Will AI Take Your Job? The Honest Answer from Inside Silicon Valley - With Arnnon Geshuri

Will AI take your job? It’s the question everyone is asking, and the scary headlines aren’t helping. In this episode, Kwame Christian sits down with Arnnon Geshuri, Chief People Officer at Snowflake and former HR leader at Google and Tesla, to separate the hype from what’s actually happening inside one of the leading AI companies. Arnnon shares the simple three-part framework Snowflake uses to decide what AI should automate, what it should help with, and what must always stay human. He talks about what happens to entry-level jobs when AI can handle the basics, the skills that will keep you valuable (curiosity, systems thinking and good judgment), and how hiring managers can spot someone who is faking their AI experience. Our producer Simone also asks the question many of us are thinking: when AI experts quit and warn the world, what are the rest of us supposed to do? Plus, we revisit our conversation with AI researcher David Shapiro on why fear-driven stories about AI grab our attention, and how the stories we tell ourselves can shape the future we end up with. Connect with David Shapiro ⁠Follow David Shapiro on YouTube Contact ANI ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Request A Customized Workshop For Your Company⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow Kwame Christian on LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠negotiateanything.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here to buy your copy of Finding Confidence in Conflict: How to Negotiate Anything and Live Your Best Life!

• 0:00Speaker 00

  We had a leader of one of Silicon Valley's top AI companies on the podcast, and we asked them all of the tough questions you would want us to ask. Might I lose my job as a result of this? Might I be one of those things that's automated? One of the main things we wanted to do in this episode is make sure that you knew what you needed to know in order to secure your future in this new AI world we found ourselves in.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  You have to do something because AI is gonna take control over everything. And to me, it's like, you have to do something. Don't ask me to do something. I'm not in control of that. I am a podcast producer. You are an AI expert. So what is the role of AI leaders? That I don't think is just quitting and warn people about the end of the world.

• 0:50Speaker 00

  Snowflake is an AI-powered data cloud platform with a market cap of over $100 billion. And they are without a doubt, one of the leading companies in the new AI revolution. In this episode, we want to separate fact from fiction. What is hype and what is real? Because there's a lot of noise out there on the internet. So we brought in Snowflake's chief people officer to the podcast because he's not a theorist. He's not somebody who is a fear mongerer. He's going to give it to us straight and tell us what it is that we need to know about AI going forward. This is the story of Arnon Ghoshuri and welcome to Big Swings Only.

• 1:31Speaker 00

  Today's episode is brought to you by Shopify, Granola AI, Quince, and the Anxious Achiever Podcast. Stay present in your meetings. Get three months of granola free at granola.ai/Quami. For your gift list, shopquince.com for free shipping and 365-day returns. And make sure to tell them that Quami with Big Swings Only sent you. Subscribe to the Anxious Achiever today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Do you have an idea that you want live for the holidays? Launch before Black Friday at Shopify.com/Quami.

• 2:07Speaker 00

  So, Arnon, when you turn on the news or flip on social media and you see people talking about AI, what is the thing that you see the most that annoys you the most?

• 2:19Speaker 02

  It's a great question. It really is around how the pundits are creating and stirring anxiety. They're stirring fear around the AI era. Really, the AI era is here to uplift us, really to create a great environment where we as individuals can look at some of these repetitive tasks that we do in our work, get them to be automated and really amplify our human side of who we are. So what Snowflake does, for example, is it creates an agentic layer on top of people's data. So you can create insights and you can ask the data questions and you can build a portfolio of information to help you make great decisions about the company.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  That's really the true power of practical AI is to really build capability for companies. And when I'm hearing pundits are starting to stir things up and create fear, it feeds into anxiety about people's transformation, about people's change management. People are reluctant to embrace things. And the world is full of change all the time. History has shown us that change comes from the internet to the automobile, to all these different transformational technologies. It really is important for people to feel comfortable, to learn, to be open, to be curious, and to lean in. And when pundits are just creating this false sense of anxiety,

• 3:47Speaker 02

  it really is helping to push people away from embracing AI as this next amazing change for humanity.

• 3:56Speaker 00

  Yes, so what you're saying makes a lot of sense. And it can be really confusing for folks who are not in the industry. Because you brought up the point of pundits, and you're 100% right. You have different pundits or even online creators who recognize that the algorithm is really promoting things that promote the AI doomer mentality. So everything is going to fall apart. But then when you also see that a lot of the most visible AI CEOs are echoing some of the same sentiments, then people become more concerned because it seems like the folks who are most in the know are validating the sometimes hyperbolic claims of the pundits.

• 4:40Speaker 00

  And so when you see those folks like Sam Altman, for example, the leader of Anthropic as well, saying certain things, saying we need to slow down because this is getting dangerous. How do you break through to people where you're saying things are going to get better, but everybody else seems to be saying something different?

• 5:00Speaker 02

  I think with any new technology, you need to create guardrails. You need to create some structure around how we should think about implementing AI. And so let me give a very myopic example of what we do at Snowflake.

• 5:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  And I think that has, it could have a more amplified effect if people think about the same way. So we divide AI implementation to three buckets. The first one is anything that causes friction in a person's work or a person's life, you can automate. Like this is stuff that we're doing on a repetitive basis. Go ahead and use AI fully to automate and make your life better. The second one is if you're using AI to help augment your creativity. And maybe from a company perspective, this could be, let's say you're doing an employee survey. All the data comes in. You can use AI to look at the data to help look at themes.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  But once you get the themes, it's the person who makes the judgment call around how to utilize that data and make decisions on that data. And the third is really important, that you preserve a whole set of activities that are only human. That's judgment, that is career advice, that's talking to people, that's helping people grow. So you need to be intentional about this third bucket of what you keep human. So when you're talking about big leaders coming out and saying, we need to put guardrails on this, it means that sometimes they forget, or I think sometimes they're overlooking that we need to preserve the humanity along the way.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  And as long as we have a strong guardrail that keeps human and make sure the human element is amplified, then I think there is a structure that people will feel more comfortable with. But right now, they're out there, you know, saying things without structure, without talking about that there's guardrails, and it does make people a little bit concerned.

• 6:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, because one thing I like about you, Arnnon, is that when you put this together, when you implement this, you're implementing it at the highest level and you're doing it with a high degree of intentionality. The three buckets, I love this. We have automation, augmentation, and then having preserved certain things for human-only purposes, which I think is beautiful. And you're right, when the folks who are going on these platforms and talking, a lot of times there is not much nuance that's captured. Either it's not, the nuance isn't articulated, or it is articulated and the nuance doesn't really sell very well. So it's not amplifying. And so we hold on to the most, like the scariest, the messages that have the most limbic resonance

• 7:42Speaker 00

  are the ones that get amplified the most. And to your point about the preserving the human-only aspects of business, I think that is the part that people are really holding on to the most when it comes to their biggest concerns. Because we have the more practical, possibly more rooted in reality concern of, hey, might I lose my job as a result of this? Might I be one of those things that's automated? But then we have on the more hyperbolic side, preserving humanity in an actual real sense. Because now we're talking extinction. That's been the thing in the last week that has been floating around the most, the approximately 10% chance of human extinction.

• 8:24Speaker 00

  Where we get this number, God only knows, you know? And so as you're going, as with Snowflake, how AI is a big part of what it is that you're doing, how do you break through that resistance if you're, for instance, trying to sell this? As somebody who is trying to bring this to new markets? Or within a company, if you're trying to have people be okay with the implementation? How do you overcome that type of fear mongering?

