Amazing, incredible, gritty, and thoughtful sums up what happened this past Tuesday at Benedictine University.
Daniel L. Goodwin Hall of Business hosted VAI’s inaugural Vibe with AI Salon, an executive in-person gathering focusing on how AI is impacting real life while unpacking what requires human discernment and consideration. VAI has been shaped as an extension of the TEDx Naperville experience, both founded by Arthur Zards, LabZ’s Chief Experience Officer.
“The energy was absolutely incredible […] I hope you’ll stay curious.” Dona Marie Post.
“I appreciated the rigor and candor in the discussion and the perspectives in the room- it pushed my own thinking and raised my game.” Ann Hoeger.
“All coming from different walks of life. Taking questions on the fly, people not even raising their hands. It was gritty, it was real and it was AMAZING.” Kevin Chaplin.
“Despite a cold Tuesday night, the turnout was strong and the conversation was thoughtful […] looking forward to continuing these conversations.” Waident Technology Solutions.
I was honored to join Arthur Zards, Philip Hardy, John Ahlberg, Ann Hoeger, David Panek and Donna Marie Post as a member of the Salon’s speaker and facilitation team.
“Jose de Francisco took us into Human Factors Engineering, offering a structured way to think about the evolution of AI systems and where human reasoning still belongs alongside machine intelligence […] de Francisco is an award-winning technology executive and design innovator, a pioneer in Human Scale AI with experience spanning startups, Fortune 500 corporations, and global innovation forums.” Arthur Zards.
“I was fortunate to attend in person, I am still trying to wrap my brain around his key points. Fascinating guy.” Dave Hodgson.
In my discussion, I introduced Human Scale AI, HS AI, as principled practice devoted to making tech human. This means prioritizing user manageability from the outset by ensuring that AI systems are governable and aligned to serve us effectively.
- HS AI moves the conversation to concrete human experiences blending four dimensions: culture, knowledge, cognition, and affect in real-world contexts and applications.
- HS AI integrates behavioral economics, reasoning and sentiment analysis insights so that user models and AI agents are equipped to deliver meaningful personalization to assist, amplify, and augment users’ possibilities, including self-service customization and new value creation.
- These three capability levels (assistive, amplification and augmentation) are purposely set to generate measurable value-based objectives and key results, OKR, yielding quality outcomes.
- Neurosymbolic AI is instrumental to HS AI because it combines the strengths of prediction models with the structure and transparency of symbolic reasoning.
- This hybrid architecture’s stack provides a foundation for ensuring that complex automation serves humans’ decision responsibilities and ultimate ownership.
As Stephen Hawking emphasized in his WIRED Making Tech Human AMA, AI will only benefit society if its development is guided intentionally rather than assumed to be inherently positive. Human Scale AI’s narrative drives our conversations to inform and orient overall system design. Transitioning from well‑intended abstract constructs toward delivering material value makes a difference.
As technology evolves at unprecedented speed and scale, the fact is that, in the midst of any change, the human factor remains the X factor, where ‘X’ stands for our individual and shared human experiences. Designing systems for our senses and sense making determines success in ways that win hearts, minds and business, which fuels investment entrepreneurship and investment confidence for what’s next.
Photo credit: Donna Marie Post
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Amazing, incredible, gritty, and thoughtful sums up what happened this past Tuesday at Benedictine University.
Vibe with AI’s inaugural Salon, VAI, took place at Benedictine University this past Tuesday to focus on unpacking what still requires human consideration and judgement as AI is evolving at unprecedented speed and scale. VAI is an extension of TEDx Naperville’s experience.
My discussion shared a human factors engineering perspective on how AI systems can be designed to be manageable, governable, and decisively aligned to serve what real users need to succeed. We addressed Human Scale AI, HS AI, as a principled approach that prioritizes practical user centric cases.
I also covered how experience analytics, personalization models, and Neurosymbolic AI support human possibilities. HS AI ensures that the technology meets us to deliver measurable, tangible value while making its design, development and delivery intentionally guided.
I would like to thank Arthur Zards, LabZ Chief Experience Officer, and Philip Hardy, Director of Innovation and Strategic Partnerships at Benedictine University for the opportunity to be a member of the Salon’s speaker and facilitation team with John Ahlberg, Ann Hoeger, David Panek, Donna Marie Post.
I am also grateful for the session and follow up discussions, which are transcending the event as some of us are continuing the conversation.
Additional insights: Human Scale AI at VAI’s Inaugural Salon @ JdFblog.phd
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