Your Brain at Work

The Challenges and Opportunities of AI

Episode Summary

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has revolutionized the organizational landscape. Not only does it provide organizations with a means to cut costs and enhance the quality of services, it can also optimize processes, productivity, and efficiencies, at scale. Despite the breadth of opportunities, organizations are still struggling to reap the full potential of an AI-fueled workforce. This is because reaching its full value requires companies to rewire how they work. On this episode of Your Brain at Work, Dr. David Rock and Dr. Emma Sarro discuss the challenges leaders face when working to implement AI into their processes and how to leverage neuroscience to turn challenges into opportunities. They’ll also discuss how a deep understanding of human cognition and the science of change management is the foundation for an AI-strategy that creates the right type of human-AI workforce that enhances productivity and innovation.

Episode Transcription

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Ariel Roldan: Welcome back to another week of your brain at work. Live! I'm your host, Arielle Roldan.

 

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Ariel Roldan: for our regulars. We're happy to have you back, and for our newcomers. Welcome. We're excited to have you here with us today. For the 1st time

 

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Ariel Roldan: in this episode we'll discuss the challenges and opportunities of AI which has revolutionized the organizational landscape.

 

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Ariel Roldan: Now, as I quickly share, some housekeeping notes, drop in the chat or in the comments box on social, and let us know where you're joining in from today.

 

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Ariel Roldan: We suggest you put your phone on. Do not disturb and quit your email and messaging apps. So you can get the most out of the show today, and it helps with the quality of the audio and video.

 

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Ariel Roldan: We love interaction. So feel free to share your thoughts and comments in the chat

 

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Ariel Roldan: time to introduce our speakers for today

 

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Ariel Roldan: our 1st guest. You all know him well coined the term neural leadership when he co-founded Nli over 2 decades ago with a professional doctorate, 4 successful books under his name, and a multitude of bylines ranging from the Harvard Business Review to the New York Times, and many more a warm welcome for co-founder and CEO, of the Neural Leadership Institute. Dr. David Rock.

 

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David Rock: Thanks very much, Ariel. Good to be here with you.

 

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Ariel Roldan: Thanks for being here today. David.

 

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Ariel Roldan: our moderator for today holds a Phd in neuroscience from New York University. She leads the research team at the Neuro Leadership Institute, where she focuses on translating cognitive and social neuroscience into actionable solutions for organizations. A warm welcome to the senior Director of Research at Nli. Dr. Emma Saro.

 

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Ariel Roldan: Thanks for being here today, Emma, and passing it over to you.

 

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Emma Sarro: Thanks. Ariel. Hello again, David!

 

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Emma Sarro: How you doing.

 

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David Rock: Doing well, good to be back.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, yeah. So well, today, we have another exciting episode. We are kind of diving into another one of the predictions you laid out for 2025, which is really this continued sense of caution around AI. We know it improves efficiency, but it just seems to be met with continued worries about, how do we use it? The embedded biases, you know, how does it impact creativity, our ability to have insights? We talked a lot about it in our recent summit just a few months ago.

 

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Emma Sarro: and anytime you look into. So in preparation for this, I looked into kind of the like. What does the adoption look like for AI and organizations. Every time you look, it changes right now, over 50%, maybe around 60 or more of organizations intend to adopt AI globally within the next 3 years. But it tends to be really in larger businesses.

 

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Emma Sarro: Despite this, there's still this worry, you know, it's going to take away all of these jobs. But sometimes the predictions are that it'll provide even more jobs. So really an opportunity. For how do we upskill like, how do we build the skills to use AI, which is something we'll talk about.

 

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Emma Sarro: But then, all of the other concerns about the potential biases, how do we make sure that we're, you know, media like mitigating these biases. And you know what is the value of the human interaction. So all of these worries are coming up. And we're going to be, you know, talking about these today and really thinking about them as these are challenges. And how do we turn them into opportunities.

 

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Emma Sarro: One of them is this, how does AI impact human potential? I'd love to. Just you know, we love chat. We love interaction. What do you all think about the impact that AI has on, whether it will unlock or really lock out human potential from anyone in the audience. And I'd love to hear from you too, David. What do you think.

 

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David Rock: Yeah, let's get some comments. Get people thinking, do you think AI will unlock human potential? Or will it lock up human potential? Let's get some comments from folks. I see we've got over 200 people online, probably some others on Linkedin and other places that we stream.

 

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David Rock: So it's yeah. It's such an interesting question. It's getting such a powerful reaction. I think. You know, in some ways it's helpful to study

 

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David Rock: the uptake of computers generally. The difference with computers is, they happen very slowly, and we're all kind of terrified about the speed at which AI is kind of happening because it is happening really fast.

 

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David Rock: but computers massively upended entire industries and change how we do everything. I mean, they really did when talking about going back to like, you know, the 19 eighties when very few people had a you know, a computer at home. We certainly didn't have smartphones, you know, computers in our pockets, but entire industries were, you know, were decimated. And yet the, you know, over time.

 

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David Rock: you know, computers have created enormous opportunities, and, you know, invented complete industries.

 

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David Rock: and that was even before the Internet. And suddenly the Internet's invented complete industries and destroyed many others. So it's interesting, you know, with a lot of these technologies, there's often a lot of fear. The reality is that they often create enormous breakthroughs as well at the same time. And I think the difference with AI is it's happening so quickly. It's scaring people. But in the end I think that it'll have a net positive on people. One of the things to remember is the reason people came up with AI is the limits of our

 

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David Rock: kind of cognitive capacity. Right? The we can accurately and and fairly quickly unaided, you know, add up 3 digits in our head, 4 digits in our head. Maybe 5 digits in our head starts to be really exhausting at 4 or 5 digits, multiplying 4 digits, not really dividing 4 digits definitely, not doing any more than one of those calculations at any one time. Definitely, not.

