Carolyn Ford At the intersection of government, innovation, and human needs, in each episode, I talk with some of the most influential voices in technology, uncovering how their leveraging innovation to solve complex challenges and improve the way we live. This episode is sponsored by Owl Cyber Defense, Leaders in secure data transfer solutions a critical networks. Hi, I'm your host, Carolyn Ford. Welcome to a special episode of Tech Transforms that kicks off our Halloween series, chills and thrills. Today, we're diving into the curious case of artificial intelligence, with futurists and author Joseph Bradley. So, in the last episode, we ended on the unsettling side of AI from your book, You to the Power of Two, But what you argue and what I love, like, our listeners should go to your website, you have a presentation on there. It's about maybe 30, 45 minutes, where you talk about the happiness algorithm and some of the objectives of AI, they can listen to that while they're waiting for the book. That happiness should be AI’s prime directive. So let's explore that. So what do you see as the most thrilling opportunities? And I know we've talked a lot about it in the last episode, but the most thrilling opportunities that AI creates for individuals and organizations to reach their full potential. We just ended with you saying, organizations have to share with their employees what this is going to do for them, how this is going to help them. have a better day, essentially. Other ways they're not going to embrace it. Joseph Bradley You're 100%, 100% right. So, um, what's the what's the the upside, if you will? So, I think it's really important, so the happiest paradigm says that you need to focus on happiness for your customer base or your employ base, as your ultimate goal. If you don't, then you can go down this rat hole, which's always leads to cost cutting inefficiencies, and that may not be what your customer won't. So we give an example of a Dutch grocery store that implemented AI and tools to help people want to the checkout lives faster. And what they found is that their customer satisfaction was down, and they go, "Why is that? We were really efficient. Most of their customers happen to be elderly, and they didn't want to get out of the line fast. They wanted to have a conversation. So what did they end up doing? They created a slow checkout line. Instead of AI helping people with getting out, it learned who the customer was so that the checker could have a conversation and engage with that person. So this whole happiness of Ein says, again, be careful with choosing what your or your destination is. You need to be clear on making that choice. If you don't make that choice, if you business or are not clear as to what the goal is, then AI will often be used purely for efficiency purposes, and that may create a result that you are really, that you're not particularly prepared for. The upside of AI, if had to sum it up, it's humanity at scale, where it is. It makes me the best of me possible, which is awesome. What? Right? And you think about all the things that we have lived through in the last, God, man, 50 years, right? I mean, look what happened when the world got together and decided that we should focus on solving COVID. We could happen. Look, what happened? It shows you what happens. If you can align yourself and align interests and align the power of human thinking, you can really create and solve somebody's unbelievably hard problems. And that, to me, is the power of your identic AI agent being a full expression of you, you can talk in your language, I can talk in my language. Imagine that. I'm running global companies for years, and the hardest thing by far is ensuring that when you have multiple different cultures that we are communicating in a way that each person in the organization understands. When you can get to where you can have a natural language processing, where I can and I'm looking and I can see you, and I can hear AI he's telling me, but I'm looking at your face in my human intuition between what AI is telling me in your body language, when we can get to that level, you're talking about unlocking an amazing amount of activity innovation that we'll see in the organization. So that's that's what, you know, that's why I get up in the morning and fight for each and every day. That really, really is exciting to me. Carolyn Ford How do leaders make this shift? Because I think and I fall into the trap of, we're doing this to be more productive. No, we're not. We're doing this, so we can have more joy. But how do how do I as a leader? How do I model that objective? How do I bring that into the workplace? Joseph Bradley So, I think the first thing that you have to really understand as a leader is that AI is not about processes first. It's about values. So, when you think about implementation of AI, they start talking about technical aspects, compute power, in communing versus central computer. Carolyn Ford Deer in the headlights. I just zoned out. Joseph Bradley And so because they're worried about the technical implication, what I mean by start with values first, I'm