The AI Economy: Trevor Noah on Embracing Curiosity in AI

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IN THIS ISSUE: Celebrity Trevor Noah appeared at Zendesk’s Relate conference this week, sharing his perspective on technology with his comedic perspective. He urges us not to surrender to our fear and instead embrace curiosity. Here’s what the host of the “What Now? With Trevor Noah” podcast said.

Plus, why are AI-generated images in the style of “Spirited Away” taking the internet by storm? Learn about OpenAI’s new ChatGPT image generation option. And catch up on this week’s AI news you may have missed.

The Prompt

You might know Trevor Noah from The Daily Show, his stand-up comedy, or his bestselling 2016 memoir, Born a Crime. But he’s also deeply curious about technology and how it’s shaping our world. During a fireside chat with Zendesk’s Chief Technology Officer Adrian McDermott this week, the cultural commentator shared his thoughts about artificial intelligence. In short, he believes the tech can amplify the human connection.

“I think it’s interesting to see the leaps and bounds that it’s making,” Noah said, though he acknowledged that AI may be reaching a plateau in how much data it can process and accomplish. “I would love to see where we settle with AI, but in the meantime, I find it’s very exciting and scary—but not world-ending scary.”

Microsoft’s Chief Questions Officer speaks from experience, having experimented with the technology himself. Although mainly engaging with AI as a consumer, Noah has been curious about customer user agents and what the market will shape up to be. However, he found humor in the irony: “In some ways, it feels like we’re still in a middle area where the agent is now going to be running the program for you, which seems like what the graphical user interface was doing before that. So now, it’s like you have a program to run a program, which is still a program. So, we’re not really fully in this utopia of AI doing everything.”

Be Curious, Not Fearful

The popular comedian admitted that evaluating AI’s impact—whether good or bad—is a complex challenge: “I’ve heard some people say to me, ‘Trevor, this thing, it’s like the atom bomb all over again.’ I understand why you say that, but the atom bomb couldn’t write poems. What I mean about that is that I think it’s important to remember that weapons can only be weapons. There is no other use for a gun. There is no other use for a bomb. So the difficulty that comes with AI is understanding that you have something that is a tool that can be used as a weapon, but that’s any tool.”

While it may seem Noah is a techno-optimist, he sought to offer a more measured response. He’s hedging somewhat on AI, suggesting a cautious approach to it. He believes in its potential but encourages people to have a curious, not fearful, attitude. Embrace the experiment of technology, but understand we’re in uncharted territory.

“We’ve never had AI. We don’t know what it will create. We don’t know what it will end up being. And so the same way we didn’t know what the atomic bomb—which was only a weapon—we didn’t know how it would shape the world. No one could have known that. We now don’t know what this tool that can also be a weapon, that can also be this magnificent utopia. We don’t know how it will affect the world.”

AI Must Complement Human Progress

One such concern is AI’s impact on jobs. Workforce disruption is a familiar argument critics make against it. Noah cited a quote from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang: “Any company that uses AI to drop its workforce is a company that has run out of ideas.” In other words, companies with ideas suffer from not having enough people to execute them. But, if they use AI, the first instinct is to reduce the workforce, meaning the company doesn’t have enough ideas. “In time, you’re just going to be a company that shrinks and metastasizes in one place,” Noah remarked. All of this is to say that executives who turn to AI to replace their workers and cut costs have a bigger problem to worry about.

“I think every company who thinks future, who thinks big, will think about protecting the workers, not necessarily the jobs because they’ll understand that in the long-term, that’s going to be the key to their success and their…growth,” he shared.

Artificial intelligence should be a potential partner in human progress, not a threat.

Human, Human, Operator, Human!

Noah also dissected AI’s potential in customer service, arguing that the technology could help eliminate “some of the grunt work that isn’t necessarily adding qualitative value.” But aside from this benefit, he highlighted that AI could reshape the company-customer relationship, infusing a human connection. Noah concedes there will always be friction in the experience, but it’s essential to weed out the unproductive and frustrating moments. “I don’t think there’s a single company out there that is willfully trying to destroy their customers’ lives,” he said. “If you are, good for you, it’s an interesting one. But for the most part, that’s not what you’re trying to do.”

How long do you endure the IVR before you scream on the telephone for a human agent?

The consequences can be serious when there is unnecessary friction, such as being stuck in an endless loop of automated responses or waiting a long time to speak to a human agent. “The rage you will feel when you are that customer makes it feel personal like people will end a relationship with the company because of that moment.”

AI has the potential to reduce friction, and when applied thoughtfully, that interaction with a bot can feel genuinely helpful.

What’s a Human Connection Worth?

Noah refutes that today, customer service doesn’t promote human connection. Rather, he equates that in “the same way the prisoner and the prison warden have a human connection. Yes, you are connecting, but this is not how we want humans to be connecting.” The acclaimed author pointed out that human connection isn’t when you’re “engaging with somebody who has to help you fix” a problem you have with a product, system, or company. That’s because you’re in a conflict and hoping the other party can help you.

Instead, human connection is when you converse with someone in an additive way. Noah predicts this is where AI could shine, such as picking up the administration of keeping us connected with one another. “There’s definitely a world and its potential for AI to take up some of that slack and be a connector between everybody in an intelligent way.”

