Terence Mauri: AI Should Be a Co-Pilot, Not a Replacement

Put your books even into large language models and get different perspectives on those books, books that you're writing and the books that you want to write. These are great examples of what I call roi. Not just return on investment, but a new human metric for a post AI world. Return on imagination, return on intelligence, return on integrity and ideas.

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Terrence, thanks for joining us today.

Kwame, great to be on the show.

Yes, it is exciting to have you, my friend. So how would you get us started? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Thank you so much. So I'm a world leading expert at the intersection of AI leadership and disruption. And the key thing I talk about is this idea that when volatility is high and this is the slowest it will ever be in our lifetime, not taking a risk is a risk that is powerful.

What a strong way to start. Because as we talk about AI and disruption and the future of business within companies, one of the biggest challenges people have is with just adoption and changing and introducing new processes and technologies. And I love this framing because I think the status quo can be so alluring for so many people in so many organizations.

We're drowning in data, drowning in information, drowning in meetings, drowning in bmi, not Body Mass Index, Bureaucratic Misery Index. My research at HAP Future Lab shows that actually bureaucracy is going up and that's a tax on human potential, speed and agility. So look, my call to action, my call to reflection is that the risk of inaction always outnumbers the risk of action. And one of my reflections writing my new book, the Upside of Disruption, is that we always overestimate the risk of trying something new, a new way of working, for example, a new career A new relationship. And we always underestimate the risk of standing still.

Brilliant. I think a lot of people who are listening to this episode, they're saying, oh, my gosh, he's speaking my language. Didn't know this was the episode I needed, but I do need it. And I think what we could do is we can turn this episode essentially into a coaching session. Probably a little bit therapy, but a lot of coaching on change makers who are within companies, who are really struggling to create that positive change when it comes to adopting new technologies. Obviously, AI is big in every industry, but sometimes it might just be another new system. And when you think about, I think, starting off by conceptualizing the problem and understanding the problem and the challenge would be a good place to start. So when that change maker goes and starts to have these conversations, what are the things that make those conversations so particularly difficult?

I think, number one, people are tired. We have burnout, risk of burnout, meetings, pre meetings, and one in three meetings is considered a complete waste of time. We're drowning in email. We're, on average, dealing with 30,000 emails a year each, and that's going up exponentially. And so, number one, we're tired. Number two, we're suffering from extreme levels of anxiety. We're worried about our jobs, we're worried about security, we're worried about geopolitical risk around the world. And so that creates anxiety. In fact, there's a new word I've discovered, meta anxiety, which means anxiety about anxiety. And so, of course, all of that, and we still need to do the day job. So this is why these conversations around change and transformation are difficult.

I really appreciate the fact that we're starting here, too, because I think people jump really quickly to the technical specificity and complications of those type of things. And we miss the fact that the core reason behind what makes these conversations so tough are just simply human challenges. We're tired, we're overworked, we're anxious, and apparently we are anxious about being anxious. And I think this is a really powerful place to start because it gives us clarity to understand where some of this resistance might be coming from, either within ourselves or within other people.

I think this is it. I think in this age of AI, actually, what gives us the edge is to be more human, to elevate what makes us more human. And so that means doing the basics brilliantly. It means, for example, asking the questions that have not been asked, saying what's not being said. We know that silence is always less risky than speak up. We know that when you get to a lot, become a large organization, you more likely to default to conformity behaviors rather than courage behaviors. We know that most of us are over managed and underled. We know that most of us are checked rather than coached. I once had a boss whose nickname was the Silent Assassin. It was terrifying. He'd come into the room, he'd breathe down my ear and say, what am I doing? And so yes, we need to do the basics brilliantly and counterintuitively, we need to avoid artificial intimacy, artificial idiocy.

Oh, okay, we are going to go deeper on that. When you say that go deeper, what does that mean?

So Esther Peral, psychotherapist, she talks about the risks of AI. She uses this play on the word AI, artificial intelligence, and says, look, we're at risk of artificial intimacy if we start outsourcing our relationships to a machine. What is that actually good? For example, new research coming out of MIT showed that in the short term introducing AI elevated productivity, efficiency, all of these left brain activities. But it came at the cost of, well, being. Loneliness went up, self isolation behaviors went up. So I am a techno optimist. But we have to be careful how we work alongside machines to avoid artificial idiocy. Another example is just companies creating these chat bots then start cursing and swearing before they've been properly tested. This is artificial idiocy. You know, we've got these dating apps that already introducing dating coaches. Now that sounds good in principle, but let's imagine a survey where you can outsource the dating, the seduction to the chatbot in multiple languages while you're sleeping. We lose truth, we lose transparency, we lose trust. That's the basis of what makes us human. This is what it means to be artificially idiot or an artificial intimacy.

