Latest / The In-Between Tech and Trust Podcast / Techistentialism: Trust, Agency, and Decision-Making in Tech Acceleration - EP11

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Techistentialism: Trust, Agency, and Decision-Making in Tech Acceleration - EP11 · The In-Between Tech and Trust Podcast

0:02
As algorithms become maybe the most important decision makers
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in our lives, the question is not only can you trust AI or can
0:09
you trust whatever it it might be the information or what have
0:12
you really exceptional realities, but can we trust that
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we understand AI well enough? What does it mean to trust when
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the systems around us are unpredictable and the future
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uncertain? Welcome to the newest episode of
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the In Between Trust Podcast, the podcast at the intersection
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of tech and trust. In this episode, I speak with
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Rajesh Bits. He's foresight strategist, tech
0:39
essentialist, and founder of the Disruptive Futures Institute.
0:44
Together we explore the link between trust, agency, and
0:48
decision making in a world shaped by algorithms,
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complexity, and acceleration. This is a conversation about how
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we see, act, and anticipate in a time where text seems to become
1:02
existential. Hello Roger, welcome to the In
1:07
Between podcast. I'm so grateful to have you.
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It's wonderful to be here ever and I can't imagine many topics
1:15
that are more important than your in between trust podcast.
1:17
Thank you. Thank you so much for saying
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that. That's also definitely the part
1:22
of where I wanted to catch up with you in the very beginning
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because you've worked like in your background across
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investment banking, foresight and now take a central ISM.
1:32
And at the intersection of it all, what has trust mean to you
1:37
personally and professionally? Yeah.
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So trust is for me has always been and hopefully will continue
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to be directly linked with a philosophical concept which,
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which I find essential and which we'll touch upon, which is
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agency and agency working hand in hand with alignment.
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So it's, it's really not something necessarily just a
2:00
want or something you desire. It's really a fundamental need
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that's directly linked to me to existence.
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It's a decision heuristic. It allows the functioning in
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multi polar circumstances of peaceful democratic ways where
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you have some shared reality on basis and I think the we'll
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touch upon it. But if citizens can't agree on
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basic facts, if you don't have trust, if you what you see isn't
2:26
what it might be and the systems breakdown, financial markets
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rely on trust from my privates, you know, previous investment
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back in the world's legal systems.
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But scientific progress and and humanities really trust is, is
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pretty foundational for me in those aspects.
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And in your recent work, you've coined the idea of tech
2:47
essentialism. And now that you mentioned that
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trust is one of the bases of like how you view into the
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current status quo, but also more in going into that is when
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you think of trust through like that particular lens, what is
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the very first thing that comes to your mind?
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Yeah. So the first thing that comes to
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my mind is really the role in decision making.
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I mentioned earlier that trust is in a way it's a decisional
3:17
heuristic or I believe it is. I certainly use it like that.
3:22
As algorithms become maybe the most important decision makers
3:25
in our lives, the question is not only can you trust AI or can
3:29
you trust whatever it it might be, the information or what have
3:32
you really exceptional realities, but can we trust that
3:35
we understand AI well enough? And I know your question wasn't
3:40
directly mentioning AI, but maybe just as a point of
3:44
context. Take essentialism, the way we
3:46
define it is studying the nature of human beings, existence and
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decision making in our technological world.
3:53
So the play on the word, but it's it's not a funny play, it's
3:57
a serious play. Is is, you know, in the 19th and
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20th century you had existentialism and Heidegger,
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Kievskart, Jean Beauvoir and many others, and you had
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exclusively human decision making.
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It was the existential condition was what is the condition of
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being in the world? What is being human in the
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world? And we'll touch upon it maybe in
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a moment, but tech essentialism is really in the 21st century,
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human and algorithmic decision making go hand in hand.
4:24
In other words, the existential and technological conditions
4:28
cannot be separated. So existence is existence in a
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technological world. And therefore you can't ignore
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the impact not only of AI in decision making, but of humans
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in terms of their own decision making value chain and with that
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agency. So coming back to your question
4:45
on trust and around tech instantialism, it's really that
4:48
question of not only trusting whatever it is information that,
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but really do we understand and do we trust ourselves well
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enough to trust whatever we're seeing here reading, et cetera?
5:00
But you've now touched upon artificial intelligence and the
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technological infrastructure in themselves.
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And one of my most, one of the questions that I'm most curious
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about is how can we trust tech? How do you see it?
