Nick Frosst, co-founder of Toronto-based AI firm Cohere, says the future of artificial intelligence is human - a refreshing take from the impending job replacement worries facing the Canadian workforce.
In conversation with Ndidi Oteh, Chief Executive Officer of Accenture Song, and Imran Khan, TD's Head of Innovation and Design, the tech leaders agreed that the future of AI design emphasises the need for human-centred development at its core.
In 2023, MIT Sloan published a report highlighting the importance of a human touch in generative AI. The institute cited generative AI as the amplification of human ideas and creations rather than a replacement. Adding the telephone and the computer were the first two significant advancements to change everyday life. Society is now in the third technological revolution, one based on creative AI.
In conversation with the godfather of AI, Geoffrey Hinton, at Toronto Tech Week in June, Frosst was vocal about human-centred AI. Hinton, who left his position at Google Brain in 2023 due to concerns about AI threats to humanity, went on to teach at the University of Toronto about how the developing technology could pose a threat to humanity. During that conversation, Frosst did not think AI posed any existential threats, but rather tools that operate differently than the human mind.
On the first night of Toronto's Elevate Festival, the Cohere co-founder provided some clarity on the current scope of AI advancements.
"A few years ago, there was this idea that the model just became Gods. I think it's very clear that now they wont, but they're very good technology, very useful, but there's some limitations based on the nature of autoregressive sequence models. "
As models improve, many organisations may assume that performance alone will drive user adoption. But Frosst and Oteh cautioned that design remains the bridge between potential and impact.
"In every boardroom across the world, a board member said, 'What are we doing about AI?' Somebody else should have said, 'We're doing what we've been doing the whole time, and now we're using AI to do it better and faster,'" said Frosst.
As intelligent systems like LLMs become more sophisticated, the focus is shifting from what AI can do to how it affects people's emotions. Oteh noted that in an era of overwhelming digital noise, companies must craft meaningful and empathetic user experiences to stand out.
A recent Accenture report complemented these sentiments. 87 per cent of respondents in Accenture's recent global survey said that just a single bad customer service experience can completely deter them from a brand.
"So when you think about, how are you differentiating yourself, one thing that's really, really critical is you have to make sure that AI and the technology that you use is helping you create more human connections, not less," said Oteh.
She added that when technologies improve through the implementation of AI, they become more sophisticated; however, it's what humans add to the project that will ultimately define a winner. "AI can automate tasks, but it doesn't automate imagination, it doesn't automate purpose, and it doesn't automate trust. That is happening through design, and a human helping to guide that."
Image courtesy of Elevate Festival.
