The agentic economy represents a fundamental shift where AI systems act autonomously on behalf of humans, making decisions and executing transactions without direct human intervention. This transformation requires new trust infrastructure, verification mechanisms, and human-in-the-loop protocols to ensure accountability. The critical challenge is preserving human sovereignty and identity while leveraging AI's capabilities, as over-reliance on AI for companionship and decision-making risks emotional dependency and loss of authentic human connection. Organizations and individuals must develop sovereign AI agents that operate on their own data and values, rather than relying on centralized systems. The transition demands workforce development, ethical frameworks, and policies that balance technological advancement with human flourishing.
GatherVerse - AI Evolve Summit 2026: Day 2Added:
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Greetings and welcome to Gatherverse AI Evolve Summit 2026, day two.
We're coming off the heels of an extraordinary day one at this 44th Global Gathers event in which we've had a litany of speakers join us from around the world, trans metropolitan, transcontinental, from various and different perspectives of life of innovation.
There is so much that has been covered only in day one and day two is no exception to the result.
Gatherverse meets at the intersection of emerging technologies with consideration for humanity first standards of accessibility and education, equality, community development, safety and privacy, wellness and ethics, compassion, care, trust.
We meet today in this unprecedented time in this month of May in the era of compute. Wait in the era of AI hypers scale. Wait in the era of acceleration.
Wait in the era of existential crisis.
Wait in the era of AI human flourishing.
Is it all of the above?
Is it one of the lot?
We have in this world a great bifurcation of understanding when it comes to technology, but more so ever when it comes to where people find themselves in the vocations in the throws of life.
the career path and the path of entrepreneurship.
We are in a great transitionary time of civilization of industry.
We've gone from the agrarian age.
We've gone into the industrial age steam industrial age too electric.
head fast into the prototypical generation, into the information age, the applications renaissance. And now we find ourselves in the age of the frontier.
All technology abides within the great ecohabitat.
And in this ecohabitat, there are a number of different various of technologies that abide.
But what happens when these technologies begin to grow and pair together? This is what we commonly refer to as the merge pairing. And these technologies combine together and on a morph scale in the amalgamation those amalgamations come together and that leads us to the true technological convergence. New naming conventions must be defined.
New directions must be set and new compasses must be met in this frontier.
And at the center of it all, we hope, is the preciousness of the consideration of human preservation, of existence, of the heartbeat, of innovation, if you will.
We've had so many different speakers from near and far join us.
We've had so many people give us real time report of consideration of what they're seeing from their lens perspective when it comes to this intersection of emerging technologies and human consideration for betterment.
In a world where we often hear more from machines than under the banner of human voices.
In many ways, we've surrendered agency and judgment away from the most incredible database that you and I were given from our mother's womb at birth, the human mind.
I think about what we innovate today impacts the future tomorrow and generations to come. And I wonder what could be done tonight.
What could be sustained?
And what has this meaning of trust and truth and ground truth?
And what has the impact of AI been for you and I already in this world?
Look around you folks. Things are changing.
Good, bad, or indifferent. Things are changing. Some say, "But yes, Chris, they're always changing."
But you've never seen them change like this.
And with Gatherverse, we do our level best with diligence and persistence to bring that change to your doorstep, to your home.
to a neighbor, to a friend, to a stranger to let you know that there was a time in the age of agentic creation, multi-headed agentic systems and hyperrealistic immersive simulations of visual intelligence that there was a time amongst all that through the weeds and the sprockets platforms and the protocols and the products there was compassion.
There are humans behind the screens and on the other side of the GPU, the chambers of the human heart.
As quick as it comes, quick as it goes.
Day two begins.
And may our gather be well.
Greetings.
Welcome to the first round table panel discussion of gadas AI evop.
We are truly humbled to have such an incredible assembly of minds with us today.
Gathered from around the globe with visionaries and experts joining us from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas and representing unique perspectives and a wealth of expertise as we discuss the topic the serious impact AI has already made in our lives. Panelists will welcome you. I'm excited to have each and every one of you here and I'm looking forward to the conversation.
Well, we start with introductions and we continue with the conversation. I will start with Amy. Hi Amy, it is good to see you. Please tell us who you are, where you're joining us from, and what inspired you to gather with us today.
>> Thank you. Wonderful to be here, and I'm looking forward to learning from everyone else on the panel. I'm the founder of Inner Strength Education, which brings innovative mindfulness and systems thinking work to high school students. And I'm currently building an AI platform for ages 15 to 25 on wellness, critical thinking, and what they call the soft skills development.
What I really intend is to build a platform that will help young people evolve their wisdom and their compassion for the future. So that's what brought me here. I've been thinking a lot about the dangers and trying to mitigate them because we also have enormous possibility.
So it's going to be wonderful to talk with everyone today.
>> Amy, we welcome you.
>> Thank you, Dr. Kiana, please tell us who you are and where you're joining us from.
>> Hello everyone. I am Dr. Kiana Bradshaw.
I am academic program director emerging technologies at Columbia Southern University. I am joining everyone from the Carolinas today and I just loved uh helping and creating AI programs and helping everyone use it ethically and it's you know making it very useful for me and the students and the faculty.
We welcome you doctor. Good to have you here. Richard, please please kindly introduce yourself. Tell us who you are, where you're joining us from, and your inspiration for joining us.
Hello, Richard. Can you hear me?
>> Hello, can you hear me?
>> Sorry.
Yeah, you you're still muted. Yeah, also I'm muted about now.
>> Yes, you're muted.
>> Okay, I Is it now? Better?
>> Yes, it's better now.
>> All right. So, um my name is Richard Pusky. I'm a founder. Okay. I'm a founder of uh Digital Wheel of Fortune, uh which is a uh future forecasting strategic forecasting consultancy.
uh also a futurist. Um I uh focus on the intersection of uh let's say the humanities and technologies and um uh and where um the components of biometrics, immersion, and AI uh intersect.
>> We welcome you, Richard. We're looking forward to your perspective. Joe, please tell us who you are and where you're joining us from and of course inspiration as well.
>> Hey everyone, uh my name is Joe Wilson.
I'm a founder of J Mo Global Consulting and I provide consulting in technical advisory and hands-on support to organizations uh enabling them um consolidate their fragmented data systems into a reliable source of truth and become ready for AI.
I am joining you from Virginia uh Fredericksburg, Virginia this morning and I'm glad to be here. Um, it's very interesting to be on Giverse and I look forward to a very engaging conversation today. Thank you.
>> Of course, Joe. I also look forward to a very interesting conversation. We welcome you, Joe. Leah, please.
Leah, you're muted. Kindly unmute and introduce yourself.
>> There we go. Sorry, I thought the the host had to unmute me. Um, hello. nice to be here and I sincerely appreciate the invitation amongst this incredible stage. My name is Lee Felton. I am the president of the AI for Job Security Foundation where we help communities um around the country embrace AI technologies and understand their power as well as their limitations. Um, I'm calling from the Seattle, Washington area and I'm also the um creator of the co-adaptive anthropotechnical environment lexicon where I'm helping people understand the difference and the evolution of AI from being a tool that we use to actually being an environment that is helping us adapt.
>> You're welcome Leah from the from Washington. We're looking forward to hearing more about what you do. Thank you for joining Shepra. Welcome Shepra. Please introduce yourself.
>> Thank you so much Salvation. Um I hope you can hear me. My name is Shiffraa coming from Kenya. Um I'm the president of the global council responsible AI here in Kenya. Um working in the intersection of cyber security and AI governance. um with a deep uh burden for women in tech uh empower women in tech and also talents in underrepresented places here in Kenya. I'm really inspired to be here because I want to listen to different perspectives of what people are thinking and how we can improve uh what's the coming in the age of AI. Thank you so much.
>> Thank you. She probably welcome you from Kenya. Ian please.
>> Hi everyone. Um I'm the founder of and lead architect of Hara. Um so I've been driving a very um affordable um international level education model based on AI um cognitive science and even logic which is the the most um foundational um framework for learning everything and um so I've been trying to um uh I mean develop this model to reduce educational inequality while redefining um how humans run in the age AI. So uh so we operates on hybrid um B2B B2C model. So we can provide um so like uh without a real time teaching uh we can just um help uh many underprivileged students by providing them uh um you know many different types of useful information and uh learning materials. And at the same time we have just started um uh try uh we have just started uh helping uh the local likeademies.
So uh so that uh teachers can u taking up rest without spending a lot of time in learning new technologies and providing lots of content for their students in this uh competitive uh environment. And uh we are actually thinking about I mean recently we are about to uh get into like one African uh country like probably in Kenya uh an international school so that we can approve our uh effect our also like education impact on the world. So hopefully uh this would go uh as go smooth as >> right. Yes.
>> Yeah. Thank you very much. Well done on the great work you're doing on the education side with K education. Um B, it's good to see you again. Uh please tell us who you are for the first timers and where you're joining us from. Of course, your inspiration for joining us.
>> Sure. Sure. Thank you. It's great to be here again um and to see you all. Um I'm Beth Sukowski. I'm a co-founder of AI Between Worlds. We help small and medium-sized businesses with their ethical AI adoption into their core business operations.
Um, I'm joining from Massachusetts in the United States and um and I'm I'm very excited about this. I'm very optimistic about all of the things that AI can help us with while remaining cautious about a lot of the risks um that we all know that we face. And I'm really looking forward to this discussion and to hearing all of these these great um wonderful people also talk about um their experience as well.
So, thank you.
>> Of course. Thank you very much, Pet. to welcome you and and I am Salvation Chigaraka. I'm the global progress director at Gadavas and I'm joining you from Lagos Island and I'm looking forward to the conversation we're about to have uh to discuss the topic the serious impact AI has already made in our lives. I think this topic it's it's saying it's already happening. It's happening. It's here and we're seeing it. It's not futuristic and that's what this conversation is about and I would like for Amy to open the floor for us and to tell us what she thinks and share with us Amy what AI impact has been felt most around the world looking at the global level what do you think has really impacted we see AI doing a lot of things but we also see AI affecting jobs education even attention spans in schools Ian can testify We also see AI effects in creativity. Of course, the pecs are there, but then what are the impacts on AI right now?
Amy, please tell us it the impact is coming so fast and spreading so quickly that every 10 minutes it seems like there's a new nuance to the impact. I think first there's a tremendous amount of excitement.
Um I think many people are experiencing the uh freedom and creativity and possibility of coding barriers and cost barriers to creating being lowered and finding ways to create scalable solutions um for all different populations in all different ways. So, I think that that's initially what's hitting the human creativity. And humans are a little bit like three-year-olds in terms of a species. They get very, very excited about things, but they don't realize that if they play with something, it could break. And I think that that's a little bit where we are with our enthusiasm around AI. Um I think circles who work more closely with it are aware of many of the downsides. So everything from resource use for large data centers that are destroying communities and water tables with long-term consequences to changing the value of the way we value our human sentience and consciousness. that we are the result of a 13.8 evolutionary experiment and our consciousness is precious and the way that we are looking at AI, it's somewhat downplaying the uniqueness of human capacities rather than looking at the the ways that we can cocreate synthetic intelligence and human intelligence without denigrating our humanity.
I think there's a a lot of people are turning to AI for personal problems and finding some support there and also finding an emptiness there which in long term can be quite debilitating. So I think that that needs a lot of care.
One of the biggest concerns I have is is the use of AI for war and we are already seeing that and you know certain populations have been really affected by that and I think we all want to hold that in our hearts because that uh can accelerate quite quickly and is already having devastating effects. So it's very much uh positive and concerning at the exact same time. So that's in a nutshell.
>> Yes, I I agree with you on that. Uh I will bring Richard to chime in on what you just shared with us. Uh Richard, what do you think?
Can you hear us? Okay, Richard, you're muted. Kindly mute.
>> Yeah. Okay. Yes, I'm I'm okay now. Um I was having some platform issues as well.
um you know I the um impact I felt that I'm kind of seeing around the world is like the um more around not really the I guess the specific AI technologies but the if you want to leave the term efficiencies that it's bringing right so just look at what it you know what it did to like just say search uh in general or you know kind of with Google um you know it's not specific that it's faster this that whatever just just there was like a cultural change away on how we're like looking for information and you know and if we're going only to these AI you know uh systems we're kind of getting kind of what they what they were trained on and stuff like that versus kind of other things like that. So there is a uh I would say information you know funnel you know that is is um um that again it's forcing people to be you know I guess better at it or search at it or do more than one reference or kind of something like that. So um it also when it comes to you know again like how it's if you want to say destroying sectors of jobs um you know it is really kind of again not the technology itself but it's just making people very you know more efficient or quicker right so instead of 10 people you know taking a year to do it now I could do it with two people in four months right so that effect that you know inability for I think culture or workforces or kind of or kind of something like that if you want to leave it need time to catch up, right? So >> um I'm also um seeing uh on the flip side uh you know the um and have forecasted this you know almost a year ago two years ago that kind of u uh negative reaction that we're having toward AI now specifically kind with stu like with students or again the you know kind of the the alphas or the you know kind of late genen z's you know booing you know tech people you know you know at commencement you and uh kind of moving away from smartphones to flip phones, you know, I I actually kind of see that continuing, you know, kind of down the line, too.
And so I'm kind of and again how AI, you know, was, you know, going to, you know, I would say almost have a negative um effect toward technology, you know, kind of overall, but we'll kind of see where it goes.
>> Of course. Um, thank you, Richard. And Richard just mentioned about the impact of AI on the job side and Amy has also mentioned on how it's affecting the consciousness as well as it's being used as a tool for war. What's concerning Dr. Kiana? I'd like to hear your perspective on that with what Richard and I has just shared with us. What do you think?
>> I think AI should be used the right way.
Honestly, I don't think it should be used for war. I don't I'm more your peaceful type of person. not a war person, but when uh it's used, I'm worried about is it being used ethically and what is it being used exactly for?
So, that's basically what I think I should be used for.
>> But, um I think the hesitancy with the Gen Z's, a lot of them that I talked to, they're saying we just don't understand it. And then they're getting, you know, they're not used to it. And I'm I'm hearing comments like that. So I think if it was being used in an ethical manner and used in a way where it's going to help us benefit others in society that it it wouldn't be such a large push back the way it is. And unfortunately that's right now.
>> Yeah. Yeah. I have a follow-up question but I'll be bringing it to Joe. Joe um looking at the state of things with what Dr. Kiana shared and Amy and Richard do you think that we are currently experiencing more positive impact of a on AI of AI rather?
>> Uh thank uh thank you very much. Uh so uh yes I think we are already experiencing the positive impact of AI and I'd like to take a step back right and reflect on where we come from and where we are right now.
