AI, Commencement Speeches, and Why Human Thinking Still Matters | The Curiosity Shop

In this episode of The Curiosity Shop, Brené Brown and Adam Grant use this year’s booed commencement speeches as a launching pad to explore the role of AI in our lives. They dig into what some of those commencement addresses were missing: moral imagination, emotional honesty, and real empathy for the graduates. Brené introduces the concept of being “smitten with what’s written,” the trap of polished AI output that looks good but fails to move anything forward, and unpacks why writing is a tool for thinking, not just communicating. Adam proposes that signing your name on AI-generated content is an integrity violation, and together they work through how to give feedback, set expectations, and stay human in the middle of a technological transformation. Show Notes: George Saunders Reflects on his Famous Convocation Address at Syracuse University (2013) - George Saunders, 2023, Syracuse University College of Arts and Sciences Values and Messages Conveyed in College Commencement Speeches - Jenifer Partch & Richard Kinnier, 2011, Current Psychology Don’t Be Afraid to Fall - Brené Brown, 2020 University of Texas at Austin (Commencement Address) Make Your Bed – Admiral William H. McRaven, 2014 University of Texas at Austin (Commencement Address) Through Disappointment You Can Gain Clarity - Conan O'Brien, 2011, Dartmouth College (Commencement Address ) Be True to Yourself - Ellen DeGeneres, 2009 Tulane University (Commencement Address)) The Importance of Kindness - Steve Carell, 2025 Northwestern University (Commencement Address) Make Failure Your Fuel - Abby Wambach, 2018 Barnard College (Commencement Address) Wolfpack: How to Come Together, Unleash Our Power, and Change the Game – Abby Wambach, 2019, Celadon Books 2026 graduates boo commencement speeches on AI - Eric Schmidt (Former Google CEO) University of Arizona; Gloria Caulfield (Real estate executive) University of Central Florida: Scott Borchetta (Big Machine Records CEO) Middle Tennessee State University, May 2026, PBS NewsHour Exploring the Paradoxes of Human Nature: The Stockdale Paradox Explained, Brené Brown and Adam Grant, May 28, 2026, The Curiosity Shop with Brené Brown and Adam Grant Strong Ground: The Lessons of Daring Leadership, the Tenacity of Paradox, and the Wisdom of the Human Spirit - Brené Brown, 2025, Random House A Whole New Mind – Daniel Pink, 2005, Riverhead Books (source of 'Symphony') AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity – Kate Niederhoffer et al. (BetterUp Labs & Stanford Social Media Lab), 2025, Harvard Business Review The Biggest Tell That Something Was Written by AI – Eve Fairbanks, 2026, The Atlantic Quote Origin: I Do Not Know What I Think Until I Read What I’m Writing - Quoteresearch, 2023, Quote Investigator Dare to lead glossary: Key language, skills, tools, and practices (including “Paint Done”) - Brené Brown, Pilots and Passengers – BetterUp Labs & Stanford Social Media Lab 2025, BetterUp The Ghost in the Machine’s Memory: A Teacher’s Lament - Hudson Mathew, 2026, AI & Society (A Socrates warning, voiced by Plato) The Enhanced Games – inaugural event May 24, 2026, Las Vegas (founder Aron D'Souza; doping-permitted competition) Atlas of AI – Kate Crawford, 2021, Yale University Press Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Adam Grant?

  Hey, everyone. In this episode, Brené and I are gonna take, we're gonna take on AI in a way that I've never really thought about before. We're gonna talk about commencement speeches and what makes a great one. We're gonna talk about why the booing happened and how it might have been prevented, the role of moral imagination in taking on technological change. We're also gonna talk about some of the challenges we're facing with AI, particularly when collaborators dump thoughtless, maybe AI-generated content on us, and then how we respond to that, and whether a collaborator should have to disclose AI use when they have it. And I think we're also gonna land on maybe a high note

• 0:43Adam Grant?

  around what great content actually does.

• 0:50Brené Brown?

  Welcome to The Curiosity Shop.

• 0:51Adam Grant?

  A show from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

• 1:00Adam Grant?

  Hey, Brené.

• 1:00Brené Brown?

  Hi, how are you?

• 1:02Adam Grant?

  I have been watching too many commencement speeches, which has been fun, but also

• 1:07Brené Brown?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:07Adam Grant?

  Slightly distracting.

• 1:09Brené Brown?

  I love a commencement address. Not all of them, but I love a good one.

• 1:13Adam Grant?

  It's the only thing I like about graduation.

• 1:15Brené Brown?

  Same, actually. Yeah. And, man, when they, when they deliver, they just deliver. And when they don't, they do not. They're tough.

• 1:25Adam Grant?

  But we don't re-watch the ones that didn't.

• 1:27Brené Brown?

  No. And have you given a commencement address?

• 1:31Adam Grant?

  I have given three of them, I think. You?

• 1:35Brené Brown?

  Three, actually. And I hate to report that two of them, one was a medical school graduation, and then two of them were the University of Texas at Austin. And the first one was virtual because of COVID. It was the first time in, like, the history of the university they had to cancel commencement. So I had to do it, yes. And then I was like, whoo, that was hard. And I had to write something that would translate well to virtual. And then they're like, oh, great, we're back and we're in person, so you can do this one, too. I'm like, no, I can't write two commencement addresses back and back. And, yeah, they were hard, but it was fun. And the medical school one was really fun, too.

• 2:12Adam Grant?

  I think one a decade should be the limit.

• 2:14Brené Brown?

  Yeah. I have to say, to be honest with you, I don't know that I would do one now. The environment's tough.

• 2:20Adam Grant?

  I don't think I would either. You don't wanna get booed?

• 2:22Brené Brown?

  You wouldn't?

• 2:24Brené Brown?

  No, I actually don't want to get booed. But I, I don't know. I, I don't, I don't know. It's, it's wild out there. You want to talk about the booing?

• 2:37Adam Grant?

  Well, we definitely have to talk about that.

• 2:38Brené Brown?

  Have you seen the booing?

• 2:39Adam Grant?

  Yes, and I also, I just, I don't think you need a professor as your commencement speaker. Like, we teach entire classes. We spend lots of time with students. Go invite somebody who's not normally on campus to address the audience.

• 2:53Brené Brown?

  Amen. I love it. I'm with you. Hear, hear.

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• 4:30Adam Grant?

  What are your, what are your favorite commencement speeches of all time? You must have a list.

• 4:34Brené Brown?

  I have a list, but really, I'm going to pull it up. I have a list, but more importantly than a list, I have two paragraphs in one commencement address that...

• 4:52Brené Brown?

  Stuck with me like I can't even tell you how it moved me. This is George Saunders.

• 5:00Brené Brown?

  Syracuse. Yes. You know it? 2013. Yes, yes. And so let me read it to you. So he does, he does this really funny part where he says, here's what I don't regret. And he tells some really terrible stories and then he says, I don't regret any of those. And then he, then he says, but here's something I do regret. In seventh grade, this new kid joined our class and the interest of confidentiality, her convocation speech name will be Ellen. Ellen was small, shy. She wore these blue cat eye glasses that at the time only old ladies wore. When nervous, which was pretty much always, she had a habit of us of taking a strand of hair into her mouth and chewing on it. So she came to our school in our neighborhood and was mostly ignored, occasionally teased.

• 5:45Brené Brown?

  Does your hair taste good? That sort of thing. I could see this hurt her. I still remember the way she'd look after such an insult, eyes cast down, a little gut kicked, as if having just been reminded of her place in things. She was trying as much as possible to disappear. After a while, she'd drift away, hair strands still in mouth. At home, I imagined after school, her mother would say, you know, how was your day, sweetie? And she'd say, oh, fine. And her mother would say, making any friends? And she'd go, yeah, sure lots. Sometimes I'd see her hanging around alone in her front yard as if afraid to leave it. And then they moved. That was it. No tragedy, no big final hazing. One day she was there, next day she wasn't. End of story.

• 6:29Brené Brown?

  Now, why do I regret that? This is the piece that kills me, Adam. Me too. Now, why do I regret that? Why 42 years later, am I still thinking about it? Relative to most of the other kids, I was actually pretty nice to her. I never said an unkind word to her. In fact, I sometimes even mildly defended her. But still, it bothers me. So here's something I know to be true, although it's a little corny and I don't quite know what to do with it. What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. These, oh my God, this, this sentence. Those moments when another human being was there in front of me, suffering. And I responded sensibly, reservedly, mildly.

• 7:19Adam Grant?

  Devastating.

• 7:21Brené Brown?

  Yeah. Just, only George Saunders could write like that, but I just think, what do I regret most in my life are failures of kindness? Those moments when another human being was there in front of me, suffering, and I responded sensibly, reservedly, mildly.

• 7:39Adam Grant?

  It's, it's such a, it's a novel way of delivering a timeless message.

• 7:45Brené Brown?

  Mm hmm. It's beautiful.

• 7:47Adam Grant?

