Web Summit Rio 2023. It couldn’t be different.
Generative Artificial Intelligence dominated several stages of the Web Summit Rio 2023, considered the largest global event of technology and innovation. In the first edition held in South America, there was also space to debate creativity. Yes, creativity in the new AI times.
In some moments, the debate about AI revolved around the possible impacts on work as we know it today, in the most diverse segments. In others, with testimonials on how it has been tested and incorporated to generate gains in scale and productivity. The climax was a live, colorful demonstration of how the tool makes it possible to create an application in exactly 18 minutes – on the event’s main stage, before the eyes of three thousand people!
It is curious to hear and assemble a mosaic on the subject based on testimonials and experiences so varied, from engineers, programmers, designers, journalists, advertisers and creators. The first two groups, of course, are enthusiastic about the new paradigm in the technological regime that generative AI will establish. The others reinforcing the alert that the creativity, critical sense, and human connections will be, more and more, the source of value generation and differentiation of companies and professionals.
In other words, the level will be high. “Whoever knows how to use AI better than us do will be able to take our jobs,” said Alex Collmer, CEO of startup VidMob. Just as we heard at SXSW in Austin last March, the way forward is to learn and define how to use it transparently to incorporate its benefits, without giving up our logical ability and final word.
ChatGPT
In the panel “Is ChatGPT going to kill journalism?”, mediator Steve Clemons – editor of the American website Semafor – opened the session asking the question to the tool itself, which gave us a “no” in a tangled answer full of clichés. He then invited his colleagues in the panel to talk about the use of ChatGPT in the production of journalistic content.
“I see AI as an assistant, for us to delegate repetitive tasks. But we need to discuss ethical standards about its use,” said Laura Bonilla, Latin American editor of the AFP news agency in Latin America, reinforcing: “Accuracy is everything in journalism. People need to have the final word. Greg Williams, editorial director of Wired magazine, was emphatic: “ChatGPT has nothing to do with the truth. It feeds off the Internet, where there is a lot of misinformation.
“It’s like the saying goes: what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. The singularities that only professionals have will stand out. The points of view, the critical eye, the sources that each journalist has, their relationships,” pointed out Paula Mageste, CEO of Editora Globo Condé Nast.
Creativity
The debates were also animated about the impacts on the creative processes of communication and marketing. Even on different stages, speakers ended up converging: creativity is about human connection, about generating unique and emotionally relevant bonds.
Drinking from the new possibilities of emerging technologies, yes! But believing that they alone will deliver the solutions, no!
“Creativity is about putting people at the center, it’s thinking about what could be, what should be,” said Australian David Droga, CEO of Accenture Song and founder of the Droga5 agency, who was cheered when he declared: “Logical people make the world go round. Creative people make the world worthwhile!”. Creativity goes far beyond communication.
Brian Collins, one of the world’s most prestigious designers, contextualized: “creativity always finds a way (in the face of new technologies). Charismatic, he engaged the audience by throwing candy to the people in the front rows – in the best style of Chacrinha, the old warrior – to support his speech that the digital cannot be the only way to promote a unique moment of interaction between people.
Diversity & inclusion
Lia Rizzo, journalist and cofounder of the Tempo de Mulher network, in another panel, brought to the table the essential aspect for any debate on evolution and innovation: “creativity is connection. And, therefore, it goes through diversity, through inclusion.
It was very important to have seen and heard so many powerful female voices in the territory of the Web Summit Rio 2023. We cannot end this article without mentioning the young indigenous leader Txai Suruí, who defended the alliance between ancestral knowledge and technology to protect the forest and the climate. Or the entrepreneur, journalist, and activist Monique Evelle, who demanded fairness in the remuneration of groups underrepresented in the creative market.
In the audience, the female occupancy was also significant, for a technology event, certainly boosted by initiatives such as Women in Tech, which offered tickets with 75% discount. But the mostly white presence in the booths and audiences left a big homework assignment for the next edition of the Web Summit Rio, already announced for April 2024.
Author:
Carina Almeida, Adryana Almeida and Bianca Arman
who ran the Web Summit Rio Marathon
Textual Comunicação, Brazil