• 8:54Speaker 02

  Sure. So I'll use Snowflake as an example because we, you know, we're a microcosm of the world, right? We have lots of people from different walks of life and different backgrounds professionally, all coming to lend their expertise to helping Snowflake become great. And just like you mentioned, you know, there is a need for intentionality around what to preserve as human. So before any company implements tools, before we push out mandates to the organization, before any of that happens, a few things have to occur. The first one is you communicate very clearly that structure, that three-pronged structure.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  And you think about how, there's a spectrum. And the spectrum is, on one side, you have where you can reduce friction in the work environment through automation. And the other side is where do you erode trust? And if you start going towards the erosion of trust, that means you're using AI in human areas that should stay human. You lose the audience. I mean, you lose your employee population. It's just not how it should work. Well, you want to create intentionality around it. So what we've done very practically, and you know, hopefully people will find this valuable, is we started small.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  Okay, we said, okay, look, what we need to do is, this is all about change management. And a lot of times, the people team is responsible, the HR team is responsible for leading the change within organizations or finding themselves in that position, or they're being asked to lead the change. So what we, how we did at Snowflake is we started small. I asked some of my teams, and I'll use my own team as an example, to find something that was full of friction in their work environment. And I'll give a very practical example. Job descriptions. Creating job descriptions for a company, sometimes it's time-consuming. And so what we did was, I said, okay, how long does it take you to do it? Two to three hours for each job description.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  So what we'll do is, I said, okay, why don't you look at ways to automate that and see if you can really bring that time down? And they built an application that it takes less than 10 minutes now to build a job description, where the agent pulls archived data, it looks at external environment about new words that are being used, it gets manager approval, all in the same cycle within 10 minutes, ready to go and sent out.

• 11:28Speaker 02

  What's really important about that is it's a success where people said, oh, this is actually helping me. And so part of that change management is starting small in very myopic areas that actually alleviate friction. And also you get people to say, well, this is not so bad. This is actually helpful to me. So it takes all that anxiety we talked about and something very practical in their daily life and fixes something that is painful. Then they realize they can spend more time on more meaningful things. So if a recruiter, for example, has their job description generated, those two hours saved can now spend on engaging with candidates,

• 12:10Speaker 02

  talking to people, connecting, doing all those human aspects that AI should not touch. So once you think about that at a grand scale, where you look across the entire organization, you start building great automation tools, great applications to help to reduce that friction. You get people who are believers. You get people who say, now I understand what this, all this AI means. And people out there in the world can do this, like they can create emails that are generated in their own words. They can look at their schedule and help them organize the week. They can do shopping lists that are generated. I mean, there's lots of things you can start to build that makes your day, your day easier.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  So I think the whole thing about reducing anxiety, reducing folks feeling the hesitation is you start small. You build a little bit of momentum. You create environments where people can experiment and try things and realize this is actually beneficial to me. And then you keep the guardrails as soon as they start to think about doing stuff that should be human, like career conversations or engagement, you say, no, we're going to keep that intentionally off limits for AI. Because we want people to be engaged with people and we want the human aspects to stay stable within the company.

• 13:31Speaker 00

  Love it. I love it. I like the idea of the incremental approach where instead of saying, trying to persuade people, even verbally here, we're saying, all right, let's figure out what the minimum viable product could be for this. So people can actually see the positive benefits in their lives. Let me ask you a hypothetical question.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 13:51Speaker 00

  So we have right now this last bucket where it's human only. And you said you want to make sure that we have very clear guardrails to make sure that we don't infringe on the human side. Now, this is going to sound, this question might sound a little bit overly simplistic, but we'll get depth with the follow up here. Why is it important to retain that little bit of humanity?

• 14:16Speaker 02

  There are multiple reasons, right? We talked about that, first of all, I mentioned eroding trust.

• 14:24Speaker 00

  Right.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  Trust, trust comes from a feeling that there is, who we are as human beings is guarded, is preserved. And we need to start with that as, as the core, where people don't feel like they're going to be overrun and out of control. So there's some control that's put back on the human that feels like it's stabilizing, is an anchor for people.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  And secondly, it, it really telegraphs to the world, to a company that we care about the people. We care about you. We care about you as a human being. I mean, if you just said, here's all these tools and start doing all this, all these different projects in the company and start automating everything and people say, well, wait, what about me? Like some of this is my job, like, like I understand, like you're trying to take me away as a human being. So it conveys not only that we preserve humanity intentionality, but it just preserves that concept that we care about the human being in the company and we can't lose that.

• 15:29Speaker 00

  Right. I, I agree with you 100%. Now, this is where it gets kind of weird though, because imagine we get to a point, two or three years down the road where the AIs can competently do the things that used to be human only. So the things that are human only today and now can actually be done of a greater degree. Like we passed the Turing test, it's very conversational, everything like that.

• 15:56Speaker 00

  So at that point, where does that third bucket lie? Do we still keep it as like a principle, a general value? Or do we say, all right, well, we have to generate shareholder value as well? Cause I'm thinking back to the beginning, a few years ago, Sam Altman famously said that, he says, at some point we'll have a billion dollar company that has only one employee, right? And so as AI continues to get bigger and better and more effective, do you see that third bucket shrinking? How do we handle that?

• 16:31Speaker 02

  Actually, call me an optimist, I, I don't, because I really think that

• 16:37Speaker 02

  the pendulum will go in the middle. And what we'll see is that a lot of the technology will help to alleviate tactical tasks. But we'll find that what's emerging is the human capability to connect with each other, the human capability to make decisions and judgment, the nuances. I really think it's going to stay human. And, and I, you know, I think about this all the time, like even at a more myopic level. I mean, I'll go in this direction. A myopic level is if let's say, we take a person out of college who's a finance analyst, let's say.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  And if a finance analyst graduates with the finance degree and they enter a company. Now, how people learn is they'll rotate around to different financial parts of the business, FPNA and accounting and doing some RV and learning the business. And then they start going into more, bigger meetings where they're utilizing the data to be, to be thoughtful about, about decisions and to help to grow the company. But it takes a few years to learn that stuff before they get into the bigger roles. So to your point, if AI comes in and basically takes the first three years of basic level finance analytics

• 18:00Speaker 02

  and automates the whole thing, you know, where does a new entry level person come into a company and start to grow, right? So now we have to think beyond this and the people team has to be responsible for recreating and reimagining how learning works. How people grow as, as a professional. And you create parts of the business where they come in, you accelerate the learning. Because what's key to all that learning is you learn the, how data works and how things are, are put together so you can make good, good calls if the data looks right or wrong. So when new people come in, you have to accelerate this synthetic learning,

• 18:41Speaker 02

  like this simulation environment where you teach systems thinking, you teach how you take data and you see where things might be not correct. So then you accelerate that and that allows, to your original question, that allows people to learn the basics faster, like within six months instead of three years. Then they can move into the more human led part of the business, which is interfacing with people, making decisions, creating more meaningful impact for the company and more meaningful revenue streams for the company. So all that's really super important. So I think that we are going to find that as we are developing rotational programs for folks

• 19:24Speaker 02

  and are accelerating learning, we're going to amplify the human aspect much faster than before. So it's not going to go away. It's just going to be amplified and it's going to be faster career tracks for people in life. And that's how, that's how we're going to see the amplification of the human side of the business.

• 19:43Speaker 00

  Perfect. That makes a lot of sense. And let's, let's stay on this human side. So for the people who are listening, what would you say? Cause you touched on a few of them, but I want to go a little bit more deeper, a little bit deeper and get a little bit more technical here to when it comes to the human centered skills that will be preserved going forward. If people are thinking about what it is that they need to really invest in within themselves in order to make sure that they are of value going forward, what are those things that they should focus on? Try this, pull up your notes from a meeting last week. Do they still make sense? Or do they just seem like random notes that only the old version of you could decode?

