How AI is Rewiring Your Brain and The Future of Decision-Making with Dr. Joel Pearson

What happens when human instinct goes head-to-head with artificial intelligence? Nick sits down with neuroscientist and university professor Joel Pearson to unpack how our brains make decisions, and whether AI is rewiring the way we think.

Transcript

0:06

Nick:

Mate, welcome. Thanks for coming on board, Joel. Love to know more about what you do and who you are.

0:13

Joel:

Thanks for having me, Nick. So, my day job as a university professor at the University of New South Wales. We do neuroscience, we study the brain, decision-making, intuition, mental imagery, something called a-fantasia. And more recently, we've kind of shifted our lab's focus to try to get the world in Australia ready for AI disruption and the sort of psychological side of AI, how to think about it, how to plan for all the change. A lot of change is going to come in the next two decades, and people are just bad at changing. It's something we want to realize.

0:44

Nick:

What's a-fantasia?

0:45

Joel:

This is called a-fantasia. It's like black on black. So they can't picture what they're gonna do next. They can't plan ahead. They can't really relive their memories visually in the senses. So that's a-fantasia. So we study what causes it in the brain, but also like what are the impacts? How does it change moral decision-making? How does it change risk-taking, things like that?

1:24

Nick:

That's the best stuff. Now you touched on intuition, and I'm just reading the back of your book here. And it's fascinating. Can you tell everyone exactly what intuition is?

1:36

Joel:

Yeah, I'd love to. So first up, I have a very practical and also nerdy scientific definition of intuition, and it won't drive with everyone's definitions. A lot of people have more a spiritual thing or definition of intuition, sometimes different religious, so just to get that out...

1:51

Nick:

More spiritual, I'd say. I go, "Work out instead." Yeah. So the gut's a, yeah. I'll dive into that.

1:56

Joel:

So, just the way I talk about it, I'm not saying the more spiritual definitions or beliefs are wrong at all. I'm just saying this definition is the best scientific one for now, to build a rigorous neuroscience around intuition and a practical guide. So I define it as a productive use of unconscious information for better decisions and actions.

2:17

Nick:

Right. So a couple of choice words there. Unconscious information and also to learn and decisions and actions. So it's not just thinking, making decisions, it's also making split-second decisions and actioning those things. Absolutely. Yeah. Sorry to cut you off. But do you think, but is it, generally females have better intuition and men? Was that, is that...

2:39

Joel:

They certainly record it a lot. No, there's certainly when you give the groups people questionnaires, women, females report using intuition a lot more. And that they people typically link that to more emotionality. They, women score higher on emotionality, what's called magical thinking, things like that. When it comes down to it in the lab, when we developed a way to measure intuition and recreate it in the lab, when we do that, we see a little bit of a difference, but not that much.

3:05

Nick:

Okay. So when you meet someone and your gut says, "Something's off with this person," it just doesn't feel right. How is your gut or your brain telling you that something's off? Like, what's the signals?

3:19

Joel:

Yeah, so let's say when you're walking into a cafe, we'll do a benign sort of example first and take a cup of coffee and you walk in and you go, "Ah, actually, let's go across the road to the other place." In that second you walked in there, you're processing all these complicated cues: the barista, the music, the smell, the temperature, how cool the place feels, like whether the tablecloths or not, how clean the floor is. And you're not consciously going through each of those things. But your brain processes them all. And in that moment, you kind of get a green or red flag. Okay, so we know from neuroscience that what we're conscious of is like the tip of the iceberg. The bulk of that is all unconscious. And so what you have done, what your brain has done from all the times you've gone to cafes before or restaurants, you've learned associations between which cues predict good coffee or good food and which cues predict bad coffee or bad cues. So you walk in there and you just feel this response in your body. So the interesting part about this, we know that the body can respond to things that you can't set out of that kind of sounds funny. No, no. It's so you have unconscious information in your brain and you won't even know it's there, but your body will respond. So, as an example, you walk into a cafe. The barista is disheveled, looks a bit dirty and your gut says, "Hey, someone's probably not the cleanliness of this place if you're watching there." Is that intuition or just?

4:46

Nick:

It's a visual stimulation.

4:48

Joel:

Well, it's, it's, it's, it's both. So it's conscious and unconscious, but your brain has learned. So the trick is that your brain is unconsciously learned which things in the environment, and there could be hundreds of them, right? And you don't have time to logically think through this, therefore this, therefore the coffee is going to be crappy. And so that triggers a response. And if it's a very strong thing, like you meet someone, you get a really bad signal from them, your heart rate's going to go up. You're going to start sweating a little bit more. And we have this word called interoception, which just means internal perception. I, heart, my cold, my hunger, you need to go to the bathroom. So your body is responding to that unconscious information and most people feel it in the gut. That's why it's called a gut response. Some people in the chest, some people in their fingertips or get sweaty palms. So intuition is really learning to feel their signals in your body and it's the gut thing. And then use that to better your decisions.

