In the latest edition of our WYtalks, Rui Ferreira (WYcreative) and Miguel Pires (NERVO), brought a new format to our Beach House – Debuzz: deconstructing the hype around buzzwords, and opening up space for uncomplicated conversations about topics from nowadays, such as AI and Web3.

Together, they led the conversation through the widely publicized Artificial Intelligence and the “mysterious” Web3, seeking to understand what is essential, share experiences and identify opportunities for brands and professionals.

Rui Ferreira kicked off with the motto “AI and the human in the loop”. On the one hand, a (simplistically) technical and scientific introduction to LLMs – Large Language Models – what they are, how they work, and how they are trained.

According to Rui, “It is crucial to understand high-level concepts of what they are and how they work, to be able to understand what we can (or cannot) do with them”. Beyond what is tech and geek, he spoke about the role of human beings in aligning and interacting with technology and its use on scale. He also warned of the importance of “separating the wheat from the chaff”, at a time when “the challenge is not to find information, but to filter it”. Still, everything points to AI becoming the right – and perhaps left – arm of communications and marketing professionals. In a tweet: “AI will not replace you, a person using AI will”.

WYcreative’s strategist central message was simple: we are witnessing the beginning of something that “no one” knows where it will go. He spoke of future perspectives and scenarios as uncharted territories and the most recent “sparks of AGI” – the glimpse of a generalist artificial intelligence and how close we will be to experiencing an “EX Machina”.

Then, Miguel Pires, pulled the audience into the present and what is already the reality of the decentralized internet. He opened the doors to Web3 and what its principles mean: transparency, trust, ownership, and privacy. “Web3 is about community,” he said, pointing to examples of how NFTs are transforming the world of art and collectibles and, more recently, experiences. It also paved the way for a new era for brands on WEB3: decentralized, participatory, and open-source. IP as ID (meaning assets as part of digital identity), CC0 (public domain), DAOS (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) and Tokenomics (or token economies) are some of the instruments that make these brands different and prepared for an ever-changing future, more decentralized.

Miguel Pires addressed how users become owners on Web3 and presented a step-by-step: how to take our brands to Web3 and how brands that were born decentralized materialize in the physical world. Much remains to be said concerning both subjects and, therefore, more moments of sharing like this are expected in an attempt to keep up with the developments that emerge, up to the minute.

Article originally published in LÍDER Magazine.