E24 Artificial Intelligence: The Future and Human Potential

Dr. Anna Milithyan, a psychologist, author, and executive coach, discusses the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and human potential. She explains her interest in AI and its impact on society. She highlights the history of AI and how it has become more prominent in our lives. Dr. Milithyan emphasizes the importance of using AI to enhance human potential rather than diminish it. She mentions exciting applications of AI in medicine, such as using AI to detect cancer early and accelerate the development of medicines. She also mentions the use of AI in understanding animal communication. Overall, she believes that AI can be a tool for building a better future if used responsibly. I'm your host, Laura Perez-Earhart. I'm the CEO of Epiphany Consulting Solutions, and as a consultant and executive coach, I want to welcome Dr. Anna Milithyan. She is a psychologist, a professional speaker, podcaster, a certified executive coach, and the author of Mindset Zone, Actualize Your Potential. Currently, Dr. Milithyan is at the forefront of exploring human AI. Her work aims to harness the power of artificial intelligence to leverage human potential, ensuring that technological advances enhance rather than diminish our humanity and collective well-being. I'm excited about this interview and learning about your perspective and observation as they apply to your clients, the current state of AI, including future states, talking about the dangers and the social and ethical implications of gen AI and AI. It's really a pleasure to be here, and this is one of the topics that I'm really passionate about. So, wonderful. I was looking forward to this podcast for several weeks now. I find this intriguing and very interesting that your PhD is in psychology, and you're a certified executive coach. Yes. So, I'm just going to ask the obvious question, why artificial intelligence? What is it about this subject that piqued your interest? So, we have to go a little bit back. I'm originally from Portugal, and the system there, when we decide to go to college, is very different than here, because we have to declare a major when we apply to university. I still remember when we applied nationally, and my two top choices were psychology in the University of Coimbra, that is a historical university in Portugal, and the second choice was electronic and telecommunications in another university. So, I always had this kind of love by technology and the love by the puzzles that human beings are, and I chose the humans. I love it. And at the same time, I, like a first adopter, always try new things, always try to be, I'm not a technologist, but I'm a user and a first adopter. Now, when AI became the talk of the town, so to speak, when chat.gpp became public, and I started to use it as a user, and I was starting to listen to everything around it, I realized that, with my background as a psychologist, with my work in coaching and working with small to medium-sized businesses, I had something to say in this conversation from the human side of the equation. So, artificial intelligence is something that's been with us for a long time. If we think about the 20th century, we have to wait until, like, the first half of it to have the computers that occupy the space of a room. Around that middle of the 20th century is when they start to speak about machine learning, and the term artificial intelligence came forward. Can we ever develop a machine that has an intelligence like a human? So, that has many decades of history, and there was a time that we didn't realize that we already was using machine learning and artificial intelligence. If we ever, in our iPhone, were using in the photos the thing to categorize by the face, face recognition, that is machine learning. If we have a Roomba in the house that vacuum clean, it's a robot. So, all of this, or we already was using the text-to-voice or voice-to-text, all of that, or if you're using YouTube, or if you're using social media, we already were using artificial intelligence, but it was like this in the background, and we were not aware of it. What changed with sharp GTP is that suddenly it came to our awareness, artificial intelligence, and this thing that we now call the generative artificial intelligence that allow us to be talking with a machine in a way that is really beyond our initial expectations, and to the point that we are, oh my gosh, will machines be more intelligent than us? We are even, there is a question about our identity as humans. So, that was what piqued my interest, is this dance between technology and humanity, and what the humanistic, like myself, how can I have a voice in this conversation, and how can I bring more diversity of voices to this conversation? Yeah, 100%. How does AI fit into the realm of harnessing human potential? Can you give some examples? Sorry, because I get so... I love it. This is really at the core, because one thing that we have to understand, that when I talk about this, when I speak to a group of business owners or in an association about this, I like to start to demystify one thing. Because when we think about technology, something like artificial intelligence, we are thinking about the technology like in the phone, like in a smartphone, that if we think like technology as the art or craft of using something to an effect, technology has been with us since the beginning of us calling ourselves humans, even before that. Think about, there is a technology necessary to start a fire. There is a technology necessary to bend two rocks against each other and do the spear of the stone that becomes the tip of a spear. And if anybody doubts about that, go to their backyard, grab two rocks, try to bend one against the other and see if