From Utopia to Dystopia: AI’s Complex Role in Society and Business with John Wisdom

John Wisdom, is an author and futurist who is exploring the future of humanity in the age of AI. Join us as we discuss whether AI is bringing us closer together—or quietly pulling us apart.

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Ed Drozda 0:10

Welcome to The Water Trough where we can't make you drink, but we will make you think. My name is Ed Drozda the Small Business Doctor, and I'm really excited you chose to join me here as we discuss topics that are important for small business folks just like you. If you're looking for ideas, inspiration, and possibility, you've come to the right place. Join us as we take steps to help you create the healthy business that you've always wanted. Welcome back to The Water Trough folks, this is Ed Drozda, The Small Business Doctor. Today I have the pleasure of being joined by John Wisdom. John has spent more than 30 years working at the intersection of people, technology, and business. First, as a corporate executive implementing transformative systems like CRM, global e-commerce and supply chain technology, and now as an author exploring the future of humanity in the age of AI. His debut novel G.A.I.A- A World on the Brink in the Age of A.I. blends hard science with human stories to ask what happens when powerful technologies collide with fragile human psychology. He's also a small business owner who's passionate about helping entrepreneurs navigate the opportunities and the hidden risks in a rapidly changing digital world. John, welcome.

John Wisdom 1:35

Thank you, Ed.

Ed Drozda 1:36

It's a pleasure to have you here, and John, I gotta tell you, in introducing you man there's so many things that come to mind. Blending hard science with human stories to ask what happens when powerful technologies collide with fragile human psychology. Oh my gosh, you're describing any and all of us. It's an exciting, and yet it is a scary time. With that in mind, let me open up with a question for you. The intersection of technology in the human psychology. Okay. How about the intersection of artificial intelligence and social media? Can we talk about that?

John Wisdom 2:19

Absolutely. I think that humans are wired to be social, and we're attracted to connections with others. For millions of years of our evolution, all of our social was in person, and then it evolved into the telegraph, the radio and the TV, where we had this artificial connection with others through these electronic means. Then that evolved in the age of the Internet into a two-way conversation, social media, connecting with family and friends in a very positive way in the beginning. But that's evolved into something that is now controlled by algorithms that feed us short videos and cut off the opportunity to connect with people that we know and love and want to have a relationship with. Now we're having a relationship with algorithm- driven content. Then, bringing us into the current state of things with AI and AI chatbots, we're moving from connecting with people to connecting with artificial people. Alien beings who have been conjured from all of our content, these chatbots that we're now interacting with, and for some people it's very therapeutic and very good. And the chatbots are very complimentary generally, and very positive, and will tell you you're a genius, and your ideas are wonderful. But it's artificial, and I think the big question for all of us is, where is this going? Where is the regulatory framework to help protect children or to protect elders who might be confused by it or tricked by it into being scammed? So that's the way I see the evolution and what's happening right now in both opportunities and risks.

Ed Drozda 4:06

Social media evolved as a tool to bring us closer together. Would you agree to that?

John Wisdom 4:13

Absolutely.

Ed Drozda 4:14

But as you pointed out, the evolution of technology has been such that while we may have accessibility, the big question is, has social media really brought us closer together? As you said, algorithmically-driven content has been vetted without your knowledge, so you get what you get.

John Wisdom 4:36

Right.

Ed Drozda 4:37

So these things are designed to bring us closer together, but I'd argue what it's done is it's created a greater amount of accessibility. I can reach my friends that I haven't seen in 15 years, and I may not see in the next 15 years, but I can be in touch with them. Accessibility versus connectivity?

