Latest / Humanity Working / Bonus Episode: Leading Change in the Era of AI, Featuring Bill Kirst

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Bonus Episode: Leading Change in the Era of AI, Featuring Bill Kirst · Humanity Working

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: Hi everybody, welcome to Humanity Working.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm joined today by Bill Kirsten.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Bill is the host of a terrific podcast that I listen to myself and absolutely recommend called Coffee and Change.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: And he's also author of the book Leading Change in the Era of AI.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome, Bill, and great to have you here with us.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: Appreciate the invite, Paul, and looking forward to the conversation.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: I want to say something about the book before we get into it.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: I had a strong reaction to it.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I think I had several strong reactions to it.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Which I think I'll I'll sum up like this.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: The first reaction I had was I feel I feel like this should have been the first book I read on AI.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Now, of course, that was impossible.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: It came out this year.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: But it felt like a thing you should read and then go read all the other stuff about, you know, how amazing it is or what you need to do differently and uh and things like that.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: The second reaction I had was one of deep questioning and introspection about um the approaches that I've been using and um and the ways in which I've uh I've used it, the way in which I've recommended to others how they use it.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: I teach people on how to thrive alongside AI.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it really gave me pause as to as to whether I'm serving the humans uh with the work that I do.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um so my my question for you, my first question for you is is that a common reaction or a variant of that reaction that you're getting as you get out there and talk to people about the book?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, it's uh so far, um the reactions have almost all been in the realm of what you experienced.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um and the person who's probably closest to your the way you describe your experience would when you said, I feel like this should have been the first book I read, and then secondly, I now am carrying so many more questions and interrogating how I'm using it, interacting with it, and recommending it.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: That person was my father, ironically, Paul.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: And my father's um in his 80s um and obviously retired.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: This is a man who reads the Wall Street Journal every day, right?
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: Page to page, um, cover to cover, as you say.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: He he sat down with me recently when I last saw him, and he said, Hey Bill, I'd like to actually sit down with you.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: I have a few questions for you about the book.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: And that turned into a two and a half hour conversation, which by the way, I recorded for posterity.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: I'm really glad I did.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: And his reaction was almost word for word, yours.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: And he said something to me at the end of that conversation, which was really profound.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: He said, Bill, I used to read all of these articles in the Wall Street Journal and other publications.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: Every day there's a story, multiple stories on AI.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I would feel a little inept, I'd feel behind, I'd feel like I was um not understanding what they were talking about.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: Now that I've read your book, I feel like I've got a master's degree and what this is and its implications and its consequences, and I can read every article, even if it's technical, and understand and make better decisions.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: And he's 84.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, it's been an interesting set of reactions from people, very common to what you're experiencing.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: And what it does so beautifully is it um it helps us understand how AI is fitting into our world today, but then is also almost like a plea for it to fit into our lives in a in a different way, in a way where it truly does live up to some of the um to some of the aspirations that are in mission statements and have been in mission statements uh of tech companies for years.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um we use this incredibly powerful technology in a way that does actually empower human beings versus make human beings irre irrelevant.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um there is a there's a path for that to happen, right?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: There is a way in which we can actually deploy this technology in a way that does help us as humans, but at the same time, there's a history of tech companies proclaiming that they aspire to do that, but actively not.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: So can you talk about that a little bit?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean it it comes down to something very simple for me.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: When people show you who they are, believe them.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: And these tech companies have been showing us who they are time and time and time again.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: We have so many lessons just from the social media era in the past decade plus.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't think we as humans have learned those lessons.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I feel like each time we get close to learning those lessons and making an intentional change for ourselves, these technology companies, whether they state it or not, essentially go hire more anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, organizational psychologists in some case, to help them tweak the algorithm to get us that much more dependent and addicted.