you can do anything with it. There is knowledge associated with it. There is a way of doing it that produce a result. So technology is the usage of tools and the invention of totally associated with as humans. And the great thing about it is that it creates challenges that then we have to adapt, not to our biology, but to our culture. If we think about even, let's go to 12,000 years before our time. That is where we point like the beginning of the agricultural revolution. Humans start to create the populations that had a place that were cultivating their own food. Think about all the technology that was necessary to develop for that. And then we are not much different biologically from that beings, human beings 12,000 years ago, but culturally think about the difference. Then the invention of writing, that was a huge technological revolution that changed everything. And the way that we think about ourselves and relate to ourselves and the philosophy and then science, all of that at the beginning with the invention of writing that is also related with all technology developed. So fast forward to now, we are living a time where there is a ton of technological developments with these big shining objects nowadays that is artificial intelligence and generative AI. And this is a tool, an opportunity that is going to change a lot the way we live. And we can use it as a way to harness and enhance us and our humanity, or can be another thing to take us into the path of burnout, mainly in the workplace. That is what I think about the future of work a lot. So this is why it's a great opportunity in AI. We can use it in a way to build a better future or not. And how can I bring more people to the table to make sure that this is to build a better future? Yeah, absolutely. Something that you said earlier about advancement, you're right. Over the decades, technology has advanced significantly. It is a lot of times like throwing pasta at the wall, seeing what sticks, trying new things. Something for listeners that might still be wrapping their heads around gen AI and AI. So AI is more of the mechanics, the robots, more towards manufacturing or space. That's when I think of AI, I think of the robotics. Gen AI is of data and content, the ability to further expand creativity when using gen AI. So that's the distinction I make between the two. Now that you've mentioned the application, let's talk about the current state of AI and some of the most exciting applications that you're aware of that exist right now. What are they? And just one moment in terms of the definitions of AI and generative AI, because when you speak about many experts, you are going to get many different definitions. Of course. Oh, yeah. And the main thing that I want to leave you is that we use this term AI and generative AI, but it's like a big bucket where we put a lot of things. So I just want to make that caveat that the more exciting applications that I see about all these big fields that we are now identifying are generative AI or the big data, the big language models and so forth. A couple, obviously, I love the advances that this can create in medicine. I'm a cancer survivor and I love to see, for instance, for breast cancer, how can we use AI to read the mammograms to be able to go beyond what a trained eye of a radiologist can see? Because we know there are loads of data and we know the women that get cancer, ones that don't, and we can go back like reverse engineer and see what was there that the human eye could not see that can create patterns that we can help to detect cancer early. Or the development of medicines, the AI allow us to accelerate the proteins, the match of the proteins that possibly will be a better match for the clinical trials. So that I think is fascinating. And if you want something mind-blowing is there are some research being done about animal communication using AI, trying to understand, like for instance, the whales, the communication between whales or other animals. Now we have ways that we can understand much more of our other beings in planet Earth. And now they communicate than ever before in artificial intelligence, these large language models that are the core of the generative AI. It's giving us tools on that. Yeah, it's so fascinating. There's so much around the wonderful world of AI. Like you said, Emma, it is dipping into medicine, science, at extraordinary measures and lengths that we couldn't even conceive years ago, decades ago. But yes, even detecting the animal species, how they communicate, how they move, what their communication and movements might mean to us as humans. AI is fascinating where it can see beyond the human eye, beyond what we could even potentially see. What are some of the industries that you work with currently? And how are they incorporating AI or gen AI into these companies? If you allow me, I will just answer with a different angle, because it's more the question, like you said, that AI is permeating everything. I think there will not be like, yes, we can still do things without computers, but it's not the more efficient way of doing things for most things. The same now with these new tools, this new technology is going to permeate everything. And then it's going to be the industries that adapt faster and embrace this and use this to the global good, and the ones that are trying to ignore it, and just put their head on the sand. So I work a lot with micro businesses, small to medium sized businesses, that have the tendency to not want to be on the front line of this new technology. They have been running their business for a while. It's working, so why rocking the boat, so to speak? One of the things that I'm seeing doing is help them to see the possibilities, to expand their possibilities in a big way. And by learning