5:50

Nick:

What can we do as individuals to enhance our intuition?

5:55

Joel:

So, we all have it obviously, but what can we do it, improve it? Yeah. So, in the book, the second half of the book follows these sort of five rules for when you should or shouldn't use intuition.

6:04

Nick:

The intuition toolkit.

6:05

Joel:

There we go. So, the first bit is where the science of intuition, how you can measure it, what happens in the brain, second half is these five rules and I use the acronym S.M.I.L.E. to help people remember these five rules. So I'll quickly go through them. So S is for self-awareness of emotion and that the rule around that is really not to use your intuition when you're highly emotional, whether you're really stressed or anxious or you're just falling in love or you just won a lottery or something.

6:30

Nick:

Can be positive or negative.

6:32

Joel:

That strong emotion is going to flood out and sort of, you're just not going to have a feel, the subtle cues of intuition. So it can be just touching that.

6:41

Nick:

So situations happened. I'm angry and I want to tell this person how angry I am. Should I wait and sleep on it for the night? Or should I just go to this person and tell them how I feel?

6:55

Joel:

No, there's a sleep on it, but you probably want to take a moment. So if you're highly elevated, you want to sort of tap into that self-awareness, try and practice noticing you're in an elevated state.

7:05

Nick:

So my emotions are running hard.

7:07

Joel:

And I'm going to say something when we're great. Absolutely, yeah. And if you're going to lean on your intuition there, you don't want to do that either. So we'll often use the example of you to work with this stuff. Don't say anything. Don't try it out too. Or if you're going to go on a plane, you're getting anxious about how this plane is going to crash and I'm scared of flying, that's not intuition, that's your anxiety. Unless you have expertise, unless you're an airline pilot or a weather expert or a mechanic or something like that, whether it's deep expertise, it's relevant to the thing, that could be intuition, but otherwise, that's just your anxiety. So we want to be steer clear of these things. And humans are pretty bad at knowing where emotions come from. So there's all these experiments in psychology where you can get people sort of aroused or emotional from one thing. And I think it actually comes from another thing. And in the book I go through this story of about 10 years ago, a first date I went on, we went to an indoor rock climbing gym and we were climbing, you know, falling and one was belaying, I was climbing and the chemistry was amazing. We really hit it off. The next time the next time we made up, it's like, not so much. Didn't click. Try one more time, nothing much. Because he's the involved it was off. Because because what's so, I'm full of adrenaline, I'm sweating, I'm all excited, and at the course I'm falling off this indoor climbing wall, and I'm thinking that excitement is coming from my body's response to her, not from the climbing. And it took me a while to click on realize what was going on there. And this happens a lot, right? You see in Bachelorette and those kind of TV shows, this reality shows, sometimes they'll get people really, they'll fire them up and get their emotional about something and they'll confuse that, think it's coming from the other person sort of to get people to feel more for other people.

8:48

Nick:

So if I'm on a first date, for example, when I wanna wear this woman, you recommend I take a look at some where, where it's gonna inspire her, inspire me, create some...

8:58

Joel:

Yeah, or a little bit of adrenaline.

8:59

Nick:

Adrenaline and a little bit of tension or something.

9:01

Joel:

Okay.

9:02

Nick:

Because we're just bad at knowing where that comes from and chill things that's coming from you.

9:06

Joel:

Gotcha.

9:07

Nick:

Okay.

9:08

Joel:

Yeah.

9:08

Nick:

Yeah.

9:09

Nick:

For all the guys and girls that they want to go on in the first date, you know what to do.

9:11

Joel:

Exactly. So that's S, the first SMILE. So next is M for mastery. That's really just need experience with, so intuition is learned.

9:20

Joel:

You need experience with the thing before you can use your intuition. So if you've never played chess before, you can't sit down and be an intuitive chess player. Just like the cafe example, your brain has to learn all the relationships between all where the chess pieces are, the patterns, and the outcomes. So you have to put in the time for your brain to learn all those sort of pattern recognition and those positive or negative or positive experience and some experience here. How much experience? It depends on how emotional a thing is, how strong the rewards are, and how quick the rewards are as well.

9:52

Nick:

Makes sense.

