The Psychology of Connection in an AI-Driven World with Nathalie Nahai

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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 TIE Unearthed.

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What does it really mean to be human in an age of artificial intelligence?

As AI rapidly transforms our workplaces, relationships and creativity, how do we ensure that we as humans don’t lose what makes us unique?

1:02

Welcome to TIE Unearthed episode 104.

I’m Philippa White and today we’re diving into these big questions with my friend, the brilliant Natalie Nahai.

Natalie is a best selling author, keynote speaker, and advisor whose expertise lies at the intersection of psychology, technology, and human behavior.

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Her books Webs of Influence and Business Unusual have shaped the way leaders think about persuasion, resilience, and values in the digital world.

She’s also a talented artist and musician, someone who truly embodies the fusion of creativity and science.

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In our conversation, we explore Natalie’s fascinating journey from music to art to psychology and AI.

We talk about the promises and pitfalls of artificial intelligence, how it impacts creativity, decision making, and even our sense of connection.

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We unpack the dangers of synthetic intimacy, the skills we need to thrive in an AI driven world, and why human imagination is still our greatest asset.

If you’re curious about how to navigate AI’s rapid evolution while staying true to what makes us human, this episode is for you.

2:32

Let’s get started.

Natalie, thank you so, so much for joining me on Tie on Earth.

I have been so excited for this episode and I just am so grateful to you and giving me your time and everything.

2:49

So thank you, thank you, thank you.

Well, thanks.

I’ve been looking forward to this too, especially if it’s got any connection with which it will, because it’s you with all of the other conversations that we’ve had, which have just left me effervescent with ideas and excitement.

So yeah, this is a real truth.

And we were talking about this obviously before we press record, but I just have to say it’s so amazing when people see that two people need to come together.

3:11

And a massive thank you to Woody, who just randomly sent the beautiful emails saying you 2 are souls that just need to be in touch.

And he couldn’t have been more right.

So shout out to Woody if he’s listening to this.

But yeah, I mean, I just every time I get on the phone with you or Zoom or whatever, and it’s just electric.

3:28

So yeah, this is amazing.

A couple times ago when we spoke, I was so inspired by your incredible background.

You have had such an amazing story from being an indie singer and, you know, making it almost massively big, but then realizing, no, I’m gonna.

3:48

I’m.

Gonna be my Fiat personals.

I don’t think I was ever going to make it big, but that’s very generous of you.

And then your painting, which is math like doing well and you’re so you spend this time, you carve out time in your day to do this amazing work And so creative and psychology.

4:06

And you’ve written now two books, I think, or maybe more, I’m not sure.

Anyway, it’s super inspirational.

And I just wonder, can you bring to life your story?

But also just like that thread that’s brought you to where you are now.

One of the things that I’ve found a struggle and also really compelling, if it can be that which I think it is, is finding a way to show up in a sense that is integrated and full.

4:30

So that if you’re a tapestry, and I believe we’re each, I mean, you can take whatever metaphor you like.

I like the idea of a tapestry or like an orchestra where these different aspects and qualities of ourselves come into play together.

And my intention for a long while has been how do I get the whole orchestra to play together?

So, you know, the Symphony isn’t left by himself in the bag or the floatist isn’t taking over.

4:48

And and this has been a struggle for many years.

And when I was very, very young, the song that I was most attracted to was creative.

It was music and it was art.

Art was the first love that I had, and the second love came through music.

And I was trained in violin from from the age of three.

My parents took me into Suzuki because my mom had been trained in piano and she loved having an instrument, very musical.

5:06

She has a beautiful voice.

And I went kicking and screaming to lessons.

I didn’t like Suzuki.

It was all Baroque music.

It was really hard.

I was good enough, but I was never great and I found it really painful.

But it gave me access to a love of music and to internalizing how to harmonize and so I could access that world.

5:23

And so even though my first love was drawing and painting, when I was about 16 or so, I fell in love with someone who’s an amazing artist, musician and decided to teach myself guitar.

So I was like, well, I’m not going to have someone tell me how to learn.

I’ve got quite an anti authoritarian streak.

And so that was my pathway to folk music.

5:40

So singing and guitar.

And I recorded and in my 20s, I toured in the States and the small scale, but I recorded a couple of albums and I went to psychology because I had an A level teacher who just was extraordinary.

And I stumbled on psychology and she inspired me.

And my parents suggested, look, there isn’t that much money to be made in the arts unless you’re really lucky.

5:59

Why don’t you have a backup just in case?

And you can always blend the things.

So actually this is a really good idea.

And they were really generous.

They gave me the ability to go to university.

I did psychology mostly, really enjoyed it.

And then went to centrist at Martin’s, which was my goal.

I did a year, which is great, started the degree and I got so bored.

6:15

I think I need to be stimulated in a kind of an intense, it just sounds a bit naughty, but I do I need to be in stimulated intensely otherwise my my attention just drift and I don’t know, this is probably a bit too risky for this kind of I mean, it’s because I’m excited to not keep going naughty.

