Humanize AI before it dehumanizes us, with Dr. Rana el Kaliouby at SXSW

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/f60a6cd50bb51f86

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Hi everyone, Bob here. Today's episode is a special live recording from on stage at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, featuring Dr. Rana L. Kalyubi. Rana is a repeat guest on the show, an AI scientist.
founder of Affectiva, investor at Blue Tulip, and host of the wonderful podcast Pioneers of AI.
In this keynote conversation, we discuss how to keep AI human-centric, not only as a safeguard, but also to help us thrive socially, economically, and emotionally. We also play a game parsing fact from fiction on some of the buziest AI myths.
And we debate the merits and pitfalls of everything from AI therapy to meta glasses, to which AI founders are opportunistic versus truly visionary. So let's get to it.
I'm Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

Put your hands together for AI scientist.
Entrepreneur, investor, podcast host, and my good friend, Dr. Rana L Cal Ubi.
Isn't this fun?
So fun.
All right.
So um
We're gonna talk today about about
Controversies and opportunities in this in this moment of change, right? What's real.
Maybe what's not as quite as real, what's myth.
And and how to stay human centric in in all of that. Um I w I wanna start with you, Rana, with your background, because your journey to this world of AI.
wasn't exactly predestined.
Uh I think the first picture we have here is is of you as a kid with your family. Uh Rana, you grew up in Egypt and Kuwait. Yeah, you're like, oh look at look at me. Um your mother
No was one of the first
female computer scientists in the in the middle east. It sounds like it was a dynamic

Out of that, how did you find yourself studying machine learning?
Yeah, I I would say we grew up in a very tech forward household. So my parents my dad, as you said
It's pretty strict, but he taught Cobal programming in the 1970s. It's an obsolete programming language. Oh, some people recognize it. And my mom was one of the very first female programmers to sign up to take this class in Cairo, Egypt, in the 70s. So
Um that's how they met. Um then they we moved to Kuwait and I rem like my earliest memories of my childhood with my two younger sisters was sitting around an At Atari video console.
video gaming console, I guess. Um any any Atari Pla space invaders, anybody? Woo okay and um for me technology brought our family together.
And so I think that's been a common thread throughout my career. Like how can we
Build technology that
Brings people together versus isolated.
Or pull us apart.
Your studies took you from Egypt to London to then MIT, where you co-founded your company, Affectiva. And this is a journey that you capture in your book Girl Decoded. I think we have a a cover of the of the book.
From the start, you were focused on the emotional context.
of AI on being human centric. Effectiva used machine learning, I hope I described this the right way, to read people's emotional states and sort of analyze nonverbal cues and things like that. Sort of focusing on EQ as much as as IQ. And I'm curious about it.
Given that background, when you look at what's happening in the AI world today, how prevalent is that?
emphasis you know do the m major players take
EQ as seriously as they should.

The answer is no. But but but let me kind of unpack that. Um we've made a ton of progress in AI on the IQ front, on the cognitive abilities and the cognitive intelligence of machines. Um but to get to true artificial like general intelligence, AGI, we absolutely need these
technologies to have both emotional and social intelligence.
And that this is where I believe that the industry as a whole is really lagging, and it's the next frontier to figure out this EQ. We need to marry the IQ and the EQ of machines.
And it's you know, if if we look at human intelligence, of course your IQ matters, but your EQ matters
Arguably even more. Like people who have higher emotional intelligences are better leaders, they're better managers, they're better partners, they're better friends.
And I believe the same to be true for technology and
And also if you kind of consider how
humans communicate, only seven percent of how we communicate is an the actual choice of words we use. Ninety three percent is nonverbal. It's facial expressions, vocal intonations, gestures, body posture. And all of that technology is completely oblivious to, right? Like if you think about AI today, it's mostly focused on
what you're saying not how you're saying it and what's the context context around it so
I believe this is gonna be the next frontier of AI.
Um
AI ought to communicate with us the same way we communicate with each other through
Conversation, perception, empathy.
