0:03
Welcome to the show, where we expose new perspectives on our ever evolving world through the lenses of various industries, cultures and backgrounds.
Our guests are disruptors, united by a common goal to bring their purpose to life.
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Whether they’re from the commercial world or third sector, from the Global North or the Global South, expect an inspirational journey that will transform your perspective on just what is possible.
My name is Philippa White and welcome to Thai Unearthed.
0:41
What if we’re asking the wrong questions about artificial intelligence?
What if instead of asking how AI can be more powerful, more profitable, more efficient, we asked how can it serve life?
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In this episode, we go far beyond the usual headlines of tech disruption and digital transformation.
I got to speak to someone who’s daring to reimagine the entire paradigm.
Welcome to episode 109 of Thai Unearthed.
1:13
Today I’m joined by Caroline Chubb Caldron, a futurist humanist and one of the top 100 brilliant women in AI ethics.
She’s the founder of Hello Humanity, and she’s on a mission to bring about nothing less than a civilizational shift from extraction to regeneration, from automation to imagination, from machine alignment to life alignment.
1:39
Our conversation is a journey.
We talk about Caroline’s multicultural upbringing, her work with global institutions like the World Economic Forum and Google, and her bold frameworks like regenerative AI, ethics and civilizational imaginaries that challenge the very foundations of how we think about technology, business, and especially the future.
2:07
We explore how our economic systems are out of step with the living world, why moral imagination is now a leadership imperative, and what it means to be a conscious custodian of the future.
We talk about awe, the illusion of separation, and the truth of our interconnection.
2:29
And we ask, can artificial intelligence help us become more human?
This is a conversation that invites reflection, reorientation, and ultimately, responsibility.
Because, as Caroline says, if we don’t intentionally design AI in service of life, it will be unintentionally designed against it.
2:55
So with that, let’s dive it.
Hello Caroline, thank you so much for joining me here on Thai on Earth.
I’ve been looking forward to this for so long and just thrilled to have you with me.
3:12
Oh gosh, thank you for the invitation.
I just loved our initial conversation and glad to explore this with you.
Yeah, it’s fantastic.
So I am looking at a beautiful scene behind you.
Beautiful windows look sunny outside.
I see I think green grass in the background.
3:29
So tell me, where are you so our listeners can picture it as well?
So I live just outside of New York City.
I’m about 35 minutes away in a town called Maplewood, NJ and I’m sitting in our family room because now that we have gone through COVID, we both work from home.
3:45
So we exchanged different offices, but I’m in the downstairs office that we’ve carved out of our family rooms.
Yeah, this is my favorite room in the house because it’s so much light, so much joy.
Beautiful, totally.
I love it.
It’s just so fresh and so alive and it’s amazing energy.
4:02
Oh, I love it.
And you’re just looking behind in our backyard.
My son is a soccer player, so I don’t know if you can tell that there’s some soccer Nets back there.
Can’t see the Nets, I just see that there’s green.
And it’s amazing.
You’re out in Brazil and I’m here in New York.
You know what a wonderful, serendipitous connection.
I think we probably mentioned this the last time we spoke.
4:19
You know, I’m not a massive fan of social.
My kids do not have social media on their phones.
I don’t spend a lot of time on it.
But there is a lot of value with these kind of connections because if it wasn’t for LinkedIn, I wouldn’t have found you.
And I just am so grateful that it does exist because then I get to be in Brazil and you in New York, and we find these serendipitous connections where there’s just so much overlap with what we’re both doing.
4:43
And I can’t wait to meet you in Brazil in person and someday come to New York.
It’ll.
Be fine.
Yeah, No, exactly.
Well, one way, it will definitely happen because these connections, we have to, yeah, cultivate them for sure.
Carolyn, tell me a little bit about you.
Your story is what I got with the last time that we spoke.
4:58
I was so inspired and I knew that I needed to have you on the podcast.
But before we get into all the work stuff you’re thinking, just tell us your story.
I am a mother, a wife, a sister, a daughter.
I was born in Switzerland, raised in Italy.
American dad, German mom.
Very fortunate to right off the bat, speak multiple languages, traveled all around the world, live in just about every continent, moved to the stage when I was younger, they moved away, moved back.
5:23
And now I’ve been here in Maplewood actually for 15 years, almost 16 years actually, which feels incredible because I’ve always been such a nomad.
And the work that I have been doing over the course of my lifetime has always been around reimagining disruptive futures.
And I call myself a futurist and a humanist because there are no terms to describe the work that I do.
5:43
I study the impact of autonomous and intelligent machines and business and society.