 

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David Rock: you know. So we have this real limit on our capacity to hold information and then accurately process it right. And any decision we make as a human involves holding information and processing it. So you know, the reason AI exists

 

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David Rock: is that there are incredibly complex information sets data sets that we could never dream of holding that there's enormous insight in, if we if we could. And AI is helping with that. And so there's this perspective that AI is giving us a superpower of

 

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David Rock: sort of hacking the limits that our prefrontal has, you know, hacking the sort of limits of our prefrontal, giving us this massive capacity. And I think that's true. But a bit like computers. I think there is going to be a divide, and maybe even a bigger divide with computers, you know, with computers, particularly until we had so smartphones that became much easier to use, much more ubiquitous.

 

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David Rock: The people who are really good at technology had a huge head start, and then lots of people had no access to technology. And we're talking, you know, billions of people. Now, you know, sort of most people have smartphones. So it's more, you know, it's there. But I think it's gonna be a little bit similar with AI, is that a small percentage of people are going to use it really well and massively empower themselves and be massively more impactful, massively more effective.

 

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David Rock: But a lot of people might actually be left behind as well. I think we're going to see a similar pattern. So I think it's going to be a mix. But I don't see the job risk as acutely as others do.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, yeah. And I think we'll see that over time. As you say, I think we'll learn over time, like, what are the jobs that we can create now, right? And some of the predictions are that there will be more jobs created. So you know, being innovative in the jobs that we can create. What can we use use AI for? So it kind of forces us to think about what are the best ways to use? AI and I would love to take the data from the chat and kind of look

 

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Emma Sarro: at the distribution, because, as it was popping up, I could kind of see everything, you know both. It'll lock it. It'll unlock it, you know, like the way we use it. The critical thinking skills needed, which is something that you know stood out to me because we'll be talking about that. So all of these things, I think everyone's thinking along the same lines, the similar worries that we're seeing in the data is coming up here, which is really interesting.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah.

 

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David Rock: Yeah, for sure. I think you know, one of the questions and just building on this sort of divide issue is, and it it sort of sparked my interest this week when we saw some research coming out about critical thinking. And there is definitely some evidence that the regular use of AI is reducing critical thinking.

 

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David Rock: and it's a bit like you go to a meeting, and there's someone that's just much smarter than you, and they and you just keep going them to them for answers. And after a while you just stop kind of trying to think about the problem. It's just like, Hey, let's just let's ask Mary. She's really smart, and we're just gonna and you just stop thinking because you like, you know, Daniel Kahneman said. Thinking is aversive. It's like doing a push up or 20 push ups. We avoid it.

 

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David Rock: In fact, it's very hard to do exercise and thinking at the same time. They're kind of some similar mechanisms. But if there's a chance to avoid thinking, we'll take it right. And we start to over time sort of outsource critical thinking and not use it. Now. You can imagine people who start to do that a lot. Maybe they even

 

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David Rock: do that for decades. Are they going to lose critical thinking capacity. I think they will. Actually, I think they won't necessarily. But it's very high potential. And if you're betting on people choosing not to be lazy, you might lose that bet, because I think a lot of people will, you know, choose to be lazy, but you'll get a lot of people also choosing to be fit and healthy like we do, you know, in society today. But on the whole, there'll be a lot of cognitively lazy people. Just one reflection I have on this

 

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David Rock: that

 

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David Rock: you know, when computers and calculators became ubiquitous, everyone was like, Oh, my God, we won't have math skills. It's true. The average student today isn't as good at multiplication tables as they were 20 years ago 30 years ago.

 

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David Rock: It's true, and that doesn't matter so much because you're not using multiplication tables that often but critical thinking skills. You kind of need them every day all the time. So I think, outsourcing our critical thinking skills and not developing them is something we should push against and something certainly in education and in companies.

 

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David Rock: We probably want to be continuing to get people to really work on critical thinking and and maintain that muscle. I think it's a really important one. It's not like addition that we can just use a calculator. We really need that capacity internally.

 

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Emma Sarro: Oh, totally. I mean this research that David's talking about came out on the 3.rd So it's recent research kind of speaking to what we've been talking about internally a lot about this. How are we using AI? And it showed that the more individuals use AI and rely on AI the worse. Their critical thinking skills are. And it's all around this

 

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Emma Sarro: cognitive offloading idea. And we've evolved to, you know. Take the easy route unless we're driven and motivated enough not to. So it's really like, how do we drive people to want to search for the right answer and think along those lines? It's really fascinating this research. And it really drives us to think about, how can we maintain those critical thinking skills? Because critical thinking is important for

 

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Emma Sarro: all of these things. Innovation, you know, having, you know, being now, I'm losing my train of thought. But yeah, it's a critical. So I think that then, thinking about, how do we? How do we build those skills? Especially when using AI? What are the mindsets needed? What are the habits needed? You know? How do we maintain that sense of creativity which is what.

 

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David Rock: Will be.

 

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Emma Sarro: Into now, but I think that that was something that's been top of mind for all of us.

 

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David Rock: Yeah. And it's interesting because the the kinds of skills that you need are essentially, cognitively taxing

 

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David Rock: the kind of critical thinking skills that you want to add to AI, right? So AI plus critical thinking skills from humans is going to be the best mix right? And and you know, to the kids who say, Oh, why do I need to bother? It's like, you know, if if you're not improving on AI, you're going to be out of a job you're making yourself literally redundant in, you know, literally going to make yourself redundant. So if you're not adding critical thinking skills to AI,

 

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David Rock: you're going to be redundant at some point in some way. Right? So I think I think AI plus critical thinking skills. The interesting thing is, the critical thinking skills are quite

 

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David Rock: cognitively taxing. It's like seeing things from many other perspectives which requires a lot of cognitive capacity to do that right which requires a calm, relaxed brain lots of resources, right? Well slept. You know, all of those things. So it requires thinking of multiple levels. So not just shifting perspectives, but thinking multiple levels. Like, let's think about this from.

 

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David Rock: you know, from from a country perspective. Let's think about it from a hundred year perspective. Let's think about it from from, you know, a CEO perspective. Let's think about it from someone in sub-saharan Africa who's you know? Who's who's farming to survive like so so changing perspective, changing your sort of how high you're thinking about how sort of abstract you're thinking versus how concrete

 

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David Rock: you know, all those different things are important, also mitigating the biases which requires just challenging yourself.