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it happens right before our eyes.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: Uh a simple app update.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: It can say things like, we're just updating the terms and conditions, or we're updating security.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: And what happens is everything that you've, from a pattern behavioral standpoint, gotten used to using that app, um, very almost invisibly, they've snuck something in there that gets you just a little more hooked, right?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: A little more and you feel in your body that you've made choices and changes, but they still have you by that, right?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so if we think about the seeds of the social media and what it could have been, I mean, you remember this, Paul, when it first came out, right?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: It was about connecting people.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: It was about traversing time zones and borders and community.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and if you ask somebody today what it feels like to use some of this technology, sometimes people say it makes me feel bad or I feel more disconnected than ever.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I think a lot of those patterns are at scale with AI.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_02: And that is that's that's the part which really concerns me because last we heard, 800 million people use Chat GPT each week, right?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's weekly active users.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: And based on recent studies that OpenAI had to release because they're in lawsuits, um 1.2 million people a week put in suicide ideation into Chat GPT.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: If that's not a cry for help, I don't know what is.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think we're compelled, and I'm convicted, to speak about this, to talk about this, because I worry about our humanity, I worry about our delicacy, I I worry about our sanctity.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: So before we get into the specifics of the book a little bit, and there are a few themes I want to get into.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: I want to I want to just pull back a tiny bit, because there's a there's a there's a theme, a broader theme, that keeps sticking with me, which is the sort of like just because we can do things, should we do things.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: I've been struck and thinking quite a lot recently about the fact that you've got multiple layers, if you like, of people, from governments all the way down to individuals that are behaving in a very particular way.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's related to I I think it's related to fear, but but fear in a subtly different way than we commonly think about that fear.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: So often with new technology we think of like fear, uncertainty, and doubt and so on, as in uh I don't understand it, or fear as in this is gonna this is gonna replace me, right?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: And there's certainly elements of that associated with um with AI.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: But if you kind of start at the governmental level, you've got right now governments that are that are either changing regulations or choosing not to regulate or investing enormous amounts of additional uh making enormous amounts of additional investment in energy.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we just surpassed, for example, the amount of coal being burned and the planet is now at its highest ever.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um despite all of these various uh you know shifts towards green energy.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Massive increases there, abandonment of climate pledges, uh governments um freeing up um the ability to build enormous data centers in order to power all this stuff.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it feels like all of this is centered around well, the Chinese are doing X, so the US must do Y in order to keep up.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Then you get down to if you like the corporation level and the company level.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're an AI company, it's we must go full steam ahead as AI company.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say AI company X, but there literally is an AI company called X.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, this AI company and that AI company and this AI company, and they're changing how they behave because they have because they have to keep up.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then down to the companies that are using AI, well, these this comp these companies over here are firing a bunch of people, so we have to in order to remain as competitive as they do.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then down all the way to the individual level, going where where you're going, okay, well, my colleagues are getting you know three or four X productivity and doing twice as much as as uh as I am because they're using AI, so I must too.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it feels like across every level, from governments all the way down to individuals, we've got people and organizations rushing towards something because if they don't, they are they are irrelevant.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: How do you how do you can you break out of that?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: Can we break out of it?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: I believe we can.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: How we do it is probably up for more debate, but the question I've been asking people when I talk to them in small groups about this very heavy question is will we remember ourselves and who we are at the end of said race?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_02: So let's let's let's play it out.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: Let's say at all those levels, right, governments make decisions and regulations to keep ahead in the race.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um companies make decisions to keep relevant, um, corporations make decisions to maximize power and profit and um scale.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_02: Individuals take on the path of being more efficient than their you know their neighbor or their friend.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: To what end?
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: And let's say we get there.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: Let's say we win, let's say we get that efficient.