• 20:24Speaker 00

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• 21:09Speaker 00

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• 21:55Speaker 00

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• 22:10Speaker 02

  Well, first, they should make sure that there's some natural innate curiosity. Because what companies look for is people who are open to experimenting, to trying things, to create space for themselves, to question like, why is this, why is this SaaS quo important? Like, why can't we reinvent the way we're doing things? So you had to come with curiosity to use a system. We call it AI propensity. So we want, we, there's three parts of AI propensity. One is that you're AI aware. And that means you just know that, oh, there's a couple of applications out there, but I haven't really tried it yet. Then there's AI curious. And that where you start leaning in and thinking about and, and playing with the tools. And then you become AI proficient.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  And there's a lot of levels of AI proficiency. We're using the tools to make your life better. You're actually utilizing it. So, so the, so we want the people to go from curious to proficient. And so people just need to play and feel comfortable just trying things. Just, it's okay to fail. It's okay to try things. So those are the skillsets that are really important because technology is moving really fast. And what you learn today is going to transform and be different tomorrow. So, but having that innate capability to be curious allows you to tackle it and tackle new stuff all the time and constantly have continuous learning. The second thing is around systems thinking. Because what we're finding is now that data is at your fingertips and you're able to

• 23:38Speaker 02

  look at lots of different data sources and it comes together in a very coherent pattern. You now need to think about how things tie together, how things interface and what the interdependencies are. So having not so much a myopic perspective, but being able to see how things can impact other, other parts of the food chain within your organization or within life is going to be super important. So system thinking is really critical. And, and those two put together, curiosity with system thinking really create this foundation for people to learn and to grow and to advance their skillsets.

• 24:16Speaker 00

  Beautiful, beautiful. I, I love this and I like that we started off with curiosity too. Because what's interesting is we can't predict the future. But if you stay curious, you can at least identify the things that you need to know and you'll have that thirst for knowledge that draws you into actually learning what's required to be successful.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  Right, and it helps with, with adaptation, right? You're able to adapt. You're able to kind of change yourself because you're curious and you're not stuck in one way of doing things. So, and adaption is the key of the game here, right? And you can, you can learn that. You can learn to be comfortable with change by being curious and constantly adapting to the new technologies.

• 24:56Speaker 00

  And speaking of adaptation, because we, when we think about the folk, the people who are at the forefront of all of these changes within the, the workplace, we often think about the folks who are AI native, the people who are in software engineering and things like that. But a lot of times, you mentioned it's the, the people who are people leaders. So folks who are in charge of human resources. How has that shifted that profession? Because now you're, you're finding yourself doing things that you never thought were going to be part of your, your day to day life.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I think, I think it's, it's important to realize at the beginning that the, the bridge between the technical and non-technical has been, has been crossed. This is through natural language capability on a lot of the AI tools. So you don't have to be that technical anymore to really leverage all the really cool tools out there to build something amazing for your organization. So because we have this, this divide that has no, basically no longer exists. People leaders within companies, any leader who doesn't have the engineering background can still make dramatic impact, dramatic positive impact to the organization, building tools. Because, and I'll give you a great example.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  The, I've asked my recruiting team, the size of job description database that I mentioned, the generator I mentioned before. I asked them to think of other things that they would like to transform to really build this robust recruiting organization within the company. And a lot of them are not that technical, right? They come, they come up, maybe they came from sales or some other parts of the business to become recruiters. Because the tools are so advanced, they can go in, just think about what they want to create and put it in words, create a prompt that makes sense, work with the system that asks them questions along the way. And literally in the morning, they had something on a napkin. In the afternoon, they have a working app already done.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  So it's that fast and that, that amazing, how you can transform your work environment and not be technical, but make an application that works so fluently and so fluidly in your organization. So the speed with which we can develop, we can help the company get better, we can make change, is at the fingerprint, fingertips of all the leaders out there, both technical and non-technical.

• 27:22Speaker 00

  Hmm. Are, are we shifting to a world where there's almost an unspoken assumption that you have to have some level of AI literacy for new, for new job applicants at this point?

• 27:37Speaker 02

  I, I believe we're moving to, I mean, if I said the same thing about the internet, you know, everybody has to go on the internet, you know, you know, 20, 30 years ago.

• 27:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  Then people say, what are you talking about? What is this interweb, WWE? And I remember that time. I mean, I was part of that, you know, part of a company that had that transformation. And there were a lot of people say, I don't understand, just understand how this is structured. But it's, it's become ubiquitous now, right? It's every, it's everything and people are, are users automatically. And it's going to be the same thing with AI proficiency. It's just going to be, it's going to be built into everything that we, that we do. It's going to be commonplace. So whether you like it or not, I think people will naturally become AI proficient. And again, there's levels though. And then some people are just will be great users of all these tools and other people will create tomorrow, right? They'll actually build the tools that other people will use.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  But everyone is going to have some basic table stakes of AI proficiency for sure and literacy.

• 28:36Speaker 00

  We have AI aware, AI curious, AI proficient. Which one is Snowflake currently hiring for?

• 28:44Speaker 02

  You have to have a minimal of curiosity, but we are looking for folks that have played with the tools and proven they've, they have become baseline proficient.

• 28:54Speaker 00

  Perfect. Okay. Now let's go to this one. And we've touched on this, but I want to push you to, to come up with something different here. So you can't name something that you've named already. So what is the one human skill that AI will never automate that we haven't already addressed?

• 29:17Speaker 02

  The one skill it will not automate is, I would, I would say judgment.

• 29:29Speaker 00

  Hmm, go deeper on that one.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  So there, judgment is so nuanced and it is, it requires so many variables of our own learning and our knowledge to be able to make a call. I can give you a very practical example.

• 29:47Speaker 00

  Beautiful.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  So let's say, because I'm a people person and run people teams. I look at compensation in, in many different ways. And so the data itself could, could, I could run a report that says, you'll please look across the organization and tell me if there's any groups that might be behind market data and their pay, their pay scale as an example. It'll come up with five groups and it'll tell me these people are underpaid, you know, as an example. But maybe there's a rationale behind it. Maybe because they're in a different geo or there's, or they're being paid through

• 30:31Speaker 02

  stock options or stock versus cash, or there's some other way that we're paying this group that makes that organization fit in a, in a certain market spectrum. So, so AI wouldn't come up and think about that. I mean, it's really about the human judgment to look at the data, to make a call, to understand the nuances of intentionality and decision-making and history. I just don't think that AI will ever have an ability to do that because really is, it's a deep decision-making process that the human makes a, an emotional judgment. You know, this, this emotional connection to the data that is going to be preserved as human.

• 31:15Speaker 00

  Yep, I agree 100%. And I'll, I'll take that another step further too, when it comes to executive presence and in vivo communication, like in real time. Because there is the, everything that you said about judgment and decision-making, 100% correct. I also think there's going to be an increase in a lack of confidence in calling that shot in real time in a, in a real conversation. Because so many times people are, they might have a decision that they've made, but they always want to double check it with AI to make sure that it's okay. So that gives them a lot more confidence. So the person who is able to articulate their point, come up with their rationale and really

• 31:56Speaker 00

  stand on that in person, I think in, or in real time, I think that's going to be a leadership component that will make them stand out significantly going forward too.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. And you know, another area, you know, that I really want to make sure is preserved is, and we, I had mentioned this a little bit, is about this emotional intelligence, right? So, you know, I don't think this will ever be AI-fied because it really is important that a person and to another person has a conversation regarding things that are going on in their life, things that might impact their work, things that might, that they need a little bit of a break or they need some connection with a person to understand them. AI can never replace that, right? And as people, people making that human connection, being emotionally available for somebody

• 32:52Speaker 02

  else to just share who they are, is a very human aspect that, you know, I think will be preserved forever. And it's really an important, because we're all people in a company. It's not dots on a page. It's, it's human beings and that connection is so important to preserve.