 

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David Rock: really helpful to have a framework like seeds, which kind of defines the biases, gives you a tool to assess those as well as you know, just challenging your thinking overall. So I think these skills

 

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David Rock: I'm more, much more cognitively taxing than the skills that we're outsourcing to AI, which are more process skills that you can sort of just do repetitively without thinking. So. Essentially, you know, people need to think much more deeply. It reminds me I've started to write again more deeply this year. I'm working on a new book, and my last book was a thousand focused hours and a focused hour for me means I'm really well rested. Everything is switched off. I'm completely calm. I'm like

 

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David Rock: focused, not being disturbed. And for hours on end, hours on end. Like 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 h, I'm completely able to focus and nothing. So it's really hard to find a thousand focus hours, and that's the kind of mental state you need to be in to do really critical thinking. Right? You don't do good critical thinking in between 10 other tasks. It's quite deep, reflective thinking.

 

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David Rock: So we'll need to make sure, as we have AI, that people still have the space to do deep, reflective thinking. We can't get busier and busier and expect people will do really great critical thinking in the 5 seconds they have between meetings. It's just not how the brain works. So some interesting, you know, some interesting thoughts. There.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's a piece of this, too, that the skills needed and the behaviors needed to be critically thinking about problems are also can be also rewarding. So having that growth, mindset that drive to learn and to understand and to be flexible, all of those things can also be rewarding. And this somewhat links to our next kind of you know, like

 

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Emma Sarro: topic, here is really the idea of creativity, which is another like really human focused learning based cognitive process that we don't want to lose right? And there's been this question around, how does AI impact our creativity? We talked about it at Summit. We keep coming back to this.

 

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David Rock: Discussion.

 

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Emma Sarro: And what are you thinking about like this idea of creativity?

 

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David Rock: Yeah. So you know, there's this debate. Will AI be as creative as people? And the answer is, you probably shouldn't bet against that like AI will probably have the ability, you know. Right now, can AI write a good song? We can write an okay song. Can I come up with a good title for a book. We can do an okay job of that. You can imagine the speed of development those things are going to get.

 

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David Rock: you know better and better and better. But does that mean AI should be doing creative tasks right? And you know now, in some roles that will be that will make sense that AI does some creative tasks more than just rendering a picture.

 

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David Rock: Maybe it can decide what to put in that picture and other things. But again you take the human out.

 

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David Rock: You're you're you're you're causing some interesting challenges. The the question is.

 

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David Rock: what happens when AI does produce creativity? So

 

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David Rock: a couple of interesting findings. 1st of all, there is a bit of a regression to the mean. So what that means is, you know, you give a thousand writers, AI tools, and the writing all starts to sound similar in some ways like, especially on average, across a lot of people, maybe not 2 or 3 people across. A lot of people start to sound similar, give people tools for creating visuals. Things start to seem really similar. So there's a regression to the mean. Because AI has a data set

 

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David Rock: right, and that data set is based on averages. And all of this, so the creativity actually becomes a bit less at the moment, even if it's doing it, the other. There are 2 other really interesting points. One is, people don't like the output as much. So this was actually studied, and we presented this at the summit last October, that people much prefer human created

 

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David Rock: art or creativity. Right now you can say, well, what about? If AI gets amazing? I'm not sure.

 

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David Rock: I mean, there could be a point where you can't tell the difference. But then I think we'll want to know, because we don't like being fooled, and then I think there'll still be an element of no, I prefer, you know, human created. So I'm arguing with myself here over and over critical thinking. So firstly, AI can do a lot of creative tasks, but should it? Well, people prefer not. But there's a more important point here, which is that

 

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David Rock: the act of being creative is intrinsically rewarding, motivating life, creating, like literally, the people who live the longest are continually creative in their eighties and nineties and beyond, like, they're continually making connections and working on things. So it's literally life giving. It's the stuff of motivation

 

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David Rock: when we have that moment of insight that Aha moment, it actually drives us to, you know, to build things and to create things. Companies are founded on creative insights. They're literally founded on people kind of putting something together in a whole new way.

 

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David Rock: And so so should AI be having the insights and then telling us what to do. I don't want to work in that job. I don't want a society where AI is making the decisions and people are executing on them for AI there, because the AI is having all the fun, and we're losing the insights. So I think there's an interesting point there to kind of. Consider. What are your thoughts on that, Emma?

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, a lot. I mean, I think that like the the data around liking AI produced

 

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Emma Sarro: items or interacting with AI is something that we talked about. And the research. What was interesting about the research is that some of the artwork that was presented was the same, and it was just told to the individual. This is created by AI. This is created by a human, and that alone was what changed the perception of whether an individual liked the artwork or not, which really suggests that we really are driven

 

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Emma Sarro: to appreciate human created things as opposed to AI. We just maybe, you know, don't trust the creativity that AI produces. We don't trust it. There's just something different about the human connection. And then we're told that we're interacting with AI as opposed to a human that also changes whether or not we'd want to continue interacting with this thing right?

 

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David Rock: Yeah, yeah, I mean, we can tell. You know, we're all being frustrated with those bot conversations that just take forever and go in circles and miss the new ones. And as soon as we we work out that you know, we're interacting with an AI or a bot on a phone call or in a chat. It's like it's it's, you know, we. It's it's deflating, right? And I think, you know, we have a fundamental way that we're built right? We're built to

 

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David Rock: get in this dynamic with other humans. And it activates networks when we're in a dynamic with another human. Now, there's lots of different sort of elements to that one is neural synchrony, where we're both kind of thinking the same thought or approaching the same task in a similar kind of way, intrinsically rewarding. Very unlikely to get that from AI. There's the oxytocin effect from doing tasks in a similar way as well. Again, very unlikely to get that from from an AI.