  No one ever looks back and says, yeah, I wish I was less kind to other people.

• 7:52Brené Brown?

  No, no. You know, and when we look back, I mean, having studied courage for so many years now, we do regret times when someone was suffering and we could have been brave. And it would have been unpopular, but we chose to respond.

• 8:13Brené Brown?

  And this is the worst part, mildly, reservedly, and sensibly. Oh, so beautiful. Okay, tell me your favorites.

• 8:22Adam Grant?

  Well, he didn't, he didn't even do anything wrong. He just failed to do something that he thought was right.

• 8:27Brené Brown?

  Yes, that's important.

• 8:30Adam Grant?

  This, this reminds me, there was a, there was a study a while back by Parch and Kinnear. It was a content analysis of commencement speech themes. So you're gonna love this. What, what do commencement speakers talk about? And one, two, three, four, I think the top five, if I remember correctly, going in reverse order. Number five, never give up.

• 8:51Adam Grant?

  Number four, be true to yourself. Number three, expand your horizons. Number two, do the right thing. And number one, help others.

• 9:01Brené Brown?

  I mean.

• 9:01Adam Grant?

  George Saunders nailed number one and number two, and kinda number four, too.

• 9:06Brené Brown?

  I mean, those are like the five commandments.

• 9:08Adam Grant?

  I thought there were more than five.

• 9:12Brené Brown?

  Yeah, no, but these are the five commencement commandments. Yeah.

• 9:15Adam Grant?

  That that used to bother me a little bit. It feels like they're homogeneous, they're trite, they become cliches. But the way that George did it, he he pulled you into the story.

• 9:28Brené Brown?

  And Yeah.

• 9:29Adam Grant?

  He also, thinking about regretting not being kind, it's such a different way of delivering the message than saying, well, you know, you should help other people. And maybe that's what we need. Maybe we need to be reminded of core values in fresh ways.

• 9:45Brené Brown?

  In fresh ways. And I think, you know, that's what I the commencement address that I had to deliver, I had to take it into consideration into consideration that here were these kids missing their college graduation because of the pandemic. And so my whole theme of it was the world will not ready itself for you. You know, you're going to have to find a way to be ready for the world, no matter what it brings. And then I I wove it around not getting into UT for three years. Yeah. And so

• 10:27Adam Grant?

  Wait, you didn't get into UT?

• 10:30Brené Brown?

  No.

• 10:31Adam Grant?

  What?

• 10:31Brené Brown?

  I got into UT as a high school student, but my parents were in the midst of a vicious divorce. So I leveraged that and did like a little poster presentation on why, instead of going to UT, which I did get into UT, I think it was the only I applied to UT and Fashion Institute of Technology, that was it, in New York, why I could get through UT in three years and hitchhike through Europe for a year. And they were so embroiled in their own divorce that they ended up letting me do that. And when I got back, my life went off the rails. And I went in and out of college, junior colleges, St. Mary's

• 11:14Brené Brown?

  and San Antonio for like, three or four years, had a point oh, five GPA.

• 11:23Brené Brown?

  Got a job for AT&T, got promoted three times, and then finally quit AT&T to be go back to college full time when I was like 25 or 26. And they wouldn't let me in. And for like four semesters consecutively, I would get a 4.0 at the junior college and they'd say, no, another one, your GPA was so bad. And so I told the story about, you know, I told the story about the perseverance there and how, what I learned from it and how hard it was. And so, and I thought it was interesting because it just, things sometimes don't go as planned. So, but it was, it was basically those five things wrapped in a very specific story.

• 12:04Adam Grant?

  I mean, you, you must have been, like during those three years, you must have been thinking every day, like, this is perfect material for my future commencement speech. That's how you got through it, right?

• 12:14Brené Brown?

  No, I was thinking, God, I've got to go into the TCBY and then change into my waiter outfit and then take a bus to the restaurant where I was waiting tables to work my way through school. So I was thinking like, this is shitsville, man. When is this going to end?

• 12:30Adam Grant?

  Oh, well, I'm gonna have to go back and watch the full speech. Is it recorded?

• 12:34Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I'll put a link to it in the pod.

• 12:36Adam Grant?

  Okay, good. I can't wait to see it.

• 12:38Brené Brown?

  Just know that under the desk where I'm sitting, I've got on blue jean cutoffs and Birkenstocks, so. And then my big floppy PhD hat.

• 12:47Adam Grant?

  Important information noted.

• 12:49Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 12:50Adam Grant?

  So I'm just thinking about commencement speeches that I've loved over the years. And there are so many. I think about, I mean, no list of commencement speeches is complete without Bill McRaven, Admiral McRaven, make your bed.

• 13:03Brené Brown?

  Let's go, Hook 'em Horns, make your bed.

• 13:05Adam Grant?

  That was a UT speech. It was so good. And I make my bed now sometimes because I'm afraid of him.

• 13:11Brené Brown?

  No, I mean, what a lovely guy.

• 13:14Adam Grant?

  Such a gem. I've loved, I've loved every Conan O'Brien commencement speech. Those are, I think those are always just hilarious and delightfully self-deprecating. Ellen DeGeneres gave one that I thought was such a good, it was such a good challenging of one of the, the truisms that you usually shows up, which is follow your passion.

• 13:39Adam Grant?

  I'm not, I'm not gonna do this justice because her delivery was, was exceptional. But she, she says something like, follow your passion, stay true to yourself. Never follow someone else's path unless you're in the woods and you're lost and you see a path. Then by all means, you should take that path.

• 13:57Brené Brown?

  That's funny. That's funny.

• 14:00Adam Grant?

  Go, Ellen. And then I think last year, Steve Carell gave a great commencement speech, also on kindness.

• 14:06Brené Brown?

  Oh, God, I loved it. Oh, I loved it. What was your favorite part of it?

• 14:11Adam Grant?

  You know, I think I, I loved his case for, for being kind to other people. I, I thought like George Saunders, but in a very different way, from a very different voice. He, he did it in a way that it made it feel fresh and new. But I also just loved when he said, don't use chat GPT for personal emails. That's just sad.

• 14:31Brené Brown?

  That's gonna be a good transition to the stuff we're gonna talk about today. I've got big questions for you.

• 14:35Adam Grant?

  All right, where are we going? We have to talk about the booing.

• 14:39Brené Brown?

  Okay, yes. And one thing I want to add is I want to add Abby Wambach's commencement address at Barnard that became Wolfpack, her book.

• 14:49Adam Grant?

  Yes.

• 14:51Brené Brown?

  I have to say, I've read that book 10 times. I give it away all the time. I have listened to it in the car with my kids. The leadership lessons in that book, point and run. When you score the goal, the first thing you should do is point at the person who gave you the assist. When someone else scores the goal, the first thing you should do is run to hug that person. If you can't, I mean, this, we have this framed in our office, one of the quote, one of the lessons from Wolfpack, which is if you can't lead from the bench, you can't lead anywhere.

• 15:25Brené Brown?

  So I think Wolfpack and the commencement address that gave birth to that was one of my tops as well. I gotta give a shout out there. Okay, the booing, the booing this year, the booing heard around the world.

• 15:39Brené Brown?

  Oh, man, I, I, I found those tough to watch.

• 15:45Adam Grant?

  Yeah, and I, I have to tell you, this is probably not a, this is not most people's reaction, but I felt for the commencement speakers who are getting booed. One, because anyone who's ever spent time, time on stage knows how hard it is to stand up in front of an audience and put yourself out there and bomb. And granted, anybody who's giving a commencement speech ought to have thick enough skin, they can handle it. Like, this, this should not be the moment that tests your resilience, but that, that, you know, I thought, coupled with the fact that the speakers I heard booed at least, were trying to say something helpful to the audience about, look, you know, AI is upending the world, here's how to think about it, here's how to, you know, how to survive and thrive in that world. I'm like, why, why are you booing that?

• 16:30Adam Grant?

  And then I thought about it, and there are a lot of reasons why, why the boos happened. But that's where I started. How about you?

• 16:37Brené Brown?

  Hmm, okay, so you have to, you have to understand, first of all, this is, you will have to go into boo etiquette.

• 16:44Adam Grant?

  Wait, there's boo etiquette? Booty-kit?

• 16:46Brené Brown?

  Yeah, oh, there's booty-kit, yeah.

• 16:50Brené Brown?

  There's, there's booty-kit.

• 16:51Adam Grant?

  Don't mispronounce that one.

• 16:54Brené Brown?

  Yeah, no, don't.

• 16:57Brené Brown?

  So, one, as you can tell from my Houston Oilers hat today, I was raised, obviously, in a huge sports family, but I was definitely raised in a family where you did not boo. I guess there are booers and non-booers, and it will be the hardest thing about, like, being a season ticket crazy person in sports is if I end up with other, sitting with other season ticket holders at games that are booers, I, I, you know me, I, I'm a moral high ground girl, like, I, I just don't believe in booing. Even when the other team takes the field and people are booing, I stand up and try to clap. Like, I, I think booing is bad manners.

