Lead by thinking differently

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The Pixar movie Ratatouille was cute, but delivered a sobering message. That is, "while a great artist can come from anywhere, the rest of the kitchen staff are so substitutable they can be replaced by a horde of rats."

This observation from Vivienne Ming, neuroscientist and co-founder of The Human Trust, unfortunately has a ring of truth these days, as experts and analysts insist that technology and AI are releasing our innovative juices. In her latest book Robot-Proof: When Machines Have All the Answers, Build Better People, she attempts to temper the more upbeat pronouncements with the reality on the ground. That is, while “A-players” are embracing and being rewarded by the new realities of a digital economy, most people are still getting by in the service economy.

To illustrate how technological change often suppresses – not unleashes – peoples’ innovative spirits, Ming points to the lingering effects of the industrial revolution. For example, many craft occupations were rendered obsolete. Most weavers were not transformed into fashion designers, she illustrates.

Likewise, such pronouncements about elevating jobs are more “bait and switch” than promised, she said. A few benefit, but tasks become more more mundane for those who hang onto their jobs, "When AI is deployed merely to make routine work more efficient, it doesn’t create more creative time; it creates more routine work. It’s like adding lanes to a freeway and being shocked when you just get more traffic.”

For example, a myth she dispels is that ATMs created better jobs for tellers. While tellers’ jobs have been elevated to engage in more customer interaction, “it was not the strategic, relationship-building work of a financial professional. It was the repetitive, low autonomy labor of providing basic support to less tech-savvy customers. The job was not elevated, it was hollowed out.”

The key to thriving and succeeding in an AI-driven world is to embrace AI to draw out the latent talents of yourself and your teams. Ming offers practical advice on how to rise above the homogenized, vanilla world associated with AI:

• Build a purpose; become a ‘fanatic’ in your niche. “Move from a passive consumer of the world to an active problem-owner," Ming says. "It means identifying an ill-posed problem that genuinely fascinates you and committing to exploring it with the rigor and passion of a fanatic, simply for the sake of exploration itself.” Start a newsletter, build presentations, write a blog, she urges. “As you do this work, something remarkable happens. you stop being a person with a list of skills and start becoming the person to talk to about a specific, interesting problem.”
• Adopt “productive fiction” as a core path. Over-reliance on AI answers can enfeeble our brains, Ming says. “Frictionless access to automation creates an illusion of understanding, without the deep cognitive engagement required to actually build it.” She urges people to introduce more friction into mental activities. “It’s about resisting the shallow efficiency of self automation and instead embracing AI as a tool to force deeper cognitive engagement, challenge your assumption, and build your underlying meta-learning skills.” For example, turn off your GPS and see if you can beat the computer’s suggested route. “My fear is that, for the knowledge worker, GPT is the new GPS,” she states.
• Master the “grad-student model” of AI collaboration. “We’re told AI is a ”co-pilot" or an “assistant,” Ming says. “If you use GPT like an intern to whom you delegate routine tasks, you will inevitably be replaced by a cheaper manager who’s just as good at self-automating.” The best option is to treat AI as a brilliant-but-niave graduate student." Be an active participant in a "structured dialogue, leveraging your deep understanding as a guide to AI’s vast knowledge."
• Actively curate your information diet to combat bias amplification. Use AI to help "map the boundaries of our ignorance, come up with original ideas, and think outside the box, without having to “peek inside your neighbor’s box,” Ming urges. By tasking AI to map the boundaries of our ignorance, you transform it from a mere knowledge-retrieval engine into a discovery engine."
• Design your compensatory strategies. Everyone, including the most highly respected leaders in the world, has flaws. The trick is not to dwell on them, but rather, “build aa system around yourself that renders them irrelevant,” Ming advises. Identify your weaknesses, and proactively design relationship and system to compensate for them. Just as a CEO needs a board of directors for guidance and expertise, assemble your own “board of directors,” she advises.
• Learn to map the edge of the known world. “Develop an intuitive feel for the border,” Ming advises. “By repeatedly experiencing the moment an AI’s knowledge becomes brittle, you train your mind to recognize the difference between high-probability regurgitation and low-probability speculation.”

Harness the power of your people and their curiosity, harness your own power and sense of curiosity to pursue new approaches to problems.