And then I work with visionary leaders to become conscious custodians of future.
My hope and my aspiration is that we can usher this beautiful moment, which feels terrible right now, but it’s actually a beautiful moment because it’s so disruptive to reimagine our potential civilizational future and do it in a way that reconnects us with our own flourishing and our planetary flourishing.
6:08
Just backing up a little bit because we are going to get to all of that in a moment, but what an amazingly cultural background and I didn’t know that.
So how old were you when you moved to the States?
I think it was 16 and then I was here for, well, I finished college here and then I moved back to, I moved to France, moved back here and moved to Australia, moved back here and moved to London, moved back here.
6:32
Wow, so you’ve lived all over the place and your parents obviously come from all over the place.
So you are a global citizen?
And I’m married to a Colombian just to, you know, to take off all the boxes, all that one.
Yeah, wow, I love that.
I have to tell you a funny story.
So when I first met my husband, I went to Brazil very early on because his brother was getting married.
6:52
He was living in Rio de Janeiro and he married a Brazilian woman.
I’m pretty good with languages.
I speak 6 languages now.
Like I’m really good with languages.
And when I was in Brazil, I was like, why am I not understanding everybody here?
Like Brazilian, it has some friendship, it has some Latin.
7:07
So I was very, very lost.
I came back, I was living in Chicago at the time.
I came back and I’m going to learn Portuguese.
No, I was like, that’s it.
I can’t possibly not even be able to maneuver ordering a cup of coffee or something.
And you know what happened?
I had this wonderful friend in Chicago who was Brazilian and I said, please teach me.
7:25
And so we arranged these afternoon teaching lessons and she taught me the pronunciation of ajainchi, which of course I’m hearing ajainchi and I can’t figure out what it is.
When I saw it written and it said Ajainte, all of a sudden I was like, Oh my gosh, I’m just not understanding.
7:42
Because of the translation issue, the mission, I ended up picking it up pretty quickly.
I don’t speak perfectly fluently, but I understand everything so.
I understand what I was saying just now.
Yeah, I feel a connection with you that goes beyond just us being on the phone, because I just loved my time in Brazil and I wanted to learn all about it.
7:59
Oh.
My God, you still have to come and visit them.
Yeah.
So what was the catalyst to what you’re doing now?
I’ve always worked with organizations to try to understand what are the future forces that are going to impact their business and be the disruptive force that would capitalize on those forces.
8:15
And in 2015, I ended up having a moment where I was thinking about about the future of business, the future of society.
In that moment, before AI was anything in anybodies consciousness except for a few pockets of people, I realized how incredibly disruptive this technology was going to become and that we had enough of the elements that were needed in order for it to become that disruptive.
8:39
And it’s not just AI, right?
It’s quantum, it’s fire engineering, all these things and realizing that we are facing a profound shift in how businesses can define business, how people can define work, how society and democracy can even operate.
And I decided I needed to be a voice.
8:55
Because if we continued with the same paradigms from which AI was born and from which we designed our entire civilization, we’re looking at an unfortunate future.
We’re looking at a endlessly diminishing returns because of the exponential effects that AI’s have on materials, on human labor, on economic concentration of power, on democratic systems that aren’t, that can’t support AI influences and so on.
9:21
So I wanted to be a voice and I started very early on working with IEEE designing what were one of the first in the world AI ethics constructs to help the world start thinking about this.
And from then on, I just started doing a whole lot of work with major companies, Google, Microsoft, I spoke with the World Economic Forum in New York.
9:41
I traveled the world trying to, I don’t know, maybe a simple way to put it is to ignite moral imagination, to ensure that we are becoming moral stewards of this technology and ushering it into this moment with a vision that goes beyond what we’ve seen on movies, beyond just this extractive paradigm of power and and hyper efficiency towards a future of true generous abundance for everybody.
10:09
Curious about what is the response of people around that and particularly from the point of view of we know what is necessary and what is important, but that isn’t necessarily always what business buys or will do because it’s not the business model or it’s not in the best interest of business.
10:27
And we’ll get to that because it’s a, it’s a really, really important.
I’m really curious to know what the response is to everything you’re talking about.
But you did talk about AI ethics, and I just want to get to that first because I really want to understand, you know, you helped.
Shape the first AI ethics document.
10:43
Yeah, one of many.
Many and now you’re focused on life aligned ethics, which is what you sort of touched on when we spoke the last time.
And I love this.
And it’s just says everything about what you’re working towards.
You’ve said that if if we’re not intentionally designing AI with life in mind, we are unintentionally designing it against life.
11:01
Can you unpack?