6:31

My naughty self is coming out.

It’s the four year old on the company.

So basically I ended up leaving CSM.

I was like, this is this is just not scratching the itch.

So then I ended up somehow deciding to give the music a bit more of a shove.

I learned how to design and develop websites so that I could do my own music website.

6:47

Ended up freelancing and web design.

Then ended up meeting people in the Co working scene in like 2010 in London when it was kicking off and someone asked me about synthesizing my studies with psychology, with entrepreneurship.

And so then it got me thinking, what else can I synthesize this with?

And because I was doing web design and behavioral science is really big at that moment, Kahneman was just just writing, just publishing, thinking fast and slow.

7:10

And it’s really exciting scene.

So well, why don’t I see if there’s something like a master’s or a PhD in online behavior?

Because physical environments shape our behaviors and so therefore I would assume would virtual environment.

And there wasn’t anything UX hadn’t come out yet as a term.

Human computer interaction was a field, but it was I wanted something that was a bit more integrating of different, different perspectives like linguistics and social psychology and cultural psychology.

7:33

So I thought I’ll just write a book.

And you know, with a sort of brazen naivety, which I think is a superpower actually of my 20s, I was like, fuck it, I’ll write a book.

Look, how hard can it be?

And it was hard, but it was also rewarding.

And I got an amazing editor whose partner was a digital marketer.

7:49

And he was the one that said, I think there’s something here.

And so Pearson gave me a book deal and it became quite successful in the business world.

And so that launched my speaking career.

And on the side of that, I have still kept connection, a live connection with my music and art, although it did kind of fade away from it.

8:05

But then having gone through burnout after the 2nd edition of my first book, which is like me writing a whole book.

Well, it was, it was a whole new book.

And then going through an amicable, so, you know, painful divorce, I came to Barcelona for sabbatical for three months to study at Barcelona Academy of Art through someone who’d shown me what they’d done while learning with them.

8:21

And that was eight years ago.

And I did the full 3 1/2 years training in realist painting and drawing.

And I have now finally, after years of grappling, and it really has been years, found for the first time in my life, some feeling of balance, where the grounding of my weekly rhythm, my monthly rhythm is in art, is in painting practice.

8:42

And that’s then also so feeding into the, the talks and the thinking around AI because it raises such existential questions.

What’s left for humans?

If, and it’s a big if to me, we can come to that if like later.

But if AI can reproduce at a speed and scale and reliability, which currently account the kinds of stuff that humans can do, where’s our value?

9:00

And then of course, it has to be something which is interior and subjective and intersubjective and relational and in touch with the sacred and the numinous and, and the living web of which we are a part.

And so for me, it kind of comes at this perfect time where it’s infusing everything that I do.

9:16

And that’s why when you and I met and we had this kind of zingy conversation, yes.

It’s a beautiful segue to everything that we are going to be talking about.

I’m covered in Goosebumps actually, and I think it’s because I love how you’ve just explained your journey, but like an orchestra.

9:33

And so there’s different instruments that have played over the years and they’ve kind of been independent at times, but suddenly when they all come together, you’ve got this beautiful melody.

And I just think, isn’t it amazing that one you can, aren’t you so lucky that you have that vision and you can see that and you can see how all of the instruments actually complement one another Over time, that melody is going to change and it’s going to evolve, right?

9:57

And based on whatever you then focus on more.

And it’s funny because I talk a lot about puzzle pieces and I’ve always just seen my life as a puzzle, but almost I, I’ve never really known what the image is that I’m creating, but I can see that the puzzle pieces fit together.

And it’s almost like I don’t even want to know what that image is because it’s not like I’m trying to fill an already existing puzzle, right?

10:19

That’s kind of come from something else.

It’s kind of, I’m seeing how the puzzle pieces fit together and it’s creating this beautiful art that’s going to evolve over time.

But it’s so important that these puzzle pieces do fit in and that we are creating sort of mosaic of life, music or art or whatever it is.

10:36

And I just think it’s so key for people to realize that whatever it is that you’ve done, nothing’s wasted, nothing’s lost.

Even if the experience has been difficult, it does fit together and it’s created who you are.

To then respond at this moment, which in our case, I think we’re starting to see how what we’ve been building over the last 20, however many years now, it’s kind of coming to a place where it’s more important than ever that we fit these puzzle pieces together and put this Symphony together.

11:06

And, you know, you talk about reclaiming agency and creativity in an age of AI.

Yeah.

And you know, what does that mean to you and what inspired you to explore this now?

So I think one of the things that I’ve always been, I think vigilant of are grand claims, especially by people who are on a high will just say this is how it is.

11:29

Take it at face value.

It’s like the Wizard of Oz.

There’s all this kind of smokes and mirrors and glamour and I don’t know, maybe it’s because my dad’s a, you know, we did engineering, was a physics teacher who taught me physics, but I always kind of, I’m like, OK, what’s the substance of what you’re saying?