Um
But I also believe strongly that we only
Build what we measure for. And all of the benchmarks in AI today they're very IQ focused.
So I guess my call to action to the audience here and you know whoever's tuning in and listening to this, we need benchmarks around the EQ of AI. And and when you talk to
your colleagues who are who are at some of these places the hyper scalers and whatnot
And you raise this issue, are they like
Yeah, that's
Yes, I agree. Or are they like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I I you know
I I don't really buy it.
I
I think there's recognition that this is important, but it's I I think it's also a function of who's designing these technologies. I mean I'll give one example. If you look at all the leading humanoid robotics companies
The robots are pretty impressive. They can
You know, unlo unload your dishwasher and fold your your laundry and I don't know, like
Organiz your living room.
But I wouldn't want any of these robots in my home. They're big and scary and they don't really know how to interact with humans, so
The teams building these things are really
kind of really obsessed about the functionality and they're not really thinking about okay, when this thing goes out into the real world.
How's it gonna be a lives, right? Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Well uh um the next visual I have as has a little bit about your your life. It's a picture of your mom
uh with two kids. This is you the here you are with your with your two kids.
Um, and you're telling me that each of their approaches to
to AI are very different. That your son is kind of super enthusiastic and he's using all the new tools and he's doing everything, and your your daughter is a little bit like it's sort of the opposite direction, like
IRL I want to unplug a little bit.
It it almost sounds like your family dining table is like a microcosm of the discussions we're having in in society at large.
It it really is. Um this picture is from a number of years ago, so they're a bit older now. My son is seventeen, he's very AI forward. He's actually my teacher in many ways. Like even though I spend my every day in the AI space, he's always surfacing like new tools, his latest project.
is using AI workflows to translate
Um
the diaries of Egyptian workmen from the nineteen thirties who who worked at the Giza Pyramids and they wrote these diaries like handwritten in Arabic with a lot of like images and whatnot.
And he's using AI to translate them.
And
And he's actually running into obstacles'cause he's pushing what the AI can do, which is really awesome and cool. I I love that he's using it to advance knowledge and
You know.
Like combined history and archival research and AI. So that's Adam.
My daughter, Jana, she is a food anthropologist. She just graduated in the spring from Harvard and she does not use AI at all. And the project she's working on is bringing
It's a c she calls it a cultural salon slash cafe. So they bring young people, um
You don't have to be young. You they bring people to the space and they host book talks and poetry readings and
Embossing workshops and whatnot. But but it they're packed every night. And it basically tells you people are really longing for
This
In real life human connection. And so Yeah, there's a reason we're all gathered here in this room, right? Exactly. We're not doing this over Zoom, right? Yeah. Um
And so I think both realities are true. We need to both at the same time lean into AI. I really believe I keep pushing her to like at least try chat GPT or something. Um and then at the same time I think we should really
um nurture our human connection as well. I mean I I was curious, I y you know, you you exited Affectiva in twenty twenty one, right? You're an investor now, as as I mentioned at Blue Tulip.
But as the as you're also the host of this podcast of of
Yeah.
Like are these tools between the investing and the and the podcast that you're using to try to
Shape where AI goes from here? Like what what is what is your goal in that? Yeah. So um I think Tiva was my baby. It was like literally my third

really r was big part of of what I did and my identity. And so when I sold it in twenty twenty one, I spent a lot of time thinking about
W you know what what do I want to do next?
Yeah.
And I kept coming back to this idea slash question that we absolutely need to.
Build a future of AI that is human centric.
that prioritizes how these technologies are going to affect our everyday lives and our relationships.
And um
I'm I mean I believe that AI has massive economic opportunity.
It really does. And at the same time, it has this opportunity to unlock human potential. So my point of view is that AI should not replace
Our abilities it should really amplify an.
augment what we can do, and ideally we can harness AI and use it to solve
really meaningful problems say you know facing society today. So so that's kind of my thesis around that. And then I was like, okay, how do I
shape that how do I become a real player in that space given my background to
Um, and I landed on three things. So one is investing, so
kind of backing founders who are building these
Generation category defining human centric AI companies to a storytelling, amplifying the voices of AI that maybe you may not.