• 17:41Brené Brown?

  Like, I do not believe in booing. There's no words that I could tell you right now on this podcast that will convey my disdain for booing.

• 17:48Adam Grant?

  Can I ask you a question about that?

• 17:50Brené Brown?

  Yes.

• 17:51Adam Grant?

  My college roommate Palmer made me rethink my, because I also, I just thought booing was disrespectful and rude in all situations. And Palmer's from Texas. And when I would make a bad pun, he would just look at me and say, boo. With his big grin and I would start laughing and his way of showing playful disapproval made me think there's a time and a place for booing, but it may not be the situation you're thinking about.

• 18:17Brené Brown?

  No, I don't, I'm no, I'm not for Palmer's booing your bad pun. I'd just be like, I think it's better to say, God, that was, that sucked, Adam.

• 18:26Brené Brown?

  But, and I've been on the receiving end of a couple of them, but they actually were really all good so far, but.

• 18:34Adam Grant?

  Advance apology for any bad puns I make.

• 18:37Brené Brown?

  No, I'm a punny girl. I like pun. I, I think booing, I just don't like it. It's just, it's like the way I was raised and it's probably the disrespectful, irreverent. And then a lot of the times in college sports, these are kids, like walking, taking a field. Like, I just don't, but if someone's hurt, I'm the first, I'm first to my feet. And I am quiet. Like, if I was coaching a team, I'm like, take a knee. Now, or you'll be pulled from the game. This is part of sports personship. So I think I'm just more rule follower-y.

• 19:22Brené Brown?

  So when I'm watching them, I was like, I don't like the boos. But when I think about it, I think I have far more empathy for the students than I do for the actual speakers.

• 19:33Adam Grant?

  Probably where it should be.

• 19:33Brené Brown?

  To be honest. I don't know, I don't know whether it should be or not. I mean, just, I thought every AI focused commencement address.

• 19:45Brené Brown?

  lacked moral imagination and moral clarity. And that's what commencement is about. This is about life. This is not about technological digital transformation readiness. This is about love and kindness and regret and resilience. I thought AI lacked two things, moral imagination and a finger on the pulse of how kids must be feeling about the world we're handing them right now.

• 20:27Brené Brown?

  I don't think they were booing necessarily AI as much as they were booing the shit show they've been handed. You know?

• 20:35Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 20:37Brené Brown?

  Their inability to be as prosperous as their grandparents at this point. You know? And so I don't think a commencement address giver. Let me just put, let me just get away from the negative. We don't have to edit this part out because this is me thinking in real time.

• 20:55Adam Grant?

  Yeah, no, I like this.

• 20:57Brené Brown?

  I think a good talk should be selfless. And a gift to the people that are spending their time listening to you, not about what you think is important, but about what they think is important and what you could contribute to that. I don't know. I was frustrated.

• 21:17Adam Grant?

  Oh, no, I agree. I think a talk is a gift. I think your job as a speaker is to figure out, what do I know that's worthy of sharing with you? That will be for your benefit.

• 21:28Brené Brown?

  Amen.

• 21:28Adam Grant?

  I, I think if you are a technology or business leader who's asked to give a commencement speech to college students, and you're getting asked all the time for advice on like, how do I think about future-proofing my career? How do I get ready for a world that's in flux? It's easy to imagine. You think that's the helpful thing to talk about? Especially if that's your expertise.

• 21:51Brené Brown?

  So what I would say is, what is the thing you get asked about all the time? And then how can you look at that through the lens of moral imagination? Not four ways to write a prompt, which some of these got close to, you know, and they just felt.

• 22:12Brené Brown?

  I don't know. They just felt they missed the mark to me.

• 22:16Adam Grant?

  How would, how would you think about giving? So, okay, you're sitting down with a, let's say, a tech founder

• 22:25Adam Grant?

  who's building an AI company and they've been asked to give a commencement speech. What would you, how would you coach them through the process of using their moral imagination to say something inspiring and useful, but also real to, to the audience? Because, you know, we, we talked two episodes ago about the Stockdale paradox that you introduced. And the importance of combining gritty facts with gritty faith. And I heard several of these speakers who got booed trying to do that, trying to say, look, like we, like the genie's out of the bottle. We don't know what to do about that, but we have faith that you can still go on to do great things. And we're, we're going to do our best to share something with you that will help you on that.

• 23:07Adam Grant?

  And it did not, did not land for the audiences they were speaking to. But I, I thought that was sort of what, what was being attempted in some of these cases. And so I don't know if you agree with that or not. So first question is, what do you think of that? And then secondly, how would you coach them to, to read the room?

• 23:25Brené Brown?

  I think that it's an elevation.

• 23:32Brené Brown?

  I, I would say to the, if, if, if really this was a tech startup CEO who was asked to do a commencement address, I think I would start with, tell me your story. And tell me about the most emotionally difficult parts. And then I would probably use some of those stories to talk about larger lessons in the technology. So that abstract of the data and the milieu in which it took place, what did you learn about what it means to be human and a leader? You know, it's not, and I've seen people do that really, really well.

• 24:10Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 24:11Brené Brown?

  I've seen.

• 24:11Adam Grant?

  Yeah, I think that's great advice.

• 24:13Brené Brown?

  Yeah. So I would say that, but, but the other thing is like, this is what I do for a living. Cause grounded theory research is coming up with.

• 24:26Brené Brown?

  You know, you should be able, it's interesting, like, this is, this is kind of a rabbit hole, but I think it's, you'll find it interesting. This is how I would think about it.

• 24:36Brené Brown?

  In grounded theory research, the theories that you, the basic social process theories that you put in the world should not be connected to the kind of industry or area where they were collected. So, for example, this really interesting research on how, why people would do not resuscitate orders, why there are a couple of diseases where people who have high potential of death do not have DNRs. And so like, you've got, you've got, like, end of life hemodialysis patients in this study, they found that fewer of them than most people that are sick have DNRs, they just don't have them. And then a grounded

• 25:20Brené Brown?

  theory researcher went in for her dissertation and found out it's simultane, it's very difficult to simultaneously engage in very frequent medical procedures that are very painful, and maintain hope, and also plan for death. Does that make sense? Yeah. Like, I don't have a D, yeah, I don't have, I don't have a DNR because I'm fighting to live right now, and I cannot both fight to live and plan for death. Well, one of the most interesting applications of that was how was that theory used to understand what happened in Enron? And how can a company that's actively in trouble be held responsible for planning an ethical death? And do you need things in place to make sure that that

• 26:05Brené Brown?

  happens? And so I think that's about, what have I learned specifically about, from, from, you know, putting agile processes into my business that I could extrapolate and tell a bunch of 22, 24-year-olds?

• 26:24Brené Brown?

  About life, like get with a team, define what's done and be ruthless in your inventory of what you're building, but also ruthless in your kindness and support toward each other.

• 26:38Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 26:38Brené Brown?

  That's a commencement at learning.

• 26:40Adam Grant?

  Yes, yes, it is. And, you know, when, when you first started, I'm thinking, okay, AI is an elephant in this room. How do you not acknowledge it?

• 26:47Brené Brown?

  Right.

• 26:48Adam Grant?

  But it's so easy to acknowledge it just by saying upfront, you're probably expecting me to give a talk about AI. I want to talk about something more important.

• 26:56Brené Brown?

  What it means to be human.

• 26:58Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 26:59Brené Brown?

  In a time of, I mean, to, to, to be, you know, electricity, this is what we went through, you know, industrialization, this is what we went through. You're a generation bearing witness.

• 27:13Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 27:13Brené Brown?

  And here's what we know from history.

• 27:15Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 27:16Brené Brown?

  And the lessons we know from history are deeply human.

• 27:19Adam Grant?

  Let's zoom out.

• 27:20Brené Brown?

  Yes. And then zoom back in with story, zoom out with, you know, your five commandments.

• 27:28Brené Brown?

  To me, I want moral imagination and I want really interesting, specific stories to back it up. Make your bed.

• 27:38Adam Grant?

  Nailed it. Yeah. I mean, I think almost every great act of communication, whether it's a commencement speech, whether it's a book or an article, whether it's an email, sometimes even, has both a zoom out, like, let's put this in, in big picture context, and a zoom in, let me give you a really specific memorable story, phrase, data point.

• 28:03Brené Brown?

  I mean, a hundred percent. It's interesting because last week I was like so slow on my texts with you. I'm sorry about that. I was so in the weeds.

• 28:12Adam Grant?

  I reject your apology. Texting does not have an expiration date.

• 28:17Brené Brown?

  This is why we're friends.

• 28:18Adam Grant?

  There is no expected response window when I text you.

• 28:21Brené Brown?

  Really?

• 28:23Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 28:24Brené Brown?

  Oh, I expect a text back quickly. So I'm glad we're clarifying this because I felt like shit because I was so in the weeds filming these curriculum videos for Strong Ground for the Dare to Lead work. And it was interesting because it was the first time, because Strong Ground's the first time I've really written an entire like chapter on the importance of communication.

