From left, Bülent Uyaniker, Dr. Ying Zhu, moderator Nathan Skolski, Dr. Madeleine Ransom and Rob Cupello participate UBC Okanagan Debates at Kelowna Community Theatre.
Before the experts waged a single argument on stage at UBC Okanagan Debates on Sunday, audience members gave their opinions on the central topic: will AI enhance, or diminish, the human experience?
Using their smartphones and an online survey, about 40 per cent said AI would enhance the human experience. Eighteen per cent said it would diminish it. The rest-nearly half of the sold-out Kelowna Community Theatre audience-chose uncertainty.
When invited to describe their feelings about AI in one word, the most common response on the screen was "scary."
Arguing AI will enhance the human experience were Dr. Ying Zhu, Associate Professor in UBCO's Faculty of Management and the university's Academic Advisor on Artificial Intelligence, and Bülent Uyaniker, founder of Kelowna-based DataSpeckle.
On the diminish side were Dr. Madeleine Ransom, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at UBCO and Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence, Wellbeing and Ethics, and Rob Cupello, a Kelowna marketing strategist who advises businesses on AI adoption.
From novelty to necessity
When UBC Okanagan Debates first tackled AI in 2023, it still felt experimental. Two years later, it feels embedded. The question is no longer whether AI is here. It is how it is reshaping work, relationships and trust.
Dr. Zhu began with questions for the audience. Who uses Google Maps? Unlocks their phone with facial recognition? Accepts Amazon recommendations? Speaks to Siri?
"If you said yes to any one of those, you're already using AI," she said. "If you like those apps, your life has already been enhanced."
Her case was that AI is neither sudden nor foreign. The term dates to 1956. Machine learning already underpins advances in medicine, logistics and communication. She cited AI's role in accelerating COVID-19 vaccine development and its potential to deliver personalized medicine and individualized tutoring at scale.
Uyaniker reinforced that point with a longer historical arc. Referencing the Preston curve, which tracks the relationship between national income and life expectancy, he noted that life expectancy has more than doubled since 1900 while global prosperity has increased dramatically. Each technological wave-railways, electricity, aviation, antibiotics-brought disruption and gains.
"AI did not descend from the stars," he said. "We built it with our own hands. It has no soul. It has no hidden ambitions. It does not have any desires of its own."
For him, the issue is not inevitability but stewardship. Technological change unsettles. Humans shape it.
Vulnerability and erosion
Dr. Ransom approached the motion from a different angle.
"With the rise of AI, we're making ourselves and our democracies vulnerable in ways that we don't fully understand," she said.
She described documented cases of people with no prior mental health history developing psychosis after prolonged interaction with AI chatbots. She pointed to teenagers spending formative years in frictionless, one-sided digital relationships designed to centre and please them.
AI companions, she argued, are not evidence of flourishing. They signal a retreat from the reciprocal, sometimes difficult work of human connection.
Cupello, who works daily with AI systems, offered a caution grounded in industry practice.
"It's not the AI that I worry about," he said. "It's us. Are we truly optimizing for human flourishing? Are we smart enough to use AI for good, or just smart enough to build it and deploy it without thinking through the consequences?"
Where the debate sharpened
The most contested ground was expertise, specifically, what happens to the systems that produce it.
Cupello cited fintech firms eliminating thousands of entry-level roles through automation. Those junior jobs, he argued, are where tacit knowledge and judgment are developed.
"You remove them, and you may increase output," he said, "but where is the knowledge going to be transferred from?"
Dr. Zhu countered with projections from the World Economic Forum's 2025 Future of Jobs Report, which estimates AI will create 170 million jobs while displacing 92 million. She drew parallels to the early internet, which generated entirely new forms of work that were unimaginable at its outset.
Dr. Ransom accepted the possibility of job growth but questioned the reassurance. Her concern was structural. Human apprenticeship-the slow transmission of ethics, context and judgment-cannot be left to market incentives alone.
"We cannot trust corporations to give us those systems of human apprenticeship when they're focused on their bottom line," she said. "We need legislation to align their incentives with trustworthy AI."
Uyaniker resisted the framing of fear.
"We do not have artificial curiosity," he said. "Curiosity is something we inherently have. We should trust our human qualities."
Unresolved, but clarified
No one suggested the question could be settled in 90 minutes.
Cupello warned that outsourcing thinking, judgment and responsibility carries risks that are difficult to reverse.
"Those foundations are a lot harder to rebuild than a spreadsheet," he said.
Dr. Ransom urged the audience not to default to helplessness, but to act as consumers and citizens. Uyaniker framed AI as a mirror, reflecting human intent. Dr. Zhu closed with cautious optimism.
"I really hope we can all get together and build a positive, AI-powered human society," she said.
UBC Okanagan Debates is a free public event series hosted by UBC's Okanagan campus.
To learn more, visit https://ok.ubc.ca/ubc-okanagan-debates/
