The Habit Mechanic - Unlock your Human-AI Edge

Brain State Intelligence in an AI-Powered World

• Dr. Jon Finn

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We're witnessing a significant acceleration in AI development with major implications for the workforce. This week has brought striking revelations about AI's rapid advancement, from government warnings to corporate restructuring announcements and insights from AI pioneers.

• UK government minister warning that workers must incorporate AI into workflows or risk being left behind
• Amazon announcing they will replace human roles with AI, affecting their 1.5 million US employees
• Mark Zuckerberg offering $100 million sign-on fees to build a team of 50 elite developers for general-purpose AI
• Geoffrey Hinton, "godfather of AI," explaining why AI differs from previous technologies in its job displacement potential
• Real-world example of a developer completing in 3 days what would have previously taken 3 weeks or months using AI tools
• Recognition that AI adoption is not a fad but a fundamental shift backed by enormous investment
• The importance of developing "brain state intelligence" to work effectively with AI technologies

Speaker 1:

hello, habit mechanics. Dr john finn here, hope you're having a great week so far. So the the last week has been very interesting in terms of ai and its developments. We started the week, in the uk at least, with, I think, the government minister for technology and innovation saying that UK workers really needed to start building AI into their workflows or they'd get left behind. I think that was an article in the Guardian newspaper. I think that was an article in the Guardian newspaper. We saw Amazon was really the first big company.

Speaker 1:

Amazon employ 1.5 million people in the US and significant numbers of other people or of people in other countries saying they publicly came out and said that we will be replacing some human roles with AI and you know no guarantees about would the technology create new roles? They didn't know, they thought it might, but they weren't sure. We ourselves gave our first although we've given many online talks about this. We gave our first um in-person talk to one of our partners um, and in fact it's one of our partner schools that we've worked with for, I think, 13 or 14 years now, and we were speaking to their parents, who are a great group of people, very rich, diverse professional backgrounds, many in the city of London, but also many in many working in the city of London, but also many working in the other core sectors in London. So it was great to talk to them about creating high-performing human AI teams and get their thoughts and their feedback. Some of the insights that were shared in the conversations afterwards surprised me at the speed things are going and, in fact, the sums of money that are being invested in by some businesses. So that was really insightful.

Speaker 1:

The story has come into the mainstream. That Mark Zuckerberg. So this is just another interesting thing that we've seen this week coming to the mainstream. Mark Zuckerberg is paying $100 million yes, $100 million sign-on fees as he tries to assemble a team of, I think, 50, what he might call super developers working on general purpose AI. So, rather than these kind of specific agents we're seeing emerging rapidly creating an AI which is general, more human-like and possibly surpassing human intelligence or humans' ability. Well, yeah, to learn, which is what intelligence is, and I think probably a conversation for the podcast, because we sometimes misunderstand what intelligence means. It's just about learning. So that's been going on and I just think in every direction we look, we can see businesses are starting to make this transition to smaller teams of humans who are working with AI technologies and who can deliver significantly more value to the business.

Speaker 1:

And the other thing that I've heard this week is Geoffrey Hinton, who is the godfather of AI, and he was quoted in a BBC article that talked about this Amazon statement, and Geoffrey Hinton spoke on a popular podcast. Geoffrey Hinton is basically the guy who has worked on neural networks all his life and there are other AI models out there, but he persisted with neural networks and eventually got them to work, and neural networks are the core technology that are driving the AI tools we're using today, and it was Geoffrey Hinton Geoffrey Hinton's story that really got me interested in these new AI technologies a couple of years ago when I read the Genius Makers book, because he's the protagonist of that book. So he's a London academic and I think he used to work at UCL, but there wasn't much appetite for neural networks in the UK so he eventually moved to canada and that's where he's done most of his academic work, but essentially a lot of the the leading thinkers in the ai space are his students, um, and jeffrey hinton, with some of his students, created a business that they sold to google and um, very interesting character. You should check him out. But he's talking about the, the potential of ai, both in what it can do in a beneficial way, but both some of the potential downsides.

Speaker 1:

But what is very interesting is we hear a it's a bit of a narrative out there yeah, about ai, people saying, yeah, but it will create new jobs, won't it? Because all new technologies create new jobs and people use different examples. The one I know is the typewriter. People thought the typewriter would put people out of work and it created more jobs and lots of other technologies have done the same. And in this podcast he's saying AI is different. He doesn't believe we'll create lots of new jobs because it can do most of what most people get paid to do every day. So this is the reality check, because it can do most of what most people get to do every day.

Speaker 1:

So this is the reality check, and sometimes I feel like it's just us saying this stuff, but it's not. It's real. We're not scaremongering. It's absolutely real. We want to help people to prepare and to thrive in an AI-powered world and I think AI gives us the opportunity to do that, but only if we can get brain state intelligent. So I just think we've had a really interesting week which has, I think, put a spotlight on the pace of AI development and it's moving faster than anybody thought in January. Because, you know, in January there's a lot of reports coming out around this stuff and it was all kind of projected that, oh, in five years time we might see these things. But you know, six months later we're starting to see big shifts big shifts in language, shifts in positioning, big shifts in case studies.

Speaker 1:

Another thing I spoke to a friend this week who's a developer and he was just saying that he developed a little Chrome plugin Not so little, pretty clever. Most of us couldn't do it, but he said that he was able to create that in three days using ai powered tools. Previously he said that similar project would have taken him more like three weeks and, um, or maybe even three months. I can't remember after, but it's one of those two, both impressive, right, and he was saying he felt like an octopus that he just had. He could just move so quickly. So, yeah, just so, so, so interesting.

Speaker 1:

We started the year with predictions, but now we're seeing reality, we're seeing the real-time impact of these technologies and a lot of the people I speak to. They're getting massive benefits from these technologies. But again, the key is it's brain state intelligence. Some people are scared of the technologies. I completely understand that and I have seen quite an adverse reaction from some people. I completely understand that and I have seen quite an adverse reaction from some people. Yeah, and it's understandable. But I think ultimately, once people start to try these technologies and they can see what they can do and and they can recognise that it's just simply a way to outsource, instead of having to use your own brain to do everything you know, we never have enough time in the day to do that, we never have enough brain power every day to do what we want to get done we can outsource some of that brain power in a very cost-effective way. But yeah, that's just a bit of a reflection really, and I think I'll come back and talk about neural networks in a different pod.

Speaker 1:

But I think the main, the main insight I've taken away from this week, is just how quickly things are moving and, of course, they're just the things that we see in the public domain. Having spent many years working in professional sport behind the scenes, you learn that most of what you read in the sports page is certainly about the teams I was involved in. Either wasn't Well, it's often not reported the things that are actually going on, or if they are reported, they're very delayed. So this is only what we know about, right, but anyway, that's just the data that we can use right now to guide us. But I think the main message is this is not going away. It's not a fad, it's not the millennium uh bug, it's um, it's here. The sums of money that have been invested in it are enormous. The results some people are getting already and the technologies baby like are enormous, and I know that we can all use it. If we learn how to use it properly, we'll be safer and it can help us to be healthier, happier and at our best more often.

Speaker 1:

So thank you for listening. Remember, we've got our free mini course where we talk about how to create high performing human AI teams, and if you haven't got Train your Brain for the Air Evolution book yet, that's getting a lot of traction as well. So if you haven't got it, get it. If you've already got it, read it. Read it again. Put the things into practice. Yeah, we've got some exciting news about some training we're working on at the moment, just to make it easier for people to put these things into practice. So wherever we are right now, it's not fixed, it's not deterministic. Wherever our brain state score is, we can do better and that's why we always say you're only one brain state, habit away.