Let’s talk ai and digital technology again.  Maybe I should write it ‘Ai’ because it’s all artificial and not intelligent.  Every one of you should be alert to what’s going on.  I’ve been reading, thinking, listening to some smart people. Here’s my advice for everyone, especially the “non-techy” among us.

Nobody can predict the direction of ai.  Let go of the idea that you’re going to figure out where this is all going.  That’s not your job.  Pay attention without being anxious.  Use ai where it’s helpful.  Experiment and evaluate.  If an ai assistant or tool can improve your work, use it to improve your work. Don’t automatically trust an ai.  “A chatbot is not an oracle. It’s a statistics engine that creates sentences that sound accurate.” (Neal Stephenson, brilliant sci-fi author)  Test everything, hold fast to what is good. 

I can confidently say that the idea of uploading your consciousness to ‘the cloud’ so you’ll live forever will not happen.  Why? No one has successfully defined consciousness in engineering terms that could be implemented.  Also, I’ve worked with Google, Amazon, and Microsoft cloud services –oh boy — I’d never trust them to manage the technology platform of my ‘consciousness.’  I’m not even sure how they would price such a service.

‘Uploading your consciousness’ is already happening in this way:  At least half our population seems to have abdicated their critical thinking to somebody or some service online.  A friend says I’m half-right, they’ve only outsourced their thinking, but I see a full-on abdication.  I observe people surrendering their creativity and curiosity to a “Great and Powerful Oz!”  I don’t want you to be in that group.

There are many roles and some jobs manipulating data and information which will be largely replaced by ai assistants.  Once again, we’ll go through business shifts which will forever alter what will be life-wage paying jobs.  Internet-based commerce obliterated travel agencies and newspapers. Yet travel and news consumption are at all-time highs.  Film cameras are a rare specialty item, yet people take more pictures than ever.  Algorithms replaced thousands of stock traders, banking employees, and financial advisors, but there’s more money movement than ever. We pack so many services into our glowing pocket screen devices that no one can sell old devices like a car GPS unit anymore.  [The component that makes GPS in your phone possible is about the size of a grain of rice.]  Internet-based commerce destroyed the marketing strategies of the TV age, and now ai will destroy most of the wage-paying roles in the digital marketing age.  I know a business owner who replaced his 5-person virtual digital marketing team with a collection of ai bots he created using a $20/month GPT4 subscription.  He’s no  tech wizard, either. Business and commerce will expand, but the jobs will dramatically shift for every role which is at least 60% digital.   Here is an interesting milestone:  Amazon’s Kindle submission process now requires you to state if you used ai to create your book. 

This is an era where people will figure out that they’re in a different business now.  We’ve seen emergent economic systems many times in history. The dominant passenger train businesses in the early 1900’s didn’t make the transition to cars and airplanes, because they saw themselves in the train business, not the people transportation business. These ai tools will trigger new transitions, and anyone clinging too tightly to their business model might find themselves holding a scrapbook of what once was.  Much of the initial profit will be made by people selling the ‘picks and shovels’ to the gold miners dreaming of the big strike. Then the business ecosystems accelerate and grow, and new profit sources become available.  

Maybe some people will have enough smarts with authority (few in authority have the smarts) to restrict or shape what happens with ai.  But for you and me?  Forget about stopping ai.  That’s not our job.  Our job is to figure out what we will do, as individuals, in our families and communities, in our businesses, next.

The history of technological advances is that we see the benefits quickly, and then it takes a much longer time to understand the downsides. The inevitable consequence of ai tools, like all technologies, will be more extreme 80/20 distributions.  Unequal distributions will continue.  I am not saying the bottom gets worse; on the contrary, technological change is a tide that lifts all boats, and is a dominant factor in why the poor today are economically richer than ever before in history.  I’m optimistic that ai tutors can democratize education opportunities for more people worldwide.  The unequal part is the top, growing faster than ever.  The evolving ai toolset amplifies the money, influence, power, and capability of some much more than others. 

[Small sidebar:  Are you teaching your children about 80/20 thinking and behaving?  We either master 80/20 or it masters us.]

You might think, “But these tools are buggy.  ChatGPT hallucinates.” Yep.  Do you remember what the first iPod and iPhone were like, before there was a universe of apps, with the first-generation camera?  Remember what open-source software was like in the 1990’s?  The Amazon of 1996 is a tiny speck of what Amazon is today, an organization so digitized that an employee directly interacting with a customer is a defect that must be fixed with a digital solution.  There is every economic incentive to make ai tools better. 