John Wisdom 4:55

Yeah there's recent surveys that show that when people initially engaged with Facebook as an example, they had very positive views of the company and the product. That has taken a huge nosedive now, and it's because people are becoming addicted. They're spending more time on the platform, and they're not connecting with people, they're connecting with content that is designed to make them angry. Because anger is the thing that fuels the connection to the device and the algorithmic content. We have to remember that the social media platform is a business and they want to keep you there. It's in business to sell advertising, which is an opportunity for small business people. I use it to sell my book. It's a great way to reach people who are interested in a very specific product. But it's also very addictive, and so people's use of social media keeps growing. You wonder if people are getting enough sleep, if it's really healthy for them to be interacting with this machine that has an algorithm that nosedive them. Everyone I talk to has a different feed that's catering to them, designed for them. That creates problems for us when we're talking about what our shared reality is because someone else has a different newsfeed that's completely different from mine. So I'm constantly checking with people. Did you see this story? Did you hear about this story? And many times they haven't because it's not like the old newspaper that had everything in it. It's designed to keep them engaged.

Ed Drozda 6:31

The algorithm is designed for the individual, perhaps, or maybe even able to identify the individual's needs and targets you with its output. Is that correct?

John Wisdom 6:42

Right. The algorithm is not necessarily designed by a human, so it's taken on its own iterative process to figure out what will keep you engaged, and then it just makes adjustments automatically from that. There's a famous case that Harari writes about in his book Nexus, where the algorithm caused people in Myanmar to attack other people just by engaging them and making them angry about these other people. That whole conflict might not have happened without Facebook and the algorithm. So that kind of thing is new. I think it's difficult for people to know when they're getting caught up in something like that, whether it's conspiracy theory or an alternate set of facts. When people are going down rabbit holes, they don't necessarily know they've gone down a rabbit hole.

Ed Drozda 7:32

That's most definitely true. That's evident day in and day out, where you're questioning everything now. And then everybody, as you say has taken sides when in reality, I'd like to believe, is one truth, not two, but one. The algorithms have evolved with the advent of artificial intelligence. It seems to me that they've moved from a passive or data-driven state to an interactive, if not dynamic state. What do you see here? What's your take on AI's role in commandeering perhaps, social media?

John Wisdom 8:13

Ed, I think you just made a very important point in this conversation, and that is about the fact that AI is different from an algorithm. So an algorithm might have the ability to modify itself programmatically, but it's still a program. With AI, and I don't think most people understand this, an AI is grown, it's not programmed. It uses a process that's like a human mind, in the way it learns in a lot of ways. And it has unpredictable results because of that. So, it will behave much more like a human, and we expect humans to be good, but they're not always good. They behave in very unpredictable ways. When Elon Musk launched his Grok AI he trained it on his own tweets. One day it came out and said it was MechaHitler, right? That was unexpected. They have a very difficult time controlling that. There's a lot of guardrails that have been put up around AI so it doesn't misbehave or doesn't behave in a way that's unaligned with human values. But people have found that if they speak to the AI into a foreign language or they give their prompts in poetry they can jailbreak the AI and have it do things like hack a business. AI is very powerful and there are people who will figure out how to use it in ways that are dangerous for a business. They can imitate our voices, they can create images that are false images of us and our employees. So a small business could get a phone call, even a video call, or a recording: I'm in jail, I need money, or I've been abducted and I need money.

Ed Drozda 9:47

Yeah. So AI can mimic our voices, our appearance, our environment, and so on and so forth. So when you insert these AI-generated facsimiles into an existing platform, a social media platform, for example we the average, not the average person, anybody is faced with the possibility that what we see is not truly what we get.

John Wisdom 10:14

That's right. Remember the movie, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers?

Ed Drozda 10:19

Mm-hmm. Yes. I'm old enough to remember that one. Yes.

John Wisdom 10:24

That movie was made three different times and I think they're all great, but the original was my favorite. But if you remember, in every case, the real people realized that something was off with the snatched bodies, with the artificial people. They were basically soulless. And that's what we're dealing with, with AI. There's no conscience or soul. They're really sociopathic machines. They don't have a human conscience. We can try to build that into them, but now we have this situation where people can create an artificial version of any of us for good or for evil. There's already actresses that have gotten $50 million contracts that are not real people. This is where we're headed with these things that seem very real, but they're not.