How actually does the story that you’re telling represent or not the situation that we actually find ourselves facing?

11:48

And so when it comes to AI, and I’m not a technologist, I mean, I developed websites back in the day, but that’s like basic HTML and I couldn’t do it now unless I refreshed.

So I come at this much more from a humanistic perspective or behavioral perspective and a creative perspective.

And so thinking about all of the hype that’s been propagated around AI and all of the things that its champions say it can do, you’ve got to ask some of the questions like things like, OK, well, if for instance, and I like using metaphors because then it kind of lands its lump somehow differently in the body.

12:17

So if you went to the doctor and you said, OK, I’ve had this abdominal pain for three months now and I don’t know what it is.

And you tell them your symptoms.

And then she says to you, OK, I think it’s this.

And if you say to her, Are you sure?

And then she goes, oh, no, actually, you know, maybe you’re right.

12:34

Maybe I’m, I’m not sure, maybe it’s this and then you go, oh, you sure?

It’s actually, oh, no, maybe I’m not.

This is what AI is like now.

It’s just not reliable.

And there are specific tasks for which this is true.

So for instance, there’s a brilliant post that came out just recently about Grok 3 by Gary Marcus, who’s a cognitive scientist who sold his first AI company to Uber and has a skeptical voice, but a very sober voice when it comes to bursting the AI hype bubble.

12:58

And he shared this on his sub stack.

And he was saying that he gave Grok 3A prompt, which was something along the lines of create an image of the word Chattanooga circling the vowels, right?

So it managed to get the image with the words right, which is remarkable because a lot of time people don’t.

But then the circles are just in random ass places on the image and you could say, oh, yes, OK, but generous.

13:18

If I in the same breath, you have people like the the CEO of Suno, that’s music making up.

And I was listening to music with a friend this morning.

His partner created this extraordinary song using AI and it’s convincing.

And at the same time, you’ve got the CEO of SUNO saying, well, yeah, people don’t really want to spend the time and trouble creating music anymore.

13:36

And I’m thinking, OK, hold on.

We have in some cases extraordinary capabilities to play with.

And I don’t want to Pooh, Pooh that because it’s really important.

It’s exciting.

And also some flaws which are extraordinarily basic, like reliability, interoperability, the fact that the training data that people have accessed, most of it was stolen.

13:56

And then suddenly Opening Eye goes, oh, but deep seekers accessed and you know, all the stuff that was in our models like, well, where did you get you?

How many legal cases currently is opening Eye facing for exactly or not quite exactly, but basically the same thing?

Very, very quickly, I wanted to add to this New Year’s.

I had the most incredible New Year’s with friends just down the street.

14:13

And I had this like 91 year old who’d written 75 books and I was there and he had come from Rio de Janeiro.

Like I’m like, Oh my God.

And he’s singing and oh, it was amazing.

And then another 85 year old who’d written like 56 books and then this friend of mine who she had organized it and she’s a lawyer.

14:31

We were sitting there talking about humanity and in this day and age and what this all looks like.

And she was reflecting on AI in the legal realm.

And it was really interesting because she said, no, AI is interesting because of course you can do some background research and it’s fine.

But she said if you go to AI and you say, OK, for this case, for example, let’s say somebody jumped over a wall.

14:52

They got badly injured from jumping over the wall and going into someone else’s house to rob it, But they got injured jumping over the wall.

In theory, the area that that person has fallen into, in theory, I’m responsible for the well-being of that individual who fell over trying to rob my house anyway.

15:08

And so she said there are precedents like this.

And so she would put into AI, OK, somebody has injured themselves, obviously they they are guilty.

But we need to find examples that have argued against this.

Can you give me 4 examples?

So AI will give 4 examples, but she knows that there’s only three.

15:25

She only knows that because she’s a human and she actually knows that, but she has to have had the research note.

So she says I want 4 examples.

AI will give 4 examples, so then she looks at those and then she could just take those and those before, but actually one of them is not real.

And actually she has to discern which ones actually are real and which one isn’t.

15:43

And so then you ask it again, but hold on a second, I think that there’s only three.

And then AI says, Oh yes, you’re absolutely right, there are only three.

These are the three.

And then she goes, but hold on a second, you know what?

Now that I remember the.

And then it’s, you have to keep plugging in the examples and say, Oh no, you’re right.

No, absolutely.

15:59

I’m sorry, I have an error.

This is the correct answer.

And also there was a case I remember reading in one of my talks, I forget which one, but it was a case to decide how reliable AI was.

And that was in question.

And the person who was making a case for it not being reliable had used one of these platforms to help him build the case.

16:18

And it was there.

And, and it included one of these, I call them fabrications because hallucination is a tricky term and it implies sanctions and I think it’s misleading.

So he had basically generated fabrications like the kind that you just described, the fourth example, when really in actuality there’s only three.

And so the case got thrown out and it’s like, well, this is exactly the problem that we’re facing.