• 12:55
  unknown: Yeah.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_02: Will you know who you are?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_02: Will you remember who you are at the end of it?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: You arrive there if you look around, if you look at who you are, if you look at how you've behaved, if you look at the outcomes, I'm not saying in those cases there won't necessarily be more profit or more efficiency or more productivity or innovation.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: But will you, as an individual, as a citizen, as a corporate and you know, a corporate citizen or a family member or a friend, will you be comfortable and aligned in integrity with the choices you've made and the amount of, again, humanity and sanctity that you you've made decisions with.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know the answer to that.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's a very individual question for each person.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: And part of the reason I put this out in the world is because I want people to have permission to stop and pause and reflect and ask themselves that question.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: The game feels right now like all of those other entities, the last thing they want you to do is to pause and reflect and ask that question because you might make a different decision.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um if we all stopped using this for a day, those that are sort of at the helm of these powerful positions would not be powerful for a moment.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um and maybe we would see things a little bit differently.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so I don't know if there's an individual easy answer, but I know there's a deep question that I want people to carry, like you're doing, so that they themselves can find their way to the right answer for them.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not black or white, it's not never use this and only use this.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: As you said, there's a threading and there's a a weaving that we have to do.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_02: But if we don't stop and understand who we are before, during, and after, we are without a compass.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Let's explore just for a second the idea of black and whiteness here.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you if you think about take something like CFCs, for example.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: So chlorofluorocarbons.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the younger listeners won't may not even remember what those are, right?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: But they were a chemical that was used in a in a propellant.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: And back in the day, your under-omdiodron really sprayed out really well, right?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, because of chlorofluorocarbons, and it was used, it had a whole bunch of other uses.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um so they were they were genuinely useful for a bunch of different things.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but they also had this rather annoying thing, which is they tore a hole in the ozone layer.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: And we took a decision as a planet that the costs of this thing were greater than the benefits that it provided, and we basically abandoned them.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um what if the costs of this thing and the risks associated with this thing are great enough that we should be black and white on this?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: That there that we should literally say, nope, there is no generative AI is banned, as an example.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um is that viable?
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: In some ways, I think the genie's out of the bottle.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so to put it back in would be really tough because my worry is that once you've shown somebody the addictive power of something, and again, this is where I try to draw a slight um you know comparison to some of the lessons we did not learn with social media, the power of generative AI is being doled out in such a way where those that are showing it to us are also telling us you can't live without it.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um and as such, we've become addicted to it.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: But I wonder I wonder if we got to a place, and I think I read about this in the book, where there might be almost a reverse renaissance to your point, right?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: There's there's an awakening that took place where people said, this is not worth using to put a hole in the ozone.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: Why?
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: Because a hole in the ozone means increased cancer, increased temperature, like we this is our one place we live.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_02: Let's make sure we can make it as safe and comfortable and viable as possible.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: People made different decisions.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: I think the aspect of using this technology, but also being told by those that are the arbiters of it, that it will improve your life, that it will, as you said, gain you savings and efficiency, those are all kind of addictive concepts to want to attach to.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: And this is not a but, and when you start to have conversations with people around how much that prompt costs in the equivalent of a glass of water, or in the equivalent of the power grid, if you live in Texas, is gonna be so you know constrained that you're looking at more brownouts and blackouts throughout a winter.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: You start to have conversations with individuals on that basis, and they think about it differently and they feel into it differently.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: I've had people in front of me pause before they go in to put a prompt in because now they're thinking about it through the lens of how many glasses of water.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I understand these things are getting more efficient, but we still have that challenge of the power and the water and the cooling and all of the resources that go into this.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: And you have to ask yourself: is it worth just getting a quick answer on something when in fact you could you could still arrive at an answer without depleting that resource?