5:14
That's a big consideration. The reason I kind of mentioned
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AI and why I kind of, you know, I didn't mean to divert a
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broader discussion on you're asking about tech essentialism
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or, or, or trust. But I think that today the
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consideration and, and around existentialism is that you
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cannot separate humans from technology.
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And today most technology is cognified or trying to be and
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therefore there's some element way by this artificial
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intelligence. And so your question around how
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can you trust technology is, is a very layered 1.
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And I'll try and kind of be be quite quick.
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But I think the first point for me is, which is a big kind of
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concern is the false dichotomies of, you know, technology being
5:57
utopia or dystopia. Obviously there it's quite easy.
6:00
If you think it's dystopia, you can't trust technology and it's
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all terrible. And if you think it's utopia,
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you have that veneer of the magic wand or and it's just
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utopia, it will cure everything, etcetera.
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And the challenge and link to trust is that like many things,
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it's somewhere in between. And I think the existential
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challenge for humanity and in relation to trust is how it
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affects agency, freedom and choice, therefore decision
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making. And so I think that, and that's
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your question, how can you trust technology to trust technology?
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You have to be able to trust your agency, trust your choices,
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and trust your decision making. And that is difficult in today's
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context as we don't need this podcast to observe, but but
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certainly it helps us unpack things.
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And so I think that today, unless we trust our agency, our
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choices, our decision making, our understanding of the world
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as it really is, as a complex, unpredictable, nuanced, layered
6:58
world, uncontrollable, we won't be able to trust technology.
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And then what does that mean? And what doesn't that entail?
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We, we can talk about it, but I think that until we trust
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ourselves, our agency, our decision making and our ability
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to make choices and understand what choices are beliterate in
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terms of technology. As you teach Latin or English or
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maths or whatever you want, unless you have that fluency,
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you may think you can trust technology but really you can't.
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Or you may think you can't trust technology and you can't, but
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you don't necessarily have alternatives operating systems
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to to kind of compensate for. That and in other words, if you
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like, don't incorporate tech, tech essentialism into your
7:41
daily work, it's going to be challenging for us to move
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forward, right? And I'm sure that our listeners
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would want to know how they can incorporate it into their daily
7:52
business. So what would you say or what
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would you advise them to do other three things that they
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should do in order to integrate it into their daily business?
8:03
Yeah. So fundamentally tech
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essentialism is just appreciating that that debate
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around how do you restore trust around your own decision making
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and agency and how do you do that in the context of a world
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which is nonlinear, which is unpredictable, which is complex,
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etcetera. So the first thing I think is
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actually the the realization if you believe that the world is
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linear, predictable, complicated, but understandable,
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known, controllable in that world, which is things are more
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singular, binary, straightforward, effectively,
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you're not necessarily aware that you can be two things at
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once, that they're contradictions, that they're
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paradoxes, that they're tensions, you're not necessarily
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way of the outside influences of the impact on your decision
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making on your choices, etcetera.
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So I think the first aspect is really build awareness of the
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context of your world, build awareness of how decision making
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functions and the role that technology can have in moving up
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the value chain of decision making.
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And that's that's pretty important.
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I think the the second element, and that is kind of what what we
9:15
call I given keynotes on that, you know, the mindset shift.
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OK, I, I understand better the nature of the world.
9:21
The second thing is, is to restore agency and to restore
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agency is then to action, the decision making and the newfound
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understanding of of what the world really is.
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And because agency is like an option.
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So it's, it's great and it has some value, but only if you
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exercise it. If you don't exercise that
9:40
option, it's worth nothing. So agency as a second point once
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you have a better sort of appreciation of the world is
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essential. And the third element is Israeli
9:49
around big anticipatory. Now that's not predictive.
9:53
Anticipatory is just thinking with foresight about the
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possible futures, about next order implications, about things
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which might seem unconnected, how they can impact things,
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about building resiliency for different scenarios because you
10:07
don't know necessarily the outcomes.
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It's not predictable. And so, so that that kind of
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anticipatory is kind of like a preparation.
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So what does it mean if you have a greater awareness, if you
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exercise your agency and if you then are more anticipatory?
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The reason it's so important is because the impact of the lack
10:27
of trust or technology or AI in an adverse way will come, or any
10:31
disruption for that matter, comes from how you see the
10:33
world, which informs how you prepare for the world and which
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informs how you respond to it. So that kind of tripod trilogy,
10:42
whatever you want to call it around awareness, agency and
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anticipatory. It allows you to see the world
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as it really is, to action and have the agency, and then to
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inform preparations and responses.
