The Value of Human “Messiness”

In the tech world, we often refer to automation as the solution to human ‘messiness’. Humans are error prone, filled with biases, forgetful, often worse than algorithms at calculating things, and sometimes difficult to work with. But a key part of being human is our ‘messiness’. Our inner complexity pushes us to learn in relationship with our environment, find truths in context, grow, and improve things. We are consciously aware of being part of something bigger than ourselves and are able to combine morality with knowledge, applying contextual wisdom to our decision making. If we optimize away our messiness, we risk reducing dynamic quality and relinquishing our agency. This talk will dig into the nuance needed in the age of AI to understand where we should optimize for efficiency and where (messy) variety is valuable. This situational clarity can help us develop technology for the right things, in the right way.