So when we speak of AI a lot of people might think that because they are using chat GBT cloud code or Gemini or other AI tools uh they might think that well this is the avalanche of AI but uh no so I come from a data science background right so AI has been in place for a very long time right um AI has been helping organiz organizations uh whether it has been through natural language processing right um semantics analytics those things so we have seen the impact of AI already and we we we know that there are lot of progress that has been made in our lives and that AI has uh dramatically impacted how we have uh made decisions uh whether is by um selecting who's qualified for a mortgage uh who's qualified for a loan.
So all of these things have already already been uh impacting our lives.
But one thing I really really want to uh emphasize is that um that um why is it that we are evaluating the impact of AI in our lives? But I think those who get the most out of AI uh sits uh at the intersection of uh those who have technical versus those who have uh non-technical.
By that I mean that uh it is actually organizations that do understand their operations and data and ensuring that they have the data foundations to make sure they are ready. uh versus organizations that just uh jump onto the chaos, they hide, you know, um because we have cloud code is doing this, ch GPT can do this, uh Google Gemini can do this. So everybody just want to make investment into the AI but not really assessing how fundamentally in in the context of data readiness they are to make the next investment into AI.
So I think uh this is where we can begin to assess the impact of AI from an organizational perspective and then driving down to the individual level. I hope I I hope I answer your question.
>> Yes. Yes, Joe. And you also brought thoughts to my mind as well with what you just shared with the organizational level because we are individuals and we all belong to society as well as the organizations that run this intelligence, this technology and we all belong to this organization one way or the other indirectly or or directly. We we we work with them as staff or we do business with them or we are the are the people that are being laid off from this organization because of the rise of AI and it has affected our jobs and is even affecting education. We see it with the younger generation where AI is affecting the attention spans of this generation and it brings question to my mind from what you just said but I will carry the question over to Leah and Bet of course to give their contributions from what you just shared with us Joe and B I'll be coming over to you with what Joe has just shared with us. I'm thinking, oh, Joel is saying something so great, but what what happens when we lose our jobs from the organizational standpoint because um I I think earlier this year, LinkedIn released a work report that AI is now deeply embedded in workplace productivity and decision making globally. And we know that this is a tool if it's involved in decision making and making decisions for humans. What data is this technology making the decisions from? Who informed this technology? This this this technology information it can use to make a decision over a human and can we trust such data? Better like your perspective on this.
Um, my perspective is aligned with Joe's in that I do believe that getting your data in order is of utmost priority. The issue is is that a lot of people are using a lot of these large language models that have been trained on data that has a lot of bias.
And it's also trained on communication styles that value a sense of confidence and authority so that when it responds, it does so with that same um tone of authority and confidence, which makes people inherently want to believe it um and take it as truth. And what we need to do is understand what decisions we're allowing the AI to make on our behalf and whether or not that's okay. That's an ongoing leadership um challenge and something that I think needs to be explicitly called out as organizations adopt and roll out AI for their workplace and for uh their companies.
So, um, in terms of jobs, um, we do see bias in hiring. Um, you do see a lot of companies laying off and they claim it's due to AI, but yet there's a lot of, um, studies out there that have shown that people really aren't adopting AI at the pace that you would expect it to happen in order to support the layoffs that are happening. Um, so I believe that the layoffs aren't necessarily happening due to AI, but um are are basically that's just the message that is being associated with it. Um that being said, I'm very worried um for you know entrylevel um college students who are facing you know job hunting today um because you know a lot of the jobs that they would normally come into entry level and then learn and have to have some degree of struggle to develop and grow new skills. those tasks and those jobs that are associated with those tasks are being replaced by AI. Now, I do that new tasks will be developed. I do believe that there will be more opportunity and I do believe that as leaders, it's always our job to make sure that there is opportunity for our people and for future generations. So um so I am optimistic that that will happen but we are in that um you know in the throws of a major change um and so so we'll see of course I hope we'll see changes um speaking of consequences but let me bring Leah on this on the consequences that the technology we're already seeing right now you mentioned um the entry levels not being skilled up enough to fit into the recent positions we have right now in these organizations. Leah, what do you think?
>> There's a lot to unpack here. I mean, the conversation really is uncovering a lot of the um significant issues that people aren't understanding with this adoption of AI. For me personally, I believe a lot of enterprise level adoption is like the emperor's new clothes, if you're familiar with that tale that, you know, it looks beautiful and it it looks like everybody is ahead of the game and everybody is adopting it. So, we have to go faster. We have to be AI literate. We have to, you know, have this mass adoption. But that just isn't what's happening. Um, I think it's more smoke and mirrors than anything because right now people need to understand what AI actually is. Had ChatGpt or other um platforms come out instead of saying this is AI, if they said this is a probabilistic engine that is statistically guessing what the answer of your prompt should be based on these little tokens. Um, and that's that's pretty much what it is.
That wouldn't have gotten as much excitement, as much, you know, interaction. Instead, it's like, oh, this is artificial intelligence. Is it going to be smarter than people? And I always push back on that question. Is AI smarter than humans? Think about that.
AI is the mimicked intelligence of humans. Mimicked intelligence. And so just like um Dr. Beth had said, this really does go back to the data. It goes back to our belief in these systems. And so from a data perspective, yes, the data is biased, but it's more than the data being biased. The the people who are building these models, they're biased. The people who are developing the systems, they're biased. you know, everything about why we even use AI for certain things is a result of our individual bias. And so, we have to remember that it's not whether AI is more intelligent or whether humans are more intelligent because humans are complex. We are complex beings and it is our complexity that makes us more intelligent and will always make us more intelligent because AI is not does not think. AI is statistically guessing what the answer should be. And to your point about um younger generations and and uh more junior employees, I hope organizations remember that some of the most innovative thoughts and ideas come from those who have not been in the systems. Come from those who are junior because they think about things differently. They see things that we've just been doing because we have this loop. You know, in corporations, we have this loop. Once we get started on something, we do it that way because it's always been done that way. But it's our junior associates that come in and they question it. And we have to always remember to question not just the patterns and the routines that we have in our lives, but we have to remember to question why is AI coming back with that particular answer? Because as I always say, the limits of the past should not be used to predict our future.
>> Yes. Yes. Yes. Leah, thank you for sharing that with us. Quite insightful perspective from you there. Let's bring Shipron um into the next question. Uh Shepan, we've talked about a lot. Let's bring you. How has AI change humanity's relationship with information? as previously can share with us.
>> Sorry.
>> Can you hear me? She can.
>> Yes, I can hear you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
>> Yes. Bringing you into the next question. And and Max, how has AI changed humanity's relationship with information?
>> Amazing. Thank you so much. Um I've had amazing conversations and for me um I love the point that you mentioned on awareness because this is something that needs to be talked about on consequences. Um AI has changed uh relationships with information and um I think I'll go back to the point on um people being more of uh dependent on on AI. um humans are now outsourcing thinking instead of thinking their own and um making sure that their ideas are genuine and they're upskilling or upscaling with AI. We are trying to use AI for literally everything which is wrong because um as Lee has talked about uh just recently um got me thinking um while AI is making mimicking us and becoming smarter are we becoming dumber and are our students becoming um way less um not aware and not aware that there are different jobs coming to be taken or there are different scams that are coming in um and that's why I love the point on um on awareness um the part of information I'd talk about one thing I had an educator called Jang say um consumerism is the perfection to slavery um we've come to a point where AI is now having all the information from search engines and uh we are getting all this information everywhere and we have made AI to be the final say um we've stopped researching we've stopped going to the ground we've we've stopped so many things that we were doing that kept us in touch as humans and I feel that that has affected us as humans because um we are now um being fully dependent on the AI agents instead of just going out there and making sure that these are the data that is being filled or it's just an assumed data that AI has already mimicked from the statistics as Lee has said.
Yes, Ian. Yes, Shepra. Shepra, what you just shared, I'll come over to Ian with my followup question. When you say there's um a loop with information, there's a gap rather in the information system currently with the presence of AI. Um Ian, let me bring you on the next question. Do you think that um currently do you think that it has affected trust with the way information is now being communicated? Do you think that AI has affected trust in individuals and institution?
>> All right. Um I believe I think we don't really trust each other anymore because what uh what our friends or our colleagues say um might not u their uh ideas actually they might just repeat what they just learned from AI and um they might just fake you know uh just like um um you know as if they are were talking about their own unique ideas.
So because of that uh personally I or because of that or thanks to that I personally don't really have to contact my friends to uh acquire some professional insights from some you know experts um in various areas and so this kind of you know um a breaks our human relationship in society and we we get to be more isolated um we don't contact each other more uh we used to rely on each other even to be more pro uh Paris and to make even more money. Um so this is kind of sad. Um and so basically we are living uh in in new version of the industrial uh revolution. you know during the industrial revolution uh uh just because of the new technologies were developed uh it didn't mean you know people could uh take enough rest or rather actually during the time factories operated for longer hours and production targets grew larger and competition became uh fiercer. This is exactly what's going on and uh but the thing is uh probably like the the people who are dominating the world and uh govern the world uh in the public sectors and especially those like public officials they don't really have to work hard they don't really have to work faster they just get a regular u payment pay uh every month so which means uh just private comp like the private companies or like people in those organic organization will learn and then they will do something you know which could be even like a negative toward the society even though like the ES boom has been going on around but like if the benefit is not um high enough they they will just focus on you know like something negative just to make more money so you know they're going to be much smarter than um people in private sector which means the world will be even more uh dominated and governed by private ones. So in so in this sense I really think in in the future uh like a big social enterprise will be the the answer like u that operate their business uh based on their humanitarian spirit. So they don't really have to be obsessed with uh like maximizing their immediate profit. instead they will just focus on like uh rather than uh being obsessed with the profit they will just try to always like the index about how um sound impact they they are making so I think that's >> thank you thank you Ian thank you for your perspective on that on how AI is affecting trust and the lack of trust currently in the society as we say it I'll be coming with Amy on the next question coming back to you Amy um um she shared more on how information is being affected by AI and uh Ian has also touched on the trust effects currently just briefly Amy just tell us as briefly as you can is humanity more informed or we're more dependent on AI >> I think that's something that we'll see as it rolls out more I think it's a little bit too early to tell >> if we educate our students and our working people in how to work with AI. I think it can make us more informed because you can research well, you can compare sources, you can pull in conflicting sources and contradictory sources and really assess whatever you're studying yourself if we're training people to do that. So, I think that there's a possibility of becoming much better informed in a shorter period of time and I think that's really positive. I know that that's certainly how I use it and it's been really helpful in a lot of the research I'm doing. The one of the things that I'm concerned about is >> the um I don't know if there's a term for it, but a friend of mine called it the McDonaldization of knowledge where every everyone, you know, it's basically English. It's basically pulling it's biasing certain sources and it's it's sending those across the world. Now AI can be used to uplift and preserve dying languages and cultures and bring out alternative points of view and the you know different lifestyles and different approaches and different perspectives right now because of the speed of roll out what we're seeing is what's basically coming out of Silicon Valley and all of the traditional biases and if that rolls out really quickly without um really diverse diversifying our knowledge sources, it we're going to lose so much so quickly, but I think there's the possibility to do the opposite.
>> Yes. Yes. I also think so. Amy, thanks for your perspective on that. Dr. Qua, we have very little time on our clock and please just tell us what are the trade-offs that people are making between convenience and personal privacy with AI. Well, like uh Ian touched on earlier, it's really sad because people are trading off their friends and their relationships for AI. They're figuring if I could reach out to technology and I can get this information through that, I don't need to call a friend. I don't need to call someone to help. So, I think we need to balance everything out and and try to really reach out and touch talk to people because uh AI is intelligence is artificial. We the ones have the human intelligence and we need to recognize there are limits to everything and if we don't balance it out in our lives we we could just have these kind of trade-offs taken over over and over again and it's really sad >> indeed indeed. Um let's come over to you Richard and then Joel just briefly as possible as we can Richard tell us how does AI impact human well-being? Um doctor just shared how we're trading of friendship, we're trading of good relationship and trust which is very vital. Tell us the impact on overall human well-being and quality of life right now with the use of AI.
Well, the mo the thing that sticks out the most is um the um uh let's say the the addition or the um additional uses of uh AI in scientific technologies, pharmaceuticals that that's kind of where I'm starting to see like I would say like where it makes a difference to quality of life.
In fact, the science groups even measure that you could live a 100 years but with a with a bad quality of life or live 20 years with a great quality of life. So there's a kind of a measurement in there, you know. So um you know you know AI again which I try to keep it very positive because you know I know there's a lot of dystopian out there can do you know bring uh like let's just say medicines better or quicker to the market right and for the fact that it can go so deep it can go almost go down to an individual's DNA you know an individual's you know kind of session so actual cures you know of something instead of just kind of keeping you on drugs forever you know kind of things like Um you know then um you know the other kind of quality of life I get you know kind of from AI you know kind of in back when it comes to like you know again humanity again is uh the um almost like kind of the reciprocal part of you know we now have more information do this faster right or you know get this information out you know kind of you know quicker or include it into what you're doing so you can then make that you know that that much better you know that much you know further. So um those are the I would say that kind of like a the speed you know and then um and then quality of life is where I think a lot of the um you know utopian aspects of AI come from.
>> Thank you Richard. Thank you Richard.
Let's bring in Joe to the questions. Um Joe um with what Richard has just shared with us. I don't think anyone here right now on this panel would want to experience being um on lifelong medication just to survive, just to leave. That would be a sad experience generally and and I hope not for the future of humanity. That should be so. Um Joe, um what are emerging concerns about AI security and privac privacy risks in everyday life?
Joel please as as as briefly as possible just give us some few um facts on this on this question.
>> Uh so um that is a great concern um because the great benefits of AI comes with confidence and security. So uh I come from the AI work space. So I know that uh AI one thing I'm very confident about is that AI can amplify the insecurities or vulnerabilities in whatsoever systems you are working with in so far that the foundation especially from the data perspective is not solidified and it is not trained to become AI ready. So um from an insecurity perspective AI can do so much. It can impersonate your verses. I mean AI can amplify unrealistic and insecure uh evidence in the context of AI suggestions and people can tend to believe that. So we are now in a world of information. We are generating more data than ever before. So uh unverified uh misinformation can be amplified by AI. The point is that those of us that are into the AI space and organizations that are seeking to leverage the goods from AI must ensure that the data from which they are leveraging AI is verifiable, is trustworthed, is reliable. And that is one reason why I tend to speak with many theme leaders to ensure that their data foundation is solid, it's trusted and is reliable because anything outside of that is what amplifying misinformation.
Uh even if you go across Africa, the emerging markets that deal with a lot of democracies even for us here in the United States, we see that misinformation tend to be amplified by AI and that is a serious security issues. So I believe that those that are leveraging AI must ensure that security is addressed, data reliability, data truth is addressed so that we do not amplify the insecurities or misinformation that have been generated by the hallucination of AI because it just tried to generate it own information which of course is not fundamentally true.
