How to Be More Human In A Time of AI

0:00From Entrepreneur Media, this is Problem Solvers, a show in which entrepreneurs do what entrepreneurs do best, solve unexpected problems in their business. We were completely wrong. And I'm just like, it's not selling. It was like, we have to start from scratch. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine.

0:22When I first hit record, whenever I'm talking to someone for this show, I always tell them, before we get into the conversation, I produce the very first part of an episode. And so it's always great to just have audio of you introducing yourself. Can you do that? And most people, what they do is they just say their name. And then I have to prompt them for more. Can you say your name and your title or book title or whatever? Nobody has ever answered the question quite the way Cal did. Cal, can I just have you introduce yourself? I always like to hear how people introduce themselves. Cal Fussman spent 20 years interviewing the icons who've shaped the world over the last 75 years.

1:01That goes across presidents from Carter to Biden, Gail Gorbachev, Muhammad Ali, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, interviewed them all for Esquire magazine and told their stories in their own words. That's how most people know me. At a certain point in about 2015, I started talking about it to large audiences and was having a great time going all over the world doing that. And then COVID hit. And I went back to take care of my dad who was turning 90. He's passed away since. And now we find ourselves in the age of AI. And I'm looking into that future and trying to figure that out. Isn't that wonderful?

1:47And the reason that I'm playing this for you is because Cal is by nature, a storyteller. It's what he's done for a living. And you can see when you do something for that long when you think about story in such a deep way. Well, you give me a full narrative of your career, which I guess when you have built a career out of storytelling, you just can't get away from, can you? It's all in the story. You know, there's a line, first line in the book from Yuval Noah Harari, a selling author. Book is 21 Lessons for the 21st century. And the opening line goes, humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers, or equations.

2:31And the simpler the story, the better. But we're not just here to talk about how to tell a story because telling a story is getting more complicated in a world in which so many people and so many things can tell stories. That's what Cal has become really interested in lately. It's why he included AI in his personal narrative slash introduction just a moment ago. And he says it a little more plainly here. One of the things I've been doing lately is framing this idea, this debate between authenticity and artificial intelligence. In my mind, that is the battle of the next millennium. Because the way Cal sees it, so much of our communication is going to happen automatically.

3:19It's going to happen through a medium of robots or automation, which means that your ability to be authentic, despite that, your ability to utilize technology, but also recognize your humanity and when it is needed the most is going to be perhaps the most important communication skill, perhaps the most important skill of all. So that's what we're going to talk about today on Problem Solvers. It is not just storytelling. It's storytelling in an age of AI. It's making sure that your humanness never disappears. And in fact, maybe, just maybe, can be even enhanced by the robots. Cal, I should also say, is the host of a great podcast called Big Questions, which I have been on.

4:07And this is the kind of big question he loves wrestling with. So he offered to bring it to problem solvers. And I love it. The question of how to be more human in a time of AI, coming up after the break. In the innovation economy, change is constant. But some things remain the same. Like how Silicon Valley Bank is still the SVB you know and trust, now backed by the strength and stability of First Citizens Bank. or how SVB continues to be uniquely positioned to deliver specialized lending and financial solutions for companies, founders, and investors, or that SVB remains fully committed to the innovation economy.

4:48Change is constant, but through it all, SVB is still the Silicon Valley bank that can help your runways lead to liftoff. Yes, SVB. Learn more at svb.com slash solvers. All right, we're back talking with Cal Fussman about the human side of AI, which is to say us, the humans, and how we need to focus even more on our own humanity and our own authenticity as we use these tools that in some ways can mimic those things itself. And to start, I asked Cal to give me an example of how this might play out. Well, look at it this way, on a very simple basis. People apply for jobs. I was just talking to a recruiter at a company for this.

5:35And they may go through a cover letter. And not long after that, maybe they have a call. And after that, maybe the candidate wants to send back a thank you email. What happens is the head of recruiting gets the email and can tell, was this sent by artificial intelligence or was this a building block of artificial intelligence? that the candidate used as a tool to create a personal, authentic, human thank you note. If it's the first and the thank you note is just a blast from AI, you know why? Candidates pushed aside because it is a sign of they may just want AI to do their work for them. Whereas if it's used as a tool, then, hey, that's what we're looking for.

