WebSummit Rio Panel — Generative AI: Where to after the hype?
Everyone in Silicon Valley seems to be obsessed with Generative AI and the potential that it has for the future of the tech ecosystem. From creating images and videos, to drafting and reviewing code, or producing hyper-personalized content, the possibilities appear nearly endless. The potential implications to society do too. There is a real possibility that nefarious characters use it to defraud more consumers, businesses and even the government.
With billions of VC dollars funneling into the latest Generative AI startups, we have accelerated the development and deployment of this technology. This panel explores the impact of generative AI on various industries and shares their perspective on what will be left once the initial hype has subsided. Take a listen below.
Transcript
Hi everyone. I'm very excited to this panel because I don't know if you heard, but Generative AI is changing everything. But what's left when the hype is gone?
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That's what we are gonna discuss in this session. Panelists will investigate the deployment, the development, and the impact of Generative AI: how it can produce music, code, text, and images.
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Let's start with Sarah. Automati AI is a provider of conversational of solutions, but I would like to hear a little bit more of what your company are doing and if you could If you talk to how do you see the impact of development in the deployment of generative ai?
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Yes, of course. So thank you for having me. Quick intro. I am Sarah. I am the CEO and co-founder of a company called Ultimate. My co-founders and I have been building Ultimate for about five years now. And we are 170 people based across London, Berlin, New York, Helsinki. So yeah, we've been working in AI for a while, and what Ultimate does, we are a customer service automation platform.
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So our customers use us to design an AI virtual agent that works like a real agent within their customer support team. And automatically responds to customer service requests in all of their digital channels, like email or chat or messaging. And it does it in every single language. And AI is a really core component of that, right?
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Because we use AI for the human machine conversations, we use AI to understand customer intent, to extract key information and to manage the bot. So you are going to your question, which is how is AI changing customer service? What is my view? And AI has been, AI is going to disrupt customer service.
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It is already happening. A lot of customer service is transactional. You probably know this because you reach out to customer service yourself. It's questions like, where's my order? Why have I been charged this, pro product recommendation? All of those questions, AI can probably do better than a human today, right?
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Because it's faster, it's 24 7 and what we're seeing happening in customer support is the average automation rate today is about 45%. And with generative ai, it's gonna go up to about 60% in the next two years. And the main reason for that is two, two key things are happening with generative.
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Firstly, generative AI can get started, it can launch instantly, right? So we released the generative AI product, just a couple weeks ago. And how it works is you put in your help center url, And that's it. You have a bot immediately. It can answer any question completely human-like about anything in your customer support, right?
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And so any business can use this. It's no longer hard to launch. It just goes live instantly in any language. The second thing that generative AI is really good at is, and this one's obvious, it can have really human-like conversations, right? Really contextual, really spontaneous. Us and that means that the user experience is getting really good.
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And as we all know, when the user experience gets good, the adoption can grow and grow. So yeah, I think it's a catalyst. AI is really being catalyzed right now by what's happening in generative.
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Thank you, Sarah. Let's bring some Brazilian flavor to this stage.
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Daniel, I would like to share what you are doing generative ai and if you could, if you discuss a little bit more about the impact you are seeing generative AI in the industry, both in terms of the prototype development and customer engagement.
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Perfect. Good morning everybody. Brazilian retail cosmetics group, the leading company in Brazil and some other countries, have complex problems.
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And also sometimes we take this complexity to our customers and of course we want to take it out. The friction that we create. Just for you to understand, we have like around 10 different brands that we produce. We have three to 4,000 products. A person could choose one between 3000 products to buy. They want to understand what's the best thing for myself, what do I need, what will help with my needs.
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We have 4,000 stores. We have 10 different sales channels that. Epic commerce and altogether direct sales, everything. So this is important. This is nice. This is good to decon because the person can find anything anywhere, but also create complexity. If I want to know what's the best for products for myself, how can I choose, how can I know, how can understand from which brand do I buy from?
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What's the difference between this skincare product and the other one to my skin? What will happen? And then some other questions. I bought it, but I want to understand how do I use it? How do I apply makeup? This is something that everybody who uses makeup, they all the time are on Instagram or Facebook or blog looking for tips for recommendation for help to use makeup products or the best perfume to myself.
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Of course our Sales team and and the office team and everybody, which is helping people to find their solutions. We know what to do, we know what to answer. But of course, with generative AI yeah, we can do it much better, much faster, and much more precise. We can help them to find some time.