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: I think we're at a really interesting time right now, Paul, where people as citizens and consumers are starting to have those debates and those questions.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_02: And these questions are not just happening around boardroom tables, they're happening around kitchen tables.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I the other part I've really been delighted about this book going out in the world is I'm having young people approach me and say, My parent gave me this book.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: A high school student came to me and said, My parent gave me this book.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_02: And that high school student felt the pressure of always using this technology because their school said, Okay, we can't hold back the title wave of AI.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: You guys should use it in this way, right?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: Use it as a as a co-learner, as a tutor, right?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: And still, this young person said, I don't want to.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: But they felt the pressure all around them.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_02: And then they came to me and they said, Until I had your book, I didn't feel I had permission to say no thank you.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: Or not right now, maybe is a better way to say it.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: And if if young people, my gen alpha, are saying they want to use this differently, they don't want to make choices that are that go against who they are.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: I think I think there's hope.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: And there might be that swing back.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: There might be the pendulum swing where we see almost this reverse renaissance as I talk about in the book, and people might crave something that is more human-crafted as opposed to something that is not human-crafted and has dire consequences and impacts of resources, our planet, um, what's happening to our brains.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you've seen in studies.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: Critical thinking, um, imagination, boredom.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_02: These are all things that you and I had growing up, and I'm grateful for.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: But I worry about people who are shown the ease with which to use this technology because despite our belief, our brains have not evolved that much in many millennia.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we are very much still pattern-seeking devices in between our ears and in our cranium.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what this technology has got us addicted to.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's it in itself is a pattern-seeking device.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: It keeps showing us what we want to see, um, which makes it hard to step away from it.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I am encouraged by the conversations that people are having um in the other orbits around it, right?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: These are these are bigger impacts, bigger ripples, and both young and obviously older generations are having conversations about this.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, to pull on your on your theme around young people and their response to your book, I do find that very encouraging, and it resonates with um some of the work that that we've done in this area.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um we work with people that are just entering the workforce, so a little um a tiny bit older in some cases.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: But But those people often have a very different relationship with social media than you might expect.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: I see, for example, I've spoken to probably dozens of young people who have not a love-hate relationship with LinkedIn, for example, but kind of a hate-hate relationship with LinkedIn.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: And they're they're asking questions that are very different to the questions that I asked when I first got on LinkedIn.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, LinkedIn was a very different platform back then.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: But it we got to a point where certainly people of my generation, I'm 54, um having a profile on LinkedIn and being, you know, moderately active on LinkedIn and keeping that profile up to date, very rapidly just became a requirement if you were a professional in the workplace.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: And some people of the new generation are like, no, I I don't subscribe to that requirement.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: I want to live my life in a in a way that is that is different to that.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so I see that there.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen younger people choosing to uh disconnect in other ways.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the people that are using dumb phones versus smartphones, a lot of the the momentum around that is coming from uh from younger people as well.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I agree with you.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think there is some there's some real opportunity there for us to learn from the wisdom of youth here.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I I also think what I found to be quite instructive to me is in the hesitation, there's a whole lot of information.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm seeing hesitation, I'm seeing it in corporate hallways, I'm seeing it in classrooms, I'm seeing it in home.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: And it doesn't necessarily mean it's a vitriolic response, but hesitation on its own is so informative because there's something in you, there's something that's calling you to even just discern a little more.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: Say I'm not ready, or perhaps I haven't thought this through, that gives me hope.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm I'm gonna move from from hope, uh sadly, to a little bit of to a little bit of fear that uh that I that I have.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: And this is one area where I was reading your book and and and wanting to agree but struggling to agree.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you have a section uh and it kind of permeates a little bit uh as a theme around what I would refer to as as the unique and beautiful nature of of human art.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm using art in the broadest sense.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: The written word, the spoken word, the um the sculpture, everything that you can you can think of as art.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: But stuff that we that we as humans create.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you talk about the sort of inability of of of AI to be that.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: AI can't um, and I'm connecting in a couple of themes here, but AI can't love you back, for example, and and things of that nature.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: Where I I I I agree with all of that, obviously, as a as a as a factual statement, but what I've been struggling with lately, and I would love to get your thoughts on it, is yes, AI cannot create art in the way that a human being can create art.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, AI cannot love in a way that a human can love.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: But I worry that it can simulate those things in a way that doesn't just feel the same, but in a strange way feels better.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so if you look at um, for example, I experimented with with replica, or I don't know if you know replica, but a a couple of a couple of years ago, as I was researching an article I was writing on this.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um and even back then, I haven't used it for a couple of years, but even that back then it was pretty damn good at at creating what you know felt like a felt like an authentic human relationship.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: You reference um one of my favorite movies of the last couple of years, Poor Things.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um I kept thinking of the most recent Blade Runner and the relationship between um uh Ryan Gosling's character and Anna Day Armas' character.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: And and his his uh girlfriend, I guess, wife, I think she is, I can't remember, um, that is um that is basically a a a flawed avatar at this point is a very human-feeling relationship.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: We see around the world, particularly in uh in parts of Asia, deep uh you know, people marrying avatars and and things of that nature.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll get into the creation aspect of this art in a moment here, but but for those of us that are consuming this art, how do we deal with something that is potentially going to be knows us so well and and is so effective at you know pressing our emotional buttons in the right way that it's better than any human could be.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's a better girlfriend or boyfriend or a husband or a wife, or it creates better art.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, like I've got a bunch of classic literature behind me.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know any of those authors, right?