• 28:47Brené Brown?

  And mission critical communication, but it's exactly what you're saying, whether it's a text or an email, like emotional resonance, you know, clarity, Chekhov's gun. Don't bring in something that you're not gonna, you know, Chekhov's guns is really interesting, you know, from the Russian playwright Chekhov, who said, if you've got a gun in act one, don't describe it in the play or the story unless it's going to go off at some point because it's extraneous at that point. And then I'm just always looking for it, you know? Like, there's just, there's just, people need to be seen and heard. And comms is a great way to do that. Yeah. And emotional resonance, moral imagination, lessons backed by stories.

• 29:31Brené Brown?

  These go back to caveman walls.

• 29:35Adam Grant?

  Can I put in a request here?

• 29:37Brené Brown?

  Yes.

• 29:38Adam Grant?

  Okay, good. I think, I think we need a Brené Brown book on storytelling. You, you introduced yourself to the world in part as a storytelling researcher. You are a master storyteller. It's all over all the work you do, but you've never, you've never taken it on to give us your view of how to tell a great story. Will you?

• 30:02Brené Brown?

  Oh.

• 30:04Adam Grant?

  It's an invitation. You can reject it if you want. You can decline it for now. It's an open invitation.

• 30:09Brené Brown?

  What does the RSVP do?

• 30:13Brené Brown?

  I gotta think about it.

• 30:15Adam Grant?

  Later than your texts are, but I, I think it's,

• 30:19Adam Grant?

  it's a topic that everybody, we, we, we live our lives through stories. We communicate who we are through stories. And it's something that you have, you have so much knowledge and so much emotion around. It's kind of amazing that you've never taken it on as a topic in and of itself.

• 30:38Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I don't think about it as art and science, really. I just talk about, like, I'm a fifth gen, I, I come from a long line of Texas bullshitters. So I just, it's like DNA programmed, I think. But I, I'll think about it because I definitely respect when I see it done well.

• 30:55Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 30:55Brené Brown?

  I think more than anything, it's what, it's what,

• 31:00Brené Brown?

  I think what I'm really a big fan of is what Dan Pink would call symphonic thinking, story, metaphor, analogy.

• 31:11Adam Grant?

  A book on how to, how to do that better? Only more important in, in the age of AI.

• 31:18Brené Brown?

  I'll think about it. I doubt I'm the right person. There's really good people who study that. I'll look at it.

• 31:23Adam Grant?

  Ah, study, as, as you know well, studying something and synthesizing something are two different skills.

• 31:29Brené Brown?

  That's true. That's really true.

• 31:32Adam Grant?

  Atlas of the heart.

• 31:35Brené Brown?

  You're right. Okay.

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• 33:10Brené Brown?

  Okay, let's talk, Leo, since we're on AI, do you want to solve a problem for me?

• 33:15Adam Grant?

  I, I love solving problems more than almost anything I can think of.

• 33:20Brené Brown?

  Okay. Oh, I love this. I didn't know problem solving was your love language.

• 33:24Adam Grant?

  Of course you did. We share.

• 33:25Brené Brown?

  I did know that. Yeah, in different ways, I think. So but I really do have a problem. I have a real problem. We received a document.

• 33:34Brené Brown?

  It pissed me off and it wasn't from either one of us. It was from someone else. And I forwarded it to you because I wasn't sure you had received it on separate copy. And I called the document work slop, AI work slop. I have big emotions about being on the receiving end of work slop.

• 33:58Adam Grant?

  Well, first of all, I think I the back and forth we had about that made me think that I think you said, we didn't end up talking about it, but you made a comment that you were trying to be less reactive about this kind of thing.

• 34:14Adam Grant?

  And I heard that and I thought, well, I don't know that I want you to be less reactive because your strong reactions are part of what give you insight and passion. And then I was like, wait, maybe what you want are the strong reactions, but not the reactivity. And can you separate, is it possible to separate those two things?

• 34:31Brené Brown?

  Oh.

• 34:32Adam Grant?

  Like, can you have strong reactions without being reactive? Because I think that might be the best of both worlds here.

• 34:39Brené Brown?

  Yes. So I have a strong reaction. I'm trying to be less reactive.

• 34:44Adam Grant?

  Like, yeah, I'm here for the strong reaction. You should you should hate work slop with every fiber of your being because should we talk about the research that our colleagues at BetterUp did on it?

• 34:55Brené Brown?

  Yes.

• 34:55Adam Grant?

  Or do you want to solve the problem first?

• 34:57Brené Brown?

  Well, what I want to, what I, let me go back to the problem and let me just say one thing I'm looking to do. This is what I'm asking for your help around. And you've already helped me by separating strong reactions with big reactivity. I want to have, I'm OK with my strong reaction. I'd like to regulate and be productive in my response. So I'd like to go big reaction, regulation, productive response.

• 35:26Adam Grant?

  Love it.

• 35:27Brené Brown?

  Does that make sense?

• 35:28Adam Grant?

  Yes.

• 35:29Brené Brown?

  And let me tell you, can I, just before we go to the BetterUp research, which I really want to talk about because I think it's so good on two fronts, actually, one on work on work slop and the other on their passengers pilot work. The reason why I have such a reaction to work slop is it shifts work to me.

• 35:55Brené Brown?

  It puts, it adds to my workload, which is often already at the brink. Now, you have put something in front of me

• 36:05Brené Brown?

  that I have to, first of all, I have to have an emotional reaction. I have to spend cognitive dollars regulating. And then I have to spend even more cognitive dollars telling you why what you sent me pisses me off in a way that's constructive. That, that's expensive. You just cost me, if I get a hundred cognitive dollars a day, you just fricking cost me forty.

• 36:30Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 36:30Brené Brown?

  No, I'm not kidding.

• 36:31Adam Grant?

  That's a lot. That's a lot. So, okay, so work slop, the AI form anyway, although it could be human generated too.

• 36:41Adam Grant?

  How are we defining it? We're talking about thoughtless prompting of AI and then basically just sending you a copy paste of the output.

• 36:51Brené Brown?

  Let me, you, let me give the definition. So this is, so Adam and I do, both do work with BetterUp. And this is BetterUp's research that they did in partnership, BetterUp Labs, with the Stanford Social Media Lab. And so their definition, let's use that because I think it's helpful, is, so this is AI work slop. Work slop is work that masquerades as good work, but lacks the substance to be meaning, to meaningfully advance a given task. It's insidious, that's the definition. Let me say it again because I think it's important. Work, AI-generated work slop. Masquerades as good work, but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task. Oh, I think it's really good.

• 37:33Brené Brown?

  Its insidious effect is transferring effort from creator to receiver. I mean, I go Dukes Up right there.

• 37:41Adam Grant?

  Not only am I dumping work on you, but I'm also acting like I did it. Which is dishonest.

• 37:48Brené Brown?

  Yeah, yes.

• 37:49Adam Grant?

  Like, I'm claiming, I'm claiming that I put in effort, but I'm actually delegating without your permission.

• 37:56Brené Brown?

  I think that's less of a case for me because I don't really, if you're using AI well, and you're meaningfully advancing a task, I don't actually, I kind of expect that now with the prevalence of AI use. So it's not a credit thing for me. So I appreciate it. The problem is that you're sending me something that masquerades as good work, that is actually not meaningful in its ability to move the task forward. So it's a little bit different. I don't think that taking credit for it is, because I'm assuming that, you know, I'm only evaluating on one vector, which is meaningful advancement of task.

• 38:39Adam Grant?

  Got it. Okay, then I'm gonna need your help in this conversation too, because I have a big problem with people using AI for anything they send to me without disclosing exactly how they used it.

• 38:51Brené Brown?

  Is that true with Grammarly, the dictionary, a thesaurus?

• 38:56Adam Grant?

  A thesaurus, no. If you've used AI to generate more than a word, if AI has written even a sentence, I want to know it.

• 39:07Brené Brown?

  We're gonna have to work on this together, you and me. I think that's unfair.

• 39:16Adam Grant?

  Wow. All right, let's talk about both sides of this. Do you want to start with your problem or mine?

• 39:21Brené Brown?

  Um, let's stay with work slot for a minute. So I want to introduce a new concept here, and I would like you to send a quarter to my favorite charity every time you work. Will you use this because it's gonna be that popular?

• 39:37Adam Grant?

  I can't wait.

• 39:38Brené Brown?

  I think as, I think when, I think very few people are strong writers. Would you agree or disagree?

• 39:48Adam Grant?

  Agree.

• 39:49Brené Brown?

  Okay. I think with the advent of AI, people who struggle with written communication, persuasive written communication, the problem is they're smitten with what's written. That's my new thing. They are so smitten, they are so smitten with the idea that they can hand off a work deliverable or anything that's well-written.

• 40:17Brené Brown?

