Is AI Making Us Smarter or More Lonely? | Leadership, Learning & Human Connection

In this live episode of Diversity Conversations, Eric Ellis and Tommie Lewis explore a timely question with real leadership implications: Is AI making us smarter, or is it making us lazier and more disconnected?

What begins with stories about golf, learning, humility, and the journey of growth opens into a rich conversation about artificial intelligence, creativity, critical thinking, and the risks of relying too heavily on technology. Eric shares how tools like ChatGPT can expand learning, speed up problem-solving, and support innovation when used with discernment. Tommie brings a thoughtful and grounded perspective on change, skepticism, and the importance of learning how to use emerging tools wisely.

The conversation then shifts into another urgent issue of our time: loneliness. Together, Eric and Tommie reflect on how technology, remote work, changing social habits, and modern communication patterns may be affecting human connection, belonging, and emotional well-being.

This episode is a thoughtful dialogue on leadership, adaptation, community, and what it means to remain deeply human in a rapidly changing world.

In this episode:

• Is AI helping us think better, or making us mentally dependent?
• How leaders can use technology without losing authenticity
• Why discernment and supervision still matter with AI tools
• The connection between convenience, communication, and loneliness
• Why human beings still need real community, presence, and belonging
• Practical reflections on staying grounded in an increasingly digital world

About the Hosts
Eric Ellis is President & CEO of Integrity Development Corporation.
Website: www.integritydev.com

Tommie Lewis is President & CEO of Make It Plain Consulting.
 Website: www.mipcllc.com

Diversity Conversations, Eric Ellis, Tommie Lewis, artificial intelligence, AI, ChatGPT, leadership, human connection, loneliness, workplace culture, emotional intelligence, communication, community, technology and society, digital transformation, critical thinking, creativity, leadership development, DEI, diversity conversations podcast

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to Diversity Conversations, where we engage in thought-provoking dialogue to identify leadership solutions to today's most challenging conflicts. Stream live each week, Saturday, 9 30 a.m. to 11 a.m., hosted by Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Strategists and CEOs Eric Ellis and Tommy Lewis. Join us and add your voice to this engaging diversity conversation.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

Good morning, greater Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky, the United States, and the world. My name is Eric Ellis, and I'm the president and CEO of Integrity Development Corporation. And I'm joined this morning by my good friend and brother, Tommy Lewis, president and CEO of Make It Plane Consulting.

SPEAKER_03 0:46

Good morning, Eric. What's up, Tommy? What's up, man? It's a cool day. Yes, sir. We've uh here in the Midwest and across the Northeast, but uh uh last week, a couple of days in the 60s. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Back in the 30s. Uh, God is real and this is his world.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

Right. And he controls it.

SPEAKER_03 1:07

He controls.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

He says, I don't care what kind of jacket you plan for. Right. This is what I'm doing. I'm gonna put you in a coat. And so we are moving back and forth with the weather. But uh Tommy, uh last week, Tommy Lewis called me up and said, E, let's go. Uh let's go. You got room for golf? I said, Man, let's do it. Yeah, and man, we had a time, didn't we?

SPEAKER_03 1:26

We had a time, we had a time. Haven't been out in some time. Yeah, you know, uh, I had gone down to Florida several weeks, you know, prior to different courses, different weather, uh, and uh played a lot of golf. But there were some things I remembered, you know, when we played, right? But it's just good to get out and uh start start to lock some things in.

SPEAKER_02 1:51

Yeah, yeah, man. I'll tell you. Uh Tommy and I have a tremendous amount of respect for the game of golf because of how difficult it is. But on that day, uh early this week, we just had a ball. I mean, we really were hitting the ball well. I mean, you know, golf's gonna give you some craziness too. Yeah, we're but we're hitting the ball well. Tommy had his flop shot working. Finally, yeah, yeah, was putting through things, and right now, our anticipation is excitement for the season. Yeah, but that's how every round of golf is. Every time you see a golfer and they're about to start, oh man, they're polishing up their stuff, they're at the driving range, working it out, working it out, and everybody comes with great excitement. Then at the end of the round, yeah, humble pie. Oh man, people dragging their heads, dropping their heads, some just throwing the clubs in the trunk and driving off. So, golf is a game that gives you a lot of anticipation, but boy, it doesn't give you very much uh in terms of uh success, does it?

