During a recent TIME100 Talks panel in Cannes, a group of CEOs and executives from different sectors came together to discuss how artificial intelligence is changing creativity at their respective companies.
The panel included Jessica Padula, Nespresso USA’s VP of marketing and head of sustainability; Amit Jain, CEO and cofounder of the AI platform Luma AI; Stefano Volpetti, chief global growth officer at Philip Morris International (PMI); and Nigel Vaz, CEO at Publicis Sapient.
During the panel, each leader reiterated the importance of humans and AI working together to generate creative value.
“I’ve always said [AI] is going to make good people even better,” Nespresso’s Padula said. “That’s true for our employees, but it can also be for your day, [for] who you are.”
Padula said the Nespresso team is leveraging tools like AI to elevate the user experience. Nespresso’s data shows that consumers want to drink their coffee slowly and intentionally, which is something that AI tools can help Nespresso achieve. For example, Padula said the company can teach its consumers more about coffee through their app.
Volpetti, from PMI, said that humans and AI should work in unison. And in the AI era, experts believe that humans should work with the technology to compose something special—not merely adapt to it.
“We believe that the two together have the ability to become a force multiplier,” he said. “When you think about the use of AI to personalize and be able to change habit at scale, this is a perfect match.”
As for younger, AI-native workers, Volpetti said that from an innovation perspective, he sees a “much higher level of curiosity” and the preparedness “to experiment to accept there will be mistakes all along the way.” Curiosity and risk-taking are key elements to unlocking creativity.
Publicis Sapient’s Vaz chimed in on how AI is changing how young people work. He said that AI is pushing workers to develop “the ability to constantly iterate and unlearn as much as [they] can relearn.”
“For young folks coming to the organization, almost whatever they’ve learned is going to be obsolete by the time they actually start at the workforce, and every six months, it’s going to be obsolete again,” he added.
Vaz also said that companies should invest in both their human workforce and AI to get the best results.
“I use this analogy of Iron Man,” Vaz said. “You got to invest in the suit and the people and you put them together and you get a superhero. And if you invest in one—it’s a great suit or great people—but you’re not going to get the same kind of acceleration.”
Luma AI’s founder, Jain, reiterated a point that other tech leaders, like Jensen Huang at Nvidia, have made in the past. “A person will only lose their job to another person who is using AI,” he said.
Jain acknowledged that people in creative roles tend to get “emotional” about how AI impacts originality and authenticity.
“There’s going to be change,” Jain said. “I think we have to be ready for it and we have to invest in people so that they are ready for it. But two, I think it’s this collaboration—the human-machine collaboration—that is the future of most technologies.”
Padula, on the other hand, pointed out one gap that AI can’t fill. And this could be where human intuition and creative thinking become most crucial.
“You cannot learn your consumer by talking to AI,” she said. “You can learn a lot about them. You can learn a lot of data. You can learn what they do, where they spend their time. . . . But there’s something different about real-life human interaction.”
As AI shapes how people approach creativity in the workplace, it’s the human qualities, like agility, vulnerability and thoughtfulness that set individuals apart, especially when unlocking creative thinking at work.
“AI is an amplifier,” Volpeti added. “Once you are curious and you know your consumers, personalization [and] scale through AI becomes possible.”