10:57
And I think where you just highlighted is so important to
11:01
note that it comes from one within oneself, right?
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So for me as a person to you as a person, and we see technology
11:08
as a means to an end of how we also enter this conversation and
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basically, but then again, there are those moments of where it's
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definitely the other way around that technology shapes how we
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are aware, how we advocate, how we also engage or execute acute
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agency. How do you see this mutual
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interference? And also, how do you see the
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influence that technology has on the triangle that you described?
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Yeah, and no, you're, you're so right in the end, ever.
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It's I mean in the end all along, you know, it's, it's
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really a question of of our humanity and beingness.
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It's interesting because I was earlier last week.
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In fact, I'm currently in LA on a project and I actually went to
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an emergency preparation thing run by a Los Angeles police and
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emergency crisis. And actually I did it not just
12:00
because they fires and things that are specific emergencies,
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but because actually I'm preparing my my next book.
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And in that next book, I'm thinking about some of these
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topics. And what was very interesting is
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that effectively one of the key messages for for crisis
12:14
management or whatever you want to call it.
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And I think our world is in a constant two degree, you know,
12:19
challenges is that you need to look after yourself in
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emergencies. If you're not able to look after
12:25
yourself and to take care of yourself, then you won't be able
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to help anybody else. And so it starts really as trust
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does with yourself and what actions and the trust that the
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actions you have can have an impact on the future.
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And I think to your point around control, part of the awareness
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is that we don't have control. So the first awareness is that
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in a complex, unpredictable, non linear world, you actually don't
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have control. But that's OK if you're aware of
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it and you have alternative modes for decision making and
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appreciation. And I think it was Martin
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Heidegger who challenged the comforting illusion that we
12:58
could control technology. And so you have this paradox of
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technology. On one hand, it's magical.
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On the other hand, it's has its challenges and dangers.
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And in between there's this whole area where it's a constant
13:11
realization and feedback loops between the awareness of that
13:16
the agency might be exercising and the role technology is
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having in in the value chain and making decisions for you or
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informing decisions instead of you.
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And then if you're thinking about being anticipatory and
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think about scenarios and that, and you're relying consciously
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or unconsciously on, on even or AI or research from AI or
13:38
whatever, basically, you're conflating analysis of things
13:43
that do not necessarily inform the future because what is
13:45
unpredictable, there's no date on the future.
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So even simple AI, which seems innocent enough in a business
13:52
context, which you're using for analytics to project single
13:57
outcomes and future decisions, and you're doing that to the
14:00
reliance of anything else, you're then losing that
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awareness, that agency and that anticipatory concrete example.
14:06
Take the Fed, for instance, with interest rates.
14:08
They may or may not use AI, but they use very advanced computers
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and supercomputers, which are akin to one of the capabilities
14:15
that AI can do. They process that.
14:17
They have supermodels and they're very clever people.
14:19
And they completely failed at predicting like, you know, the
14:23
interest rates. They admitted that they had the
14:25
highest interest rates for half a century.
14:26
They admitted, you know, Yellen, I think, sort of said, sorry,
14:29
you know, I thought we could control cards, of course,
14:32
because they relied on it as if data was a proxy for the future,
14:36
as if the world was stable, linear and predictable.
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And they relied it to the exclusion of anything else.
14:41
And therefore you're not aware that there are multiple possible
14:45
outcomes. You're not doing anything about
14:46
it if you are aware, but you might not even be aware.
14:48
So you're not exercising your agency.
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And then you're certainly not being anticipatory because
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you're not preparing different scenarios.
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As an aside, one of the central banks is actually now working on
14:57
different scenarios to prepare for different outcomes.
14:59
So, so the struggle is constant. We don't control technology.
15:02
We don't control the environment, we don't control
15:04
anything but that if you have the awareness, you exercise the
15:07
agency and you're constantly updating with feedback loops in
15:10
an agile way how you see the possible futures panning out and
15:14
reconciling that with a longer term vision.
15:16
You're then at least with feedback loops emerging
15:19
constantly with a degree of awareness and exercising agency.
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I think in so far as you're not exercising the agency, in so far
15:27
as you're not thinking the priority of possibilities, in so
15:30
far as you're not aware of some of these themes that
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effectively, whether it's technology or AI, you will then
15:38
by definition not be aware of it.
