The Human Margin

As AI takes on more of the work, decisions travel further and affect more people before anyone notices what they've become. Quality on its own cannot create trust. Trust depends on someone remaining answerable for what follows.

Peter Barber calls the distance between the people who make a decision and the person who lives with its consequence the Human Margin. Drawing on a decade across fintech, AI and high-consequence products - including an intelligence agency that rejected his team's work for being too well designed - he argues that closing that distance is now the design leader's job.

This talk offers a practical lens for the age of agentic execution: what can be delegated to machines, what must stay observable, when a person needs to intervene, and who remains accountable after a system acts. Before a decision travels, ask: what are we trying to make true, who will have to live with it, and am I prepared to stand behind what follows?

The Melbourne Connect AI Community of Practice brings together Melbourne Connect partners, researchers, startups and members of the broader innovation ecosystem to explore how emerging technologies are changing the way organisations work. This series provides an opportunity to learn from practitioners who are actively applying AI and to share experiences, challenges and opportunities across sectors.

About the Speaker

Peter Barber
Peter Barber is a Product Design Leader at Airwallex, working across identity, authentication and security. Previously, he led global design teams at Block across Cash App and Afterpay. He was also the founding product and design leader at Delphos Labs, where he built technology for nation-state cyber defence. He created the Clarity Canvas and speaks on trust, accountability and what design stays answerable for as execution automates.