C-Suite Perspectives On AI: Miguel Sabel Pereira Of Designit On Where to Use AI and Where to Rely Only on Humans
An Interview With Kieran Powell
Consider the externalities. Leverage frameworks like Designit’s ‘Do No Harm’ to identify the risks that could be caused by an AI intervention and to come up with measures to avoid, mitigate, and repair any harm caused.
As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance and integrate into various aspects of business, decision-makers at the highest levels face the complex task of determining where AI can be most effectively utilized and where the human touch remains irreplaceable. This series seeks to explore the nuanced decisions made by C-Suite executives regarding the implementation of AI in their operations. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Miguel Sabel Pereira.
Miguel Sabel Pereira is the Global Director of Strategy and Sustainability, at Designit, tasked with creating new business models through design.
Miguel has led Business Design, Venture Creation, and Service Design projects internationally in a range of industries including finance, manufacturing and energy industries, with category leaders like ING, ThyssenKrupp, BBVA or Ferrovial.
Sustainability and technological innovation have been central themes in his career, from creating SaaS for carbon emissions management to building data-based digital products for risk reduction in hazmat transportation fleets.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
“When I was in design school, training to be an industrial designer, I became obsessed with the impact of design.
“I built my professional life around that obsession and the connection of those two worlds that desperately need each other — business and design.
“So, I dug into design management, business model innovation, corporate strategy, externality management, and even accounting and finance.
“It’s not the most common road for a designer, but I always enjoyed being a bit of an outlier.”
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
“I facilitate different strategic initiatives for Designit. I am lucky to contribute to diverse and exciting challenges that influence the company’s future and, even more exciting, the products and experiences we will create with our clients and shape the lives of millions.
“This includes sharpening our industry focus, strengthening our sustainability practices or reimagining how we design with the explosion of GenAI.
“It’s all influenced by Designit’s purpose: creating shared progress for our clients, their clients, and ultimately society.”
Thank you for that. Let’s now shift to the central focus of our discussion. In your experience, what have been the most challenging aspects of integrating AI into your business operations, and how have you balanced these with the need to preserve human-centric roles?
“We are all trying to have certain, definitive, and clear strategies about something that’s in development, very complex, and, to a great degree, unpredictable. That’s probably the most challenging thing. We must be ready to experiment, ready to fail, and mitigate any possible harm.
“The expectations for GenAI are tremendous, and managing them is also a challenge. For those of us who are convinced that GenAI will shape our future, it’s crucial to approach these promises with a healthy dose of skepticism and critical thinking.
“Of course, it is even better if that critical thinking is supported by an actionable analysis of externalities, such as the ones enabled by Designit’s Do No Harm framework.
Can you share a specific instance where AI initially seemed like the optimal solution but ultimately proved less effective than human intervention? What did this experience teach you about the limitations of AI in your field?
“Ideation is a great example. For me, volume-dependent activities like this are seen as the best opportunity for GenAI in a creative industry like ours.
“Certainly, many opportunities for automation can lead to significantly improved results in some aspects. However, in our own tests and experiments with the technology, we have found plenty of biases are increasingly commonplace in the ideas that are being generated using different LLMs.
“As the marginal cost of generating one more idea or prototype becomes zero, the true value lies in their purpose. That’s where human intervention is mandatory, guaranteeing that only meaningful concepts, responsibly questioned, move forward.”
How do you navigate the ethical implications of implementing AI in your company, especially concerning potential job displacement and ensuring ethical AI usage?
“‘Do No Harm’ is Designit’s framework for responsible business and design, inspired by the Hippocratic Oath in medicine, and developed by Dr. Pardis Shafafi and Giulia Bazoli. It guides us through the mapping, avoidance, and mitigation of risks. For us, it is a vital “tool” when working in spaces of higher uncertainty and hype, such as the fast-moving AI space.
“This critical attitude is what allows us to be optimistic about a better future. However, creating such a future is not necessarily straightforward, and we must actively design a tomorrow grounded on humanity-centric values.”