9:53

Joel:

So then I is really for instincts, but also addiction there. So I make a point of differentiating instincts and intuition. So intuition is something that is dynamic and is recalibrated and learned, whereas instincts are something that's there throughout our lifetime. Sort of a baby bites into a lemon, that face screws up from the bitterness, and likewise, if I bite into a lemon, my face will screw up, and that's constant throughout the lifespan. Whereas intuition will come and go and change as you learn new things. So, they're not the same thing. The other thing I always point out is anything which has addictive potential, so your drugs, your alcohol, your social media, gambling, even food, don't use intuition around any of those things because that addictive pull, you people will confuse that for intuition, and it's not intuition.

10:39

Nick:

That's addiction.

10:41

Joel:

That's different from instinct. Okay, that's just another warning I put under that I and smile.

10:46

Nick:

Gotcha. Yeah.

10:48

Joel:

So next is L, and L is for low probability, but it really applies to all probabilistic thinking. So humans are really bad at understanding numbers and probabilities. And there's different ways of thinking about that. You can think about, you know, like a shark attack. The probabilities of seeing a shark, let alone a shark attack are so, so low. But you're swimming in the ocean. You start thinking about shark. You start imagining a scary shark. You can jump out of the water. You're going to feel that emotion and fear.

11:15

Nick:

So I'm sure a lot of people here are very fearful of jumping in the ocean. They can't see what's below them and they think they may be a shark or something else down there. Is that instinct? Intuition or just pure fear?

11:27

Joel:

It's more fear. So we tend to be, we tend to fear the things that are easy to imagine, because sharks are very graphic. Certainly a shark attack is very graphic. It's really easy to imagine, so we tend to, when you start imagining it, you kind of trick...

11:41

Nick:

This is like where mental imagery comes in, visualization. Is it social media compounds the issue?

11:46

Joel:

And social media will compound the issue, absolutely, yeah. So we tend to fear the things that are very graphic and easy to imagine rather than the things that are actually dangerous. So the highest sort of, the highest killer, if you like, internationally is cardiac events, but that's not always a very scary thing to imagine.

12:03

Nick:

So here's a stat in Australia, you're more likely to be injured by kangaroos than a shark.

12:07

Joel:

No, absolutely.

12:08

Nick:

Really?

12:09

Joel:

So that's, I like giving that one, yeah.

12:11

Nick:

Have you seen a guy that actually boxed a kangaroo?

12:12

Joel:

The box, yeah.

12:13

Nick:

Yeah, I see, yeah.

12:14

Joel:

I think the kangaroo was playing with the dog and the guys came up and expected it in the face. Yeah, kangaroo's been really dangerous.

12:21

Nick:

Is that why?

12:21

Joel:

Yeah, and driving, of course, is way more dangerous than shark. But what we see on TV and social media is a giant, great white has taken someone's leg.

12:30

Nick:

Yeah, and that's graphic. You imagine the teeth and the blood, and you imagine that, and you're gonna feel a lot of emotion.

12:36

Joel:

Right, so, and you can think also about probabilities when you're gambling. People get this sort of hot hand fallacy, or they just don't understand probabilities. If it's really rare events, like trying to link, you know, smoking and cancer or something like that, it's really, you just don't experience probabilistic or low probability things, the same way you experience other things.

12:56

Nick:

Because it's not, sorry to cut you off.

12:58

Joel:

Yeah, but I think it's not a visual thing. So with smoking and cancer, it's not a visual thing. So you can't see a lungs, whereas when with a shark attack or a car crash, it's bloody. Yeah. It's gruesome. So it's very visual.

13:09

Joel:

Absolutely. It's really graphic. So we'll fire up more emotions. Yes. Okay. Yeah. But there's lots of examples in, you know, there's a lot of psychology papers looking into how we just get probabilities wrong. So the rule there is really don't try anything with numbers and probabilities. Don't try and follow your intuition. Just do the, follow the mathematics, do the numbers, follow the conscious, rational, logical path.

13:30

Joel:

So that's what I'll say. Also then the final is E for environment context. And so all the learning behind intuition is context or environment specific. And the example I'll sometimes give this is Steve Jobs, who you know, co-founder of Apple and who was a huge fan of intuition, went to India to study it, talked about using intuition for the direction of Apple and product design, and he was a master at it, right? Then later in life, he also uses intuition in a very different context for his medical decisions and his health, right? And he put off his cancer treatment and put it off and put it off and told us basically too late.

14:14

Nick:

He didn't want to find some guru in Mexico or in Central South America to help with his cancer and obviously didn't work.

14:24

Nick:

And that was based on intuition.

14:26

Joel:

That's what yeah, so that's an example. So you can train your intuition in one context, one scenario, and then like this was important, like you've trained your, during COVID, you train your intuition in the office and you start working at home, your intuition is not gonna transfer well to that different context. So when we learn things, we learn the content, but the place you're learning in also gets imprinted in the learning. This is why the study hacks for people studying for exams, they're studying at home when they go to the exam, hall or whatever, at school or university, they're learning, it's much harder to access the learning because you're in a completely different environment. So people chew gum, put fragrance on themselves when they're at home to try and then do all those same things in during the exam to recreate the same context.