6:27Somebody who's going to take these building blocks in the future and add what they know to create something that gets the best out of the future and the best out of ourselves. That's a very valuable way to think about any new technology, I think, which is to say, we are never really offloading our or replacing our humanity. It's not what people want and it limits our potential. But that is not to say that leaning on some new technology can't enhance our ability to be a human connector, but it really comes down to whether or not you are thinking first about the human connection or you were thinking first about utilizing the technology.

7:14What do you think about that? I got another great example for you. Yeah. Now, say you're an engineer, not an English major, an engineer, somebody who loves numbers. Somebody who's not going to be thinking of writing the next great American novel. They want to create something through code, through numbers. Job comes up. They send in a resume with a cover letter that looks like it was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. What do you think the person who's looking at that cover letter is thinking? What does that do for what you're going to believe about the authenticity of the person who sent it? These are things that haven't really come up before unless the engineer hired out an English major to write a letter.

8:04But it's clear that when you show up, you're not going to be able to duplicate that. So I think so many things are going to have to be learned and adjusted. And we got to start asking the questions about this. And for your audience, well, go ahead. I see another question on your face. Go ahead. Yeah. Every, you know, Cal, you're so funny because you're so sensitive to questions. Most guests see my intake of breath where I'm about to ask a question and their response is actually to just start talking a little faster to cut me off. But you don't do that. So I'm not used to it. So what I was going to say was that in both of those examples, what's required for connection is an understanding of the expectation of the human.

8:51So if I'm the engineer and I'm reaching out for an engineering job, then I should know that there is some kind of expectation of the kind of person that I am. And what they want is for me to show up as me. And so to the degree that I'm going to use technology, it has to be to enhance what I am rather than to be something else. That's a very important distinction that's often lost, I think, because you think there is one way to do something. And so I will just use a machine to do the thing that somebody expects, even if I don't really understand what their expectation is. And what you end up doing is producing something that's deeply inauthentic.

9:34And the vision that you're laying out should feel like a liberating one, I think, to people, which is to say that the thing that you are already is actually the thing that other people want. Now, the question is, how do you use technology to just be you better or be you more efficiently, which is very different from not being you at all? This is a question that is going to be playing out. It's what I'm looking into. is what I'm consulting about because I'll give you another example. Yeah. Same basic topic. Let's say, you know, we were both invited to James Altucher's house by a great guy named Jay Yao.

10:15Yes. Context for people who don't know. So James, fascinating guy, has done a million things in his career. Now perhaps best known as a great author and host of a podcast that people love. And you and I are both friends with James. And Jay is his producer, who is also a wonderful guy who we've both gotten to know. And Jay is from Malaysia. Yes. And he's been in the United States for not very long. And so English is not his native language. And he's very smart. Yeah. But quite often, and I think a lot of people are going to resonate with this, when you meet somebody who cannot speak your native language in your country, you don't necessarily understand how intelligent they are.

11:02I think we all have experiences in that. Now imagine if that person now has the capability to use their intelligence, go on AI and convert it into not only fluent English, fluent Portuguese. They can have their image on the screen and the words coming out of their mouth are in a different language. And this is a world we're looking at. And I think we got to think where this is taking us. And we have to think how people are going to see us or how we tip people off to the fact that I'm using AI to do this, which will make people say, oh, OK, he's being authentic and upfront right at the start. So I can trust this.

11:44But if people aren't taking measures like that, it's only natural, I think. And when they do show up as their real self, people are going to wonder, who was this person? the person who sent me that email or that video is this person. So, and I don't see that question bubbling yet. So I'm going to ram through with my next point. Do you remember there was this video game called Second Life? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Where you would, uh, it's a sort of world building game. Give a good description of it because I actually never played it, but one of the founders of the internet, BitSurf, told me about it.

12:21So give a give a little description and then I'll jump in. Oh, sure. Well, I never played Second Life either. But my understanding of it is that it was a version that people loved of something that was it was a version of the metaverse in a way that people actually populated. because nobody ever populated the metaverse. But it was a world that you would occupy with an avatar and engage with other real people who are avatars and that you would be able to go on adventures and explore spaces and do the kinds of things that you can only do in a kind of cartoon world. And people spent a lot of time on there because it was a fun escape and it was a kind of different place to meet new people.

