SXSW 2025, Day 3: Breaking the mold

“Doing the same things as others doesn’t have any meaning”, declared Thierry Reboul, Executive Director of the Paris 2024 Creation and Ceremonies, at SXSW 2025. Statements such as his appear often throughout the festival’s conference tracks — after all, if the speakers weren’t breaking the mold, they would not be speaking at South to begin with.

So let’s take a look at how today’s conversations are changing the game and how they can inspire us to innovate as well:

Trust, knowledge, and the untapped potential of AI

Innovating doesn't always have to require reinventing the wheel: “small moves, smartly made, can lead to big impacts”, highlights author and entrepreneur John Hagel, founder of the consultancy firm Beyond Our Edge. In his talk about the untapped potential of AI, the first half of the hour-long speech was focused not on AI, but on learning, and what learning should look like in our times.

As it is being mentioned throughout South by, we live in challenging times: “We are in the early stages of a very big shift that is changing the economy and society globally”, says Hagel; a time in which change is happening faster and faster. In this context, existing knowledge can become obsolete very, very fast, so he positions that learning in today’s world should be more focused on creating new knowledge, for which skills such as creativity, imagination and connection (here’s that word again!) are more important than ever.

For the author, the true untapped potential of AI is in supporting the creation of new business models that are not worried about scalability or cost-reduction, but in freeing up time so professionals can dedicate themselves more to learning faster and to creating new knowledge faster.

He also worries about the lack of a broader discussion about the data required to put the “Intelligence” in AI, and warns that this will become a more and more pressing matter especially as people start to lose trust in how companies handle their data. But if businesses tap into AI’s potential of impacting our lives, our work in meaningful ways, the cycle reverts: companies create value to customers with AI, thus building or strengthening trust; that leads customers to be more willing to share data with the company; their AI-usage, with more data, becomes more efficient and helps the company create more value, building more trust, and so on.

As is the general consensus around South by and beyond, AI by itself is “nothing” to the customer — what matters is the improvements and benefits you create for them with it.

Moving forward in challenging times

Going back to the topic of the fast-changing, challenging times we live in, a panel titled Emotional Machines: AI, Feeling & The Human Body, featuring designers working with AI, brought about thought-provoking discussions about how we perceive humanity in a context where technology evolves so fast and goes so far. The panel posed the question: what does it mean to be human in a world with Artificial Intelligence?

South by Southwest 2025 is very interested in looking into how we connect with ourselves and with technology, and in how technology changes the way we connect with each other. It might seem like a philosophical exercise, but discussing this can have practical effects in our work environments, business decisions, and even personal planning. After all, as the event’s speakers have highlighted, we cannot break apart or away from technology, so we must understand how to best interact with it — and to reach its, and our, full potential.

Breaking the mold

Thierry Reboul and Thomas Jolly, Artistic Director of Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Ceremonies, referred to a headline that called their opening ceremony “an ode to togetherness”. Again, that word comes up in the context of South by 2025: connection.

Recognizing connection as a most urgent matter today, Reboul and Jolly use that as the focus point of differentiating their work from all other Olympic Opening Ceremonies before. Sharing that they had to go to great lengths to get all the necessary people on board of their idea of hosting the ceremony not on a stadium but in the city of Paris. “If you have something to say, an idea you’re willing to fight for, it’s worth it”, defines Rebould. “It has to have meaning”.

For Jolly, their ceremony and the Olympics as an institution are all about connection: “We are all alive at the same time, at the same place, and we have to celebrate that”. And how will other mega events focus on bringing ceremony and audience closer together from now on? Rebould responds, very sincerely, that he… doesn’t know: “Everybody is talking about AI, but it’s just a tool — albeit a very interesting one. What you need is to find something different.”

Leading experts openly sharing their biggest worries and their own uncertainties: that is definitely one of the many magical things about South by Southwest. As usual, we hope you’ve liked our coverage of the event’s third day, and that you come back for a full week more of SXSW 2025 coverage!

by Mariana González, Content Lead at PagSeguro International

Austin, Texas, March 7th 2025