Elias Stahl is the Founder & CEO of HILOS, an AI lab and software platform dissolving the barriers between design and production.
At a truly global summit, you can tell where someone is from almost entirely by the degree of exuberance or fear they relate to AI. An American professor claims that the progress of the last 50,000 years, from stone tools to microchips, will be repeated in the next fifty and that he cannot predict what that will be any more than a caveman could predict a microchip. A German professor urgently asks whether we are asking the right questions and not moving too fast—she cautions that we got it wrong with social media and are still living in its wake.
This year I’ve spoken at both Nvidia’s GTC in San Jose and the UN’s AI for Good summit in Geneva. The two events couldn’t more starkly reveal how differently AI is viewed around the world. And for anyone running a global company, this matters.
Americans by nature are dissatisfied with the present and confident they can build a better future. Many Europeans I spoke with were anxious and hesitant, drawn towards dialogue and consensus. Underlying this was a fear of lack of control and direction. Chinese exhibits in Geneva conjured up AI as giant robots guarding futuristic Chinese cityscapes. They certainly did not lack for control.
As AI becomes more capable and more interwoven across our lives, you can expect stronger reactions, both inside and around your company. As a leader, it’s your responsibility to prepare for and meet that, guiding your company according to your own distinct vision for the future.
Three Ways The World Is Reacting To AI
Reactions to AI that I’ve seen have broadly fallen into three camps: exuberance, reluctance or fear. Nvidia’s GTC was all exuberance—exuberance at the new markets that will be made, the growth that will result, the science fiction future we can all expect in our lifetime.
Across many conversations with European executives, there is reluctance—a feeling that AI is now necessary to be competitive, that it will happen regardless, so they might as well get on board, but that this future is largely not of their construction and that the end direction is not firmly defined.
Fear manifests as complete anti-AI sentiment, with employees refusing to work with AI and seeing it as just another lever in a long sequence of techniques to accrue wealth and power for the already wealthy and powerful.
We’ve gotten very good at building bubbles around each of these conversations, reinforcing their distinct echo chambers. As a leader, you need to engage in these conversations. Your business doesn’t need an AI strategy as much as an AI purpose, a destination that resets the scope and vision of your company. Done well, this will make concrete what was amorphous for the exuberant, empower the reluctant and define your moral and ethical codes for the fearful.
From AI Strategy To AI Purpose
My company sits at the intersection of AI and creativity, a conversation that is questioning the most human aspect of who we are. Can AI be creative, like a human being? What is the role of human creativity? If an artist uses AI, is the resulting work fully theirs?
These are questions I take seriously. Looking at what smart phone cameras did or how YouTube changed the media landscape, expanded access and more powerful tools leads to new creator economies, where more people can participate than ever before, take and share photos, start their own global TV channels, drop an album and distribute it globally in an instant—and this doesn’t erase professional photography or television, it gives the professional even more powerful tools while including us all in the craft.
Creative AI tools will do the same, if they are thoughtfully designed. If they aren’t solely reductive, input-output-based programs, but instead respect and encourage mastery, creative friction and the development of a designer, that incredibly personal and human part of us.
This means AI that can forget, for if we cannot forget, we never can truly remember. This means AI that is an apprentice rather than the deaf and dumb laborer. It means tools that don’t keep you locked into a screen, pushing things to AI. And it means tools that are highly specialized for each type of product design, honoring that a shoe is not designed in the same way as a table or a video game.
This is the importance of an AI vision for a company; it sets a moral and ethical undertone for what you’re building, defines your destination and gives something for everyone, no matter their sentiment on AI, to stand on. Ask yourself how clear your own AI vision is, and whether it is one your team, customers and partners can answer as clearly as you. Otherwise, exuberance, reluctance and fear will lead in your place.
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