talking about talking about that in the book. I'm talking about reliability, transparency, agency, fairness, accountability, safety, adaptability. about your values. You have to have some guiding principles. that you have to say, over and over and over again and filter your AI ambitions through. And you really need to spend that's your first step. Remember where I was saying? We talked about,It's okay to be lost, but not wandering around, because you know where you' where you go to. You can think about those principles as your in destination, your compass to help you get there. This is where we're always going. Will this move take me closer to this nation or further away from that destination? It's really important that leaders have that filter. All to Austin, leaders will talk about AI, and again, they talk about the process, not the value, they implement it without the value, and then they run into a problem, well, wait a minute. Now, we got an issue. All my employees are reacting this way to it. I didn't expect that. Well, they're telling me. Oh, my God, can you go back on our website and look at the values. We have some values look like that? That's where, you, those values in many places sit buried on page 75 deeply in the website. You got to bring those out, and you got to talk about those each and every day, and as especially as it relates to AI, you have to filter it, So your answer is the first step is you think of AI in terms of value, not process first. That's the number one thing that you have to implement. If you don't have your guiding principles for AI in a manner that can implement those, then you're gonna be in big trouble. Carolyn Ford As you were talking, I just thought about how you've titled your book. Your book. just puts the value of AI. You to the power of two. And that is what gets me excited about AI is it's an ampler for me. And so. our word choice, like you said, value, not process first, you didn't name your book, how do you prompt engineer? I mean, there's a place for that. Joseph Bradley Yes, that's exactly right. No, it is it is truly about you becoming the best of you possible. That's what we're trying to do. That's what we're trying to create. And, you know, when you think about how we most of us approach these problems, you know, we talked about this in about outputs versus inputs.. The problem of focusing on outputs is that they're lagging indicators. Then it allows you to look at what's happening in the rearview mirror. Inputs art typically looking forward, what you're going to do, not what you've done, but what are we going to do? Where should things happen? And that's why it's so important to have this input focus, if you will, as opposed to this output focus, which always, always, always has you looking in the rear beam mirror, trying to catch up. And if you look and you asked the most organizations, what is your most important asset? They'll say people. Yet you have no forward looking indicator. Your whole HR is mainly built on questions that happened a quarter ago. And you're looking at your people and their feelings and what's happening, you got your head turned back, and you're trying to figure it out, well, why aren't we achieving what we need to achieve?" This or focus around AI has the ability to help you take the most important asset you have in your organization. Do you say it your people and be able to give you a forward looking view as to where they're going, what they want to accomplish, how they can help you. That's why it's so important. Carolyn Ford And back to discovering the magic of AI for me, I have AI helped me figure out what those inputs are. Like I 'cause sometimes I'm like, "Well, I don't even know where to start." And then I think, I just need to start. And I'll start word vomiting at AI and get my conversation going and have it help me shape up and define what the input needs to be, what help me get to the right question. Joseph Bradley It's a hard right. I mean, the thing, again, you know, especially as you lead more and more people in your career, you most of us will give it understanding as CEO. We have to we're actually taught with me very careful about the questions that we actually ask of our organization, because as a CEO, if I simply ask an innocent question, I could have people can interpret that, and I could have 20,000 people all of a sudden parts to the right shifting, right? And so the higher you go, you're actually, you insulate yourself from the question that you really want to ask, because if you ask the question, you're concerned about the amount of energy and effort in the resource that's taken to come to that answer. All of a sudden now, there's this AI thing that pops in the back. and now the skill that you have to learn is you can actually ask that. asset of your works, that question. And it doesn't require a whole bunch of hundreds of people, and millions of dollars to go spend it and giving you an answer. And so But that has to be, that has to be that's a whole behavioral thing that has to be taught and up to because that is something that again, goes against what many CEOs have experienced, that