The Human Glitch in the AI Machine

Key takeaways from SXSW London 2025 on why taste, trust, and human-centric design are our most valuable assets in the new age of technology.

I just spent a week at SXSW London 2025, and I walked away with the distinct feeling that the ground is shifting beneath our feet. The future we’ve been discussing for years is no longer a distant concept; it’s being deployed now. We are at a profound inflection point. From intimate conversations with the architects of our AI future to deep dives on brand identity and bio-inspired robotics, a single, powerful message emerged:

in an age of exponential technological leverage, our most human qualities – taste, judgment, and creativity – are becoming our most valuable assets.

This isn’t a time for designers, leaders, or innovators to step aside and let the algorithms take the wheel. It’s a mandate to grab it with both hands. Here is my synthesis of the critical shifts ahead and what they mean for those of us who build, create, and lead.

The Macro Shifts: A New Societal Operating System

We are witnessing the dawn of a new technological era, a fundamental rewiring of our societal infrastructure. The change is happening on multiple fronts simultaneously.

The AI and Quantum Revolution

According to Demis Hassabis, the co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, AI is rapidly evolving from a tool for repetitive tasks into a network of autonomous agents capable of executing specific goals.

He predicts a significant adoption of these agents in enterprise settings within the next 2–3 years.

Beyond that, Hassabis foresees a ‘ChatGPT moment’ for Quantum Computing within the same timeframe, which will solve previously impossible computational problems in minutes.

The initial applications will be transformative for materials discovery and drug development, but the long-term impact on optimization and simulation is almost unimaginable.

The Reshaping of Society and Infrastructure These technological leaps will trigger massive societal overhauls:

• Cities in Flux: Autonomous vehicles are already becoming the dominant form of ride-hailing in cities like San Francisco, surpassing Uber usage. This will force our city infrastructure to adapt to support autonomous systems, potentially enabling people to live much further from urban centers. However, the challenge of adapting historic cities like London to these new technologies remains a significant hurdle.
• Ubiquitous Computing: The trend is toward smaller, more efficient, and ever-present computing systems. The goal is to make computation more accessible and to integrate AI into the physical world through robotics, making our environment more responsive to our needs.
• A New Workforce: We are facing a global demographic shift. The world population is expected to peak around 2085 and then begin to decline. By 2050, 25% of the population in many parts of the world will be over 65. This makes automation and robotics essential to address an aging workforce and labor-intensive jobs. It will also create entirely new roles, from AI ethicists and climate restoration designers to experience neural curators.

The New Front Door: Brand and Commerce in the Age of AI

One of the most immediate and tangible shifts is happening at the intersection of AI and commerce. As Block Co-founder Jim McKelvey starkly put it, ‘You’re not who you think you are’ in the eyes of an AI.

Large Language Models (LLMs) have become a primary source for brand information and consumer decisions. A staggering 90% of Americans earning over $125k have already purchased products based on LLM recommendations. Futhermore, conversion rates from these AI recommendations are twice as high as traditional Google search.

This creates a ‘new digital shelf’ where brands often have limited control over how they are perceived. It is now critical for companies to use tools to measure and monitor their visibility and sentiment across multiple AI engines, ensuring their websites remain indexable by LLMs. The customer journey is collapsing, with platforms like OpenAI partnering with Shopify for direct checkout, turning the point of awareness into the point of purchase.

Considering your brand’s AI visibility is now as critical as traditional SEO.

The Design Mandate: Thriving in a World of AI-Generated Sameness

For designers and creatives, the most urgent challenge is the paradox of AI. As one panel on AI and human agency warned,

we face a potential deluge of ‘average versions of everything,’ leading to a bland sea of sameness. This is precisely where our role becomes more critical than ever.

1. Human Skills are the New Premium In a world saturated with AI-generated content, the real differentiators are uniquely human.

• Taste, Taste, Taste: Aesthetics, taste, and cultural credibility become paramount success factors.
• Empathy and Judgment: As AI handles repetitive tasks, the emphasis shifts to human skills like empathy and nuanced judgment. This is a core responsibility that cannot be abdicated; a concerning 72% of leaders expect AI to reflect their brand values, a risky proposition.
• Authentic Creativity: There is now increased value placed on authentic, messy, human creativity as a way to stand out.

2. Redefining the Creative Process and Team The way we work must evolve. Douwe Kiela, co-founder of Contextual AI, noted that for enterprise AI adoption, change management is just as important as the technology itself.

• The ‘Super Organism’ Team: Small, creative-led teams with mixed skills are poised to become ‘super organisms’ that will make or break companies.
• AI as a ‘Caddie’: The recommendation is to use AI tools as ‘caddies,’ not dependencies. [cite_start]Build prompting expertise across teams and try multiple AI models rather than committing to one.
• Garbage In, Garbage Out: AI can accelerate the concept-to-consumer timeline, but human oversight on creative direction and quality control is non-negotiable, because ‘shit in = shit out’.
• System Brittleness: We must also be realistic about current limitations. [cite_start]AI systems remain brittle and prone to hallucination, and enterprise adoption is often slowed by the need for clean, well-structured data and resistance from legal departments.

Designing the Future: Ethics, Agency, and Augmentation

Looking toward 2050, the conversations at SXSW stretched into truly mind-bending territory. The design firm frog presented a ‘Future-Scare’ vision that was both fascinating and unsettling, pushing the boundaries of what we consider possible.

They painted a picture of a world where:

• Gene editing moves from a purely medical treatment to a form of self-expression, allowing for memory enhancement, metabolism optimization, or even appearance customization.
• Sensory augmentation becomes a commercial reality, with technology enabling us to experience new colors beyond the current spectrum or have personalized sound, smell, and taste capabilities.

These provocations force us to confront profound design challenges today. How do we design for ethical boundaries, age restrictions, and even identity copyright? How do we manage sensory overload and create meaningful experiences, not just technological novelties?

The central design principle that emerged was the need to balance radical innovation with responsible progress, ensuring that technology reflects human values while enabling new possibilities.

The Final Word

The overarching theme of SXSW London 2025 was not one of technology replacing humanity, but augmenting it. The future will be shaped not by those who build the most powerful AI, but by those who can most artfully guide it with human taste, judgment, and a relentless focus on creating value for people.

Our greatest challenge is to be the thoughtful, critical, and creative glitch in the machine. The one that questions, refines, and steers technology toward a future that is not just intelligent, but also wise.