Um companies that dominate the AI headlines, in my opinion.
But there's a lot of innovators and thinkers and creators in the AI space, and I want to make sure that we are a platform to tell their stories and give them be a door opener too. And the third one is a convener. Um
Which is why I like to do these things. I I I love bringing people together with disparate backgrounds and perspectives and just seeing what magic unfolds.
You use this phrase about sort of
Um humanizing technology before it dehumanizes us.
And
In the in the dialogue today about AI
I I always wonder about sort of the
For the practitioners, and you are are were one of the seminal ones, like how much responsibility.
You filak you have.
For what the future of this technology ends up being and how much that

How deep is that conversation in that community?
As opposed to sort of giving lip service to it, but I just gotta get ahead of the you know the company next to me.
I I feel a very strong responsibility, and I would actually argue we all in this room have.
A responsibility as well because we get to vote with our feet which AI tools we're using every day.
Right?
Who's getting the twenty dollars a month subscription from all of us? And and I think asking questions around does this company care about the ethics of the technology?
How is it being built? Are they thinking about bias, both data and algorithmic bias? Are they thinking about trust and security and privacy? Are they thinking about the use cases of this technology? Where should it be deployed and where should it really not be deployed? I think these are big questions that we all should be asking of the tools we're using.
And with you know, as an investor, it's a qu
There's a set of questions. We have like a rubric that we ask founders and if the founders have not at all thought about it, if they're not open, then we're not that we're not investing in them. Yeah.
So
I thought maybe we'd do something very human and we'd um we'd play a game.
That's okay with you. So um because there's so much
noise surrounding AI right now in and so many myths.
Um it's sort of hard to know what to pay attention to. I think we all feel that. So this this game is called fact or fiction. And um I'm gonna share a few video clips, some of which that come from uh pioneers of AI, the podcast, and each of them lead to a myth.
around uh surrounding AI today. And
And I'm I'll be eager for your take about sort of whether it's mostly fact
Mostly fiction, um or somewhere in between. Are are you ready? Okay. So so let's play uh let's play the first uh the first clip.
Are we in an AI bubble? Of course. We're certainly seeing lots of evidence of bubble like behavior. The excitement that the hyperscalers had kind of got away from them a little bit and it's starting to face reality. It has the world wondering if we're about to see a big pop of the AI bubble. AI bubble AI bubble.
whenever this bubbs, there's going to be tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars that will literally be incinerated.
Mm sourana of course.
The first myth.
We're in an AI bubble. Is this is this fact or fiction?
I think actually it's mostly fiction. I so I believe there are signs there are like you know
signs of potentially a bubble for example there are a lot of companies
raising you know the frothy valuation problem there are a lot of companies raising hundreds of millions of dollars at
billion dollar valuations, but their pre-product, their pre-revenue.
That's that's kind of a s you know, that's a red flag. Um
And there are also kind of concerns around the circular money machine, right? Like you can you look at these like a handful of companies, they're all investing in each other, they're all, you know, like buying chips from each other and then NVIDIA gives money to open AI, open AI uses that money to buy chips from NVIDIA.
Exactly. Like you kind of wonder what is the net new value creation here.
But the world I'm in every day, the ecosystem of founders building like real products that are gonna be like transforming real industries and
Companies that are
really trying to figure out how to bring AI to be more productive. This is real. And it's very early days. So
That's where I focus my energy and I I
Thanks.
We're in the very early days of like massive, massive economic opportunity. And so I mean a lot of those clips we saw were were from investors. Maybe the investment marketplace there might be some bubble in, which might be cautionary for all of us, because we all have money in these companies now, right? But
But in the long run, you think the technology itself
We may be
Are even undervaluing?
I think so. Yeah. The technology itself, it's very early days and the use the applications of the technology is is very early days. We spend a lot of our time
Um our thesis is basically AI is transforming
Like every industry on vertical, but we focus on three in particular. One is how AI
Um is driving this health span.
