Jeremy Gutsche, chief executive of trend intelligence platform Trend Hunter, believes

humans are capable of more than we think — and that artificial intelligence can help multiply the things we’re best at. “Today you can be an author, an artist, an actor, an influencer, a musician, a programmer, a scientist, a project manager, a film director, a game designer, a strategist, and you can be all of those things at the same time,” said Gutsche.

The rapidly evolving world of trends, research, risks and breakthroughs in AI super agents are at the forefront of Trend Hunter’s Future Festival World Summit in Toronto, which runs until Sept. 25.

There is opportunity in chaos

Here are five takeaways from the first day of the event. There’s no doubt AI is a disruptive technology, Gutsche said in his keynote speech on Tuesday, but humans have been here before.

Gutsche pointed to the bubonic plague in the 14th century, which reshaped Europe’s cultural and economic order and gave rise to social mobility and the pursuit of knowledge. In the hundreds of years that followed, art, geography, manufacturing, literature, science, business and architecture flourished.

“It was ‘polychaos,’ a time of rampant opportunity and change. It was like a veil being lifted from the eyes of mankind,” said Gutsche.

“Our work is about how chaos reshuffles the deck, changes the rules, switches who’s in the lead and creates opportunity. But, more importantly, our work is understanding the frameworks to get to that opportunity. It’s that chaos is predictable and there’s a series of patterns that you could use and apply,” he said.

Take risks and don’t fear change

“There’s a lot of buzz going around now about misinformation and I think there’s an opportunity for those of us that are in in the business of providing accurate, relevant, credible information that’s independently reported,” said Tony Hunter, chief executive of McClatchy Media Company. “What we need to do is catch up on the use of AI and technology, because we’ve been lapped.”

McClatchy acquired Trend Hunter in 2024 and uses AI across its newsrooms for tasks including transcriptions, data analysis, content generation and summarizing articles for readers.

Technology has upended traditional media’s business models, but Hunter said the company’s vision hasn’t changed — they just have new tools to execute it.

“We are applying a lot of discipline and rigour around innovation … encouraging our employees to take risks again (and) managing those risks, not breaking our values or our principles or our editorial philosophies,” he said.

Put people first, not technology

“For me, innovation is about making the impossible accessible. And what does that mean? It starts with thinking about humans,” said Karla Congson, chief executive and chief technical officer of Agentiiv, a hybrid human-AI consulting firm that builds custom AI agents for businesses.

Companies that have successfully adopted AI treat it “like a cultural transformation rather than a technological implementation, which is a very, very different mindset. It’s about humans as opposed to an IT decision,” she said. “What they start with is the workflows and capabilities and the pain points that the people are feeling on the ground.”

Those who will best understand how to apply AI to a business won’t be the head of AI or a third-party consultant, Congson believes, but frontline workers who understand the company’s day-to-day operational frictions.

Banks are embracing the future of work

Being highly regulated hasn’t stopped Canadian banks from embracing AI for everything from improving products and services to reimagining the way employees work. Last year, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) launched a custom-built generative AI tool that helps employees automate tasks, summarize documents, draft emails and generate follow-up materials after meetings.

CIBC’s AI platform has been especially useful for bridging the communication gap between workers in various departments who speak different “languages,” said Sharon Steele, a senior AI product leader at the bank. Forty-thousand employees have finished training and received access to the tool, which averages 9,000 daily users.

“We are getting to (what) we call AI fluency, so enabling that across the organization and really doing that handholding,” she said. “No one’s going to be left behind. I think that’s the motto we go in with, and we are really embracing everyone” in the bank’s transformation.

Privacy and security are powering up

As a provider of Canadian infrastructure that powers AI computing for domestic companies, Neural Edge chief executive and project director Dave Senior Jr. thinks a lot about privacy, compliance, governance and sovereignty.

“Do you know where your data is right now? Is it in Canada or somewhere else?” he asked.

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Strengthening privacy and security measures alongside advancing AI technology will be of the utmost importance for industries that handle personal information, including banking, healthcare and legal. Senior Jr. said Neural Edge is working on a pilot project to launch a quantum-encrypted solution for its data centre.

“When the mathematical algorithms are no longer going to be the accepted standard, what’s the next thing? We’re always trying to look towards the future, and I see a future where companies won’t have to compromise with compute power and security,” he said.