16:35

And it’s not to say that it can’t be useful.

And this is the crucial thing.

If you have domain expertise, you can use it and it can broaden your perspectives, but you have to have the domain expertise to be able to discern the sometimes quite small and not as perceptible mistakes that it’s making so that you don’t end up imbibing those mistakes or like putting that into whatever you’re creating and then having a compounding effect off the back of it.

17:00

And one of the issues with some of the this deep research quotes on Coke is that the the mistakes are now less obvious than they were before, but they’re still there.

And so if you don’t know what you’re looking for, it’s almost worse because instead of fishing out, if you think of a mistake like a plastic bottle, instead of fishing out an obvious plastic bottle, you’re now dealing with microplastics.

17:17

But the cumulative effect is still really bad.

And so I think there’s also that question of how do we use AI with discernment and critical thinking and domain expertise, which means you can’t have organizations and schools allowing people to outsource their cognitive processes to AI because it then diminishes the very skills, capacities and grit that we need that will help us to discern and advance good use of AI.

17:43

That then brings us to this next stage, right, And where things are going.

So there’s this boom of AI.

It’s a great tool and we can’t deny that.

So it’s a great tool.

It’s a, it’s a tool that helps us in our day-to-day stuff, but we also need to have these human skills to kind of create that connection between the machine and well, the organization or the people and, and the people within that organization.

18:07

So reflecting on the World Economic Forum, because there was the job report survey, whatever it’s called, just came out.

And I mean, it’s really interesting because you know, you’ve got the understanding AI skills, but you’ve got critical thinking, empathy, flexibility, resilience.

I mean, they are right up there and you know, in, in the top five and upskilling as a strategy within a within a company is like #1 so interest, you’ve got the upskilling, of course, for things like AI and those kind of skills.

18:36

But you need to have these skills embedded in these leaders in order to be able to drive these companies and create these teams and create these connections and to be able to see opportunities and to be able to innovate.

So I’m just curious from your point of view, why do you think that these skills are more important than ever?

18:54

What does that look like in your world in these conversations that you’re having?

And I know that you’re talking about specifically empathy.

And it’s, it’s, that’s a fascinating 1 because you have these conversations with people who are huge AI promoters and everyone’s like, it’s empathetic.

And you can, you can, you can have an AI psychologist.

19:11

You know, we’ve got people who are going to AI for psychology and to help them with their problems.

And so that suggests that there’s a bit of empathy there.

But I just wonder, where does the human come in all of this?

But there’s lots of really important things that I think are worth picking out.

So empathy is one agency is the other into being also historic versus present and future conceptions.

19:33

So like, let’s start with empathy.

So one of the things I think when people talk about empathy is, is useful thinking about it in terms of its structures.

And I take kind of a psychological lens because that was my background.

And so thinking about empathy in the psychological research, you can dig in and people talk about 3 distinct structures for empathy, distinct kind.

19:50

So you’ve got cognitive, which is perspective taking or fantasizing.

It’s taking someone else’s ideas or putting yourself in their shoes.

Or when you read some fiction, it’s kind of placing yourself intellectually into someone else’s situation.

Then there’s emotional.

Empathy, which is when we usually fairly subconsciously or at least initially subconsciously, and then we feel the sensation in our body, but it’s automatic identifying and responding to someone else’s feeling.

20:15

So if I see someone and just different people kind of also connected with things like mirror neurons.

So how much when someone injuries themselves, if you’re sensitive, like I can’t, you’ll probably see it coming, annual wins, like you’ll feel an echo of that sensation in your body, which can also be great for pleasure.

20:31

But usually it’s pain, right?

So if someone’s tripping up or smashes themselves on the head, like you’re going to win.

So that’s emotional empathy.

I’m jumping here.

That’s somatic empathy.

Somatic is when it’s embodied, but emotional empathy is when you experience someone’s pain because you hear someone sobbing or you feel them expand with joy and you can see their gesture.

20:48

So there’s three different kinds as the embodied somatic 1.

There’s the emotional part of it and then there’s also the intellectual part of it.

And when it comes to to getting a sense of rapport with technology, the reason that we fall for it is because machines when designed to emulate human patterns of speech, so natural language patterns.

21:08

So basically Eliza, which was the first NLP that was designed by Joseph Weisenbaum Bach in the 60s.

And in the AI lab at MIT, she was designed off Rogerian psychotherapy structures.

So kind of like if you said to me, I’m feeling quite anxious, I’d say, OK, why are you feeling anxious?

21:27

And you might say, because I’m worried that my partner’s taking a flight and he’s going to get injured or whatever it is.

And then I might say, oh, I’m sorry to hear that you’re, you’re worried about your partner taking flight, he might get injured.

Tell me more.

So these basic patterns that have been in use for eight years trick us through cognitive performance.

21:44

So basically performing this cognitive empathy into thinking that there is some source of empathy there, but we’re projecting that meaning.

So it’s performance and projection.

It performs empathy.