• 33:12Speaker 00

  Amazing. I love it. I love it. Um, okay. Now let's play the game within the lightning round of what did you learn? So the biggest lesson. What is the biggest lesson you took from your time at Google?

• 33:28Speaker 02

  The biggest lesson I took was how data and analytics

• 33:34Speaker 02

  from a people's side can drive amazing decisions. It was, we really amplified how people analytics was the core of the people function. And it analyzed all aspects of, of human behavior and patterns just to help us make better decisions. So I found that, that people analytics and data is a core part of any HR organization.

• 33:59Speaker 00

  Perfect. That makes, makes a lot of sense from Google too. What was the biggest lesson you learned working at Tesla?

• 34:07Speaker 02

  At Tesla, there was a big push for unfiltered communication. There was a fear sometimes that when a problem was escalated, it would get a little bit watered down as it got to, to you as a leader. And so, so sometimes, you know, maybe a big crisis became, oh, here's a small little issue by the time we got to you. Like the phone game. So, so we really practiced unfiltered communication, meaning you go directly to the person.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  There was no hierarchy when, where problems need to be escalated. You can reach out to anybody in the company that you want to and share your point of view, share what's a problem because it's about, it's about efficiency. It's about looking at the, at the, the issue in its raw form. So we can make better decisions of how to solve for it. So it's unfiltered communication was really key to speed and solving really crazy problems before they became crises.

• 35:09Speaker 00

  Nice. Nice. Very good answer. Now, last question. When you are hiring and you're looking for somebody with some degree of tech literacy, AI literacy, what are the tells that you look for that they are faking AI literacy?

• 35:26Speaker 02

  So, so I've learned along the way that you do have to dig into people's experiences. So they might be able to tell a story really well because they practice the story. But you have to start asking questions and just like you said, go, go a little bit lower. Go into it, scratch a little bit more, go into depth of how they created something, the rationale behind it. How did they solve a problem? Who did they have to socialize it with? How did it get implemented? What were the, the failures of it? The more questions you ask around things they've done from an AI fluency perspective, if they don't have answers for all of those questions, you know that they're trying to fake it. They know that it's too superficial.

• 36:09Speaker 02

  So I do go deeper into the questions because I really want to understand like, how did they think about the problem? And how did they address it with an AI app or some type of technology or some pattern or some tech, or something they've done to really get to the core of the problem and implement it. The farther you go in, if they don't have answers for that, I know they might be not quite the, the person who actually developed it.

• 36:32Speaker 00

  Makes sense. No, I like it. Great answers. Great answers. And Simone, I know you have been waiting patiently and you've got something interesting to say or a great question to ask. So what's on your mind?

• 36:44Speaker 01

  One of the things that I see of many AI experts is that they work for, for a company and then they decide to quit. And sometimes they go online and say, hey, you have to do something because AI is going to take control over everything. And to me it's like, you have to do something. Don't ask me to do something because I still paste my password with Post-its in my laptop. Why are you asking me to do something? I'm not in control of that. I, I am a podcast producer. You are an AI expert. So first, why they do that? And second, what is the, the role of AI leaders?

• 37:25Speaker 01

  That I don't think is just quitting and warn people about the end of the world because, because of AI. So.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's interesting questions. Well, so I'm not sure about the, the intention of people who start to, start to

• 37:39Speaker 02

  have all these explanations and I, and I've seen that and I've watched the news and, and read, read all the articles myself.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  But I do know that, that it is up to all the leaders in all these companies to work together. It is a new frontier. It is uncharted. And it relies on people to have really good judgment of how to create these guardrails, to create an environment where people feel safe. And people know that they're developing stuff and there's room to experiment, there's room to be curious. So yes, sometimes folks, when they make all these great, you know, accusations and start to create some, some waves, it just keeps us thinking like true leaders will lead from within and make sure that people are comfortable with how the technology is evolving and helping change management.

• 38:31Speaker 02

  Helping people start from the beginning, as we talked about, get used to it, get familiar with it. And that's really how we're going to solve some of these problems is where people use technology. They realize they can have very positive impact on their lives and people around them. And they can make their own call, whether it's, whether it's going to doom the world or whether they're going to be able to just make their lives way, way better.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 38:58Speaker 00

  Oh, very, very helpful. So we, we've talked about the news a number of times here. Has it meaningfully made your job harder when it comes to having these conversations? Do you have to answer to this or does it really just stay in the, the media world and doesn't affect you that much?

• 39:19Speaker 02

  From inside of Snowflake, you know, we've gone through our own journey to educate our own population, our own employees with how we are structuring very productively, how we're structuring the, ourselves in the AI era. Right? We talked about the three pillars. We talked about what we're going to preserve as human. So because they live it every day, it is, it safeguards some of this, some of this talk out there. It doesn't really come inside because people are utilizing the tools and realizing how helpful it is for companies to look at their data, how helpful it is for organizations to have this agentic layer of Snowflake in their companies because it comes with great governance, great data security.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  And it comes with thoughtfulness around the human. And so they know that they're doing the right thing. And so it, it does help them navigate some of the, some of the waves out there and keep on a straight course.

• 40:16Speaker 00

  Yep. Brilliant. And then last question too, because you've got some incredible, you've, you have an incredible resume of all of the companies that you've helped, the, the significant changes that you've helped to make in Silicon Valley. What drew you to Snowflake? If you were going to take a big swing this holiday season and start a business, what would you build? Maybe it's that one idea that you can't stop thinking about. I've built a business from the ground up and I can tell you that the hard part isn't the idea, it's getting it live. That's where Shopify comes in. You can sell everywhere people shop, online, in person, across social media, even in AI chats. And Shopify checkout with Shop Pay converts up to 36% higher than the competition.

• 40:59Speaker 00

  So more of the people who show up actually buy. Plus, Black Friday is when more people are already shopping and ready to buy. So the sooner you're live, the better. If you're ready to launch your business before Black Friday, go to Shopify.com/Quami to start your free trial. That's Shopify.com/Quami. Go to Shopify.com/Quami to hear your first. Try this. Pull up your notes from a meeting last week. Do they still make sense or do they just seem like random notes that only the old version of you could decode? That used to be me. And as a negotiator, that's a real problem because my job is to listen, not type or write notes. That's why Granola has been one of my favorite tools, period.

• 41:42Speaker 00

  It's an AI powered notepad. I jot my usual rough notes and then Granola securely transcribes the meeting in the background. And when it ends, I get clean, structured notes that still make sense a week later. Decisions, owners, next steps, everything that I would need to feel good about going forward. And it works through your device's audio too. So there's no additional setup or any annoying AI joining your call. Just your normal meeting, but with superpowers. If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no brainer. You can try it totally free for three months. Just go to granola.ai/Quami. That's granola.ai/Quami to get your time back. Get three months free at granola.ai/Quami.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  The potential of Snowflake is it's unbelievable. Originally, when I spoke with Sridhar, CEO, and we kind of thought about where we're taking the company, it was invigorating. It was exciting. And, and you know, I judge, you know, my next move on, on companies that are creating a new tomorrow, are on the frontier of new technology, are building things that are going to change people's lives for the better and make this make a better impact on the, on the world. And I felt it here. I felt that everyone was so mission focused, so engaged, that we're going to do what's

• 43:07Speaker 02

  right, and we're going to do what's ethical, and we're going to build something special. And that drew me in from day one.