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Therefore, it will not inform how you prepare and how you
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respond to things you've now. Mentioned some quite large
15:47
organizations. Also the context environments
15:50
that we're currently finding ourselves in in those complex
15:54
times are also fast changing. Environment systems adapt quite
15:58
unpredictable, but how would you say do organizations balance
16:03
control with the openness that we need in order to engage or
16:08
ensure existentialism or a mutual understanding to navigate
16:13
this complex environment? Yeah, so there's.
16:15
It's an interesting word you're using and you're using it in a
16:18
kind of insightful way precisely because that's that's hitting
16:22
the problematic right, which is control.
16:25
And again, to, to the features of complex systems.
16:29
And, and of course, you, you know this intimately, but for
16:32
some of our listeners who may be less well, first, it's important
16:35
to spend a second on control and how it's incompatible with our
16:40
context and therefore the, the challenge.
16:42
And then I'll touch upon what we do about it and what
16:44
organizations can do about it. If you take a simple dichotomy
16:47
between complicated and complex, some of us who are interested in
16:51
systems or kind of in frameworks by Dave Snowden or others have
16:55
that familiarity. But I think it's worth spending
16:56
a second on it because then it will reach lead us to
16:59
understanding control and, and, and that complicated.
17:01
Basically, you can analyze cause and effect ex ante.
17:04
Things are known unknowns. There's a range of right answers
17:08
and you can rely on experts. It's linear.
17:11
This has some degree of predictability.
17:13
It's basically the comfort zone for AI and even 2° humanity can
17:18
pattern recognition helps rank discovery.
17:20
Amazing things can happen in that environment where you have
17:23
some knowability and understanding and predictability
17:26
and linearity. Now in complex environments
17:29
which are unknown unknowns, which are non linear way, they
17:33
are not a range of right answers at that given point in time.
17:37
It's emergent. You need to kind of probe sends
17:40
respond differently because at that point in time you don't
17:44
know the lay of the land. And one of the features of
17:46
complexity, which is pretty much our everyday today for
17:49
organizations is that it's unpredictable and therefore not
17:53
controlled. It's emergent, it's dynamic,
17:54
it's in flux, it's constantly changing.
17:56
Now, what does that mean is that it means that the more an
17:59
organization is going to try to control the uncontrollable and
18:02
predict the unpredictable, you're going to have a
18:04
challenge. And therefore, I think that the
18:07
best thing is again, coming back to awareness.
18:09
If you're aware that your control doesn't mean anything in
18:12
an uncontrollable world and that those are already the features,
18:14
then you move to different operating systems which don't
18:17
rely on control. And so to navigate complexity, I
18:20
think you need to have that awareness, that control maybe
18:23
isn't the the fix. And it's not even a question of
18:27
what are the parameters of control you want to have, how
18:29
much or how little it's, it's to really have the humidity to
18:32
accept we might not be able to, to control it.
18:34
But what do you do? We in our work at the Disruptive
18:38
Fusion Institute or without tech, tech essentialism concept,
18:41
we have what we call the AAA, which is simply, and we borrow
18:43
things from other people. It's not our creation, but we,
18:46
we think that together it works well.
18:47
You need resiliency. Plus, because it's
18:49
unpredictable, you can have sharks precisely.
18:52
You can't control it, so you need to be able to sustain
18:55
shocks and maybe even improve or benefit from the shocks that you
18:58
won't be able to control. And that we call antifragile,
19:01
borrowing from Nassim Taleb. And it's basically resilient.
19:04
Plus instead of just being resilient like a rubber band,
19:07
you can knock it. But the more you know you knock
19:09
it, but it won't be deformed. The idea that's resiliency, the
19:12
idea of antifragility is, is 1 not trap.
19:15
You actually enjoy errors, you enjoy mistakes, you get upside,
19:19
you benefit from the shocks, you improve through shocks.
19:21
So it's a difference for instance, between ViaSat
19:24
satellites, which are decentralized, not very well
19:28
conventional RND of command and control.
19:31
Sorry, it's the the, the Elon Musk.
19:34
And I'm I'm not necessarily pro against Elon Musk.
19:37
I'm just, it just happens to be stalling satellite
19:40
constellations, which are low Earth orbit, which are
19:42
decentralized and very different from ViaSat, which are the well
19:46
established, you know, more rigid satellites which the
19:51
armies rely on. Now, the point about the the
19:55
ViaSat is that they work in a controllable world, but they
19:57
have single points of failure. That's why when Russia invaded
20:00
Ukraine, it took them 10 seconds to deactivate ViaSat because
20:03
it's it has single points of failure.