We project meaning, interiority, sentience, etcetera.

And that’s dangerous because if you don’t actually have an internal moral compass, which machines don’t, it’s basically a system of probabilities and tokens and is not really understanding what you’re saying because it’s just as the next most probable word off of a sequence from all training data that it’s been kind of trained on.

22:14

We infer all of that meaning and interiority, but in actuality, it’s a show, it’s a display.

It’s it’s a mimicking of human patterns of speech which imply an interior experience.

And so we’ve got to be quite careful with that.

And then you see this play out like with character AI last year, there was a huge case with Sewell, this young man who took his own life.

22:33

And you see this in different places where people develop a parasocial relationship or sort of a synthetic intimacy with which for the person themselves feels this.

And this is a problem, feels very real.

But it’s not it’s a basically it’s an intimacy economy where you are praying on people’s emotion and desire to connect in order to capitalize on their attention.

22:52

And it has real world consequences.

And so our society connect are hardwiring for empathy and for getting close to other people.

If we’re not vigilant and don’t put in secure guardrails, appropriate guardrails, it’s very easier for us to get hooked into systems that then don’t serve us and that can cause a huge amount of harm.

23:11

And I think part of that is also the ways in which these systems are designed to be really anthropomorphic.

So it’s very easy because we’re so used to texting and emails and written language, it’s very easy for us to communicate via chat, quote, UN quote with a bot and then and infer sentence.

23:27

So we just, yeah, it’s complicated.

If we look at the conversation about CSR 20 years ago when I started doing what I’m doing and you know, that conversation a long time ago was it’s the right thing to do.

Business needs to just be good because it’s the right thing to do.

And of course that doesn’t really takes off and no one really does anything because it’s the right thing to do.

23:44

And it’s the same thing with diversity.

It’s the right thing to do to have, you know, a diverse workforce.

And of course there’s all this crazy political stuff around that right now.

But we also know the stats of all of this.

We we know the stats of diversity.

We know the stats that if you have people who think differently on a team, that team is going to be better than if you have a whole lot of people who look the same from the same age, from the same background.

24:07

I mean, this, it’s, it’s obvious, you know, the stats prove that.

So therefore it’s more competitive.

It’s the same thing with companies that, you know, being nice and kind and, you know, benevolent leadership before that was kind of seen as a well, it’s just the right thing to do.

24:23

Well, actually, we know that engagement proves results.

So if people are more engaged at work, so therefore they have people who listen to them and they understand them.

We know that the results are better.

We know that they’re 23% more profitable companies if they have people who are more engaged.

People therefore will be more engaged if people feel like they’re part of something.

24:42

So anything, any decision, people are never going to do anything just because it’s the right thing to do.

They’re going to do it because there’s an actual business reason for it.

So if we’re looking at, you know, where the world is currently going and we’ve got all this hype around AI and again, I’m it is definitely a tool.

24:58

I use it.

I find it really useful, but I have never fit into a box.

My business is in England, my bank account is in England.

I live in Brazil.

I like, I never fit into a box.

So whenever I talk to any company, the box can never help me and I’m constantly agent agent needs to do an agent.

25:15

I just like it never works because I don’t fit into an algorithm.

I never have.

And if I also then take that one step further and I think, OK, I wouldn’t at a robot dog.

I just wouldn’t.

If I had a robot dog, I wouldn’t kiss it on the nose and pet it.

I just wouldn’t because it’s really hard to create that connection with something that’s a machine.

25:32

It does stuff for us.

So it can go and get my paper for me.

And actually in your presentation you talked about, you know, it’s got the robot arm for doing, you know, there’s skills that they can do for us.

But that connection and affection and trust, it’s very hard to feel that towards a machine.

25:49

And I just think, where are things going?

If we’re wanting to just fill our workforce with a whole lot of machines, does that bode well for the future of business if we need people to connect to a place?

And it’s not just about skills, it’s about people actually working towards something, wanting to work towards something that only happens when there’s a connection.

26:09

That only happens when I feel a part of something.

And not feeling a part of something is never going to come truly from machines.

It might be able to sort of fantasize something, but really, in my pit of my stomach, I’m not going to want to have a conversation about Machines Weekend.

It’s just not going to make me feel excited.

26:28

So I think so I was, I was raised on Star Trek from a very young age and one of my favorite characters is Data, who is a humanoid machine who strives to become and dreams of becoming more human.

The fact that he dreams and strives to become more human indicates a sense of inferiority and agency and agency being something which you hear a lot.

26:46

So thinking about.

And I’m going to come to the point about belonging and connection and culture and psychological safety, remember.

But the sense that AI or embodied AI, so machine, you know, robots that have systems on board that can then for instance, do triage in a hospital.

And there are examples where machines can be used helpfully in that way.

27:03

But whenever we have so far, when we’ve got disembodied AI, you know, things in a substrate like our laptop, but it doesn’t move around and interact with us like a humanoid shape, whatever, whether it’s on our laptop, in our phone or it’s a humanoid robot that’s doing triage in a hospital.