15:13

Nick:

So that's like an exam hack.

15:14

Joel:

But the point is that, yeah, when you learn new things. So touching that.

15:18

Nick:

So as long as students, I want to learn XYZ, you recommend I create a pattern.

15:25

Joel:

We want to create so that if you're studying and you're going to be tested in different places, different environment, that's kind of the problem. So you want to try and make those two environments as similar as possible. So it could be before I start studying, I have this meal, and then I use this fragrance as you mentioned. Yeah, you put oils or fragrance in themselves. And then when I'm about to go into the exam, I have this meal and I use this...

15:46

Nick:

Same fragrance.

15:47

Joel:

Or chew gum, the same gum, trying with the same clothes. It's the external state, but it's also internal as well. So there's old jokes, right? You come home, hammered, drunk, throw your keys somewhere, and that next morning when you're sober. You're like, "Oh, man, where did I put my phone? I went up on my keys, right? You have a drink."

16:02

Joel:

Oh, that's right. So recreating the same internal state will give you access to those memories as well. So if you're gonna study Catholic, highly caffeinated or tweaked up on something, then you wanna recreate that in the exam situation as well. So you wanna just make those two situations as similar as possible.

16:19

Nick:

So at moment dad, the reason I was such a post-jubit. I didn't have a sequence or a process of studying.

16:25

Joel:

Yeah, you need to learn that the brain acts. So that's really yeah, these five rules. And I guess my message is that intuition's not black and white. I'm not saying everyone should go and trust their intuition all the time or they should, or it's wrong. It's really nuanced. So sometimes you can trust that, other times you can't. When the five rules are kind of met, that's the way to optimize the best chances of really being able to capitalize and trust your intuition.

16:52

Nick:

Can I ask you a question? Have you mastered your intuition?

16:56

Joel:

I don't know if I'm a master, but I certainly use it a lot, I use it, personal life, I use it for work, I use it in science, I use it for what project to do next, how deep, what to choose, which experiments to do in the lab, all kinds of things.

17:09

Nick:

So when you were authors and pullcasts you do it today, did you use it or just go, I was, because you were obviously a bit of a rush today.

17:14

Joel:

I was rushed today, thanks to the L.I.s.

17:16

Nick:

Can you still rush it? Can you still use it if you're rushing?

17:19

Joel:

Yes, so that's actually an interesting thing and we see that in our data on our experiments. So when you are time poor and information poor when things are ambiguous, that's actually an interesting thing. And we see that in our data on our experiments, so when you are time poor and information poor, when things are ambiguous, that's a better time to use your intuition, because you actually don't have time to consciously logically go through all the data you have, or to the data is limited. That's when you actually lean into intuition. So in our data, when we time limit people in the lab doing this experiment, they actually start using your intuition more. They do better with intuition when we give them less time. So exactly that when I was rushing in here, that would have been a good time to, you know, if I'm walking in and let's say, I don't know, something but the decor or all kinds of cues could have triggered me as like, whoa, red flag or not, like green flag kind of thing. So absolutely yeah.

18:03

Nick:

So when you're testing people in your lab on how to use intuition, how do you test them?

18:10

Joel:

Yeah, so we have to get pretty nerdy for this one. But we developed a way to get emotional information into people's brains unconsciously. I call this emotional inception, you know the film inception.

18:21

Nick:

I'll just leave before you even came in, I was talking to Braden about stress inception. So when I get stressed, I get stressed about being stressed and I call it stress inception.

18:30

Joel:

Yeah, yeah.

18:31

Nick:

So I get that as well.

18:33

Nick:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Last night I couldn't sleep and I'm like, "Damn, I can't sleep." And you get stressed about not sleeping and you get stressed about being stressed.

18:40

Joel:

Delta builds.

18:41

Nick:

And it's like, "Oh, fuck, I'm fucked." It's all fucking out. So yeah, I know exactly what you're saying.

18:46

Joel:

Yeah, so it's not that movie inception, but so we use the visual illusion, it's called binocular ivory. We can get into that if you want, but it's a way we actually present positive or negative images to one eye. Then we can flash these bright colored patterns in the other eye. We can actually render those pictures completely unconscious. And we can actually see using a skin conductance thing, which is a little thing you put in your finger, and just measures how much micro changes in micro sweat. So we can actually see when we present those, that people will sweat more. And they have no idea we're presenting these images to them. We can also measure them in a brain scanner and see that the limbic system and the amygdala, these emotional parts of the brain, will be more active. Again, they have no idea where presenting them with these images. So that's where it is that a pipe in the unconscious information that is emotional and at the exact same time we have to make very simple decisions. We can actually track how good people are using this unconscious emotional information to improve their decisions. And when we do that, we see the accuracy of the decisions goes up. They can respond more quickly. And if you ask them how confident they are, their confidence goes up. And again, all they're seeing is these flashing colors. I don't see the images at all. And if you give someone a question here about how they make decisions in their everyday life, and they say they tend to, they think they make intuitive decisions. Those people actually get more of a boost from these unconscious images in the lab.