13:04And it was indeed, like the name suggested, a second life, a different place to live, a totally different life. That's a great description. And my point on it is you had people who would go into the basement, go upstairs, lock into second life, and they would start to meet people and they could even fall in love. And meanwhile, their husband or wife in real life was downstairs while they were falling in love upstairs. And what was happening is the avatars we're falling in love. And what I think is happening now is we have the potential to use AI, if we wish, to create avatars for ourselves. We can look to be writing like novelists when we can.

13:49And this is going to be a huge problem because people are going to have to figure out, are people authentic or are they showing me something they're not? Yeah. All right. Go with the question. I see another question there. Well, so what I'm thinking about is how, you know, Cal, whenever people start talking about how technology is creating unique challenges for us, my first approach to it is to think about corollaries that came before or that are not technological, because I think that oftentimes looking at just the technology makes it feel like, oh, this is some kind of technology problem. But of course, this is really always a human problem.

14:31What you're describing and the challenges you're describing here are the human, our human needs or our human wants or our human holes in our lives that we're just filling in different ways with technology. We're hiding behind it in some ways. Our insecurities or our shortcomings, we think that we can fill in. So here's the corollary that I'm going to throw at you a little bit from the universe that both of us have occupied of media creation, which is that I have met many people, I bet you have too, who want to be a more public person. They want to write books that people read. They want to post on social media.

15:10And so they are not good at this because it's not their training. They don't know how to communicate in words as well. And so they hire people to do it. And then they run into a problem, a very interesting problem. And the problem is that the words and the ideas and the voice that they become known for is not theirs. And the great ideas in that book, they didn't come up with, which means that when you sit down to interview them, they're not actually very good at articulating those ideas. And boy, I have experienced it. I bet you have too. You're laughing. So I bet you have. And the same is true on social.

15:42And so let's say that something goes wrong and maybe that relationship gets severed between them and the person who is functionally producing the ideas that they become known for. They don't know how to hold themselves up in the world anymore because it was never theirs to begin with. Now, instead of a person, what we have when we're talking about ChatGPT or whatever is we have a machine that's doing it for us. But the same is still true, which is that people put themselves into situations in which they take a step back from their own life and from their own presentation of themselves, and they let something else fill in the gap.

16:15And that will only take you so far. And I don't think that people think through what happens on the other side of that? That is a great point. It's exactly where I am when I do the work trying to help companies at this point in their interviewing process, because look at it this way now. I'm a candidate for job safe. I can now go on artificial intelligence and say, I want this particular job for this company. I'm going into an interview next Tuesday. What are the 20 questions I'm going to be asked. And you know what? I'm going to get those questions. And then I'm going to take those questions.

16:53I'm going to put it back to ChatGPT and say, get the answers. What am I? And here's the thing. Here's the thing, Jason. ChatGPT has the most powerful, persuasive answers, because if you asked it for the most persuasive answers, it has all a history to pull back on and put in front of you. So now you can have all the questions and you can have the most profound, hopefully, or persuasive answers to go into the interview. Now, if the people doing the interviewing are showing up with a list of 20 questions and they're running down number one, number two, number three, next candidate, run through the 20, and they're all getting chat GPT answers, who are they going to believe?

17:42So in my opinion, a lot of people, the whole hiring process is going to have to be reinvented to find the authenticity in people. At the same time, we're going through what Bruce Feiler, author of the book. I love Bruce Feiler. You know Bruce? Okay. Sure. Yeah. He's a friend, author of the book, Life is in the Transitions and most recently The Search. There you go. Why don't you describe the search for everybody? Sure. Well, listeners of this podcast could describe the search because he was on not long ago. But the search is a great breakdown of what work actually means to us, the things that we're aware of and the things that we're not aware of, and then how to find more meaningful work by better understanding our relationship to work and what we really need.

18:29Bravo. Thank you. And basically what he uncovered is that in today's world, people are not going into job interviews thinking of climbing a ladder. They are like archaeologists digging into themselves to find what is going to bring them the biggest meaning. And if you're not responding to that as a person doing the hiring, you're going to be in trouble because if you can't match what you're offering and what they want to love to do, Guess what? According to Bruce Filer, they're leaving pretty quick. Yeah. And I read that 50 % of annual earnings of a starter employee is lost every time they leave and you have to go through the recruiting process and onboarding and training.