 

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David Rock: Now, of course, you're going to say, well, David, here I go arguing with myself again, you know, as we get some robots in all our homes in 2, 3, 4 years they're coming, and they're really well trained, and we nuance the way they talk to us. And all this stuff. Will we get some of those effects? Maybe if we've really had a big big role in

 

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David Rock: in in knowing that we can absolutely trust that technology, big leap there. Maybe we'll we'll sort of get into a dynamic. But a lot of the AI we're dealing with we've not created. We don't know much about it. We don't necessarily feel safe. So

 

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David Rock: there's a very real effect of interacting with other humans in the human brain that's intrinsically rewarding activates a really different type of memory network, a different type of reward network. We just don't get that interfacing with

 

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David Rock: machinery. So I think there'll always be a role for interfacing with people. In fact, I think one of the ironies of the AI age is that humans are going to become more important, and human interactions again become more important and more valued in this process. So that's, I think, something to something that we think is going to happen.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, I love that. I mean, as we talk about a lot. We're so driven and rewarded by being around other humans. I mean, we? We're not driven and rewarded by being around robots yet, right? And so having that human connection when we're able to have it, is it provides just a much richer experience for us. We're just driven to

 

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Emma Sarro: to find those moments. But yeah, something that you said earlier about creativity and learning. I think that can help us to understand how we actually work with AI to actually help us learn and be rewarded for that learning. And one of the things that we talked about at Summit was this idea of the zone of proximal development.

 

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David Rock: And.

 

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Emma Sarro: A model of learning. And how do we use what we've already learned to improve? And how far can we go outside of our skill set and still benefit from it, and kind of like expand on our skills. And working within this zone or proximal development is kind of the range of where we want to say, like our lane, that we should stay in. And if we worked within that and use AI for those kinds of things, we can still pull on our current set of knowledge and expand.

 

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David Rock: But it.

 

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Emma Sarro: Jump outside of that and rely on AI for something that we don't have any connections with that we can pull from. We're not benefiting from it.

 

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David Rock: Yeah, let's explain this a bit more. I'll put it in some different terms for a minute. I'm a huge fan of the Khan Academy people probably know the Khan Academy. It's now a really big organization. I remember when it just started

 

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David Rock: with this really simple, simple idea, which was, you know this, this guy was starting to mentor. I think it was his cousin or nephew, or someone like that. And he worked out how to teach someone a really complicated subject. I don't remember what it was. I think it was chemistry at the time. But he, this, this

 

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David Rock: this guy I don't know his whole name I should know. I know it's Khan. But he worked out how to teach a really complex subject.

 

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David Rock: Kind of insight by insight. Right? Starting that you could teach to like literally, like a 9, 1011, 12 year old, like a very, very young age, people who had no idea of the concept. He worked out like the very 1st sort of insight people needed to have.

 

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David Rock: and then how to get that across literally in stick figures so very low tech. Very. And you know he was literally drawing on a blank screen. He was drawing, you know, color pictures on a blank black screen

 

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David Rock: and insight by insight he worked out how to teach really complicated concepts, and he went from chemistry to physics to math, to advanced, really, really advanced topics of all kinds. And now it's a whole platform that really helps students understand things more easily right? And what he's done and what his team has done is worked out like the insights to get from, you know

 

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David Rock: A to F, and I don't mean marks right. But to get from A to B to C to DF. The other series of sort of insights you need to have, and then how to give those to people as simply as possible. Right and very, very helpful. Now you can use

 

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David Rock: AI in exactly the same way, in a very, very focused way. You can use AI now

 

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David Rock: to actually get you to that next step of insight that can be really, really helpful example. I've got a bit of a fixed mindset about drawing, like, you know, getting a pencil and drawing, I draw stick figures. If I wanted to learn to draw, I would ask AI, Hey, I want to learn to draw. I have 0 skills. Can you tell me like the very simplest 1st thing that I should do? And I should practice for a week?

 

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David Rock: Just tell me the very, very basic, and it would give me some really simple exercises, and I would do that. And then I would go back a week later and say, Hey, can you tell me? You know this is what I've done. Can you tell me exactly what I should do next to practice? And it would give me it would tutor me step by step through how to draw, and as long as I went and actually practiced, I would suddenly know how to draw pretty well, probably over a period of a couple months. But I don't have the chunks right. I don't have the sort of little micro skills of light and dark and shading and pencil. And all these things.

 

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David Rock: So in a similar way, you can use AI to expand your zone of proximal development. So zone of proximal development is basically, you know, my zone around drawing was sort of 0. But if I knew how to draw, and I spent a couple of months doing that I could draw reasonably, I could now say, Can you teach me how to draw a building? Right? And I've got basic skills? Can you now take me to that after a building. Could you show me how to draw a city?

 

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David Rock: Right? And so you're expanding sort of what you know? And going a little bit further. And AI, I'm convinced. And a lot of people know this is is a fantastic tutoring tool to help you accelerate your own insights right, so you can use it in a very personalized way. And I think that's the right way to do learning

 

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David Rock: is to help you with exactly where you are now kind of make that leap to exactly the next step that you need to expand that knowledge. But you don't want to use AI to sort of go, hey? I know a little bit about drawing, but show me exactly how to start a nuclear power station and how to build one of those like a real one like that's enormous body of knowledge. You can't just sort of go from straight to F,

 

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David Rock: and it might give you the plans, but doesn't mean you know how to now build it and start it, and you know, get it going. So as an artist.

 

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David Rock: anyway, that's the concept. So it should be speeding up the the sort of expansion of your knowledge not necessarily just plunking you into the middle of something you know nothing about.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah. Yeah. And it does preserve by asking questions. This way of AI. It preserves your ability to stay motivated and driven to do it. You have to go back and ask for the next step along some line of learning right? So it preserves the motivation and the reward that we get from learning new skills and learning new things, and probably preserves the ability to maintain our insights. Because along the way, if you're asking small little chunks.

 

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Emma Sarro: you'll probably have some insights along the way. Get driven by them, go back for more, and continue to improve as opposed to jumping from one skill to something totally different.

 

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Emma Sarro: which is predicted to really reduce the level of creativity, potential innovation, or human innovation and things like that.