I love this. And I think these are elements that we should all be considering when it comes to these conversations. Because yeah, we have the binary, the simple approach of saying, all right, cool, should we adopt this or should we not adopt this? But then as we go deeper, we can think about how we can and should adopt this and how do we do that while preserving our humanity. I think that's really important. And I see so many people that are using this essentially as like a crutch. So I recognize that there may be some deficiencies I have in communication or in engagement with other people. So instead of working on myself to get better, I'm just going to outsource that. And we think, okay, checks that box of efficiency. But it really takes the humanity out of these interactions.

This is It, I mean, the story of AI still being written, will it be a maker or a breaker of humanity? Will it be a democrat, democratizer or a disruptor? Will it be some sort of dystopian golem minding us of our humanity? We need to ask bolder, wiser questions that have not been asked before, such as how do we align AI to serve humanity's interests? How do we ensure that AI is not just responsible, but inclusive and sustainable and elevates what make us more human? These are the questions that aren't being asked enough right now.

Oh, this is good. And so now I'm starting to see a picture here because this is clearly much deeper than the surface level may presume. And so for us as individuals, as professionals, even beyond what our companies decide to adopt or choose not to adopt, we're going to be interfacing with artificial intelligence in different types of ways. So we need to figure out how we personally can maintain our humanity. And let's speak to those individuals out there. So what are ways that we can use artificial intelligence as it relates to communication and interaction with other people to advance our communication, to enhance our connection without getting to that side where we are diminishing our humanity?

I love the framing and I love the question. In fact, it's what I call a catalytic question. A question that doesn't just make us feel good, but makes us think hard. And I think in this age of AI and certainty and risk, but also possibility questions are the answer. I think starting from a deep place of self awareness, a deep place of self reflection on what are the blind spots that we're blind to in terms of our communication? The noble laureate Herbert Simon said too much information leads to a poverty of attention and a poverty of self awareness. We know we're suffering an epidemic of loneliness. 300 million people report having no friends. And so I think starting from a place of what are the blind spots that I'm blind to? What are the communication gaps that I need to reflect on? And this is a great place. It's starting from a place of humility, not hubris. This is how we start listening to ourselves, listening to others, and actually really putting into action those qualities, those character skills, those human skills, in order to find a clarity around what stays and what goes. In fact, a great question to ask is what's enduring? Because actually, sometimes asking what's not going to change is a great place to prioritize energy and attention. Trust in each other is not going to change. It shouldn't. Change should be protecting that so what's enduring? What's emerging? What's new? An eye on the future, but also what's eroding? What are some of the behaviors in terms of communication, the way we communicate that we need to let go of? For example, ghosting. You know, if I ask a direct question to our listeners and viewers today, how many of us have been ghosted over the last year? The answer is probably quite a few. And these are examples of how AI and machines can contaminate or, or erode what makes us more human. We need to protect this.

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Master the art with the American Negotiation Institute. Click the link in the description to find out more. Elevate, negotiate, and succeed. I love this and I think this is a really strong place to start too, because I'm even thinking about it transparently from my perspective. Understanding and starting with that self awareness is critical in all areas of life. But I can see especially how it works here too, because sometimes we might say, all right, I want to use AI to advance my communication skills, advance my ability to connect. But we have to be humble enough to recognize that we don't see our own blind spots. So a good place to start is talking to your colleagues, the people who interact with you, and ask them for an honest assessment. When it comes to my communication skills, where am I lacking? Where can I improve? And you can use it as a supplement. So I'll give an example. So we at a and I email is my kryptonite. I really struggle with that. Now, integrating AI into my process has been helpful because it allows me to respond authentically and quickly. So I like to talk. Not surprisingly, I have a podcast. I don't like to write, though. I don't like writing, which is also surprising because I have two books. But I recognize that about myself. So I will speak authentically into the AI and say, hey, use as much of my words as possible. Just organize this for me and let's go. And so that's a way for me to say, all right, cool. Struggling with email, Struggling with Writing this can be my writing assistant and move on. Now I recognize I'm not just letting it answer for me completely. And I think that's the difference. You recognize, okay, this is how it can supplement, but it's not. I'm not going to allow it to hold me back from connecting. Truly.