In general, the better the ai tools become, the more human we must become.  Let us continue to be savvy people using ai as tools lest 99% of us become tools for those exploiting ai.

We’re past a point where we must re-think privacy (again).  The metadata of everything we’re doing online continues to accumulate and will be exploited.  We can’t be foolish – don’t share information with an ai that you wouldn’t want known widely.  Tech platforms must be responsible actors.  I don’t like it, but it’s easier than ever for a bad actor to attack you, to make your life very difficult.  These technologies give statists enormous power.  This has significant implications with our laws and policies for cash. Since human beings are still fundamentally human beings, even in this age of exponential change, worry more about “who” is using ai and why, than trying to understand how it all works.  Perhaps the best way to live is to behave as if you’re always under observation.  There is nothing anonymous in this universe.  

Going forward, we must teach people about digital technology limits, rather than passively allowing bad messaging to dominate.  Here’s the starting point:  Use digital technologies to help you with analysis, pattern recognition, or simplifying a task.  Do not abdicate your human responsibility for discerning meaning and making moral judgments.  Digital technologies are neither sentient nor conscious, and whatever agency they appear to have has been programmed. 

We begin our humanity apprenticeship in our childhood.  Therefore, I am open to discussions about restrictions on smartphones and social media for children, just as we set age limits on alcohol and driving.  I’m not advocating prolonged adolescence – we have too much of this now.  I’m advocating to protect children and give them every opportunity to become their best.  

I’m encouraged by people responding to the crisis of meaning in their lives by asking spiritual questions.  Apparently, many people are using chatbots like a spiritual mentor or coach.  That’s unlikely to be fruitful, though this is evidence of hole-in-the-heart hunger that God will use to bring people to Himself.  God communicates with his creatures, not the tools his creatures create.  God loves his creatures, not their tools, and holds his creatures accountable. 

The most influential leaders in our future will be the most human, not the most machine-like.  They’ll be religious, because that will be appealing, and they’ll have a moral framework for making difficult decisions.  They’ll be savvy at using tools without being used by tools.  Being a good communicator is insufficient; they must be good at connecting with others.  We resonate with deep people, skilled and competent, but not with machines.  Some will be more like pastoral guides, and others more like special forces team leaders.

There’s a whole movement now discouraging teenagers from doing part-time, entry-level jobs at fast-food joints, retail shops, etc.  Some say these jobs are demeaning.  Some say that these teenagers are taking jobs from adults or shouldn’t be getting the same minimum-wage as needy adults.  Maybe, but that’s missing the big value proposition. I’m thinking about these typical entry jobs for teenagers another way:  this is the minor-leagues to prepare players for the big leagues.  These are the positions where a teenager learns to show up on time, work when you don’t feel like it, get along with other employees and a boss that you might not always like, learn how to interact with customers, solve problems as they come up, learn what it takes to make a sale, etc.  Those skills are incredibly valuable in an age of ai acceleration.  Those experiences aren’t going to be taught by an ai, nor fully replaced by an ai.

And for adults in a workforce?  Imagination.  Creativity.  Innovation and optimization leveraging knowledge and experience from other industries.  Negotiating deals, finding value propositions.  Physical craftsmanship.  Delighting customers.  Making moral judgments.  Developing the skills of others, especially the next generations.  Putting meaning into products and services.  Joy.  Artistry.  Personal connections. 

I’m hopeful despite the daunting changes fostered by ai and whatever tools we invent next.  Pessimism and abdication will not help us.

What does your heart tell you?

Just a periodic reminder that someone’s DiSC score tells you nothing about their maturity and self-control.  I find it helpful to think about a DiSC score as the default behavior pattern when a person is weary and lacks the wherewithal to fake anything.  But leaders always retain the ability to choose how we interact with others.  This is an ongoing opportunity and responsibility.

The challenging reality of this age is that most of our community life is… online.  Even some physical communities are strongly supported by their online connections. Some studies have been done showing how online communities collapse and flail:

• Negative comments about the choices of others (amped up by ‘anonymity’)
• Deviation from an accepted norm
• Echo chamber effects – some ideas or products are highly promoted, others disregarded. This creates an exclusion zone for individuals who have other preferences
• Self-appointed gatekeepers who control discussions about alternative views

What are the characteristics of successful online communities?

• Generosity.  Sharing far more than taking.  Supporting one another.
• A cultivated culture of collective experimenting and learning together.
• A few key principles, then tolerance for a wide range of non-core ideas.
• Acknowledging that sometimes we irritate or surprise one another, and we can still be in community together.
• Gratitude for being part of something useful and bigger than an individual.

Can you think of others?