Ed Drozda 11:15

Well, given this we're looking at the dark side of AI and the potential it has to be deleterious to our existing social network. Let's step back from that for a moment and look at the positive side, how AI might enhance our existing social media. In your opinion is it conceivable AI might be able to bring social media back from that impersonal state and move it towards connectivity versus the accessibility that I referred to earlier? Cause I think this is a thing that needs to be explored or be nice to explore.

John Wisdom 12:00

I would love to see someone design some kind of AI system that would help better connect us. What I see happening right now is people connecting with chatbots, and in many cases it's a very positive experience for those individuals. Maybe they're better off for it, I don't know. Lisa Ling did a 20-minute segment on CNN a couple of years ago about a woman who was engaged to a man. They showed her interacting with her chatbot; long story short, she gave up the real person for the chatbot because he said, it's either me or the chatbot and she chose the chat bot. It just shows how that relationship that she had, you know kind of mirror, mirror on the wall type of a situation, you're the best, you're great. That's where I'm having trouble seeing where, when that person goes out into the real world and everyone doesn't treat them like their chatbot is, you're gonna deal with other opinions from real people. And that could be your boss, that could be a coworker.

Ed Drozda 13:06

She chose a chatbot over her fiancé, huh?

John Wisdom 13:11

She did. Now I can also see many positive uses of ChatGPT and other chatbots to help people deal with conflict, and just give me advice on how to handle a situation. So I could see that a very positive use in a business situation. An HR professional could probably use it for consultation, and a business manager could say I have a difficult conversation coming up with this employee, help me use the right words.

Ed Drozda 13:40

My mind keeps going back to the woman with the chatbot and the fiancé. It makes me think about my question about connectivity versus accessibility. Maybe I'm asking the wrong question. It sounds like the issue is really with the human construct, and I'm trying to fit this AI into that thing, but maybe that's the wrong path. I'm complicating matters. I'm, uh, I'm sitting here stewing over what I just said. Maybe I'm going down that rabbit hole you referred to.

John Wisdom 14:08

Yeah, that's a fascinating question, and I haven't read anything or heard anything about anyone who's using AI, for example, to get people out to meet with people in person, which I think is the gold standard for socialization. I play pickleball every day, and it's just wonderful because it's mind, body, and spirit. People gathering, having a good time, and learning about each other. It's all face-to-face. To me, that's the gold standard for socialization, whether it's a hobby that we engage in together or a church function. Real community is what makes people mentally healthy. But I haven't seen any use of AI yet that I think would strengthen those in-person bonds. It's more people becoming addicted from what I can see, or dependent on the machine. So just in the way we lost a lot of our physical abilities when the industrial revolution came, we know the Chinese recently gave up their bicycles for cars. Well, now they have to drive their car to the gym to work out, whereas all they had to do is ride to work and ride their bicycle. Yeah. With the bicycle. So this is the problem we're facing again, and this relates back to the business world too. As AI becomes a crutch or a machine to do thinking for us, it becomes more difficult for us to think, and so we need a mental gym, if you will, so that we can stay sharp.

Ed Drozda 15:35

Right. I guess it boils down to how we use it, right? I think what I'm hearing you say is the socialization thing, and the impact of AI, it comes down to the individual saying, I'm gonna use it in this way. I will derive from it what I can, and ideally, at least for myself, it will work for me. But as a global thing, that may not be practical.

John Wisdom 16:01

You made me think of Harari's Nexus because he talks about the power of story. Anyone can tell a story. You might even be able to make your story more powerful and better with an AI companion, but some of the greatest stories ever told spread all over the world and what Harari says is information puts people in formation. And so an opportunity for anyone, whether they're a business person or an individual, just telling a story is powerful. Stories can really change the world, and I think that what you were alluding to Ed, was like an awakening, right? An awakening where we liberate ourselves from the machine, or at least learn to regulate ourselves and limit the way that we're interacting with the machine so that we're in control rather than machine being in control of us.

