The proper use of artificial intelligence is that which frees people to pursue the things that humans do best: being creative and connecting with other human beings.
So says Jeff Green, chief executive of the The Trade Desk, a ten-year-old, publicly traded company that makes money brokering advertising on behalf of some of the largest ad buyers in the world.
Businesses that follow that rule, you could call it humane AI, may also end up being better businesses, to judge from the example Green has set.
AI is "a real thing, it's critical," says Green, in an interview with ZDNet at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.
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Green has been adding artificial intelligence tools to his company's suite of technologies that help media buyers pick where to place their spots. It's impact can be "huge," but AI is also a misunderstood, he says.
"The average consumer or the average reader thinks, oh, that's the robots taking over things," he says.
"I don't think about it the same way Elon Musk does. Instead, I look at it as, there are things that humans are really good at, which is creating hypotheses, and being creative, and connecting with other human beings. Machines don't do that very well.
"But machines are often way better at doing math, they are way better at testing hypotheses."
To help humans, "there's lots of AI that we can point at huge data sets that we have," says Green, "to make better choices on their behalf so they can spend more time being