Episode 19: Maslow's AI Analysis

when there's big shifts occurring i find that a lot of times people's intentions when speaking
about that shift fall into a couple of categories one category is what i call the futurist and the
the general purpose of this train of thought tends to be predictions within whatever this transition
is so that later down the road you can point back to them and say see i called it that kind of thing
and i don't mean that in a bad way just to be clear like i don't think this is a bad thing it's just
that that's that's one train the other train i think is kind of introspective or analytical
conversation around the topic where it's not necessarily trying to predict where things are
going but more assessing options possibilities what's going on now some of it does branch into
what could happen in the future but i think it comes from more of a analytical and sometimes
philosophical or you know just a it's conversation for the sake of conversation less for the sake of
a called shot to be clear i think this is a false distinction that i'm drawing i don't think
that it's fair of me to say these are the only two options because odds are in many cases it's a blend
of the two that's going on right like you might be simultaneously analyzing and having deep conversation
about something while also making called shots they are not mutually exclusive ideas but just for the
sake of you know this conversation here that's just sort of a way to frame it the thought of
what is the purpose of any given conversation is this about futurism or is this about kind of analysis
and an inspection recently i was listening to a podcast the podcast is titled innovation storytellers
it's it was episode 185 and what i'm going to be talking about starts around the 24 minute mark but
just in general that's a very interesting podcast it was a very interesting episode and if you're
interested in you know in innovation space and this one this episode in particular was about
innovation within uh with ai as a backing that kind of thing um great episode great podcast highly
recommended they had a guest on who was talking about his perspective surrounding ai and also some of
the futurism he was he was being in some cases quite a futurist about where things might go great
conversation really interesting to listen to but he got to this one particular part where he started
saying that he viewed the state of ai both currently and also looking forward as sort of a maslow hierarchy
of needs and the way he phrased this or the way he saw this was that let's say that there was three
levels in the pyramid he said that the base level the the initial level is one around how ai can help
with productivity the second level is around how ai can be a generator a generative solution for
things you know creating images and videos and that kind of stuff and then the highest level of the
pyramid in his view was run one around ai being used strategically at the strategic kind of tip of the
pyramid i thought this was an interesting way to view things and still now i'm back and forth as to
whether or not i agree with this pyramid just to preface briefly when i say i don't agree with something
i'm not trying to start some kind of war or say that there aren't arguments on both sides or good points
on both sides or anything else but i do come at things from a from a standpoint of let's discuss
differences and of opinions to help kind of round everyone's point of view out so i'm not saying that
i'm necessarily right in this and he was wrong or anything else i'm just saying i thought it was it was
something that struck a a different thought in my head so again his hierarchy of needs base level
productivity second level generative third level strategic my initial thinking on this was that
that pyramid should be flipped to me we are currently in a state of strategic development and strategic
thought around ai companies people organizations however you want to look at this
are engaged in regular thought around how ai will impact them strategically and how they will
use it strategically and how and let's be honest many companies right now are thinking of how can we
make all of our strategies built around ai i i almost feel like that is the base level then level two i
would agree if that's the base level i would agree that generative is the next level up so it kind of
keeps its place in the middle but my main argument here is that i don't think generative ai is a higher order
thing than using ai for productivity purposes and then i would argue if these are the only three options
right in that vacuum that productivity in this world would really be the tip of the pyramid
i think right now yes there are productivity boosts we there's a lot of stories out there they go
through some of them in the podcast where they talk about sales folks getting a 5x you know response
rate to their cold email campaigns because of the use of ai or he goes through a um a thing with a
phd student where a phd student would have taken some you know several years to accomplish something
that ai was able to accomplish in two seconds i'm not arguing that we aren't seeing major productivity
boosts already because we are we are also at the same time doing some pretty unproductive things with
ai we're trying to weasel it into all kinds of places where it doesn't really belong we're claiming
ai is doing things that it's not we're firing people from companies because we believe
ai will take their jobs or uh will will replace them and i would argue that all of this
whirlwind right now all of this dust in the air is creating a lot of non-productive time
and that once we figure out so think about this way once we have figured out
how ai can be used strategically bottom of the pyramid and once we have figured out
how to use the generative capabilities of ai only then can we see the true productivity
boosts and benefits that will come with this amazing new you know wave of technology
as a system i'm not talking about individual instances where again there are plenty of
instances where someone can go on chat gpt or wherever and look up ask a couple questions
and then they you know it's a productivity boost to them and and but it's a very small scale
thing as a world i'm not sure that we can truly see and take advantage of the generative and
productive productivity boosts that this offers us without first figuring out that base level of
the pyramid which i think is strategy i think it is strategizing and and maybe not agreeing but
coming to some sort of consensus across the world of what this thing is how it should be used where
it should be used where it's best used how it's best used it's still evolving so fast
we we can't we can't figure that out on the fly this quickly having all this dust in the air
while in at an individual and specific level there might be some productivity gains
at a global scale i think we'll look back at this time and say wow we didn't even know what
we were doing and there was a lot of time and resources and frustration wasted but what do you
think do you think in order to systematically see productivity boosts we kind of need to work
strategies out or do you think i'm crazy and that the strategy is it is the ultimate you know end
goal here where ai can help us strategically develop everything and we've been using it
to boost productivity for years i can see both sides of the argument on this on this and again i think
it's all a false choice anyway because i'm sure there are these are just three things that they
listed on a podcast there are many things in the mix with ai um it's just that this one particular
thing this one ladder and this one comment just got me thinking which is what a good podcast should do
it's what any good material should do it should get you thinking about whether or not you agree
disagree agree partially do you have things to add things you subtract so it got me thinking about
this and if you get a chance go listen to the episode and see what you think