empathetic
experience I think it's just going to continue to improve.
I do believe at least for a long time.
We're going to have human in the loop.
We're going to be you know, taking an approach of ensuring
that it's not you know the human is still playing the human role.
and I also believe the more we have the technology continue to
advance, the more important that personalization and that personal
aspect of interacting with a customer or with another human is just going
to continue to stay really important.
Yeah, I'm just building off of what my fellow panelists have said, but,
spitballing here around emotional state.
I think what's really exciting is you can have, many different emotional
contexts in the same way that a human has very many different emotional contexts.
And so, and in the case of like coaching a customer support agent, That can
become personalized and tailored and authentic to them as individuals and
it's just another example of, the potential of this technology and why
it's so exciting, because you can really respond to the emotional state of your
team or the emotional state of different departments or just the emotional
state of many different, contexts and you're not limited to just one.
Yeah.
I'd just like to
add one more thing with, AI studio, people, we, are actually creating
AI characters or AI assistants.
To cover all the different topics that they wouldn't otherwise want to share
that it could be an uncomfortable topic or an intimate topic but questions
that they would want to ask someone but may be afraid of judgment by their
friends or relatives or peers they can actually do that with an AI character
and not only can you make one of one,
area you can make many, it could be a stylist or a your own coach,
or a cheerleader or a planner, but you have like one, many assistants
that you could actually create and cater and tailor to your personal
needs on a day-to-day basis too.
Great.
Yeah, I, that's a really great jumping off point to, a, theme that
I wanna touch on, which is sort of.
what so far has sort of surprised us about AI, it's progress, it's adoption,
and so forth, and, sort of picking up on what you were saying there, Catherine,
we did, work with, Inflection on their emotionally intelligent assistant, Pi,
and what's really interesting about Pi and the way that people used it is
that, as Kim was getting to earlier on, you can see that, that sort of almost
that fear of the blank page and that cold start problem, where when we sort
of suggested that people do functional things with the help of Pi, which it
was very capable of doing, making lists, making plans, so on and so forth, there
was just an aspect of that, terror, the paralysis of the blinking cursor setting.
By contrast, when we began to explore more, pre prompts, if you will,
around more conversational or even borderline, emotionally assistive tasks.
We saw usage just really, deepen and folks begin to, use AI in a
very kind of free and, ready way.
And it makes me think about, or rather the surprise that it underscored for
me was almost as emotion as a way in to adoption with AI, that the Need to set
a clear and sympathetic and sensitive role for the AI is really almost like
a meta barrier before the functional adoption, before the use in a kind
of task or utility based context.
So, with that, I'd like to open back out to the panel as far as, maybe something
that surprised you, that seemed a little counterintuitive about the way that AI
tools and systems have, been adopted, experimented with, or approached so far.
And I'll open that to anybody who wants to take it.
I'll jump in.
We touched on this earlier, but I, think just how accessible and
approachable something so incredibly complex is, and because of that how
quickly it's scaled and people have just leaned in to try it out and just
You know, whether it's in a fun way or in a much more professional way.
I think it's, unique in that respect compared to other introductions of
technology that have had maybe a steeper learning curve or more of
a need to advance and mature before broad population found value in them.
I think what, one thing that was surprising to me is, the, first
impression people have of generative AI or AI in general is like deep fakes.
That's what they think top of mind.
And I think that's, really promoted by the things that are written and, I think
there's this other side of AI that could be a very useful tool, both personally,
professionally and creatively, that hasn't been more broadly talked about, and
celebrated, I think it's, fair, like the deep fakes are a real thing and should be,
addressed, and guardrailed, incredibly so, because of the dangers it provides, but,
If we can find these other facets where it can actually be helpful for humanity,
I think that would go a long way.
The other thing I'm surprised by is just, because people are first,
blocked by that first impression.
There's a lack of, curiosity or self education to find more
about how that could be useful for themselves and their lives.
And so how can we get that, get over that, again, cold start problem where,
what you hear in the media is one thing, but if one does a lot of the research
there, and there's so many tools available now, like what can really
serve one's purpose or one's business purposes to, increase productivity or
unlock creativity and self expression?
Yeah, it, does remind me of that, that aha moment when you, overcome that sort
of first time experience and you start to see the personal value for the first time.
And I love that story about, going into sort of more emotional contexts and
how that kind of deepens engagement.
It makes me think about personalization and understanding and, going back to my
example of like prepping for the panel.
I have a project with Claude and I have trained Claude to understand me
and understand me as a design leader and understand my strengths and the
things that i'm working on And it has really I think deepened the value
that I am getting from the tool.
So I really think that we're just scratching the surface here I think
these things are going to get easier and easier over time And it does make
me think about this transformation that we're all going through, and
seeing this through a different lens like this, this isn't just a tool.
this is really a collaborator for me.
This is really a coach for me.
Absolutely.
Great.
so yes, the, frantic sneezing signals that we're nearing the end of our
time and bless you, by the way.
I want to ask one final question and it's a little bit of a softball, but, since
we've been talking about, the really, the present of AI and how it's impacting
our daily lives, both professionally, personally today, I'd like to give you
all a moment to look to the future and sort of share what excites you about what
lies ahead, within, privacy compliance.
But what are you most excited for looking forward for, in terms
of AI capabilities and adoption?
I'm just really excited for the fact that anyone can be a creator now.
Like, you don't need to pay thousands of dollars to a studio, to an agency.
You could actually do that iteration yourself.
and, get to the point where you know what you're going to ask for those
who are professionals in that realm.
The other thing is that people think it might replace their jobs.
It's more about adaptation, those who know how to leverage the tools
can get to that outcome faster.
I think that's an important distinction, and removes the fear of like,
Oh, AI is going to replace my job completely, when it can create apps.
No, it really requires the art direction and creative direction.
And product thinking to get to that ideal outcome.
So it's another tool in your set of parts.
In addition to all the tools that are out there and what we've grown up with, Adobe,
for instance, for our creative solutions.
So, the other thing I'm really excited about is the fact that there is, this
new form of creation where it is.
More collaborative to Kim's point.
And I mean, we just saw, Adobe announced yesterday with project.
it was a, concept.
It's basically storyboarding.
so how can, people start to collaborate creatively together
when it used to be a very insular,
only for the star, leader or person who had the longest tenure.
It democratizes that creative process altogether, which is
what I'm really excited about.
I love that.
Yeah.
I would say the, area I'm most excited about is one I have no personal or
professional knowledge in whatsoever.
but I am really excited with where the technology can help us to democratize
affordable healthcare and education on a broad scale, like across the globe.
Again, not something I have any education in, but I think it's gonna
add tremendous value to so many people across the country, across
not just our country, but the world.
Yeah, I love that you said that and well, and yeah, I'm I am
very, hopeful for the future.
We're, just in the beginning stages.
We have technology that is helping us complete tasks that
used to take an hour or a day.
we believe that it's going to scale to help tasks that
would take weeks or months.
That it will be as smart as or smarter than, the leading
human expert in the world.
And I think that's just gonna unlock so much for us.
Yeah, like in, In healthcare and socioeconomic policy, and
just to make it really tangible as a user experience person.
Like, I think it's going to be really, freeing for us.
And like I said, we'll be working in completely different ways.
Excellent.
Well, excellent answers.
Excellent panelists.
Thank you all so, so much.
Thank you all for listening.