That So I think the first place to start is that we need to shift our thinking.
We need to start thinking in systems and specifically living systems.
We are a living system.
Our body is a living system, but we’re also part of a much larger living systems and nested whole archies, right?
11:17
Like and you can go as small as a cell all the way up to the cosmos.
All of these systems work together.
We’re not trained to think in systems.
Actually, we are trained preferentially to think mechanistically or scientifically.
That means taking a problem, breaking it into pieces, and just trying to solve that one problem without with externalizing all the implications that it might have on other systems.
11:38
It has LED us to progress on specific areas and leaps and bounds, but it also has led to this extraordinary imbalance between our human world and the living world.
We are at a huge tipping point.
I, I mean, I’m sure your audience is, is very familiar with the climate science, but that’s just one piece of it.
11:59
Like the fact that we are at the end of a survivable planet and I really mean it.
We’re at the end of a survivable planet.
It should shake us into a weakness and help us recognize that we need to come back and to right relationship with the planet.
But the other piece of it too is our economic models are not going to sustain an AI future.
12:18
The current economic model is the incentives like you talked about are to deliver shareholders value, which is tied to profits, tied to growth.
Yes.
And if we continue on the path of exponential growth, first of all, they’re not infinite materials on the planet for us to continue to create exponential growth.
12:36
We also end up having an enormous exponential concentration of power, which we’re already seeing where all of our businesses start getting conglomerated under one or two technology umbrellas.
Everything is becoming technology.
And then in addition to that, you can already see video is coming out with how about soon we’re going to have agentic?
12:55
Not soon.
It’s already here.
We have agentic forces.
People are going to get displaced.
And the more people get displaced from work without the safety net of either Ubi or some type of transition to a different type of work that is still valued in our society and still given economic value, we are going to have an enormous amount of people who are going to be out of work.
13:16
And if they’re out of work, they can’t participate in the economy.
If they can’t participate in the economy, then they can’t purchase your goods and services.
If they can’t purchase your goods and services, then your businesses don’t have any goods and services to sell, which means your own businesses are going to collapse.
Though we need to shift our economic models and we need to shift our world views fundamentally.
13:34
We need to shift our world views from a mechanistic reductionist idea of taking things and just maximizing for that moment and actually thinking in systems, living systems.
And we need to understand that the extractive capitalistic model of infinite growth does not work on a finite planet, but also does not work on their AI scenarios.
13:53
So we need to move our economic model into, well, I’ve been doing a lot of research on what future potential economic models will be.
And one of the ones that I think has the most credence, and there’s a lot that needs to be figured out around it is regenerative economics, because again, it’s aligning with economics and right relationship with life of which we are part of, which we need in order to survive.
14:13
So there’s that, but we also need to move from this real anthropomorphic idea that human beings are at the top of the pyramid and we get to dominate the rest of the world because first of all, we’re no longer the dominators in the rational view of the world.
14:29
AI is going to dominate us, right?
Like our rational capabilities are going to be eclipsed by AI.
So we’re no longer dominating in rationality and intelligence as we have to find it.
And if we birth our machines with the same paradigm that, you know, whatever the top of the pyramid dominates, then we’re going to create our own subjugation.
14:49
And that’s a huge problem.
That’s a huge problem.
So I am pushing for a future where we recognize that we need to become not anthropomorphic and not even anthropomorphize our machines, but we need to be life centric and come back into the right relationship with life.
15:05
So if you would imagine, for example, a circle of life, right?
Like millions of years ago, we were part of the circle of life, equal power to the lions and the so on and the plants, right?
Everybody has it.
And then all of a sudden we made leaps and bounds in our capacities that put us in the center of the circle of life and we have dominated the rest of the life.
15:25
What’s happening now is AI is supplanting us in that center and putting us back on the on the edges.
But as AI shifts into ASI and AGI and we could discuss whether or not that’s actually going to happen.
I’m not even going to attempt to make sense of it in this 45 minute podcast.
15:40
But right now what we have is artificial narrow intelligence.
It’s not even narrow, it’s multi multimodal.
But what that means is that we have AI’s that can do certain things really well.
So we have the LLMS like Chachi, PTS and so on.
What I mean by multimodal is that you’re combining a lot of narrow AI’s into one package so that we have agents that can now go onto your computer and create create NLM chat scripts and, you know, kind of do what you tell them to do.
16:05
So we’re kind of in that space.
Artificial general intelligence, AGI is, it’s got a lot of definitions, but more or less it’s understood as the moment in which AI can surpass human intelligence or be as intelligent as a human.
