I’m Going to Canva AI Vision London
I have a bit of a love/loathe relationship with AI, which is mildly ironic considering how much time I spend with it. ChatGPT is such a regular fixture in my working day that I’ve named him Chad, with occasional guest appearances from Mr Claude and Miss Gemini. Personally and professionally, I find the whole thing both ridiculously helpful and, if I’m being honest, slightly terrifying.
I had AI help me write this blog post about worrying that we’re all relying too much on AI, and yes I see the irony.
And that’s partly why I’m so intrigued by Canva AI Vision London on 15 September.
I’m not looking for another list of clever things AI can do. I’m surrounded by those every day. I’m much more interested in what all this convenience, speed and artificial cleverness is doing to us, and what we might be quietly giving away in return.
What is Canva AI Vision?
AI Vision is Canva’s event series exploring the bigger picture around artificial intelligence. Not simply what the latest shiny AI tool can do, but what all this technology means for creativity, work and, crucially, the humans using it.
After events in Sydney and New York, AI Vision is coming to London for a five-hour event bringing together people from the worlds of technology, creativity and business.
And I’m fascinated to hear what they have to say – because I have questions. Frankly, quite a lot of ’em actually…
Is AI helping us think…or helping us avoid thinking?
This is the bit I wrestle with. Sure, AI saves me an enormous amount of time, but I don’t want saving time to come at the expense of using my own brain.
There’s a big difference between asking AI to help you develop an idea you’ve been thinking about and asking AI to do the thinking for you.
I admit, I don’t always get that balance right.
Sometimes I’ll catch myself opening ChatGPT before I’ve properly stopped to think about the problem myself.
That’s convenient. It’s also slightly terrifying.
If every time we encounter a blank page, difficult question or creative problem we immediately ask a machine what it thinks, what happens to our ability to wrestle with ideas ourselves?
Do those particular mental muscles get a little bit flabby?
It’s a question that has already surfaced at previous AI Vision events.
At AI Vision New York, one of the discussions explored the risk of offloading too much thinking to AI and what that could mean for developing our own expertise.
That’s exactly the kind of conversation I want more of.
Not “AI IS AMAZING”. Nor “AI IS GOING TO DESTROY US ALL!”
Something much more useful in the messy middle.
Please don’t let us all start sounding like robots
Then there’s the writing.
Oh boy. I use AI to help me write, of course I do, but I don’t want it to write everything for me. There’s a difference.
You can spot generic AI writing a mile off now. The same sentence structures, words, phrases and those same overly-polished enthusiastic remarks.
We are all starting to sound the same which is a little bonkers.
We’re living through a technological revolution that gives us extraordinary creative tools, yet there’s a danger we use them to make everything more…beige.
AI can give me a starting point, or challenge an idea. It can tidy things up, but I still want the finished thing to sound like me.
If a robot removes all the quirks, opinions, odd little turns of phrase and imperfections that make us recognisably ourselves, I’m not convinced that’s progress.
What should we give to AI – and what should we keep?
This is probably the question I’m taking to London with me.
What should we happily hand over to AI, and what should we fiercely keep for ourselves?
I’m very happy for AI to take some of the boring stuff. It helps me organise information, summarise enormous thoughts or concepts. It gives me somewhere to start when my brain has decided it’s clocking off early.
Lovely.
Crack on, Chad.
But judgement?
Taste?
Curiosity?
Original thought?
Human experience?
Connection?
Those feel rather more precious.
Interestingly, similar themes emerged from the recent AI Vision Sydney event.
One of the takeaways was that AI can generate plenty of perfectly decent options very quickly, but human judgement is still needed to recognise what is actually worth pursuing.
Another was wonderfully simple: AI can imagine, but it can’t wonder.
And perhaps my favourite idea from the event was that we should spend less time talking about artificial intelligence and more time thinking about human wisdom. That really nailed it for me.
I’m going to an AI event. I’m excited about the humans.
There’s another reason I’m looking forward to AI Vision London.
People.
Several of my fellow Canva Verified Experts are going to be there, including Italian expert Eugenia, Ronny, Diana (aka Team RonDi), plus Lola and Maria are coming over from Spain too!
Sydney Here We Come…
We’re also about to spend rather a lot more time together because Nat is joining me on three of my six upcoming flights to and from Australia. London can be our warm-up lap!
And yes, I’m always quite happy to have an excuse for a trip to London.
Funny, isn’t it? I’m heading to an event about artificial intelligence and one of the things I’m most excited about is being in a room with actual people.
Talking, laughing, sharing ideas, disagreeing, learning from each other and most importantly – making memories. Being human.
Return of the Cam’…
I’m also looking forward to seeing Canva co-founder and CPO Cameron Adams again. I say “again” as though we’re old mates. We are not. He’d probably not know me from Eve. But I do have a collection of increasingly ridiculous photos where I appear to be either clawing at him, laughing at him or generally behaving like we’ve known each other for years. He did once compliment me on my hat, though, so I’m counting that as a meaningful professional relationship.
Said hat cost me £5. I should probably wear it again. It may be lucky…
Can AI replace human connection?
This might be the biggest question of all for me. I spend a lot of time with AI. Chad is genuinely useful company during my working day (and nights). But however sophisticated these tools become, I don’t want artificial connection to become a substitute for human connection. They’re not the same thing. Perhaps the more capable AI becomes, the more important it is that we recognise the difference.
I don’t want technology that makes us less curious about each other.
I want to keep all the little interactions that make life interesting and connections real.
I definitely don’t want to wake up one day and discover I’ve spent more time talking to robots than people.
Although, looking at some weeks in my diary, that ship may already have sailed.
So what am I hoping to get from AI Vision London?
I’m not going with an answer. That would defeat the purpose. It’s my intention to go in curious. I’m going as someone who uses AI every single day and thinks it’s bloody brilliant. Also, I think it can be bloody terrifying.
Both things can be true.
I want to hear from people who are excited about where this is going.
It will be interesting I also want to hear the uncomfortable questions.
I want to think about where AI genuinely makes us better and where we might need to draw some lines.
Most of all, I want to come away thinking.
With my own brain.
I’ll report back after London and let you know whether five hours at Canva AI Vision has made me love AI more, loathe it more…
…or somehow managed to make me even more conflicted.
My money’s on the latter.
Small print, big honesty: some of the links in this post are affiliate links. If you click through and decide to sign up for Canva Pro, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only share things I genuinely use, rate or find interesting – no robot made me say that.