 

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David Rock: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting comment in the chat. There's a bit of a sort of arms race in the recruiting business, because recruiting such a high volume business. A company might have, like 10,000 people to hire, you know, if you're accenture, you might be hiring 25,000 people in a year, right? Which means you're looking at a quarter of a million resumes. And you know, making decisions. So it's easy for a company to look at this and say, All right, we're going to automate. Put AI into resume review and even into interviews. But there's this really fascinating arms race where companies are getting

 

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David Rock: you know, more and more. AI. But people are working out how to thwart it.

 

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David Rock: And it's just it's kind of gone a little bit crazy. And now some companies are just going back to you know, we need to actually interview, because we just can't tell.

 

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David Rock: you know who's actually good or not.

 

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David Rock: You know all that someone mentioned. You know, using AI to coach, we've we've got an AI coach. We built an AI called Niles, a neuro intelligent leadership enhancing system based on

 

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David Rock: our coaching model. We've been, you know, tweaking and improving for 26 years. The model we have for coaching is about bringing smart people to their own insights as quickly as possible

 

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David Rock: by helping them notice patterns in their thinking. And it's based on the science of insight. So it's not based on like brief solutions focused therapy or trained on sort of cognitive behavioral therapy, or some of those things it's trained on our knowledge set on how insights happen in the brain, and the exact kind of question that's most likely to create the type of reflection that makes insight happen.

 

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David Rock: So there's a sort of active metacognition, and we've written a whole paper on this. In fact, we've written 3 papers on insight and coaching and all that, but we have an AI. It's now going into organizations called Niles

 

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David Rock: that you can use in real time to coach you through any scenario or to advise you, you can say, Hey, can you tell me how to send this email to this person? I'm having a conflict with around such and such. Can you write a draft of the email for you. It'll do that. Minimizing scarf threats, minimizing seeds, biases all of that. So that's a live. If you've been following us. You've probably heard of it. It's called Niles.

 

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David Rock: My team can put a link in the chat if you're from a company, and you're interested in experimenting with Niles. We're actually putting it into organizations and working with it. Just put the word Niles in your company name in the chat, and someone will follow up with you pretty quickly.

 

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David Rock: Yeah, we wrote a white paper on it, too. Thanks, Tony, about shifting from artificial intelligence to neurointelligence. So just put Niles and your company name in the chat and someone definitely put your company name as well. Someone will reach out to you to explore potentially testing this out in your organization. Thanks very much. Yeah, Emma, where would you like to go next? We're still on some of the challenges. Any other challenges you want?

 

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David Rock: Dude.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, one more, I mean, and I'll just say about Niles. It keeps getting better and better. I mean, I would say, we are learning. It's learning the way that it communicates is kind of like you're talking to one of one of us, really, and like what we provide the way it's provided it's it's actually, it's incredible. We're all using it here. But yeah, the last question is, so we talked about how AI will probably take over a lot of jobs. Is it going to take all of our roles? Is it going to eat up software? I mean the last big worry that people have.

 

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David Rock: I mean, there's a really interesting thing that's going to happen in software. I think in apps. In some ways, it's gonna be really interesting to see what happens if you look back 30 years. We all had an office. Well, some of you can't look back 30 years, but if you could, and you're working. 30 years ago

 

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David Rock: you would remember you had an office. You had a desk right and a calendar on the wall, and you had a telephone, and we didn't have mobile phones 30 years ago, and you had a rolodex, maybe, or some, you know, some notepads with people's numbers, and you had business cards and a business card holder, and you had a clock on the wall and an alarm clock.

 

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David Rock: and you had all these different things right, and your software and particularly apps, have eaten all of those

 

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David Rock: right. Your clock is in your phone, your calculators in your phone, your alarm clocks in your phone. Your desk is in your phone. Your paper is in your phone. It goes on and on. So you literally don't need an office whatsoever to do work. And I have some friends who literally only work in their phone. They literally their entire office is their phone. They don't have a laptop, you know, the nomads. They work everywhere, but they do all their work just in their telephone. It's at that point now where that's possible. So software has eaten the physical office.

 

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David Rock: right? But it's really interesting as as AI develops. And you know, it's gonna take a few years. But AI develops. And particularly as these kind of personalized agents evolve. I think it's gonna be a huge business in your personalized agent who really knows you really understands you. It's not just your personal assistant like really manages things for you. And you know, like that, that

 

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David Rock: entity, right? That piece of software that's your agent. You don't need an alarm clock anymore. You're going to say, Hey, Niles, wake me up at 10, you know, as an app you don't need a calculator. Necessarily, you don't need a lot of things, right? So a lot of the apps and software we use actually going to be unnecessary. AI might eat a lot of the apps and software that we have

 

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David Rock: over the next, you know, 5 years, maybe 10 at the most. So it's interesting sort of to to think about it that way.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, absolutely. And then the idea of how reliant will then be if we're relying on this one entity, right for everything, but on the same kind of train of thought. Does this mean the AI kind of moving over to the opportunities? Is this mean that we're going to enjoy our jobs better.

 

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David Rock: It could be, it could be. There's some evidence of that. Microsoft did some research on this, and they found that people were actually literally enjoying their jobs, more feeling, more creative, more free. Because, you know a lot of the sort of, you know, annoying work, the repetitive work you could outsource and just be lifting to a higher level. And you definitely as a writer, if you use it to research and to sort of format things, you definitely can move faster.

 

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David Rock: I find I can't use it to write for me, but I can use it to, like, you know, explore ideas and develop concepts. And but then I need to sit down and actually write. But yeah, it's making people more creative to some degree. It's expanding potential. It's speeding up. So there is some evidence that it's sort of helping

 

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David Rock: people enjoy their jobs more. That's sort of a I think, a good thing. But then, again, we're back to the critical. We're back to sort of the critical thinking. Let's let's stay on that track, though. There's something I wanted to dig into.

 

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David Rock: and I maybe maybe you've heard me talk about this before, but it's it's such an interesting way to think about it. And it just reminded me,

 

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David Rock: talking about sort of AI eating all the software that that when you track the use of technology

 

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David Rock: computers, particularly when you track it sort of way back to the very 1st computers is a really interesting trend that you notice the very 1st computers, those giant you know, Ibm computers that had, you know, punch cards literally those, you know, cards with holes in them, and I don't remember they were like 2 K. Or something for a whole room

 

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David Rock: like, you know, incredibly small amount of memory incredibly big. And these things could do a few basic processes. Now in the sixties that we're using this kind of technology a little bit more advanced. But for sending people to the moon, you know, they were calculating.