I think this is a great example. A question to ask ourselves is how can we use AI as not just a co pilot, but co strategist, a co thinker, use AI as a sparring partner. For example, let's imagine you have a presentation to the executive director team and actually you want to get a sense of the questions or the challenges that they might have for you. You could actually say to the chat bot, okay, speaking in the voice of Jim, who's the CEO, what questions is he likely to ask me based on the presentation I've just uploaded? Putting myself in the shoes of Sarah, who's the cfo, what are the types of challenges or objections she might have to this presentation? This is a real life example of what you can do, scenario analysis, role play, and you can put your books even into large language models and get different perspectives on those books, the books that you're writing and the books that you want to write. These are great examples of what I call roi. Not just return on investment, but a new human metric for a post AI world. Return on imagination, return on intelligence, return on integrity and ideas. Human new human metrics where we have speed to insight, speed to anomaly, speed to thinking differently. These superhuman powers that we should not underestimate if we use wisely, ethically and responsibly.

I love this. And Terence, I want you to now, this is a little bit of a selfish coaching moment for me. So I want you. And if you disagree with this, call me out because this is good, because I've been saying it before. So I need people to unlearn what I said if I'm incorrect. And you've done more research on, on this than me. So let's, let's roll through this. So I have this hypothesis that in the future the best communicators are going to be centaur communicators. So they are. I got this from the idea of chess. So centaur chess is where you have a human paired with a computer and that human paired with a computer can beat a supercomputer, right? And so that concept, I want to bring it to communications where I think in the future the best communicators are going to be centaurs. They're going to be able to have that humanity, retain that humanity with the integrity and the values and the empathy that they bring to each interaction. But then they can supplement their humanity with artificial intelligence, like you said, to prepare, to research, to recognize their own blind spots and be better in those conversations. And if we can understand that balance, then we can use this to elevate our interactions without pulling away from them.

This is a. I love this analogy. In fact, Cal Newport, researcher at mit, talks about the centaur and the cyborg and this idea of unbundling tasks. So, you know, think about, you know, centaur is where you wear your centaur hat, is where you're working alongside AI. And then they're going to be other sorts of communication activities. Maybe they're low routine, repetitive, automated, predictable, they take up a lot of time, but they're low value, low impact, which can become cyborg activities. That means that they can be outsourced or automated. So it's really having that agility, that fluidity, to know what parts of my day am I center and what parts of my day am I cyborg? And by knowing the difference, it means that you get more return on your energy, more return on your attention, and more return on your intelligence. We also have to be careful because sometimes technology is very good at making the trivial seem urgent. And so we need to have a really good filters to know what parts of my day should be centaur driven versus cyborg driven. Right now I would argue that too much of humanity's history, especially the last 200 years of work for humans, has been too much cyborg led. You think about how much of our day is automated, predictive, repetitive, low value, soul sucking. So this is an inflection point. If we do it in the right way to do work that gives us pride but makes a difference as well.

Absolutely. And I love this idea of return on energy and intelligence. That's powerful. And now let's go back to the people who are within their organizations and they see processes, systems, technology that need to be upgraded. And they're having a conversation with somebody who feels more comfortable in the status quo, who sees the risk of change being greater than the risk of staying the same. And we have somebody who is a techno optimist like you, who wants to try to bring this into their company, but they're running into that resistance. What strategies or tactics would you suggest that that person puts into place in order to overcome some of that suspicion?

I think start with trust. So look at trust as the precondition that any type of conversation influencing to be Activated. There needs to be a basic level of trust, respect, dignity, reciprocity. If that's not in place, you can be the best influencer in the world. You're going to get pushback, you're going to get resistance. So this has to start with the building blocks of a human, human relationship, which is trust, a confident relationship in each other. When you have trust, it allows you to make trust leaps into the unknown. And a trust leap could be, hey, let's test an alternative to what we're doing alongside what we're doing. So that's low risk, because you're not asking the person to give something up. You're saying, let's continue to do what we're doing, but let's test this alongside it. Let's agree what are some respected criteria to measure it and get them to give you the answer. It could be speed, it could be efficiency, it could be quality. And then say, look, let's do this alongside what we're doing for the next month, or agree what an acceptable timescale is and then let's look at the results of that hypothesis and see if it works. When you use this type of approach, it's low risk. You're bringing the other parties on board, they become co collaborators, co creators in this process. You agree on how they want to judge it and then you see the results for yourself. And when you use this type of approach, as you can imagine, it's much more human led rather than transactional or pushy.