SPEAKER_03 2:52

It doesn't. Uh, and I'm smiling about this because when I went down to Florida uh with a few friends, good golfers, we're pretty much uh the same as far as handicap. They may be a few points better than I am, uh, but we played uh four rounds of golf in three days. Okay. Um, and so it was great. These are this is a real PGA course in this brook. Right. Uh they were preparing for the tournament in several weeks. But uh first round of golf, getting set up, did well. Second round of golf, which was a Saturday morning, did pretty well, warming up. The third round of golf in the afternoon on Saturday, uh and kind of lit it up. Okay. I was on fire. Okay. And I think I started smelling myself. Oh, Godfire always detects that, don't it? Yeah, golf and detect that. Sunday morning rolled around, and I could not get it together. I could not get it together. And uh my mind said, the the last three rounds, you were great. Right. Uh, but my body said, Yeah, you never have played four rounds of golf. That's what my body said in my entire life. I've never played four consecutive rounds of golf. My mind, my mind said, yep. Right. My body said, No, we're about to shut down. Right. We we don't so I don't care what you're thinking about. Right, here's where I'm going. And so I took that analogy and uh connected it with kind of what we do every day, every week in our business. Uh, we probably have, well, I'll speak for myself. In one way, shape, or form, I have more wins than losses. On paper, there are more losses. We lose proposals all the time, right? Right uh business opportunities all the time, right? We lose clients all the time, but the learning is the winning, right? The journey is the winning, and that's why when we refer to when we have you know daily devotions, things like that, it reminds us of the journey versus the destination.

SPEAKER_02 5:19

I like that, uh, Tommy. And uh so we uh had a had a great time out there together, enjoying the weather, enjoying each other's company, and enjoying hitting some decent shots at the beginning of the season. Now, Tommy, uh I had a chance to to just sit down and watch the Arnold Palmer invitational. I don't know if you saw that, and I saw so many golfers in a row putting their t-shot in the water.

SPEAKER_03 5:51

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 5:52

In a row, yeah, and either they were in the woods or in the water. I mean, that's how tight the hole was, hole 18. I couldn't believe it. And they'd be saying, the now be saying, well, I think these gonna try to fade. Oh, he I think he faded it too much in the water, and then they'd be in the pine cones on the other side, and very few golfers hit the hit the uh fairway, and so it reminded me of how difficult this game is, even for the pros. And then they had this one little island green, it was a nine-iron shot. That sounds like it should be just doable for all pro golfers. Man, they were again island green, putting it in the water, uh, going over, uh, putting spin on the bar, spinning it back into the water. And I was like, well, this is quite refreshing to see, indeed. Sorry, that this game that we find difficult is also difficult for those that are the best in the world.

SPEAKER_03 6:56

Yeah, I want to give a shout out to our community, uh, and thank you to our producer, Lydia. You know, we're asking our community, uh, where are you joining us from today? Uh I love that question. And I would like folks to put in the chat if you're listening, uh, if you're watching on the platforms, put in the chat where you where you're dialing in, where you're joining us from, uh, because we want to know. Sure, we are uh Eric and I are in the US, our producer is in Mexico, we have guests who come to us from around the world, uh, and we're excited about that. And so we will always like to encourage you to like and subscribe as well, so that you are reminded when we are waking up and you're waking up and joining us every Saturday morning on Diversity Conversations. Thank you for liking and subscribing.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

Absolutely. Tommy, I want to kick us off today uh by talking about or asking your thoughts on uh some of the things that are conversations that are being had around the country, around the world. Uh, one of them that uh certainly in business and industry we're uh looking at is the question is is AI making humans smarter or lazier? And uh are tools like ChatGPT helping uh creativity or are they replacing our thinking? Tommy, what are your thoughts? I certainly have some thoughts because I spent a lot of time with uh chat GPT.

SPEAKER_03 8:31

And and and I don't spend a lot of time with chat or GTP. What is it? GPT. That's that's how much time GPT. I don't, Eric. Uh I may use the software uh maybe three or four times a month. Maybe. Uh and it's on my phone, it's not on any of my desktop or laptop devices. Uh I don't have a paid subscription. I know you get more with that. And so what I have learned from it is uh I know that it is technology. Um it I don't know a lot about it. So I have used it literally when I'm in a crunch. Right when I need to have different thinking, right? Right. And say, let me just ask chat what the outline is, and it'll provide an outline, and then I use my own intelligence to create the content. Right. I haven't used it much to create content, and that's the question around are we getting smarter? So this the smarter pieces are human beings getting smarter or lazier and uh smarter smarts is intelligence. Artificial intelligence is indeed artificial, it's it's using the access to information that it is privy to. Um I don't know, I would say that I as I'm thinking about it right now, I don't think that human beings are getting smarter with it. Right. I think that human beings may be using it as a resource to or access to information as far as increasing intelligence. I don't think so.

SPEAKER_02 10:26

Right.

SPEAKER_03 10:27

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 10:28

Um I uh kind of mixed. I I do uh utilize uh AI, uh specifically chat GPT a lot. And uh I do understand both perspectives, both points of view. I think that we do have to be careful that we are not uh uh doing some of the work that it takes to try to understand things. But from my standpoint, I think number one, I think that chat GPT and AI needs to be supervised. So it can't really do anything by itself. I mean, it'll make a mess of you and it will uh give you wrong information. So if you don't have a baseline of understanding, you'll get wrong information from chat, and just like everything else on the internet, you'll assume that it's it's accurate.

