The Next Wave of AI: Empowering Teams to Dream Bigger, Create Smarter

Artificial intelligence is evolving quickly from experimentation to impact. Across industries, teams are discovering that AI is a powerful collaborator for expanding their imagination. At Mattson, we believe the future belongs to those who combine human curiosity and AI to help create a vision for what has never been done before.

This month, we’re thrilled to share reflections from Steve Gundrum, Chief AI Officer, on his experience at the recent TED AI Conference in San Francisco. Alongside Justin Shimek, CEO, and Jennifer Pagano, Director of AI, Steve explored how AI is transforming not just technology—but how we think, collaborate, and innovate. The powerful combination of how Real Intelligence (RI) + Artificial Intelligence (AI) amplifies creativity.

This piece kicks off a two-part series. Stay tuned for part two in mid-November—a special Thanksgiving edition offering deeper insights from Steve on how to build inspired, future-ready teams that lead with both heart and intelligence.

Powerful Quotes From The TED AI Conference Revealing How AI Is Shaping the Future

Amid the buzz at TED AI, certain voices cut through with clarity and inspiration. These quotes capture the profound ways AI is rewriting the rules of innovation.

“AI is no longer a technology story—it’s an infrastructure story. It underpins the next industrial revolution, just as electricity did a century ago.”

Mattson Insight: AI is shifting from a novelty to a foundational layer of every system—business, government, and culture.

“The businesses that will thrive aren’t the ones that use AI, but the ones built around it.”

Mattson Insight: Success depends on reimagining business models, not just automating tasks. It’s a strategic, not a tactical, transformation.

“In every boardroom now, the conversation has changed from ‘should we use AI?’ to ‘how fast can we scale it?”

Mattson Insight: Adoption is no longer the question—innovation is. The leaders who embrace AI boldly are unlocking entirely new markets, efficiencies, and forms of human creativity.

“AI collapses the distance between data and decision.”

Mattson Insight: The lag time between insight and action is shrinking, allowing organizations to explore markets, customers, and disruptive changes almost instantly

“Creativity is no longer a human monopoly—it’s becoming a human-AI duet.”

Mattson Insight: In art, design, and strategy, humans and machines are beginning to co-create rather than compete.

“The most valuable companies in the next decade won’t own the most data—they’ll own the smartest questions.”

Mattson Insight: Competitive advantage will come from using AI to look forward with curiosity, framing and exploration, not hoarding information and using it as a window to the past.

“AI is forcing leaders to relearn what it means to be human—judgment, empathy, and imagination are back in fashion.”

Mattson Insight: As machines handle logic and prediction, distinctly human traits and intuition regain value in leadership and innovation.

“Automation is about efficiency; intelligence is about discovery. Businesses that confuse the two will stagnate.”

Mattson Insight: True transformation requires using AI to find new possibilities, not just to do the old things faster.

“Every AI deployment is also a cultural intervention—it changes how people see their own agency inside an organization.”

Mattson Insight: The introduction of AI reshapes workplace dynamics and personal sense of contribution.

“AI doesn’t replace humans—it replaces the boundaries of what humans can achieve.”

Mattson Insight: The most profound impact isn’t substitution but expansion—extending human potential and redefining what’s possible.

Book your 2026 Protothink ideation session today, reach us at contact@mattsonco.com.

Want to go deeper?
Click to watch our video, “The AI Shift: Beyond the Hype”