about AI, they can see new possibilities and new venues, even at an individual level. Even let me give you just an example, for instance, a vet clinic. How can a vet clinic use AI? If they, for instance, record the consultation and have a system like Santum.io to do the summary of the consultation or the team meeting, think about the time that is saved in terms of resources. I'm interested around the value that a company such as a vet clinic you just mentioned. How does a vet clinic see the value of using AI? One of the ways, they already are using computers, so they understand the importance of technology, but these tools can save us time. So that is one of the entries that we really can help people, individuals, to leaders, to teams, to organizations by integrating, by learning about these tools and use it in an intelligent way as a partnership with it. How can we save time to create a bigger impact in whatever we do? Interesting. So what have you observed working with these companies that has worked or not worked for them around AI? A lot is, there is a mindset block because there are people, for instance, in the coaching world. I also work with coaches in their businesses that are really microbusiness, sometimes one-person business. And coaches are incredible human beings, very good in what they do. And there is, being in the coaching community, a big percentage of coaches, they ask, I don't want to know anything about this. This is not, this is destroying our humanity. And the whole coach box and all of that. So part of my mission is to help them see, okay, the cat is out of the box. This is here to stay. So how can we use this to enhance our humanity and prevent to dehumanize us? So this changing of perspective that, okay, they like that. And this is an extreme example, but even for a business owner, they don't think that this is going to affect them. Changing their mindset around it and seeing these as an opportunity. And the first step, they have to educate themselves about it, at least have a more open view of it, to be open to learn about it and to educate themselves about that. That is the first thing that they have to do and that it works. Because if you don't, it's like the shortcut, you can still make things work by showing them. And that if you manage to change, help them see their beliefs around this to shift, to have a different perspective, there is the thing that you can leverage to create change faster. Now that we've been talking about AI and Gen AI, how you see it being used and the opportunities, let's talk about the future of it. Given the significant risk, what are some of the most pressing dangers of AI that we should be concerned about in the near future? The deep sites, honestly. So the ability, for instance, now in terms of voice, with a sample of somebody's voice, you can train and recreate the text that then sounds like that voice. That can be great for creating content for many people that create content online, but can also be used in very not good ways. And now we are speaking about, for instance, in schemes that somebody can phone the grandparents with our voice, our voice of our kids. So their grandkids requesting money, or they are in a bad situation and all of that, and the voice will be the same. So we are speaking about having families have a code word that they can ask. So that's kind of the deep site voice and video. The video takes a little bit more knowledge to do, but it's going to just be a question of time to be able to recreate videos that we do not know with our eye if that is really the person that was recorded or it is a deep site. So that will be one of the things that is affecting mainly the voice. People can be de-affected now. And one of the ways to, by knowing, by education, we are aware of the risks and we can start to put some safeguards and start to know what to do about. And I think that is a great example, that by putting our heads on just hiding in the sand, we are not going, we are still going to be affected by the significant risks that can happen and not have a voice in the conversation. So my big first thing is let's educate ourselves. We don't need to be technologists to be educated about AI and understand the risks and also its potentials. Yeah, you know, I like the way you're talking about the deep fakes. For example, for me, I caught wind of this a year ago, listening to, you know, reading different articles, doing my own research as we were diving into AI and Gen AI and how to incorporate it into our business. And deep fake came about, especially the videoing. And we realized that it was already there. Those dangers are already lurking. The caution that we take is using some kind of a code to ensure safety, right? Whether it's business to business or whether it's personal, so family matters. I have read several stories where that deep fake really did financially destroy some businesses and personal lives, family lives. Accentuating the caution and education is huge. Let's flip the coin now. And now that we've talked about the dangers of AI, let's talk about the ethical and social implications. What are some of the main ethical concerns surrounding AI development and deployment that you can talk to? And these are connected because, for instance, going back to the middle of the 20th century when machine learning starts, there was something that was called the Turing test that they said, okay, when can we build a machine that when you are communicating with the machine, it will not know if you are speaking with a human or you are speaking with a machine. And when you devise a machine that you really don't know, that is a human or a machine, it passes the Turing test. Nowadays, the chatbot bots like chat3TP and others will pass the Turing test with flying colors in most