unknown 11:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 11:19

Uh so I'm a left-handed golfer. So chat, uh, you know, AI depends on sort of a lot of data that they're getting from the world around them and the people that are, you know, asking and inputting into chat. And so if only 13% of people in the world are left-handed, uh, that means that most of the data that chat has is for right-handed golfers. So when I ask it about something and I tell it, chat, remember, I'm left-handed, it'll give me a right-handed solution. And it does that over and over and over again. Uh, and so there are a lot, it needs to be supervised. But I would say that uh the way I view it is that it is information that's available to us, like back when we were in college, and you go to the library and you talk to the librarian, and they would give you codes to help you find sections where the information that you were looking for, then you'd go get the book or the encyclopedia, you'd pull it out. I just see chat in many ways as that same kind of process. And uh, and and uh, and so it gives us access to information. Uh, one of the things that I was just telling Tommy and uh our producer before the show is that uh uh my son, my nephew, uh they would staying with me and they had a friend over the other day. And I came home and all of a sudden there was a big black spot in the wooden floor. And I'm like, okay, what in the world is this? And I asked people, you know, did anybody know what happened? And everybody looked like the cat that ate the mouse, and they were just kind of, and so what I did was I used chat to help me understand the best way to go at that. And I ended up sanding it down and then asking chat how I should navigate this and manage it, and it gave me some real good insight. After repairing the floor, I just went on a hole. I'm a woodworker now, and I literally took a dining room table that uh one of our kids, I think it was Eric, uh 15 years ago, was just drawing on our beautiful uh wooden dining room table with pins and markers, permanent marker over the whole table. It's took to art world, and so we literally have put a uh a tablecloth on it for the last 15 years. Uh, but I decided, well, nobody's around to supervise me, so I'm just gonna have at it. So I just took the uh tablecloth off, got me a sand and Tommy, and now I'm at it. And I start with this, you know, at least know enough to start small. So I started with the marker and the pen itself, and I'm thinking, hey, that looks pretty good. Now I'm looking at the whole table thinking, uh oh, I just did those couple spots. This probably's gonna be a mess if I trust to try to polyurethane over that. So I literally worked with chat to sand down the entire table down to the bare wood and learn that uh veneer was what I was really working with, and that if you went too far, you'd cut through it, and then you'd see some deeper. So chat was able to give me some things to be aware of that I did not know by myself. And as a result of doing that one table, finishing it beautifully, and putting five coats of polyurethane. And I'm I'm going with each uh, and then I would take pictures of it and upload those to chat, and chat would evaluate it. And chat is a beautiful friend. I see why people are talking to chat and think that they really got a friend because chat has so much built-in empathy, it's like he said, Great job, Eric. That looks amazing. You are really and I'm feeling good, like thanks, Chad, my buddy old pal, you know, and literally, so I've got shiny spots some places, and I have to sand in between, and chat to tell me what grit of sandpaper to use. And so after about four, I'm thinking, okay, this looks decent, but I still look, and then chat said, No, that's how maple looks. And chad says, when you put the fifth coat on this, Eric, it's going boom, bring it all together. I'm thinking that's not and literally when I put the fifth coat on, Tommy, wow, everything came together. And then I was thinking about a sixth coat, and I tell you can lead chat too. So I told Chad, I said, you know, I'm kind of nervous about putting another coat on. Is it really worth it? And chat reads your insecurities and it gives you back feedback almost based on that. So it said, No, no, Eric, you have really got it to the max level, and the amount of benefit that you would get from a six coat is not really worth the risk.

SPEAKER_03 16:06

So, how so how are you talking to chat? Are you typing it in?

SPEAKER_02 16:11

Yep, okay, and then it's responding back, and uh it's really talking to me, and it feels so so you're asking chat questions, and it's kind of like the way the voice that they have chat in. Matter of fact, I'm gonna use it in some training now, Tommy. And I'm going to label the exercise. Do you have as much empathy as AI?

SPEAKER_03 16:36

Does it give you references of where it's getting the information?

SPEAKER_02 16:40

If you ask, but if without asking, it just okay, it'll give you the answers, and uh and then it will adjust. So I did that whole dining room table. Now I'm feeling like an expert, so I'm saying I'm gonna do the kitchen table too. And chat uh says you don't have to use the same process because that table, uh, you can do a scuff and recoat so you don't actually take it down to the bare wood, and that process works.

SPEAKER_03 17:07

Do you find yourself uh asking chat things and taking chat's response as verbatim?

SPEAKER_02 17:17

Uh it depends. Uh it depends. If I'm doing uh work with my business, no. So I do cross-references, I ask for real uh data, give me the research that backs this up. Uh and uh and so when you ask for cross-references, sometimes I'll jump on the other side and say, well, what about this? You know, and so in the midst of all of that, along with my own knowledge, uh, I'm able to uh supervise chat because chat needs that. But for things like uh just house projects, uh DIY, I generally kind of take it at its word.

SPEAKER_03 17:54

So to the question that you posed, I want to get your response. I know you talked through some things. Is chat making people smarter or lazy humans smarter or lazier?

