The Quest Beyond AI

Recently, the fierce “game of throne” in the AI world has shaken the peace and harmony on the human planet, putting many into sleepless nights.  

A couple days ago, an IT director in a financial firm I coached sent me an unexpected message past mid night, moaning about rumors of layoffs in his department, worrying that his skills would soon lose value, and not knowing what to do... I replied to him, "On the contrary, I want to congratulate you for getting closer to thinking about the most important question in life!"

The More Important Question

Our mind, shaped by education and upbringing, has the habit of deducing career orientation and life goals from the abilities and skills we have. As we often hear people say, “I am good at math so I should work in finance.” This kind of thinking inertia has its limitations. On the one hand, individual differences are not being considered. Everyone has their own sets of beliefs, values and mission in life. Should people with common skills have similar career path and life advancement? More importantly, such logic makes us see our worth as equivalent to our abilities and skills. When external demand for abilities and skills changes, just as the unemployment threat brought about by AI, we can easily fall into questioning our worth, or even the feeling of lost.

 

Strengths Theory tells us that we are more likely to be satisfied and successful when using our strengths and expertise. Strengths Theory is not wrong, however, to achieve more lasting and deeper satisfaction and success, each of us must sincerely address a more important question first: What is a satisfied and successful life for me? In other words, what gives me meaning and purpose in life?

 

Job, function, title, and expertise are all means to a purpose. When we are clearer of what we really want in life, it becomes easier to decide what skills need to be developed, how to leverage our strengths, and what kind of career path to pave that would eventually lead to our own strive of satisfaction and success.

Reflecting to the debates and discussions about AI, what is the more important question we need to address first?

 

In 2021, businesses around the world offered close to 100 billion dollars to the growth and development of AI. Contrastingly, fundings supporting the growth and development of social science globally is only a small fraction of what AI gets. This staggering comparison makes one wonder. 

 

Having studied engineering in university, I once belonged to the millions of science and engineering graduates who regarded contributing to technological progress as a personal mission. I once firmly believed that new is better and ‘as is’ equals to backward, that only by continuously and aggressively pushing the agenda of technological advancement can human beings reach betterment and have a chance to thrive in the future. 

 

When I was leading product innovation for consumer brands, my R&D team and I were obsessed with dressing everyday products with the fanciest and most sophisticated technologies to disrupt the category norm and dazzle our consumers. Before launching a new product, we used to commission series of consumer research to evaluate our new technologies and improve the designs. At the time, I was often stunted by the unimpressed comments from consumers, "I am happy with the current product because my mum recommended to me. Why do you have to change it?", "Your new product is not bad, but I prefer the fragrance of the other one…" It was not until later did I realize that the new benefits brought by new technologies may not always be unconditionally welcomed.

 

A few years back, sitting inside the bright conference room of my first professional coaching training session, the opening question I was asked to ponder was "What is a good life?" I remember feeling confused and utterly blank. Quickly flipping through the mental textbooks from my past learning, page by page there was nothing else but the mantra of "knowledge and technology creates a better life". So aside from having more knowledge and more powerful technologies, what else do we need for a good life?

 

The five years of learning and becoming a professional coach were also the time it took me to contemplate the question. To answer what is a good life, we need to be willing to step back into not knowing, to put aside all the answers given by others, to let go of established definitions and thinking patterns, to return to the purist mind of an innocent child, to examine everything with the greatest curiosity, and to accept the unknown with open arms. Along the way of questioning, I discovered a richer world and touched new depth of humanity. I felt like having climbed onto a ladder that reached to a higher level of consciousness, opening a wider field, allowing me to peek into the connectiveness of things and the destinies of change. 

 

Looking at the rapid rise of AI from the new field, I believe the most important question is not what AI can do, but what its ultimate purpose is. Or in other words, what role AI needs to play in mankind's pursuit of a better future?

 

Only with consensus on what a “good future” looks like can we more strategically define what role AI serves. Such a big question is not just for the creators of technology to answer but requires the collective wisdom of all mankind. 

 

When I was looking for my definition of a "good life", I threw myself into books and theories in philosophy, sociology, psychology and so on. Together they greatly expanded the cognitive boundaries of my engineering brain. In the same way, to make sense of such a big topic, we need the joint participation and co-creation of multidiscipline. 

 

Going back to our individual challenges, while exploring life meaning and purpose, how to confront the fast approaching “survival threat” brought by AI?

Threat or Challenge? 

Psychologists found an important distinction in the way we react to new rivals. Faced with a sudden and powerful new arrival like AI, our instinctive reaction is to regard it as a "threat". When we see something as a "threat", we feel scared and perhaps angry. Our survival instinct, developed through billions of years of evolution, gets triggered and sending emergency signals to the brain, which responds immediately by releasing stress hormones. Stress hormones put us in a "fight-flight-freeze" state where we lose the agility to learn or create effectively. 