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: Most of them are dead.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: So they so to me, as I'm consuming all of that stuff, it it could be irrelevant as to whether it is Jane Austen the AI or Jane Austen the uh the actual Jane Austen, who is so far removed from me that it doesn't that it doesn't matter.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: So this is I struggled with this hugely because I I wanted to just be like, yes, yes, yes.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: But then I thought about like the human that is the consumer preferring the thing that is not human.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_02: I think um it's very real, and what you're sensing is something that again it goes back to the both the simplicity and the complexity of what it means to be human.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll and from a neurophysiological standpoint, what you're talking about I think is there is we understand what dopamine does, we also understand what cortisol does.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I I think what's interesting is there's and I I forget the other chemical, but basically they call it the the um the chemical that sort of surges through your body when like you when you get a hug, right?
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's not quite dopamine, but it's it's sort of like the group community chemical, right?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_02: Our mind is experiencing one thing, and our body is feeling another thing.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: And the interesting thing that you're that you're touching on is it's a it's a bit of a a disassociation that's happening.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um I don't necessarily know if it's bad or good, because in your in your instance with Jane Austen, for example, if if you love all of the workings of Jane Austen and you can use a technology that allows you to feel even sort of closer to this author who you could never actually meet, but it brings to life the works and the and the sensations and the feelings, and you have more proximity to the the being and the creation and the contributions that is Jane Austen.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: Is that a bad thing?
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_02: No, I would say it's not a bad thing.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_02: However, I think I want people to go even further and understand what is happening in them when that sensation occurs, right?
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_02: So to be able to discern that this the chemicals that are running through my body triggered by what my brain is seeing, it's important to discern that it's like being told over and over again what you want to hear.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: And we know this.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: We know a lot of these tools were sort of designed and programmed with slightly sick, you know, sycophantic tendencies, because the way you keep using it is when it makes you feel good and when it tells you things or just enough things to keep you wanting more.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_02: Some people have talked about this again to talk about the social media, like the race to the bottom of the brainstem, right?
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_02: We get to the that sort of default mode of our brain, and we can can we continue to hit that button, right?
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_02: We continue to want that treat, want that treat.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_02: Where it gets a little concerning for me is when we are so into that that we have actually forgotten or we can't detect that we are way off the reserve and we are far beyond our human experience.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, to your point around movies like Poor Things or Blade Runner or her, to what detriment do we get to that place where we we can rise to such highs with it, but then when we come to that realization that it is not real and that it cannot, as you said, love you back or hug you back or debate with you in a way, I worry about the lows.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_02: I worry about the come downs, right?
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_02: And we see this in time and time again, and as I mentioned, the study that OpenAI had to release recently, we see people using it in such a way to reach those dopamine hits, and then the come-down is drastically dangerous.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: And this goes back to like our brain not being all that evolved.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: We think we can tell the difference between these things.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: We think we know the to to when to put a threshold, we think we have self-control.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_02: But whether it's substance or technology or anything in between, we have examples time and time again where we are incapable of that.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_02: And the example I would give is Sora 2, right?