Could you describe a successful instance in your company where AI and human skills were synergistically combined to achieve a result that neither could have accomplished alone?
“Synergies are greatly dependent on context, personal skills or preferences. For some, success means translating text into images, because they lack the skills. For others, having a “thinking sparring session” when they work alone from home.
“Somehow, that adaptability is an exciting update of human-machine collaboration. The human configures the flexible capabilities of technology to respond to their evolving needs.”
Based on your experience and success, what are the “5 Things To Keep in Mind When Deciding Where to Use AI and Where to Rely Only on Humans, and Why?” How have these 5 things impacted your work or your career?
“This isn’t a simple binary decision but rather choosing where to position yourself in a nuanced spectrum between full automation and human execution. Here are five key considerations to guide what should always be an explicit and intentional decision:
- Start with the obvious. Begin by assessing whether a task is apt for automation. Ask yourself — would the output benefit from automating data management or text writing or from generating a large volume of variations? Would it be detrimental if data was inaccurate, the results were biased, or they included copyrighted material? The pros and cons of GenAI are well-documented, and nothing beats the intuition developed thanks to first-hand experimentation.
- Engage with practitioners. Collaborate closely with the individuals currently responsible for the tasks under consideration. Listen to them and talk about how they try to improve their work and results. Learn about the opportunities, blockers, or risks they find. Include them and make them feel included. I have learned a lot from grass-roots innovation and what my colleagues were already exploring. Fostering this kind of experimentation culture in moments of technological revolution is invaluable.
- Consider the importance of novelty. Determine whether your goals require adherence to established patterns or if they would benefit from avoiding commonplaces. Tasks that align with existing patterns may be more suited to AI automation, while those requiring originality should lean toward human involvement.
- Reflect on the intrinsic value of the task. Doing some activities holds an inherent value that extends beyond their outcomes, such as conducting client interviews to build empathy, reviewing literature to build intellectual scaffolding and confidence, or ideation to reframe challenges. Maybe automating the task is possible, but after zooming out, you just choose not to.
- Consider the externalities. Leverage frameworks like Designit’s ‘Do No Harm’ to identify the risks that could be caused by an AI intervention and to come up with measures to avoid, mitigate, and repair any harm caused.
Looking towards the future, in which areas of your business do you foresee AI making the most significant impact, and conversely, in which areas do you believe a human touch will remain indispensable?
“It is difficult to imagine areas that could be unaffected by this technology wave, or fully automated without the involvement of my colleagues. Anticipating new human-machine interaction models that enhance our capabilities in a symbiotic and trustworthy manner is what excites me.
“Today we can see how new interaction models between people and technology are emerging to enable this collaboration. New paradigms like variations of the already impactful copilot model or inspiring ubiquitous and liquid assistants. The space for creativity and ingenuity is huge, and the opportunity is too.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
“I love the general algorithm for progress suggested by designer Matt Webb: ‘Identify the cheapest way to create surplus hours for the largest number of people; do that; repeat.’”
“Wouldn’t it be amazing if any corporation or entrepreneur innovating on GenAI would be driven by this algorithm? First, because it would put humans as the main recipients of any net progress created. And second, because time, being the ultimate constraint, is a powerful way of measuring it.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Check out the Designit blog, as well as finding me on LinkedIn
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
About The Interviewer: Kieran Powell is the EVP of Channel V Media a New York City Public Relations agency with a global network of agency partners in over 30 countries. Kieran has advised more than 150 companies in the Technology, B2B, Retail and Financial sectors. Prior to taking over business operations at Channel V Media, Kieran held roles at Merrill Lynch, PwC and Ernst & Young. Get in touch with Kieran to discuss how marketing and public relations can be leveraged to achieve concrete business goals.
C-Suite Perspectives On AI: Miguel Sabel Pereira Of Designit On Where to Use AI and Where to Rely… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.