For CEO and founder of the leading artificial intelligence company Arago Hans-Christian Boos, time is everything. Time is the quintessential factor that we all must thrive on to achieve success. He is a man on a mission, a mission to bring AI to the forefront of creativity and innovative thinking.
In an interview with Sonophilia’s editor in chief Maryam Ghaddar, Chris said: “Time is the only limited resource that any of us have… [No matter what], time is still going to be very limited to us. We shouldn’t waste it on 1 percent improvements. We should spend our time making new discoveries or dealing with people.”
Arago was founded in 1995 on the principal of solving the world’s most fundamental AI problems, namely IT and business operations that incorporate machine learning with human problem-solving skills. Chris believed at the time of Arago’s conception in AI’s unique ability to change the system and improve life in society. Arago focuses on various human problem-solving technologies.
“We actually combine many of the AI technology that is out there,” Chris noted. “We combine reasoning with learning, we use semantics, we do natural language processing. All of those together build a general problem solver. The idea is to be able to automate anything that humans have already collectively experienced.”
Chris wholeheartedly believes in empowering human potential and freeing up time for creativity and innovative thinking. This is where Sonophilia comes into play. Our sense of life has been hindered by our robotic-like work and a system of economies of scale. The majority of our time is spent performing tasks we already know.
“That means we have to make people work like machines, and that’s not what people are made for,” he explained. “Thus, the more industrialized a country or economy is, and the better a company is in terms of processing and economies of scale, the more depressed people you’ll find. That can’t be the solution. I believe AI can do this work and people can focus on actually creating new experiences or doing services from person to person, because in the end, we all enjoy contact with people most, right?”
Right. AI can revolutionize our world in unprecedented ways. The implications are phenomenal. Chris offered the example of enterprise staffing, which typically focuses on the number of people needed to perform necessary tasks. However, he suggests, AI can help us focus on how many people are needed to bring about progress and create change. That’s a powerful notion.
“I believe AI is going to revolutionize the world by taking the need for standardization consolidation out of the system, so we can grow, we can broaden our horizon, we can do new things, we can innovate, without ever having to standardize and optimize. AI is fantastic at doing individual tasks… [and] optimizing over time… that’s a fundamental shift.”
His involvement with Sonophilia and its unique array of people with different backgrounds has widened his scope of this shift and given him new insights and perspective into the possibilities of his field.
“What I really like about Sonophilia is… you have artists, you have business people, you have generally people with a lot of experience and people who you think would have this huge ego, but at Sonophilia, they step back and everybody is willing to listen to one another and learn from one another. I believe this different type of perspective is really what makes it happen. Normally, the meetings that happen are so off the beaten tracks; whoever goes there actually has made the time to be there fully.”
With Sonophilia’s key aim being to exchange and develop new strategies to celebrate the power of creativity and imagination, Chris elaborated on what creativity and creative leadership mean to him. He believes creativity falls into three categories.
“Number one is what we call artistic creativity. These are people who are willing, by themselves, of their own intrinsic motivation, to go against mainstream. They’re willing to do something that other people don’t understand… The second type of creativity is engineering creativity, the ability to cobble stuff together out of the most unlikely parts of solutions, the things that don’t seem logical at first if you don’t know enough of the context… The third one, I would say, is pioneering. These people are willing to take more risks and (only feel) happy if they take more risks. Thus, they do the things that [render] big rewards, but that others feel are too risky.”
This last creative category—pioneering—is what Chris believes encompasses creative leadership. Taking risks is what it’s all about. It brings new meaning to the concept of trial and error. Pioneering creativity must be juxtaposed with sufficient reasoning.
With Sonophilians, Chris concluded, “You’ll find all (three) types… They’re all artistic, engineering, and pioneering because they’re all these different people. That’s what I find interesting. That’s the type of environment where you’ll learn new things.”