These apply to in-person communities, and strong institutions as well.  Worth pondering if you’re an opportunity space to create and build up communities.

Minnesota’s “Land of 10,000 Lakes” has an important leadership communication lesson. 

Imagine this:  I throw a boulder into the center of one of those lakes, which raises a wave that reaches all the shoreline.  The impact of even the biggest boulder wouldn’t touch any other lake, even one separated by a few yards of land. 

Your organization is like this, full of independent lakes.  You’ll need to get to each lake to communicate with each effectively to create a change.  You might need to shape the context of your core messaging to be effective in different kinds of lakes – depth, shape, age, clarity of water, access points to others.

A common mistake in big organizations is to pull together a team of people representing each region or department.  Most of these are big enough that they have several ‘lakes’ – so one person is unlikely to be effective at reaching them all.  Organize sub-team members to cascade messaging and action plans, so that each lake is reached. A significant mistake many exec leaders make is to call a big department or whole company town hall and share their message.  Trust me when I say that your message didn’t reach everyone equally well.  Do necessary follow-up work. 

Christians are fond of the story of the thief crucified with Jesus, who believes in Jesus and is told, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”  Great story of salvation by grace!  Multitudes of people who did scummy things identify with this nameless guy.

We should also celebrate the story of Matthias in Acts 1.  Jesus didn’t select Matthias as one of his 12 Apostles. We’re told Matthias has been a faithful follower for years and is a witness of the resurrection.  He’s selected to replace Judas by roll of the dice over another equally qualified disciple named Justus. Matthias is never mentioned again in the New Testament.  There are different traditions (some conflicting) about him ministering in Ethiopia and Jerusalem. 

Here’s the story of a pretty good guy, JV team at best, who gets to be called one of the 12 Apostles.  We have his name.  That’s a great story, too, and easy for many to identify with.  I’d like to know more about Justus, too.

The Daily Stoic posted this:

“Napoleon famously would wait three weeks until he opened his mail because he knew that most issues would resolve themselves. If you are always reachable, if you can be gotten a hold of at a moment’s notice, you will not be focused on the big important things, you will not be doing your work.” 

For most of my career I prided myself on efficient and rapid response to emails.  I could get to inbox zero pretty often, moving only a subset of items to my @action folder.  Of course this meant I was constantly busy, and it almost hurt to ‘unplug’ from work because of the addictive adrenaline spikes. I was rewarded for this, especially when I was in direct support and operation leader roles.  My main strategy for getting blocks of time for project deliverables was to work early and ‘clear the decks’ to give me some flexible time mid-day.  

I’m not in those kinds of roles now.  And neither are most senior managers, up to the CEO.  They need to structure their accessibility and time quite differently.  They’ll pay attention to email or texts from a specific subset of people, but they’re not rewarded for inbox zero across the board. 

Here’s my challenge for you: What more could you accomplish with a disciplined approach to being less available and less responsive-in-the-moment?  What issues will you force others to resolve (as they should) rather than you driving a resolution?  What’s the $10,000/hour and $100,000/hour work that only you can do?  

I’ve written before about how you must choose one thing to optimize, and then maybe a distant second.  This is simple reality.

Project managers know that you navigate the 3 classic elements of tradeoffs: Scope, Time, Resources.  Sometimes you’ll hear “Pick any two.” 

This pattern is widespread:

Want to buy a car?  Exactly what you want, customized?  You’ll pay more and wait much longer than accepting one of the cars available on the lot. 

Health coverage options?  People want universal coverage, low prices, and high quality – but the reality is that you must pick 2 of these.

Leadership decisions are frequently about these kinds of tradeoffs.  Lean into options and be prepared to explain to people (repeatedly) why their fantasies of optimizing on all three dimensions is impossible.

One more thing: If someone gives you an example of all three, I guarantee that someone else is subsidizing the costs or absorbing some complexity. 

There are two Greek words translated as “time” in the New Testament.  Chronos is chronological time, the passing of the hours, days and years. Kairos is qualitative time, or opportune time – the characteristic of a moment or a movement.  When Jesus announces, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:15), it’s kairos.

We all tend to worry about the passing of time (chronos) and the difficulties of the current time (kairos), and the anxiousness of the coming time (kairos).  We develop practices which help us be efficient and effective with chronos.  We must have wisdom, insight, and faith to respond well to kairos.  An awesome message of the Bible is God saying “I’ve got this. I’ve got you. Trust me.”  Living in the truth of that message is how we recognize the kairos in our lives.  Truly, we were all born for such a time as this.

Note: This is an excerpt from the draft of an upcoming book about the journey to becoming a deep person.