>> So I have to step in right there. you have unpacked so much on on this uh questions. I'm sure you've answered that question very well and thank you very much for your perspective and your insights on on the risks of artificial intelligence and how you can amplify it.
Uh thank you very much. Um panelists we have very little mean very little time on our clock. I'm looking at it right now and I can see that so much has been discussed and expressed and a lot has been shared on the impact of EI on our lives today. And I hope for one good reason that everything we've discussed here for the sake of humanity and everything we've talked about, everything we've shared, everything we hope for that truly it can be considered when these technologies are being used in real time. And that the impact of artificial intelligence can be positive, can preserve trust, can preserve relationships, can preserve jobs, can give hope to the entrylevel employee who hopes to be an engineer, a business person, a doctor, whoever. And that what what matters to humanity would not by humanity be given to artificial intelligence. Panelists, thank you for joining the conversation. I would say a gada was well. Thank you very much.
Over to the university.
Heat.
Heat.
Greetings and welcome back to Gatherverse AI evolved day two. We're so happy to be able to still be able to sojourn with you after that incredible roundt discussion. It was deep. There was a lot unpacked and yet we still have so much more to be able to go with us.
Joining on stage is Dr. Akiat.
I want you to please let us know who you are, what you're doing, and what inspired you to be here today. There's so much to be able to discover.
Hi uh Christopher it's really great uh to join gather gather verse again and uh having you as the moderator of this uh fireside chat uh so I'm an educator a researcher uh I have uh earned my doctoral degree in instructional technology and media uh specifically in art multimodal embodied artificial intelligence where I compared uh between chat GPT and uh artificial intelligence in mixed reality. And I really found the amazing results not because of artificial intelligence, but because of how humans can actually embed artificial intelligence within sound pedagogical uh frameworks and help students attain learning outcomes and also have self-confidence. Um, I've also taught virtual reality, um, UX design, uh, human computer interaction, and I also, uh, currently teach, um, AI courses at the media university of applied sciences, uh, about, um, uh, like, uh, designing, um, AI companions and embodied conversational AI for diverse topics, advertising, uh, education, uh, health, uh, you name it. and uh the students really uh I I really love teaching so and doing research as well.
Yeah, >> we're definitely happy to have you and thank you so much for taking and carving out a small amount of time to be able to join us. I certainly am happy to join you on stage. I've had the pleasure of being able to spend time and we've had the pleasure of being able to learn together in various vocations. Uh, I've considered your work tantamount and rather important, especially with the consideration of what we're looking at when it comes to visual intelligence.
You mentioned the words embodiment and we start thinking about artificial intelligence and synthetic embodiment and what those two worlds look like coming together. What does it mean when we're able to build out these intelligent worlds or semi-intelligent worlds, I should say, or artificially procedurally generated worlds, if you will, with a hint of intelligence. What are your studies showing you today?
Because everyone that's listening and joining us at gatherverse.live and our various other social streams, we're so happy to have you. But everyone that's joining us here, they must need to know that this is the dawning of the next president that we're looking at in this amalgamation of computer science, in this amalgamation of uh if you will uh uh even life sciences, but more so thinking about it in terms of applied sciences as you may mention. When these sciences come together in particular when we're looking at visualization or hyper realism and we're thinking about these type of transformer mechanisms or vja world models coming into view uh into these embodiment what are you seeing and especially when it comes to prospective uh agentic systems.
>> Yeah. So, so I was actually uh like uh dealing with a problem um in a specific area of research where immigrant students they don't have access to uh tools um where they can't uh be prepared for uh the job uh and and workforce. And so the problem is is that usually there are uh classes that help uh non-native speakers. Um but the problem is usually with educators. There's no problem with educators. But the thing is is that they come from a language learning uh background which has been documented a lot by research and uh the curriculum itself. So they are also the ones who create the curriculum. And so the thing is when you teach students who come from um nursing background, engineering background or and also other backgrounds, you can't give them the the guidance, right? And yes, we we know how to answer interview questions, but every job has its own set of uh questions and um and in different ways. And so artificial intelligence was embedded to help the students in a specific amount of time. And so there was like three uh types of students or groups. Ones who used um chat GPT in order to prepare themselves for job interviews only for 20 minutes every week uh within a 4-hour class. And um others uh were traditional teaching. So it's only the instructor who helps the students and uh the third ones were uh students who uh interacted with embodied multimodal artificial intelligence. So both AIs were multimodal one with chat GPT voice and the other one with AI in mixed reality.
So it's an AI avatar sitting on a desk and and stuff like that. And so uh I have seen students uh like who had access to chat GPT but they preferred uh to do the interview um and actually they asked for more time but I I couldn't allow them I allowed them after the study uh to practice more with the convey so it was convey in in mixed reality and uh they said that we like it yes it is AI uh we feel like um we can risk you are very nice with us and you can feel like uh when we are struggling but you don't have the exact information about nursing and about this and AI can provide us with this uh extra information that you can't uh provide us with and we love how we are in a in um in a setting like that makes us feel like we are in a in a real interview. So they would sit and there's a woman in front of them in mixed reality uh that was ready player me and then uh they would uh practice uh job interview and I also noticed that uh students who used mixed reality they asked more questions about their aspirations in the future.
So a student who wanted nursing, they were like, "Oh, so what should we do in order to uh like excel in in nursing?
What are other programs? How can we improve uh like um like areas in in in nursing and so on?" And then they actually kept writing uh notes. uh whereas the students of course who were doing Chad GPT uh they also exhibited certain behaviors like they were not interacting with gesture which also made me feel like okay so how about another study uh looking at how they behave with AI uh especially that uh I'm not a person who likes self reports I use the heart rate and I also used certain measures in order to to really know if students like how students um interact with artificial intelligence and how they perceive it. And uh through interviews which actually uh sparked my attention was that um they described artificial intelligence as a an older brother, a friend uh a woman and I felt this anthropomorphic perception of AI which led me to another study and uh what I've seen when they interacted with artificial intelligence is that we can't consider it as a tool anymore. It's not a tool because it's not like a calculator. It doesn't just give you an answer but it actually like gives you answers interacts with you and uh of course there are risks behind using artificial intelligence. The other thing when it when AI becomes an avatar in mixed reality it actually adds to like realism and social presence of artificial intelligence. And this can be sometimes risky uh if not guided well by an an instructor. And so yeah, >> I think about that that's very fascinating on so many different fronts that you're saying that we're not relating that as a tool. But let me kind of digress into what you're talking about with this experience with the students themselves. I can't help but think about the uncanny valley. I can't help but think about what does that look like when we start to think about this uncanny valley? we start to think about human factor development uh cognitive um fidelity and we start thinking about contextual fidelity what was that experience like does the computer vision the multimodal the concatenative or parametric synthesis I don't know which one a multimodal you're using but with the communication of speech and the computer vision do you feel like it enhances does it does it expand um or does it limit uh the uncanny valley in terms of human factor ergonomics.
>> Okay. So, at first the students were kind of like they they they actually felt the uncanny valley like, "Oh, that's so weird. Uh, how am I going to talk to this woman?"
Okay. And the in the first session when I onboarded the students, some of students were so nice like they came because they um they just I mean sometimes when the instructor is kind with students sometimes they can just volunteer. Uh later on when they found out like you can perceive like the convey is not uh like other engines where you can feel the uncanny valley like sometimes it can repeat itself. Uh but um the thing is when you structure the um when there is a purpose within the classroom like the instructor um like has um a good pedagogical framework. I think that the the use of artificial intelligence becomes normal and they understand that this is AI. uh we shouldn't be afraid of it because I've actually seen many people who used this application at first and at first they were actually oh my no I wouldn't even use it but then later on when they when they started using it I even even instructors who used this application uh they they actually started leaning forward treating it as if she is the she's she's a woman and they were treating it with respect although they know exactly that this is an avatar.
Sure.
>> And they started to behave as if she is a human. But in case in terms of enhancing or not, that's actually the role of the human instructor. It's not the role of AI. And also it depends. So it depends on many factors. So for example I I don't know which stage you mean but uh sometimes we need to prepare the students uh from Bloom's taxonomy for example it has lower order thinking skills and higher order thinking skills and when it comes to enhancing uh students uh perspective or I mean enhancing students like in terms of critical thinking or creative behavior >> um I've seen many examples whether from um from students who are second language learners or my students also who studied virtual reality or or artificial intelligence. When the student understands the concepts very well, the foundational concepts very well uh and also they were able to understand or meet the learning outcomes uh they can actually do well with AI generative AI and sometimes they also may not choose generative AI to to do the design. So for example, I have seen competitions with the students who use artificial intelligence and students who who didn't and I've yeah I mean students who didn't use AI were not allowed to use AI in my study. they actually memorized they were memorizing like from websites. Okay. Uh or from lectures uh whereas students who had prior knowledge about their previous job they actually use artificial intelligence. Do they know what they're doing? Okay. So the thing is AI does not enhance unless me as a human know what I want to do. Okay. And I'm capable of actually using uh or kind of like I don't know how to do that how to to say this but you know this um um term or jargon in uh um garbage in garbage out in in computer science >> and so I have seen students who understand what they want like for example uh using multimodal um AI in a VR class I've seen students who understand the learning uh spatial uh technology very well. They understand VR interactions and when they use artificial intelligence, they use it wisely and they use it for a purpose.
Whereas I've seen students who are heavy VR gamers but when it comes to transferring this from from a design thinking perspective and designing a VR game or designing a VR experience, they actually struggled when they used AI.
they they really struggled. They were like, "Hey, uh, I want to do a game on uh uh what's it called? It was um I don't remember the name of the the game, but they wanted to create a game." And Chad GPT uh created something that has nothing to do with VR. It could kind of like fitting a 2D game into VR. So, it was really like I had to sit with them during studio hours to teach them like, "Hey, what's VR interactions? We've explained this before." until we came up with um like we generated a good um story for the VR game and then afterwards we generated like the game uh mechanics and stuff like that and so I I I wouldn't say that how AI uh would um support uh but it's actually how human centered AI so there has to be human in the loop everywhere in every step that would guide students into that process where because AI on its own if you don't know what you're doing it would generate garbage.
>> That's right. You know, I think about this I think about embodiment. I think about anatomical structures and anthropomorphism and how students or even said as the faculty leaned in into the context of the actual experience itself in a multimodal uh setting.
>> Let me ask you this Dr. Okay. Um, with the few minutes the few minutes that we have left, we're looking at the exploration or the explosion of virtual worlds made by prompt and we see this being uh uh something that has changed the dynamics of innovation when you and I come from an industry uh where we've seen hundreds of people u just to make one virtual world and now that we're able to see such a polomial constructs to be able to come together and the way that they're being able to come together and they're being displayed and built.
Um, you know, I could take an image and then I can create a whole virtual world, if you will. I think about this embodiment that you're expressing onto us these lessons. We're thinking about these NPCs that are embedded in these environments.
What relationship does the anatomical multimodal construct of new of fret uh that continues to grow empirically by hydra by hypers scale observation if you will that continues to grow? What do you foresee the new relationship or this new defining relationship between the modern centric avatar that has some type of semi-intelligence if you will and these semi-intelligent built environments or built worlds? What is that amalgamation if if you will?
What does that look like from your lens perspective?
>> That's a lot to unpack and that's a lot to unpack. I get it. That's that's about as bleeding cutting edge of a question that I can ask in relation to the work and your research that you're doing. Um, when it comes to avatar development, contemporary avatar development, do you have a sense on what this might look like?
>> Can you just repeat the question because I >> Sure. So, if we take the virtual worlds that are being >> So, what's the relationship?
>> Yeah, sure. the the new relationship between the new avatar, the new virtual world setting or visual intelligence, spatial intelligence. What does that look like when we start to think about from the perspective that I have this semi-intelligent agent that's walking around in this constructed or gener generated environment? What is the nature of that? What does that look like? I mean, this is all cutting edge.
This is all frontier. We have no owner's manual for this. We have no guides.
There's no books that are surrounding that. I wouldn't even say that >> even if we look at Rodenberry. Sure, we could look at references of of fiction, Rodenberry or or Klein's uh anthrop ontological anthropocentric uh simulation immersive system, the Oasis, if you will. We could see that, but we're starting to see, it seems to me, these stepping stones um formated before us in real time. Do you have anything on that when you start thinking about this avatar work? because this is to me what you're working on is extremely cutting edge um when it comes to Yeah. Go ahead.
Go ahead.
>> Yeah, sorry. I I mean what's the purpose of the avatar?
>> So I have um two research papers that are is there are systematic literature reviews. one is a critical literature review about AI enhanced language learning environments in immersive environments and uh they actually it's a comparison between um the cave allegory and uh constructivism and so you can create as many AI avatars as you want in in a generated uh VR world but what's the purpose of the AI avatar does it really help users who who come into the world for a specific purpose or not. I also have intelligent tutors in immersive environments where I look at uh previous research in medicine and others. And what I uh what I found out is that what's the purpose? Why do I need an intelligent agent? Okay, is there a need? Why a need in an immersive environment? Does it relate to things that I need to do in the VR world like VR interactions or just a 2D interface?
Um so the the first thing is is a purpose.
Like for example uh I was uh I was I teach this AI course and my students were like so I was teaching the u design thinking uh model and then uh so the students by the end of the course they should uh create embodied AI agents in immersive environments and one of the students was like well I have this problem and it's in advertising and um and I'm like yes but this wouldn't work like AI in in this area wouldn't work. So I'm not here to make you fit an AI agent in immersive world just because of the course. We are here actually to struggle to uh discuss uh to challenge our assumptions and then find a purpose of this AI avatar in this role in this immersive world.
>> Yeah. So I think starting with purpose first >> and I've seen in design sprints many designers they have very optimistic views about AI.
>> AI is capable of doing many things but I'm like yeah but you are actually bypassing the friction.
>> Okay we actually need to struggle.
>> Yeah. So I think we should start by purpose first.
So with that said, I I sit here and have extreme appreciation for the way that you answered that because the way that you answered it is authentic in the sense of you didn't try to fit it to where it doesn't belong that we start with purpose. What's the reason? What's the nature of the avatar?
>> Dr. Aaya, it speaks to why we've been able to share stage with you once again.
And as quick as it come to quick as it goes, our time is over. we have to now launch this round table. We look forward to being able to have more of an extended conversation with you in the near future. Uh there's so much uh everyone that's sitting here with us at gatherverse.live and various social streams take a look at the research that Dr. Akayad I vouch for it. It's some of the most cutting edge when it comes to immersive intelligence in the world and I certainly appreciate uh having this opportunity to be able to join you on stage. Dr. Akayad, thank you so much.
Our gather was well.