 

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David Rock: Using these incredibly, you know, room sized computers that did far less than than your phone does now, like far, far less so anyway, when technology started, we would interface with technology using punch cards with these huge rooms and very few people would interface with technology, and the interface was very clunky and very few users. There's only, like a you know.

 

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David Rock: a few dozen or something uses of the technology. So the interface was interesting. Now, what happened as as computers became.

 

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David Rock: You know, smaller and machine coding started. You had a lot more uses and a lot more people. The real breakthrough happened with what's called Wysiwyg. What you see is what you get. And you know the Macintosh came out obviously, and the Microsoft windows kind of got the same idea of of the Wysiwyg, which was a big breakthrough from machine coding or basic language.

 

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David Rock: because machine coding and basic language, the interface required, like a whole language like you needed, like a whole language, to learn that language. So the interface was required a lot of cognitive load. You go to Wysiwyg. Now, anyone could interface with a you know, with a computer moving things around.

 

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David Rock: If you had a you know, depending which kind of computer you had, you'd have

 

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David Rock: different levels of complexity. But it was interesting. And suddenly you had a, you know, ubiquitous computing, a lot more tasks. Right? This is when you know, excel and word. And all these things started to really become, you know, replace the word processor. And all this.

 

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David Rock: and then the big breakthrough, so that, you know. So that was a big breakthrough going from, you know, from coding to Wysiwyg was a huge breakthrough going from that to screens to touch screens was another big breakthrough, really, really big breakthrough. And now you have just about the whole planet have phones

 

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David Rock: and the use cases for technology are infinite. And the reason for that is the fluency of the interface.

 

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David Rock: Right? Think about the reason that everyone has them is, it's so easy to use them, and you can use them for just about everything.

 

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David Rock: right? So as the fluency goes up, as it becomes more and more fluent to use a lot more people viewing it, using it. And it becomes a lot more part of our lives right now, what's happening is AI is another fluency breakthrough. It's a massive fluency breakthrough, or it's not yet, though, until we have these sort of AI assistants that do everything. When we have these AI assistants that help us really, proactively.

 

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David Rock: we're going to have this massive fluency breakthrough again. And certainly speaking to a device that understands you. Obviously speaking to a device that doesn't understand you is incredibly frustrating. But speaking to a device that really understands you. So you say, Hey, you know, get me an uber home.

 

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David Rock: It it just, you know, an uber turns up. you know, as we get to that again, we're gonna see a breakthrough in the usage and and and the use cases. So the number of people and the use cases. And and I think it'll just become literally a part of us including, you know, in our clothes and other things. So so that's I just think it's interesting to sort of think of it that way that it's a fluency

 

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David Rock: breakthrough and and we're not quite there with fluency, like, I have a lot of friends who, you know, talk to their phone. They're talking to, chat. Gpt, they're having a conversation. We're starting to get there. But you really want that that device to understand you deeply and and to offload lots and lots of of kind of cognitive work for you.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, that's so interesting. And I think I love this. And I wonder at the same time, as fluency is increasing, maybe the increased need for really maintaining some of those human skills that we need to make assessments right and to make judgment calls on our future behavior. So how much, if we are constantly telling our assistant what to do, like.

 

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Emma Sarro: how much variability is going to be in that. So we're going to be continuously doing the same thing along the same lines. So where does creativity come back in, and where do us pushing boundaries and trying something new? Come in

 

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Emma Sarro: right.

 

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David Rock: Yeah, yeah, I think it's going to be really important for people to be aware of not offloading all their cognitive tasks to AI. It's not just that you'll get lazy. It's that you'll miss a lot of opportunities in life. You'll miss a lot of the energy and the joy of life, and my greatest days are when I'm super productive, when I'm creating. You know, when I'm

 

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David Rock: sitting down focused for 6 h. It's really hard work. Last week I took some time off. I went up to my property upstate New York.

 

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David Rock: I wrote

 

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David Rock: 17,000 words in 6 days of something I'm working on, and it was my best week. I was working harder than I've ever worked for such a great week. I did use AI here and there not very much, but if I just sat down and said, Hey, write me 17,000 words, and then I just sat on the porch.

 

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David Rock: My brain would spin on itself wouldn't have anywhere near the same joy and muscle building and all this stuff. So I just, I do think we're going to need to educate a generation around, you know, continue to work on your brain, continue to have insight, and really, importantly, continue to have social connections, because social connections are really where the joy is and where the insights are and where the energy is. So I think we've got to really make sure. People continue to prioritize those 3 things.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah. Just imagine those 2 scenarios of asking it to write versus finishing that that piece of work, the the downer of not being able to walk away and feel that accomplishment and everything that comes with it. Right.

 

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Emma Sarro: all of that. If you don't do it yourself right in some way.

 

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David Rock: Yeah, social, like stretching your brain. You know, creative tasks and social activities. So so important, so doing difficult things, basically doing creative things and being social like. If you have AI rob you of those things, you're going to have quite a challenging life, because the brain just starts to kind of turn in on itself. In some ways it can be an interesting challenge. Why don't we talk about AI transformation? Because that's something we've been really fascinated by. And

 

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David Rock: I think it's it's such an interesting topic, sort of looking at how companies are approaching this whole thing. And we're we're at an interesting stage, you know, the early stage was like, What's this? AI thing? The next stage was like exuberance. And oh, my gosh!

 

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David Rock: AI is going to change the world and everything. And then everyone started to see the bill companies started to look at and go. Oh, $20 per person per month. That's quite a lot of money. They started to see the risks and the bill, and the sort of challenges and things kind of slowed down. But we're now at this point where companies are looking seriously at like 2025, 2026, 2027, and saying like, Okay, there's incredible opportunities in our marketing

 

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David Rock: department, or a sales department or a manufacturing arm, or something like these incredible opportunities to reduce inefficiencies and augment people. And some companies certainly are looking at replacing people. But you know, more companies are saying there are real opportunities to augment people, but we're just not sure how to do it. And so there's this, you know, this paradox of choice is, there's so much software, there's so many possible applications, so many use cases for AI. It's like.