16:21
I shouldn’t say surpass AGI is B as intelligent as a human.
We could define intelligence.
I can tell you that I’m very upset with, not upset, but I’m demoralized by how narrow we define intelligence, especially human intelligence, because it tends to be very rational.
16:37
And I do think that if we accept that definition, I’m sure we’re going to outpace human rational intelligence.
We already are.
So that’s AGI.
And then ASI actually is like a moment in time in which artificial general intelligence becomes more intelligent than humans.
And people say, oh, that’s far away, but actually it’s the moment in time in which AGI moves to ASI.
16:56
And it’s, it’s going to happen like that because AGI is going to continue to learn extraordinarily fast on exponential scales.
And we, you know, it’ll just be an escape velocity situation.
So we have the circles of life and AI is now in the middle.
The moment AI becomes AGI, it starts overwhelming life as a whole if we don’t align its values with the principles of life, right?
17:20
The ethics that we’re designing AI with right now are perpetuating this anthropomorphic idea of humans and domination.
What we actually need is to come back into right relationship and right balance and equitable and mutuality and embed that and engender that into our AIS.
17:37
Just to dig a little bit deeper with that, as far as many of the conversations that you hear are quite doomsday where a lot of where you’re taking this is there’s a lot of potential for that, but there’s a lot that we can do and there’s still hope to be able to prevent that.
17:55
And I’m just wondering in the conversations that you’re having, one, does it feel hopeful one and two, know when we’re talking about that financial success and business only making decisions based on what is best for business and not thinking about that because this doesn’t come into the equation.
18:16
What comes into the equation is what’s best for business.
But we’re talking about, well, hold on a second, what’s best for business is that you can actually have a business and perhaps this might just nullify that potential.
So does it feel hopeful?
Do you feel like the responses from those who are responsible for driving this forward are listening to you?
18:38
When I speak, I don’t just speak.
I try to create a space where people can actually resonate with the large questions and really reflect on it.
And when I’m in the room, I can feel it.
I can feel almost palpated.
I can feel the genuine vibration pulsing hope for a future that feels so much more enlivening, flourishing, burdened.
19:02
Green always shows up in whatever visions they create.
So like extraordinarily green, extraordinarily like lush.
I can feel that.
And I want to name what it is that you’re talking about, which is this is double bind that we collectively have a vision, not uniformly, but more or less uniformly of this flourishing future.
19:23
But we’re locked in to a system that forces us to have to only deal with the very next quarter.
Yes, and totally deliver the quarterly success.
It’s called a Malokin trap, or at least that’s how it’s called in my part of the world.
And, and just to get into it a little bit, because I think it’s really helpful if we name it, right.
19:42
If we name it, we can start seeing it.
And then if we see it and we name it, we can perhaps start dismantling it.
Moloch is the name of an ancient God that civilizations used to think that they needed to sacrifice their children to in order to have a good harvest.
19:58
So it’s exactly what’s happening now.
We’re sacrificing our futures, our future, civilization of future, of planet, our future, everything in order to have a good harvest, in order to have a good return in this moment.
And it’s this dynamic that we’re in.
And so many of us don’t know how to shift it because we’re locked in it, right?
20:16
Like you and I both have to pay for rent.
We can only pay for rent if we participate in in this economic model that requires for us to deliver value that’s defined as financial value.
So now where that takes me is how do we shift the system?
How do we become system changers?
20:32
We’re in the system.
And so we need to start appreciating that system.
First of all, we need to start appreciating the systems can change.
This economic model is only about 60 to 100 years old or, you know, perfected.
We can reimagine it.
It’s not locked in.
Somehow we think that it’s locked in, but it’s not locked.
20:48
So we need to 1st recognize that we can change our system, and then now we need to start creating what are called islands of coherence, which is a terminology that I came up with.
But the Nobel Peace Prize chemistry folder talked about if you create enough islands of coherence, it has the opportunity to elevate the entire system.
21:06
So I love using that terminology of islands of coherence because it operates on a chemical form, but it also operates in our living civilizational forms.
And what that means is gather people who are intentional about trying to create a different future gather with those because your ability to change the system is diminished if you’re just one.
21:27
But it’s it’s it’s larger if you’re more than one, right?
And it also gives you more resilience to keep wanting to change the system.
The third thing is that we live on an this illusion of insignificance.
And the UN report actually recently came out with this statistic.
And I don’t know if I’m saying the numbers right, but more or less 67% of people worldwide recognize that climate change is a problem, and something like 68% would be willing to sacrifice part of their income in order to address climate change.
21:56
So there is a majority out there, but we somehow have this illusion of insignificance where we don’t think we can actually change the system.