>> Thank you so much. It's a a great honor to be interviewed by you and be here in Gatherverse. Thank you so much, Chris.
>> Thank you so much.
And with that said, we're coming and headed on the heels of our next round table discussion moderated by Lin Gatau, the communications director for Gatherverse. The focus is on the agentic economy. We're seeing multi-headed agentic systems, hive swarms, and general agents that are operating beyond these models. They're non-deterministic.
They're doing incredible things. They're designing, coding, making, breaking, and hacking. They're used in the vestages of warfare, and they're used in the kitchen in our homes. There's so many things that we're starting to see when it comes to agentic systems. And we want to know more. We need to know more. And we're about to get that perspective. What it means at this intersection of humanity.
Mayor Gather be well.
Hello and greetings. Welcome to our second panel AI evolve summit 2026 day two and our round table panel topic is a gigantic economy the new infrastructure of digital commerce now before we get started I kindly request each of you my dear panelists to kindly mute up mic until called upon and with that said let's get into the heart of the matter I want to appreciate Christopher with laying a very good foundation with Dr. Ammani and of course the other panelists who are here before us and this is just a continuum of this conversation. We're going to be brief and we're going to be very very genuine with our experience. There's no need for perfection. Just pour out your heart.
Okay. And I will start with the introductions. I will begin with addition since he's the only male in this camp. Please tell us who you are briefly and what inspired you to join us today.
>> Hello ladies, my name is Tisha Mo. I'm the founder of a technologies where we deal with technology in the hospitality sector. We use our technologies to enhance guest experiences. or you think um HVS systems so your basic um sound systems, TV screens, uh writing pads, guest feedback systems, basicity systems. Thank you.
>> All right, Dish, you are in the right place. You're going to tell us about how you are applying agents. Sadia, this is not your first time. Welcome. Tell us who you are and what inspired you to join us today.
>> Thank you. It's an honor to be here with Gather verse again. My name is Saddio Jonas. I am the founder and chief AI officer of AI Advantage Consulting where I lead organizations through safe, governable, human- centered AI adoption uh that ensures that they get a return on their investment in AI technologies. I'm also the founder of the Academy for AI Strategy where I help leaders to gain all the skills that they need to be able to guide their teams through this AI augmented era.
>> And we're very happy to have you once again, Nagawa. This is not your first time as well. Please tell us who you are for the first timers and what inspired you to join us today.
Hi, I'm Nago and I um a consultant at Azure Zenith, also the co-founder of AI Between Worlds and um we um I help um all right uh it seems there's a little bit of mic problems there, but we are going to fix it. Shine, over to you. You know, take the mic. Take the mic.
You're muted.
>> Thank you guys so much. My name is Charlene Nichols. I'm the founder uh and CEO of Omniverse City. Um I've been building uh e-commerce, B2B commerce and B2B TOC commerce systems for over 20 years and uh we started build working with um introducing our AI uh fellows about three years ago uh developing um more like community members than just agents. uh we found that there was a really big opportunity to help navigation through a lot of these virtual tools and spaces through AI. So I'm really excited to talk about the convergence of those two worlds.
>> Yes. And we're very delighted to have you. And now with me we have Russell Bandandy who just joined you. Please tell us who you are although we know but tell us for the first timers and what inspired you to join this panel.
Well, first of all, thank you for having me, Lynn. And those you don't know me, my name is Russell. I am the affairs director or global affairs director at Gavverse. I'm also the co-founder of Just Verify. And Just Verify is focused on building the trust infrastructure for AI. Um so our mission is to basically build the trust in infrastructure for AI so that anyone can transparently and you know adopt and use it and basically um engage basically with it. And um our vision basically is to create a future in which everyone can independently verify their AIS doesn't matter if it's agentic or you know normal models or world models or any other models. Um so you know happy to be here and happy to be part of the panel and I'm looking forward to talking about agentics because I've been studying and watching and learning and building and all different stuff around the last few years. So I'm looking forward to the discussion. Definitely, Russell. We can't wait to hear your side of verification. Now, panelists, as we wait for the others because they're coming back, I want us to just get started. And AI agents have been doing the rounds for some months right now. And uh this is not just about u AI analyzing giving information but we've moved to a level where AI is acting on our behalf and uh with it acting on our behalf there's something that comes along with it and especially when it comes to business and digital commerce for me I see new models of businesses will emerge from I uh from AI agents or intelligent agent And I also see an opportunity where there's so many things that will be amplified about a business that AI will expose to the world. I'm not the best person to to to really talk about this.
I'm here with you Charlene. Let's start with the first question. What defines an agentic economy in practical terms and anyone can chime in as well.
Um well we are actually building a digital economy in Omniverse City that is modeled after similar like standards like for instance The Sims or you know Roblox. They all have their own little in-game economy. So we are actually using in-game economics to create a more a a safer sandbox for people to experiment. In-game currency is a lot uh in my opinion a lot safer for people to buy, sell, and trade within these agentic worlds. And because we have natives to omniverse city which we call digisens they understand the economy. So the um the problem with um any sort of gamified economics whether it be like in-game economies or even like let's talk about something like crypto we all know what happened during web 3. was so complex and even though there were a lot of great tools there that people could have used um there were so many people using them insidiously that the people that never got in on boarded properly to use them correctly um there wasn't a balance there right so there was like a a hyper um uh application of the wrong way of using these things and not the right way so I think there is no right way to define agentic economies in p practical terms because there's different countries, different cultures, different communities, all these different things.
So, I think the beautiful thing about the agents is they're agnostic. They don't really um need to define what's right and what's wrong. They can create an adaptive environment where we can all experiment in real time without the friction that comes with economic clash.
>> All right. All right. I I hear you. I hear you shim but I really want to follow up on that because we we have different perspectives different industries and sad I see you Bing and Russell but let me hear your thoughts Sio do you agree with Shelling what is your thought >> actually I would actually like to uh back up slightly um from what uh Charlene is talking about um what she was talking about is a little further down the road from where I want to start the reason why I'm going to back up is because when I announced to my audience ience that I was going to be speaking on this panel. I was shocked at the amount of DMs that I received when I said your your next customer might not be human.
And people really didn't understand what that meant. And they sent a me some messages to me asking me what do you mean by that and what does that have to do with leadership and all of that stuff. So I had to write a whole article about it. So I realized that we who are practitioners in the space, we already understand what it means to have an agentic economy, but we sometimes forget that people who are not practitioners in the space don't know what that means. So I'm just going to back up a little bit and just give a short history so that we can catch people up as to what that means. When we moved from being able to like physically go to a market and buy things onto the web, onto the web, we needed some way to verify that A we were going to get the product that we wanted to get, B that it was going to be the quality that we wanted, etc. So, we we developed an architecture of trust on the internet with reviews, with pictures, with like verified purchases from other people before. We looked to see signals of okay, how long has this um company been in existence just as a way to reassure us that that we're going to have a quality experience with a particular vendor buying something online and that's e-commerce then so that and and a lot of that um focused on you know being able to search on Google and be able to find whatever we're looking for. Then more recently after the rise of generative AI we were looking at you know large language models like chat GPT etc to recommend um products recommend companies etc to us that's even still very recent right and that you know comes with a level of trust I was shocked uh when um I just got a client who came to me because I was recommended by chat GPT and now we're taking we're going to another step where AI is not only recommending products to us based on what we ask but actually is able to take the steps and go and purchase something on our behalf >> with our instruction and that's where you know what the agentic economy is. It is the idea that something who is not human acting under the direction of a human or a group of humans, an organization, etc. is going out there making decisions about purchasing and bringing products back to the original um person that sent that agent out. So, I just wanted to mention that because not everyone understood what that meant.
>> Sad, you did a very beautiful job by defining it for audience who are new.
Thank you so much. And I really hope your audience are tuned in and they now understand better and we're going to discover more. Russell, what's your take when it comes to defining an aigentic economy perfectly?
>> Yeah, I mean I I'll take a step above what Sadio has been saying. Um, you know, first of all, economy in general is obviously financial, right? Financial distribution. So when we talk about financial when we're talking about agentto agent transactions it's more about cryptocurrency uh instant transactions not just you know um kind of like you know giving cash to them because that's not possible unless they're a robot then maybe but um but it's it's about instantaneous uh transaction from one another. It's about the different forms of cryptocurrency.
You've got stable coins uh you got um your token like tokens like for example Ethereum etc. So you you've got all different ways in which you can kind of pay for transactions instantaneously. So that is a important part of the economy.
The second point as well is when we're talking about um sort of like how do we do transactions? So for example, if a platform is let's say they're selling a certain type of data, right? and and an agent wants to get hold of that data there are mechanisms in place or being put in place that um you know make sure that basically the agent pays for the data rather than scrap scrape it so for example there's a a thing called a http x42 um so that mechanism in particular basically says right the agent has to pay in order to access for the data so that you can gather the data to then be used so let's say for example you're finding out something about a report or if you want to find something about I don't know certain information certain research you're doing then you pay for that data to that platform to then get that data so then your agent then retrieves that for you on your behalf so just a couple more things to add to this economy but I think economy is very widespread and I think the very simplest way to think about it is it is financial is transactions and it's that agents are going to be working on your behalf doing those transactions >> all right thank you for bringing uh in the financial uh side of things. And this drags me to the next question and I'm bringing it over to you Dan. How are autonomous agents changing economas dynamics? Russell did the financial side. You're good in design. You've been uh in the design space and all that and customer service and all that. Please tell us your thoughts.
>> Thank you. Thank you, Dean. Well, as the Russell has said, we have to get ready for the buyers and the buyers the customers are changing and not are not human alone and becoming machines. So such like your website if you have a website if it includes only PayPal to purchase alone is supposed to include also crypto. If you don't accept crypto now, you're supposed to start accepting crypto payments as well. And also your inventory and whatever it is you're offering has to be updated in real time, not months, not weeks, seconds if possible. So that whoever is looking at your inventory, whoever wants to purchase the service or product as um you have to consider that it is machines, not people who are buying these things. So you have to try and keep up with whatever it is you're offering. Thank you.
All right, let me just open this widely.
Let me just open this conversation.
We've mentioned now businesses. It's not about B2B but AI to AI. Is that what we are saying? Literally AI to AI, consumer replaced, AI to AI. This is where we are going. S I see you. But I just want to hear from Shelling before we even go to the next question. What is the the nature of e-commerce dynamics right now?
Well, I just want to continue to lean into my position, which is there's no normal and there's no usual way of doing things. Um, uh, let's go back to something that we don't really talk a lot about in these types of conversations. The majority of local small businesses, and again, that's my focus. So, that's whenever I speak, that's the context I'm coming from. The majority of small local businesses, Main Street USA, never embraced e-commerce.
the closest they got to was maybe like eBay or like you know like um Uber Eats you know they they kind of adopted these logistical solutions but very few of them equipped themselves with the resources to get pictures and descriptions and Sio I love what you talked about I call it no like and trust because that's the foundation of how internet search began when it comes to Google kind of taking over every algorithm update until recently when they just threw all the rules out the book and said, "Screw it. We got to follow AI and fight fight for the fight." Right? But up until very recently, it's been signals to know, like, and trust you. And how is that going to be possible when most people don't know, like, or trust AI. So, um, I do believe to answer your question directly, Lynn, we are racing towards a world where AI, my AI would talk to your AI. Unfortunately, the infrastructure and the uh ecosystems that have to emerge from all of these like tools and toys that people are cobbling together. It's not happening because we're looking at solutions as like these kind of plug-andplay band-aids when you you really have to do your research. And um we we don't have an intelligent intelligence gap anymore because we have access to as much intelligence as our tokens will allow us to buy. But what we do have is a growing knowledge gap, an experience gap. And AI cannot fix that. AI cannot yet go into your brain and install the knowledge in you. So we have to really continue to challenge ourselves to level up and above all observe the source of truth.
make sure you know where um that information and those decisions are coming from and make sure it's transparent and I don't believe that it will always have to be crypto that powers these payments. I do believe you're going to see >> shing we're going to hold that thought for a while because I feel the financial sector especially when you talk about economy it's one deep conversation and I I I will I will I will go back to we just before we we we conclude with this uh amazing discussion but you mentioned something very good about infrastructure who's building this infrastructure and that has been always the concern when it comes to machine learning when it comes to uh just just general generative AI who is feeding the data and it's not uh agentic AI is not different from that but who this brings me to to to the next question who controls decision making in a genticdriven transaction is it the person who fed the AI agent is it the person who is using the AI agent or is it the AI agent itself working on itself without even the data we don't know if they're speaking to to each other. So I I want to really get this scope but before that I see Nagawa. Uh Nagawa please tell us who you are briefly so that we can bring you in into this conversation. Uh I I think you're in a position to do so. Tell us who you are briefly kindly.
All right. Nagawa is still working on her mic. We're very happy to have her.
All right. Sio I'm bringing you to this because I see you very excited. I want to share the same excitement as you.
>> Yeah, sure. Actually, that that the answer to that question is multironged.
um for the person who is sending the agent out, right? It is their responsibility to decide whether or not they want to permission that agent to act on their behalf completely autonomously or if they want the agent to go out, pull together recommendations, be prepared to make a decision but then check with the human the human in that in that cycle is called the human in the loop to check with that person first before getting a final authorization. Or sometimes it could be that a system is set in place that checks against a for a particular set of criteria so that a human doesn't have to be involved but a decision making gate point is created so that it's as as long as all these criteria are checked then the agent has permission to move forward. Now on the the other side the the the the the business that the agent is sent to the person on the the the agent on the other hand side of the transaction. Right?
Similarly to that the the the business or the person who is doing the selling, they have to be able to prepare their businesses for the fact that agents are going to be looking. So, they're going to have to make sure that they have trustworthy infrastructure, right, that agents feel comfortable interacting with or else they would not recommend that to their original user, right? They have to have privacy policies, um, secure transactions in place or else that wouldn't happen and they will be on their side. They would have to make decisions about whether they are going to interact with other agents or not.
their their agents are going to have to have criteria um determining which agents are trustworthy um to do transactions with etc. And I would imagine that this is where Russell's solution comes in when it comes to verification. Um because that's part of the architecture of trust on both ends.
>> All right. You know, Sadio, before I even just jump to the the next uh speaker, I have a really uh good followup on that. When when we talk about infrastructure, I'm still drawing to what Shaling said. Does it mean businesses that don't have the infrastructure to build the right AI agentic systems will either be left behind?
What will happen to them? What's the scenario here? And someone else can chime in as well beside you. Yes, that's the thing I'm extremely concerned about because this is something that leaders really are not thinking about and they may have worked hard to de to build up their businesses etc. and their businesses are going to be completely passed over and be literally invisible to a whole host of consumers that they haven't prepared for, right? And so if they haven't built that infrastructure even at the most basic level in terms of making their website so that it their website is readable and intelligible by a by agents >> um making sure that their business creates thought leaderships to which the agents can refer to when making a decision about whether their business is credible or not because that's how um agents work. And then also having the infrastructure to interact, having their own agents to be able to interact, that's even more advanced. But even at the basic level, lots of businesses are going to be passed by just like uh Charlene indicated with the mom and pop businesses. I'm very concerned about small and mediumsiz businesses and mom and pop businesses.
