Integrating AI into our Human Networks

I have a paid subscription to my favorite AI tool and I have found myself relying on it increasingly over the past several months. I often tell people something like “I use it as a research assistant. I prompt it carefully and completely, read its responses thoughtfully, and when I see something I think may be suspect, I prompt my AI tool with a challenge that often results in getting a better, more accurate, nuanced, qualified answer.”

See previous AI post: "Using AI While Growing the Human's Intelligence"

I had been thinking that makes me a quite careful, responsible, productive AI user.

Until I was provoked to consider rearranging my thoughts about what constitutes the most careful and productive use of AI by the Center for Creative Leadership’s (CCL) free white paper titled “The Space Between People: Building the Human Connections that Make Leadership Work at Scale.”

The e-mail I received which contained the link to the white paper asked: “When was the last time AI replaced a conversation you should have had?”

Information "Interstate" vs. the More Nuanced Route?

Conversations aren’t as fast as AI. I might have to coordinate calendars with someone. Conversations might not be as straightforward because I might find myself exchanging pleasantries, catching up on family and personal things, maybe lightening things up by sharing or hearing a funny anecdote. Conversations can meander.

AI can be so fast and direct. I can write a prompt, check it over, edit and refine as needed, and then press a button. Within seconds to maybe a couple of minutes, I have a complete answer to read, consider, react to with further questions or requests for clarification. In this world of seemingly ever-accelerating change, that seems so important.

A few years ago, I asked a co-worker a technical question that I thought she probably knew the answer to. She responded not unkindly, “Ever hear of Google? You should find that answer for yourself.” That’s not an unheard of response these days. Some organizations and professions highly value people who research things ‘for themselves.’ Often, for good reason.

But the white paper made me see a different side of our increased reliance on AI and search engines that I hadn’t focused on: much of our increased reliance on AI (or any digitized answer machine, really) comes at the cost of decreased interaction between humans. Those interactions have a value to our organizations that AI cannot replace.

Value of Understanding the "Human Landscape?"

We’re built for connection with one another. Human connection serves as the basis for trust, for shared sense-making, for shared commitment to shared vision, mission and values. Humans are built to be inspired by other humans. We can only be held accountable for our work by another human. In general, we can only solve organizational problems in connection with other humans. Our most meaningful moments of reflection, of celebration of accomplishments, of discussing ways to continually improve as a team or organization, happen when humans who are connected in all the ways mentioned here, are reflecting, celebrating, analyzing, and improving together.

I think about what it's like to drive between distant cities and even avoid interstate highways, rather than flying. Flying has irreplaceable value! But my most memorable trip from Washington, D.C. to Buffalo (I've driven or flown it at least a hundred times) involved taking two-lane highways from my home in Virginia up through Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. We've all heard of Gettysburg, right? My usual driving trip reduced it to a collection of road signs. But on a glorious fall morning, the slow, narrow road I had chosen took me into the heart of one of the most gorgeous, friendly, interesting towns I've ever seen. I hung out longer than I needed to. Now, when someone says "Gettysburg," I have a much richer understanding of the place than just a locality where an important military battle was once fought.

Back to those slow, meandering conversations between people. The white paper contained many impactful statements, but here’s one that especially stood out to me:

• “Trust takes time. Connection requires repetition. In an always-on environment, both feel like luxuries – the kind of slow, seemingly unproductive interactions that get crowded out by what feels most urgent right now.”

  
  

As much as I learned about Gettysburg from my morning there, I'd know a lot more if I returned again and again.

The CCL white paper positions reliance on AI queries as one of the most powerful ways in which organizations today are expecting their people to be quicker and more efficient in generating results. AI is regarded as a way around the “slow, seemingly unproductive interactions” that are abandoned in favor of what is fast. An alternative to the slower, more human-interactive processes of even five years ago that build trust, connection, shared understanding of the work and priorities that the organization is about.

The white paper makes the case that the efficiencies we gain as we increase our reliance on AI have longer-term, more systemic costs to the organization, thus creating a new set of leadership challenges. The paper puts it this way as it considers the impacts of the increased use of AI and the prevalence of the remote workforce together:

• “The conditions that once allowed relational infrastructure to develop as a byproduct of proximity, shared culture, and organizational stability no longer exist in the same way. Organizations must create a replacement.”

  
  

That may be true in any organization that wants the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts – where cooperation between motivated people becomes a competitive advantage. But it can also matter to independent consultants and contractors with no staff.

Solopreneurs often rely on the strength of their network connections to promote their business activities. These networks rely on all the things the CCL white paper names as important organization characteristics: trust, shared culture, shared sense-making, being inspired and held accountable by our partners and peers.

The CCL white paper does not propose “less” use of AI as a solution. My take-away from it is that organizations (and solopreneurs) need to be find new ways to build and encourage human connections in their work environments now that technology enables us to more easily, as my coworker once told me, “find that answer for yourself.”

Maybe that’s as simple as promoting policies that encourage peer or supervisory reviews of certain AI prompts and outputs so that humans still have opportunities to evaluate and discuss the issues that they would have discussed together in the bygone days before AI. I will be thinking about inviting appropriate people in my human network to share their reactions and perspectives to my AI prompts and answers. And maybe let the conversation meander just a bit.