contexts. Not everything, there are ways of treating them, but in most contexts, we could make a chatbot in many, you don't know if it's a human in the other side or a machine. But ethically, even these companies not having the real official guidelines, if you ask one of these bots, are you a human? You will say, no, I'm a machine and I'm generating this and they have a program. So even these companies that are creating this, they know that they have to do this in a way that fulfills some ethical criteria of not deceiving. Even the ones that are using the chatbot technology with a robot that creates, they are creating robots that have anthropological form, but not too much that you ever confuse them with a human. So they want to have some anthropological form to be more reliable, but not too much to be scary. And that is the line that we have to, and what is, who is defining the ethical concerns and what are the rules of the game for this, for development and deployment. But even in things, let's just bring this a little bit more to the day-to-day of businesses and leaders that have to make decisions. If they decide to use this type of technology in a chat format, in a website or for customer service for their businesses, of course, diminish the costs, that is very attractive, absolutely. But if it deceives the potential customer or the customer to thinking that they are speaking with a person and then they're realizing that it's not the person, that feels icky. That is deceiving and destroy trust. That is not good for any business. Right, it is very deceiving. So how do we ensure that AI is developed and used responsibly? And that is this line and there is some learning curve here, but I'm seeing here with the chats, sometimes they are very clear. I'm a chatbot, I'm year 12 to initially, but if you need to speak with a human being, here is how. Not the tendency that we see now in customer support that almost, some of them still have a human somewhere, but you, gosh, you have to feel layer after layer after layer until you get to speak with a human being in the other side. And I think this is also an opportunity for companies to differentiate themselves. How can we use technology and AI to streamline a lot of the process? Yes, but without losing the human touch that people are even more eager to have now than ever because of all this abundance of technology. So I think this can be an opportunity. They still can use the technology to streamline the process in the backend to make people more efficient, but we still can have, I still want to go to, I know that there are bars now that are restaurants that they will have the robot or coffee stores to do the coffee. I still like the barista and their personal touch. Oh, a hundred percent. Me too. Yeah, you know, I love the conversation, but yeah, I've seen where they've used robotics in a small cafe or a restaurant where there's an actual robot delivering the food or the drinks. And there is that wow, and oh, we have to go there to see it. Yes, absolutely. And then business-wise, that can be very interesting. But I like to go to a restaurant that people know my name and I know the name of the waiter, the name of the host. I like that. And I think in this world now with so much of these new things and we have as human beings, these kinds of things, we like change, we like the new. And at the same time, if it's too new, too fast, we react against it. So we have to navigate this as a dance two steps forward, one step back. But humanity, I think human touch is more important than ever. Oh, absolutely. AI is one of those shiny objects. And interesting to see different industries and technology, how it's embracing AI and gen AI to develop more streamlined processes or systems for efficiency, major efficiency. It helps the larger organizations stay efficient, relevant, and it gives them a more competitive edge. So let's talk about the predictions around the future of AI. What do you think the future holds for AI over the next five to 10 years? The interesting thing here is that it's very difficult to predict because of the toleration of change. And some people are speaking about exponential growth. I think we'll have a type of exponential growth with AI. We are going to get some plateaus because the amount of data that is needed and the technology and infrastructure has to catch up. But I think this is like a hundred foot wave that is going to affect everything. And yes, in the next five, 10 years, a lot of things are going to change because of AI. But how? Depends a lot on us, the input that our role in this equation. So what the future of AI holds depends on us and in the workplace or the future of work depends a lot. In my opinion, this can be a great opportunity to create work sustainability. But if we don't are intentional and proactive on this, we are going to create just more systemic forces for burning out more people. And that will not be good. And that's something since the pandemic, burnout has been right in the face of everything that we do, what we talk about. It is out there. And I know that the psychologists have been exponentially exerting themselves to be able to handle such a high volume of patients since the pandemic dealing with burnout, dealing with stress. I hope that AI is used productively in organizations today and responsibly where it's going to help the workflow and workload for stakeholders versus overwhelming and crashing and burning. So now that we're talking about implications of the social aspect of AI, which are profound and multifaceted, so touching various aspects of the human life, society and global economy. Talk about some key social implications that come to mind for you. What are they? Oh, and one and doing the bridge about the work and the big social implications of