Episode Transcript
Host: Hey, it's Tyler here. We're trying something a little bit different with today's episode. After a whole year of running the Levy Inspiration Grant Program, we've found some patterns emerge among our student interviews. In this episode, we're sharing three unaired stories that have some common elements and one main, unifying theme. Alright, here we go.
If you take a peek at news feeds on any given day, you'll likely see headlines about automation and AI ranging from buzzy anticipation to chilling doom-and-gloom, and everything in between.
It's kind of like that classic spy movie scene, where the heroes are huddled around a ticking time bomb with less than a minute to go. It's exciting, but also a little terrifying, and in this case, no one knows exactly what will happen when the timer hits zero.
But for now, there are still some processes where humans have a unique advantage over technology. At least, that's what a few of our students learned on their Inspiration Grant trips. Today, we have three stories with one common thread: each student went in with an initial assumption that removing humans from a process could be the solution to a problem. In reality, things were a little bit more complicated.
First, we have a peek into Kyron Whitfield and Yousuf Ahmed's trip to South Africa. They wanted to experience the obstacles and pitfalls of being a tourist in an unfamiliar place, and if there were any tech fixes to help with these challenges. During some of the tours they went on, they picked up on a few human nuances that couldn't quite be replicated by a virtual solution. Here's Yousuf explaining some of their thoughts on the trip.
Yousuf: So me and Kyron went on several tours and excursions, and we've had an opportunity to interact and really engage with the tour guides and even interview them at the end of the tour.
During that process, we started to just pick up on subtle things. When we went on a tour in Soweto, a historic township, the tour guides were born and raised the town and it just gave a completely different level of insight, comfort, safety and engagement.
While being a tourist myself at certain times of the trip, something that I also was shocked by was the influence that people had on me and how much that played a role in my satisfaction on the trip.
So, for instance if I'm experiencing warm attitudes, like very friendly energy from the people, it often paints like a brighter picture, I feel more safe, more comfortable and walk away saying, " I want to come back." Initially coming into this opportunity, one idea that we had was potentially taking out the tour guide and sort of virtualizing it to develop a virtual tour guide of sorts. During our time of going on tours, engaging and interviewing various tour guides, we discovered that they really played a pivotal role. It wasn't only in terms of information, but also giving that comfort and safety towards tourists.
And so that was something that I didn't come into this trip with, but something that I'm really glad I learned.
Host: Next is Jialu Zhou who traveled to Japan to explore how they approach healthier desserts with less sugar, but just as much flavor. In this clip, she recounts the experience of walking through a factory and observing the full production process of one company's desserts, and realizing just how important the human touch remains in making these tasty treats.
Jialu: Something that amazed me at this factory is that I didn't imagine there would be so much work that still has to be done by people.
I imagine that in this modern society, most of the work would be done by assembly line and by the machine, but actually there is a type of the cake that still requires human people, and I think that they have put a lot of love into that cake. That's something I learned, that people can taste how much effort and love you have put into the product.
I think the reason why the human touch is so important in the production process of manufacturing the desserts is there were some process of procedure that can only be done by people in order to make this product more exquisite and perfect for the market.
For example, the butter cake I mentioned, people have to wrap it to make this shape perfect. This process is what makes this dessert different. So I would say that the human action is sometimes not replaceable because it's the effort and the human's time spent on this product, it's like never replaceable by the machine.
Host: Last up for this episode, we have Jeriel Acosta and Sahil Desai. Jeriel and Sahil went to Thailand to research a potential tech solution for travel planning and curating itineraries. Unfortunately for them, they experienced a consumer pain point a bit too literally. Here's Sahil, recounting their experience.
Sahil: So obviously one of Thailand's main attractions are its beaches, and we were very excited to go and check out the beaches, talk to folks out there. And this is where like curation can go wrong, cause all the lists pointed us in this direction. They're all like, " this is the beach to go to, everyone have fun."
Jeriel and I are sitting in the water, and all of a sudden we feel like we're getting stung. We jump out of the water and we talked to a local and they're like, "oh yeah, like no one ever tells the tourist, but there's a ton of jellyfish in the water." And it's just like this dependence on blogs and websites can really steer you in the wrong way.
The importance of having that local connection, like someone who truly understands that local area to be like, " yeah, it's a great beach, but it has jellyfish," like just something super simple like that would have made or break our decision making process. And I think it goes back to one of the themes of the importance of like having that local knowledge and that curation for you.
And maybe something that you can't automate. Like you can't scrub the internet and pull all the metadata that points to like these top locations, because there's just knowledge that you're not going to be able to capture. And you just need that local, you need that person in the loop to truly facilitate and augment the curation process.
Host: Whether it's providing a sense of connection in a strange place, adding that extra special touch to something sweet, or simply not wanting to be stung by jellyfish, there are still some things that humans just do better. Automating a task can be an incredible time-save that allows people to focus on more meaningful things. But sometimes, it's easy to forget what we might be losing until we feel its absence.
I don't know about you, but after hearing these stories, I'm feeling a bit better about my place in the world. Technology will, of course, continue to change and evolve, as will our relationship to it. But until proven otherwise, I like to think that we'll always have a special sauce that technology can't replace.
That's all for this special episode. To stay up to date on future episodes where we continue to dive into the stories and learnings of our student travelers, subscribe to the Levy Inspiration Grant Program podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts. To learn more about Entrepreneurship at Kellogg and the ways we're supporting the next generation of entrepreneurs, visit our website at kell.gg/ entrepreneurship. That's kell.gg/ entrepreneurship. I'm your host, Tyler Seybold. Until next time...
