Dara Ó Briain and Hannah Fry explore the power of people in the age of machines

Author: Isha Jain

As our world has become increasingly digitised, humans still bring their own unique, unreplicable experiences – according to keynote speakers at Europe’s biggest digital transformation show. 

On the DTX + UCX’s main stage at the London ExCeL this week, TV Presenter and Comedian, Dara O’Briain, alongside UCL Professor and Author, Hannah Fry, discuss the impact of AI on society and businesses, analysing how factors such as emotion, intent and readiness must be considered as AI becomes more prominent in our society and the business world.

“The human world is random and chaotic – and the algorithmic world is clean and binary,” Hannah tells. 

“So smashing these two worlds together makes for some interesting stuff,” Hannah says the pace of tech often depends on how ready humans are for change. “There are amazing ideas that exist but the world isn’t quite prepared for them. The first electric car was actually made in the 1890s – but people weren’t ready for it!” She also pointed to the long-term presence of the software behind ChatGPT, which only became realised outside of the tech world after the introduction of a ‘simple user interface that suddenly made it available to everybody.’

Dara cites the example of video calling as something humans took time to embrace, “It was available for years but people found it intrusive, initially…”

“It took a pandemic to make it popular,” Dara agrees that most successful changes in tech are ideas which are sufficiently familiar, and that any ‘mutation or variations’ which are too big often prove jarring at first. 

The pair concluded that experiences such as comedy remain intrinsically human and may never be replicated by AI, and that it is real people who are still in control of intention, as we climb an exponential curve.

The idea of the human’s role in a digital world was a recurring theme throughout day two of DTX + UCX 2023. A panel on ‘managing change to make tech work for everyone’, starring Tesco’s Christopher Harvey and Avison Young’s Sarah Jane-Osborne, discussed how businesses need to create a narrative when introducing new tech, building a sense of excitement so that people don’t immediately reject the idea. It also emphasised the value of storytelling in tech – a skill that human beings can utilise to articulate and promote innovations as these tools cannot do so themselves. 

DTX + UCX Europe 2023’s Content Director, Dominie Roberts, concludes, “I’m so proud of some of the conversations that took place as part of this year’s show and hope they’ve gone some way to inspiring IT teams and leaders on how to maximise humans in our  increasingly digital world.

“We are at a pivotal point in tech right now, and I hope that our superb line-up of speakers and panellists addressing these issues head-on with insight and expertise will prove extremely valuable to our engaged audience at DTX + UCX yet again. 

“We look forward to welcoming everyone back next year.”