has been taught, have experienced in their ability to be able to simply ask a " innocent question or ask a question in this direction, and next thing you know, your organization is off track. Right. And just like we talked about in the last episode, Red team those questions. Give your AI the different personas and say, you know, "You're my engineering group, you guys care about this.If I said this, how are you gonna respond?". Like, how are you gonna feel? Joseph Bradley Absolutely. Absolutely. Carolyn Ford I want to talk about the cognitive cities again. First, I want to know, like, how close are we, and what gets you the most excited about cognitive cities? Joseph Bradley Sure. So, um, okay, how close are? I think there's some really good examples. If you think of, like, Estonia, Estonia, they have their world's first kind of digital republic. They have every citizen basically has a unique ID that locks in their healthcare votating, banking, taxes, and all this stuff, all that is allowing them to be proactive and predictive to kind of shape experiences Singapore has its kind of one Nation program, that I think is our Smart Nation program, we call it, which is really great, because again, it's taking all of the information from its various cities and how cities are interacting, and they're trying to use it to be more forward looking and reshaping how they should do herb planning and what city service they should offer. So I think, Singapore is a good example. I think Dubai has some really, really great stuff that they're doing as well to enhance customer experience. And then, of course, NEOM, you know, I always felt folks, you can't achieve what you can't understand, right? And NEOM is an amazing announcement because somebody had to think of it. The Crown Prince had to think of it and see it, and then had to believe it to be true, then had to understand it, knowing what the financial implications of something that it would be. And so I think, and when you put that out there, the thing to be that people are missing, it isn't whether or not it will be successful or not. Wrong question. No, no. Wrong question. Would you had asked yourself is, what is the talent level? Have people believe, are people believing that this is a reality? Are people believing that this cognitive city is something that they could actually build? And what you find is, all one is yes, I went to Saudi Arabia to work in the most diverse environment of my life in technology. I'm like, "This is amazing. I get there, and there are people from all around the world. Men, women, all different tough now, 90 different nationalities. My leadership team,at NEOM was 55% my executive were like 52% women, and I'm sitting there going, "This is amazing. And why is that? It because people believed in the project, and that purpose attracted them to work in that. So when you think about the cognitive city, yes, the technology is stuff that we talked about is very important being predictive and proactive and Singapore Estonia, but the underlying piece that a lot of people miss the promise of the cognitive city, it's a much greater purpose. That is what is attracting talent. You're putting people in humans first, and that's why it that's why it's so exciting to talk about. Smart cities, you only mention people. You're talking about things. talking about connected buses, connected trains, connected lights.. What is that? You don't even mention to people. You don't mention a citizen. The power the cognitive city, not only is it in the technology, but it's in the purpose. In other words, the value is found in the destination in getting there. That's that's the goal. That's what gets people excited about the notion of a cognitive decision. Carolyn Ford So, after the journey of writing, you to the power of two, what was the discovery of realization or did you have a big aha moment that left you most excited about AI's abilities? I think that one of the biggest moments for me was when we were talking, there's a book. There's a section of a book that talks about the arts, what came to my mind was, man, you know, whether if you happen to be a disabled individual, AI really has the power to be able to help you realize your full expression of self. You don't need to be able to control your arms and, like, to be able to be an artist to draw. Right, to create something that is beautiful. And and we can just focus in on allowing you to be the best of you possible. Man, that is so much efficiency, so much happiness, so much productivity. If we can just tap in a little bit of that, right? We can solve a lot of problems. So that was my biggest, I think, my biggest aha, is really isn't about trying to do more. It's about you becoming more. It really isn't. It's that. That's the. And if you get it you understand that, then I have a really, really good high level of confidence that AI would be successful. Carolyn Ford Unlocking things that you didn't even know you wanted. Joseph Bradley 100%.. Carolyn Ford What are some measurable outcomes or changes that you've seen since implementing a human centric input focused approach to AI? Joseph