The power of technology is undeniable. It touches every aspect of our work and personal lives; from making life easier and more convenient, through to advancing medicine, enabling better collaboration, communication and community, and enhancing education to name just a few applications. All pervasive, technology is constantly working for us directly and indirectly, whilst we are awake and asleep.

For all its applications throughout history, technology is at its best when serving the needs of humans. A designed by humans for humans approach will ensure that humans do not abdicate responsibility of the ‘technology outcomes’ and remain in control of what, why and how technology is used to serve us. 

Debate and commentary around the technology-human relationship is prolific and will continue to be a hot topic as the use of AI in every industry continues to grow. In the world of conversational AI, technology has its best impact when used to complement rather than replace humans, and designed to work within a broad ecosystem that is human-led and human-controlled.

This approach enables organizations to utilize the processing power of technology to deliver the speed, convenience and personalization expectations of today’s customer, whilst simultaneously engaging customers on a human level that makes them feel valued, understood and heard. The outcome is brand loyalty and trust.

The human-led, human-controlled approach to the technology-human relationship also ensures that humans are the masters in the conversational AI ecosystem and orchestrate and cheer-lead for the right outcomes, at the right time, in the right way. Technology helps deliver the wanted outcomes. Deploying and utilizing conversational and generative AI to be used as appropriate with consideration of context, person, sentiment and need, is determined by humans via predefined or real-time decision making.

Technology with the human touch makes for the best customer and employee experiences. That’s the sweet spot where conversational AI experts can provide organizations with competitive advantage. It is not either technology or humans, it is both. Technology serving human needs, with humans firmly in control.

Conversational AI at its best is where humans lead and technology follows.