And transactional or pushy are those are the only ways that people typically approach this. And I'm sure you've seen this when I go to different companies, do these events and whatnot, people are saying, hey, I have the right answer, Answer, why isn't this working? Why are they so silly that they cannot accept this? And essentially we have to recognize there's a difference between being right and being persuasive. You can send them all the articles, all the data that you want. You're still going to miss out if you're not focusing on that human to human connection. And I really appreciate the fact that we started there because it starts with that trust. And a lot of times we have not invested enough in the relationship with the person on the other side for them to even trust us to open up, to consider the possibility.

Kwame, you wouldn't believe, and I'm sure you're in this, you get this as well, the number of emails, unsolicited or LinkedIn connections where before I've even met this person, Had a conversation with them, know anything about them. They're asking me for, asking me to give them things. It could be asking me to give them information or introduce them to a client or a speaking agent or whoever. And it's just like, guys, this is the wrong approach. You know, we've never even met, we haven't built up trust. And you burn an opportunity straight away before you've even started. This is this kind of basic human to human principles that we need to protect and prioritize and defend, which is trust, reciprocity, investing, listening. This is what creates a dignified relationship. And this is my concern that in this age of acceleration, we're becoming more transactional. We need to protect ourselves against becoming transactional.

This is so critical, so critical. And I think a lot of times people try to move so quickly that they forget the human fundamentals. And I really appreciate that we keep on coming back to this because even though this can seem from the outside looking in, really technical and it is, it's really sophisticated technology, at the end of the day, when it comes to the implementation, it is still a people led conversation. It's so fascinating how frequent we lose that fact.

Paradox. Here's the paradox paradox, which is really interesting. Technology changes fast, humans don't. Technology changes fast, humans don't. And we forget that paradox at our peril. We have Paleolithic brains millions of years old, we have their medieval institutions in many, many organizations, and we have godlike technology. And if we don't respect these basic human to human principles of dignity, reciprocity, respect and trust, that's a shortcut to transactional relationships. And by the way, when you have a lot of transactional relationships in your personal life and professional life, it's a shortcut to loneliness and happiness. Stress levels go up, friction go up, silos go up. When you have deep embedded trust based relationships, friction goes down, reciprocity goes up. People want to help each other. And so despite AI, despite advances in technology, we should not forget these basic non negotiable human principles.

Yes, yes. And one of those principles that I see comes up all the time in negotiation is collaboration. Working with versus working against. And I think a lot of times people unintentionally identify the other side as an enemy combatant. You are against progress, you're against change, you are the problem. So instead of trying to work with them, they're working against them, trying to bully through them rather than bringing them along. And it comes down to the mindset and it comes down to the approach. And so if you're coaching somebody who wants to adopt this technology in a meaningful way, and in the past they have looked at people as obstacles and they've run into resistance, how can they change the way they're framing these interactions in order to be more collaborative and work with them, to co create alongside them?

I think we need to take a moment of deep humility to first of all look at transformation efforts, change efforts, change programs around the world. We know there's different statistics out there, but typically it's like 60 to 70% of change transformations fail or fail to achieve all their objectives. And it's the same with AI. Nobody likes to be changed. If we're trying to do AI to other people without bringing them on the journey, telling them the story, involving them being less evangelical, less hysterical, and actually focusing more on, look, these are practical tools. Let's do small experiments, let's start small, but start now because if you don't, you know, start before you're ready is a really good call to action. But involving people on the journey and making sure that that trust is in place, this is how we get people on board, this is how we create movements and this is how we get things done. Yes.

Okay, now let's, let's talk a little bit more about AI philosophy. And in AI we have the alignment problem and maybe we can actually start off by defining that. And I think there's a larger global kind of conversation that has to happen between the people who are going to be affected by AI and the people who are creating AI in order to solve this alignment problem. So can we first define this alignment challenge and then talk about how we can potentially, just as a society, have these conversations at a higher level?

I think it's the alignment problem is a problem and it's like a puzzle. It's part of this puzzle and you have different, different influences involved in this. So for example, if we look at the vc, the venture capital community, they're laser focused on dollars and data processing and speed. We've seen a trillion dollars of capex allocated by the big tech mega cap companies over the next five years. So there's a lot of money, data dollars and processing power converging together, creating this continuous loop. That's exciting. But the other side of the equation is does this come at the expense of democracy? Does this come at the expense of truth and transparency and trust? Does this come at the expense of well being and relationships? So there's a disconnect here. There's a disconnect. We have different parts of society, policymakers, businesses, all with different narratives, different agendas, and different ideas of what success looks like. This is why we need to bring together these different parts of business to have the conversations to start talking about smart regulation, ethics, governance, impact on society, division, disinformation, market instability. These are big questions that often we're just not asking, we're not discussing.

I agree.