Revolution. Um so think sensors, data, AI, and how that can advance healthcare in every aspect of it. The other is future of work. So how can we employ and deploy AI, whether it's physical AI or AI co-workers and agentic AI to transform
Um businesses and
Especially antiquated industries, like some some often they're very like boring and unsexy, but like lots of opportunity there. And the last is sustainable living. How can we use AI to
Uh apply that to planet health, whether it's uh food innovation
Um
You know, th rethinking manufacturing, um climate, energy.
All right.
All right, so are you are you ready for a for another myth? Okay.
All right, let's uh the this next video is from uh the pioneers of of AI uh show. So let's uh let's see the next one.
Somewhere in the early twenty forties.
We will get a billionaire.
By people robots.
Uh they will do more work.
Than all of humanity does today.
People are terrified.
that these jobs get displaced and they should be.
Okay. Such a happy thought from Venod Kosla there. Um legendary tech investor. So the so the myth here is that
Like
The robots are taking over.
Right. So so how how real is that?
I I kind of
I mean, Venodas legendary, right? And he's um
obviously been super successful. I think he was one of the first investors in OpenAI, actually.
Um, but I kinda disagree with his point of view a little bit. I I do think I don't think robots are taking
Over in the sci-fi like movie kind of terminator kind of way. Um, I do think robots are gonna take over a lot of jobs, um, often like repetitive, mundane, even dangerous jobs. We're we're looking at a company that's using um they're building humanoid robots for shipwelding.
Ship welding. Yes. And it's a very dangerous job, as it turns out, and there's not enough humans who even want to do it.
That's a perfect job for a robot to take on.
So I I think there's going to be a a lot of that.
Um
But I
But again, if you take a human centric
Angle to that. We want the robots to take over the tasks that we as humans.
probably don't want to do. And yes, that will that will mean we'll have to think about what do we want to do and what does that look like.
But it but it doesn't necessarily mean that uh we are we should be threatened by these robots.
I
Don't think so.
All right.
Oh well that's reassuring.
All right. Uh let's let's try the next myth. Uh can we play this is another pioneers of AI uh video. Let's uh let's play that.
People don't realize that IP gets more valuable in an AI world because if
a model, a foundational model is not trained on that IP, it's behind.
And trying to make decisions about whether or not you publish the work you do because you want the accolades, that's the exact wrong way.
to do things now. Maybe you don't want to patent it because the minute you publish it, every model is training on it.
All right. So uh so our good friend Mark Cuban. So so basically the the myth is that that AI is bad for creators.
Right. Mark is kind of arguing that it it's not. It's good for creators.
Where where are you on this?
H
I don't think A AI is inherently bad for creators. I think AI is reshaping the creator economy.
Um
You know, when I put my kind of positive hat on, AI's also democratizing access to creation.
Right. I I have like zero
Graphic skills I can create videos and content and I I think it lowers the barrier.
But that also I think at the same time means that
You know, there's gonna be a premium.
On human originality.
And human perspective and
Um
lived experiences and how do you encapsulate all of that because AI is not gonna that that's not gonna be a differentiating uh factor. So um
I mean it's it's it's almost like sort of the the definition of progress in some ways, right? The floor goes up. Right. But that doesn't mean the ceiling doesn't go up also, which is which is where I guess the best creators will end up. Yeah, I love I love that. All right, we have two more myths. Let's play the play the next um the next video also from Pioneer Survey.
Humans will never be more intelligent than AI.
Which is an incredible opportunity.
To realize that we are not defined by our IQ.
Let's
AI be more intelligent than humans.
And let humans be wiser than AI.
Yeah.
I love Ariana. She's just so cool. So the the the myth here and
Ariana is Ariana Huffington's talking about it there, right? AI is on course to
to outsmart humanity which she thinks is a is a good thing
Is okay yeah. I I agree with Ariana. Her point of view is basically yeah, let AI
Um
Let AI be smarter than us, but let us kind of um she uses this term like AI can be the GPS of our soul. Like how can we use the GPS of our soul. Yes.