20:05
Now Starlink, three years later, they're still working because
20:09
you can knock them as much as you want to actually improve
20:12
with these errors, learn from it and so far haven't been able to.
20:15
So they decentralized, they have a lot of features which.
20:18
Appreciate that. It's not control.
20:20
So antifragility is, is that idea of strengthening through
20:24
shocks and that you're not trying to predict, you're not
20:26
trying to control. Anticipatory we talked about
20:28
earlier and that's the second day.
20:30
So antifragile anticipatory, it's just thinking, preparing
20:33
for different possible futures. And the third one is agility.
20:37
Agility to understand that the things you're anticipating in
20:41
the longer term future are important, but early the present
20:44
exists. So you're emerging every day
20:46
with feedback loops, with new information.
20:48
It's a discovery process. It's trial and error, but so
20:51
that those emergent, the agility to emerge in the present for it
20:56
not to be constant crisis management or emergencies,
20:59
you're reconciling it with that longer term anticipatory and
21:02
vision. You're just constantly updating
21:04
that. So in our view, to sort of wrap
21:07
up on the control question, which I think is important is
21:09
you need to be anti fragile, you need to be anticipatory and you
21:13
need that cognitive, emergent and strategic agility to
21:17
constantly reconcile feedback loops with new information
21:21
because it's a trial and narrow process precisely because it's
21:23
emergent and not controllable. And what?
21:25
I learned from like the leaders that I have conversation with
21:30
and what I also see within the market is that you now use the
21:35
word constantly. And for them this is one of the
21:39
main challenges because constantly like being in this
21:43
iterative process and communicating it to the teams
21:47
and to the stakeholders, to the market, to the users whatsoever,
21:50
it's like so challenging. And if we now look into your
21:56
proposition of also like taking up on the awareness, how do you
22:00
handle it? How do you make sure that you
22:03
integrate it into your channels of communication and to keep in
22:08
mind the way that people, target groups, whoever you talk to,
22:14
understand of where you're headed with it?
22:16
Yeah, so. Listen, it's a key question,
22:19
right? Because ultimately it is not the
22:21
way the world is running today and it's hot and change is hard.
22:25
One can't just sort of say, oh, listen, just try those and
22:27
should be fine. So, so the first observation is
22:30
you're, you're 100% right. It's a challenge.
22:34
What I would say, though, is that I think at this stage, if
22:38
we were having this conversation 3 five years ago or whatever,
22:41
when we started really thinking hard about all that, it was more
22:44
of a challenge for people to realize that things were
22:47
different because all these sharks they would treat as
22:50
episodic, singular, siloed sharks for which they would be
22:54
back to normal. So whether it's COVID or whether
22:57
it's the final financial crisis of 2008.
23:00
So the thing about those is that they kind of like, you know, you
23:03
have two years, a few governments and poor countries
23:06
and poor people, not meaning that derogatively, just the
23:09
reality of the world lose out and then it gets back to normal.
23:12
People write lose money or write a few checks and some people
23:15
make a lot of money because it's asymmetrical.
23:17
But then there's back to normal, you know, the, the governments
23:19
bail out banks and, and all the people who are careless and then
23:23
you get back to normal a few years later.
23:25
Now the thing about now is that it takes less convincing.
23:28
I think there's not a single person organization entity in
23:31
the world that doesn't realize there's a different context.
23:33
They may be very dogmatic as how they see the world.
23:35
They may not have an awareness of the some of the things we
23:37
talked about, but they probably have some sense that it's not
23:41
what they had deemed as normal to spend most of their lives,
23:44
seeing as their context. So the convincing that the world
23:48
is different and you need something else and that whatever
23:50
they're doing isn't working probably is less of a challenge.
23:54
And then it's then what do you do about it?
23:55
Now what our clients and people who have adopted in case studies
23:59
and other things that AAA like about it is that there's
24:01
actually only one A, which is a bit more tricky for constant
24:04
updates. Anti fragile you can treat as a
24:07
foundation. It's not changing.
24:08
If you're an organization and you're doing share buybacks and
24:11
you're constantly buying share buybacks to have a 5 minute fix
24:15
on the stock markets, it might seem great, but it's very
24:17
fragile. The minute there's a shock that
24:19
cash is gone, guess what? All of those airlines and all
24:22
that came begging for money or went bust when there were
24:24
sharks. Silicon Valley sat on a trillion
24:27
dollars of cash. It's inefficient for those MBA
24:30
Harvard studies of capital allocation.
24:32
But guess what? It's anti fragile.
