Tobias Hooton, CEO and Founder of Stelia, was recently invited to join Per Overgaard, General Manager, ISG EMEA, of Lenovo for an in-depth conversation on Lenovo’s A Smart Perspective podcast. The pair explored fundamental questions central to the future of artificial intelligence and its impact on human society.
The discussion ranges from the generational shifts in how we interact with technology to the philosophical questions surrounding AI development and the technical challenges of deploying AI systems across global boundaries. They explore the critical decisions we face as we approach what Tobias describes as the “human-machine AI interface” – a future of completely embedded human-AI interaction within the next decade.
Drawing on his extensive industry understanding, Tobias articulates the essential tension between technological advancement and human values, examining how we preserve space for interpretation and ambiguity in automated systems while building AI that enhances rather than replaces human capabilities. Throughout the discussion, Tobias shares insights into Stelia’s approach to building distributed foundational AI systems designed for positive human impact at global scale.
The conversation covers:
- The AI “1996 moment”: how despite widespread industry assumptions, we’re still at the dial-up modem equivalent in AI development, and what’s coming next.
- Global AI deployment challenges: the technical and regulatory complexities of operating AI systems across different countries and the distributed foundational systems required to achieve true global scalability.
- Generational technology shifts: how the move from Google’s indexed results to LLM generated responses represents a fundamental change in human-technology interaction.
- Human vs machine intelligence: the critical differences between AI’s rationalised decision-making and human’s emotional intelligence, and the need for both to complement each other.
- Philosophy in technology: how philosophical considerations around consciousness, creativity, and human experience must guide AI development in order to reach meaningful outcomes.
Watch the full podcast episode to hear the complete discussion on AI’s trajectory and its implications for global technology.