• 43:13Speaker 00

  Brilliant. And for those of you, for those who are listening who haven't heard of Snowflake, let's talk about that mission. What, what makes it so game changing?

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Well, it really creates an ability for any company to become a player in the AI era. You know, it creates tools and technology on this agentic layer that sits on top of your data, helps organize your data, that you can read information from, from all these disparate parts of your company into something that's coherent and full of patterns that you can actually make better business decisions and build a better company. So it is, it is the foremost tool, foremost tool in the world that does this. Many, many customers are just clamoring for this type of technology. I myself talk to many CHROs and I personally go out and do calls every month, visit customers,

• 44:05Speaker 02

  and talk to them about how I've transformed the people team here through these tools, and they're amazed. And they say, where can I sign up? So it is a frontier technology. We're building something for the future. We're creating it today, where any, any company can become a player in the AI era, and I'm excited to be here.

• 44:26Speaker 00

  Amazing. See, Arun, one, one of the things that I think is so interesting here about this is that, and we, we talked off camera about this too. There is you, as somebody who is one of the people leaders of the organization, you're working really closely to the business development and sales team too. Can you go deeper into that? Because I've, I've worked with, as like I had a number of SaaS companies as clients, and a lot of times they're very siloed. The business development team, the sales team, they're kind of doing their own thing, kind of wild, wild westing things out on their own. So can you talk about the, that unique connection that you have with business development?

• 45:07Speaker 02

  So the people team, we are squarely in the mix. Like, again, we, we call ourselves customer zero because we built tools over the last year. We built an amazing range of tools that is helping to uplift the people team and create such an amazing employee experience across the company. Now it's time to take these tools and all this great process development and all this workflow reinvention. And I can, I can talk to other CHROs and say, I know you might be struggling with whatever you have now, but look what we created, we organized it. And so we partner with the sales team, we partner with our go to market organization, meet with customers regularly, all my team does this now, and we just tell our story.

• 45:52Speaker 02

  We say where we started and how we've thought about change management, how we educated the people team, how we grew, grew up, how we started building apps ourselves, how we started to create ways to reduce all that friction out in our workforce and make just people working here their lives so much better. And it resonates, you know, it resonates with all these CHROs, all these chief people officers in these companies, like they want to do the same thing. Like their job is to make a great working experience for the employee population, and these tools can help them get there. So it is my pleasure to be able to be not only a user of the tools, and we created our own tools, but I can share that story to others and make their lives better.

• 46:37Speaker 00

  That's such a competitive advantage because the, the stories make themselves and they're completely authentic. It worked for us, it could work for you. It's, it's a really easy sell in that regard. What, what would you say is the biggest challenge that the business development team faces day to day?

• 46:54Speaker 02

  You know, the team is doing, doing really well. Like we're hitting all the sectors, they're talking to people. I, I think there's just a lot of noise out there, right? I think there's a lot of noise of companies who might be telling a tale of products that don't quite exist yet. You know, everything, everything that we provide, it exists and it's working. It's, you know, we're, we're users of it. So I think it's helping companies kind of clear out the noise and look at the, really the strong signals that come from Snowflake, like we can actually help you be better. So it's kind of working through that and navigating and helping companies, like reaching

• 47:38Speaker 02

  in and pulling companies out of that noise into a, you know, a better future, basically.

• 47:43Speaker 00

  Yep. Makes a lot of sense. Arun, I, I really appreciate you coming on the podcast today and helping to clarify so much because speaking of noise, there is a lot of noise in the market in general when it comes to AI, and it's hard to tell what's real, what's not. And so you've helped all of us with our AI literacy, so we appreciate that. And for the folks who are listening who want to learn more about you and more about Snowflake, what's the best way to get in touch and, and learn more?

• 48:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I'm on LinkedIn and I respond to everybody. So if you want to reach out to me, I'd love to get to know you.

• 48:16Speaker 00

  Perfect. Thank you so much for joining us, really appreciate it.

• 48:19Speaker 02

  It's my pleasure. I thank you so much for having me today. I really appreciate it.

• 48:23Speaker 00

  Thank you. We understand that there is a lot of noise out there and people have a lot of questions around artificial intelligence. So to make this episode even more impactful, we wanted to circle back to one of our old episodes about AI and what the future can look like. But we see the, the two different versions. We have the utopian future and the dystopian future. Arun gave us a vision for what the most likely outcome is going to be, but this next episode that we're adding here will show us what those extremes could be too. Try this, pull up your notes from a meeting last week. Do they still make sense? Or do they just seem like random notes that only the old version of you could decode?

• 49:08Speaker 00

  That used to be me, and as a negotiator, that's a real problem because my job is to listen, not type or write notes. That's why Granola has been one of my favorite tools, period. It's an AI powered notepad. I jot my usual rough notes and then Granola securely transcribes the meeting in the background. And when it ends, I get clean, structured notes that still make sense a week later. Decisions, owners, next steps, everything that I would need to feel good about going forward. And it works through your device's audio too, so there's no additional setup or any annoying AI joining your call, just your normal meeting, but with superpowers. If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no brainer. You can try it totally free for three months. Just go to granola.ai/Quami.

• 49:53Speaker 00

  That's granola.ai/Quami to get your time back. Get three months free at granola.ai/Quami. Every year, I swear that I'm going to get ahead of holiday shopping. This year, it started with a Quince cashmere sweater that I bought for myself. It was so soft, so well made, and my first thought was, who else on my list needs one? Quince makes high quality staples with 100% Mongolian cashmere and Italian leather, and their cashmere sweaters start at just $60. All of it is 50 to 80% less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. As a negotiator, I know a great deal when I see one. This is luxury quality without the luxury price tag. I use Quince and you should too.

• 50:37Speaker 00

  Give the gift of quality this season. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or just go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Quami with big swings only. That's the best way to support the show. Dave, welcome back to the show, my friend.

• 51:01Speaker 03

  Thank you. It's good to be here.

• 51:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, man, it is exciting to have you back. So how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

• 51:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, so my name's David Shapiro. I started my work in technology back in 2007, 2008-ish, just in time for the Great Recession. I worked my way up on the job training, cloud infrastructure and automation. I worked in gigantic data centers, recognizable names like Cisco Systems and Duke Medicine. Around 2014, 2015, I started getting into machine learning and artificial intelligence. Fast forward a decade now, and it has exploded. So I built a YouTube channel. The reason that I built my YouTube channel was because I didn't have the credentials. I didn't have the right alphabet soup after my name, no PhD or anything like that. But I was, I had my experience and I wanted to share the experiments that I was doing and teach people this new technology. Then ChatGPT was kind of the big moment at the end of 2022.

• 51:51Speaker 03

  My YouTube channel exploded. I had all kinds of opportunities coming my way. That's how you found me, I think, was like, what is this new technology? I was one of the first people talking about it, teaching people how to understand this technology. Fast forward another couple of years, ChatGPT just turned two. And yeah, it's, society is grappling with this technology and more and more people are paying attention. It's kind of, you know, it's like whenever like you're vacuuming and your dog is barking at it, he can't look away because it's terrifying. That is AI to some people and other people like this is the coolest thing ever. So it's becoming even more polarizing, which is in hindsight, not surprising, but it was a little bit surprising at first. I thought that we'd be a little bit further along, but it's actually becoming more polarizing as AI is becoming more prominent in society. So I think that's why we're here today.