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I understand that a good solution, we understand that, but the good tech solution helps people to save time, save money, or create great experiences. And this kind of technology can do two or three of those options. Of course saving time and maybe create great experiences. And then comes the human part.
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Then there is a recommendation. There are recommendations, but there is somebody that knows you or is in front of you and can help you with recommendation or a certain option between all the options that the AI can give you in a future in helping you with some solution. I was thinking that maybe after this conference, I will just talk to Sarah and maybe to understand better health products.
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Let's do it. I don't. What do you see the most significant challenge in deploying generative AI in the real world, and how do you address these challenges in your work at arc?
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Sure. Hi everyone. My name's Don Muir. I'm the CEO and founder of Arc technologies based out of San Francisco. We're a digital bank for startups.
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We provide cash management. Funding solutions for hyper growth. Typically venture-backed software businesses. As David pointed out on opening night in his keynote address, artificial intelligence is the most transformative innovation of our lifetimes, and like Neobanks Arc will continue to leverage artificial intelligence across.
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Every function of the organization to drive efficiencies and deliver value to our customers. Today we're working on leveraging AI across sales and marketing to write better emails to our customers. To summarize call notes using gong's AI tool. In engineering to ship higher quality code faster with less headcount and higher quality.
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And most importantly, and most pertinent to arc in our business. What we do here on the underwriting and risk team and on cash management is leveraging gen ai and machine learning technology to make faster, better underwriting decisions so we can turn around loan decisions faster to our customers.
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So we can use artificial intelligence to determine what the proforma or normalized cash burn is and runway is for a cash burning venture backed startup in Silicon Valley and say, you should invest in a 3, 6, 12 month T-Bill program because you need only two millions of dollars of cash sitting on your balance sheet today.
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And the residual can be invested in these illiquid securities on a longer time horizon. We're working to build AI to put treasury on autopilot for venture backed softwares in a way that the traditional banks like SVB or FRB or today JP Morgan Chase or Wells Fargo haven't been able to accomplish.
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And it's my view that AI and those who leverage AI will outpace the offline incumbents who simply don't embrace this technology.
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Okay. Sarah. As AI becomes more sophisticated and capable of doing things, it's our almost impossible to distinguish what that they produce it from what is produced for by human.
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How do you think, how do you see the impact on the job market?
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Okay, great question. What's gonna happen to job. In customer service, this is like the big question. What is gonna happen to the jobs in customer service now that bots are coming and okay, so firstly the job market for customer service is going to change.
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Anyone that says that it's not going to change is not telling you the truth. It's a positive change, right? So I mentioned earlier last year, our average automation rates across every single customer that we work with all over the world. Was 45%. Now with Gen ai, I see that going up to 60% within the next 18 months.
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Okay? So that means that in the next 18 months, AI is going to be able to resolve more than half of all of customer support requests, and that's really going to change jobs. But the good news is that this doesn't happen overnight, right? We're not gonna lose jobs today. People are not going to lose their job.
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It's more that the jobs that are gonna be created in the future are not going to be the same manual, repetitive, transactional work that it is right now. They are going to be more tech savvy. They are going to be one of the fastest growing jobs Is automation manager, bot manager really in demand in customer support.
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Higher paid on average, 30 to 50% higher salaries than an average customer support agent. And the skills that you're going to need as well will be different. You will need to be a bit more technically savvy. You will need to manage an automation platform, but it's also the job of products like Ultimate, to be easy to use, to be joyful, to use so that non-technical users can just open it up and get started.
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So yeah, I think I can also add something that besides Traditional or non-creative jobs. You can also think about new developments on creative jobs, for example. I think it's not working. Oh yeah, it's working. For example, we did a proof of concept during the carnival with our tech marketing departments where we suggested and we created some.
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Makeup looks suggestions to carnival to our clients, and we created this by AI generation and the looks were created by the computer, but afterwards, what we did was asking for makeup artists to help to improve it, improve them, to make the final touch that only the human beings capable to do. It's like the chef.
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Thing, like there is something that it's art or the final human art we are discussing about what is art is not art. If it's not or not, doesn't matter, but there is something that's unique from the human being. So you can create unique experiences using AI and mixing with human being.
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Yesterday I was watching Neil Patel’s session at the summit and he was saying about the creativity comes after. What you can find with AI generation. So I think both can merge and be together.
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This is a common misconception with disruptive technology and innovation, that there will be a loss of jobs through automation and technology from my experience. In Silicon Valley and from my vantage point as a bank for startups in Silicon Valley in San Francisco, the amount of job growth and investment that we've witnessed firsthand pertaining to artificial intelligence is greater than I've seen in my professional career.