24:34
So anti fragility or or the Starlink versus ViaSat, if
24:38
there's a single point of failure, it's fragile.
24:41
It's not anti fragile. So if you think of anti
24:43
fragility as a resiliency plus as a foundation, it actually
24:46
doesn't change every 10 minutes. The foundational things that you
24:49
just need to think about are are they vulnerabilities, are they
24:52
single points of failure, etcetera.
24:54
And it doesn't necessarily cost more to have antifragile
24:57
foundations. We can unpack that.
24:58
But it's it's a, you know, we probably spent trillions with
25:00
COVID in trying to to save a few millions.
25:03
OK, So antifragility is a constant foundation treated like
25:07
a house or building. It's not changing every 10
25:09
seconds. Anticipatory.
25:11
You're thinking long term of multiple scenarios.
25:13
Those are not changing every 10 seconds either.
25:15
You're thinking about the multi simplicity.
25:17
Appreciate that your scenarios don't actually matter whether
25:19
they're right or wrong. It's the exercise that building
25:22
that muscle for the impossibility, for surprise, for
25:24
discontinuity. So the only thing that changes
25:27
to your point constantly is the agility to reconcile with your
25:31
anticipatory vision. So the foundations don't
25:34
actually matter. No one needs to do anything.
25:36
Shocks happen. Many were unanticipated because
25:38
they can't be because it's unpredictable.
25:40
But because you have anti fragile foundation, it actually
25:42
doesn't matter the day-to-day. So you're not going from crisis
25:45
to crisis because you have anti fragile, resilient plus
25:47
foundations, anticipatory. You're thinking about longer
25:50
term horizons. They don't change that often.
25:52
The only thing that changes is indeed the agility, the
25:55
cognitive emergent and strategic agility to realize and to
26:00
revisit how your potential visions of the futures are
26:04
adapting to today. So in a sense, I think the
26:07
constant change is when you're not anti fragile, when you're
26:09
not anticipatory, you're responding crisis after crisis.
26:12
Every single news flow is a crisis.
26:14
You're not, you know, you're trying to control the
26:16
uncontrollable, predict the unpredictable.
26:18
They're constantly surprised and and and firefights and that is
26:22
the real challenge. So I think that if you're
26:24
thoughtful about it and away and exercise agency and have the
26:28
preparedness, you're probably going to be less bad badly
26:33
prepared than than firefighting day-to-day for every news flow
26:37
and change. One of the points that you just
26:39
highlighted was the accelerated times or like the speed that it
26:45
takes due to technology and so on of how our environment and
26:49
like the circumstances change. But then again, earlier we also
26:54
talked about the complexity of technology and also the
26:58
infiltration or influence that control might have an hour like
27:02
intersections of speed and technology.
27:05
Overall, how do you think we should look at systems that we
27:11
haven't yet fully incorporated in the way that we live by or
27:16
that organizations also incorporate into their
27:21
structures as an ends to a mean or as a value stream for their
27:27
employees? Yeah, that's.
27:30
Again, very, very good series of insightful and, and provocative
27:34
questions. Because that's, that's the crux,
27:36
right? Because if, if one believes what
27:41
one says I do, then I'll leave the world to react as to how
27:45
they, they perceive it. But if one goes with that thesis
27:48
around unpredictability, no control, etcetera, then it does
27:53
put into question, you know what, what do you do?
27:55
Things will happen. You can't know what you know,
27:58
how can you rely on the systems, how, what do you do to safeguard
28:01
if you can't know how they'll evolve, etcetera.
28:04
And and you're right, these are real challenges of complex
28:07
adaptive systems, which are exactly as you've pointed out
28:10
and you're obviously extraordinary well versed in
28:12
these topics. So, so they are not
28:15
controllable. You don't necessarily know how
28:17
they'll evolve. You don't necessarily know if
28:18
you're doing something what the impact of that is.
28:21
There's some reality to that. But I think again, I personally
28:26
think and and observe is that first of all, there's no choice
28:30
because the systems are complex. So there is no choice in terms
28:34
of doing something about how you organize things or implement
28:37
them in organization etcetera. And then you either the choice
28:40
you have is kind of conventional strategy or decision making as
28:44
it is today, where you believe that you understand everything
28:50
or you take elements of the features of a complex system and
28:54
you sort of think about, OK, so, So what, what do I do about it?
28:56
I think what it means is the following.