The deep people you know and admire are interesting and brilliant.

I’ve thought about how to be fully yourself, maximally using your intellect, and be considered interesting (even brilliant) by others.  What do you do to stand out?  What practices, done consistently well, make you a compelling and trustworthy character?  What avenues should you take and what traps to avoid?

I’m barely treading in the foothills of possibilities.  Still, here are my recommendations:

Decide to be this way. No hiding, no excuses, willing to be different.  Pre-decide that you’ll be ok if many people misunderstand you.  You risk being ruled by fear of others until you make this decision.

Do things better than others.  Execute at a consistently high level, working to your strengths.  Focusing on fewer things improves your excellence with what you deliver.

Be fantastically curious about multiple domains.  Ask questions. Follow-up with more questions.  This is true for people you meet in person, or dead authors, or historical events.  Don’t name yourself a problem solver; think of your identity as an explorer across a landscape of possibilities.

Care for yourself as a discoverer, inventor, and creator.  Feed your mind and body with good-for-you food. Sleep well.  Exercise your body so your mind gets what it needs, including toughness and resilience. Develop rhythms of hard work and breaks. This is investing in yourself.

Make plans, then act.  Revise plans. Repeat.  Navigate forward, adjusting your traveling vector without surrendering. Be willing to be bad at something so you can (with feedback) become good at it.  Focus on what you can control, within your domain.  Waste no energy on what you cannot control, but influence by words and example.

Help others and encourage them. Develop and nurture relationships for they are the stuff of a thriving life.  Draw near to people who are also curious, questioning, and seeking wisdom.  

Be different without being frightful to others.  The person who follows a trend is in a herd.  Find opportunities to lead.

Stay hungry and stay lean.  Travel light, dropping unhelpful mental and physical baggage.  Don’t allow your passion to settle after a success but go on to the next thing.

Savor steady 1% improvements while looking for occasional big leaps.  Abandon perfection as the only goal while striving for it.  Share your work and listen for feedback. This is the way of mastery.

Get outside, breathe deeply.  Walk. Get away from screens and fancy technology. Move.

Do hard things to develop self-control.  Lack of self-control sabotages your potential. Measure how many decisions you make which are about your comfort.

Treat every experience as input for your creative output.  Capture notes, make connections, explore metaphors.

Tap into Wisdom. The world didn’t begin when you arrived.  Seek Lady Wisdom. Learn from others. Take C.S. Lewis’ advice:  Read at least two old books (pre-Gutenberg preferred) for every contemporary book you read.  Dive deep for principles, and the tactics will take care of themselves.

Be responsible.  Do the work.  Be a professional, especially with the basics of your craft. Excuses are lies you tell yourself.

Be unsurprised at the foibles and sins of others, even as you aim to be trustworthy and true to them.

Devote yourself to a consistent creative practice, with rituals, and (ideally) hold your workspace as sacred. (HT: Steven Pressfield) Create and teach others as a means of learning and reinforcing. 

Cultivate self-respect; crush pride. Measure yourself by yourself, not others. Are you better today than yesterday?  Are you on the correct vector?  Neither lie nor boast. Celebrate the work of others. You are part of a Larger Story, accountable to higher Power.

Treasure a dynamic, changing world.  A static world has no learning, no adaptation, no resilience and no renewal.  

Reframe fears as a guide to where you’re supposed to act. Replace worry with a focus on being resourceful.  

Start. There is no ‘someday’ or ‘somebody else.’

I’m all for clean air, clean water, preserving natural beauty, and abundant energy & food for every person.  Net-zero goals are unlikely to achieve what some believe. 

Imagine that we reach net-zero C02.  Human activity is no longer introducing more C02 into the atmosphere. 

What other climate-driving forces aside from atmospheric C02 will still be at work?

• Solar radiation variation over time, which also drives oceanic heating and cooling patterns
• Deep geological forces uplifting continents and powering volcanoes
• Whatever else drove long cycles of glaciation and retreat before 28,000 years ago

No one knows what the “right” temperature is, or the “right” amount of C02 in the atmosphere.  Everything in the physical world is dynamic. 

So, it’s important to think carefully about the costs of net-zero (for everyone) and the tradeoffs.  About 1.5-2 billion people do not have enough energy (fuel, electricity) to thrive.  Despite our terrific progress in reducing starvation to almost zero, about 1.2 billion people a month are getting only enough calories to survive.  Clean water is not readily available to 800 million people.  We need to make progress on these for human flourishing.  I’d be in favor of addressing those issues and then using energy and calories with clean water to adapt to variations in climate.