 

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David Rock: what do we do? What do we focus on? So we've seen that as a trend. And we've started to think long and hard about this. And we've started to put together an approach to AI transformation in kind of 3 phases. And we think we're actually really suited to do this work. And we're looking for partners to start this work with. But the 1st phase of work is basically studying your workflow. Let's say your manufacturers are looking at literally where you source things from

 

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David Rock: how things are made, how things are shipped, how things are sold, how money is collected. So the whole process right? Studying the process

 

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David Rock: and looking at it by interviewing and focus grouping people.

 

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David Rock: They're looking at it through the lens of the cognitive constraints that are likely to be getting in the way. So because we understand those, we can focus group people really quickly, really, everywhere and unpack exactly the kinds of biases that might be happening that might be like stopping. You notice opportunities

 

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David Rock: or unpack the constraints, the like working memory constraints that are stopping people really understanding customer needs or identifying the emotions that are too strong. And why, in those really challenging customers. And and you know what could be done differently. So we think we've got a really interesting angle on understanding workflows from a cognitive perspective.

 

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David Rock: And then basically saying, Look, here are 25 areas where you are. You have incredible opportunity for breakthrough, right? That we could augment your processes. And then looking at that and saying, Look here, you know, working together with a company, saying, Look, here are the top 10, and here's the top 3 areas that you could really get some either cost savings or revenue increase. Or you know, major efficiencies in time and space and all of that.

 

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David Rock: And so we think that there's a way to like study an organization's process and literally show these are the areas to focus on by coming at it from a cognitive perspective, right? And then, secondly, working with the company. So the second phase working with an organization to say, All right, what's the best kinds of technology

 

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David Rock: that can help here. And you know, partnering to do that. And then the 3rd phase, which we also think we've got a lot of insight in, because it's what we've been doing for 20 years now is how to actually get humans to take this stuff up. So how do you drive change? Minimizing scarf threats, but also really building the right habits. And

 

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David Rock: I was talking with a group today in Zurich about this, there's a really different approach to change. I think we're going to need to take with AI, because there's going to be such resistance in many ways, because it's so different. But that 3rd phase is really going to be important in the way you actually roll these things out because 75% of change initiatives fail.

 

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David Rock: Right? 75% of them fail. And the reason is, people just don't change. It's not budget or strategy or anything. It's everything was right. But people just didn't change, and a lot of. That is just the way that we're actually engaging with people. So to sort of give you the punchline of this on the change side, you remember the pandemic. Do you remember how long it took to go to work from home for companies all around the world? Right? If you'd asked how long this would take before the pandemic.

 

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David Rock: You everyone would have said, 3 months, maybe 6 months, right? Larger companies getting all your systems in place to work from home. How long is that? Gonna take? The answer is months right the answer was days like 2 days, 3 days, 4 days, 5 days, like they did it crazy fast right now you can say, well, that's because they had to. What's really interesting. The reason they did it is because everyone was focused on it at the same time.

 

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David Rock: right? Because normally, in a change initiative, there's a core team who says, Oh, you know, recycling paper is really important, and they start doing it, and then the team around them sort of cares about it. So they do it, maybe at the end of the week. But the team around them in sales, you know, selling is much more important. So they just ignore it for a year. And then, you know, even other countries say, that's the that's people over there. We're not even going to think about that. And so so nothing is ever the same priority to people.

 

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David Rock: right? And what happens is companies pack on, you know, 3, 1020, 30 different change initiatives all at the same time.

 

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David Rock: If you take the lesson from the pandemic, the way to do change is the way we actually build muscle. The right way to do change is like interval training. Let's get the whole company focused for one week on one simple thing that will create momentum right the whole company all that week, you know, everywhere in the world one simple task that requires a bit of work, the right size task and make that a priority, and then don't do anything else for a month.

 

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David Rock: Right? Just embed that. Get that, you know. Get that really going now, next month, let's do another simple task.

 

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David Rock: the entire company, right? Maybe the task the 1st week is just upload this new software. Put your code in and get you, you know, get going. Maybe that's the only thing. But the whole company does it. They've all got to have it by the end of the week, right? The next week. The whole company does this so rather than like, you know, 20 change initiatives at once. It's more like one at a time, with the entire focus of the company. On one thing.

 

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David Rock: Now you can do 12 in a year. Now, when you're doing 12 week long tasks, and they only should take like half an hour or something. They should take very short amount of time each. You can do that. So it's a really different way of thinking about organizational change that's focused on some lessons from the pandemic, but also just some lessons from change, that the number one reason people do something

 

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David Rock: turns out to be.

 

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David Rock: They think everyone's doing it. They believe everyone's doing it. That's the number one reason people do something they believe everyone's doing it. So we want to hack that in our organizations and break up these change initiatives into these chunks where everyone can focus and then get back to work. Everyone can focus and get back to work. Everyone can small bursts. And then over 2 years that might be 20 or 30

 

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David Rock: different, you know, really meaningful changes that you've put in place. So it takes a bit of courage to do that. It's a really different model of change. But we think that's a really important insight, even if you don't do that fully, that's going to be a really really important insight in kind of how to go about this change. So anyway, this is something you can tell we're super passionate about. So it's doing AI transformation from a cognitive perspective. So a brain-based approach to studying your workflows.

 

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David Rock: right to to identifying the right software solutions. And then the 3rd piece is to a brain based approach to driving change. So we're looking for partners to explore this. But I also just love to have some conversations with companies about this, and kind of pick your brains about how you see this. And so if you're if you're from an organization, you're interested in having a conversation with me or my team, just put the word AI transformation and your company name in the chat. Someone will reach out.

 

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David Rock: probably by the end of the day. So AI transformation and your company name. But I think that, like every other change, we're going to get this wrong. Society is going to get AI transformation wrong. It's going to be much slower to change. We're going to spend much more. It's gonna we're going to kind of, you know, miss the mark a lot because we're not good at change management broadly.