>> Well, and there's a thought I want to quickly add to that, Lyn.
>> Please do. And then Ros come to you.
>> Yeah, super quick. Um, I stumbled upon an what I believe is an answer. Not the answer, but an answer. There's massive workforce development solutions going on right now. And these kids that are between the ages of eight and 18, they know exactly the types of jobs that they want to have, and they're very creative and very inventive. So, we're actually devel we're teaming up with schools right now. We've got uh contracts with schools to bring these children into simulation environments where they can build their own AI agents >> that represent the jobs that they want to have and then go out into the community and meet these businesses and show them. My my big thing you guys know from if you've been watching me on this show from since the beginning is optical. Optical and optometry is Main Street USA supreme. Okay? you couldn't find a better use case. And a lot of these um kids are trying to help them understand they want to have like virtual tryons. They want to have like loyalty rewards programs for going outside and getting exposure to, you know, vitamin D. They want to get, you know, points for wearing their glasses.
So the these kids are developing these programs, reimagining the types of experiences they want to have, creating jobs that fill in those gaps and then teaching these local businesses all through a workforce development program.
So there's solutions that are out there, but we're not going to get it by telling them that they're going to fall behind and by their, you know, they're going to get wiped over the coals. We're going to have to educate them, equip them, and then we're just going to have to give them the give them the space to make these decisions. I've been, you know, whether it be and I I'll put a period here, Lynn, but whether it be helping them to understand how important website development is, SEO is, I've been through through every spectrum of the journey. That complacent attitude has not changed, but they're at the end of the road now of that complacency, and I think they're finally ready to listen.
>> All right, Charlene, you brought a very important point, bringing in the new generation, and that's a very brilliant example when you're bringing kids because it's it's it's a multigenerational issue. addition be prepared as as I come to you Russell.
What do you think about what Sadio and Shadin just expressed briefly?
>> I mean first of all um I just kind of want to go back to the infrastructure.
The infrastructure is the infrastructure around the agent. So that can mean anything from the data center all the way to protocols all the way to you know the systems around the AI agent. So I just kind of wanted to clarify that. Um and second of all as well um you know when we're talking about um agent to agents or when we're talking about interactions with agents you know they have their own communication system which they have within this you know from one to another. So when we talk about trust, when we're talking about trustworthy or when we're talking about anything along those lines, we have to be very careful in how we say that within agents because unless we have the right uh mechanisms in place, whether we have the right, right verification, right, the right validity, the right provenence, the right authentication, authenticity, etc. Unless we have all that in place, right, we can't really say something is truly trustworthy, so to speak. Now can it earn our trust through what I like to call uh trust proof or proof of trust? Sure that works. But at the same time we have to be careful and how what we say and how we say it because it's important that we gather all this evidence together to say right something is actually verifiable or like let's say an an agent is verifiable and and that therefore it's trustworthy, right? rather than just saying very loosely trust this or trustworthy that because at the end of the day you can't take what vendors say to to heart, right? You can't say you like even these benchmarks that you look at, you can't you know half of them are even being lied to as well. But the point is is if you very careful have the right frameworks around it have the right infrastructure in place and have the right mechanisms around it then you can align and make sure that that agent is trustworthy to a certain extent because >> yes >> something being fully autonomous you know you can't you know 100% predict what's going to happen but >> as trustworthy as it can be at least anyway. Yeah, Russell, you really uh highlighted what many business are really concerned about and that is trust and I I admire what you do. Uh just verify uh but let me just shift gears to you Dishon. What new models have you seen especially in this part of the world that is Africa and many other parts you're dealing with? What new business models are emerging in an agentic economy?
>> Thank you. Thank you Lee. Well, because Africa has a problem with trust. I think new business models that are going to arrive are the ones that are going to actually garner the trust that is required for these systems to work. Um so if the policies so policies if we have better policies that are going to guide these systems that are going to be built better policies and better systems that are going to guide these things these systems that are being built is going to help the people who are going to interact with these systems and for the new businesses that are going to keep coming. I think I think the trust the trust is the most important thing.
One way or another it it all it all comes down to do you really believe the agent that you are using for your own purpose is fulfilling what you want it and need it to do on your behalf. If if that is a yes then transaction is seamless. If not then a lot of question marks and then the whole system breaks down.
>> Yes. Uh and I believe that's one of the question we always ask ourselves. Do I trust an AI agent to really do a transaction for me? Do I trust an AI agent to for example maybe for example an hospital? Do I trust AI agents to really tend to a client or to a sick person and recommend something before they arrive to the hospital? Do I rec do I trust AI to do a transaction on crypto? I remember we raised this up and even just the crypto alone just the basic cashing business can someone buy a product using an agent and it's it's a question that we keep exploring and I I feel like the way we handle it our the way a business handle it handles it uh it determines the success of the agendic now I want to throw this to each and every one of you and I will start with you Shale briefly uh what industries are most exposed to agentic disruption and how can the workforce prepare for it and and before that who's taking who who if these agents are taking the customer care desk where these people going to >> well I I'll give you a couple of real examples Lynn like real true examples I know of a plumbing business that actually shut down because they implemented a $100,000 investment they made >> into their company and and just basically turned everything over to AI.
No transition plan, no optimization plan, and it shut their company down because there was no going backwards from there. They could not um take back over their system. Sio used a very important term that I hope everyone writes down on their forehead and sees it in the mirror every morning when they wake up and that's human in the loop.
Humans have to be in the loop. And I love Russell how you so um clearly articulated the AI infrastructure, but there is human infrastructure that has always been missing that we are now finally seeing. The one thing that AI has done that has helped us all the most when coming to um zooming in on your question about industries. It's we're these industries are already disrupted.
Let's talk let's not talk about the fact that um back in the beginning of time most commerce was was because of a need.
you needed new shoes, you needed food, you needed to get steak for the table or or vegetables, whatever that was. But consumerism has made us need all these things that we don't really need, right?
And um it's created all of these new ecosystems that are have always been delicate in the balance. But over the last 10 years, and I'm talking about pre- pandemic, there was so much um acquisition and consolidation of legacy systems. companies were taking over these systems, these VCs that had no idea how the legacy processes and systems work and that rolled us right into the pandemic where everything collapsed and then after that we had this rapid radical adoption of virtual digital metaverse, crypto, everything.
So everything's in a state of flux and this is a moment where every single industry has a really big opportunity to really decide what their own industrial ev revolution is going to be. there's no leader anymore and I don't think there ever will be a dominant force. We've always followed a dominant force.
There's always been a major company like a Microsoft or a Google um shaping these standards and we all get to finally take accountability for our own standards.
And that's what I hope if anyone's listening to anything that I said that's I hope your biggest takeaway that we have to be accountable to our standards and put ourselves in a position to make sure that those standards are clear to the people and the AI that we're working with.
>> Charlene, I hear you deeply and I I believe our audience really feel what you say. This is something that should be said and needs to be said every day.
And that is why we have such gatherings because we always insist on having the human loop, the human infrastructure, the humanity first. I'm coming to you Dion. It feels like there's a weight that you want to release. Please tell us what you think.
>> So about the workforce, um just advice to everyone, you have to learn and be willing to learn new skills and just to skill yourself. There is no need for you to remain rigid in whatever it is that you're doing and things are changing. So the best thing that the best advice you can give people is just try as much as possible to learn the skill to learn. just be willing to learn >> and for >> for the human in the loop systems I think >> the policies if if we have policies that are going to guide the agents when that when when the agents come and flood the internet it's going to be a bit better and be easier to work around them >> all right desan learn the skill to learn the skill to learn I I I like that I carry that with me Sadio what is your take on this what industries have been disrupted and what do have for the workforce.
>> Yeah, absolutely. And this is something that I've been thinking about deeply.
Actually, I've been this this graduating class of college students are the first AI native college students. They entered university right in 2022 and now it's 2026. They're graduating and the world that they entered uh in those careers have completely changed, right? they're graduating into a world that no longer exists, right? And and whatever college prepared them for has been completely flipped on its head. So, I'm very concerned about this and I'm working on that problem. That's why I have the a career intensive specifically for graduating seniors. And to that point, talking about who's going to be disrupted, as I said, um just sticking with your example of the customer service agent, right? the customer the human customer service service agent. What would such a person do? My advice is to take all those transferable skills that you have as a customer service agent and you make sure that you build a company that is advising other, you know, advising Main Street, advising small and medium-sized businesses on how they can be ready for non-human customers. As a matter of fact, you should be building your own agents that are actually more advanced than people who do not have customer service experience because you are coming with a skill set and that you know exactly what is needed, right? So you should be able to take that knowledge and create your own agents and work on the infrastructure, work on the trust, work on all of that. Learn all those skills and and and turn your previous experience into what that looks like for the next generation, what that looks like for the um the AIdriven economy. And that's that's the same thing for every other um role that's going to be disruptive. Just imagine what that role looks like in the new AI era and prepare yourself and position yourself for it.
>> You know, Sio, you were very kind with your words and it felt right to say it right now because it's time to be positioning yourself very fast and very fast. Be the first one and the fastest one. And thank you for sharing for sharing that. Russell, over to you.
What's your take on industries and the workforce?
Um first of all I would say the biggest industries that are going to get disrupted is finance uh health industry and you know the economy as a whole um and just you know society as a whole basically in a nutshell. Um now in terms of um you know how do we you know navigate this I mean that's a whole different question to be honest but I think that the biggest disruption is especially to the workforce is in within these industries but also I believe that right now I've I've been hearing people saying about you know human loop and you know human infrastructure and stuff. I completely agree with that. However, we're going to get to a point when AGI is here, ASI is here, and we're not going to be able to have the capabilities of being able to control these AI systems. So, here's what we all need. Every single one of us, I believe, is that we all need our own sovereign AI agents. Every single one of us need our own agent that that is our own data that is on our own sovereign computer with our own data on that is completely off grid of anything or any cloud and that is our context window into the world so to speak of other agents because at the end of the day we're going to need our own agents that are going to act on our own behalf and act on our behalf strongly and if we're going to have that we need someone that's on our side. So, we all need our own personal agent, so to speak, a buddy, a companion, whatever you want to call it. I'm not worried about the terms, but that is the world that we are all heading into. That's what we all need to prepare for. I don't care if you're an individual, if you're a leader of a company, if you're CEO, if you're even Donald Trump, right? The point is that every single one of us needs that. And when we're talking about industry disruption, I think every industry is going to be disrupted. I think the point is is how do we prepare for it and that is just one of the ways in which we can prepare for it whilst also having the right trust infrastructure and verification and everything like that as well. But I don't want to promote that too much.
It's more about sovereign AI is all about having our own agents and having our own window into the world so to speak. You know, Russell, I'm listening to what you're saying and I'm going to borrow from some of the disruptions that we've had that is I'm going to borrow especially from web two by we had all these bigger platforms. We're now here because of things like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, privately owned by mega giant companies. And when I'm listening to you, when you're saying everyone should have their own agents, are we going to look up to an environment or a a future whereby the people who don't have access to build an agent? And I believe majority of the world are the ones who are falling into that category. Are we still going to land in the same history repeating itself where mega major corporations will now own agents that really control like the majority of the population? Do do you see where I'm coming from? Yeah, please please and shine as well.
>> I'll I'll just jump in one second, Charlie. I'll just quickly jump in.
>> I I'll hand the mic over to you. I'll literally be two seconds.
>> Yes, briefly because of time. The the the point is right we have open source okay anyone can download anyone could have their own agent so to speak. So if we have open source models and we have open source like GitHub for example we can all build our own we can all develop our own we can all vibe code our own etc. But anyway Charlene I'll hand the microphone to you.
>> Over to you Charlene.
>> I'm against absolutes across the board because they create more gaps than bridges. I'm a bridge builder not a gap builder. And I go back to my original statement. We have a knowledge gap. So if if we had a fully agentic society right now, we'd be in big pro big trouble because they would be poorly trained. Okay? AIS are your employees.
Let's just get that straight. And yeah, yeah, maybe one day they will be like taking over the world, whatever. Okay?
We've all seen the movies, but for now they follow us. Okay? So as long as we're in power, let's like educate ourselves. Let's stop being lazy. Like I'm serious. I'm not going to say it in any way that's going to sugarcoat it. Like you have a responsibility. You're an adult. Be an adult. You're an adult the moment you're like 15, okay? Like you're an adult.
Like learn like about finance. Learn about your economy. Learn about your local culture. Learn about like your global culture because we're becoming a global society. I'll be doing business with Dan. You know, I could we could work together right now even though we're in completely different countries and have completely different economies and agents can definitely help to manage and process all of that. But we are still going to be held accountable whether we like it or not for the systems and the processes that we make.
And this is the moment I agree with you Russell because there's a lot of people rushing towards that agentic society because it's just easier. Everybody wants to take the easy road, but we cannot allow that to happen ahead of the infrastructure that just doesn't exist right now. It can, but we've got to put our focus there.
>> All right, Shalen, I I need to put a pen on that, but you know, we're always having so many gathers. We look forward to hearing more of that, but but Dish, I want to come to you briefly because our time is still running fast. How do agents really negotiate a value differently from humans?
Thank you. Thank you, De. Well, um, so aesthetics are going to be thrown out the window. Whatever it is that you have on your website that looks nice, an agent might not h consider it because it is there to get the best value and and fulfill the purpose that is and fulfill the purpose that it has sent it there.
So even if let's say a certain cooker looks nice and it's as expensive and the functionality isn't isn't making sense it could be it then I would like to revert back to that question you asked if there's going to be a gap um if these agents come and the economy change changes uh me my answer is um I don't know because I've worked with people who the ability to learn is not there they I know people who right now as you're speaking who cannot use a computer who do not know how to type. So is daged up going to be there?
It's a big question mark for me. It's a big question mark.
>> That's right. Thank you for bringing that. You know there are people who don't have the productivity to learn.
Let's let's just acknowledge that. I know Shalini you you are very right when you say everyone needs to learn but I'm also empathetic with people who don't want to learn and this is a loss for them. This age does not really have mercy on someone who is not willing to learn. So be on the front line to learn and joining such a conversation like this. I mean I took a lot of notes.
That's learning. You don't have to sit down take a notes write write so many things. Learning is just basically knowledge sharing like what we're doing right now. And I just want to hear from you Sadi. What what what's your take on this?