28:58
First of all, the fact that it's unpredictable doesn't mean that
29:02
you can't anticipate things. I think there's a difference in
29:05
our language. We make difference between
29:09
unanticipated and unexpected. It's just thinking about next
29:13
order implications and possibilities.
29:15
And there's actually quite a lot 1 can anticipate.
29:17
At least there's a possibility and then there's really
29:20
unexpected, which is surprise. So I think that making that
29:24
distinction means that you're still trying to anticipate
29:27
things. You're still trying to think
29:28
about the next order implications of that, having
29:30
broad perspectives because it's, it's not a sort of a singular
29:35
answer to things that are complex.
29:38
And so you still want to be anticipatory, think about what
29:43
could go wrong, what could go right.
29:44
You want safeguards for when they do because they will,
29:47
because you can't anticipate everything and you need feedback
29:50
loops and mitigants to observe as they evolve.
29:53
So it just means that the way you envisage things on day one,
29:58
you can't necessarily regulate every aspect and assume that
30:01
it's an easy win or incentivize everyone, everyone in one
30:05
particular way, assuming you understand how things might
30:07
evolve. So you, you just need to have
30:10
that approach whereby the things that are anticipatable, things
30:14
that are unexpected things that need mitigations and mechanisms
30:19
with feedback loops as and when they might arise in the future.
30:22
And then, you know, decision as to what you do with it as and
30:25
when things arise. So I still think that that
30:28
filter of certain things that are more fragile and less
30:31
fragile, not having single points of failure that exercise
30:35
that intellectual muscle of thinking about different
30:37
possibilities next door implications how and seemingly
30:42
unrelated things might connect having those diverse
30:44
perspectives to to think about that.
30:46
There's still value on that. And then what are the feedback
30:49
loops that allow you to monitor because things will evolve and
30:52
then the possible mitigations for that.
30:54
So I think you still fall on variations of a theme around
30:58
awareness, agency and anticipatory and the.
31:02
Cycles that you like explain to us just now and how they
31:06
interlink can be technological driven, right.
31:10
So we could use AI to help see us, help communicate us, help
31:15
also be part of bringing shedding light to the complexity
31:18
that we find ourselves in. How do you see in what ways
31:22
could AI help us in strength and trust given the interlinks of
31:29
the cycles that we find ourselves in?
31:31
Yeah, so. Again, these are kind of very
31:35
insightful provocations, right? Because invariably it's, uh,
31:41
it's like if it's the devil or you're using the devil for it,
31:43
If it's a magician, then it doesn't matter.
31:45
Just sprinkle AI and it's all perfect.
31:47
And of course, the reality is not so simple.
31:49
So I would say that I would start with the following.
31:52
There are certain environments and certain things which are
31:56
probably more what we call complicated.
31:59
In other words, they are known, unknown.
32:01
It's lunar, it's predictable. And for that, the eye has its
32:04
use, I think. And just to give you a concrete
32:06
example, I'm working in Brazil, I'm trying to transform
32:10
voluntary carbon markets with the first carbon credit certify
32:14
in Brazil, Lex carbon standard. And one of the things that is an
32:18
issue with the common credit markets amongst many other
32:21
things is a lack of trust to to our discussion and transparency.
32:25
And that affects liquidity and that affects the underlying
32:29
value of the assets and the trading.
32:30
And ultimately it's a no one's benefit for the market if you if
32:34
you can't trust it. And they are using technology in
32:38
ways that are pretty, I think robust for transparency,
32:42
trustworthiness, even some blockchain so you can know
32:45
whether anybody's tampered with the legal documents, etc.
32:49
And I'd say that's, that, you know, it's not a bad way of
32:53
doing it. It's better than not having
32:55
additional mitigants or safeguards to enhance the, the
32:59
possibility of changing the, the, the, the legal terms or the
33:02
ownership or the documents, etcetera, to, to have it like
33:05
that. So things that can enhance
33:07
transparency, trustworthiness. I think technology has a role to
33:10
play there. I think the danger is when you
33:13
sprinkle everything equally. First of all, if you do that,
33:16
just don't need safeguards and to monitor if it's working or
33:18
not, things can change. Maybe it doesn't.
33:20
It does, you know, it's not. Nothing is bulletproof.
33:22
But the second thing that's important is that what I just
33:24
described, a quite simple environment is a legal document.