Wow. Yeah. Basically
We we are in this moment of time where we can use AI to double down on what makes us uniquely human and tap into our intuition and
Um this kind of
wisdom and intelligence that AI doesn't have. And I really like that. So you know, so my book's called Girl Decoded. And it was very much about how to bring emotional intelligence into machines and I learned a lot from that whole journey about my own emotions.
But I keep wondering like my next book should be called Girl Embodied. And it should be about like
Our intuitive intelligence like our body intelligence, you know, when you get goosebumps, that's a signal.
When you have this gut feeling, like we're so disconnected from that.
Type of intelligence, but it's a true intelligence, and I think.
Our opportunity as humans in this age of AI is to really double down on that.
I because in the in the tech world, because we can measure other things. You were alluding to this before about IQ. Because we can measure this, this becomes the definition of intelligence when it when you you as you sort of look at it, you're like, Well m maybe not really.
Right. There is a different form of intelligence that technology has no access to right now, that we've lost access to as well, because
You know, we're always rushed. We're in this world where we're like blue to our screens. I don't think we're in touch.
I'll speak for myself. I don't think I'm
I'm always in touch with like that kind of intuitive intelligence.
Uh it's not easy for me to access it, um unless I you know spend a lot of time meditating. So anyway, I I'm on a journey to tap into that intelligence. I think it's really important. Um it sounds a little bit like for for all of us in some ways as AI takes on more of the uh, uh, I think it's
The intelligence that maybe culturally we have emphasized
That we all should be working a little harder to sort of tap that other piece of intelligence.
All right, um one one more myth. This is a uh uh constellation of random headlines chosen recently from TechCrunch of new AI startups. And there is something in common about all of these folks. They're all mad.
Yeah. I mean you you you and I were having a conversation at one point and you you pull you kept pulling these up and you were kind of
You know, um
animated and I guess so the the myth here is you know is AI a a boys club
Um and like
Is it?
Is the is that a fact? Is that a fiction?
That one is not a myth.
That one is like n there's no like mostly about it. Yes. Um I I think AI today is a boys club and it I um
Yeah, I think diversity is not a very popular d
conversation topic these days, but I think it's so important because
Um
AI is creating incredible economic opportunity.
And if women are left out because they're not founding these companies, because they're not getting the funding, we're gonna look back five years from now or a decade from now and it's gonna be we're gonna have widened the economic
Gap.
Um
Like crazy. So this is something that really concerns me.
It's why again I you know three out of my four investments out of blue
Tulip Ventures are women CEOs. I don't just invest in women.
But I really try to siek.
Seek these women founders and support them.
If not by a check.

That they should and that they need to.
Rana is so logical in how she describes the impacts of AI across all kinds of areas, even ones that are emotional. So what kind of role does being human-centric play in AI safety? And what human skills should we prioritize in an AI world?
We'll talk about that and more after the break.
Stay with us.
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Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. There's gonna be two types of companies.
Those were great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't. How do we build a future?
That is human centered.
I'm Rana El Calyubi.
And on my podcast Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone.
Every week I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future.
and we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives.
Find pioneers of AI wherever you tune in.
Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show.
Because every Friday we release a second rapid response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely from Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from The Devil Wears Prada.
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I hope to see you there.

Before the break, AI pioneer Rana El Khalyubi parsed the fact and the fiction in today's reigning AI myths.
Now Rana takes questions from the South by Southwest audience about the key skills needed in an AI world, whether Meta Glasses will be the tech form factor of the future, and the role of AI therapy and AI companions. Plus, will we all have a digital twin and more?
Let's jump back in.
Because you're focused on
The human centric part of this. You really wanted a lot of this session to
come from the humans in this room. So uh so actually I I have some questions that I'm gonna read to you. This is a a question from Anonymous. Anonymous thank you for your question. Which human skills will become more valuable in an AI driven world and how should individuals start
developing them today.
Oh.
Um, I think collaboration.