  That they're because that's new for them. Like, all of a sudden, this is this beautifully crafted thing that I can turn into someone when for forty or fifty years I have not been able to make something, you know, basically perfect in terms of editing. So I I am able to give someone something now that's that's well written. And so I think because we are smitten with what's written, we don't think through the fact that good writing does not always equate

• 40:58Brené Brown?

  to meaningfully, meaningfully advancing a task. Does that make sense?

• 41:05Adam Grant?

  It does.

• 41:06Brené Brown?

  Okay, I I have to share this with you because I was so excited when I wrote it. Let me tell you what happened. I was listening to it as I was driving between Houston and Austin. Because sometimes I listen to articles with an AI-generated voice from from from magazines. So I'm a big subscriber. I love The Atlantic. And I was listening to an article. And this is an article written by Eve Fairbanks. And the name of the we'll link it in the show notes. And that the the title of the article was, "The Biggest Tell That Something Was Written By AI. Look closely and you'll see that every part of the text is not quite right." And so here's a quote from this, and I want you to track this. It's so I'm so dying to talk to you about this. She writes, Eve writes, Eve Fairbanks.

• 41:51Brené Brown?

  "The problem is that the efficiency and frictionlessness that make AI appealing to writers are the same qualities that make it feel untrustworthy to readers. And readers are right to not trust it. No matter how much we may tell ourselves that AI is just a tool like spell check, it isn't. When we use AI to flesh out ideas, we lose the most important part of the writing process: thinking." And then she goes on to explain the writing process, which you and I know really well, which I can write a page, single-spaced in Microsoft Word.

• 42:31Brené Brown?

  And after thinking through it for one or two days can end up with a sentence. But that discernment process is not about writing quality. It's about idea, the meaningfulness of ideas.

• 42:48Brené Brown?

  Why do I feel so blown away like I'm having like I feel like I'm having a transcendent moment?

• 42:53Adam Grant?

  I don't know. I, I mean, I, when, when, when I hear you describe that, I think, yeah, most people look at writing as a tool for communicating. It's more important, it's more importantly, a tool for thinking.

• 43:08Brené Brown?

  It's a tool for thinking.

• 43:10Adam Grant?

  Writing, writing is how you work out your ideas. It's how you identify flaws in your logic and holes in your reasoning. And I think we do our best thinking when we write regularly. And the idea that people would outsource not only their communication, but their actual cognitive effort that helps them crack hard problems to a machine is terrifying to me.

• 43:37Brené Brown?

  Yeah. Do you remember when six word memoirs were really popular?

• 43:40Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 43:41Brené Brown?

  Do you remember that meme that it was so fun? Mine was, I write so I know what I think.

• 43:51Brené Brown?

  Does that make sense to you?

• 43:52Adam Grant?

  Yeah, it's like the, the Mary Parker Follet line. How can I know what I think until I see what I write?

• 43:58Brené Brown?

  Oh, my God, I love that. I don't think I've ever heard that in my life.

• 44:01Adam Grant?

  Is that Mary Parker Follet? I may be misquoting her now. We're gonna have to fact check that one. Paul?

• 44:06Brené Brown?

  We'll fact check it.

• 44:07Adam Grant?

  It's all yours.

• 44:08Brené Brown?

  Okay, um.

• 44:10Adam Grant?

  No, you know what? I think it's, I think it's E M Forster. I think.

• 44:15Brené Brown?

  I think it's E M Forster. Yeah, yeah.

• 44:17Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 44:17Brené Brown?

  I can see it on a like a.

• 44:19Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 44:19Brené Brown?

  A graphic design.

• 44:20Adam Grant?

  I think it was Forster. How can I know what I think until I see what I write? Okay, go on.

• 44:25Brené Brown?

  Okay, so.

• 44:30Brené Brown?

  This is what, this is what really, there's two more things I want to read you again this, I'm going back to the article from E. Fairbanks in the Atlantic. She writes, "When writing is hard, it's often not just because we are tired, underfed, or inefficient, but because our mind is trying to tell us crucial things. How many draft texts to colleagues or family members have we all started at, in frustration, wondering why they don't feel quite right until we finally realize that they need to be rethought completely or not sent at all?" Right? This is the Ian Forrester piece. And then listen to this quote.

• 45:09Adam Grant?

  Love that.

• 45:09Brené Brown?

  Listen to this, listen to this last thing, it's crazy. "Working on AI text as an editor is like trying to operate on a body whose skin, muscle, veins, bones, and organs are all compromised. There's nothing to leave intact, nowhere to begin."

• 45:30Adam Grant?

  Wow.

• 45:31Brené Brown?

  Like, the whole thing is, the whole thing is shit.

• 45:36Brené Brown?

  But we're smitten with the written.

• 45:38Adam Grant?

  Yeah, I think, I think, I think you're right. I never thought about it that way.

• 45:43Adam Grant?

  So, somebody then is sending you something that you're, you're not happy to receive, but they were thrilled by it.

• 45:51Adam Grant?

  And you have a problem with how to confront them. Well, I don't know if they're smitten.

• 45:54Brené Brown?

  Were they thrilled?

• 45:56Adam Grant?

  Or believed?

• 45:56Brené Brown?

  I mean, I think they're smitten by the fact that they, there's something in writing that's, that's been edited and that they can send across. I think they're, I don't think we can guess what the motivation, emotion that they're feeling is. Complacency, you know, thrill, who knows?

• 46:14Adam Grant?

  Yeah, that's right. And so you have a challenge then with confronting them and giving them feedback.

• 46:22Brené Brown?

  Yeah, because what I want to say is, oh my God, this really strong paragraph, followed by four bulleted points, followed by a concise summary, is so well-written, and there's jack shit in here that's useful.

• 46:40Adam Grant?

  You should definitely not lead with that.

• 46:44Brené Brown?

  Because if you read it, not from how it flows, but from what it says, this is actually a really piss-poor idea.

• 46:55Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 46:55Brené Brown?

  That, that, that actually you are the person I depend on because you're so good at calling those things out, but you've jumped on to some L L M that has eaten your brain and you got so smitten with what's, how it's written, that you're not practicing discernment about what it says.

• 47:15Adam Grant?

  Yes, so they, they were, they were seduced by the form and overlooked the lack of substance in the same way that people are often blown away by a speaker's charisma and then miss out that the content they're delivering is fluff.

• 47:30Brené Brown?

  Yes, a hundred percent. I think that's exactly, that's a beautiful analogy.

• 47:34Adam Grant?

  It's the same problem. It's the writing version of that.

• 47:37Brené Brown?

  It is, it is. And, but it hearkens back to something that I really struggled with for 20 years teaching graduate students, which is, we used to, did you ever use turnitin.com?

• 47:52Adam Grant?

  No.

• 47:54Brené Brown?

  Yeah, it was like a thing that you turn stuff in. We, we like, our, our college went through like a big thing, maybe 15 years ago, where everything had to go through turnitin.com to see if it was plagiarized from, it was like another digital transformation moment. Like it was it, maybe 20 years ago, was it plagiarized from the internet? But like a little side thing of it, of turnitin.com would give you an average grade level of the writing. And the mean grade level of the writing of graduate students, these graduate students would sometimes be seventh grade.

• 48:26Brené Brown?

  And so as we, as we become less skilled in writing, we become more, the writing grift of AI becomes more seductive.

• 48:43Adam Grant?

  Yeah, I think it does. Can I put a caveat on that before we go forward?

• 48:47Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I probably don't want to hear it, but I mean, I'm, I need to hear it. Go ahead.

• 48:51Adam Grant?

  Well, no, this, this goes back to one of our first podcasts when we talked about the difference between ignorant and elegant simplicity. And I think that some of the books in the genre that you and I both write in, many of the best ones have been written at a seventh grade level, if you actually analyze it. But the difference is, they are, they are conveying graduate level ideas at a seventh grade reading level, as opposed to seventh grade ideas at a seventh grade reading level.

• 49:22Brené Brown?

  Well, I'm a fan of graduate ideas in the seventh grade. I mean, I have a, I literally have a sticker on my desk that said, if this doesn't make sense to a fifth grader, then you don't understand it well enough to be talking about it. So like that, I do, I hold that litmus test for my own work because that's more to me about the simplicity, the ability to translate complex ideas into simple, into make them simple and elegant.

• 49:47Adam Grant?

  Yep.

• 49:48Brené Brown?

  But what I'm talking about are, what I'm talking about, which is scarier for me in graduate school, is graduate level ideas that read as seventh grade ideas because of a lack of, because being passed through in writing classes your whole life.

• 50:10Adam Grant?

  Mm hmm. Yep.

• 50:12Brené Brown?

  Cause no one, no one had the courage to say to you, you've got important ideas. I know you don't want to dissect sentences. You want to think about your important ideas, but some way you're going to have to convey them at some point. And I don't want your great ideas to be lost or reduced.

• 50:29Adam Grant?

  Yeah. And, and to your, to your earlier point, if you don't do the hard work of figuring out how to write clear sentences about your thoughts, your thoughts are going to remain fuzzy and you're not even going to know if you have good ideas or not.