“When we think of connecting, we have to ask ourselves what the purpose of connection is,” he explained. “There is connection that comes from conflict, and I don’t think that that connects us in a way that we use it because what it’s really doing is it’s causing us to fray. We see that with social media, and you can see that with bad customer service. But then there is connecting, where you feel like you’re engaged with the person—and that’s different.”

Final Words of Advice

What should you do to adapt to this world being shaped by AI? Noah’s answer varies depending on where you are in society. For example, if you’re young, he recommends diving right into AI, encouraging schools to embrace tools like ChatGPT and LLMs. “This might be the revolution of education that we haven’t had in almost 100 years,” Noah posits. “Rote memorization isn’t necessarily critical thinking, so I would go with the opposite approach.” He wants to see how students use AI to present a new perspective on the world war, city planning, or education.

For those who are in power, Noah believes there’s a different opportunity and responsibility. “Any boss, any CEO, any leader in the company: Don’t just think of it as extracting value out of your people and your customers. Also, think about it as providing value. Think about how it would improve a person’s life—a customer’s life—when you are able to deploy a technology that makes the experience better and think about how you can improve your employee’s life.”

Noah empathizes with everyone else in this so-called middle band, who feel overwhelmed by the technology always in their face. “On the one hand, you’re using a technology that you might feel might also be the thing that replaces you at some point. You’re in this conflicting situation…What I would encourage people to do is listen as much as you can, learn as much as you can. Don’t even try and understand per se…Just listen. Just learn. Be curious…Go into it. Try and see how it applies to your life. Play with it, and that curiosity can end up being the catalyst for what moves you into the next era of how we work and what we do.”

“Acknowledge your fears,” he added.

Disclosure: I attended Zendesk's Relate conference as a guest of the company with my flights and hotel covered. Zendesk did not dictate the contents of this post. These words are my own.

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The GPT Image Generation Obsession

OpenAI has the internet abuzz this week with the release of GPT-4o-powered image generation to ChatGPT. Initially accessible to all users, the company suspended free-tier access plans after experiencing an overwhelming surge in demand within the first few days. It apparently was so popular that OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman claimed, “Our GPUs are melting.”

And while ChatGPT’s image generation is receiving positive reviews for its quality, it’s being criticized for copyright infringement. For example, AI images in the style of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki (“My Neighbor Totoro,” “Spirited Away”) have flooded the internet, reigniting the debate about AI tools being trained on copyrighted creative works. OpenAI claims that GPT-4o was built on “publicly available data” and uses proprietary data from companies it has partnerships with.
This isn’t the first time OpenAI has launched an image generation tool. It has DALL-E, which is a freemium service. But now, with GPT-4o’s image generation in ChatGPT, there’s a single system that provides multimodal content creation.

This Week’s AI News

💰 Funding and Investments

☁️ Enterprise AI Solutions

Zendesk’s new AI Resolution Platform aims to tackle customer service’s biggest question (My Two Cents)
Salesforce refines agentic platform with flexible database (Silicon Angle)
Observe launches VoiceAI agents to automate customer call centers with realistic, humanlike voices that don’t interrupt (VentureBeat)
Microsoft brings deep reasoning to Copilot Studio, launches reasoning agents for M365 (My Two Cents)
Microsoft announces security AI agents to help overwhelmed humans (The Verge)
AWS enhances QuickSight’s business intelligence with AI agents (Silicon Angle)
Sierra acquires workplace communication startup Receptive AI (Sierra)
PwC launches AI agent operating system to revolutionize AI workflows for enterprises (PwC)
AI skeptic creates chatbot to help teachers design courses (The74)

⚙️ Hardware, Robotics, and Autonomous Systems

The AI robots are coming. The world is not ready (Quartz)
China built hundreds of AI data centers to catch the AI boom. Now many stand unused (MIT Technology Review)

🔬 Science and Breakthroughs

Doctors told him he was going to die. Then AI saved his life (The New York Times)
Earth AI’s algorithms found critical minerals in places everyone else ignored (TechCrunch)
Can AI be your therapist? Experts disagree (Axios)
Archetype AI is like ChatGPT for the physical world (Fast Company)
Doctor explains how AI is already being deployed in medical care (CNN)

💼 Business, Marketing, Media, and Consumer Applications

OpenAI reportedly expects its revenue will triple to $12.7 billion in 2025 (CNBC)
Amazon’s Alexa Fund is now backing AI startups (TechCrunch)
As AI disintermediates the inbox, publishers adapt again (AdWeek)

🛒 Retail and Commerce

⚖️ Legal, Regulatory, and Ethical Issues

💥 Disruption, Misinformation, and Risks

As AI takes his readers, a leading history publisher wonders what’s next (Big Technology)
Bill Gates: Within 10 years, AI will replace many doctors and teachers—humans won’t be needed ‘for most things’ (CNBC)
Open-source developers say AI crawlers dominate traffic, forcing blocks on entire countries (Ars Technica)
Job hunting and hiring in the age of AI: Where did all the humans go? (The Washington Post)

🔎 Opinions, Analysis, and Editorials

AI is painful for journalists but healthy for journalism (Pete Pachal/Fast Company)
5 AI superpowers Japan has over Silicon Valley and Beijing (Media & The Machine)

End Output

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Trevor Noah on AI: Embrace Curiosity Over Fear