• 52:33Speaker 00

  Yes. Oh, this is fascinating. And I tell you, the work that you've done is so impressive because you've done the work just experientially. You've done the work in terms of creating your own research and then consuming the research of others. And you've been so focused on solving this alignment issue and helping other people to understand it. And now your audience is over hundreds of thousands at this point, and it's incredibly impressive. And with today's episode, we're going to talk about negotiating the future of AI. There's so much for us to address here because the technology will continue to progress. And I know there are some tech doomers out there who might want to say like, stop developing it. That's not realistic. It will continue to develop. So that means that we have to have some conversations, some really critical conversations

• 53:15Speaker 00

  about what we want our future to look like and what future we want to make sure that we avoid. And we have all seen enough scary AI-related movies to see what that potentially could be. And so let's just talk about setting the stage for this conversation. When we think about the conversation about negotiating the future of AI, who are the players and what are the things that we need to address?

• 53:36Speaker 03

  That is such a great place to start. So the main players are, I kind of break it down into three buckets. So there's we the people, so citizens, that's consumers, voters, whoever. Then there's the government, which is the institutions that we have built or that some of them build themselves. The government isn't always responsive to the people, but it should be. That's another conversation. We just had an election where we're negotiating that relationship again. And then there's the business, there's the corporations. That's the other kind of leg of this kind of stool. So you think of it of three legs of a stool. And we're all constantly in a state of negotiation over economics, over technology, over morality, whether it's reproductive rights or marriage rights or what our military should be doing.

• 54:17Speaker 03

  So technology is just another topic of conversation in this ongoing relationship that we all have to negotiate. And so like, as we were kind of talking about just before we hit record, you know, we just had a major election, which is going to have huge ramifications. And the way that I have kind of mentally understood this election is the American people had two basic choices. One choice was the establishment of the status quo of this is the way that things have been done. This is what the institution says versus a wrecking ball to change the institutions. And that happens every now and then. It happens about every 60 to 80 years where because of the democratic process, you end up with more and more rigidity and fragility and what's called calcification or ossification.

• 55:00Speaker 03

  So just everything kind of gets cramped up and then something has to change. And in this case, technology can be a forcing function. Technology has often been a forcing function in history, whether it was the steam engine, whether it was petroleum, steel, aerospace. So technology has a tendency to shake things loose. Sometimes it breaks things, but often what you'll see is society will kind of shake itself loose as these, as these pressures kind of build. It's almost like tectonic plates, right? You can only push against each other for so long until something has to give. And we're, we're at the beginning of that inflection point, which is why I kind of alluded earlier that AI in particular is becoming more polarizing over time rather than less because that strike, slip fault is, is still building up tension,

• 55:43Speaker 03

  which is why the work that, that you're doing, that I'm doing, that a lot of people that I, that I'm still working with is so important because it is an ongoing negotiation of how do we navigate this? Because as you mentioned, some of the forces are unstoppable. So the next task, I think, or one of the next tasks is identifying what are the levers that we do have control over versus the ones that we don't? Because in some cases, nature is just going to run its course, right? It's like, you know, if you've got the flu, you can't stop the flu. You just make the person comfortable and keep them well-fed until it runs its course and their, their body adapts. So then you look at, okay, well, what do I have control over? I can give you a blanket. I can give you, you know, some chicken soup. There's other things that you don't have control over. And that I think is one of the key things that gives a lot of people some heartburn and anxiety

• 56:26Speaker 03

  is recognizing, oh, oh, no, there's things that I don't have control over here. And that's very terrifying to a lot of people. And then also everyone has different levers of control. Some people have more authority than others. So, you know, whether you're a researcher or a CEO or the president or just a guy who's worried about losing your job, like there's all kinds of dimensions of authority and agency. And that landscape is also going to change pretty dramatically for some people. So that, again, all those reactions are perfectly understandable.

• 56:54Speaker 00

  I agree. And when you think about these conversations, they're very complicated. They're very complex. There are a lot of emotions that go into it. Some practical concerns, some tangible concerns and a lot of things that are intangible, like the value of human creation, those types of things. And when it comes to focusing on the right things, in order to focus on the right things, we also have to have a decent understanding of what are the wrong things that we might be focused on that are very tempting and alluring. So let's, let's address some of those things. You've been at the forefront of these conversations for the last few years and leading this massive community. And so you've been able to talk to people of all sides from different perspectives. And when you think about these conversations,

• 57:36Speaker 00

  what are the alluring distractions that people often focus on that lead us in the wrong direction?

• 57:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would say there's a few. And while I do have my criticisms and my, you know, particular school of thought, what I will say is all these conversations need to be had. At the same time, there's many layers to each conversation, which we can unpack that. So my work on epistemic tribes and the power of narratives. So for instance, one of the oldest principles of media is if it bleeds, it leads, which that basically means if it's scary, then it gets more attention. And that is just our biological evolutionary trajectory says, if there's an elephant tearing through your village, pay attention to the elephant. You know, maybe stop cooking dinner. Dinner can wait. There's an elephant on the loose, so pay attention to that. So, or if it's a tiger or an earthquake or a tidal wave or a storm is coming, we are all naturally wired. And it's not just humans. This is all animals, by the way.

• 58:28Speaker 03

  We are all naturally wired to pay attention to the greatest threat. Now, at the same time, our brains did not evolve to intuitively understand technology or anything of this scale. One of the rules of thumb is we evolved to think locally and geometrically, which is like, if you can see it, you have evolved an intuitive understanding. If you can throw a spear at it, you have evolved an intuitive understanding of that's how I deal with this threat model. We have no intuitive capacity to think globally and exponentially. So we have to compensate for our own biological shortcomings. Whenever you go from local geometric thought or local geometric problems to global exponential problems. And artificial intelligence is both global and exponential, meaning whatever you think you know about it is probably wrong.

• 59:12Speaker 03

  If you're going on your emotions and your gut instinct, you're probably wrong. And many people like, it's no one's fault, by the way. It's just, it's another cognitive bias. It's another failure of our biology because technology is moving faster than our own evolution. And so because of that, I think that many people, there was a tweet that went around that said like, AI doomerism is basically a cognitive trap for really smart people because you can imagine threats.

• 59:36Speaker 00

  That's true.

• 59:37Speaker 03

  And then it becomes real and that becomes another story. It becomes a whole narrative and you're like, well, I don't have any evidence for this because there can be no evidence for this and there can be no data, but it's very real to me because I have a good story about it. So I think that I have come to the belief that that's mostly a distraction because when you return to hard facts, like what is actually demonstrably true? AI hasn't killed anyone yet. It hasn't woke up and said, I'm going to take over the world. There's all kinds of things that it hasn't done yet and has shown no evidence. And in fact, because some people will say, well, absence of evidence is an evidence of absence or whatever. But we actually have plenty of evidence to the contrary. We have plenty of evidence that AI is actually creative. It just wants to make art for us. And it's like how the internet just wanted to give us cats, right? We've kind of moved on from that model, but you know, what did we use the internet for?

• 1:00:21Speaker 03

  We used it for cats and, you know, lots of other things to waste time. It has also been very useful. There's a growing amount of evidence that AI is steerable, that it is, you know, benign or benevolent. It also has, like any new technology, it has mixed uses and it's a bit of a double-edged sword. But many of the things, many of the stories that people have been afraid of have yet to manifest. Now that doesn't mean that they won't, but you'd kind of expect to see some evidence of those stories coming to fruition by now, but we're seeing more evidence to the contrary. So I would say that's probably the biggest thing in terms of distractions or conversations that I personally feel have less utility at this point. And we can get more profit from talking about, okay, well, it's here now. So how do we make the best of this? How do we steer the ship going back to those levers?

• 1:01:06Speaker 03

  Like what levers of control do we have? And what are the ramifications for society, for us as individuals, for business, for government, and those sorts of questions? And those conversations are, as I mentioned, often a lot more boring. Like policy conversations are less exciting than Skynet is going to kill everyone. So yeah, that's kind of my take where I'm at.