SPEAKER_02 18:06

Uh I think a little bit of both, uh, but but I know now that I know now I picked up a skill from from work with chat indeed on how to refinish tapes. And I feel like I can, I was going through a uh uh a uh thrift uh shop yesterday, Snooty Fox, and then saw furniture in there, and I was thinking, hey, I could refinish that, I could do that, I could do that. So I've literally got a whole new skill. So I really feel that it has helped me to advance my knowledge and understanding. Uh because that's something that I wasn't gonna go to the library. I mean, I I would have Googled it and done some other kinds of things, but for me, I see it as offering a benefit to us. I think if people are irresponsibly taking chat's word and asking chat every little thing, then I think that that just can make you lazy.

SPEAKER_03 19:01

Yeah, yeah. And and I I see a few folks in the chat who are agreeing with you and then also supporting how uh chat has been a resource for them as well. Uh, you know, I guess I I I need to become more familiar, right? So I may be at uh, you know, when we look at the the the uh process of change uh with chat, I am not the early adapter, right? Uh so I I absolutely see a value in chat. Uh I haven't used it. Uh I'm still asking chat, you know, who are you? Right, right, right. That's right. Giving back. Defend yourself. Like who are you and who sent you? Right. You know, exactly. I'm skeptical, like that in certain aspects. Now, you know, I don't know. You you just popped up on the scene. Right. I asked you a couple of questions. Collected a lot of information. And I he gave it back to me. Right. So uh yeah, I know that it is absolutely a tool of now. Right. I wouldn't even say Eric is the tool of the future, right? It's the tool of now.

SPEAKER_02 20:12

That's exactly right. I agree with that. And so I was talking to Tommy also from a business standpoint. Let me share with you how chat will eliminate jobs. So I think that is absolutely going to happen. That there will be jobs that people don't need, and then there will be new jobs that come about as a result of it. But for me, I was talking to uh someone who is an expert in branding, and uh uh they've worked with a lot of people from uh the authors of Rich Dad Poor Dad to Mark Cuban. They've worked with a lot of people, and I was meeting with them uh this last week and talking about branding and them doing some things with me around a LinkedIn strategy, and so uh it was going to probably cost maybe$25 or$30,000. And so that gave me a little bit of hesitation. And so I literally went to Chad since the whole person's strategy was a LinkedIn strategy, and I asked Chad, I said, Chad, can you take my LinkedIn page and can you analyze it from a business standpoint and give me some feedback on uh how effective my LinkedIn page is today, pros and cons. And also, can you take my connections and build a strategy for me communicating with them in a way that would uh move uh connections from connections to clients? And chat said confidently, yes, I can. Yes, I can do that. And let me give you a creative and specific strategy for, and literally chat walkthrough, and the beauty of utilizing chat for a number of things is now chat knows me. It's kind of scary. Chat knows me, knows my research, knows my data, uh, knows the research that we've done. To create some of my new processes. And so chat was able to access all of the information that not it just has in the world, but that it has on me. And was able to help me sort of make adjustments in my branding, my main messages, how I define myself and describe myself in my title line and why it give me the research around decision makers and buyers. Here's what they're looking for. So your uh current page, it's awesome, uh, you know, but you're not after likes right now. You're after transforming connections to clients. And so it gave me some wonderful and utilizing my own content, Tommy, I could just plug and play. I didn't have to take what it said generically and then put my stuff on it. It was able to do that with my stuff because we've been working this for the last couple of years. And so it then took, it said, Eric, I can take all of your connections and I can analyze them and I can literally put them in a prioritized order around those that are most likely, those that have the greatest influence, uh, those that are most likely to be interested in uh what you do. Uh, it can look at those that have the greatest amount of connections and they're constantly connecting people. So it's analyzing my 5,000 connections from a standpoint of who are they? Who are they to me? Uh, what power and decision-making ability do they have? What influence do they have? Are they connecting people on a regular basis? Is this something that they're using? And so I just have found that fascinating. And so, what this consultant was gonna do, what I mean, Chad did this, said the same thing. It was almost like he did this through AI. What he was telling me he was gonna do for me, he actually is getting it from AI.

SPEAKER_03 23:56

Yeah, yeah, that's that's interesting, Eric. And uh I would be interested in learning uh and knowing, you know, how this turns out. Yep. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Right. And I'm okay with with all of that, particularly the bad and the ugly. Absolutely. So there's a learning opportunity in that space. Um, I used to say in training uh with regards to technology, I used to have a joke and people used to laugh around uh who taught you how to text? Right. Folks say, well, no one, right? We went from the landline with the uh attached cord to the wireless or mobile at the time. And then there's a there's something called text, and and then we were doing that, and there's a disconnect at times with those who are texting and those who knew whatever would be called texting etiquette. Oh, right, absolutely, and so I'm I'm curious to know uh as folks are being introduced to and have continued to use AI, two things. Who is teaching them how to use AI? And the other is is there an AI etiquette uh or anything of that nature that makes sense?