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We serve 25% of this batch and Y Combinator on the banking side. And 15% of the winner 23 batch at Y Combinator is building ai. The investments from venture capitalists in Silicon Valley are targeting AI and pouring into ai. Cerebral Valley spun up the neighborhood next to my office in Soma, and we see founders that come into our office all the time talking about job growth, hiring, raising more capital.
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There's tons of new jobs that are being born in San Francisco and more broadly in the Bay Area and globally as we've discussed here in Brazil and Rio specifically. So for me it's very exciting and with disruption while certain industries may be impacted in the short term over the long term, the growth potential is enormous and there'll be net new jobs created as now of you brought this conversation to the human side of the talk.
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Let's talk about this. What is the skills needed to success in customer engagement? Building cosmetic industry in financial service, producing generative ai? Ooh, producing generative ai?
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Okay, so in customer service, the skills that you need to work in a team that is using ai. Versus a team that is not, are exactly the same skills.
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Okay? You need to know how you need to understand your customers. You need to know how the customer service process should work. What is the ideal flow? You need to know what are the different systems that you need the data from? So let's say the question is, where is my order? The number one most common question in e-commerce.
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You need to know that you get that order details from this system over here. Or the, these are your different delivery partners, right? You just build those flows into an automation platform like Ultimate, and that's it. And then you just manage, you monitor the performance. You qa the tool in the exact same way that you QA your support agent team.
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It is a one-to-one transference of skills, and actually that's why it's so important that we do not have. Fear mongering headlines, eye-catching headlines like AI is coming to take your job because that's just gonna create fear and therefore slow down innovation. We need honest, pragmatic, potentially a bit boring, real life stories of how this is being implemented, what the jobs are like to destigmatize it, but also to therefore make people feel bought in, like they are part of the change and like they can be winners of the change that's happening.
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Yeah, same skills, really. Yeah. On the customer service side, specifically traditional financial institutions, the large a hundred plus billion dollar publicly traded companies that ARC set out to disrupt, to displace, they have a very poor track record with serving early stage SMB startup and consumer clients.
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Generative AI changes that. Simple applications, chat bots reaching out to e to customers, sending customized outbound emails being hyperresponsive to customer inbound request the potential of generative AI to improve customer service and the overall customer experience in financial services.
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Is enormous. And that in particular is very exciting to me. And the operators, the executives across the traditional ffis that do not embrace this technology will be left behind by those who do. But also, I think I was discussing that with Sarah before. I think that we have to this responsibility, especially big companies and government, but also new companies, we have the responsibility to.
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Help people to understand how to manage and how to rethink their jobs because probably they won't, they're not the same kind of professionals who do this the traditional thing right now. And they will do it a different way with ai. They will have to learn and relearn and reinvent theirselves their selves, and we have to help them because maybe that will be a gap.
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And there is a need to invest in on education and knowledge and creative jobs in general. Actually what is happening is that after this revolution of that Genet will cause probably most of the jobs will be more creative. We have to find solutions not to find information. You have to deal with information not to.
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Report information. We have to take decisions, we have to help people to take decisions. So this gap will have to be fulfilled by us helping and adjusting the teams and the professionals in general to use, to better use these tools. Yeah, actually I would just, I completely agree. I think this idea of upskilling and training people is so important and.
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From my personal experience, right? I am not technical. I had no idea I would end up being a founder of an AI company. I went to girls only schools until I was 18 and tech and software was not even on the syllabus. So I was not exposed to it. School. I was not exposed to it. University AI is not, you do not need to be an engineer to work in the space to contribute with the space.
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You need to understand more than anything. The use case, how the technology should be applied, the problem that you're trying to solve, and then you work as part of a team at all sorts of diverse companies to use it for all sorts of really cool things. Yeah, I would like to change the service a little bit, Daniel.
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As AI becomes more widely spread, how what kind of technical and ethical considerations a company like Bo. AR and our company Sarah, have to take in account in order to develop a technological project more responsibly. I think one of the ethical discussion that we have to have is this one that we were saying about what to do with the people that doesn't know how to handle with the store, how to use it.
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There will be a gap for some time, and we have to discuss it and we have to to understand that there will be, need to invest on the transition. But also there is something that is important to the society. Not only jobs, but about the Veras the. How do I say that?