Whether you're collaborating with humans or machines, that's gonna be really important. I think communication is gonna be really key as well. I I think we're actually all increasingly attuned to stuff that's written by AI. Like we can probably all like discern that. And so I think being a great communicator.
Um and and
original communicator is really key.
And then I still think we'll need a lot of critical thinking.
Still.
Yeah, and creativity. Yeah, so all yeah.
Um here's a here's a question from uh from Sophia.
out there she asked whether you use meta glasses
Or what AI native devices.
Are you looking at
So we have meta glasses at home. We have a couple. I don't use mine. Adam, my son, uses his a lot.
Like we will literally be walking
Down a street together, and I think I'm talking to him, but he's got his glasses on, he's listening to music.
And he uses it. I mean it's still very early days for these glasses. They're not I would say they're not really AI native yet.
But I was just at their annual event uh last week, and they were kind of unveiling the visual intelligence capabilities that they will add to that. More broadly, though.
Um
Yeah, like do you think those are the kinds of devices that we're gonna be interacting with AI through? Yeah, I think um my this is one of our investment thesis. We are using AI on pre-AI devices.
Right now, like a smartphone is not an AI native device.
And so we're on the lookout for founders who are building these AI native devices from the ground up. So hardware and software. And our thesis there is that it has to be perceptual, it has to be conversational, it has to have empathy, it has to have context, it has to have memory, it has to be ambient.
Um Yeah, I don't I don't know what that is yet. Yeah, we don't we don't. Yeah. And a lot of the big AI labs are investing a lot of money trying to kind of build something. And I don't know if it's gonna be is it gonna be glasses, is it gonna be a wearable pin. Trevor Burrus Because everyone wants to own the next phone, right? That's what it is, because it's it's so much money, but we don't we don't really know what that
Exactly.
Yeah, there's a lot of experimentation on what the form factor will look like. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So we'll see. Um so there there are a handful of questions that are around uh around a particular theme about
World models. What is a world model and how is it different from a large language model? World world sounds very generic to uh to some people. Yeah. There's been an evolution actually in these like foundation models. They started off being very language focused.
Um like think chat GPT, right? And then they became more multimodal, so now they can deal with images and video. They can both ingest images and video and generate images and video and voice. So they've become multimodal.
But they're still not rooted in the real world. And to unlock physical AI, so AI that is like you know, like robotics is one example, or
Or an AI native device is another example of a physical AI. To unlock that, you need AI that understands how the
Real world works, um, the physics of it.
It has spatialities. So that's what a world model is. It's the equivalent of a large language model.
But kinda rooted in the real world in the physical. Scraping out all the information that's on the internet, it has to be like in a room like this and get all of the signals from
All of the things that are in this room right now.
information it needs. It's a lot more information, it's a lot more complex. Um you know how with the large language models there's these companies that train the you know the bots, basically train these AI models. They generate a lot of text and they rep team the text and whatnot.
We're starting to see companies that are doing the same, but in the real world. So you literally strap on a camera and you're paid.
To walk around your house or your work or
the streets and all of the data you're capturing then becomes input data to these world models. So
I'm like one of those cars gathering information for Google Maps. Is that what I think Exactly, exactly. But now it's like people, you know, in their kitchen, like washing the dishes. That's all incredible training data for a robot that will eventually do this job. All right. Let's go to the the next question. The next question is, oh this is interesting. This is from um Caroline.

Using AI
for therapy. I mean there is this discussion about sort of
AI therapy, AI companions, you know, to sort of replace human relationships.
What is our emotional relationship?
W to AI. What's he what what will be healthy about that?
I think there is a room for AI to be a therapist, to be kind of a supportive companion, but I feel very strongly that it should not take the the role of an actual human.
Yeah, thank you. Yes. I
Feels very strongly about that.
Um
But there is a value proposition in having something um that you can um
You know.
When you're up at two in the morning and you really want
Uh
run something, you know, you're ruminating on an idea and you're really struggling, that could be very supportive, but I think there needs to be human oversight and a human in the loop.
