AI is a 100-foot wave. It's going to disrupt everything directly or indirectly.” – Ana Melikian

AI continues to be a hot topic around every corner. As I’ve written before, I believe we can use this type of technological advancement as a tool to support a balanced life, and we can choose to embrace certain elements of AI instead of fearing it.

Today, I discuss: 

• Using AI avatars in presentations
• Surfing the 100-Foot AI Wave: a team effort
• Bringing humanistic voices to the AI conversation

Using AI avatars in presentations

I recently began experimenting with AI Avatars in my presentations. I have created—from a photo—an avatar that I fed my bio, and I have a video where the avatar is presenting and reading. The avatar of myself introduces itself, reads my bio, and I then invite audience members to interact with it and ask questions. 

After they interact with the AI avatar and the chatbot, I ask, “How does it make you feel?” I also have a survey that asks people to describe their emotions in 3 words or short phrases. The software I'm using brings those words together in a word cloud, where the words used most often show up bigger. 

The most popular terms are: 

• Curious
• Intrigued
• Amazed
• Impressed

But there are also words such as freaked out, creeped out, fake, weird, etc. It's fascinating to me to see the diversity of emotions that AI elicits.

Now that I'm taking my presentation on the road, I'm curious to see how different audiences react with different feelings. If I'm speaking in Silicon Valley or in a company that is developing AI software and is fully embracing AI, I’m sure there would be a bias towards the positive side of AI’s impact.

At the same time, I know that if I'm speaking with a different type of audience—for instance, an audience of coaches and consultants—their bias is going to be more for being skeptical, using words like icky, inauthentic, not human, or unnatural, because that is their bias. 

They are very focused—and some of them even worried—about how AI bots are going to replace some level of coaching, and if this is a good thing for our well-being. 

I’m intrigued to see how the responses take shape and how people’s emotions fluctuate around this topic.

Surfing the 100-Foot AI wave: a team effort

The reason I continue to revisit this topic is because the impacts of AI are still in the early days of showing their full potential. We are still experiencing the rapid growth and change that comes with this type of innovation.

AI is a 100-foot wave that will disrupt many aspects of life directly or indirectly.

Exploring this metaphor of a 100-foot wave, let's consider the beach as the business world. If you choose to ignore that this 100-foot wave is coming, it can be a very dangerous proposition because you can be crushed by it if you are in the range of it, and most people in the business world are going to be in the range of it. 

On the other hand, if your attitude and approach to it are trying to embrace this wave or control everything about this wave, staying on top of every nuance of every new tool–and I know there are people out there whose job is to keep on the top of every new tool—the risk of burnout is high.

If you ignore it, you can be crushed by it. If you try to control it, you can be crushed by it. 

What is a better response? What are the possibilities here?

You can try to surf the wave or support someone who is surfing the wave. This is how we can create a bigger positive impact as we all learn to navigate these new waters together.

The reason I'm using this 100-foot wave as an example has to do with the HBO documentary series that maybe you are familiar with called The 100-Foot Wave which follows the journey of a big wave surfer, McNamara, in his quest to ride a 100-foot wave, and the challenges that come with that goal. 

Fascinating enough, one of the reasons I started watching the series is that most of it is filmed in a small fishing village in Portugal, my country of origin. The name of this village is Nazare, and, through this documentary and McNamara, it became like a mecca for the big wave surfers from all over the world. They go in the winter when the big swells happen, to try to surf the 100-foot waves. And the very interesting thing about seeing the documentary is that this is not a one-person task. 

If you watch, it's a team of people that are supporting the surfers—the jet skis that take the surfers out there in the middle of the ocean to the right point where they can catch the wave, spotters in the lighthouse with binoculars communicating with the surfer and the support team to make sure that they pick the right wave and that everything is as safe as possible. 

It’s a team effort. Just like most challenges, it’s better faced as a group. There is strength in numbers. 

Bringing humanistic voices to the AI conversation

My mission here is to bring awareness and more humanistic voices to the table. I know plenty of tech people who are all in, and I love the passion of some of these people. And some of them are also aware of the dangers and are trying to put guardrails around this privacy, unintended consequences, etc. 

There are many people on the humanistic side of this—the coaches and consultants, HR people, and so many others—who are putting their heads in the sand and not wanting to explore this new tech. 

But the truth is we need them to venture into AI territory, to bring balance to the conversation. Excitement and passion for these innovations are not negative elements unless those are the only voices we’re hearing on the subject.

There must be a balanced representation of perspectives to ensure we’re looking at these tools in the right light, at the right time, with the proper guidelines and precautions.

So, how do you feel about AI, and why do you think you have the feelings you do?

Be sure to check out my full episode for further insights into the AI wave!