Well, I am hoping for a moment like we had in the 90s where I grew up in a place where in the in in the United States there was, you know, um telephone telephones in each home with wires, etc. I grew up in Guyana for for most of my life in Guyana. there was like one telephone per like neighborhood and other everyone like went to one person's house to to use the phone and there were you know that was the case in other other parts of the world and then later on Kenya started to be the one that led the the in the use of cell phones and they completely leapfrogged over the need for you know physical telephone lines and they were the first one to create digital currency empa.
>> I am seeing that this is a moment like that for people who don't know how to type and who find it difficult to learn in the s in the traditional system that we had. Now these such people can pick up a their cell phone which they have anyway and speak thoughts into existence. That's the the message that I would like to communicate around the world. Like now we have the God-given ability to be able to bring whatever's on the inside of us into existence and people need to know that that exists and I think that we'll see revolutionary solutions once that becomes you know widespread knowledge. I want to acknowledge >> yeah because of time I really really want to continue with this but let me just say something to what Sadadio said because I'm Kenyan and she touched my heart on what she said about Empessa Empessa really came in as a disruption where we could really send money throughout the economy with or without internet with or without a smartphone with or without knowing English but using vernacular language and that is what we are looking for when it comes to to gen to bring up AI agentic systems and anything AI that's going to come up in the future. Now with a brief word, just one word. I don't know who I want to give it to. Shalid, I might want to give you, but just one one word. What would you call your agent? What would you do if you had an agent right now?
What would you call it? What would you do with it? Just one word and we're done. One word, Shelene.
>> Evolve.
>> All right. Thank you. AI evolve panel two day two. Thank you so much. Our gather was well for this panel. Connect with this leaders and look at what they are doing. It's a goodbye for us.
>> 105 p.m.
Russell, you're muted if you're talking.
>> Okay. Hello everyone and welcome back.
Um, great to have you all with us and apologies about that. I had uh issues with um not only trying to upload my presentation. Um but also technical difficulties as well now where I'm muting myself. So that's quite good. Um but anyway um let's kick start off with this round table. We do have some fantastic uh panelists with us. Um if I could ask everyone to just well actually it's not not even any point muting your mics at the moment because there's only three of us here. So, um, what I wanted you to do is, uh, quickly introduce yourselves. So, Lawrence, uh, and then coach and then Stefan, we'll head over to you after. So, Lawrence, if you do want to quickly introduce yourself, u roughly about a minute and then we'll kickstart the round table discussion.
>> All right. Thank you. Can you hear me?
>> Yes, loud and clear.
>> All right. Thank you. My name is Lawrence. I am the founder CEO of Sapphire Global Tech, a tech company that helps small business to leverage AI in today's world. And um in addition to that, I'm also u an agent faculty. I teach at several universities within the US. Uh my background is in data science, AI and bit of a quantitative background, statistics.
>> Oh, it's great to have you with us, Lawrence. Uh and thank you for joining us as well today. Um, Coach Bobby, over to you. Uh, do you want to quickly introduce yourself? Um, and Sha, is it Sha? Uh, do you want to just mute your microphone quickly for us, please? Uh, thank you very much. Uh, Coach Bobby, no, unmute your microphone. Don't mute your microphone, Bobby. Don't do what I did.
Please introduce yourself, Bobby.
>> Yeah, glad to. Hello, everyone. Um, Coach Bobby Humes. I am the CEO of BH Consultancy. We are an organizational consultancy se firm who specializes in helping leaders, teams and organizations identify their problems and chart solutions towards them. Um I'm an organizational strategist so I think about things at the convergence of how do humans um react to and respond to changes in an organization. Happy >> great to have you with us, Coach Bobby and an OG as well as far as I've been told behind the scenes. Uh Stefan, uh please introduce yourself. It's great to have you with us as well. And um as always, Stefan, it's always great to have you with us here at Gavas.
>> I appreciate it. What's up, everybody?
Hey y'all. I'm Stefan Young Bloodood, Raleigh, North Carolina. I like to put this out there. I'm a a dad of three kids and I have my grandfather. I got five kids. So, I come into this AI space and tech space uh a little on the upper side and uh sort of working with what I call ethics elders in the place of AI. I uh founded Black AI Think Tank as well as National Black AI literacy events.
Our big one is coming up June 8th to June 12th and uh Christopher is speaking in that and it's all about um making sure everybody has an opportunity when it comes to AI getting the voice out to the underrepresented and the underserved. And uh yeah, it's great to be here. I love every time you all have these things. So it's great and >> it's always great to have you with us as well, Stefan. like every time it's always interesting with the round table discussions that you're on. So thank you very much for joining us and uh okay let me try and get your name right Sha is that correct and also unmute your microphone. Yeah, thank you so much everyone. I am so young to talk about you know such a great stuff but let me introduce myself. I am Sha. Basically I'm from Pakistan. I do consulting on leadership and technology and enterprise and AI is my motive to you know work on I've been working with the youth all over the world around 10,000 to you know 50,000 youth that I have worked with them and with this you know it's really great to connect with people with the like-minded people and they bring something new on your table and talk about something that everybody is very excited and that the age of the technology that most of us are you know sometime afraid of it but I would say That's a great help. So, I'm really happy to connect with everyone and you know share and network with everyone.
Thank you so much, >> SH. We appreciate you being with us and thank you so much for joining us once again as well. I think it's another is it your first time?
>> No. Uh here it's first time definitely, but normally I do talk to you know.
>> Okay. Well, f first time with me then.
There we go. All right. One way or another, we'll get there.
>> Yeah.
>> And uh quick introduction for myself.
So, oh well, who's that phone there? All right, let me just quick quick quickly boot shot. There we go. And just quick introduction for myself. My name is Russell. I'm the uh global affairs director at Galverse. And also, I'm the co-founder of Just Verify. And Just Verify, I can't hear your audio. Who is who says that they can't hear my audio?
Um Oh, here we go. You've joined the stage. Uh Cly, I'm just going to mute your microphone quickly and then we'll get to your introduction in just a second. Um, so anyway, back on track.
Uh, my name's Russell. I'm the director, global affairs director at Galveast.
Also co-founder Just Verify. And Just Verify is focused on building the trust infrastructure for AA. Uh, so we're focused on uh building out all the infrastructure so that we can have independent verification and trust when it comes to well you you decide your own trust of course, but it's sort of independent verification and verifying and having verifiable AI around the different agents and systems and etc. and allowing you to have a truthful way in being able to gather all this evidence together and be able to verify it uh to know you know whether you can trust it or not. So from your own decision that is so uh that is me and then now we're going over to Kery.
Karthy can you hear me and also can you unmute your microphone as well so we can hear you too?
I'll take that as we can't hear you or you can't hear me one way or the other.
So, let's get into the questions. So, question one, um, what does living AI practically mean?
Important question here. Coach Bobby, since you are the real OG around here, apparently, um, I'm going to let you start and kick this ball off right here.
Kick us off.
>> Yeah, absolutely. Kirby, are you are you present? Can Can you hear? Okay, >> it's okay. Don't worry. We'll we'll sort our behind the scenes. Don't worry.
>> Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. All right. So, yeah. Um, what does living AI practically mean? I don't know. Um, and the reason why I don't know is because I I struggle to uh see that people are practically living. Like I I I think that when we look at education here in the United States, we have uh people young people in in in in middle school who whose whose reading scores are dropping, whose, you know, math and STEM scores aren't improving. And so um I think that if we're going to practically uh uh you know if if AI is going to practically live I think we have to build it upon a baseline of efficacy that is really rooted in u people's striving for excellence and and I think that since uh covid we've really lost a lot of that of that striving I think uh people are you know there's a lot of tribalization happening I think there's a a uh lot of negative discord just around how people engage with one another. And I think we're starting to see that manifest itself with people's use of AI. And so like for me it's it's really you know are we building uh practical living standards uh of AI on top of some modicum of um you know uh excellence as a society. So I I I I kind of worry that we're not ready or m mature enough for practically living with AI.
I think kind of to reiterate your point just the scale of it the way you know how fast it's being adopted how fast it's been introduced um just the speed in general like every day you look at the news and there's like you know 20 new things happening every day whether that's open AI has you know done a deal or raisement here or a you know this AI has improved to the next stage from 3.1 to 3.2 too and you know there's so much really sort of practically going on so to speak you know what does living with AI practically mean it's it's hard to tell because unless you uh like how the last round table was saying that the whole knowledge gap kind of thing um you know unless you you know learn and able to adopt it and to learn pretty quick I think that's kind of maybe one of the biggest hurdles that we are facing when it comes to adoption So Stefan, um, I'm going to bring you into, uh, actually one second. Sorry, Stephan. Uh, Karthy, can we can you hear us now?
Let me just see.
>> Hi, Russell. Can you >> There we go. Karthy, please introduce yourself and also Lynn will head over to you just a second.
>> Sure. I'm so sorry for that audio. I'm not sure it was not working.
>> No worries.
>> Good morning. Good afternoon everyone.
This is Kiti Amistapuram and I'm I'm working as a lead uh software developer at Chub Insurance Company and I'm happy to be part of this uh panel. Uh let me add the details what I know so far.
>> Well, thank you for introducing yourself first of all Karthy. Second of all, thank you for sorting out the technical difficulties and it's glad you know to have you with us and we'll definitely get you involved with all the questions that we have and also in the discussions as well. Uh but we do need head over to Lynn very quickly just so she can introduce herself. I know who you are Lynn but who you know everyone else doesn't so introduce yourself.
>> Greetings everyone. I am the communications director for gather verse I'm link guitar here in Nairobi Kenya and I'm really inspired to really learn about what living AI and living humans looks like. Thank you >> Lynn. Nice and short and sweet. Love it.
Um okay so going back to the discussion.
So we just talking about with coach Bobby um you know mentioning about you know how since COVID things have slowly progressed and then to the point now where it's just rapidly progressed right since it dropped back in was it JPT3 which most of you would be 23 I think um if my memory serves me right so Stefan um let's bring into the discussion and continue the discussion now what are your thoughts on what does living AI practically mean from your point of view and all the your amazing family that you have too.
>> Uh you can hear me. Okay. Right.
>> For sure. Yes.
>> So let me just say that in the questions uh and we we get kind of preliminary questions. It says what does living AI mean? And uh so what I would answer with that is I don't that's not a thing unless we say it's a thing. So unless I say you know the cap to my chapstick is living is not a thing. So if we say it's living now, that's something that we basically redefine living. So who knows what that could be. I I actually asked somebody who does this their way up in in this field and um we're just not at a place I don't think of determining well that's living and that's not because you can get to a human place then of what qualities a certain human may have and if they're really considered living or not. However, living with AI, we're doing that now. I mean, everybody here's probably got email. It's protecting your spam, bank account, and all that stuff.
It's all over the place. It's behind all of the stuff we're doing today. So, we're living with AI intertwined everywhere right now. There's not really a life here on out unless you get rid of every screen that there's living without uh AI. That's probably a great question.
What would living without AI look like?
That's all I got to offer though. But this living AI thing, I think that's that's all about redefining what living is. That's my >> But but in like let me let me just I guess kind of rephrase the question for you in in in practical terms, you know, when we're talking about LLMs, Agentics, um you know, world models, etc. What what is it like living with those in particular?
>> So that stuff changes everything, period, y'all. I mean, if you look at some of the agentic AI right now and people having learned how to create an agent that's doing 10 people's jobs at one time, period, it is a game changer.
When companies do that, when entrepreneurs do that, it is a gamecher.
And it's sort of this explosion in people's minds when they realize, oh crap, that's so AI is there. Some some people it's not like beginning AI anymore. Now the world is beginning agentic you know and let's teach courses on agentic.
>> So we're in that area not just AI right now. So agents and stuff change everything to me.
>> Absolutely couldn't agree with you more and also what was discussed on the last round table discussion as well about agentics. It's a extremely uh important time that we're going into um you know last year it was all about LLMs and adoptions and pilots and you know everything like that and you know this year is full on agentics and full scale and um you know who can get to the quickest to the top when it comes to reinforcement learning and uh hyper intelligence and ASI and AGI. So um but anyway uh Kirthy let's bring you into the discussion because I I want to bring you in and then Lynn would head over to you after as well. Um for for you Karthy, what does AI shift from tool to perceive living entity?
>> Okay. Uh you can hear me right Russell and everyone.
>> Yes. Yes, we can hear you fine. Yeah. Um so AI starts to feel like a living entity when it stops behaving like a static tool I would say and begins uh showing traits we normally associated with the living systems like awareness adaption memory and responsiveness.
The shift happens when A can sense adopts when A can sense its environments uh learns and respond according to that.
So um I can say like um when it's at the point like when uh people stop seeing it as a software start experiencing it as a uh something that senses to its environment and responds to that. Um for example I I would say like in terms of insurance terms um for instance like okay when an insurance AI when it detects a leak it shuts down the valve and alerting the homeowner and then starts claim process automatically without we even initiating it. That's when we see it as a um living entity rather than um um software tool. That's what I would say.
Yeah, it's it's very interesting because you brought up a very interesting point between you know software and a living entity you know at at what point does it become a living entity as in you know how Stephan was saying earlier and quantifying and define it but you know could it still technically be living if it has the right intelligence right as in like if it has if AI actually has genuinely its own mind right >> when and it and it can actually think for itself because you know if we have an autonomous systems technically it can think for itself in a way. Um and then when we go into swarms and etc. But the point is is that is something truly living if it does have intelligence Karthy or is it just from your point of view something that's just more advanced and it's like okay this is living or is it just still under the hood software for you like I'm I'm curious >> I mean like I would say like when we feel it as a um what do you say like the um response in a dynamic way rather than it uh it rather than it provides the output based on the repetitive data like it it senses the environment according to the context and providing the um response. So that's when we feel it as a um living entity from my perspective.
>> Stefan says not biologically living but a type of digital living. I like that definition.
>> Exactly. Yes. Agree with that >> and and and thank you very much for for sharing Karthy as well. Um Lynn, we'll head over to you as well. Um you know, Stefan's just put that there. Of course, uh you know, Karthy is uh also, you know, talking about if it's intelligence or if it's living or not, etc. So, Lynn, from your point of view, what are your thoughts on all this?
Yeah, from what Kathy had said and the fund has just brought in, uh we now have a category of living, two types of categories of living that is biological and of course also including the the plants as well and digital living that is us human beings living in the digital world and of course AI itself living in the digital world itself. So I see humanity being caught in the loop of biological living and digital living.
And how do I define AI being as a living entity? Number one, it cannot breathe. It doesn't have a nose. It cannot uh talk. It does have a voice.
It does have a voice. Sorry. It talk.