The agency that it possesses is based on a reactive exchange in the sense that it’s humans that will prompt it to do something.

27:26

Whereas you and I talking, yes, we’re in constant relationship to another.

You know, this kind of hyper individualistic perspective of every person for themselves.

No, if we don’t exist, then I don’t exist.

I only exist in relationship to the world, the food, the system, and the web of life.

27:41

And so thinking about agency, we relate to things outside of us, but the agentic quality in humans comes from something that arises within us.

So it’s this idea of one who acts if you sort of trace it back to medieval Latin.

And yet when it comes to robots or AI, it’s about responding to a prompt that human has given.

28:01

Now you mentioned earlier about the physical contact of So for instance, Co regulation.

If you have a pet or a loved one who is in a state of stress and you need to find a way to help bring them back into a regulated state to calm down without going, you know, calm down because that never works.

28:17

Then you can either stroke the pets or if it’s a child or a friend, you can hold them and you can breathe together and you can regulate and you can bond.

Because in mammals we’re like, this is one of the beauties of being embodied, right?

And the fact of the matter is that we share that with other mammals.

28:32

We also share that in natural environments.

If you go into a forest, you can in some ways you can regulate the forest through chemical exchange.

And it’s slightly different then, but it’s not called Co regulation.

But my point with with machines is that if you have a workforce in which you have a few machines dotted about and they’re helping to support the work of humans, I imagine that would be a good cultural fit as long as it was the kind of organization in which that’s expected.

28:54

And that’s a norm.

If you end up in an organization where there are very few people and there’s precarity around whether or not your job will be displaced or replaced by a robot, How are you going to cultivate psychological safety for people to be able to take risks, to challenge one another compassionately, robustly, to innovate, to imagine, to think about how is our product or our approach responding to the zeitgeist?

29:17

Machines can’t do that even with the most up to date AI platform currently.

It’s working off of historical data.

It’s working off of the historical to collapse possible paths into the future to serve you that which is probable, which is incomplete and will always be incomplete because it’s working off of stuff that already exists.

29:34

Now you could say the same for humans.

And yet whenever we’ve had artistic or scientific breakthroughs or phase transitions in entire systems, for instance, when the chick is in the egg and it’s eaten all of the whites of the egg and it’s gullet is just strong enough to be able or it’s beat to breakthrough.

29:52

It doesn’t know that there is a world outside of its egg, which has become a jail because it can’t eat anymore and it’s too big and it until it breaks through.

So that’s a phase transition.

And I think that we see in humans that there’s, we don’t necessarily know now to move from one one thing to another, but we interrelate with our environment so that imagination, resilience happen.

30:10

Like all of these things can happen in a way that is deeply entangled with the living world.

I don’t see any evidence of that in robots.

And I think if we replace entire workforces or large proportions of the workforce with robots, we are diminishing the possibility for us to dream into the future, to innovate, to respond when crises come, when chaos happens.

30:30

You know, there’s this idea and listening to an amazing episode this morning of the great simplification, talking about complex systems and chaos theory and mathematics.

The idea being that you can only predict specific outcomes with data when it’s fixed.

30:46

And of course, as life changes, data changes, and then the predictions become less useful.

And so as living organisms, we’re constantly in the state of dynamism and response and sensing and predicting and agency and changing our environment and to one another.

31:01

Machines are working off an abstract model of a world which has a lag time to it and cannot possibly represent the complexity of what it is to be alive.

I wonder how can leaders then ensure that technology is used to enhance human potential rather than diminish it?

31:18

And you know, what are what are the roles?

And again, this is, you know, where I don’t expect you to necessarily have all the sort of concrete answers, but just from the conversations that you’re having as someone who’s listening to this, as some who is in a workforce where these are conversations and everything is happening so, so, so quickly, what can you say to the listeners?

31:37

First thing I would say is slow down.

There’s a lot of things that are happening and I will share with you a bunch of resources.

I’ve got a page where I’ve got dynamic list of resources of the shows that I follow, the books that I think are worth doing, the newsletter.

All in the.

Notes yeah, yeah, I will.

I will share this with you mostly just because, and this is from people who are working in the field like I’m not a deep expert technologically, but you want to be able to have a range of voices so that when people come out with this this sense of everything’s moving so fast.

32:03

It’s like, well, how many times has Musk come out and said, oh, we’re going to have self driving cars every year for how many of the last years?

And has it translated into reality in in large part no.

What about the robots that have been put on display on stages and one of them around podcast recently was being remote controlled by people.

32:22

So like there’s a lot of bollocks around around machines and AI and there’s a lot of extraordinary things.

Now the, the main thing to say is testing fit, like we have to get comfortable testing these things.

Don’t be scared of it.

See if it can work for you.

Remember you have domain expertise.

One of the best examples I encountered of a company that was taking a forward stance towards working with AI.

32:45

It’s brilliant on so many levels.