 

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David Rock: And we're not. We're not understanding humans when it comes to change management. So I think there'll be a lot of handwing a lot of frustration, a lot of lost opportunity. Because we're not doing AI transformation

 

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David Rock: properly. Right? We've got to really like, think about AI transformation in a brain-based way, because guess what AI interfaces with brains.

 

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David Rock: and AI won't work because we don't interface it with brains, with human brains properly

 

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David Rock: right. AI will work if we actually get the interface with human brains. Just right?

 

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David Rock: Right? So you know, it's a different kind of interface challenge. So it's just, you know, different way of of of thinking about it.

 

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David Rock: and and and approaching this task. Anything you wanted to add. There, Emma, being on a bit of a rant. But I'm I'm super excited about this topic. I think there's something really important in getting this right.

 

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Emma Sarro: Absolutely. And I think ultimately, despite all the complexities that AI kind of presents and that people are uncertain about like, we're not really sure how to use it, what to use it for ultimately, at its core, like an AI strategy is change management, and we have that down so well to ultimately the science right? And so how do we leverage this new thing, this new tool in an organization and embed it fully

 

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Emma Sarro: habits around it, so it can be looked at as simple as that. And that's the way we approach it is. How can we get the buy in the trying out of the behaviors, and fully embedded in all processes.

 

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David Rock: Yeah, maybe we're kind of the Khan Academy of corporate learning is to work out the habits and we do them one at a time, but we do that at scale all at the same time, which is fun, anyway. Enough about us. It's been a fascinating conversation. I've had a privilege of spending today lunch today in Zurich with a wonderful group of Hr. Leaders, and yesterday in London with another group of Hr. Leaders. And these topics are really present for Senior Hr. Folks, particularly in Europe.

 

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David Rock: and I was in New York the day before, doing a similar thing and same there. Everyone's particularly focused right now on kind of the the challenges of people being ending up, losing their critical thinking skills.

 

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David Rock: So that's another area that we're thinking about is, you know, what are those skills? How do we kind of define those and anchor those? That's an area that we're really working on? We've got a sort of working title for that. It's it's amplify. So we're we're thinking about a solution called Amplify, which is, you know, teaching people how to get the best of AI. So the you know, AI plus human, we're still at the relatively early stages. We'd love to have conversations with companies about what you think

 

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David Rock: the cognitive skills would be in your organization. So put the word amplify in your company, name in the chat. If you want to have a conversation, we're not ready to sell anything or deliver anything. But we're in this research stages, and we'd love to share our hypotheses and hear yours about the critical skills that people really need. So it's something to something to consider fantastic, fantastic conversation. I'm heading to Davos this weekend.

 

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David Rock: I'm going to be involved in some AI sessions and some other sessions. If you look at my Linkedin page, I think it's Dr. David Rock on Linkedin. You'll see some of the things I'm involved in there. I think next Friday, this time next week, I'm going to do a session about human change at scale.

 

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David Rock: and some of the insights that hopefully I'll glean from from Devos will be interesting to see. You know what's useful that comes. That, you know, comes out of this week. So you know great great conversation today. And yeah, Emma, what are your insights as you? As we sort of wrap this up.

 

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Emma Sarro: Yeah, I mean, it was. I mean, I love talking about human creativity. I think you know. What we came away with was more opportunities really, than challenges. I think we, you know, we think about this as how do we use this better? I know we have a poll that we can drop in just to think about how we can work with you all in the future. And I also am excited about next week. Talk about what you're learning what you've learned, and you know, heard from others at Devos, and hope you all can join us. This is a great session.

 

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David Rock: And it'll also be about change at scale. So just thinking about, you know, human change at scale. And some of the, you know, really interesting developments that we're seeing. There's a really interesting thing that happens at Davos. There's the World Economic Forum. And then there's a side conference. And the side conference actually has a lot of the really interesting topics, the sort of cutting edge

 

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David Rock: topics. And so I'll be going to a bunch of those hosted by Wall Street Journal, and lots of other interesting organizations. So thanks very much everyone for being here. Thanks, Emma, for great work, Ariel as well, and I'll hand back to you, and everyone take care of yourselves. Look after each other and keep doing what matters. Thanks, everyone. Bye, bye.

 

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Emma Sarro: Thanks, David, off to you, Ariel.

 

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Ariel Roldan: Thank you so much for today's discussion. We appreciate your time and all that you shared today. Now for closing. If you haven't already, please take a look at our poll, and let us know how Nli can help you in the future. That Poll will stay up for a few more moments. As I share some announcements.

 

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Ariel Roldan: The 1st is, we have our brain-based design and facilitation workshop coming up for anyone looking to amplify how they design learning whether it's virtual, live, and in person or asynchronous. This workshop will provide you with an inside. Look into how we use a brain-based approach for our own design. The next event like this will likely begin, will begin February 12th as a virtual workshop over 3 separate sessions, and we'll be likely to host one near you in person soon.

 

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Ariel Roldan: Next, we have our C-suite brain lab for C-level or senior executives looking to get an inside, look into their own brain as they learn the critical habits for leaders. We are designing a 3 day brain lab of effective habit activation seminars and real-time Eeg, scanning participants will walk away with insights into their own brain as it faces complex challenges.

 

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Ariel Roldan: Next, we have our insider exchange specifically for senior executives. If you enjoy your brain at work, live. You'll love our

 

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Ariel Roldan: insider program. We invite you to join this exclusive opportunity where you can enjoy benefits such as 1st looks at new research, roundtable discussions with leading executives and researchers and helping us craft new innovations at work to apply. Follow the link shared in the chat.

 

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Ariel Roldan: Finally, our podcast if you enjoyed today's conversation, you'll love the podcast show. So make sure you subscribe. You can hear the past. Friday webinars on demand. Look for your brain at work, live wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts like spotify. Now, this is where we officially say farewell for the week on behalf of today's guests, the Nli team behind the scenes. Thanks again for joining us. We'll see you back here same time next week.

 

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Ariel Roldan: Bye.