Bradley I think the biggest for me, higher employee satisfaction and faster type of arcade. I think those are the two. quick story on what's happening. So, team created the first digital identic twin of myself, not knowing that's what we were doing. They simply got tired of presenting wrong presentations to meet the strategy team, and I go no, that's not it. So I said, more you get it wrong, we're gonna start having these conversations early. So we've got up, like, 4 o'clock in the morning, go, "O, Joseph, okay, can we take we got an idea. Can we give access to your emails and these comments? Not for the purposes of doing anything else, but we just want to create, we think we can create an AI version of you that we can practice with, and sort of help and that's what they did. They create a version of me, they practiced, they got much better. They actually were much happier because they found success, and it freed their time up to do other things and to be more creative and bring value to me. And the time to market was dramatically reduced in terms of them producing content that I thought was in line with strategic direction that we want to go to. So faster time in the market, and then I have seen, which I would not ever have thought of, but I've seen a much actually a big, big boom in employee satisfaction, as compared to AI versus without AI, yes, I've seen that by far. Carolyn Ford Yeah, well, and you had to be happier, because you weren't happy to review over and over. And I've done something similar with my CEO. He knows, so it's not creepy. He knows I've done this. Like I set up a GPT for him. And I'm constantly feeding it. No, he likes this. Like, I've given it you know, presentations he's done, things he's written, so it can learn his style. And when I give him something to review, it's 95%. Joseph Bradley That's a great application of it. And, you know, you told him, he's aware of it, all those things are so important, and you eliminate the kind of aching factor, because he knows about it, and you're very clear about what you're using it for, you hit all the value, man, with value first, so well done. Carolyn Ford All right, let's move to our tech talk questions for this episode, our thrills episode. If identic AI were a Star Trek sidekick, who's who should voice it? The logical Spock, the curious Data, or the Omniscient ship's computer? And I'm gonna throw one more in there. What about Q? Joseph Bradley It's probably a cop out, but I actually think it is with idenitic AI, it would definitely use all four. It be about one voice. It would know which voice to use to be able to help you. Carolyn Ford Oh, my gosh, it would code switch. Okay, you surprised me. I did not expect you to pick all four well done. What's an outdated piece of tech you still love? Kind of like a classic Starfleet communicator, a tricorder? Joseph Bradley Combustible engines. Carolyn Ford Oh, you and my dad. I'm not saying that you're as old as my dad, but yes, I mean, they're kind of pretty, right? Like, I love going to, like, a train museum. Joseph Bradley Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, cool. Joseph Bradley Yeah, I mean, it's it's, I mean, me and I that way with my automobiles. I mean, I love it. Personally, look, I'm a car collector. Electric cars are just, I mean, I drive one around every day. it's just so great in many ways, but there is that experience factor of hearing that pure mechanical I'm a Porsche guy. Right. And it's just. It's just, it's an experience unto itself. And so I do envision, my nephew is nine years old, and I told my wife, I said, you know, he's gotta look at us and he's 18. He's gonna be like, "Can you believe you guys were stupid enough to drive? I mean, you had the focus in a car. You can’t do anything but stay on the road, and how did you do that like for 5 hours at a time. Carolyn Ford My kids said that now. Yeah. Joseph Bradley Yeah, He's not gonna know anything of that of what we know about driving. And I said, you know what? Just like you go to a park to ride horses, we're gonna have to go to a park to drive a car. Carolyn Ford That's right. Joseph Bradley It's gonna be the same thing. That's where that's exactly where we're at. So anyway. Carolyn Ford Well, and I think maybe in our cognitive cities, you'll be able to just, like, rebuild the car of your dreams. My dad rebuilt a Ford 1946 from the floorboard, tore it down, rebuilt it. Joseph Bradley Really?. Carolyn Ford Yeah. So maybe the cognitive cities gives us back that kind of time, right? Where we can just do the things that give us joy. Joseph Bradley Yeah, 100%, 100%. I mean, that's the goal. And again, as long as you understand what the goal is, I think that AI can really help us get there. Carolyn Ford Well, thank you so much for spending this hour with me, Joseph. It's been a delight. Joseph Bradley Thank you. I enjoyed the conversation, Lots of fun. Carolyn Ford The time's done by way too fast. Thank you, listeners, for joining us. Please share this episode and smash that like button. Tech Transforms is produced by Show and Tell. Until next time, stay curious and keep imagining the future.