>> It has one thing. Yes. H but it can't breathe. It can't really It doesn't have a skin to really It can say it can adapt to the environment, but it doesn't really have a skin that has sensories enough to tell what that environment is or what's the feel of just being in a certain environment in a certain temperature, but it can adapt to an environment. So having that categories of digital living and biological living and human beings in between the two for me this is a new world we're creating. I was not ready for this world but I'm looking forward to hear how we're going to navigate this. I'm handing it over to another speaker.
Well, thank you very much, Lynn, for sharing your thoughts. And um I will I will add I think you know when we're talking about robots, right, and also when we're talking about um multi-ensory models, right, there is a lot coming out right now from multiensory models and robots that are getting to the point where they're having the same sort of limbs, right? But also, if we're talking multi-ensory, like they can feel the touch and start hearing, etc. um they are getting to the point where maybe let's say roughly 3 to four years time when you first look at a robot you might not know the difference between if they are actually human or not. So when we're talking about do are they truly living it, you know, you could argue that it isn't. You could say argue that it is. But if we're talking about if it has a synthetic heart and synthetic um um like body systems etc. like a synthetic brain. Maybe it is truly living. It's it's hard to really define exactly if they are living or not. But I'm just, you know, kind of putting out or at least informing you, Lynn, that you know, there are multi-entury models, there are robots out there which are getting to the point where it's getting so advanced that they can touch, they can feel, they can see, so to speak, and and speak. So let's move on to the next question and uh we'll head over to you next Sha and then Lawrence as well and the question for you guys is what does AI shift from tool oh wait we've already just done that one sorry my next question is what's what psychological effects come from human to AI interaction I love this question sha uh let's bring you on to this kick us off with this question >> yeah I think the psychological effects are you know for the human interaction are in both opportunities and risks as well if I am able to talk about it's you know positive sides you know it is reducing the loneliness it has some personaliz learning styles as well it can sometime help in our mental health as well as you know it can help us some other things just like if I would stick to the point about the personalized learning in terms of psychological effects for me that I feel that Before I used to take a lot of effort to make one of the things for myself. But this personalized learning is bringing some positive effects for me. It has a lot of uh you know risks as well. Uh some emotional dependency and uh you can say that uh manipulation through hyperpersonalization that that is also one of the risk that I feel that can you know bring some real challenge. Uh I feel the real challenge is not whether AI has emotions. I think the challenge is whether you you humans emotions surrender too much authority according to the AI systems or not. So that really makes me think about it. So for me uh as a you know as a learner as an explorer I feel that the most important thing for me when it comes to human and AI interaction you know it induce so much opportunities for the world leaders as well. uh uh you know as I gave the example of the personalized learning you know in the past people used to make a lot of efforts for you know personalized learning I need to just go and hire someone but right now my psychologically I feel more smart I feel more you know comfortable in terms of that AI is really helping me every day uh since the risks you know everything has got its risks as well but it depends on the mindset I believe that co you know coach Bobby can also relate with this you know whenever we go to the people people are very in their their stuck mindset you know they are not ready to you know talk about it they don't want to talk about it but you you just keep talking about it and you start giving them some stories some words some you know intellectual things so that's how you know it can bring so many things as well yeah that's it >> yeah I think like you said there there's positives and there's also negatives I I like the old saying of you know pros and cons right yeah what are the pros what the cons you know there's cons to everything there's pros everything and you know weighing that up. But I will say this that there has been official evidence uh shown about how it changes the mind of the person right the human in terms of like for example using chat GBT Gemini and stuff they've done studies on that and of course it can change your mind and brain waves the same as what Tik Tok can that's why we call it Tik Tok brain right so to the point is you know but is it maybe you know benefiting us in terms of okay there might be downsides to it, but could there be a long-term upside to that? We don't know. It's kind of like when people found out about smoking and then all of a sudden smoking was cool and good and then all of a sudden, oh, this is really bad for you. Oh, it can help cause your lungs bad. So, you know, it's kind of like, you know, we don't know. We don't have enough data and resources and sources yet, but I think over time we'll definitely be able to discover.
>> I want to share a personal story here for everyone. Um, back in Sure. And then we and then we need to jump over to Lawrence.
>> Yeah. Yeah. It's it's very quick and it's very impactful. That really gave me another perspective to look at the world. Uh I went to a village where uh people were even unawared about what does mean the the email as well. So at one side of the world that people are like you and me are talking about you know what advant advancements can be you know part of our lifestyle. So I went to a village. I just I was uh I I was a trainer there. I have to go. I just met a girl that I asked everyone in the classroom. Uh do you guys send emails to each other? So everyone was like what is the email? So I was literally shocked how is that possible? Why it's not coming? So so many you know debates can be here. So so many things can be here why the one side of the world I feel that what sort of psych psychological effects they these children could have it even they don't know it. So in in terms of sharing the knowledge you know there are stages of the knowledge in one of the one of the things that would be I don't know it you don't know it right I know it but you don't know it we all know it but someone may not know it so there are stages so when it comes to you know such things you know I get you know astonished you know how these things are really possible yeah >> well Sha I completely understand what you're saying I I remember when the internet first come around so that was fun as well so Sha thank you very much for sharing really appreciate your input uh for this round table discussion Lawrence, we're going to be heading over to you now. Um, and from your point of view, Lawrence, um, there there's so much that you mostly want to share. So, um, when it comes to human and AI interaction, maybe from your own personal uh, side or maybe just even other people that you have worked with, whether clients, etc. Uh, what psychological what psychological let me get my words right. what psychological effects uh have came from either your own point of view or even what you've just heard from other clients maybe >> uh you want to unmute your mic.
>> Oh sorry >> there we go. Awesome.
>> Uh thanks for that question. So the way I like to look at it is just um from the point of view that AI can help people feel supported, right? Um it can help you know especially elderly people. It can help with loneliness. It can help with bridging the gap with learning. It can help with planning you know um emotional reflection and things like that. And and just think about it this way.
Um as humans we have relationships and in those relationships you know sometimes we find it difficult because in those relationship we have you know uh it does require patience it has a disagreement it has a growth process involved you know you get offended by people right but when we talk about AI we're looking at something totally different you know because AI most times often agrees with whatever you do >> so as as a result you know we now tend to treat AI more like the safe space where we don't get judged, we don't get you know um rebuked, we don't get disagreement and we just fall into that comfort zone and the danger of that is the fact that you know people then overly become dependent on such a system but there's a growth process that comes from interacting with humans where you have you know as differences you argue we may not agree and you learn through the process of you know being offended and the growth process that comes from that and that is one of the areas where I look at the psychological effect between you know the interaction between AI and humans right um so we tend to lose that component of that growth process that comes with interacting with human versus when we interact with AI because AI like I said most of the time is always going to agree with you is always going to be there to comfort you it may never challenge you in a sense right and as a result as human we tend to you know kind of fall back into that default position because we feel like this is a safe space. We don't get judged, we don't get challenged, we don't get, you know, uh disagreements, right?
>> That's the psychological effect that I see uh in in a sense the interaction between humans and and air.
>> Well, thank you very much first of all for sharing Lawrence. Second of all, I will add to what you're saying. Um you know, that's why Chad GBT, Gemini, etc., they had these personality traits where you can change the personality of them, right? so that they can act more towards what you want them. Do you want them to be candid and direct? Do you want them to be, you know, loving, affectionate and supportive? Um, you know, so you you can you can kind of change the personalities of these AIs, but the underlying factor is um even though you can change the personalities of them, underly underneath all that is are they actually truly aligned with you? Like when we talk about values, principles, etc. like are the values of this AI that you're using and their principles and and and how they behave and perform etc. are they aligned with what you are as an individual and what you're what you're doing or even just in human values in general. So I think that's something that we got to think about and there has also been evidence where you people have you know have hacked into these AI models and underlying it has multi uh multiple uh multi-personality disorders so to speak as in it has multiple different personalities underneath it once you do sort of prompt inject into it. But the point what I'm saying is is that when we're talking about humans AI interaction, we got to think about our own autonomy, right? We've got to think about our own sovereign AI and what it is personally for ourselves, right? So I completely agree with what you're saying, Lawrence, is that do you want an AI that a is on your side but completely agrees all the time like how you're saying, right? this is more like GPT3, GPT4 we're talking about here, or you know, do you want something that's going to be more candid towards you, more direct, more professional, you know, adjusting the personality of GPT5, etc. So, I completely agree with what you're saying. It's just that we need to think underneath all these models, the data behind it is, is this truly aligned with our own principles and morals. So, thank you very much, Lawrence, for sharing that. And I just wanted to add that onto what you're saying because I really love what you're saying. That's why I was like, "Oh, I've got to add to this, Lawrence."
>> You know, I was gonna bring up the issue with the data like you said. But I think the the moral lesson here is this. You know, this could, you know, result isolation, right? And that could be something that could be um you know have a negative impact on on people especially you know older people who are um not overly integrated in the society because of the you know the lifestyle they're in and um especially for you know some even some younger folks who are also equally very anxious right so over reliance on that could you know lead to isolations and depression and and other things and we'll talk about you know uh different um you know you can change different models with these AI tools. As a human I can be interacting with you and I can also uh change my countenance and how I talk to you based on your facial expression alone. I can read the moment and I can adjust to that and AI cannot do that right and so these are some of the differences between you know uh you know interacting with AI or integration with AI and humans. I I that is debatable with the with the with the uh when we're talking about um multimodalities and and visual and and how it can take your facial expressions but I do agree in general. I do agree with you. So thank you for sharing. We're going to move on to the next question. Coach Bobby, we're going to head over to you and also we'll head over to you as well Stefan. The next question is how do we define agency in AI without >> Yeah.
>> Thank you so much Bobby. You just saved me.
>> Yeah. So I I think where where the conversation is right now is this really powerful assumption that people know what their values are. Uh I I the people that that I've work with in my business um we do deep work to people to uncover what their values are. This is not something that most people can just rattle off to you. Here are my top three values. And so I think the the assumption is that the the the general user of AI is using it beyond what I call the digital hammer. AI is a tool like it's intended to be used as a tool.
But we're having a conversation here even right now where we're holding space for people using AI as an emotional uh uh service entity, right? Helping them define who they are, helping them navigate um significant life choices.
And so how do we define agency in AI without anthropomorphizing it? Um you know I I think we have to go upstream and away from AI. I think we have to be thoughtful and conscious of um the uh like like the state of the world as it as it as it were. Uh I I I think that the excitement of AI and like its use cases is definitely there. We use it in our business as well, but it's the digital hammer. We're using it as a tool. We're not using it to uh inform reality for us. And so I think that um if we're going to define agency without making without making AI uh another human, we have to be aware of who we are, what we desire out of using that tool. Like um I have a seven-year-old. I don't just give him a hammer and let him walk around with it.
>> Right. Right. Because I know how to use that tool. Um I also know how destructive that can be. We have a lot of windows in our home. Right. And so I think we have to be thoughtful about um you know people first having um their own agency and understanding what their use cases for the tool is. Um and like I I really think that um not everyone should have access to AI. I know that that's not a popular sentiment, but I don't think everyone should just have access to AI. I think there should be age limits. I think there should be specific use cases for it. Yeah, I I I think you you like defining it as in like a under a certain age or b if you have some sort of like um disorder so to speak like maybe multi-personality disorder or ADHD or I don't know like any sort of uh diagnosis so to speak from a doctor where you shouldn't be using it so to speak as in from a medical point of view >> I would start at I would start at at age limits and then inside organizations I would have like you know >> certain technology requirement limits on it. Um I just think that we are entering a space where people are relying on AI to be their personality, their chef like their their all in all.
>> So so he basically heavy reliance on AI in a nutshell.
>> That's how that's how we u avoid you know anthropomorphizing AI. But I don't know if if we're capable of doing that. I I don't I don't again I go back to how I answered the first question. I don't think we're mature enough to handle this digital hammer.
>> Well, we'll find out, won't we? Uh thank you very much, Bobby. Um Stefan, um heading over to you now. Um how do we define agency and AI without anthrop anthropom that word says it? Um >> I hate that word.
>> Yeah. like like like I may maybe from your point of view Stefan you know when we're talking about living because I mean there's a lot that you I've seen you in the comments there's a lot you have to say Stefan >> um >> you know when we're talking about something living or not living >> and then we're talking about how do we define agency and AI >> without in it like >> those two worlds are coming together so to speak right >> so how from from your lens just just give us a point of view of what you think overall.
>> Yeah, I think the the battle here, the tension is really over words and it's over meaning. Every one of these discussions you're going to everyone somebody's going to say, well, what do you mean when you say and what do you mean when you say this? Uh I started a few years ago writing a book called uh word drift and it basically shows how the meaning of these words that are associated with AI have changed and are changing and the last uh sort of change that I looked at was how AI is going to assist us in defining our words. So it's a dictionary that includes words uh ex out of Oxford dictionary of 1950. Let's move up to 1990, then 2025 and 26, and then the definition in 2050. So, watch this really quick. In this little uh lexicon, agency in 1950 meant the office or function of an agent, the state of being in action or of exerting power, a means of instrument through which a specific effect is produced. Uh, move that on to 1990 and it's the capacity of an individual to act independently and make free choices. a central concept in sociology and philosophy contrasting with structural determinism also an organization or business acting on behalf this just push this all the way up to 2050 and I'm telling you everything we say now AI is sort of a part of and when people are redefining new dictionaries are happening AI is a part of this this could be a uh definition that it comes with up with the measurable capability of a human or artificial system to init initiate goal directed action under constraints.
Agency is graded substrate independent and it's mapped to a corresponding framework of obligations. Legal and technical frameworks trace agency chains to who uh to allocate accountability price uh precisely preventing responsibility gaps. The thing is, um, we have these I don't know who makes this or ball that's going to, uh, there's a few of them out that's going to tell us who's human or not. And, uh, just get this. We created this thing to be so smart, it's going to turn around and instead of us saying, "What's AI?"
It's going to look in our eyeball and say, "Well, okay, they passed. They're human and this one is human. So, because so much is fake, we're going to rely on AI to tell us whether we're real. And that gets back to our identity, y'all.
For everything, my bottom line is hold on to your identity. For your children, your grandparents, you know your identity, who you are. Period. Because a bunch of stuff is trying to shift you off of that place, that real foundation of who you are.
>> Thank you very much, Stefan. And um it's very interesting how you brought up the the dictionary there cuz it does make me think about everyone saying shape now when no one was saying that just two or three years ago or any everyone saying insure when no one was saying that either. Um there's certain words which we all seem to be saying now which we never said previously uh and never heard of in our lifetime. So Stefan, I completely agree with you. There's more words to be added to the dictionary yet.
So, uh, Lynn, uh, let's head over to you now and we're going to, uh, go to the next question and then, uh, Karthy, we'll head over to you next. We've got about 10 minutes left. So, um, we'll be very quick. What risks arise when people begin to rely on AI for companionship and identity validation? This is following on from what Stephan was just said.