And, and when we do have these conversations, or when we observe others having these conversations, a lot of times the conversations devolve around really, really quickly when it's so fascinating because we're talking about technology. But if you hear the conversations that we're having about what the future may or may not be as it relates to AI, it sounds like we're talking about religion. And the conversations break down so fast. And so when you think about those conversations that have been happening as it relates to alignment, as it relates to the future of AI and what it means for us philosophically and morally as a society, what are the biggest mistakes that people make as they're having these really important convers?

My observation is that one of the biggest is not knowing the difference between warm AI and cold AI. And I'll explain the difference. Cold AI is efficiency first. So efficiency first. That means that it's designed to be faster, designed to be efficient, hyper efficient. And of course, from an organization's perspective, pretty much 95% of organizations on the planet have invested in cold AI. So it's efficiency first, it erodes humanity, and it might be good in a very narrow interpretation of profit maximization, but at the cost of human maximization. That's cold AI. Warm AI is the opposite. It's humanity first. It's thinking about the human at the center of this conversation. Yeah. For example, I worked with a startup in Norway called no Isolation. What it wanted to do is use warm AI to help children stay connected to school when they were recovering from a serious disease or accident in hospital. That's an example of warm AI. It's really thinking about the human equation. Cold AI is when you just go into a store and perhaps you haven't got a human cashier, and maybe that's okay, but maybe you're a senior, maybe you're lonely, maybe you want to have a conversation with a human, but you can't because the consultants have told the store that you have to make because it's efficient, because you squeeze more efficiency and more money from this, you've made every cashier automated. I saw this happen in the Netherlands. I worked with a store called Jumbo and They tested two lines. One line was automated, one line was human. And of course, the demographics. In Europe, like the rest of the world, we have about five different demographics, including aging population, seniors, and what they wanted was a human connection. So the human line actually made more money than the automated line. And that was the difference between warm AI and cold AI. This is a blind spot right now because every CEO has jumped on the bandwagon of cold AI profit maximization without thinking about society and human maximization.

Oh, that's deep. That is deep. And just what's fascinating for me is that this shows the power of words. It shows the power of words because to me, I was not familiar with that distinction between warm AI and cold AI. And it's something that as soon as you discussed it, I immediately could resonate in the heart. You feel that? Yeah, I understand that. But if we don't have the words, then we can't have a high level conversation about this. And I'm even thinking about some of maybe the AI debates that I've watched online and the conversations internally within different companies. And I think just even having these terms at hand would have elevated the dialogue so much because you can feel it, like you said, but it's really frustrated when you feel feel something so strongly, but you can't articulate it effectively.

Even when you call a call center, you know, let's say you're calling a call center for your bank. It's called AI. It's called technology. You have to, you're, you're kept waiting. There's music that drives you crazy. You can't speak to anybody. Then you have to think of a password that you had to try and remember, but you can't remember it. Then you get logged out. You could spend half a day because it's cold AI. It's just efficiency first for them, not for us. And so this is what I wanted to do in my new book, the upside of disruption is reframe language, the power of language. Because the future is not just about technology or trends. It's about mindsets, it's about voices, it's about words. It's about choices too.

This is great. This is great. And Terence, before you go, let me just get one last piece of wisdom out of you. So for people who are having these high level technical conversations, we've talked about a lot of different tools and different tactics and approaches. But if there was one piece of advice that we have yet to cover, what would that one piece of advice you would give be to those professionals out there? With these conversations, the late physicist Stephen.

Hawking said, intelligence is the ability to adapt. Einstein wrote, you can't navigate a new world with an old map. Ted Lasso said, stay humble, stay teachable. And so my recommendation today is let's not waste one of the biggest reframing moments of our lifetime. The number one mindset to scale and sustain is curiosity. Be curious and start small. Iterate play with things. There's a huge power of thinking like a kid. In Japan, they call it shoshin, the beginner's mindset. When you have an expert mindset, you find a thousand reasons not to do anything. When you adopt a beginner's attitude, a Shoshin attitude, you play your experiment and that way you get to own your future and have a stake in the future. And that's what this is all about.

Incredible. Terence, thank you. Thank you so much for joining us. Before you go, just remind the listeners again about your new book and how they can work with you.

Thank you, Kwame. I've enjoyed our discussion today. For folks who want to reach out, there's my LinkedIn profile, Terence Mowry at LinkedIn, my website, terencemouri.com and of course my new book, the Upside of Disruption, which is at Barnes and Noble and Amazon and many other websites.

Incredible. Terrence, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

Kwame, it's been a pleasure.

Awesome. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

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