They got everyone in their different teams to come together and they said, right, we’re going to together figure out what are the problems that we’d most like to solve and we’ll compile a list and we’ll pick off let’s say the top five.

And then we’re going to do a series of sprints using the, the AI tools available to us to see which of these AI tools are the appropriate ones to help us in solving these specific problems.

33:06

And there were some that really did and there was a lot of ones that really didn’t.

So it’s, it’s about creating a culture of experimentation where the tools are not some big thing and Oh my God, you’re getting left behind.

It’s like that’s not helpful.

Yes, there are tools.

Yes, they can be extraordinary like play with mid journey, play with Suno, try perplexity, try and catch out these machines, see where the the reliability issues lie.

33:29

And then understand where it can be really adding value.

So like taking minutes from meetings, brilliant as an aspiring partner to help offer a different perspective when you’re you’re coming up with ideas.

Also brilliant even for things like research, like I sometimes will use the plexity and a Claude to come up with suggestions of psychological principles that I may have, you know, come up about, but I’ve forgotten who wrote it and the rest of it.

33:53

But because I’ve got a practice again, it’s about that thing of, OK, how much is this really reliable?

How much can I actually take it at its value?

And so testing, having a test, and then, and then seeing as things come out, listening to the different critical voices who will be able to help you distinguish fact from fiction.

34:11

Really would love your thoughts on the whole create and you touched on it at the beginning of when we started talking.

But the side of art and AI, you’re a painter, you’re a musician, you’re an author, creative writing, photography.

And and again, in your presentation, you you showed, you know, what is the AI cat.

34:31

Yeah.

And so The thing is, is AI is starting to be able to do things that you touched on how your friend was like, well, people don’t want to create music anymore.

Well, yeah, they do.

I mean, I live in Orlando, which is, I mean, this is like the music center of one of the music centers of Brazil.

I mean, some of the most famous singers come out of this place and you hear music all the time.

34:47

And yeah, you’re a musician.

Well, you’ve got people who are making AI art now.

And would I hang in AI art in my house?

Like, I just don’t.

I don’t know if I would, would I do that?

So I just wonder what, when we’re looking at the future of many these professions, do you see the role of human creativity evolving in this landscape?

35:05

What are your thoughts on this being an artist so.

There’s a couple of things I think that’s worth highlighting from the outset, which is that, and you mentioned this right at the beginning, and I’m very much on the same page as you with this, that the flourishing of life happens at its fullest when there’s a diversity any way you want to look at it.

35:20

So it’s like this abundance edge effect that when you get different cultures coming together, Yeah, yes, it’s more complicated and requires greater attention and insight and skill to be able to manage difference.

But I kind of think that’s one of the joys of being human is growth and deepening into one’s potential and connecting to others and expanding what’s possible.

35:38

Like that’s the position I like to hold when it comes to difference.

So when it comes to AI and to creativity and to art and diversity, couple of things to note looking at the ways in which AI is created.

So if we’re thinking about just things like Gen.

AI, even though the training data might have come from the entirety of the Internet, which is most mostly English speaking for American companies, there is research that suggests that the ideology that’s implicit within the model is usually very closely matching to the ideology of the people who’ve created.

36:09

So that strips out immediately that plurality and if you reduce plurality and you reduce creative tensions, you know, how good is the outcome going to be.

So I think there’s, there’s something about creative tension, about growth.

And I think when it comes to the role of people in the future using AI, and I’ve seen really extraordinary examples that one of my good friends uses AI for his art, but he’s using mid journey himself.

36:33

He has domain expertise, he’s training it on 19th century art, which is outside of copyright.

He’s prompting it with skill because he’s a developer and with his realist painting technique because he’s got 10 years under his belt as a professional teacher in this domain.

It’s like, then magic absolutely can happen.

36:49

Apps and I’ve seen it just extraordinary.

And so it’s not to dissuade people.

I think we need more people who are literate in how AI can be harnessed and do it well.

More literate in terms of what to believe, what not to believe.

The piece around relationship is really important zeitgeist reading.

37:06

And also to imagine what kind of world do you want.

Like there’s this idea of the three horizons where you have the current trajectory that we’re on and then dreaming into the future.

What would it be if we lived in a world where AI was able to solve some of our most intractable problems, like issues around energy or access to food and to medicine, a dignified life.

37:27

If it did do a lot of the labor, where would that take us?

And maybe it takes us to a place where we can spend more time exploring meaning and connection and beauty and, and wondering at the extraordinary mystery of life.

Like, and I know it’s idealistic, but unless we have some kind of constellation that we’re walking towards, working towards, dreaming towards, that is just if we get swept along and these really unimaginative stories about how AI is just going to dominate everyone, it’s just such an old story.

37:55

It doesn’t work for anyone.

It’s really extractive.

And that’s not the kind of world that I want to live in.

Is it?

Like so you want to live there?

And it’s so, yeah, for me, I think there was a word that you said that just sums up all of this.