• 50:41Brené Brown?

  Yeah, back to that. Yeah, we're about, you're right. I agree with everything you're saying. So solve my problem for me.

• 50:46Adam Grant?

  All right. So here's, here's a first volley. I wonder if, one way to approach this is just to lead, I mean, we, we know from extensive research on feedback, that explaining why you're giving the feedback and communicating that you're doing it because you care about the person and you believe in their capability is important as context. So I wonder if, if you went to the person who sent you the work slop and you said, hey, I was really surprised reading this because I didn't see the level of discernment in it that you demonstrate on a daily basis. Can you help me understand why?

• 51:23Brené Brown?

  Where do I say work slop?

• 51:26Adam Grant?

  You don't have to. You don't have to label it. You're the one who's always reminding me.

• 51:32Brené Brown?

  I know, but, but I, okay, I really want to figure this out because everybody's dealing with this right now that is in organizations.

• 51:42Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 51:43Brené Brown?

  Is it, okay, you're the person that sent it to me, let's say, and we're just role playing right now. I like, I like where you're going. It's probably intuitively where I would go. But here's what I, I need to say upfront. Or somewhere in there, I need to say, was this generated by AI?

• 52:00Adam Grant?

  That was my next question. I was gonna let them explain it first and see if they offer it.

• 52:05Brené Brown?

  Now we're into your question.

• 52:08Adam Grant?

  Yes, we are.

• 52:08Brené Brown?

  You know what I mean?

• 52:09Adam Grant?

  Yeah, you just went right from your problem to mine. It's, but before we leave yours, I think the key is

• 52:15Brené Brown?

  Oh, we're not leaving mine because mine's not solved.

• 52:17Adam Grant?

  It's not solved.

• 52:18Brené Brown?

  I really need your help.

• 52:20Adam Grant?

  To break down what I'm trying to accomplish, I think the first thing to do is to clearly convey that the work was not up to your standard or their capability level.

• 52:31Brené Brown?

  Agreed.

• 52:32Adam Grant?

  And then secondly, to give them a chance to walk through the process that they use so you can understand it better. And they might just immediately say, yeah, you know what? I, I was, I was pressed for time and I did that, you know, with, with some AI prompts and, you know, I, I didn't review it as carefully as I should have. That's my fault. Here's what I'm gonna do differently next time. Or they might say, you know, this was a, this was a really hard task for me. And like, I think I, they might have some other explanation, right? I want to give them a chance to, to explain the thought process behind what they did. You know, I guess, I guess what I'm saying is that strong reaction to me is different. If they own up to the fact right away, you know what?

• 53:15Adam Grant?

  Like I did this with AI. I was asleep at the wheel.

• 53:20Adam Grant?

  And they take responsibility for that. Then if they say, you know, I actually thought this was really good. And here's why. I'm like, we need to have a different conversation.

• 53:28Brené Brown?

  Yeah, this is, this is all, I wonder why I'm so emotionally hooked by this. Cause I mean, everything you're saying is like, I know to be true. It's what we teach. But I don't know why I'm so reactive to this because I think it's about shift, the shifting of burden.

• 53:45Adam Grant?

  Well.

• 53:46Brené Brown?

  Oh, you know what? Oh God, it's worse. It's worse.

• 53:51Brené Brown?

  I think there's some self righteousness on my part.

• 53:54Adam Grant?

  Never.

• 53:56Brené Brown?

  Shut up.

• 53:57Adam Grant?

  It's never happened. No, no, I, I, I was.

• 53:59Brené Brown?

  What is that? Wait, wait, wait. If you think we're gonna cruise right past that, you're wrong. What do you mean? Like, am I, am I, in my kind of number one Enneagram traits here?

• 54:10Adam Grant?

  I think you might be. I was gonna frame it more charitably, actually, which is, you're a doer. You, you take on tasks that other people could and should do, and you're happy to take full responsibility and ownership for them. You put your best effort and your best thinking into them. And not only are other people failing to, to meet you in that, they're failing in even making the effort in the first place and then asking you to do more.

• 54:38Adam Grant?

  It just feels like a violation of one of your core values. You're an owner and this is, this is a complete lack of ownership on their part.

• 54:47Brené Brown?

  I am a radical ownership person.

• 54:50Adam Grant?

  But other people cannot just assign ownership to you, right? That's what they're doing. They're, you, you use the word transfer.

• 54:58Brené Brown?

  Yeah, no, I don't want, yeah, well, I mean, even in the research, it's insidious effect is transferring effort from creator to receiver.

• 55:05Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 55:05Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I think that's interesting. I, I.

• 55:09Brené Brown?

  Yeah, this is a little bit of my stuff. This is, this is a little bit of my, this is a little bit of my stuff. I think around.

• 55:21Brené Brown?

  Yeah. I'm gonna have to think about that. I'm gonna have to talk about my coach about this.

• 55:26Adam Grant?

  Well, I also wonder.

• 55:28Brené Brown?

  Fuck, another invitation to think about something, I'm sure. Great.

• 55:32Adam Grant?

  No, it's not invitation. Actually, I'm, I have a, maybe a different kind of practical solution, which is, one of the, one of the things I've, I've come to believe about feedback, I've never, I've never articulated this before, but I, I've been implicitly operating as if it's true. So, pressure test it if you disagree. I think. I think that a large amount of the feedback that I end up giving could be avoided if I was clearer about my expectations upfront.

• 56:00Brené Brown?

  Oh, God, same. I mean, that's such a, that's so insightful.

• 56:05Adam Grant?

  It's just, it's just a basic inconsistent fail for me is, you know, somebody delivers something, I'm not happy with it. I'm like, well, I didn't tell them what I wanted in the first place. I should probably do that upfront. And so I wonder, you can't do this with everybody, but with the core, the core people that you work with regularly, is the actual solution to this problem, not how do I give feedback when I have a strong reaction, but let's have a team conversation about work slop. This is one of my triggers. If you do not want a strong negative emotional reaction from me, here is how to avoid it. And also, can we set some norms where if you send me something that I think is not up to standard and has this slop quality,

• 56:47Adam Grant?

  I can just say, please try again, or not ready for my review yet, or, you know, have some shorthand where I don't actually even have to have the whole conversation with you. I can just signal to you, you are, you are on a slippery slope right now. Do not take another step. Go back to the beginning. Is there some kind of expectation setting and norming conversation that you could have to prevent a lot of the feedback from occurring is my question that I am trying to ask in long form.

• 57:18Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting because one of the videos that I recorded for the new curriculum yesterday was about something from, that we use from Dare to Lead, which is Paint Done. And Paint Done is, it's born of Agile and Scrum where they use definition of done. And so someone running a Scrum or Agile process will say, let's define done. So everyone's on the same page about what the expectation is before they go into the development or launching process. And so the reason why we don't use definition of done and we use Paint Done is because we don't just want kind of real, just black and white, deliverable definitions.

• 58:02Brené Brown?

  We want, we want it to make people feel this way. You know, we want more warmth to it. So we use paint done, like really define done for me and then paint it and give it some color, some context. Should it feel warm? How should it make people feel? Should it be, you know, that kind of thing? So I think painting done around AI has been a complete ball drop on my part, point. Like I've been using AI for two years. And I am so quick, and this is in my number one Enneagram tradiness.

• 58:41Brené Brown?

  I am so quick to assign lack of effort and complacency to something as opposed to I spent, I've probably spent, I don't know, in total over two years, 60 hours teaching myself how to use it and not use it. And then I'm in, I'm, I'm very rigorous in my use of it.

• 59:06Adam Grant?

  And you haven't communicated any of that to the people you work with?

• 59:10Brené Brown?

  No.

• 59:12Adam Grant?

  There we go. I think that is your, that's your solution.

• 59:15Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I just, you know why? Cause I just said, then just don't use AI because I don't, I don't, cause where am I, this probably just goes to my overstretchedness. Like, when am I going to be teaching people how to use it? And no, and I taught myself to use it. So either teach yourself to use it or don't use it, but don't use it in a shoddy way.

• 59:34Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 59:35Brené Brown?

  Which is not good leadership. Really, honestly, it's not. And, and so, bummer. Okay. I got it.

• 59:46Adam Grant?

  So I did not solve your problem, but I think we've outlined a path that you could take to prevent your problem in a lot of cases.

• 59:53Brené Brown?

  I think you did really help me because I think what you did, which I love, I think you helped me get under the definition of the problem, which then led to an answer that feels familiar and, and values aligned with me. So I think you, yeah.

• 1:00:14Brené Brown?

  Thank you.

• 1:00:17Brené Brown?

  Fuck.

• 1:00:17Adam Grant?

  Well, okay.

• 1:00:18Brené Brown?

  In equal measure.

• 1:00:21Adam Grant?

  I think the best solutions are always a combination of the two. Like, I kind of knew what I needed to do once the problem was defined back to me. But now I have to do the, I have to do the work.