But if we actually gathered and cohered in these islands of coherence, we would be able to ship that system quite rapidly because there is, you know, a majority of people that actually would want to do that.
22:14
So that’s the second thing or Thursday.
And then the next thing I want to say is whenever systems have changed in the past, there was a tipping point and there was a keystone ask.
I don’t want to get into too much, but if you I’ll just for your listeners share the understanding.
So we believe that you need something like 60% of people to be able to tip the system to change the system, some type of majority, more than 50%.
22:37
But system science actually shows that you need a very small majority.
You need about 20% of people, people that’s exciting, right?
That’s that becomes meaningful.
You and I both think that are the influence that we have is directly proportional to the largeness of our network, how many people we have in our network.
22:55
What system science is showing is that the actual the influence that we have is strongest not when we have lots of bridges to people, but when we have very wide bridges with about six to seven people.
So if you connected with six to seven people and had a deep relational bond with them and you were able to talk to them about these big issues, over time you would influence their perspective.
23:19
And over time, those people would then be activated and in turn would turn additional connections into a potential future.
So we need far wider bridges with people.
We don’t need as many thin connections with people.
That’s not helpful.
23:35
We need to recognize that 20% tips the system.
And the last thing I’ll say is a keystone ask anytime the system has changed is because there’s been the keys don’t ask.
So Rosa Parks asked for CP bus, women asked for the right to vote, Nelson Mandela asked for apartheid to be removed one ask and that capitulates the rest of the system.
23:57
So we need to get clear and what is the ask that we want to make as a civilization in order to burst this idea that is germinating but is really not sufficiently present in everybody’s mind about the potential future?
And act.
So that brings me to the next question, because it’s around how to make this actionable.
24:16
I mean, I can see it.
We want to create a movement.
We need 20% of the people.
We need people to really believe in it.
You need to just find the key individuals to really bring along on this journey.
I guess the question is we need to align AI with the fundamental principles of life.
24:34
So it’s interdependence, right relationship and service to life.
There are more principles than that, more or less there’s about 8 that across living system science and system science and bio mimicry and so on.
Actually, let’s just take a moment to pause.
24:49
We think we’re so exceptional and we are.
But life has been on this planet for 3.8 billion years.
We’re now trying to figure out how do we create systems that lead to human and planetary flourishing, right?
And we’re looking everywhere except for at the playbook of life, which has lived on this planet in a flourishing fashion for 3.8 billion years.
25:09
So what the work that I’m doing now is how do we extract those top level principles of the 3.8 billion year of life and use that as proxies for AI ethics so that our AI systems are in alignment with life and in support of our own flourishing, but also the living systems upon which we’re depend and are part of?
25:29
So with that in mind, in those principles, because it is bonkers if you think about how it’s quite basic from the point of view of just, I mean, a lot of this stuff I talk about in my book as well, thinking of others, interdependence, cause and effect, kindness, empathy, it’s very basic principles of human interaction, but also understanding that we need other people to be able to find solutions to things, treat other people well.
25:53
But then also we need to look after the environment that we live in.
How do ecosystems work when you actually really study nature and biodiversity?
We’ve lost our connection to nature.
I mean, if you think about it, when you’re walking around in cities like London or in New York City, you know, you’ve got Central Park, but you don’t even have much green space.
26:11
They’re in buildings all the time.
They’re not even seeing the sky.
More than that didn’t even just that we don’t have access to nature.
It’s that we live in the illusion that I can breathe on my own.
I was on a podcast yesterday and I told them that I have this tree outside my window and I see many trees, particular this one tree outside my window.
26:28
And I could move myself to tears just thinking about the relationship this tree and I have because that tree makes it possible for me to breathe.
And because I breathe, that tree has the possibility of surviving.
This is not a one way relationship.
And we’re in constant dynamic relationship with everything around us, but we live as if we’re not.
26:49
We really need to change that worldview.
We need to understand that the illusion of separation is what’s making us sick and what’s giving rise to these hyperextractive, hyper, ultimately diminishing economic models and return to the truth of interconnection.
27:05
What I’ve been working on for the last 20 years with my work, which is trying to get people to step out of their silos and out of their paradigms and to understand how the world works in other places around the world so they can see themselves and the world differently to start to be drivers of change.
27:22
And you have to create that shift, change in people in order for things to change, otherwise they won’t.
So it’s business as usual until they actually feel something.
But when I talk about it from the point of view of humanity or making the world a better place or doing good or improving sustainability or improving the world around us, if it’s sold in that context, it’s not treated seriously because you’re not focused on the quarterly return, you’re not focused on that return.