 

The "threat response", commanded by the primitive part of our brain, is a skill that human have been practicing for the longest period in the game of natural selection. To resist the control of our primitive emotions, we need to turn to our rational brain and combat the deep-rooted instincts using critical thinking, adapting different perspectives, and applying deep reflection. With the help of our rational brain, we are able to lower the volume of our fight-flight-freeze response and create a shift from negative and stressful feelings to a more "neutral" sense of acceptance.

 

When we can accept the objective existence of new arrivals, accept the uncontrollable aspects of change, and refocus our attention to what is within our control, our brain will gradually defrost and revive curiosity, creativity, and agility.

 

A “defrosted” brain dilutes the sense of threat, resumes clarity, releases creative energy, begins to open to new ideas and gradually sees the change brought about by AI as “challenges” rather than threats. Different from the threat response, framing a new rival as “challenge” triggers our excitement and curiosity, motivates us to actively seeking information and investing in learning, makes us more daring to take risks and more resilient when facing setbacks. Moreover, it helps us to stay in a calmer and more optimistic state when facing uncertainty. "Challenge Response" tapped into the deep wisdom of our mind, a secret talent that made it possible for us to overcome great difficulties and thrived for thousands of years.

 

When we can mentally frame a new rival as a "challenge", we feel stronger, and more in-control of the choices we have. We may realize that in the era of rapid technological expansion, human hold more power and have more to offer than we thought.

Technology is Not Everything

 

The digital revolution has been making waves in the business world for more than a decade. Almost all large and medium-sized enterprises are singing the praises of digital transformation, but very few dare to say that they are successful. Professor Sunil Gupta of Harvard Business School concluded, after studying the digital strategies of the world's top 500 companies, that most companies spend a lot of money buying the most advanced digital technology and recruiting specialized digital talents ---they “create small, independent units or startups within the larger organization, do a series of digital experiments. However, in most cases these initiatives have led to limited success.”

 

As a matter of fact, before digital revolution businesses had been questioning the return on investment of technology for a long time. Take process automation as an example, research statistics show that more than one-third of what company spends on process automation software internally gets wasted completely. And the main reason is because technologies were not properly integrated into the human processes already in place. 

 

There are enough lessons to testify that having advanced digital technology does not mean getting accelerated growth, that technology alone cannot solve all the problems. The selection and use of technology should serve the goals and missions of the organization, as Professor Linda Hill of Harvard Business School argued after years of in-depth research on digital transformation of organizations, "digital transformation, on the one hand, it’s about whether or not you’re trying to put digital tools to serve any kinds of goals and objectives that you might have that help you to be more customer centric."

 

To realize the vision and goals of an organization, innovative technology is only one type of means, and there are many "non-technical" factors that need to be considered systematically. As sharply put by Professor Hill, "In digital transformation, human participation is more important than technology participation." Whether a good technology can bring value to the organization is subject to all aspects of human factors, from selecting technical parameters, defining measurements and standards, to linking technology with organizational operations, and making judgments and decisions based on output. All are collaborations of people and technology, led by people.

 

Going back to the revolution brought about by AI, the slogan is not that AI wants to seize power to rule mankind, but AI seeking human’s help to realize its potential and serve the world meaningfully. AI is a powerful new force in the complex system of human existence, therefore, we need to define and design its role at system level:

 

What are the problems we need AI the most?

How can AI’s participation maximize the power of people and technology as a whole?

 

Looking at the challenges AI brought from the system’s point of view, maximizing this new opportunity means joining the strengths of AI and us to push boundaries and drive advancement as a whole. 

 

My personal purpose is to help more talents grow into good leaders and help more good leaders to make big impacts. With the partnership of AI, I believe achieving "more" and "bigger" will be faster and more exciting.

A few More Words…

 

The rise of AI has led more people pondering about the purpose and meaning of work and beyond. This spiritual awakening is worth celebrating.

 

"What is a good and meaningful life?" is the most essential question. Job, title, skills, status are all means to a purpose. Knowledge can be acquired, skills can be developed, jobs can change, but the purpose and mission of life will not be easily altered by external factors.

 

Even when titles wiped, status gone, we can still be rich. The most precious thing is a curious heart that accepts change and thrives on challenges. It preserves mankind’s most mysterious wisdom and creativity, allowing us to navigate to the exits of threat and unlock the infinite vitality beyond.

About the author: Dannie is a certified executive coach and leadership development expert, and spent her earlier career in wide-ranging international positions in large multinational corporations. Growing up in China, she lived and worked in UK, Switzerland, and now residing in Singapore with her husband and a little one.