• 1:01:26Speaker 00

  Hello, my friends. Before we get back to today's episode, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever wondered how to elevate your team's negotiation game? And how you can help the folks on your team have better, difficult conversations? At the American Negotiation Institute, we offer transformative keynotes and workshops tailored to empower professionals with top-tier negotiation and conflict resolution skills. Whether it's a keynote for your next event or hands-on training for your team, we've got you covered. Don't just negotiate, master the art with the American Negotiation Institute. Click the link in the description to find out more. Elevate, negotiate, and succeed.

• 1:02:06Speaker 00

  Every year, I swear that I'm going to get ahead of holiday shopping. This year, it started with a Quince cashmere sweater that I bought for myself. It was so soft, so well-made, and my first thought was, who else on my list needs one? Quince makes high-quality staples with 100% Mongolian cashmere and Italian leather, and their cashmere sweaters start at just $60. All of it is 50 to 80% less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. As a negotiator, I know a great deal when I see one. This is luxury quality without the luxury price tag. I use Quince, and you should too. Give the gift of quality this season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or just go to quince.com.

• 1:02:50Speaker 00

  Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Kwame with Big Swings Only. That's the best way to support the show. Try this: Pull up your notes from a meeting last week. Do they still make sense? Or do they just seem like random notes that only the old version of you could decode? That used to be me, and as a negotiator, that's a real problem, because my job is to listen, not type or write notes. That's why Granola has been one of my favorite tools, period. It's an AI-powered notepad. I jot my usual rough notes, and then Granola securely transcribes the meeting in the background. And when it ends, I get clean, structured notes that still make sense a week later.

• 1:03:34Speaker 00

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• 1:04:06Speaker 00

  I think this is incredibly useful in terms of grounding us more in reality, and especially in situations where it can feel very logical. It's important for us to be able to have the self-awareness to recognize the distinction between something that feels true and something that is actually true. Because you're right, when somebody is very intellectual, that's usually a positive thing, but you have to be able to control it, because it can lead to very vivid catastrophizing that in a way that can be very convincing to you, and then you can communicate it articulately to convince other people. So I really appreciate us kind of bringing this back down to earth and elevate these conversations. But again, like you said, these are all conversations that need to happen,

• 1:04:46Speaker 00

  because if we don't, then we're just ceding even more control than we had before, right? Now, when we think about shifting the conversation to the future, when we think about the core things that we need to address, I think it's important to address the fact that, like, when we talk to each other a lot, we talk about the nature of truth and the impact of truth, and how we can create these self-fulfilling prophecies, too. When we have these conversations, it's important to bring these in, because somebody's story that they tell themselves, they can tell it enough times that it could actually create that outcome that they seek to avoid. So can you articulate that potential concern? And then we'll actually transition into the more practical conversations that are more beneficial to society.

• 1:05:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. So I mean, it comes down to that idea of self-fulfilling prophecy. And here's an example. I have actually seen some evidence of this starting to manifest. So with respect to technology, you can tell yourself a story. This is the worst thing that could possibly happen. It's going to kill everyone. And so then you view this technology through this lens of suspicion and destruction, and you almost end up creating that which you're most afraid of. You say, ah, well, see, this is what I said. This is what it's going to be. Let's treat it like an enemy. And then it becomes an enemy over time. This level of hostility towards technology, you know, it doesn't even have to be technology. You can do this to other people, right? You have an argument with your family or your friends, and you say, I hate you. You're an enemy. You're a bad person. And you treat them like a bad person, like you believe that they're a bad person.

• 1:06:13Speaker 03

  And then they're like, well, I don't like how you treat me, so I'm not going to be friends with you anymore. And that, so you make manifest that schism. And there are people, plenty of people, that are already doing this. And one of the ways that they do it rhetorically is they refer to AI as a dangerous technology, or they refer to AI as a destructive technology. And so there's this, this social coordination that happens within these epistemic tribes, where, you know, it's like, ah, well, you're not allowed to address the nuance. You're only allowed to see AI as dangerous and bad and destructive and harmful. And there's, I mean, there's groups over on Blue Sky, which is a competitor to Twitter, that they're all just like, AI is bad for education. That is the core referent of our tribe. Our tribal value is, that is the gravimetric center of our tribal belief system or our tribal value system.

• 1:06:57Speaker 03

  It's bad. It's dangerous. It needs to be stopped. And so, of course, then, when you have that kind of belief system, it precludes a lot of other kinds of conversations, which is, what if you're wrong about this? What if it's actually a great opportunity for education? What if it's actually a great opportunity for the planet? So here's an example as to where it often really comes down to framing. So one thing that a lot of people are afraid of is the power consumption that AI will demand. Microsoft and others are working on building five gigawatt data centers. That is the size of five, like, run-of-the-mill nuclear power plants. That's how much power these data centers are going to consume. It's insane. They're going to come online in like 2029 at the earliest, I think, maybe 2030. And so everyone's like, well, we're going to be using even more power,

• 1:07:39Speaker 03

  and that's going to accelerate climate change, and it's going to make things infinitely worse. And it's like, well, that's one story. But what if, just bear with me, what if we tell a different story? What if we say the only way that we can power that is with solar and nuclear fusion and other better, cleaner sources of power? What if actually we react to this demand that we can foresee? Because again, that's an exponential growth curve. We can plot it out, and we say, okay, we know how much more power we're going to have. We don't have an intuitive understanding, but we can do the math and say, we need so much more power than we've got right now. Fossil fuel won't cut it. But you know what, what can? All those cheap solar panels that China is making, that are almost too cheap to, they're collapsing the market. Maybe this is actually the best thing that has ever happened for climate change.

• 1:08:24Speaker 03

  Maybe the amount of power that AI is going to demand, because necessity is the mother of invention, right? That's another story. So maybe we can, instead of creating a self-fulfilling negative prophecy, we can create a self-fulfilling positive prophecy, where it's just like, yes, the amount of power that AI demands, because it's so useful to us, that we're going to make this investment, that we can hit two birds with one stone. We can get the AI, and we can also clean up the environment at the same time. It's not guaranteed, but my point is, is both stories are equally valid right now. So it's not over until it's over.

• 1:08:53Speaker 00

  This is incredible. And just an aside, Dave, like, every time we chat, whether it's a podcast interview or just like us walking through the woods, talking to each other, I feel every time I finish a conversation, I'm like, man, I need to write another book on this philosophical approach. It's, this is so great. And again, this is an example, again, of the power of story, but the directive nature of story, too. Because we can say, all right, whatever story I create, that's where I will naturally gravitate toward. And if we have more of that optimistic view, then it kind of forces us to think optimistically about what solutions that we can put in place to address the future problems that we see coming. And when I think about this, when we consider the different tribes that people might come from, the stories that they're telling, when we are able to distinguish between fact and reality

• 1:09:38Speaker 00

  on a narrative level, it gives us a good self-check for ourselves, because we can ask ourselves, well, hold on, I just said something. And a lot of times, we might act or say something before we fully understand where it's coming from. And so I need to ask myself, what story am I telling? What am I believing? And what is the information or data that substantiates that? Because a lot of times, what ends up happening is that we have a data set that could be interpreted one way or another. And then it's just our bias, or the way that we are seeing the world that takes us in one direction, but that doesn't necessarily make it more valid than the other potential story that we could tell ourselves. And then it also helps us to develop a healthy skepticism for the stories that we hear from other people. Because like you said, if it bleeds, it leads.