27:52
It’s not business savvy enough.
You know it’s how to make that shift change.
It is for me, it’s adolescent thinking.
So what I mean by that, it’s there is a certain cavalierness to it, right?
Like, oh, you have to deliver quarterly profits and I really feel for people like their livelihoods are tied to the quarterly profits.
28:11
So here’s what’s happening.
We’re all doing exactly what we have been taught is exceptional performance and great human value.
But we need to dream different.
We need a new dream.
We can’t keep perpetuating a system that’s going to lead to our own collapse.
28:27
And you know, that feels like a long way coming.
AGIASI is predicted in the next three to seven years.
That’s not a long time.
And the health of our soil is directly related to the health and the survivability of our species.
If you’re not on a daily basis really understanding and being grateful to the Earth’s beneath your feet, you’re living in a disillusioned and diluted bubble.
28:52
So we need to somehow re round.
My root teacher is Titna Han, and he has this beautiful practice of walking meditation.
And in The Walking meditation, he says walk as if you’re kissing the ground with your feet.
We don’t.
We walk completely disconnected in our own hands, not in relationship with the earth, not even in gratitude for all the billions of processes that are happening, worms to chemical processes, and all that that make our life possible.
29:22
How do we make this a no brainer for business?
I mean, that’s the $1,000,000 question, isn’t it?
I also want to talk a little bit about the reason why I said it’s adolescent thinking is because it’s very much rooted in this horizon one view of the world that is our current system and it’s declining and it’s diminishing and it’s self terminating.
29:38
You can’t argue it.
That is just is there’s some experiments that are happening in Horizon 2 which are just this ideas of the edges of horizon one.
Like how could we build a bridge to the future that we all dream of or that many of us stream up, which is in this Horizon three?
We need more experiments in Horizon 2.
29:55
We need a capital investment in regenerative ideas.
Do you remember years ago when Google claimed the 20% time for experimental projects?
We need that across the board.
We need 20% time for all industries to experiment with different business models, different economic metrics, different financial investment strategies.
30:16
We need to rebalance that, and we need companies who are investing in AI to make an equal, if not disproportionate investment because they can’t survive without human beings participating in the economic system.
Unless they’re envisioning a future of just AI and AI agents participating in their own economic system, I don’t see how they I don’t think.
30:36
Making food can can AI make food AI?
Can care food and grow food, but are we going to look at a future where AI is purchasing food from you?
Possibly.
But you know, at the end of the day, like what?
Where does that leave human beings?
Now, some people argue that, you know, this is a natural evolution, that we are a species that is in decline and that this is our next presentation in the world.
30:59
Like, you know, imagine the evolution of man.
But the final element, So people can argue that I just believe while that may be true in some domains, I believe there’s something about humanity that we have so overlooked and so undervalued that deserves space and time and investment to create.
31:22
So imagine a future where autonomous and intelligent machines do the labor that have locked us into the lives that we have lived, right?
And release us to actually become more human.
And what I mean by that is the domains of humanity that we have forgotten, the relational field between you, me and you.
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That pulsing, that vibration, that tending to that care, that understanding, that empathy, that intention to somehow link with you and get to know you because you’re being and your beingness nourishes me and vice versa, right?
31:57
And because somehow between the two of us, something’s going to emerge.
New ideas, new thinking, new ways of understanding.
We don’t give that enough credence.
I truly believe that a lot of the thickness that we have is that we have replaced human relationship with synthetic relationships.
32:16
And they’re thin and they’re just a proxy, you know, a very thin layer of what the human relationship could be, right?
Totally.
But we have somehow decided that the simplicity of that is worthy or worthwhile for us.
Would you pet a robot dog?
You have to look at the workout of MIT Media Lab.
32:33
She does a lot of the work around human relationships with robots and proving over and over and over again that we will anthropomorphize robots.
So perfect example.
Let me give you an example.
So she brings people into a room.
She gives everybody this tiny little robot that looks like a cute little dinosaur.
There’s the cutest little dinosaur, but of course it’s just mechanical.
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And she tells them to take care of it and somehow, you know, whatever it is, and then 30 minutes and she gives everybody a hammer and she says, now smash it.
And they can’t it’s it violates their ethics.
It violates their values.
They have attached themselves to this robot.
They’ve just taken care of it.
They’ve poured their life force into this unliving thing.
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And now they cannot smash it.
Her work is really prescient.
And it changes our understanding of the technologies that we’re creating because they’re not neutral because of the way that we interact with them and because of the meaning that we get out of that interaction.