19:20Mid-level, it's 100, 250%. High-level, specialized position, 200, 250%. Wow. So people are going to have to learn to interview at a much deeper level because of ChatGPT. Cal, you did this interesting thing here in our conversation, which is that you turned the perspective around. We spent a lot of time talking about the importance of recognizing your authentic voice in how you communicate and then utilizing technology to enhance that authentic voice rather than to replace it with something inauthentic. But then you took us into the perspective of companies who are hiring and are going to have to try to parse what is actually authentic from what is not, how to recognize when somebody is hiding or not utilizing their authenticity because they're just giving what they think the company would want.

20:09And I know this is work that you do, so you probably could go on and on about it. But if just as a way to conclude this conversation, maybe give me one or two insights about how companies either can recognize or prompt candidates, so recognizing the authenticity in candidates or try to prompt it from them or start to think differently about how they're communicating with candidates so that they can get away from the fake technological versions of people and try to understand who they're actually talking to? Great question. Thank you. First thing they got to do is what a great interviewer does before they go into the interview.

20:45They have to interview themselves and the company is going to have to interview the job in a new way. And when And you interview the job in a new way. And look, we didn't have Chad GPT a year ago. And so everything has changed. It's time now, if you want to refill the position, not to reach back for the job description of a year ago or two years ago and say, I just throw this out there and see what comes in. Yeah. When Oprah Winfrey is going to interview somebody, I guarantee you she thinks, like, what am I going to ask this person? Not what are the questions I asked the last 50 people. She's going inside of herself to find the questions to make that interview work.

21:27And everybody who is in hiring is really going to have to look at these jobs again, ask some new questions to see what exactly is needed so that you can link up with the person who will find meaning in that so that they're not leaving in eight months. So that's the first step. Just make sure you interview the job first. And then another step is, this is so crucial. And this is where I help with consulting. The answers now, and maybe never were, in the first question. They're in the follow-up questions. Because anybody who's gone on ChatGPT and got the questions and got the answers, getting back to your point, is going to be back to their authentic self after they've given that answer.

22:11When the first follow-up question comes in, then they're back to their authentic self. And then the second follow-up, the third, the fourth, it's like digging for gold. You're often not going to find the nugget on the first shovel or the second shovel full. And look, you've been doing this for years. You know, this is going to keep digging deeper, deeper, deeper. The whole game is about the follow-up. There you go. So you get it. And this is what I'm trying to help people with, because even though it's now a difficult time in hiring for a lot of people who've been laid off and the companies seem to be in a stronger position, I know that the companies should really look at the way they hire, understanding that this is not like it is last year, five years ago, 10 years ago.

22:58we are in new territory and it takes training. It takes time to learn how to ask the right follow-up questions, how to listen. And so that's what I'm here for. So anybody who needs help, send them my way. CalBussman at gmail.com. Oh, well, Cal, that was going to be my final follow-up question, which is how do people get in touch with you? So you just dropped your Gmail, which is not a thing a lot of guests do. So thanks for that. But also any other ways that people can find you. I know, for example, you have a great podcast. Podcast is called Big Questions, and anyone can go to CalBustman.com, get a nice overview.

23:35All the things we just talk about are just getting ramped up because this whole world is just getting ramped up. But if anybody has problems hiring, if anybody wins it when I ask this question, what's the worst hire you ever made? then you might want to reach out to me because I can help you with questions that will allow you to find out the authentic qualities in the people you're interviewing. Ask Cal the question and then ask him the follow-up. Cal, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you. It's always great to talk with you. Absolutely. Likewise. And that's our episode. I would love to hear what you think and maybe even about a problem that you solved.

24:16You can find me at my website, jasonpfeiffer.com. J-A-S-O-N-F-E-I-F-E-R.com. Also, I have some more useful stuff for you. I write a newsletter about how to future-proof yourself and become more adaptable and optimistic. I would love for you to sign up. It is at jasonpfeiffer.bulletin.com. Also, check out my other podcast. It's called Build for Tomorrow. In each episode, I take on some belief that we have that holds us back from progress and show you why it is not as bad as you think. Problem Solvers is a production of Entrepreneur Media and comes out every Monday morning. So make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss an episode.

24:55Thanks to Deepa Shah for production. My name is Jason Pfeiffer. See you next week.