this. Again, we go back to the same thing for the workers. We are speaking how this affects the workforce. One easy prediction to make. We are going to have people that keep their jobs because they know how to use AI and people that are going to lose their jobs because they don't know how to use the AI. So that is an easy prediction to do and how as a society we are going to adapt. This also has to do in terms of our human nature. How are we learning to develop our culture and the playbooks for this acceleration of change? Because the change was accelerating before we have generative AI coming to the public. But now it's even more visible, even more we can see it in our day to day. So how are we going to help individuals, help teams and create systems that can adjust and use this in a way that is better for us globally or generally and not the other way around? And a lot for me, we have to go to the basics. Even with all this technology that we have to go to the basics. If we are just reacting, the future doesn't hold good things. If we learn to be more proactive, respond in a more intentional way, mainly as leaders, this can be an amazing opportunity to build a better future. So as a society, we have to create the space and the structure for this to happen. To help people develop even the importance of self-leadership and personal growth is more important than ever, in my opinion, because we have to have something to ground us, to be able to not just react because when a deceleration of change happens, there are more trigger stimuli all around us and we cannot make wise decisions if we don't ground ourselves. You bet. When we're grounded, we can think more clearly because that's when we create the space in our minds to be able to just quiet down for a minute to process the ability to make better decisions. I like the way you're talking about accelerating change because it has accelerated. I've felt it, I've seen it over the past couple of decades and it's not slowing down anytime soon. And this is in any industry. This is also about adjusting to a new way of work. Once AI came in strongly and was brought to, for example, the public, these companies and stakeholders just checking out AI and Gen AI and ChatGBT for performance purposes. I mean, being able to get through a paper and edit it is much quicker today than if I were to sit there on my own and have to edit or find someone to say, hey, come over here. I need you to edit this for me. Take a look. Tell me what you think. This is where Gen AI and ChatGBT has really done a fantastic job. So it's just a really good reminder that to be responsible and how we use it when it comes to content development or data, right? It's being responsible in a way that we're using it as a tool. We realize it's a tool. It's not there to think for us, but to be as an aid. So now that we're talking about leadership and responsibility, why is aligning ethical leadership to AI important? Can you talk to that? Yes. And part of it, just to make a bridge here, is that you were touching it. We cannot see this as a competition. We are not competing against the machine. Because many things we are going to lose. Because we develop machines that are very good in certain areas. This has to be a partnership. And this is where you're speaking about aligning ethical leadership to AI and to be able to have ethical guidelines. We have to press the pause button and do some self-awareness work. Knowing what is important. What are the values that we want to preserve? Why? Why are we doing things? What is the intention? So we really have to use technology to create more space and time to have important conversations. And then to help us to be more strategical in the way that we are using these tools. Yeah. Well said. And you are correct. It's a partnership. Using it as a partnership, what are some of the key points that illustrate alignment to ethical leadership and the responsibilities of leadership in the context of AI? Classical things about the values of organization, the mission of the organization, the vision of the organization are more important than ever. Because if you don't have that clarity, that strategical clarity, you're just going to be reacting. So I will say let's go back to the basics and then using these developments to allow us to make a bigger, positive impact out there while preventing overwhelm, overextension and burnout. I love it. Dr. Millikian, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This is an extremely important topic. And I know that anyone listening to this podcast is going to gain a lot of insight, especially those organizations or business, smaller businesses that are just dipping their toe into AI and Gen AI and figuring out the best way to use it to complement what these companies do so they can stay on the forefront of their internal technology, realize what's going on externally and knowing how to partner with this new technology. Dr. Anna Millikian, thank you so much. And I am looking forward to talking again. My pleasure. To learn more about Dr. Millikian and her speaking engagements, including her book, The Mindset Zone, log on to her website at annamillikian.com. That's A-N-N-A-M-E-L-I-K-I-A-N.com. That's it for this episode of Coaching on the Business podcast. If you're interested in being a guest or you're a subject matter expert, please go to my website at tiffanyconsultingsolutions.com and submit your request on the left chat link. You can also find me on LinkedIn under Laura Perez Earhart or my website at tiffanyconsultingsolutions.com. We hope the content and conversation will give sparks of inspiration. If you love and learn from the show, pay it forward and share my podcast with your colleagues and friends. I'm Laura Perez Earhart. Until next time, stay safe and live well.