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_02: Which is opening eyes video tool, right?
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_02: I've not used it personally, but I've watched people use it.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_02: So I looked over their shoulder and some really interesting things happen.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: You may have used it, Paul, but I have, yeah.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_02: The first thing you that occurred, I saw Lily standing over somebody, they open it up, they open up the app on their phone, and it greets them with you know terms and conditions, whatever, but it also says everything beyond this point is not real.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: And that's great.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_02: What's interesting to me is that creates sort of two pathways in your brain.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_02: In one aspect, your brain says, okay, great.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_02: I now know that everything I'm gonna see, I don't have to play that game of is this real or not?
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_02: Because right now people are playing that on TikTok and Instagram, right?
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_02: They're constantly trying to do that mental gymnastics.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_02: Is this real?
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_02: Is it not?
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_02: So already I'm feeling a sense of euphoria.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_02: Oh wow, everything from this point on is not real.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: Great.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_02: But what happens when I then click into it and everything that I see, even though my brain knows and has comprehended it's not real, everything I see with my eyes, my optical nerves, appears real.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: Now I have to do, I think, three times the mental gymnastics to keep reminding myself that this is not real, this is not real.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: And that's my worry.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_02: We don't have that ability to continue to do that mental fatigue right sizing in our brain after a certain point.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: And then it's hard to discern what's real and what's not and make decisions based on that place.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't know if that, I don't know if I have the answers to these things.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: But you're absolutely right.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_02: We are at a place where it can be uplifting and it can be devastating.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_02: I I worry that people don't have, for lack of a better term, the the core muscles, the physical therapy to be able to say, I need to put this down, or I'm stepping away from it.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_02: Like you said, right?
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_02: You've replica, but you stepped away from it.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: And it's it's a lot to ask any individual to be able to make that decision multiple times a day and stay productive and stay a high performer and stay, you know, all those things you listed.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's not a need, it's not a need answer.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, on that point around um human connection.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: In our work about, I don't know, a couple of years ago, so it's probably worse now, we we sat down with knowledge workers and we asked them how how much time they were spending with their generative AI assistant doesn't seem the right term anymore, it's almost companion or something like that.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and we found that of people that were using tools like um like ChatGPT, often they were spending six, seven hours a day interacting directly with it, and then they were spending maybe an hour a day communicating with humans.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: And some of the people that we interviewed, that it was sort of like getting out of the other side, were realizing that it was negatively impacting not just their ability to have great conversations with other humans, but also their enjoyment of having great um communication with other humans, you know.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: So it this extends into the social media realm, and obviously, as social media and uh and AI almost start to merge, whereby like 80-90% of the content you're getting on social media might be generated.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: You've probably seen that.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: There's a social media app where all of it is AI, um, is AI generated by design, and you get your own AI avatar and it starts spewing out content.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: Fascinating experiment.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: But the social media aspect of it is creating the echo chamber piece of it and the micro-targeting and only hearing voices that you agree you agree with, and that's being exacerbated by AI, which to your point is um creating the chemical the chemicals in our brain that that make us feel good.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: Humans seem a pretty, for some people at this rate already, humans seem like a pretty poor second choice compared to that stuff that we're that we're surrounding ourselves with.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: And we're doing it in the name of work and efficiency and all of this kind of stuff.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know about you, but I've met people already who uh have admitted um to forming a close what feels to them like a close bond um with um with uh either Chat GPT in its own right or a custom GPT that they built or something along those lines.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it is impacting their ability to exist effectively in the real world.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: Have you seen that as well?
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_02: I have, yeah.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_02: And and again, I I probably know a handful of people that are at that at that place too.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um you know, I think to your point, like why would people choose that over this, right?