SPEAKER_02 25:23

Yeah, it does make sense, Tommy. And I would say that uh just like with a lot of other technology and a lot of other people that I know a lot of fathers that uh their claim to fame was at Christmas time, they never read the directions. They just built the toy. Yeah. Some of them were great at it, some of them had pieces left over at the end. Uh, and uh, you know, and some looked at pictures and some like to read the directions. I would say the same thing is true with chat, uh, that a lot of people just sort of go at AI. I'd say the majority do. Just go at it and start doing it. But the reality is, Tommy, that if you don't know some things about the etiquette, you also can be found out quite quickly. In other words, Chad is uh, you know, like a guy in sports that you could always know what they were gonna do. Yeah. You know, if you shook him right and he was always gonna go for the fake and then you go around him. That's how chat is in some ways, if you're not careful. So if you ask chat to draft a letter, an email response, it's gonna open up with the same opening almost every time. And anybody that uses chat, if you send them an email and it opens up like that, they're gonna say, You probably didn't write this. Okay. And so you do need to understand some things about the character and nature of AI so that you avoid things. So you have to ask chat, write this in my my voice. Uh, write this in a way that doesn't sound like it's AI generated. And so you got to do those kind of things, or people that are aware of that will find you out, and thus you'll be set back. That thing that you thought you did out of convenience, you've been found to be inauthentic and not putting the personal time into responding to people. And the same thing happens in universities as well. A lot of students turn in things that were done by chat, and uh now they've got algorithms and other things that you can just feed it into and say, did was this written by a human or was this written by a wow, yeah, that's interesting, Eric.

SPEAKER_03 27:30

And love our community, Dan Joyner, uh chiming in. Obviously, New Paradigm Lifestyle, chiming in, continue to chime in, continue to share your input and questions around this because I have a lot of questions uh and I have a few answers. Um I don't want to present as if I do not know chat, right? I do. In fact, my company has invested some dollars in a platform, another company. That's right. That's right. That's right to produce proposals. And uh it could be proposal generators that uses chat. So folks are going to be coming to our new website that's about two months away from being created, type in their need, interest, some specifics, and within 30 to 60 seconds, they will get a make it plain proposal that is in the spirit and energy, as you mentioned, Eric, the voice of Make It Plain. Uh, I don't want anything to do with it, so we hired a company that does it. On the other side, is we talked about golfing and me going down to Florida. Uh, two of the gentlemen who are here, uh, attorneys and accountants, things like that, my my dear friends. The other partner who lives in Florida, where we golf, uh, he is an executive of an artificial intelligence company that does several billion dollars a year with uh different industries, food and consumer goods, packaging, manufacturing. And in the last in the last three or four years that we've been golfing regularly together, I just listen, have a few questions, but he talks about and has been talking about the evolution of the platform, the evolution of the intelligence and how it is now behind the scenes of a lot of client and public facing interfacing. Right? Sorry to use that word twice. And I just simply did not know that. Oh, that's AI, right, right. Third and finally, when I worked for the multi-billion dollar multinational company in the past, that uh we were creating what was called V OIP. It's basically voiceover uh intelligence programming, where uh those who wanted to go to catch a flight from Delta, uh, you give a call to Delta, they would give you some prompts, right? The the voice, the automated voice to give you some prompts to walk through it. The company I work for basically created that software, which is AI. And so I understand it, the evolution. Personally, I just don't use it as much. I I'm intrigued by what you're saying, Eric. I'm intrigued definitely by what the our community is saying. Um, and I'm not afraid, that's not it. I know it can save time, I know it will save time, but I want to literally get smarter if I use it. When I read a book, I believe I get smarter, and I'm an avid reader. This may be the same thing because you just walk through the increased intelligence and skill. It might be something I need to lean into.

SPEAKER_02 31:22

Right, but I I I'm not uh mad about your suspicion as well. Uh uh your cautious approach as well. I think that that's absolutely right. There are dating sites now, Tommy, that have AI that's involved in it, uh, where in the old days you were really communicating back and forth with the real person. Today, it's AI. And literally, they don't have to hire anybody to talk to you. And literally, a lot of these dating sites have credits and things that you have to buy. So you literally are buying credits because you think you're trying to talk to a real somebody and uh and give them presents and gifts, and you're actually just talking to AI. And AI is saying the kind of things that will keep you talking to it as it takes your money. So that's is the other side of where we are. You don't even need real people on dating sites anymore. Uh, and uh, and a lot of times when you are talking to customer service with companies, you're talking to AI. And they're walking you through things with a lot of empathy, but you're not really talking to anybody that can solve your problem. They're just continuing to respond from the masses based upon what you're asking. So I think that that's disingenuous, it's a waste of time. I tell them sometimes, hey, I know your AI, get me out of this and get me a real person.

SPEAKER_03 32:54

Yeah, this is making sense to me, Eric, because it must have been last week or the week before. Uh, as typical, I get these calls, right? And I had got a call and it caught me at a bad time. I was doing something, I didn't want to be distracted. And uh I gave it the business. Whoever that was, I start cussing and fussing, right? And it started cussing and fussing back at me. So I was like, well, this must be AI, right? It's right, it's giving me something back, but it's all good, right? Uh want to ask, uh, go to the community because there's a question that I don't have the answer to, right? What do we think about hashtag AI?

