To support our efforts in discovering and playing with what innovation means to us at Interaction, last week, myself and Matthew attended an event hosted by Three Cherries (our IT Support company of over 20 years) about AI - what it is, where it’s going (spoiler - no one knows!) and to explore our path to embracing it. They were joined by some very knowledgeable speakers - John Turner, the Chief Exec of Visit Somerset and Oxford University Alumni member, Jake Shaw from AI Consultancy Obsolete and Louis Graham, a Microsoft Copilot specialist from Westcoast Cloud.

It was a fascinating morning, albeit at times, a bit scary, hearing from those that are ‘in the know’. AI technology is developing at a speed no one predicted and it’s here to stay - it’s growing - it’s going to change how we live - and it cannot be ignored.

There is so much I could write about what they shared, but this is a blog and not a book, so I will try and be brief.

How did we get here? In 1405 (a mere 600 years ago), the printing press was invented - this was fundamental in shaping our future - people could see and share information - and now, we are never more than a finger swipe away from it (maybe even an eye movement away?).

Ever since, humans have not stopped producing, processing and sharing data - that’s what AI is about - data! A huge amount of data and everyone wants to use it. According to the latest estimates, 402.74 million terabytes of data are created each day and it is estimated that 90% of the world's data was generated in the last two years alone (I wonder how much of this contains an image of a cat).

So, what about the ethics? Have you ever wondered who owns your data? How does this get decided? Do you read the disclaimers when signing up to the latest app about how they will use your data? Do you and should you care?

At Interaction, we value trust and authenticity in the way we run our business and how we work with our clients - a big reason why lots of our clients stay with us for many years. With apps that can create an avatar of you and attend meetings on your behalf, write your notes, clone your voice - how does anyone know you are who you say you are? Will trust become the new currency?

What can we do at a smaller scale? Like many businesses, we are small and it’s ok to start small. We already use it everyday in the form of Narrow AI - think face recognition, navigation, self-driving cars. Jake Shaw from Obsolete suggests considering the following in the AI journey - ethics, efficient use (AI uses huge amounts of carbon/energy/cost/land), be considerate and don’t use it for everything - be authentic. These sound like good values to live by as we become curious about how we incorporate AI into our organisation.

I will leave you with a few more questions to ponder (ones I definitely cannot answer yet, but am curious to find out):

• Do you know where you’re going, do you know how long it will take and do you know how you will get there?

• Do you know how your industry will look in 3 years?

• AI was not used to write this blog - do you trust me?