• 1:00:34Brené Brown?

  Yeah, and I think it also goes into like prioritization and time management on my part. Like, when and how am I going to do that?

• 1:00:41Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:41Brené Brown?

  And then I get overwhelmed. That's probably what it is. Like, oh, my gosh, my, you know, I've got people on my team not using this the way they should. I, I'm a pretty, you know, this is the BetterUp researcher, research around there are pilots and there are passengers. And passengers, you know, are, you know, the research is really great around how people are using it differently in the conditions. I just need to apply what I know to be true, which is teach people how to be pilots, because organically, a lot of people are going to be passengers. Because it's a new technology.

• 1:01:15Adam Grant?

  Or find somebody in your team who's already using it as a pilot, not a passenger, and ask them to lead it. It doesn't all have to fall on you, owner.

• 1:01:23Brené Brown?

  Or bring someone, yeah, or, yeah, I know. Or bring in someone externally.

• 1:01:27Adam Grant?

  Yeah, who teaches this for a living. Sure.

• 1:01:30Brené Brown?

  Yeah, that's smart.

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• 1:03:04Adam Grant?

  All right, so I think this is a good segue to my problem, which is maybe in some ways more philosophical in nature. I really struggle with people using AI for anything that's written. That's not a brainstorming partner or an editing partner. I think that anything, any communication that's generated should be human drafted. And otherwise, I think you're taking credit for thoughts and words that you didn't have. And that feels like an integrity violation to me. And so if I have somebody who I'm collaborating with, who has written something and sentences or paragraphs were generated by AI, I don't feel like I can trust them anymore.

• 1:03:45Brené Brown?

  Wow. I mean, that's a big rupture.

• 1:03:50Adam Grant?

  Yeah. And so I think that's why, you referenced that text I sent you. I think that's why I'm so hesitant to judge. First of all, just as a basic statement of intellectual humility, I don't think I know in a lot of cases whether something was partially AI-generated or not. I don't have that much faith in my ability to judge. But even if I did, if I were to deem something work slop, I'm basically saying, as a collaborator, you're dead to me. Because you violated one of my core principles, which is you don't sign anything you didn't create yourself.

• 1:04:26Brené Brown?

  Let me, I mean, this is such an interesting conversation about why everyone got booed. Because this is, this is really tough. I mean, this is so, so I have a reaction to not taking extreme ownership of training yourself and getting good at it and applying thinking and discernment. You have a real trust violation and a real integrity violation. If anything that someone shares with you has been produced by it, which would not bother me at all.

• 1:05:01Adam Grant?

  Wow.

• 1:05:02Brené Brown?

  If it's good. If it's good and it's, you know, because, so I, do you think that that your, your response, your, your reactivity to it? Because that feels reactive to me. I don't trust you're dead to me feels some, somewhat reactive on the scale of reactivity.

• 1:05:23Adam Grant?

  It's a carefully reasoned reaction.

• 1:05:23Brené Brown?

  That's Adam Grant level reactivity.

• 1:05:28Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:28Brené Brown?

  I'm not emotional about it all. You're just dead to me.

• 1:05:32Adam Grant?

  I mean, that honestly, like that, that's kind of how it plays out. I'm like, I, I don't, I don't harbor any intense ill will toward you. I'm just like, yeah, this is no longer, yeah, like this is, this is not going to work for me. And it definitely is not going to work for you if that's how I've evaluated your work.

• 1:05:51Brené Brown?

  So could we go back to the painting done?

• 1:05:55Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:56Brené Brown?

  And in the, in the top of the collaboration, say, can you tell me about how you're using AI to support your work? Can you tell me how you're not using AI to support the work? Can you tell me about where your lines are? And let me tell you about my lines. And can we come up with a real understanding, agreement and expectation about what's okay and what's not okay?

• 1:06:18Adam Grant?

  Yes. Yeah. I think that would be enormously helpful.

• 1:06:23Brené Brown?

  Could be easier than you're dead to me. Yeah.

• 1:06:24Adam Grant?

  Much easier. And

• 1:06:25Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:26Adam Grant?

  I think what, what's great about it is, I think you just, you just made a distinction that I was hovering around, but not crystallizing, which is, I'm perfectly comfortable with somebody using AI to search for information, but not to produce information.

• 1:06:40Brené Brown?

  Yeah. I'm okay with.

• 1:06:47Brené Brown?

  If I would have had the really neat paragraph, the five bullets in the summary paragraph, and it was generated, and it really substantially forwarded and advanced our task, and it was all written by AI, but showed your discernment and thoughtfulness, I'd be 100% okay with it.

• 1:07:17Adam Grant?

  I just wouldn't trust it. That's so interesting. I'll give you a quick example. An organization I advise asked for my input on a piece of research they were getting ready to promote and publicize. And I looked at it, and it was a summary of some articles that were written on the topic they were covering. And I thought, oh, that's interesting. This is not in my core areas of expertise. But I hadn't heard of these studies before. I want to learn more about them. And then I need to read the primary sources to make sure that they're representing them accurately. And I click, and I find the original article. It turns out it's not research at all.

• 1:08:02Brené Brown?

  Hallucination.

• 1:08:03Adam Grant?

  It was a review paper. But it was somebody's, basically, it was someone's theory. But it didn't have any data behind it. And they were presenting it as if this is a conclusion backed by evidence, as opposed to this is an informed opinion of some scholars. I'm like, whoa, hold on a second. Those are two very different things. You cannot call, you know, somebody's ideas that need to be tested research in the same way that somebody's careful qualitative investigation and content analysis, or somebody's survey or experiment is research. And you're making claims that are not defensible here. And it turned out the person had used AI to generate part of it, had not, you know, hadn't sort of reviewed carefully enough

• 1:08:47Adam Grant?

  to qualify what their academic sources were and weren't. And I looked at that, and I thought, okay, this was, you know, this was an honest mistake. But I think that happens all the time. That's not hallucination. It's a mild misrepresentation if you're not in our world, but it's a pretty significant one if you are in our world, right?

• 1:09:10Brené Brown?

  Yeah, so here's what I would say. Here's what I would be curious about, not what I would say, but here's what I would ask of you. I would file that under work slop. And that would be, that would be a passenger versus a pilot error. Not an indictment of AI, but an indictment of how AI is being used. So, and here's what else I would say. I, I, I believe to be true that our, and I think you, I think you'll support this. I'll be curious.

• 1:09:50Brené Brown?

  That for as long as there's been peer reviewed evidence and review people, papers, pre-AI, people have interpreted review papers as data-driven evidence and misrepresented it in articles.

• 1:10:05Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:06Brené Brown?

  I don't think this has anything to do with AI.

• 1:10:07Adam Grant?

  That's not new.

• 1:10:08Brené Brown?

  No, I think what that is, is an overreliance of a passenger versus a pilot user.

• 1:10:15Adam Grant?

  It's a really good point.

• 1:10:17Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I, again, I think this is work slop. And, and I, I think we've talked, I don't know if we've talked about this before on the podcast, but when I was writing Strong Ground, we did everything, all the whole literature review on AI. And we did the whole literature review in parallel, in person, by person, in the stacks.

• 1:10:39Adam Grant?

  Yep.

• 1:10:40Brené Brown?

  By PhD level researchers. One of them, the toughest person, because she was the reviewer for NIH grants for a long time. So really tough, quantitative, you know. And what we found is 50 to 60% of all the citations from the AI didn't even exist.

• 1:11:00Adam Grant?

  Yeah. It's unbelievable how much of that still happens.

• 1:11:04Brené Brown?

  Right. So I guess what I'm saying is, I wonder if your conclusion, like, the way I'm tracking your conclusion is, I've seen the misuse of AI without the proper checks in place. Therefore, I distrust AI as a producer of information. Therefore, if you use it, you're dead to me.

• 1:11:30Adam Grant?

  It's not if you use it, it's if you use it in this way.

• 1:11:33Brené Brown?

  Yes, if you use it in this way and don't represent it having been used.

• 1:11:36Adam Grant?

  Accurately, yeah.

• 1:11:37Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I wonder if, again, if you and I are having the same paint done conversation upfront.

• 1:11:43Adam Grant?

  Yeah, I think we need to, but I think there's a moral part of this for me, too, which is, you know, even if it was accurate, I don't want to work with people who are content to let AI do their thinking for them, period. Like, that, that just, to me, is a, it's, it's just, it just feels dishonest.

• 1:12:03Brené Brown?

  Are you sure you're not a number one on the, on the Enneagram?

• 1:12:06Adam Grant?

  I may be multiple numbers, but I sometimes live in your camp.

• 1:12:11Brené Brown?

  Okay, you just said, I don't want to

• 1:12:15Brené Brown?

  work with someone who lets AI do their thinking.

• 1:12:19Adam Grant?

  For them.

• 1:12:21Adam Grant?

  And that is a passenger, not a pilot. I hear you on that. I, I guess I think, though, it's also plagiarism. Like, you can't take credit for a sentence someone else wrote. You shouldn't take credit for a sentence a machine wrote either.