SPEAKER_02 33:35

Any thoughts about that? No, I I don't right now I don't fully understand the question, so yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:42

So it might be something that to flush out a little bit. And if you're interested in coming on on live, you know, with us, feel free. But um, yeah, I'm not familiar again. Right from me being less familiar with AI, period. Um, yeah, I wouldn't know a deeper dive there.

SPEAKER_02 34:02

Right. So so Dan has said AI makes the living systems uh work. We do more uh sort of essential. Uh makes the living systems we do more essential. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_03 34:15

Yeah, that that that makes sense. Again, it's a tool.

SPEAKER_02 34:19

Yeah, that's right. And and and right, and it's a way uh anything you can utilize it for your own benefit. I think that it increases our ability to get more things done. It does uh move much faster. The speed of AI is just phenomenal. And for an example, Tommy, you said, you know, if you're in a thought uh kind of bubble, you know, and you you're looking for ideas, chat can do that. Uh when chat has access to your information, it can craft something the way that you would. And so it saves you the time. And then you and I can take an outline and go from there. Uh, so so we don't have to sit around thinking of things. So so it there's a there's a speed factor to AI that I think is very valuable. Uh, but there's new things that you can think of that AI cannot think of. So uh, but you can ask it things, and I just think that it's a useful thought partner, especially when we're brainstorming things. It can it can very quickly give you a lot of things to consider.

SPEAKER_03 35:24

I I would like to also re-emphasize that uh you know AI has been around for some time, maybe not as public as it was being developed, researched, redeveloped, etc. But I only say that because as we were talking, we are talking this morning, I'm thinking of Hollywood movies that I've seen in the past. I'm talking about 15, maybe 20 years ago. It was introduced as sci-fi science fiction, but it's real fi, right? Or it's it's real, it's not even real fiction, it's real life, real life, right? So there are a number of movies that I'm running through my mind right now that uh said, oh, that that was that was some Jetsons stuff from the 70s that's happening now. Or uh again, referring to Microsoft and the origins of Microsoft and those leaders, Bill Gates included, that they wanted to create the self-thinking computer. That's all Microsoft wanted to do create the self-thinking computer. We have a company here in Southwest Ohio called Proctor and Gamble, which is globally headquartered here, it's across the world. And their objective is to have a PNG product in every household in the world. And so it makes sense. Consumer goods packaging, PNG have a product in every household in the world. Microsoft create that self-thinking computer. The self-thinking computer, be it a laptop, a desktop, or a mobile device, is real today. And chat is that complement to that dream of the self-thinking computer.

SPEAKER_02 37:27

Right. And I would say that so AI, chat, they can help you uh do things that are more ordinary and based upon a body of information that currently exists. It what it can't do is help you with things that don't currently exist. And so, depending on your knowledge, when you're asking chat things, you will see uh a familiarity. You'll literally be able to say, Oh, you got that from here, you got that from there. That's not even there's nothing original about that. And so that's the thing that you'll find is that when it starts stacking stuff, there's a familiar uh familiarity to it and a sort of triteness to it. Like, that's not creative. That took from Stevie Wonders and this and this. Really? That's that's all that's what you're gonna give me. And so when you really know, then you can see where it's compiled its its recommendation to you from, and you're less impressed by that.

SPEAKER_03 38:30

So that's interesting, Eric. Uh, because when when we think of human intelligence, human intelligence for the most part is coming from either one's direct or indirect knowledge and exposure. And so when we go to high school or just K kindergarten to 12th grade, and then we go into undergraduate school, those who go to college. All of the lessons that we learn that builds our knowledge base and subsequent intelligence is history. All of it. All the laboratories we do, it's already been done. All the history that we learned, it's already been, it's already happened from the physics to the math, all of that is done. So the intelligence that human beings mostly have is based on past things. Creativity is based partly on the past. It's either what has worked, what hasn't worked, right? When there's a problem out of things that haven't worked, that generates the intelligence to think of doing something different, right? Because if it's working, it's working, right? And then we want to make it better. And so let me make it plain. So if we have a horse and buggy, right, that's the mode of transportation. The problem is it's not moving fast enough. It doesn't get me to point from point A to point B fast enough. Two, when there's inclement weather, rain, snow, etc., the horses and the buggies slow down even more, right? So the intelligence of the human being says we first of all, we identified that we can basically domesticate an animal, a horse, and we build a contraption to carry us in it, which is our now form of transportation. But we have a lot of problems with that. So being creative, how do we get from point A to point B faster? Okay. Some people said first it's the pavement because that's what's getting muddied, right? It's the platform, just like the internet is a platform, it's getting muddied. So now we have to create some type of substance, right, that we can use to travel over. Some substances are already created, like concrete. In America, we said, well, we're still horse and buggy, we're on these roads, and we don't have concrete. Well, Rome had it, right? And they built it very well. They were masters of the creation of concrete even to this day. So we then tapped into some history or knowledge already known and maybe created. Some of it was as good, some of it was not as good. But now we are using concrete and creating asphalt, things like that. On the other side, we have folks creating what we're gonna call it the automobile, right? That was after the bicycle, and now we're trying to create innovation to do that. So as we're creating those creations, even today, we should we we were supposed to have the flying vehicle in the year 2026, we should have been flying. We do have flying aircrafts, the plane that's gotten better over the years, but we don't have the flying vehicle. So the intelligence of the human being for the most part comes from the past, right? And it comes, it partly comes from how do we envision the future going from point A to point B, faster, more efficient, right? And sure, now we have the self-driving vehicle car. My concern is as we look at AI, where is it going? Do we have an idea as human beings as we're thinking about it? Do we see where our own thoughts or the actual technology is going to take us?

