Senior Vice President & Chief Product Officer, Aptiv PLC
AI will shape the future—participate or risk being left out | Sophia Velastegui | TEDxPaloAlto
Sophia Velastegui examines how artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming industries, economies, and daily life. She highlights the urgent need for individuals, businesses, and policymakers to understand and embrace AI's potential, warning that those who remain passive risk falling behind in a tech-driven world. Velastegui discusses both the opportunities and ethical challenges AI presents, emphasizing the importance of active engagement and responsible innovation. Her message is clear: shaping a future that benefits all requires proactive involvement in the AI revolution. Sophia Velasteg...
About Sophia Velastegui
Sophia Velastegui, Senior Vice President and Chief Product Officer at Aptiv, delivered a TEDx talk in Palo Alto on November 5, 2024, titled "AI will shape the future—participate or risk being left out." In the talk, she argued that artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming industries, economies, and daily life, and that individuals, businesses, and policymakers need to understand and engage with AI to avoid falling behind. Velastegui stated that "AI will shape the future and it's important that all of us participate or be left out." She described her own career shift from hardware engineering at Apple to AI work at Microsoft, where she served as Chief AI Officer, and noted that she became interested in AI after observing that apps with embedded AI had the greatest impact on users. Velastegui emphasized the importance of diverse representation in AI development, saying that "AI is made out of data as well as it's being trained and developed by developers with their perspective and they're only a small subset of the 8 billion people that make up the world." She gave an example from her time at Google and Nest, where a thermostat's AI system initially defined comfortable temperature based on California's climate but had to be updated after global launch to account for regional differences, such as in the UK. She encouraged people to spend 15 minutes a day experimenting with AI tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude, and stated that "foundational AI is being created — AI will shape the future so please participate or risk being left out."
Transcript (11 segments)
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Sophia Velastegui0:13
AI will shape the future. Participate or risk being left out. When you think about AI, do you think about HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, or maybe Terminator, or Wall-E? Or maybe you think about people like Fei-Fei Li, the Godmother of AI, or Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI. Maybe different companies come to mind, like Microsoft and Apple. Or maybe you think of a person like me. The apps that really made a huge impact on people's lives had AI embedded in them, and that's how I started my journey exploring further around AI at Microsoft as Chief AI Officer, because I've come to realize that AI will shape the future, and it's important that all of us participate or be left out. What do I mean by that? It doesn't matter if you're an AI skeptic, AI curious, or maybe you want to be an AI expert. Regardless of where you are in that spectrum, AI will be impactful in our lives, not just in work but also in play.
As it's being trained and developed by developers with their perspective, and they're only a small subset of the 8 billion people that make up the world. Are those perspectives around the world being captured? Their experiences, their viewpoints? That is one of the things we want to address, because another area that AI is getting data from is from all of us and how we engage with it. Currently, only a small set of people are engaging with the AI system and providing it feedback, and it's important that we provide that feedback.
We created the iPhone and knew that it would be a supercomputer in your hand, and in order to do that and protect your data, your safety and security, we had to think of a way to protect your information. So we as developers came up with a digit passcode, thinking there are unlimited passcodes you can create. But when we released it to the customer and looked at the data, we actually found that some of the popular passcodes were 0000 and 1234. That didn't really align with the security we were looking for in this supercomputer.
Technology is not based on our view as a developer saying, 'Hey, you should be able to do unlimited passcode combinations.' It is how it really is being used by the customer. With that digital representation in mind, we came up with the idea of Touch ID, where we use AI to map your finger ridges and then uniquely associate them with your profile. Because of that added security, we are now able to provide additional capabilities like authentication and Apple Pay, because that foundation of increased security and safety and protection of your information allowed us to provide more.
People that really makes it powerful. AI is in the same way an ecosystem we're interacting with each other, but representing you and how you engage with the devices and technology is the most important, because digital representation should not be for just a few and a few perspectives, but really take into account the rich background that all of us come to have, and making sure that the technology comes and meets you where you are. That includes AI. Secondly, the most important is that now all of us need to be represented in the AI, because AI will shape the future, and it's important that you participate in order to have your information, your viewpoints captured in the system, so that the system is not just based on a few but on the many perspectives around the world and how they view technology.
I give a real-life example. When I was at Google and at Nest, we were creating devices for your home, devices that are unloved like your thermostat, your smoke detector, and your doorbell. We were defining what is comfortable for you and the people in your home. In sunny California, it's high 68, low 68, not a cloud in the sky. But the product was actually launched globally around the world, and in the UK, how they define comfortable temperature was very different. They had extremely high energy costs and they actually had four seasons, so they're used to variation in temperature. They were comfortable sometimes at temperatures as low as 60, 62. We in California thought that was a system error. Who would be comfortable at 60, 62? That's freezing. Versus the people in the UK say, 'That's why we wear sweaters.' It's important that we realize that people, this is their home.
Definition of what is comfortable, and it shouldn't be defined by us. People across the world. In the early days of iPhone, when people were looking at it and looking at the different apps, they said, 'There's an app for that.' We are at a stage right now that there's an AI for that, where you can leverage AI into different aspects of your world, because it is important that we get information from yourself, because it will become the foundation of how the AI system understands the needs of the people that it is representing. So do this now. People say, 'You've been working on this for a long time.'
Try to think about different use cases. How can you be leveraging AI, not just using it but being intentional? So 15 minutes a day, daily, where you're drinking your coffee or tea, whatever you are doing in your search engine, why don't you try OpenAI's ChatGPT to ask that question? And also, which is very important, compare it with something else such as Anthropic's Claude to ask that same question and see the responses, because Claude focuses on safety more. Is that something that aligns with what you want and what you're looking for in the system? Next, look for a project where you can apply AI.
Teenagers with very different experiences and activities they're interested in, for a very specific time frame as well as budget. Obviously I asked my family member, but I asked Claude and found out it recommended Iceland to see the Northern Lights. To be truthful, that did not come into my idea or any of the places my family recommended, but that's the one my family really enjoyed. It's because we had a certain experience and expectation, and with this system it broadened our horizon of what is out there. That's what we're considering. We're planning that right now as we speak, and learning things about Iceland.
It's not just what is now, but it's going to be impacting us in the future because of the foundational nature of the work and the inflection point. So how do we incorporate that now in our work? Because that's where it will have the biggest impact. A lot of people I've engaged around the world ask, 'How is it that tech companies have been able to do these amazing things so quickly and with so much speed?' It's because we leaned into the technology. We leaned into AI, not just for technology but for all aspects of our work. So how can you do that in your work environment? Maybe you have a marketing plan, maybe drafting an email. Leverage some of these tools.
Get comfortable with AI, because it's important that by engaging with it, we are actually providing our feedback and our perspective of how we want the technology to serve us and how we would like it to govern. It's important we engage now because this is a especially important inflection point, because foundational AI is being created. AI will shape the future, so please participate or risk being left out. Thank you.