Is AI About Relationships?

In a way, the new technologies that we are seeing really highlight the role of humans in our world. Sure, we’re using them to build things autonomously. There will be job displacement. But at the same time, there are stakeholder relationships that really make a difference day to day. For now, humans are still in the driver’s seat.

Navin Chaddha runs Mayfield, an investment firm that invests in seed rounds and A rounds, as well as B rounds of funding. The company boasts 120 IPOs and over 225 mergers and acquisitions.

I interviewed Chaddha at Imagination in Action in April about the moving parts involved in making AI -related deals.

One thing that came through is that as an investor, Chaddha wants to invest with partners early.

“The basic idea is, how do we become partners of entrepreneurs at the ideation stage, primarily when they are coming up with an idea, and help them create a company?” he said. “We start with people, because our belief is people build products. People build companies. It’s not the other way around.”

Other suggestions offered by Chaddha in investment strategy involved looking for products that fit solutions, and valuing an approach over a time frame.

He mentioned AI-native design as a goal.

“Our belief is (that) AI will manifest digital companions who collaborate with humans to help elevate them to become super-humans,” he said, promoting an idea he described as “collaborative intelligence as a service” or, alternately, “teammates as a service.”

“Every business function, every consumer function, is going to have a buddy, a teammate,” he said.

Innovating the Interface

At one point, talk turned to how humans and machines will communicate in the years ahead. After the iPhone, Chaddha suggested, it’s hard to have a new user interface, but verbal chat, he imagined, could become the way of the future, for no-hands communication.

“The interface will be natural language,” he said.

How Humans Win

We also talked about what I called “the cognitive economy” and augmented intelligence.

“(AI is) allowing humans to have cognitive capabilities, and together we’re going to be able to do things which we weren’t able to do before,” Chaddha said, invoking the ideas of superhuman speed and superhuman cognition. “AI is a tool. It’s a technology. We are the jockey, we’re not the horse.”

Collaborating on Events

I also wanted to talk about Chaddha’s assertion that we should be doing more events about AI in these years.

“We invest in relationships,” he said. “Let’s grow the pie. Let’s bring the brightest people to the right relationships.”

That jibed with me, as I want to continue putting on these events and setting up the broadest tent possible. I’ll be bringing you more from IIA’s April event soon, to showcase all of what went on, and why it matters.

More resources here:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/say-goodbye-software-interfaces-hello-ai-teammates-navin-chaddha-wmm7c/

Navin’s World Economic Forum article on AI Teammates and a deep dive into Collaborative Intelligence as a Service.