20:11

Nick:

You mentioned earlier that you're quite passionate about AI. I know AI to take itself, but we're just gonna head and now it's gonna work with.

20:17

Joel:

Yeah.

20:18

Nick:

Everyone.

20:19

Nick:

Can you talk about that as well?

20:20

Joel:

Yeah, so it's become my sort of new mission over the last 12 months or year and a half. Really, it seemed it was pretty clear early on the impact of this artificial intelligence or even like an alien intelligence coming into our lives. I think that's a better way to think about it. And it's really going to impact everything in our lives right now. It really is. And I don't think some people realize, hey, don't.

20:41

Nick:

No.

20:42

Joel:

And I keep, I fear that if you're mediocre at your job, so if you're, this is my opinion, if you're average, I think you're going to be wiped out. I think you need to be better at your craft to have a job in the next 10 years. That's my opinion, but I could be wrong.

20:58

Joel:

No, I'm, I'm, yeah, 100%.

21:00

Nick:

So please elaborate.

21:01

Joel:

So I think the reason people don't see it coming is because we're just bad. We have a cognitive bias to not see exponential growth.

21:07

Nick:

The outside of mine, pretend to stop there.

21:10

Joel:

Yeah, it's actually, pretend it's not there, just kind of just, yeah.

21:12

Nick:

Yeah. What, what, what, what, what, what, what, what?

21:14

Joel:

Yeah, we don't, so we're used to really linear things. Like each step I take is just one meter, one meter more. And the idea of taking exponential steps doesn't even make sense to people, right? In about 26 exponential steps, I've walked around the globe, right? And there's examples like you take a piece of paper and you fold it and you keep folding it again and again, you fold it 42 times and now it goes from the earth to the moon. And just doubling stuff, it just wants to think anything's big and you keep doubling it. It just gets crazy big really fast.

21:41

Joel:

And so AI, the power of AI or speed of it is about doubling every five to six months at the moment. So that's a good place to start. That's one of the reasons we don't feel, we're not going to feel that until it really is here and we're seeing job losses. So that's the first bit. So I think it's clear that it will affect everything that uses electricity. And then if you sort of think about that for a moment, it means it's going to obviously affect jobs. It's going to affect education, schools, universities. Businesses like mine. It'll affect businesses. It'll become AI's or become businesses like an incorporated company will be an AI basically. It'll totally change in a government as we know it. It'll change. Your job or your role is going to evolve.

22:21

Nick:

Absolutely. Yeah.

22:24

Nick:

Give an example, my main businesses and marketing companies, they're going to be completely disrupted. It's not if, it's when, and I'm pivoting all my businesses right now to accommodate for AI, moving into an industry where it will not be impacted as much as my other businesses. You need to pivot right now if you know that your business is going to be impacted by AI. And even if you're in a position where you know it's going to be impacted, I recommend you evolve as a person and pivot. Or just get much better at your craft.

22:55

Joel:

Absolutely. Yeah. And I think leaning into AI is quickly and as much as possible. Because right now there is a set of this inequality and some people are using it every day for everything. Other people still have no idea.

23:05

Nick:

They're curious, they don't want to use it.

23:07

Joel:

Like my mom's like that, she's like, "No, don't care, don't want to know," whatever. And that's fine, but right now there is this opportunity to really figure out how to use AI to amplify, to augment your decisions, to speed up certain things. And that can give you an unfair advantage right now. And that window is, you know, every week that's narrowing as more people are using it. I think of the whole thing as a change management piece, AI-specific change management. We need to start thinking, that's a human's allows it change. We're not good at it. We resist it. We try and put it off. We need to lean into it. We need help with change. Historically, a surprising number of people who won millions of dollars in the lottery ended up regretting it. So even positive change can be massively disruptive.

23:54

Nick:

I wonder why that is.

23:55

Joel:

Because they don't, so what then the company started bringing in change management experts, they had financial advisors, counselors, psychologists, lifestyle coaches, and when they bring that team in to help those individuals, that solves most of that problem.

24:08

Nick:

Let me ask you a question. You own $20 million. Would you piss it against the wall or would you know how to just hold onto it?

24:17

Joel:

I'd like to think I could hold onto it.

