I live about 30 miles from the beautiful Chautauqua Institution in New York, yet somehow my first visit was just this summer. The Chautauqua Institution is a 150-year-old nonprofit education center and resort that serves as a catalyst for creative exploration, educational growth, relaxation and recreation. Each summer the Institution brings to its campus a stellar lineup of guest speakers and last month I had the opportunity to go hear a talk on AI given by Joanna Stern.

Emmy Award-winning Stern is the Sr. Personal Technology Journalist at the Wall Street Journal. She’s interviewed countless tech leaders and is well versed on today’s trends and tomorrow’s promises. She began her session with a bit of a farce – a video clip of her apologizing for not being able to deliver her talk live. As the audience grumbled, she walked out on stage and shared that the video was entirely AI-generated.

After talking about both the upsides and risks of AI, Joanna was asked by an audience member whether she feels the upsides of AI outweigh the risks. She took a long pause before answering, which surprised me. Then said, “Tough. Yes – it’s the natural evolution of technology. Humans have persevered through others – like the smartphone, which has its own positives and negatives. But we do need to be thinking about the potential negative consequences.”

Joanna began her talk with an overview of AI types and recent advancements, sharing examples of the sophisticated capabilities that have been developed particularly with GenAI. She shared some anecdotes from her interviews, such as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stating that his view is, “AI will help us do our jobs better, reducing drudgery and lowering barriers to knowledge work, even creating more jobs.”

Nadella’s points about reducing drudgery and lowering the barriers to knowledge work are ones that hold tremendous promise and could really positively impact service organizations. She also shared the views of Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, who said “I’m not scared of jobs going away; I think it’s good. But we need to contend with the speed of which this will happen. Humans will keep finding things to do.”

I feel less warm fuzzies about Altman’s statement, in part because of course the CEO of OpenAI isn’t going to go on record saying he fears how the technology will take jobs. That said, I do think there’s some truth to the point he’s making – if AI is used appropriately, yes it will automate some work – but it makes room for humans to deliver their irreplaceable value elsewhere.

The Potential Dark Side of AI

Joanna readily stated that “We are at a phase where AI doesn’t live up to its hype – but we’re moving fast.” And this is both good and, potentially, bad. She explained that where we are today aligns with the statements made by Nadella and Altman, but where we are going (AG1) becomes murkier. She summarized for the audience a number of AI risks, including:

• Hallucinations
• The lack of regulations and laws
• The need to indicate if something is AI-generated
• How AI-generated audio has fooled a bank
• How AI has been used to clone presidential candidates and mislead voters
• The unknown impact AI will have on our children
• The resource constraint being created by the exponential growth of AI
• Uncertainty on how to protect IP
• Questions around how to keep AI ethical
• How AI can perpetuate social ills
• The use of synthetic data

She even said at one point that she didn’t mean for the session to cause fear or seem negative. While she is excited about what AI can do today and the potential it holds for tomorrow, she wants to illustrate the need to take both the benefits and the risks seriously. As we determine how best to apply this technology, and when – and when not – to trust it, we should be “thoughtful stewards” of its use, and I think it’s a very important reminder.

Joanna was asked by another audience member what she feels makes us human, to which she responded “creativity.” I think my answer would be empathy, which we should apply as we forge our path of AI. What would your answer be?