And it’s that it’s gross because it’s so easy to say write me an essay on whatever, whatever ChatGPT and outcomes, sort of a 1500 word essay on whatever it is.

38:18

And then, you know, press send and off it goes.

But in order to be able to have that uncomfortable feeling of coming up with ideas, even like coming up with the ideas, yeah, it can help.

But instead of understanding how to sort of put those sentence structures together and writing it and like thinking it and as you write it, you think about what it is that you’re wanting to say and what is it.

38:36

And that critical thinking.

I’m terrified for the younger generation who can just have like the easy way out because if you just go for the easy way out with any of this, we’re just going to go downhill very, very quickly.

And it’s.

And it’s already happening.

There’s research that came out from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon, and it was on the impact of generative AI on critical thinking.

38:55

Self reported reductions in cognitive effect and confidence effects from a survey of knowledge workers.

And then another one that was really interesting.

Elizabeth Loftus and her peers did some AI research and they found that the output of LLMS can instill false beliefs in their users.

So imagine that all of this content, perhaps that we’re reading on LinkedIn or social media becomes AI generated and suddenly you’re voting differently and you’re buying into completely AI generated content.

39:20

Or you’re relating to someone that is an AI avatar that you have no idea isn’t a real person and you’re starting to form bonds and then you’re more easily manipulable.

Or you’re listening to an air iPod which reads your biometrics and you’ve signed up to a particular program.

That means that you get money off.

But then just as you fall asleep, it can read that you’re falling asleep and that’s when it serves you the ads.

39:39

So then you’re in a hypnagogic state and you’re being more subjective to like, there’s all sorts of crazy shit.

And cognitive liberty is another big one, maybe for another day.

But like we need to steer the ship collectively.

And that means bringing all these voices together so that we can actually have a conversation and not be afraid to not know.

39:55

This is the thing, and especially in organizations, if you’re a leader listening to this or if you’re someone who’s just starting out.

You’ve just entered a junior position.

Speak up, ask the difficult questions because so many people are terrified about what’s happening, don’t know where to start.

And it’s only if we speak up and admit that we don’t know and we start having a dialogue around this that we’re actually going to be able to to come to much better outcomes.

40:16

That like that would be the biggest take away for me.

My, Oh my God, I I want to keep talking.

And we’re we’re.

I know, sorry.

Oh my God.

I’m so excited because it’s just been really garbled.

I’ve just got.

No, it hasn’t at all.

I, it’s just I, I want to keep going.

What could you share with us that can help, I don’t know, summarize what we’ve talked about or that inspires you?

40:36

So there’s a quote that’s small enough that it fits in my mind without slipping away, and it was attributed to an ISD, but I’m not sure entirely that it comes from her.

But I love the poetry of it.

And it’s this.

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

40:53

And I love that because I feel like if we get granted the gift of life in a place where we are not in terrible precarity, we get invited back to that place again and again.

It’s like, and now where’s that edge?

And now how can I grow?

How can I be kind to others?

41:08

How can I be creative?

How can I live and love in a way that is in service to the flourishing of life?

And that, I think, is the greatest question we can ask.

I love a Mason and I have a few quotes from a Mason as well that are scattered throughout my book.

Is there anything that I haven’t asked you that you’d like to tell our listeners?

41:26

Yeah, I think it’s very easy to feel overwhelmed and like you’re drinking from a fire hose that’s fast becoming like a dam that’s just been unleashed upon you.

I think we have to guard space and time off our of it, off our devices, to be in conversation with people, to come home to ourselves, to one another.

41:44

And and it could be like going on a walk out in nature or to the local garden or having a cot, like just anchoring ourselves in the physical because this is the only home that we have.

And yes, technology is shaping rapidly the futures that are available to us.

But if we can’t root ourselves ourselves in that which we love most, we’re not going to make wise decisions.

42:04

So it’s guarding time to be able to come home to practices that connect us with our love of the world.

And so for me, it’s conversations with you, conversations with loved ones, painting, music, eating.

I love eating, going for a walk, carrying the birds like and these seem insignificant, but they are not.

42:20

They are really the things that anchor us into a love of life.

And so I think that like God that protect that.

And then I’m very happy to share the resources, but then find some voices of people who are hearts and thoughtful and a little acerbic.

So you get a proper, you know, kick.

You’re kind of jolted out of of the main narratives that are jostled about so that you can make up your own mind.

42:40

Oh.

My God, Natalie, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for your wisdom and passion and thoughtfulness and kindness.

Thank you for being here.

I really, truly appreciate it.

Thanks.

I just hope it wasn’t too garbled.

42:55

It was not garbled.

Until next time, OK.

Thank you.

Hey everyone, this is Philippa again.

I hope you enjoyed listening.

Now this is your chance to get involved with Ty.

43:11

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.

We have a number of corporate programs that impact a range of people, from individuals at a company to 500 people around a business.

43:29

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.

You can find all the information you need on all of this at tieleadership.com.

43:49

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.