33:27
Was it tampered with? What it's substituted and and
33:30
that in itself is important and happens, but it's not the whole
33:34
problem. Some things are more complex and
33:37
not so addressable by AI. And I think the danger is when
33:40
you use technology or AI as a fix in complex environments for
33:45
which it's not well suited and where you're delegating human
33:48
decision making outcomes or understanding to machines
33:52
relying on their decision outcomes as if it was better
33:56
than humans. And I think that is the biggest
33:57
challenge for humanity. And that's coming back to take a
34:00
centralism because what happens there?
34:02
So let's just take predictions instead of using it just to see
34:05
whether blockchain is, you know, a document has been tampered.
34:08
That's simple, that's complicated, but we understand
34:10
how it works. It's straightforward, but let's
34:12
take predicting predictability for instance.
34:15
In today's environment, you cannot predict in a reasonable
34:18
way that you can rely on those predictions.
34:20
You can predict, you can make assumptions, but you can't rely
34:23
on that single outcome now. And because simple no date on
34:27
the future, right? As we've discussed, if you're
34:29
using AIO technology to give you more trust by analyzing things
34:33
than by predicting something that's unpredictable or by
34:35
understanding things that are not so simple or
34:38
straightforward, putting false correlations or patterns or
34:41
whatever. The danger here is that not only
34:44
are humans delegating decision outcomes to a machine that is
34:48
not better able at processing it, but by virtue of delegating
34:52
those decision outcomes and understanding humans are
34:55
actually deskilling, you're becoming less capable of
34:57
understanding and decision making.
34:59
So that's what take a centralism comes in.
35:01
And so I think now to wrap with your question, which is, you
35:06
know, how can you use technology or AI given this kind of help
35:10
with trust etcetera and the features of trust, I would say
35:13
yes, in so far as those are understandable, knowable and
35:19
where AI technology might be well suited.
35:21
You still need safeguards, you still need monitoring and number
35:24
of things. But but yes, absolutely.
35:25
And that should be used if you can have more ways of tracing
35:30
the source of data, I mean, of, of information, whether it's
35:32
truthful, etcetera. Digital trust is important and
35:36
that's great. But then you have a whole realm
35:38
of areas where maybe we need to trust ourselves to understand,
35:42
to make decisions, to use intuition where it's required
35:45
and not have that temptation to delegate to to machines that may
35:49
not be better at you. And by virtue of delegating
35:51
where you actually becoming less.
35:52
And that's where I think the the danger is.
35:54
Yeah, I. Would agree to that and I would
35:56
also see that it requires a completely new perspective on
36:02
how leadership is being incorporated but that could be
36:06
completely different episode that I dive into with you and
36:08
now that we come to an end of this one, I wanted to use some
36:13
moments with you, the so-called in between moments that I have
36:16
with all of my guests. These are like questions that I
36:20
pose and ideally you would answer them in one word.
36:22
Sometimes it might not work, but it will be great if you could at
36:26
least like find a means to end to and describe of what comes to
36:30
your mind in the 1st place. And also intuitively, when I ask
36:34
you one word for what foresight means to you before.
36:38
Doing that, I'm just going to wrap on your earlier comment,
36:41
which is essential. And again, I would love if I,
36:44
when I have a podcast to reciprocate because I'd love to
36:46
learn from your perspectives and experience that because you're
36:49
obviously were very spend a lot of time thinking about these
36:52
topics and experience and on all these topics.
36:54
But you're you're spot on. Most of what we discussed in
36:57
this podcast does require break to the status quo.
37:01
Effectively, the world leadership teams has been
37:04
operating on the stable, linear, predictable, controllable world.
37:08
That is not the state of the world.
37:09
And the cost of relying on the world being linear, stable,
37:13
etcetera is increasing. So the only way we can kind of
37:16
do a slightly less bad job is indeed to a point, breaking the
37:21
status quo and doing things differently.
37:22
So that is just, you know, absolutely essential.
37:25
Now foresight for me, the one word is intelligence.
37:28
If I'm allowed two words, I would say futures intelligence.
37:31
In other words, foresight is a form of intelligence.
37:34
I think it's that much more so in a world where the humans need
37:38
intelligence and not rely on and one.
37:40
Word for what trust means to you, Alignment, and what do
37:44
leaders need most? Oftentimes of disruption agency.
37:48
And one word. For the future, you hope that we
37:51
are building sustainable. And I use it in the broader
37:54
sense, including the more conventional perfect.
37:57
It's a great end to like what I found a wonderful conversation.
38:02
Thank you for joining me today and I look forward to having
38:06
like another moment together with you and discuss of how we
38:10
progress. Thanks so much.
38:11
Ever and thanks for having this this such important topic and
38:15
podcast in between trust. Thank you.