SPEAKER_02 43:13

Right. So there's been a lot of uh uh there's been a lot of discussion around that. And uh I think that we should rightfully uh be both excited and afraid of AI because I believe that as we uh come up with technology that does anticipatory things uh that can play chess checkers against us, uh, that can anticipate things and then make decisions as a result of anticipating what we're likely to do. I think there is a real fear of when do machines get together and start leading and taking over and then not allowing you to take the control over. Them and so I think that uh uh rightfully so, man. Um, Tommy, um, right now, people could date an AI bot and never come back out to real the real world again, and so I think that there are some real fears around uh how far do we allow this to go? When do we kind of shut this down? Um, I'm and and what I would say to you is that I don't think that people will stop at any point. I was just seeing yesterday as I was watching the college basketball games, and there was nothing but commercials that were advertising all these gambling apps. And I was like, wow, if you I don't even, I'm not addicted to gambling at all. But if I was, I'd be in trouble. I'm not and I'm still in trouble. You're literally looking at them, show you nothing but people excited and winning. I'm winning. And you're like, hold on, why is this happening now? There was a time when we had regulations where you couldn't just do that to us all the time. Look at the impact that smartphones have had on our children. Right now, people are now doing class action suits because of the depression, the eating disorders, and things that kids have as a result of how their real emotional and mental state has been affected by too much time. So uh you're right on uh I mean, you're right on time, Tommy, with this this uh legitimate balance of excitement and healthy fear around where are we going and are we sure that that's where we want to go? Yeah, I think so. Uh yeah, community, thank you for joining in with us. Let's move to another topic, Tommy. Uh, today uh there are a number of people that uh deal with loneliness. Uh, I think that uh after uh COVID uh ran roughshod over the world, we had a lot of people that sort of went to the remote workplace. It accelerated the number of people that are literally working from home. The research says that globally, people that are feeling lonely, um, it's about uh 1.5 billion people, uh, one in four uh people around the world are have this overwhelming feeling of loneliness. And 50% of those people don't really even want to ever express that. What's your thinking about where we are today, Tommy, with so many people feeling lonely, uh, an epidemic, if you will, of loneliness. How do we offset that?

SPEAKER_03 46:53

Human beings by nature and by nurture are communal. There's a very, very small percentage of human beings who are non-communal, who would rather be on and in this earth without any interaction with other human beings. Very, very small. And so if we are communal folks needing some other human interaction, uh, sometimes that is physical human interaction, sometimes it's mental. So I think some of the loneliness that you're reporting from the research is out of it, it's part of it is the influence of technology. And technology is not a human experience until there is a perception of human experience, which, as we were talking about before, how AI could uh could masquerade as a human being that another human being could actually date them. The AI bot is not real, and so loneliness is uh it comes in different forms that the human being can be in the midst of a human crowd and feel lonely. So it's psychological, it's mental. It's whatever that person believes is a connection to another person, they're not receiving, thus, they're lonely. Whatever emotional stimuli the person needs or believes they need and are not receiving, then there's a there's a feeling, an emotion of loneliness. At the end of the day, it is an emotion, loneliness. As I mentioned, you can be in the midst of a crowd of human beings. So the increase of loneliness, uh, I do believe, Eric, is the ideal of one who is inspiring to be something, to be, not necessarily do, but what is my being? The question of who am I? In that pursuit of being a human, right? There are misses, there are traumatic events, there are unanswered questions, there are at times arrested development. And so, because of those things, the human doesn't fully develop, and there are gaps, and in those moments, seasons, long periods of gaps is the loneliness. And if those gaps are consistent, then there's a philosophical and psychological impact on that person's being. And that's why I think today uh more people are experiencing loneliness because they're they're on a journey somewhere with them, a part of the journey, and they're not finding it. It's not revealing itself.

SPEAKER_02 50:43

Yeah. And I would say that that thank you for that. Uh that was profound. Uh, I would also say that uh we are just not doing as many communal kinds of things. Uh, we used to have a lot more involvement in church. That was a regular thing that people did is they went to church on a weekly basis with the family. We did more things in the community. When you and I grew up, kids played on the streets a lot more because we didn't have all these gadgets that uh sort of disconnected us from each other and connected us to a device. Uh, we spent more time with each other. I mean, I remember growing up, man. Uh, you went down the street, rode your bike down to play football at the field, and everybody met there. And you rode your bike around until you saw somebody real. You you couldn't sit around with a gadget and sort of be talking to them. And so I think those things have all had an impact on how we how connected we feel with each other. And I think that uh, you know, we have to really ask ourselves the question. You know, people are looking at smartphones, and it says that if you just put a smartphone on a table, people get distracted. They're literally distracted. And once our our focus is interrupted, it takes 25 minutes to get back fully engaged with another person. And so I think that this is something that we really do have to take inventory of, and we have to make sure that we're prioritizing connecting with others.

