Think about this: you’re online with the team, or even in a room with a few people, talking about options for your business. And then AI pipes up!
It’s about to be a reality, with tools that bring the products of neural nets into the spaces where people talk and think together.
At the recent gathering I organized, we heard from Eric Gunther an MIT graduate and designer who is putting together a project called Colaj, that will allow a real time AI system to participate in human brainstorming sessions. SOSO, the ‘digital experience design firm’ he cofounded, has increasingly integrated AI into their experiential installations.
“Our vision is this: a world in which design and technology work hand in hand, to unlock our collective creative potential and bring us closer to ourselves, each other, and the planet,” Eric said.
He suggested changing the way that we think about AI, moving from a human-computer interaction, to a framework of AI “sparking, strengthening and supporting” human-to-human interactions.
“The real magic has (happened), and always will happen, when people come together to collaborate, to create, and above all, to connect with each other,” he said. “It’s where the hardest problems are solved.”
His firm is working on how to use AI to unlock this group potential. The tool will listen to and participate in human discussions around strategy, design, and problem solving. He stressed the importance of security and privacy to the venture.
“I also see that this idea of AI listening to people is going to become increasingly normalized and accepted with the next generation,” he said.
So what does it look like?
Eric described a virtual whiteboard full of ideas, images and questions. A system of color-coded “stickies,” he said, shows which ideas were generated by humans, and which ones came from the machine, so to speak.
“First, we have to get the people in the room and the AI on the same page,” he said, describing how the AI can help to visualize conversation, draw down ideas, and work with the “empty page” problem, which is essentially, in many ways, just like writer’s block: when you have infinite options at your fingertips, where do you start? That may end up being a big part of how this technology is disruptive.
But there’s more: Eric painted a picture of a scenario where the AI can say things that humans might be afraid to utter.
“AI can act as that wild-eyed, uninhibited brainstorm participant that is unafraid to throw … far-out ideas on the table,” he said.
Here’s another interesting part of how this tech works: we are used to humans being “prompt engineers,” controlling AI and stimulating it to get results. What if, by switching around those roles, we get to a place where AI can prompt a group of humans to instigate and unlock their creativity?
Think about that for a minute…
As for fears around job displacement, Eric again reiterated that the goal is to give humans agency in processes, and not take the human in the loop out of the picture: instead, to embrace and augment the ability of a group to solve problems.
“Let’s ask AI, in this moment, to make us more human, not less human,” he said, citing human capacity for emotions, empathy, vulnerability, joy and connection. “We want to double down on the qualities that are still uniquely human.”
What do you think? Where is AI going to take us as it rolls up to the table to offer its own ideas? Or is that the wrong framework? I guess it’s more like a journey that humans and machines will take together.