• 1:12:34Brené Brown?

  I don't know, it just gets, it gets slippery there, I think, because, you know, basic Word document programs will reframe sentences for you. You know, it's like Microsoft Word will suggest a sentence, Grammarly will suggest a sentence. Where does it end?

• 1:12:52Adam Grant?

  I, I mean, I, I don't want the sentence suggested. I want editing, but I want human content generation.

• 1:12:58Brené Brown?

  I know. So your moral dilemma is, I don't want to work with someone who lets AI do the thinking for them.

• 1:13:06Brené Brown?

  And my moral dilemma is, I don't want to work with someone who uses AI.

• 1:13:13Brené Brown?

  I, no, we have the same moral dilemma.

• 1:13:17Adam Grant?

  It's different kinds of sloppy uses of AI.

• 1:13:21Brené Brown?

  It's no, I don't think I think it's I think it's I broke my pen. I was so excited.

• 1:13:28Brené Brown?

  I know it's the same moral dilemma. So let's look at this. Let's just quick because because let's look at this. So key findings. This is again from better up labs in partnership with the Stanford Social Media Lab. Tracking 10,000 plus workers across 18 industries over a year. How people respond to AI splits them into two personas pilots high in agency and optimism use AI deliberately to extend their creativity and judgment. Treating every interaction as part of the work itself. Passengers lower in agency and optimism, more pessimistic and fearful, use AI as a shortcut or avoid it entirely. The gap isn't about technical skill. It's about mindset and relational skills and leadership communication.

• 1:14:12Brené Brown?

  Here we go to the painting done, right? So key findings, the two personas pilots score high in agency and optimism and use AI to extend creativity and insight. I'm OK with that. I don't know that you are yet. Passenger score low in both optimism and and agency more pessimistic. This is where I think. This is interesting.

• 1:14:36Brené Brown?

  Mandates help, but communication helps far more. Requiring AI use raises the odds of a pilot mindset sixfold. When employees are satisfied with leadership communication that ties AI to purpose and confidence. And that likelihood then rises to 21 times as likely. So that's interesting. What does that mean to you?

• 1:15:01Adam Grant?

  It makes me want to boo the people who are using AI irresponsibly.

• 1:15:08Adam Grant?

  I mean, it what it what it means to me is.

• 1:15:12Adam Grant?

  I think I think there's a difference between using AI to extend creativity and insight, which I'm supportive of. And having AI as your co author and not and not listing them as your co author.

• 1:15:25Brené Brown?

  It's not a person though, Adam. There's no plagiarizing.

• 1:15:28Adam Grant?

  Agreed, but it's it still it still seems to me that you're suggesting that you you created something that you didn't.

• 1:15:40Brené Brown?

  But you did create it because because you did create it and and you did so with discernment and thinking and excellent prompt engineering and checking sources. You did create it. You just created it with a tool. So like, so at some point, was it Socrates or Aristotle said, we can't teach people to write? Because it'll stop them from thinking. One of them, you know? And so it's like, it's this has been the case for as long as there's been advancement in tool use, right?

• 1:16:14Adam Grant?

  Yeah, but this is a different kind of tool in that it can. I mean, the term is generative AI. We've never had a tool before that could generate intact paragraphs, cogent sentences. And that, that to me, if you're doing that.

• 1:16:33Brené Brown?

  That's true.

• 1:16:34Adam Grant?

  Yeah, it just, it's a, it's a different kind of tool. And I think it's, you know, it's a little bit like, you know what? This actually, I'll give you an analogy and I'm, I'm making this one up on the spot. So I am, I am prepared to rethink it in, in the middle of even trying to explain it.

• 1:16:50Brené Brown?

  I love it. Lay it on me.

• 1:16:52Adam Grant?

  Like unformed, but it feels a little bit to me substituting human generation of content with AI, using AI to generate content feels to me like using performance enhancing drugs.

• 1:17:08Brené Brown?

  Oh my God, I knew we were going to get to the extreme games.

• 1:17:13Adam Grant?

  I was, yeah, I'm like, go do that. Go do that in your steroid enhanced games that I don't want to watch.

• 1:17:22Brené Brown?

  Where the non-using athletes crushed it, which I love. Yeah, go ahead, tech billionaires, like, you know, and the whole thing was like an advertisement for a company that sells all the peptides and all that stuff. So, yeah.

• 1:17:42Adam Grant?

  The enhanced games, I mean, not, not for me, but yeah, I'm just like, we.

• 1:17:48Brené Brown?

  So you think this is the enhanced mind games?

• 1:17:51Adam Grant?

  I think it is, and I think we need a separate class, just like we don't watch Magnus Carlsen in a regular tournament have a computer aid. We would have a separate tournament if Magnus is partnered with an AI going against other human AI teams. I want the human only.

• 1:18:06Brené Brown?

  This is chess player.

• 1:18:08Adam Grant?

  Yeah, I mean, it's true in chess, it's true in sports. If you're gonna enhance with tools that are generative, as opposed to just substituting for things that, you know, that physically are hard, like, I don't know how to send a stone tablet to you efficiently. But, but, you know, going from the stone tablet to the keyboard is not materially changing anything other than, yeah, I'm potentially making myself a little bit dumber because I'm not getting the movement benefits of handwriting. But it's still, it's still me generating the thought and the idea and the phrasing. Like, that, that is all enhanced games and it deserves to be in a separate class.

• 1:18:52Adam Grant?

  I want to watch the movie that was human written. I want to, I want to hear, I want to hear the song that was generated by a person. I want the lyrics that, that came out of the heartbreak or the moment of joy and the melody that was born from real lived emotion, not from an AI synthesis of all human emotion that's ever been documented. And I feel writing is very similar.

• 1:19:18Brené Brown?

  I feel like now you've converted me to being hateful in two places. Because I agree with you 100%. No, I love it. No, I think these are the things we're grappling with right now. And just to bring it back to the beginning, this is, like, what you just said, your, your beautiful micro speech about what you want and don't want, that's an AI commencement address with moral imagination. I'm gonna give you my standing O.

• 1:19:51Adam Grant?

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:19:52Brené Brown?

  I think it was beautiful. I think it was emotional and true and beautiful. That's what I would, that's what I want to hear. Yeah, and that's, that's, that's why it didn't work for people.

• 1:20:03Adam Grant?

  Wow.

• 1:20:03Brené Brown?

  You had moral imagination. It was really beautiful, Adam.

• 1:20:07Adam Grant?

  Thank you. Well, you, you led me there. By surfacing a problem I didn't even realize I was having.

• 1:20:15Brené Brown?

  Well, you get the standing ovation commencement address and I get two problems to take to my coach. So this shit's over. This is a wrap.

• 1:20:25Adam Grant?

  Well, you're also coming away potentially with with a new book topic, I hope. But, you know, it's funny at a basic level.

• 1:20:36Adam Grant?

  So I've gone from, this has been quite a metamorphosis over the course of this conversation. I have, I have, I've gone from you're dead to me to, and here's why we should be greater than AI.

• 1:20:52Brené Brown?

  I mean, I love it. I think, I think we're wrestling with moral issues. I mean, I think these are, I think that's why moral imagination has, these are, AI is a moral issue. And, you know, I, I wrote down something that I think in the last chapter of Strong Ground, I talk about the three, the three physically, spiritually and emotionally hardest points of my life, where I felt so hollowed out that something radical had to change. One was my sobriety 30 years ago. One was having to get off social media for a year.

• 1:21:29Brené Brown?

  And the other was after 60 to 90 days of hardcore AI use, I had the same feeling that I had before I got sober. And when I had to leave, yeah, really. And it, and I described it as feeling hollowed out by something I didn't understand. And then I was at the Aspen Ideas Festival a couple of years ago, and I did a talk with Kate Crawford, an AI scholar. And she explained that artificial intelligence is an extractive industry, an industry of extraction,

• 1:22:12Brené Brown?

  that it take, that the creation of contemporary AI systems depend on exploiting energy and mineral resources from the planet, cheap labor and data at, at scale. And she was like, I understand why you felt hollowed out by it.

• 1:22:28Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:29Brené Brown?

  Because that music doesn't fill me up. That poetry.

• 1:22:34Brené Brown?

  Doesn't get under my skin. You know, and that writing doesn't move me. And those ideas don't capture my attention. And so I doubt this will be the last AI episode we do, but it's a good start.

• 1:22:51Adam Grant?

  Well said.

• 1:22:52Brené Brown?

  Yeah. Moral imagination.

• 1:22:55Adam Grant?

  Sign me up for more of that. All right, until next time.

• 1:22:58Brené Brown?

  Until next time. The Curiosity Shop is produced by Brené Brown Education and Research Group and Granted Productions. You can subscribe to The Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app.

• 1:23:11Adam Grant?

  We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more award-winning shows at podcast.voxmedia.com.

• 1:23:17Speaker 03

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