SPEAKER_03 52:18

So the the example that you gave around uh you know us growing up and you know playing ball, going to the park, uh, certain social events, uh that is part of it. The other part is you know, professionally or how we communicate, uh, then we were uh you know communicating by written letter that we would mail through the United States Postal Service. And that communication changed either sending letters externally through the USPS, internally at companies, we had internal communications. We would put a letter in a in a uh a folder, right, and then wrap it up in we had a courier to run that piece of paper to the other department, or in some cases right down the hall or to the cubicle next door.

SPEAKER_02 53:19

Right.

SPEAKER_03 53:20

That's important. That a person would take a letter that I wrote, right, I would put it into an envelope, and that person will run it to the cubicle next door.

SPEAKER_02 53:32

Right.

SPEAKER_03 53:33

Then we had the advent of electronic mail, email. So it again separated us from that human interaction because although we were talking to another human in written form, we were losing the human nonverbal communication. We were losing the, in some cases, the physical interaction, right? Because we were cubicle, cubicle to cubicle or continent to continent, and then we absolutely lost in that communication, that connection with other humans, the esoteric, the spiritual connection. And so what was what that was doing was one, it was creating convenience and efficiency in some cases, but we were also again psychologically creating cognizant dissonance from the experience of full connection with another human, the communal connection with our community here on this virtual platform. There are a lot of people that may know you, Eric, or may know me, we may not know. There's a lot of folks who are listening that we would never meet in person, and we will and have never met in person where they are on this earth, and so we two of us, we could feel lonely if we did not make the adjustment psychologically in our mind to say, yeah, we're speaking to someone, right? Someone is hearing it, hearing us, at least one person is right, right. Because when we do the show individually, right, we have a beautiful, very good producer who is virtual to us, but when we do it, you know, kind of by ourselves, by ourselves, it's a lonely experience, right? And there are tens of thousands of people that we're talking to, right? So the technology is convenient, but the feeling could still be one of loneliness. If that is repeated, that feeling, loneliness, loneliness, wherever I go, loneliness again, psychologically, I'm alone. Yeah, I'm talking to folks, I'm gaming with them, you know, I'm interacting, they may or may not be human, all that good stuff, but this is not it. And it we have to interrupt it. And so, how do we interrupt it? Just one way of many. And this comes from studies by neuroscientists. Three things that we should do first thing when we are blessed to wake up in the morning. First thing we should do is stretch, do one some form of stretching, right? Because our bodies have been dormant, uh, and we have been unconsciously connected to the world. Right? Consciously, we're we're not connected, we're just in our own mind. And so when we wake up, we need to stretch, stretch to get our you know, blood moving, to stretch muscles and tendons and joints that haven't been moved, haven't you know, been fairly operative, right? And it starts to fire off some energies in our body. Second, if we do have some form of technology, like a cell phone, smartphone, or laptop, things like that, do not touch it for 30 minutes when we wake up, right? Because we don't know, and it just happens that now we are Pablo's dog. When we wake up in the morning, because we've been reaching for our cell phone, we open up our cell phone, and Pablo's dog in us says, simply now react to what is in our phone. Right? So that's the first piece of energy that we put into our mindset is reaction, reaction, reaction, reaction. So when we start our day, we're all reactive. Right? So don't touch your device for 30 minutes. That takes discipline. And some of us we have to change our now hardwired mentality not to do that. The third thing is uh if we're privy to be able to brush our teeth or anything like that, it is to brush our teeth with the non-dominant hand. Okay. Yep, non-dominant hand. Right that fires off the different uh hemisphere of our brain. Uh, we have to create some discipline there. It we have to be patient, slow down until it becomes a habit that we can do it with safety, not injuring our you know, our mouth or anything like that. But even that pause and difference of using the other side of our brain will allow us to be present in the moment. And then we've stretched, we're not reactive, or we're diminishing the reactive mode of our amygdala, the response mechanism that we have. And then, third, we're we're we're using more than 13% of our brain of what neuroscientists say that the average human being uses. We have to use more of our brain. With that being said, that's why I say that human beings do things from their past. It's only 13% of our memory, right? We have much more part of our brain that we that are unused, just like our smartphones. There's a lot in our smartphone that we have. A lot more capacity, absolutely. So that is one way of many, Eric, to begin to disrupt the mental psychosis of loneliness, and have us literally moving away from the dependency of technology back to the critical importance of going outside, interacting with another human being.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:14

Tommy, you've been on fire today, man. I appreciate those thoughts. Uh, community, we thank you uh again for uh joining us in this conversation. Uh, let it continue. Uh, there are a lot of things that we need to be thinking about, talking about together. Uh, and so uh uh Tommy and I have appreciated you as we always do uh joining in with us each week. Uh for and we look forward to you coming back next week for another installment in Virginia Conversations. Take care.