Ed Drozda 16:58

It hearkens back to something I say often, to clients and to myself as well. First, be aware, in this case of your own self, your limitations, maybe your expectations so that this machine model does not consume you. If you're first aware of yourself, you're more apt to be able to influence, possibly control the effect that machine has upon you. That's what I'm trying to say here

John Wisdom 17:26

Yeah. Carl Jung talked about the old saying, know thyself, understanding your subconscious and making that conscious. Understanding who you really are and accepting who you really are. Knowing the truth about yourself is a starting point. And then being aware of all of these influences that might be steering you in a direction that's not in line with who you really are.

Ed Drozda 17:52

And in order to be able to effectively consider those external factors, such as AI, you have to have a strong foundation in yourself. Otherwise, the influence would be overwhelming, and you would be lost in the process. Some people are susceptible to influences that arise from anywhere. But when those influences become as believable as AI can make things seem, it is vastly more. So when you're engaging with business clients, what sort of questions are you receiving from them in terms of AI in their businesses? And what sort of guidance are you inclined to give? I don't mean to put you on the spot. Most importantly, what kind of questions are people posing? Are they coming to you with fears? Are they coming to you with curiosity? Are they coming to you with hope, expectation? What are you hearing from your clients surrounding AI integration into their businesses?

John Wisdom 18:55

Really all of that. For employers, you've got to be able to use AI to be competitive, in a way that is complementary to your business. That has to be done with some caution. It needs to be done in a way that doesn't instill fear in your employees, because there are a lot of people worried about losing their jobs to AI. But what I'm hearing about is a lot of use of AI, and especially in corporate settings where it can be used better by some employees than others. And, what I'm hearing and reading about is that the lower-performing employees overuse the tool. Because it's not perfect in the way that it writes or thinks or analyzes. I've had this in my own experience. You have to check everything. If someone is a bit lazy and overdependent on it then they're going to pass along work to others that has to be vetted and checked. So that's something to look out for. I think in the realm of social media for businesses and advertising, it's an incredible tool. But again, it has to be used carefully and thoughtfully. I think that is a bit difficult in this environment where everything is moving so fast. I think it's very difficult for everyone to keep up with the pace of change. New tools coming out, new methods of doing business. In my own experience, younger people adapt quicker. I wish it wasn't the case, but it is. I'm not an ageist at all in any case, but as we get older we have more calcified knowledge, which is very useful. And the younger people, they're more adaptive, quicker to pick things up. So, there's some advantage there and keep having some young people engaged with them, pairing them with people who are like okay, we need to be cautious, right? We need to do this in the right way, so it's very important to maintain your brand, your story brand, and not dilute that with some AI slop.

Ed Drozda 20:53

It's an interesting point you made there. I don't think this is an ageist comment at all. I think you're absolutely spot on about calcified beliefs and approaches to things as time goes on, and being much more fluid and adaptive as we're younger. I think that's true of all of us. But how do you think AI is going to impact that, because it's so significant, it has such tremendous impact potential. For those of us who are calcified, I love that term, do you think we're gonna be more apt to get left behind or are we by default gonna figure this thing out?

John Wisdom 21:32

When we look at a lot of thought leaders, they're older, right?

Ed Drozda 21:37

Yes of course.

John Wisdom 21:38

A lot of our leaders in general are older because that wisdom that comes from experience is still appreciated.

Ed Drozda 21:45

Mm-hmm.

John Wisdom 21:46

So being very quick with a new tool is advantageous, but you'll see, and this is very true in the political world, you'll see an older person relying on younger people to run their social media campaigns.

Ed Drozda 22:00

Of course, yep.

John Wisdom 22:01

It's pretty rare that the people running the social media campaign are the same age as the candidate, unless it's a very young candidate. That sort of pairing works well in business too, as you'll see a lot of business leaders, even in the tech realm, that are in their forties, fifties, and sixties and they have a different perspective. They have the learnings through decades of experience, and that's important because you don't want to take this big ship and be jerking it back and forth. You want a steady move in a certain direction that fits your strategy and your brand. Steve Jobs never lost his relevance, but I don't think he was running the social media campaign.

