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AI Impact Summit 2025: Editors Recap 5 Main Takeaways of Event
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There is no doubt that artificial intelligence is going to impact every industry worldwide. During Newsweek's AI Impact Summit in Sonoma, California, leaders from various businesses gathered to better understand AI use cases and the best ways to implement, govern and scale AI tools.
Day three of the summit had the shortest programming, but it offered some of the most important insights gathered from the entire event.
To close out, Newsweek's Editorial Director of Nexus Gabriel Snyder and contributing editor Marcus Weldon shared the five main takeaways they learned from the panels and discussions over the last three days.
AI Puts a Premium on Curiosity and Automates the Mundane
"So one example for this one was our entertainment panel and how the filmmakers are using AI to automate the mundane development process and create more quickly," Snyder said.
Weldon also added that in the health care panels, conversations explored how drug discovery and clinicians can explore pathways to come up with new treatment plans.
Sonoma, CA - Newsweek's Marcus Weldon and Gabriel Snyder present their top five takeaways from the AI Impact Summit at Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn and Spa on Wednesday, June 25, 2025.
Sonoma, CA - Newsweek's Marcus Weldon and Gabriel Snyder present their top five takeaways from the AI Impact Summit at Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn and Spa on Wednesday, June 25, 2025.
NICK OTTO
AI Has to Humanize Health Care and Personalize Engagement in General
"Not only were many of the health care panelists talking about how ambient scribes and other AI tools were letting doctors be with their patients and bringing back the human touch into health care. But we also heard that from the representatives from Denver and Charlotte and how they're using AI to make city services more humanized," Snyder said.
"And I think that's really interesting balance. When we think of AI, we think of it as a machine. It obviously is, but it's often by doing those mundane tasks and that we talked about first, it's opening up more space and energy for things that are uniquely human. And I think that's a really critical thing to keep in mind with all of these applications."
Instacart's Daniel Danker spoke during his panel Tuesday about personalizing the shopping experience to take the cognitive load off users to start planning not only shopping lists but meal plans.
In a Wednesday panel, Sears KAIros CEO Srini Kandala said call centers using AI agents have better access to materials to provide better recommendations for customers.
AI Has the Power to Democratize Expertise and Also Value Unique Human Expertise
"So there's a danger in that democratizing expertise, that it means that everyone will think of themselves as an equivalent expert," Weldon said. "I think it raises the foundational level."
He said the average level of knowledge is going up by interaction with these systems and, on top of that, the unique human creativity remains because we understand the world in a certain way that can't be replicated by machines.
Synder added that the "critical ingredient" for problem solving is always going to be the human expertise, saying – "there is no substitute for that."
Sonoma, CA - Newsweek's Marcus Weldon and Gabriel Snyder present their top five takeaways from the AI Impact Summit at Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn and Spa on Wednesday, June 25, 2025. This marked the end...
Sonoma, CA - Newsweek's Marcus Weldon and Gabriel Snyder present their top five takeaways from the AI Impact Summit at Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn and Spa on Wednesday, June 25, 2025. This marked the end of the 2025 Summit. More
NICK OTTO
AI Adoption Should Focus on the End-to-end Value Created; Efficiency and Cost Savings Are Byproducts
Snyder said this theme came up several times during the summit, including in the return on investment discussion that morning.
"I think the thing that I really learned here was the importance of always thinking about the accuracy of and the measurement of these tools, that these are not investments that you set and forget, that there is an active element of making sure that they're doing what you're expecting, that you're catching the things that it shouldn't be doing and that that element is as important as whatever you're doing on the front end to build," he said.
Weldon added that most people agree that efficiency and cost savings will happen, but shouldn't be the goal. The goal should be about value creation.
In the panel with Oklahoma CTO Rob Teel and Banjamin Maxim, the chief innovation officer at Michigan State University Federal Credit Union, the panelists stressed the importance of focusing on the "why" we are doing something and then executing "how" in order to drive efficiencies.
Responsible AI Is About Transparency and Privacy But Also Continuous Validation and Verification
Weldon said transparency means many things when dealing with AI tools: It means disclosing what the data is based on, announcing the presence of AI, protecting privacy and continuous validation and verification.
"For everything we generate, we need to validate," he said. "So this idea of constantly testing, evaluating, verifying that the answer is valid, which is a form of transparency, and then bounding that for each personalized context."
Sonoma, CA - Michigan State University Federal Credit Union CIO Benjamin Maxim and State of Oklahoma CTO Rob Teel speak with Newsweek contributor Chuck Martin in the "Navigating the Regulatory Maze: Enhancing AI Governance, Privacy...
Sonoma, CA - Michigan State University Federal Credit Union CIO Benjamin Maxim and State of Oklahoma CTO Rob Teel speak with Newsweek contributor Chuck Martin in the "Navigating the Regulatory Maze: Enhancing AI Governance, Privacy and Cybersecurity" panel during the AI Impact Summit at Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn and Spa on Wednesday, June 25, 2025. More
NICK OTTO
Earlier that morning, there were three panel discussions about how to measure return on investment, measure success and ensure regulatory compliance.
Dr. Girish N. Nadkarni of Mount Sinai highlighted how AI can boost both patient and clinician experience in health systems – increasing returns for follow-up care for patients and decreasing burnout that will lead to greater employee retention.
With these great improvements to operations, Nadkarni did note that there should be measures for ROI and safety and ethical standards.
"I truly believe we are going to get to a point in health care where AI is going to become a part of the care team and not using AI will open up liability," he said. "I think there is something to be said about the health system that wants to use AI in a safe, effective, ethical and responsible manner."
Sachi Desai from Climate talked about using automation to help farmers with crop growth, while Maxim and Teel shared how they are each working with partners in both the public and private sectors to innovate and comply with necessary regulations.
Newsweek will host the New Destinations Summit in London on July 3 and the Women's Global Impact Forum at the office in New York City on August 5. To learn more about Newsweek's upcoming programming, visit the Events page here.