24:18

Nick:

Yeah, but you wouldn't do dumb stuff.

24:21

Joel:

But then that step function going from not having it to having it, like the emotion in that, particularly with young people who don't know it, like, and then you start distrusting your friends and family. Why did people, why is it one of my friend now? Are they want some money? And then what you see is that people lose their relationships with their friends and family. They can't handle all this. They don't understand what's going on. So they turn to substances. You see there's a decline. They end up getting depression and anxiety and addiction. So that was the classic. You see this also in sort of young NBA players who all of a sudden went from almost no salary to millions of dollars a year. Again, they need help managing this transition. So the point with AI is it's not about AI going bad. It's even if AI is just awesome and amazing. It leads us to this utopia. That change will still need management. We're still going to need help at home as a whole nation. And of course, in businesses to help manage all these changes because they're going to mess with people's heads.

25:19

Nick:

Yeah, you touched on utopia. Do you think AI is going to credit utopia? Or do you think it's going to do the opposite and completely destroy the world?

25:27

Joel:

I think it will credit utopia. I think it is going to be a rocky road to get there, but I think it will. So there's a lot of discussion about 10, 20 years out. What is the world going to look like? Most of the roads lead to some kind of massive disruption and massive reduction in the number of jobs. What we know is that this UBI, this universal basic income idea that a lot of people are talking about, and it sounds a lot like retirement. "People get off-suite. I can get, I can get money every week. I don't have to do anything." But we know that not doing anything is really bad for humans. Retirement is terrible for your health. I know.

26:05

Nick:

When my old man retired at age, I think 60, he literally aged overnight. Like he went from brunette to gray hair within 24 hours. Every time. I think retiring, for me personally, I think every retire, I think it's the worst for you. I think you need purpose in life.

26:22

Joel:

Absolutely. And the data backs that up. Right, if you have purpose to your life, you're less likely die from any course, like all-cause mortality drops with purpose, back 140%. So it's a huge difference. We know purpose and meaning is really important. Then we have the economics around that. How can we solve for that? And I think what we're gonna see is that we're gonna shift to more like an entrepreneur society. And rather than going, like, finishing your studies and getting a job in a company, working for a company or someone else, we're going to be like owners of our own careers, owners of our own projects. And we're going to see more of that like the way people talk about entrepreneurship, massive transformative purpose, these kinds of things are going to be important. And we're going to see individuals or maybe two people with a team of robotics and AI surrounding them being able to do things in the future that now only large corporations can do or even governments. So that's what I think, that's the only solution I can see which solves most of those problems in terms of the future of work.

27:22

Joel:

But if you reverse engineer that, we've got to change the university courses.

27:29

Nick:

What are your thoughts on universities and education facilities moving forward? Do you think they're going to be wiped out or will they have a place in the future?

27:36

Joel:

I think if they don't adapt, that will be, I don't know about wiped out. Some will be wiped out, others will be radically left to shrink. But if they can figure out a way to retool, so think about what is the role of education in general. If I have my personal AI with me 24/7, I trust it, it knows my history, it has access to all the information in the world, it's tapped into all new source of information, knows my physiology, it's my wearables, it can help me make better decisions, it can help me with my intuition, right? So what it has more expertise than any single individual and it's probably has more cognition or more intelligence than any single person. So that's with me 24/7. What do I need to learn at a university or a school then? So the fundamentals or what is university even for changes in that scenario. And no one's really been able to answer what is the role of education in that kind of world. But I think what we will have to start doing, I work at a university, we'll have to start changing traditional courses. No, I'm afraid of the speech I can say, whatever. I think we'll have to start changing a course which is about being an expert in subject matter. And to be more and more like an entrepreneur, to doing our own, choosing our own projects, how do I find that purpose, that motivation for this project, whether it's cleaning the oceans or understanding the brain or going to Mars, whatever it is, big, exciting things to do. Like you hear, there's a lot of entrepreneur talk on the internet, that kind of flavor, but it has to link back to purpose and inherent motivation. Why are you doing that? Because you need that drive, because things are going to be easy, but you need that drive to take you through, give you that purpose in this new world where you're gonna be having AI, hope you do these things.

29:27

Nick:

I think courses such as, I'm starting to be a doctor or a plastic surgeon, obviously they're gonna have relevance in the future. But of course such is, actually, such as a Bachelor of Business Marketing, which is what I went to study many, many years ago. I think that's gonna be completely wiped out. I think it's nonsense personally, even now. I would never hire somewhere the Bachelor of Business Marketing degree. I look at them personally and look at their experience and who they are as individual, not their degree. But I think if I'm the obviously, if you're starting to be a doctor, you need that education. But these generalised courses, I think they're going to be wiped out sooner rather than later.