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_02: Over the ability to get together with another human and have discourse.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think it comes down to it, is like humans are messy.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: And given the option, people might say, I don't want somebody to um experience all the emotions around me.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want somebody to debate me.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and if I do want them to debate me, I will give them specific instructions on how to debate me.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_02: That's a very tempting thing to walk away from.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um but then I have to remind people then you're not in relationship.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like to be in relationship is to have someone talk back to you, to someone interrupt you, to someone to put their hand on your shoulder.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, we haven't talked much about grief, but I think the fact that so much grief is being held inside the body and people don't know where to place it, and then they're turning to entities, avatars, AI, to actually work through the heaviness of the human condition concerns me because there's nothing quite like somebody holding you or putting their hand on your shoulder and allowing you to, for lack of a better term, sort of collapse.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I think these things can sort of get you close to that feeling, but it's never going to be the feeling that reminds you you're alive.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I worry that I mean the the epidemic of loneliness is real, and it's only going up with this.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so to your point, if if we can if we can give somebody just enough permission to try something different, I hope they can get back to a place where they realize that you know the the feel-good chemical running through my body is caused by actually being in this human experiment, by walking, by nature, by being with people.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's too tempting to have these things on our devices now.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, I'm reading quite a bit about developments that are happening where you don't even need the power of the cloud.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_02: So they're going to put these things on device, so you don't need to be connected to anything.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_02: That terrifies me even more.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_02: Because right now we're dependent upon Wi-Fi or connectivity, right?
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_02: Pretty soon there will be no place in the world that you can truly be disconnected and sit in your own thoughts and allow these emotions to arise and be bored and have imagination.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_02: I worry about that for the future of writing and creativity and innovation.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um I, you know, I'm I'm someone who always has an under, sort of an undercurrent, low-grade fever of depression, always have.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_02: But that's also very much the well and the source and the the sort of the table of some of my creativity.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want that to go away.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um it makes me makes me me.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_02: It makes me in some ways a better friend, a better brother, a better spouse.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: All of those human complex aspects of who we are will never be matched or measured by some of this very ones and zeros binary technology.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_02: And that's part of the reason I encourage people to like think of the power of a mirror, right?
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_02: Even the cover of the book is done intentionally with part of it, the ones and zeros on the cover, as you can see, Paul, are actually backwards.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_02: And the reason I put that on there is because the only way you can see the book the right side the right way is to hold it up to a mirror.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that was intentional and sort of subdued to encourage people, right?
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: You have to look at yourself when using this in order to understand who you are and what you know, what paths and choices you can make.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_02: And right now it's too tempting not to look at ourselves, but to look at it and to allow it to pretend to be our mirror.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and equally, you know, a mirror is no good without a source of light.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_02: We could stand in a dark room and look in a mirror and we can't see anything.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_02: So, what is your source of light?
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_02: Unique divinely, what is your source of light?
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't think that will ever be replicated or duplicated by this technology.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I think as we as we kind of think through what this means is what we need to do as people, the book is titled Leading Change in the Era of AI, and I came away um from that concept of like, and I'll be honest, I don't think the people that are the people that are leading these technology companies have the leadership attributes that are necessary for the um for the world in which we live today.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um there's not a lot of there's not a lot of Abraham Lincolns in that are that are running our uh that are running our companies or Mahatma Gandhi's or you know you pick your your leaders that that think beyond um self interest.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um so the leadership thing falls on all of us, it falls on a bunch of Individual decisions that we make.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the challenge, the the tough challenge, is that if we're gonna do what we need to do, we need to do things that are more difficult than the alternatives that we're being presented.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really hard for humans to consistently do things that are difficult and more difficult than easy alternatives.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: I do think though, and I'm maybe I'm doing this human thing of trying to draw a podcast to an end on a on a note of hope, right?