• 1:10:19Speaker 00

  We are going to be disproportionately put in front of negative stories about AI, because that is what people want to hear. It might not necessarily be what they desire the outcome to be, but it's what their limbic system will, will force them to focus on, right? I've watched two AI movies in the last week, Dave, and yeah, not great. Not, not great. And then, lastly, this helps us to remember that, whether it's negotiation, a difficult conversation, or life in general, one of the critical core aspects of success and evolution is curiosity. We have to develop a healthy curiosity, not just externally toward the people that we're talking to and the stories that we hear from other people, but also internally towards ourselves.

• 1:11:02Speaker 00

  And a lot of times, when it comes to these really hot-button issues, everybody is just reacting really quickly and emotionally, but they're not taking the time and asking deeper questions.

• 1:11:11Speaker 03

  Right, yeah. I mean, one of the things that, you know, you learn either in self-development or spiritual work is, do you believe your emotions or not, right? Because your emotions are there for a reason. There's a lot of insight that you can gain from them. But to your point, many people experience an emotion, and then they believe it to be true immediately, without further questioning or scrutiny. And to add some clinical language, so one of the things is availability heuristic. So the availability heuristic is what we were alluding to earlier, which is, if something is recent in your mind, or you have a vivid image of it, it's much easier to think that's real, or that's inevitable. So if you watch Terminator and then go talk about AI, your brain is just going to immediately go to, well, this is my, this is the best model that I have. Or if you watch, you know, Wally, I mean, I've talked to people recently that watch Wally,

• 1:11:55Speaker 03

  and they're like, this is clearly the inevitable result. I'm like, is it, though? Where is that idea coming from? And so then the other one is limbic hijacking, which limbic hijacking is that if it bleeds, it leads. It's the fact that Your nervous system is engineered for self-preservation. And so if it detects a threat, you know, it activates your amygdala and your amygdala conjures up all the appropriate memories and says, you need to react with force and maybe even violence against this threat or run away, you know, fight, flight, freeze. There's a few responses that you can have to these threats. But it can be difficult to keep all of that in mind when you're having that experience, which is why I like to take a step back and I do a lot of reading. I do a lot of writing and a lot of processing while I'm out in the woods. Some of my YouTube videos are literally just me holding up my phone, just like talking to the camera.

• 1:12:38Speaker 03

  Those are some of my most successful videos because people are just like, okay, here's the stream of consciousness to walk through that. And then once you can let go of some of those ideas, whether it's like a physical sensation, an emotion, or a story, then you are then free to scrutinize different stories and say, okay, well, which story do I want to adopt right now? Which one makes the most sense for me in my life and what's true for me? Because as I mentioned earlier, for some people, it is a threat to their livelihood and they have a right to be angry about it. Whether you're a creator, a creative type, or a copywriter, there's plenty of people that are already being negatively affected. So for them, the story is this is a threat to my livelihood. I don't know how I'm going to adapt and it's taking something from me and that's not okay. And that is again, part of the negotiation that we have to have as a society saying,

• 1:13:22Speaker 03

  okay, like yes, here's this technology that's taking something from you. Whose responsibility is it to fix that? Is it just your responsibility? Are we going to say, you're up the creek without a paddle? Good luck. Or are we going to come together as a society and say, okay, I see your pain and I see your fear. Let's help you navigate this. And right now, especially in America, because we're very, very highly individualistic. It's like, well, sorry about your luck. Better luck next time. And people have, they have a right to be angry about that. And that's another part of that negotiation. It's happening on many, many levels, internally, externally, socially, politically, all of the above.

• 1:13:53Speaker 00

  This is so fascinating. And Dave, you know, I could talk to you forever because we've had these long conversations before. Before we go, I want you to let listeners know about your new podcast that you're starting and then also what you're doing with First Movers AI. Because First Movers AI, you're right there at the forefront of some of these most impactful conversations about artificial intelligence. So I want to give you an opportunity to talk about those. And, you know, because I know that there are going to be some people listening to this who want to learn more.

• 1:14:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. Yes. So in my capacity as a researcher and communicator, I got connected with another entrepreneur, Julia McCoy. She's a serial entrepreneur and she has just left her previous venture. And she's like, Dave, I want to work with you. Whatever it is that we're doing, like, let's figure out a way to work together. And so she connected with me. We did a couple of podcasts together and then she decided to leave her past venture, created a new company. And so over the course of several weeks, just talking every day, we're like, okay, what is it that we want to do? What is it that we want to achieve and what's our mission? And so one day it just hit, you know, like a bolt from the blue. I was like, First Movers, that's what we are. That's who we're serving and that's our mission is to be the first movers of AI. So thus was born First Movers AI.

• 1:15:07Speaker 03

  I'm consulting for her company as their chief AI scientist. And then the other component of that was our podcast called Leaders of AI. Both are exactly what they say. The label is unambiguous. So First Movers AI, that is who we are accumulating on the team. So from the leadership down, and that's also who we intend to serve. And so by that, we mean every technology has an adoption curve. So there's a, you know, there's the early adopters, the innovators, there's the early majority, late majority, and so on. 2025 is going to be the year of the early adopters. So there's already, there's always some people at the cutting edge, right? The bleeding edge, but that's a very tiny fraction. So 2025 is going to be the early adopters and then by 2026, we'll be seeing the early majority of people adopting these technologies.

• 1:15:52Speaker 03

  But any new technology is difficult to adopt. You've got an established business model, you've got established protocols. It can be expensive, it can be slow, it can be confusing and frustrating to deploy these new technologies. So that's our role there with the startup. And then the podcast, Leaders of AI podcast, is again, exactly what it sounds like is we are the leaders of AI, but we're also interviewing leaders of AI. So these are people leading the charge, whether they are making agents. One of the people that we just interviewed before this podcast was someone who's leading the integration of AI into church, which is like, wow, I didn't think that was necessary, but here it is. Yeah, let's just, let's get this integrated into every level of society, like negotiating, okay, what role does AI take in the pharmaceutical industry? What does it take in ministry? What does it take in entertainment?

• 1:16:36Speaker 03

  So again, it all comes down to negotiation at different levels. And so that is the mission that Julie and I have worked on together that we are so intensely passionate about, where it's just day in, day out, we're always talking like, okay, what does this mean? What's the next step? Having that clarity of purpose is, I mean, we love working together and it's a stellar team. It almost doesn't matter what you're doing, as long as it's with the right people. But that alignment between mission and people, I don't want, ever want to do anything different. So, so here we are.

• 1:17:03Speaker 00

  Amazing. Dave, thank you again for coming on the show. Really appreciate it, brother.

• 1:17:08Speaker 03

  Thank you for having me. Looking forward to everything. Cheers.

• 1:17:10Speaker 00

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Now, before you sign off, I have something to tell you that I've never told you before. Just kidding, I've told you before, but you should listen to it again. I want you to know about Negotiate Anything Premium. Imagine all of the things that you love about our traditional feed, plus so much more. I know you like our traditional feed because you're at the end of the episode. And with Negotiate Anything Premium, you'll get more bonus content you've been asking for, more of the expert insights that you can't get anywhere else, and more exclusive behind the scenes access into every conversation. Are you ready to get more of what you want out of your life, career, and every conversation?

• 1:17:52Speaker 00

  With Negotiate Anything Premium, you'll have access to more high-level, custom-designed content and insights, giving you the tools you need to negotiate higher salaries, better deals, and better relationships in your life and career. Once I had a listener share that Negotiate Anything helped her to negotiate a $53,000 raise. Could this be you? What would that mean for your life? I've seen firsthand the impact this model has had on my life and the lives of my corporate clients, and I am confident that it can do the same for you. Are you ready to negotiate more of the best things in life? Click the link in the show notes to learn more. I'll catch you later.