And um there are unfortunately very, very few
Guardrails being built in these models that protect us when we're using these models, and not um, you know, you've you've you've probably seen, unfortunately, a lot of
Um very sad news, right? Where
Young people are using these
chat TPTs and like other other AI technologies and you know they end up
Harming themselves, right?
So I I think that is something we don't talk about often. A good friend of mine, Eric Cohen, I'll give him a plug, he's building AI safety guidelines and measures. So that again, we need a benchmark for that. We need to be able every time we release a model, we should really test it against these safety guardrails to see if it passes or not.
I mean I was having a conversation with someone about this and I was like so at some point you're gonna have your you you have your AI bot with ChatGPT, but sometimes it's gonna be like you're gonna have a shopping bot that you have a relationship with, you know, at Walmart or whatever. But you could end up having a conversation with that bot.
That's about your emotional state? It's like is Walmart gonna train its bot to worry about whether you know what I mean,'cause you can ask that bot anything, right? Correct. There has to be these guardrails and these roles that are
And between here and there are we gonna have like
Are we gonna continually have like inadvertent like oh sorry, my bad, I didn't realize people were using my
My app for that or my bot for that? Right. That's why I think anybody deploying AI should really be testing against these AI safety guidelines. Now this is a whole different question than should we have AI friends and AI partners.
A lot of people feel lonely.
Right.
And
To have something that is there for you twenty four seven is very patient. Um
There's there's something to be said for that, but it it does it does say something about us as humans, right?
Yeah. All right. Um I'm gonna go to a little bit more businessy question here.
Uh
This is from the
Quick.
Kreeka?
I hope I'm pronouncing your name right. Uh current skill sets are disappearing faster than new skills emerging.
So what should a human centric organization do to help their employees keep up?
I mean these these tools, new tools, new models, they seem like they're coming out every day. Ha how
How is
Anyone
You know, expected to keep up with it all.
I I would say organizations should really encourage their um team members to lean in and try these new tools, even if it's not gonna be perfect, even if there's gonna be mistakes and and hiccups. I I think it's important to lean in
So at our fund, we're a very small team. We just implemented a chief of staff AI agent. Uh we just named it Blue.
B L Uh.
And um this
Yeah.
It it does it does a lot of research on our behalf. It it kind of
updates our CRM. It does all these like autumn tasks that again, you don't necessarily want to be spending a lot of time on it. But I think it's made me think about ooh, w what are we doing with our
Junior team members, right?
And um
I I think young people or or or or or all these junior roles
are gonna be redefined and they're gonna have to incorporate AI in what they do.
Two CEOs over the last week, one Julie Sweet, the CEO of Accenture, the other Matthew Prince, the CEO of Cloudflare. And they both sort of said the same thing, which is like the people at the very top of their organization get it and are and are using
AI.
And at the same time, they're eagerly hiring
Like young people out of school in bigger numbers than are expected because those folks are AI native.
But the group in the middle
They're really kind of
Worried about it.
Well, I I think the reality is
All of our workflows are changing.
Right, and so you have to be really open to reimagining what these workflows look like. And it's going to be a human
AI
So one of one of the
Interviews we did for Pioneers of AI was with uh Evan Ratliff.
who has a podcast called a pot series called Shell Game.
And he started a company with two co founders, Kyle and Megan, and they're both AI agents. He was the
Silent.
Like he's the silent co founder, and Kyle is the CEO, and Megan is the CMO.
And that was fascinating. I interviewed both Evan
And also Kyle the the tech.
Te's he's like a very tech bro CEO.
I interviewed the AI on Zoom
Yeah.
Kyle was like yeah, I love you know, I I'm a rise and you know, hustle and grind, whatever, blah blah blah. And and then he was like, But on the weekends I love hiking. I'm like, Kyle, you don't even have legs and he was like Well I live vicariously through other CEOs. But it was fascinating. And I think we are going to and
Kyle shows up to investor meetings, like he will like
They will literally send Kyle to meet with investors.
And I wonder if that's gonna be our world.
Wow.