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: But I do think that there are there are shoots.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um last night I was um at um uh I'm sure you're familiar with the Moth.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah, absolutely.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_02: One of the moth books over there, yeah.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I live in uh I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and there was an uh there was a moth event last night.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so I went uh I went to it.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: There were five speakers on uh on stage who uh who delivered their stories.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: And they asked us to turn off our phones, and they asked us again to turn off our phones, and most of us did.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then we sat there and we watched human beings at their most vulnerable, at their most imperfect, and collectively we were in a shared experience that was electric.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: And at the end of that shared experience, we all put our phones back on and we all started uh retreating into this into this different world.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: But I I suspect, I don't know, and I'd love to get your thoughts on whether you agree with this, but I suspect we're gonna move to a world where in when there's a digital interface between between what we're consuming um and what's being created, that a lot of that is gonna be uh is is going to be um is gonna be AI generated.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: And our refuge from that is gonna be really local.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be, we're gonna go to a physical place, maybe we'll go to a restaurant, and they'll take our phones away from us when we walk into the when we walk into the restaurant, right?
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: There are a couple of places that are doing that already.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um But we'll go to the we'll go to these spaces where humans gather and humans are authentically human because we can feel that we need it.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's that might be where we end up, and as long as those spaces are curated and that time is curated, and we do the stuff that you're that you talk about at various points in the book, like like we rush the pain and the effort that is necessary to create great uh great art, the the the imperfections that are in Michelangelo's stuff and make it beautiful, and the mistakes and the time and all of that kind of stuff.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: If we can find a way to cherish that, then we can keep that essence of who we are as human.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: Do you agree with that?
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, a hundred percent.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_02: And the word that keeps coming to mind is as you were describing, that both the moth experience and the restaurant experience is nourishment.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_02: And when you say to people to be nourished and nourishment, again, there's a very visceral thing that people can feel and understand.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_02: That means that I'm literally taking in something that is um making me stronger and making me feel better and allowing me to sort of elongate in this in this human experiment.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what I think you're talking about.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_02: And it would be the equivalent of saying to someone, yes, you could go for empty calories all the time, but you're gonna feel lethargic, you're gonna feel fatigued, you're always gonna be hungry, and you're just gonna wonder why you can't get that sense of satiated.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I believe that we're at that stage now where people are getting empty calories, and there's nothing better than pulling that Jane Austen book off the shelf and going to a nearby coffee shop and sitting there and reading it, and having a man or woman see that you're reading it and say, I absolutely love Jane Austen for these reasons.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_02: You can tell I'm getting emotional.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_02: My voice starts to quiver.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_02: But that is that is one of those moments that you cannot replicate and is nourishment.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_02: And so I do believe we're gonna have these sort of the collapsing circles, and there's gonna be moments where people say, no phones, or let's gather around a fire, or let's have a small meal between a cohort of people.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_02: All of those things go back millennia, and they've persisted.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_02: The challenge is we've forgotten, right?
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_02: I talk about somnambalism, sleepwalking, right?
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_02: It is in the interest of some of the people that are at the helm to encourage and participate in our forgetting.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I hope that doesn't happen.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's a wonderful place to lead this.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: This could have been a five-hour conversation, but hopefully people got um a sense of of where you're coming from.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_01: Just look, I'd I'm I'm not here to hawk your book, Bill, but buy this book, everybody.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's I'm I mean, seriously, leading change in the era of AI.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: If you're a human who is interacting with technology of any sort, um and you read it, it will change how you think about what you're doing.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_01: So um I loved it.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_01: I've loved this conversation, Bill.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you so much for joining us today.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you bet.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_02: And again, I appreciate the the outreach.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, if there's more I can do to help you, and obviously the communities that you're that you're working in and building in to hold on to what we're talking about, that's exactly why I wrote this, right?
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_02: It was it was a collection of love letters to humanity.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_02: That's the subtext.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_02: And um your your response and reaction means a lot to me because um that's the intention I put into this when I put it out in the world.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_02: And so to know that it's landing and that people like you are feeling into the unique divinity of who you are is a wonderful testament.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Bill.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_00: Humanity Working is produced by Matt Neal.
• 50:47
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• 50:53
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• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: And don't forget, you can find all episodes and get our weekly newsletter at HumanityWorking.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: See you next time.