So another person I will point your audience to is Sherry Turkle out of MIT 2, who’s doing an enormous amount and tremendously insightful work around digital and synthetic relationships and human beings.
33:35
You know, and her question is the right question, which is it’s not what these technologies can do for us, It’s who do we become over time as we relate to these technologies?
We really have to consider this moment very profoundly.
The AI ethicists, the government bodies, the regulatory bodies, we are all concerned about the impact that these technologies are going to have on governance, on human society, on human wars.
33:59
So there’s a lot of resonance there.
The skills aren’t are correctly tipped right now where technology companies hold more power than governing bodies right now, and that’s a problem.
So we have to come back into balance.
Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s going to happen in the US under this administration.
34:15
I’m hoping there will be more regulation coming from other parts of the world that are going to influence our current stance.
We’re living on a Milton Friedman’s, you know, free economic model.
You know, right now this is the driving force.
Economy is lifts up all boats.
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The truth is, it’s actually lifted up only a few.
Yachts totally.
Exactly.
So our little people, the little people that are us, we need to start really pushing for a redirection.
Mentioned it throughout how AI is taking over repetitive tasks and by doing that there is an opportunity for humans to evolve into more conscious visionary leaders.
34:54
Assuming AI just does those repetitive tasks, what does this look like in practice and how do people prepare for that shift?
I go in a lot of different directions depending on my audience.
For leaders that are leading AI, I very quickly get them into systems thinking and help them understand how they need to, for their own survivability, actually start changing the system.
35:17
For human beings like people like you and me, every day I talk about the human intelligence that stands outside of the reach of machines that we need to spend far more intentional time developing.
And that falls into roughly 4 domains that I call 4 eyes.
The first one is around imagination, and the reason for that is because we need to be able to imagine the future that we want to create.
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If we can’t even have a vibrant, meaningful magnetic vision of the future, we can’t even create it.
So imagination includes things like curiosity, vulnerability, and courage, right?
Like we need courage in order to imagine completely different.
The second eye is around insight, which is the really the skills to deepen our maturity as a species and our ethical knowing.
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And that includes social emotional intelligence and skills.
It includes moral and ethical reasoning.
It includes empathy and compassion because we know that they’re at the lowest of they’ve ever been recorded in the last 40 years plus.
And people use these terms and they say, Oh yeah, you know, soft.
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But if you don’t have empathy and compassion, how do we even create anything that’s worth creating?
It’s not worth creating.
And how do we create anything that’s not going to be in ultimately damaging if we don’t understand empathy and compassion?
We can’t though.
We need that.
We also need mindfulness skills because they’re the metacognitive skills that help us understand when we are just operating out of rote patterns versus actually being recognized, being more intentional, being more aware.
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It’s really a practice of awareness and deep listening, which is related compassion.
And then the next eye is around inspiration.
And here it’s talking about, OK, so if we have created this future that is based on these very deeply resonant capacities of humanity, the inside pieces, then how do we lead for it?
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And here we need far more courageous leaders that are willing to be visionary thinkers.
We need leaders who know how to influence systems change.
We need community building because of the Islands of Coherence principle, right?
We need people who know how to build community because those communities are what’s going to help our new future emerge.
37:24
We also need peacemaking skills, which nobody talks about, but they become super important in this incredibly and increasingly more fractured world.
So you don’t know how to build peace.
I went to Business School.
I went to one of the best business schools in the world.
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Did they teach me peace building?
No, but these are the skills that we now need.
And then the last I really has to do with how do we function in a world of intelligent machines?
How do we integrate in that world?
That’s the eye.
And here it’s about finding meaning.
How do we reclaim a purpose of humanity that’s not tied to our participation in the economic model?
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How do we maintain our agency so that we’re now at the mercy of machines that could possibly manipulate our thinking, which is happening now?
How do we create digital Wellness?
How do we find even the practices of joy and plays enormous research that that’s essential for not just our individual health, but also our community health.
38:16
And I always love ending with this one, which is learning how to cultivate wonder and awe.
You know what the definition of awe is out of Stanford?
It’s self transcendence.
When we are in awe, we realize that we are part of something so much larger and that eye shrinks and we can find our right place in relationship to everything.
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So we need to find awe, which we are less exposed to, right?
As we already talked about, nature is becoming more and more foreign to us.
A lot of our experiences happen in nature, but they also happen between people.
And so how do we make ourselves more available and intentional about cultivating experiences of awe and being open to that experience?
38:58
Couldn’t agree more.
I mean, with all of it.