That's uh that's an intense future, though. I mean I I like I wonder you and I both you know, we host podcasts.
Uh oh our colleague Reed Hoffman also hosts the podcast, but he's created like this avatar of himself using AI. We could create avatars of ourselves. We we don't even need to be here. We could have have our AI version.
Із танк тire то.
Well.
Again, I think about it as augmentation. Like I don't want my digital twin, which I have, but I don't like her because she doesn't have my smile and she doesn't have my energy. So we're working on it. But but I I
I wouldn't want her to be here.
'Cause I love this.
But could she go to China and speak in Mandarin?
Amazing. That would be awesome. So I have her

Sharp. I have zero mandarin, unfortunately. So so I think that's an opportunity. Where can it augment what I can't do?
Now
There's a whole bunch of questions around IP and
What if it answers a question not in the same way I would answer how do I trust
This digital twin to be out in the
Real world on my behalf. We're not there yet.
We're running out of time. Let me go to one question here from Hector who asks um what pattern separates
The founders who are building something that will matter in five years.
Um from those riding a hype cycle. Yeah. Cause I've been in this space for over twenty five years. I can separate signal from noise and there's so much noise, right?
Every company
we get pitched by is an AI company. And and within like three questions I'm able to tell, are they really building something that is defensible?

Um and defensibility has taken on an
I think a new kind of
uh depths in this world of AI because you can be defensible today.
And literally by the next version of, you know, Anthropic's release or Gemini's release or whatever, you're obsolete.
Right. As a company and as a technology. And so we really dig into how defensible is this technology, not right now, but in the next year.
In the next five years. Five years is too long, actually, to predict, but far. Yeah.
But but defensibility is a real thing. And also how complex is the problem you're solving, really, right? And again, back to like the IP. What kind of IP or motes do you have around around what you're building and
We spent a lot of time.
Mm-hmm.
As as we wrap up for
For those in the room.
Like
What can they do to help build a human centric
future. I mean how much
Should we engage with AI? How much do we, you know, like like your son does, how much do we sort of
Safeguard like your daughter does, like or or and how much do we just have to sort of
roll with the tides and
You know, deal with whatever comes our way.
Um I would say lean in, right? I think it's important that we are all um adept and exp and and and and be playful about it. Like I think there's a curiosity.
And a
play mindset that we can bring to the table where we're experimenting and kind of pushing the boundaries of what is possible.
But I also feel strongly that collectively we need to
be vocal about
Yeah, there ought to be guardrails in these models. There ought to be benchmarks around effects on the environment.
Right? Like that's that's a we've had several conversations on pioneers of AI where we've hosted people who care about that and are trying to solve
Like build benchmarks where we can really get a sense of, okay, how bad are these every time you ask chat GPT for an idea for the for what
Like

What is the effect on the environment, right?
Um
So I think we just need to be vocal about what
What is how are the we need we need to ask for more transparency around how these models are built, how they're validated, where they're being used.
It is moving very fast. Yeah. I mean, I guess that's part of what the appeal of this uh of this technology is that
That to keep human we have to use these tools.
to to be able to be human centric. Well um Rana, as always, it it's great to talk. Be sure to subscribe to Pioneers of AI and have a response. Yes. And finally a warm thank you for Dr. Rana L Calyuga.
Talking with Rana, you can't help but think about what's our role in shaping the future of technology.
It's easy to bemoan the state of the AI industry or critique the hyperscalers, but building new technology is a human endeavor, and it's not too late to take agency over what we build. As Rana says, we can vote with our feet, choosing what AI we use and pay for and what ways we use it.
There's no reason to abdicate responsibility because what comes next is very much up in the air.
Thanks to the team at South by Southwest for inviting us on stage, and thanks to all those who brought their human selves into the room to join us.
I'm Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.
Rapid response is a wait what original.
I'm Bob Safian. Our executive producer is Eve Tro. Our producer is Alex Morris. Associate producer is Mashumaku Tonina.
Mixing and Mastering by Brian Pugh.
Our theme music is by Ryan Holiday.
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