>> Yes. I I I think just borrowing from what uh Stefan said, hold on to your identity, but I want to just stretch it a little bit further to the generation that is being defined in the digital living. They have lived digitally for since they were born, especially the generation that came uh uh since COVID 19. I believe that's the kind of generation that has been brought up online. So their lifestyle is defined digitally.
They don't have a very strong rooted background. Their identity definitely is defined in the digital world. So what comes with the risk when your identity is really defined with the digital world like what I wear like what trends am I watching on Tik Tok like what song is trending or like what is the new trending thing in education nowadays we don't do homework we only copy from AI you just ask AI like I have a ton of uh I have a younger sister and all her classmates it's it's it's now done to me that all their answers are always the same. And the teacher is really concerned because when you give them an assignment and the children or the students come all of them with a little bit just a little bit of tweaking and they chat with each other and they tell each other that just make you as not shape make it another word to make it look like it's not the same thing but all the answers during the assignment are the same. So for such a child when they grow up they will know learning is done by AI >> and answers have to be the same. You just tweak a little bit and that is that is something that will shape how they will live when they become adults. For someone who his or her algorithms maybe a young child all they the AI is just showing them is the newest sneakers is the newest makeup. It's just the newest thing, newest thing, newest thing. By the time that child grows up, their identity is always about things. So there's that generation that is really u it's it's an alarm for me for a generation that their identity is really defined on the online world. And then there was a summit I think it was AIXR where one of our speakers said that they people are now preferring to have a companion with an AI and we have seen this trending where people have weddings with an AI or just their AI and they're making vows to each other. That's for me is dangerous when a generation just doesn't want to relate to humans and relates to AI because at the end of the day this AI has been fed by someone indirectly. It's not AI itself but someone fed it. Someone told it what to do.
>> Okay, Lynn, I'm going to have to jump in. Sorry. Sorry. Ran out of time.
>> You have so much you have so much to say. I'm like, what's next to gather? Please someone else, please.
>> Sorry, I forgot. Please give it to >> Well, thank you very much, Lynn. And look, I I'm just going to turn the smoke up on this quickly and then we'll jump around to everyone else. Uh, first of all, identity validation. We need verification for that. We need to be able to verify who's human and who's not. Uh, we also need identity validation in terms of an actual genuine passport, being able to identify that, etc. Second of all, companionship, right? When we're talking about companionship, first of all, I I think it's very underutilized, so to speak, as in like, you know, I'll use the example of Grock, right? We all seen the things that come out from Grock. I don't know if you've seen in the news, but basically in very simple terms, you can uh turn the heat up with it in very nice terms. But the point what I'm getting at is people have been using Grock, for example, in the past to have companionships with that as well. So, um, so I'm just going to finish with that. Uh, Karthy, we're going to head over to you, Sha, and then Lawrence, and then we need to round this up because we've got about four minutes left. So, uh, Karthy, uh, quickly, literally 30 seconds, maybe to a minute max. Uh, from your point of view, a speak on companionship or identity validation, one or the other. What risks arise when people begin to rely on either a having the companionship or b not being able to have their own identity, so to speak? Okay. So when people rely on AI for companionship or identity validation, the big biggest risks are emotional over dependency as Lynn mentioned like that was a perfect example with the covid period and uh it's like I mean like it'll reduce like human uh uh relation connections like um so AI always it it feels like it's supportive and responsive. Um so that way like people um will feel like even there will be a weakened uh real world connection, real world um relationships.
So it it it it affects in in such a way like we are more um dependent on AI even for uh even for I mean like um for everything for decision making it could be and even with like whenever we have some questions and all always it'll be like it the response will be in a positive way only rather than like if it is a human that response would be in a different way. So I feel like it is creating more dependency. It it is overdependent.
>> Lawrence, unmute your mic and can you tell us what are your thoughts from what Karthy was saying or what are your thoughts on either companionship or identity uh from your point of view?
>> Yeah, sorry. Can you hear me? Okay. Um you know I think she's right you know and one way that I like to look at this is that you know um or let me say it this way. One risk that people will likely are going to start seeing is that people will start going to AI to tell AI everything, right?
>> That will become a situation where people begin to lose a sense of value of who they are.
>> They start secondguessing themsel because now they rely on this system, right? Um and then people start asking, you know, then what should I be doing with my life? you know so that's a lot of information to give to a machine or to you know uh to an AI too right um so uh we we have to start having conversation around these things and being to talk about the dangers that come with all of these over reliance on this two um you know having boundaries and ethics put around this place where our stakeholders we should be having a broader conversation from the home the institution the church the community the mosque everywhere should be having conversation about How can we use this to in an ethical manner? A child who is only about six years old is being handed an iPhone that that has an an AI to that doesn't know, you know, the dangers it could result in, right?
>> Um so we um we need to start, you know, having broader conversation. Uh and I've had like I've had to do that myself. You know, when my son entered high school, I I told him, we had a frank conversation.
You know, you're getting to high school now. I don't want you using AI, too. And I told him why? because I'm an an educator, right? I told him this. Look, you do this.
>> Lawrence, Lawrence, I'm gonna have to jump in. Sorry. Uh Sha, quickly, 30 seconds or less from your side of things. Um you know, what risks arise from AI companionship? Let's just finish with that.
>> Okay, let me talk about one thing, identity validation. You know, we all really fe want to feel valued. We want someone to say you matter, you are enough and what you think about that's right you know uh and AI does this perfectly every time without getting fail even so you share an idea AI appreciates it and you express a feeling AI validates it and you ask and you ask for the right decision and AI supports it because this re reality real identity is not built in comfort is built through friction I would say uh through someone is saying I disagree with you, you know, through failure, through being misunderstood, still find, you know, your own way. So AI cannot tell you who you are. Only life can do that.
>> Shout, thank you so much. I was like to say you're going to have to finish it.
Um, that is it from our round table discussion. Thank you so much. Make sure you follow each and everyone on LinkedIn. Make sure you connect with them. And up next, we have the almighty Christopher who's coming up next for you. That is it from us. Goodbye.
Goodbye everyone. Thank you so much.
>> Bye.
>> I want to connect with everybody here.
>> I would love that. Thank you.
>> Same as well.
I want to quickly call Lind Gatau and Russell Bundy on stage with us now.
And Lenn and Russell, we really appreciate uh your leadership today in this gather verse AI evolve 2026D2.
I'd like for you to briefly share with all of us at gather verse.live and all the folks that are in studio what are your brief takeaways? What are your brief salient very briefly salient points that you've gained uh and garnered from uh interactivities today?
Uh Lynn, we'll start with you and then Russell on to you as well please.
>> Yeah, thank you Christopher. I would first say thank you to every speaker and the speakers who are coming tomorrow for their very kind expressions and insights and what would be is concerning in today's world. Uh my brief takeaway from all this day one and day two u humanity comes first as we always say here at gather verse humanity comes first. Over to you, Russell.
>> Thank you.
>> Um I I I I would say honestly um agency, autonomy, um also um sovereignty, um you know, just I I I think when we're talking about agentics and we talk about AI agents, you know, we all see this world that we're all going into is crazy. And I think you know really one of the biggest learning points I would say is you know how agents can be properly utilized by an individual as an atomic person on their own having their own um agents on their own behalf kind of thing. So I think that's really important as we head into uh the agentic age.
>> Let's let's move away from the technical thesis for the moment. Russell, >> okay, I want to get to the why, >> right? When we talk about this agentic era that we find ourselves in the age of compute, so forth and so on, uh, hyper imperial, empirical awareness, why do these things matter in what context when we start thinking about because you made a bold statement earlier about everyone needs an agent, but I didn't hear more of the why. I'd like for you to briefly share the why.
and and and I I think it'll make more sense in greater context.
>> The reason why is because if we have centralized systems and centralized agencies, you know, pulling our own thoughts in our own head. We can't keep a hold of ourselves, of our own identity, of our own data, um of our own personalization. and us as a human being and as individual.
So I think if we're having let's say an agent from Google for example, you know, it's going to be whatever they want to give you. So if you start using their Google system or Google agent, so to speak, it's going to be whatever Google's data is, right? So we need to take look after our own data. We need to look after our own selves as well, but we also need to make sure that we have our own agency and autonomy so that we can keep ourselves as an individual.
>> Oh, you're speaking to sovereign so you're speaking to sovereign ownership.
>> As as an AI system is working on your behalf. Yes.
>> Sure. The preservation of sovereign autonomy I think puts that into greater context when we start looking at the reason that someone everyone should be equipped to some degree with a defensible posture or position of an agent that can allow them to be able to put in a defensive posture when it comes to using AI. Uh thank you for sharing that Russell it was very noted. I Salvi we'll come to you in just a moment. We want you to garner your thoughts on your takeaways from your roundt's experience thus far with this summit. It'll be brief with each of you and then we'll conclude this day too. But Lynn uh you talk about the need uh for the preservation of humanity and that being something that's focalized and etched in your mind when it comes to the expressions that have been rendered thus far in this round table discussion. I think about something that coach Bobby has shared in the notes uh here in stage with us that we must not outsource humanity.
Why must we not outsource humanity? And who would have thought of such a thing uh not merely a few years ago? Uh does Linda what Russell has expressed that the verbiage and the vernacular what we're using and what someone has expressed our information diet. We're seeing people use words they never used before in a societal in a colloquial sense uh beyond geometric lines if you will. And so I sit here and think about how we speak and express. I sit here and think about the pollution of my own LinkedIn platform that the majority is written by machines and I don't see the perfect imperfection of human expression like I once did like I once enjoyed. Did I even appreciate the imperfection of h the imperfection or the perfection of human imperfection like I once did and when we had it? But Lynn, what are your brief thoughts on that with an unmuted mic, please?
Yeah, you know, Christopher, when it comes to verbage, I think that most humans right now online, we're all sounding the same. Even if someone doesn't use AI, somehow your mind interprets it like the someone wrote with AI because everything is so similar. And maybe you just innocently used the word shape and it was just in your mind. It's the only English you know, but all of a sudden you put out there and you think it's uh AI. So I I I I think that um if we get to a place of no return where we've adopted this AI, we've had our sovereign agents, each and every country has their own uh agentic or not agentic, their own sovereign um AI. Do we will we ever get back to being just humans? Will we ever get back to just me talking with you? just just just a human conversation, childto- child conversation. Will we ever go back to being human again or we just have to adopt this new way of living? So, I'm still also in a in a it's a question for me. I look forward to explore for my my other colleagues. I think in the I think in the general essence of what your question is in framing I think it's rather profound in context and relatability to what you had expressed about their entire generations that all they've ever known Russell and Salvi is digital they've never known a world um like the world I would say that I know being the more mature on this stage uh as a zenial coming from one u space to the other in the sense of coming with almost pure traditional I was around before Nintendo. All right, all of you were born post Nintendo. I was before Nintendo, if I could put it like that. I know I'm aging myself right now, but you have never known a world to this degree where we had to do handwritten letters.
And when we wanted to go do something in life, our parents told us to go play outside with dirt. And so, you know, toys were scarce and video games were not a thing. And Atari was not in every household. Uh it was a different time, but it's it's a community when you can walk down and drive down neighborhoods and there weren't just blue lights emanating from the window scenes, but there were people and your neighbors that were communicating and sharing, if you will. This is a different time that we find ourselves in. And not that I'm saying that there's something per se wrong with it, as people still do reserve the right to be able to do it.
But it seems to me that they're taking a hold of our advantage of that innovation which they deem more credible, more identifiable. And the element that gives me concern salvation which has been brought up and please give us your more expanded thoughts overall is thinking about relationships when it comes to mechanistic machines and intimacy that was alluded earlier by Lynn. I think about that and if people prefer to spend their time on their devices more so than outside perhaps they'll just prefer to be able to spend more time in digital relationship of intimacy an actual tangible heartfelt warm blood intimacy.
I I find that rather interesting uh in the greater scheme of things. But Salvation, could you lend to us your different lens perspective of what you've received thus far since attending both your day one and day two of gather verse for us to conclude on.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Thank you very much, Christopher. And I wanted to say that I was also born in the early to 2000s and I know what it feels like to be without the internet. I I know what it feels like to go outside and play with the sand and to make um wooden toys and be creative about the things that we play about. The conversation we had then as kids and I know what it feels like to be without the cartoon era. So I I I would say that from day one and day two has made me understand that we're still getting there, right? And we're getting there because I think some people have begun to realize the effects on the negative side and want to do better. And I I remember one of the speaker um also confirming that um policies are now being put in place.
people started to talk about governance and ethics around this agent that that should be should be normalized. So I think we're getting into a a point an error that it won't be scattered abroad anymore like the way we see it now where everybody's doing what they choose and what they want for this technology. It's we'll get to a point where there will be control there will be policies to protect how we use this technology and how it affects our lives generally and um for the future I know there there are so many questions unanswered currently but I do hope that on the side of relationship that humans can can also look aside technology as just a tool and embrace how we see each other as people how we say good morning, good afternoon, and good night. And um we may want to do this personally after I've started normalizing calling my parents on phone and my siblings on phone rather than texting them on WhatsApp and just saying good night on WhatsApp. If I can and I have the time, I'm calling my mom, calling my siblings and saying good night. I just want to hear your voice. I just want to know that you're speaking back at me and you're saying good night back at me. are beginning to cherish those voices because these are the things that stick to our memory. These are the things we remember this events that we have physical connections and I I I hope we can also um come back to the time where we cherish trust and how this this also influences good relationship inside business and outside business and every other aspect of our life. That's how much I have to say on this matter >> and that was precious to share u the preservation of relatability, community, relationships. I know how I feel when I hear each of your voices whether on an individual basis due to the relationships that we have or even yet as I sit here under the sound of each of your voices and your leadership. I'm very proud to be have the opportunity to be able to afford to serve along with each of you here in Gatherverse audience. We often encourage you to inspire you to follow those that come to speak at gather verse but here are some of our leadership right here and I would encourage you to follow their journey to network and join with them and maybe if it's possible beyond the text in the prompt of a small white box confined to the boundaries of the digital constructs in which they find themselves native to behold.
that will pick up a phone, pick up device and simply say hello, good evening, good morning, or good night.
We'll see you for gather verse day three and AI evolve 2026 are gathers.
But then they ask when they going to see them. Then they're going to ask to feel the ghosts, the walls, the dreams. Oh, I've got mine.
At last those coming came and they never looked back.
with blinding stars in their eyes. But all they saw was black.
Fooled them hoping to see like a sweat of evil. But the pride agreed and it's not a mass. So be honest with me. We can't afford to ignore that. I'm the disease. Practical since we had to be.
When they were old, they came back to me. And they tried.
only try.
And when you follow through and wind up on your back, looking in the sky, those white clouds have turned black.
Heat up here.
Heat.
Heat.
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