From Transactions to Relationships: Shaping the Future of AI
Executive Vice President and Managing Director, Tietoevry Create
Our world is changing fast. We are all feeling the push toward digital solutions in our daily lives, and for good reason. When organizations embrace digital tools, they are not just following a trend; they are making life better for everyone involved. Think about your last doctor’s visit. How much paperwork did you have to fill out? When healthcare providers digitize previously manual processes, they free up their staff to focus on what really matters, which means caring for patients. This quality and ease of care become even more critical with an aging population. With digitalization, elderly patients or those with mobility issues can see their specialist through a video call rather than figuring out how to get across town.
Digital tools break down the barriers that once separated us from information and services. Whether someone is researching for a school project, applying for government assistance or checking their health information, they can do it all from their kitchen table at their convenience. These same tools also keep us connected to colleagues near and far. Teams that are scattered across continents can collaborate as if they were in the same room.
What is really powerful is how digitalization helps us make smarter decisions together. Organizations can collect and analyze information about real people’s needs. For example, understanding how seniors use healthcare services and creating solutions that actually work for them. In the public sector, it means cities can design public services that truly meet the community’s needs and enhance their effectiveness in responding to crises and emergency situations. At Tietoevry Create, we have even helped a client develop an AI-powered IoT solution to increase pedestrian safety.
When we embrace these changes thoughtfully, we all benefit from a better quality of life, more sustainable growth and a future where no one gets left behind.
How AI is changing the digital landscape
AI is not just another tech buzzword; it is transforming how our digital world works. It is why your music streaming app somehow knows exactly what song you want to hear next or how your email automatically sorts your messages. These are two basic examples of AI working behind the scenes to make your digital experiences more personal.
AI helps us work smarter, not harder. It handles the tedious, repetitive tasks that drain our energy and creativity. It spots patterns in mountains of information that might take us weeks to analyze. We have helped countless clients streamline their businesses by implementing AI-powered automation into their workflows.
But most importantly, AI makes technology more intuitive to use. It recognizes our speech, understands our questions and responds in ways that feel natural.
Moving from transactions to relationships with technology
Traditionally, using a computer has been purely transactional. We typed commands into a search box, and the computer gave us results. That transaction-based approach is evolving into something much more human. It is becoming a technology that we have conversations with rather than simply telling it what to do.
You might notice yourself thanking your virtual assistant or feeling frustrated when it misunderstands you. These are signs that we naturally tend to relate to AI as if it were another living being. As these systems become more sophisticated, they will feel less like clunky tools and more like trusted team members.
This evolution is just beginning. Many companies are still focused on the underlying technology and are missing the bigger picture of how we actually interact with and relate to these systems. The most successful digital experiences of the future will not just be technically impressive; they will connect with us on a human level. This will create meaningful interactions rather than just completing tasks.
AI can also help us create more meaningful human-to-human interactions. For a client in the financial services industry, Tietoevry Create built an AI solution that provides automated call summaries with sentiment analysis. This solution allows call center managers and agents to make more informed decisions when handling customer cases and also enables targeted coaching opportunities for agents.
Building AI we can trust (and control)
For these relationships to work, we need to trust the AI systems we are interacting with. At Tietoevry Create, we have developed an approach called BEHAVE, which puts people at the center of technology design. It is built on what we know about human relationships and decision-making. It helps create experiences that truly engage users, support better decisions, personalize at scale and adapt to different cultural contexts.
We also created an ESSR (Ethics, Safety, Security, Regulatory Compliance) framework that ensures AI systems are trained ethically and securely, anticipating future regulatory frameworks in Europe and the U.S.
At the heart of our approach is a simple but powerful idea: People should maintain control over technology. We call this »agency«, which is our ability to make meaningful choices about how we use digital systems.
Through approaches like BEHAVE, we are ensuring that AI development stays centered on what matters most: which are people. After all, technology should serve humanity, not the other way around.
Our BEHAVE framework brings behavioral science into AI design in several important ways:
– Making it personal: We tailor interactions based on what we know about human psychology and decision-making as well as guiding people toward outcomes that benefit them.
– Keeping it ethical: We follow a structured approach to ethical design that builds trust through transparency.
– Measuring what matters: We track unique metrics like Decision Quality and Behavioral Shift in order to understand long-term impact, not just immediate engagement.- Respecting cultural differences: We recognize that people from different backgrounds think and behave differently, and we design with these differences in mind.
– Making it easy to use: We create interfaces that minimize mental effort, based on principles from cognitive psychology.
– Continuously evaluating: We regularly assess our systems’ effects on people’s behavior to ensure they’re having the positive impact that we intend.
By putting human behavior first, we are creating a more complete approach to AI design that can drive meaningful innovation.
Looking ahead
As we continue this journey of global digitalization, AI will become more deeply woven into our daily lives. But the most successful AI will not be the one with the most impressive technical specs; it will be the one that truly understands and complements human needs.
By focusing on ethics, human agency and meaningful relationships regarding how we design these systems, we can create technology that enhances our capabilities rather than replaces them. The future belongs to AI that works with us as partners. A technology that helps us build more inclusive, sustainable communities and improves life for everyone.