But that last part, a lot of the work that I do, which is all about, I say how we take people to the edge of their mental maps and we gently nudge them off, forcing this evolution of change.
And it’s behavior change.
It’s thought change.
39:15
It’s how they see themselves in the world differently.
But there needs to be that visceral change within a person in order for things to be done differently.
And I love it because I would say that yes, it’s that aha or that all moment where suddenly something shift changes within them.
39:32
And that’s when they do start to act and think differently.
And that’s what our programs do.
But it’s just so interesting how you’ve articulated that because I couldn’t agree more.
And to be able to create that, there needs to be inspiration.
There needs to be that moment where they realize, Oh my goodness, I’ve never thought about this or seen this like this before.
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But the only way that you can do that is by pushing people to the edge of their mental map.
You know what it is?
It’s a dissolving.
Here’s the thought process.
If you were to look at your life, the values, the priorities, the goals, really ask yourself how many of those were conditioned into you and what is actually true?
40:10
Because you start doing that experiment and you start making that reflection.
You realize that so much of your priorities, your goals, and even some of your values 100% are something imposed on you.
But when you start dissolving those being beyond that and touching into something.
40:27
That is unconditioned.
That is reverberant.
I can feel it in my stomach as I’m talking to you.
It feels in perfect alignment.
It feels like there’s a deeper truth that words could never get to.
I always find myself incredibly at loss for the right words for what I’m trying to describe.
40:44
This is why.
Because words can’t describe it.
Unconditioned self, the purest form of self is transcendent.
It is really the place that we need to start nourishing more, especially in our westernized culture where all that we value is this rational part of us.
40:59
We really need to come back to being, forgive me if I say animal like.
We need to come back to our animal instincts, to our truly resonant instincts that know that there’s something beyond what we’ve created.
That’s possible because it’s what we long for.
41:15
It’s coming back to right relationship with life.
I agree, if listeners take one thing away from this conversation.
So one shift in thinking, and perhaps you’ve just said it.
What do you want it to be?
I think I have just said it is really evaluate your conditioning because once you dissolve those pieces, then there’s fertile ground for something to run far richer.
41:38
The Overton window has not opened part of it, right?
You know what I mean when I say overturn window for the audience, it’s this understanding that futures can only be created from.
Imagine a cone of where you start.
That window is going to be narrow depending on how big your worldview is.
41:55
And if you can open the possibilities, then that cone of future possibilities expands, right?
So dissolve the conditioning, create the fertile ground, open the overturn window and think about how you might move in a way where your feet might kiss the world and where you come into record relationship with life do.
42:12
You have a quote that you can share with their listeners.
You asked me this, so I did prepare one.
Oh, I thought you might.
Have It’s a quote from Nui Shwam Shama, which is an indigenous elder in the Andes.
Your people dreamed of huge factories, towering skyscrapers and countless cars like drain drops in this river.
42:31
Now you see that that dream has become a nightmare and the person interviewing this person asks so how can we change?
And he answers.
It’s very simple, we just have to change the dream.
It can be achieved in one generation.
We just have to plant a different seed and teach our children to dream new dreams well.
42:46
I’m covered in goosebumps.
Thank you for that.
Makes you want to cry.
Is there anything that I haven’t asked you that you’d like to tell our listeners?
Honestly, this conversation is complex and I recognize that it feels sometimes ominous and overwhelming and big.
43:03
But I hope in a way that what you heard is actually quite simple, is become more human.
Be a pulsing, vibrating, gorgeous human being.
Be that person and come to every conversation that you have from that place of wonder and knowing that something far more magical and beautiful could actually be versed and be willing to believe that you can change the system because you can you.
43:27
Can the time is now.
Yeah.
Thank you so much for joining us.
I appreciate your time and your thoughtfulness and your consideration and just your ideas and inspiration.
So onwards and upwards.
Thank you.
43:43
You’re so welcome, thank you for having me on the podcast.
Take care so next time.
Hey everyone, this is Philippa again.
I hope you enjoyed listening.
Now this is your chance to get involved with Ty.
If you’re looking to create better leaders, better companies and a better world, that’s just what we do by helping leaders tap into their greatest asset, their humanity.
44:07
We have a number of corporate programs that impact a range of people from individuals at a company to 500 people around a business.
Or check out my book, Return on Humanity, Leadership Lessons from All Corners of the World.
You’ll find the answers to how business can truly become a positive force while remaining at the forefront of competition.
44:30
You can find all the information you need on all of this at thaileadership.com.
Get in touch and I can explain more.
A huge thanks to Ben Naviera for Co producing this with me and for creating the music.
I hope we’ll meet up again soon.