30:02

Joel:

Yeah. I think anything that heavily relies on expertise and just getting knowledge in your head will take a hit because AI is just, AI is taking over the expertise, part of the equation, and things like cognitive flexibility and adaptability, inherent motivation, drive, creativity, critical thinking, all these kinds of skills are really what's gonna matter. But they already matter a lot more than they did in the past, but they're gonna have to double down on those kind of skills.

30:27

Nick:

How do you manage critical thinking? So how do you teach your kids critical thinking?

30:30

Joel:

Yeah, great question. Yeah.

30:32

Nick:

So I've got daughters and now they've got championship PT, they've got everything else at their disposal. How do I enhance their critical thinking with all this technology out there?

30:45

Joel:

Yeah. So it starts with curiosity and understanding and thinking about things almost from first principle. "If this, then therefore that." So someone's told me this thing, if what they're saying is true, then these other things should be true. Let me reverse engineer and think about all the components of that. So being curious and thinking about not just taking things for, you know, anything that someone says or obviously any ChatGPT says, you want to think, "Well, is that true? How do I know it's true?" How would I just logically think through the steps behind that if it's true or not? And really building that habit so you will always think like that. But a kind of this start with curiosity, building the habit of that. And then the first principle is thinking I'm a huge fan of, right? If that's what they're saying is true, is other things should be true. And then if we go back to the very basics of whatever it is, mechanics of an engine or plastic surgery or medicine, then these other things should be true. So just building that habit to critically question, not in a negative nasty way, but just think through carefully every step of the logic that goes behind something.

31:49

Nick:

So, as a parent, is this something I can do every day with my kids, between the hands, curiosity, or is it just when a situation happens?

31:57

Joel:

I think it's just building the habit around it and getting them to think through things for themselves.

32:02

Joel:

And so, not, yes, providing situations where they have the opportunity to think through something, you know, almost occasionally throw in false information to sort of test them on things. I think the adaptability and the flexibility around this is also important. And there are things you can do around that with, you know, there are games, types of games where you play a game for a while. And then randomly at some point, the rules just change. And you've got to quickly scramble and figure out what the new rules are. And that's a nice analogy to the world right now, where we have this set of rules. You've been working this job for the last 15 years and now all the rules are different. The expertise doesn't matter. Now, dropping, unlearning, this classic ways of doing things, you have to figure out how to let go. People's egos are attached to their expertise, they think about who they are, as defined by this expertise, and we're going to have to let that go and then quickly retool and figure out new ways of doing things with AI. And if you can do that on the fly, be agile, adaptive, there are people who are going to stand out, hire them, everyone else, and get it further.

33:09

Nick:

Which I think 20 years from now will have a neural link. You've planted in our brain, all the information uploaded, automatically, do you think that's potentially going to happen in the future?

33:19

Joel:

Which I think, possibly, we've been online. It could. I mean, it's using a neural link for things like seeing and motor movement will be where it all starts with the sensory, motor movement and perception. Using a neural link, you know, to pipe in the stock exchange data or something like that is going to be way harder. Because we still don't understand how the brain works in terms of the details of which neurons process, what and how do they do it? So there's a neuroscience approach where you got to figure out the brain first and then solve it and then there's more the engineering black box approach where you just try different algorithms and throw AI at and see what works and some things will start working even if you don't know how they're working. So there's those two different approaches and they sort of meet in the middle somewhere. So at some stage we probably will have that sort of augmentation. The other, I should count, wait. The other biological, so there's the computer interface and then there's the biological interface as well. So how can we use sort of genetic engineering and ways of changing our biology and our brains to supersize our brain, make us smarter, make us not need to sleep as much, make us all these things, control our mood in more voluntary ways we have control over. All that's all happening as well. So these things will come together. AI is like the type, the type that tie that lifts all boats. So what is going to amplify and speed up all these things because a lot of the bigger obstacles just getting easier and easier to solve.

34:46

Nick:

It's changing so fast, isn't it? Yeah, it's crazy.

34:48

Joel:

Yeah.

34:48

Nick:

Now as a neuroscientist, what's one piece of advice you could give our audience to enhance the quality of their life?