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If you can really trust on information, if Differation is fake or is, it's a real information, even for companies. Not only fake news, political, fake news or scientific news, but how can I know that this AI is really recommending the best product to that person and not the product with the best margin or the product with there is more on, on stock that I have to sell.
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So there were gonna be an addict also. To recommendation to, to, to the way people should use the product. How can I really help them? Cause when you go, for example, on Instagram or any social network, people are helping you to better use your product, not waste too much product. How can we also translate it to technology and be transparent and be real?
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So there will be many discussions about. How can we make it behave ethically and we must discuss it? This is something that should or must be part of our discussion. This technology, in my mind levels the playing field for underserved people. Eliminates language barriers, eliminates technical gaps in knowledge.
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In terms of ethics the advantages are clear. But it's important that the technology is used in a responsible manner, and that's on all of us. First and foremost, it's mass adoption governments, institutions, academic institutions. Corporations need to embrace the technology, encourage their employees, their students, their citizens, to utilize this innovation, this technology and the supply and the demand, and the push and the pull of the free market will guide, should guide.
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The technology in the right direction. And if it's not, it's important to be vocal about it and to speak up. And it's important for leaders of these organizations, everyone sitting here in this room, to embrace technology and ensure that it's being utilized in an equitable manner. Ensure that it's being adopted by your teams, your companies and speak up if things aren't being used appropriately.
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Don. Let's talk about the future. How do you see Generative ai changing the landscape of financial services, what do you think are the benefits and the challenge you can foresee?
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It's a great question. I think the real winner with artificial intelligence is the consumer and financial services specifically, it's the depositor who accesses a higher yield on their idle cash because it's being invested more efficiently. It's the a obligor who's getting a better, faster loan decision because the appropriate technology is being leveraged behind the scenes rather than a manual offline process that's subject to bias.
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The real winner here is the consumer.
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The pace of innovation will continue to accelerate, driven by AI and future innovation around ai.
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And at arc we're really leaning into technology and we're encouraging others to do so as well. It'll make the competitive landscape more competitive.
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And I think that's a good thing because at the end of the day, competition is what drives innovation. And everything's going to start moving a lot faster. Built on the back of artificial intelligence, the focus around generative ai. Let us choose some negativity consequence, like deep fake like manipulation of information.
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I would like to hear from our of your, of our three, how could you mitigate this bad consequence? How do you think you could avoid that?
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Yeah. So there is so much that we should be doing to make sure that it is ethically implemented. But the first thing that we should probably do, and it's an incredibly low hanging fruit, is we should mandate that AI needs to state that it is ai, right?
Or it should, if something is a generated video, right? A deep fake video, it needs to state that it is a deep, fake video. Because the risk is if we cannot tell between what is a, what is real footage and what is generated footage, then we don't know what happened or what did not actually happen, right?
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We, there is the loss of truth, there is the loss of facts. It is the same when you are having a conversation or with an AI agent. It has to state that it is an AI agent because otherwise, Yes. You don't know that there isn't actually intimacy that's happening there. That is very confusing and very distortive for the human experience if we can't tell what true relationships are.
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So that one's very quick, but I dunno what else? Oh, just add something. I think while most companies is found investments and everything will be, We put lots of money in ai. We should also invest lots of money in humanize and discuss and everything. I told you, it's already before. We have to put balance.
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And the way to do this is there will be fake news. There will be the fake. We have to put more discussion. More discussion. Not about necessarily regulations, but about what's happening what we have to do with that. Maybe technology to find this kind of. Of deep plates. There, there is technology ready to do this.
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Maybe if I create a look that doesn't exist with a model that doesn't exist with a makeup, look, I have to to I'm obligated to tell this everybody that person doesn't exist. I dunno the solution. But we have to humanize better than only invest on technology or do both.
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That's a great answer. And completely agree with. With both of you, with any new disruptive technology, there will be bad actors who use it in the way that it was not designed. And that's scary. And with this technology in particular it's terrifying Now there will be issues, there will be problems that arise from the misuse or misappropriation of this technology that is inevitable, as I mentioned.
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Before, for those who are listening in a position of power, those who are regulators, those who own companies, this isn't a reason to shy away from the technology. If anything, it's a reason to lean into it, to embrace it, to ensure that there are more good actors, more benefactors, more people who are working to use the technology for the betterment of society that outweigh those who wanna use it to detri as a detriment to society.
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Of course, regulation will come, will iterate on the best ways. To prevent to prevent misuse of this tech. But the headline for me is embrace the technology adopted in your organizations and it'll make society better as a whole over time.
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That's it guys thank you very much. Thank you.