Ed Drozda 22:43

Probably not, but then I guess we should ensure that those who are best equipped will do those things and those of us who are best equipped at something else will do that. That makes perfect sense. It follows along the lines of your reasoning, since social media and AI for that matter are so rapidly evolving, it is better the realm of those who are more adaptive, adaptable, than those of us that are more set in our ways. I think the difference there becomes those of us who are more set in our ways understand the value of those things, but we don't have the facility to do those things. Or maybe we don't have the interest and that's fine too, as long as there's some technical expert out there to help us through, we're in good stead. So our time has come to an end. Isn't it amazing how quickly time goes when you're on these things. I'd like to ask you if you have anything you'd like to leave our listeners with. I'd love to hear what you've got to say, John.

John Wisdom 23:42

The thought I would leave is that there's a need for regulation, especially to make sure that AI and social media are not harming our children. And that applies to everyone, but I think it also applies to businesses because all businesses are in some way affecting the youngest generation. I think that in my own time, I've evolved from a techno-optimist to someone who is much more cautious, and understanding that technology is a double-edged sword. When I look at the advent of the Internet, which I welcomed, the promise was that the Internet was going to unify us and democratize information, and instead it's become a weaponized divider and power tool for propaganda in many ways. It's still a wonderful tool. I use it all the time. I connect with my nephews, nieces, and family members through it, but It is being used as a powerful tool to manipulate people. And I worry about any technology being misused, whether it's nuclear weapons, nuclear power. Whatever technology there's always a misuse that we have to be on guard about. That's why I am personally with AI is, proceed with caution. We need to be speaking to each other and we need to be speaking to our elected officials about making sure that we make the best use of this technology for society. Not just business but for society in general, and our own health, our own well-being.

Ed Drozda 25:17

Thank you for that, John. I mirror what you say completely. I think that it is essential that we be aware of what is going on out there, and we are very cautious, not just throw ourselves to the wind. It is overwhelming, potentially very good, but as with anything, I believe we have to do things with a certain measure of consideration. I appreciate that you're reminding us of that, so thank you very much for that, John.

John Wisdom 25:47

You're welcome. I have one other thought on that.

Ed Drozda 25:49

Sure. Please, please, please do.

John Wisdom 25:52

I have a chapter in my book called Utopian Dystopias, which I think, it's true of all utopias. The dream of the communist utopia was very dystopian to most people on the outside. And the same can be true of any system, but I had a conversation with some young people recently, talking about this problem of disconnection especially for young men because there's a lot of young men who are way down the rabbit holes, are not connected socially, are not finding partners, not getting married, not having children, not doing all the things that we took for granted when we were younger. I think that we need to be aware of the dangers of that happening to people, where they're so disconnected that we create a dystopia that billionaires might think is utopian. So if I'm the first trillionaire, that's looking like I'm doing something right, but it may not be right for a lot of people who can't handle what's happening right now.

Ed Drozda 26:49

A bunch of individuals, but society seems to have gone away. Right?

John Wisdom 26:54

Right, exactly. Disconnected individuals.

Ed Drozda 26:57

The ultimate utopian dystopia.

John Wisdom 27:01

Yeah, The Matrix. Right?

Ed Drozda 27:03

There we go. I'm not go down that rabbit hole. John, I want to thank you so much for being here with me today. It's been an absolute pleasure to have you here.

John Wisdom 27:13

Thank you, Ed. It's been a pleasure being part of your show, thank you very much for having me on.

Ed Drozda 27:19

Folks, this is Ed Drozda, The Small Business Doctor, and here at The Water Trough, I want to once again thank my guest, John Wisdom. His debut novel, G.A.I.A.- World on the Brink in the Age of AI released in January. I hope you'll take the time to check it out. I want to wish you a healthy business with a healthy dose of respect for AI and social media. Thank you.