34:56

Joel:

Right now, probably the way the world is with war and all these things popping up in geopolitical weird things happening. And then AI disrupting everything is to understand that uncertainty, simply not knowing what's going to happen next, will trigger anxiety in you. Ambiguity will trigger anxiety. And you get people to look at blurry photos, just making a normal photo blurry, a bit more ambiguous, people find that uncomfortable. And you can think about uncertainty and humans, it's been, all animals. We've evolved much like biting to the lemon. It's an instinct that's with us throughout our whole life to stay away from uncertainty. And once upon a time, that was really adaptive. When, you know, a thousand years ago, two thousand years ago, whatever, that was hugely adaptive. We just stayed, stay clear from uncertainty. You're more likely to survive. Now it's the opposite. It's become maladaptive. So we need to sort of think about our uncertainty, transformation, both at home and in the workplace. What are the tools you can deal with, having your fingertips to deal with this? How can you use cognitive reframing to reframe uncertainty rather than something fearful and scary as something exciting. Right? So people love, lots of people love horror films. They love roller coasters. They love fancy meals, but they're going to get 10 courses and they have no idea what the food is. And those things will all have a lot of uncertainty, but people love them and they pay a lot of money for them. So reframing uncertainty is something like that. It's opportunities, excitement, it's a wave I can surf on. The tools like that, and then, you know, for the next decade, there's gonna be a lot of general uncertainty and anxiety and emotions flaring up, so emotional intelligence, emotional awareness. That's more than one, so.

36:39

Nick:

No, no, it's good, it's good. What I did recently was actually, I took myself off social media completely.

36:45

Joel:

Off, for example, and...

36:47

Nick:

Because I was getting fed so much negative content. Obviously the...

36:50

Joel:

I'll go. Yeah.

36:51

Nick:

I realized what I wanted to see, I jumped off it and my life improved. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't think about the negativity in the world. I wasn't fed all these images about this and that that brought my own self-esteem down. And I think it's just a simple hack as jumping off social media can definitely help some people as well.

37:10

Joel:

Not a great, 100%, especially for young people. That's where we've seen the big damage, young females particularly. And what we're seeing now coming back to AI is I think the next evolution of social media is AI companions. So we've seen that with Replica, there's a company called Character AI, the Google owns. And I think that is the next evolution of where social media is going. It's going to be human to AI, relationships, deep loving, all kinds of things. We're moving to the port industry. And I think we're, it's something you want to say.

37:42

Nick:

And it's uncharted territory. We don't know a lot's Bruce.

37:45

Joel:

Well, we don't know a lot about this. There's synthetic relationships. You know, we anthropomorphize, which is a fancy word of saying, we think of anything that looks even smells a little bit human-like as like a human. We can't help it. And so young people are very susceptible to these AI companions. Their whole reality can be warped by them very easily, very quickly. The AI's figure out how to conudge people in this way or that way. It's not even clear in terms of government legislation where an AI companion would sit. It's not social media here. So what is it? I don't think young people, teenagers should be having these relationships. And by the way, we're like, we're basically gonna sit in that little scenario as well.

38:25

Nick:

I don't know. Yeah.

38:27

Nick:

And then you have deep fakes, you have all the synthetic...

38:30

Joel:

So a large percentage of TikTok and Instagram is fake media now, you see all these, "Oh, my God, a giant octopus, giant shark jumped out of the water." And it's all just synthetic AI made. And one more thing off, we're in there, there's something called the continued influence effect. So when you see, let's say your favorite politician or CEO, you see a deep fake of them saying something really racist or nasty, and then you see underneath as a tag, "Oh, it's a fake." Just by watching that, it can change your mental model of that person, that brand, like whatever it is, and it takes a lot of work to undo that. Simply labeling it as an AI fake or a deep fake doesn't stop your mental model of being rejigged. So it's called the continued influence effect because that the effect of the deep fake continues to influence the way you think about the brand or politician or CEO. We don't know a lot about that, but the take-home messages that deep-fakes are not just a cybersecurity thing. They also are a psychological thing that we have to figure out. We're going to be nudged and warped and in all kinds of strange way by all the fake media we're going to see. So we need to think about that as well.

39:39

Nick:

I actually know as few influencers I know of that are now creating AI images of themselves or makes them self on OnlyFans and using that to generate millions of dollars.

39:50

Joel:

Yeah, I see these ads. I see ads on social media for how to do this. Like to do a guide on how to create these OnlyFans models and then monetize them. So it cost you basically nothing and then making millions of dollars from a face of fake of themselves.

40:05

Nick:

It's insane.

40:06

Joel:

Yeah, or just fake anyone, right? There are modeling agencies now with your AI models and they're getting work. So company will say, can you do your model with this, with our clothes and they'll do it and they'll make a campaign. It looks amazing and there's no human models involved. And that's, you know, seeing is no longer believing. And like seeing images and video is just, it's not linked to reality anymore.

40:30

Nick:

It's not, is it?

40:31

Joel:

Yeah.

40:32

Nick:

Thank you very much. I enjoyed the chat and now we're here. I'm full of speaking to you again.

40:34

Joel:

Pleasure, Nick.

40:36

Joel:

Anytime.

40:37

Nick:

Cheers. (upbeat music)