Event Recap: New Consumer Experiences In the Age of Data and AI

On May 3rd, 2023, the Prifina team with its co-organizers at New York Life, hosted a panel on how AI-driven innovation and advances will impact consumer experiences. The event was sold out and we thank all attendees who braved the spontaneous rain in San Francisco to join in person.
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We’re grateful for such lively audience participation and brilliant questions for our panel, which included Mickey McManus, BCG, Malavica Sridhar, Founder, Northstarre, Markus Lampinen, Co-Founder and CEO, Prifina and moderator Amber Wang, Women in AI / Cerebral Valley.

The panelists together raised various observations and addressed the trends in the current market:

• How conversational and natural language interfaces are… well natural for humans, with anecdotes and experiences of humans not simply asking the AI questions, but engaging in back-and-forth conversations akin to a human conversation with a software agent;
  
• Conversational interfaces could move the all-mighty phone’s position to a more backend service nexus and away from the interface into all technology;
  
• How can we solve complex problems with data, such as controlling one's biases (or emphasizing productive ones!) and who should decide what is in the best interests of individuals;
  
• As consumers generate more data, how does it change their lifestyles? How do recent developments in the AI space disrupt the relationships between brands and consumers? 
  
• How do individualized models representing users come to market? Can these personal AI coaches and assistants operate locally (e.g., on our phones) in the future? 
  

 With such a boom in generative AI, personal data and private use of personal data become fundamentally important. Not only because of privacy concerns but also because of representation; if apps and services are built utilizing individual models that represent the users, we can truly deliver private AI that helps us achieve what we want in life. Like an audience member asked: which human activities should we trust to AI and which should we want to perform ourselves?

Questions like these are at the very heart of the debate, but should it not be our choice as individuals based on our preferences? After all, studies show that outsourcing tasks and chores you do not wish to do increases your overall satisfaction in your life.

Thank you all for the wonderful debate and we cannot wait to see you soon to showcase more of what Personal AI can deliver, privately, to each of us.