What AI is teaching us about being human.

There is something slightly strange - and increasingly annoying - about the way we talk about artificial intelligence.

We talk about what it can do; how quickly it can write, calculate, analyse, summarise, design, translate, predict and produce. We talk about the jobs it might change, the industries it might disrupt and the things it might eventually be capable of doing that we currently consider uniquely human.

And quite understandably, much of the conversation is about the technology.

However, the more often I am asked about AI, the more interested I become in something else. I’m not so interested in what AI is becoming but I am interested, and indeed concerned by what we are becoming in response to it.

Perhaps the most interesting thing AI is teaching us isn't about machines at all. It is, I suspect without us being overly aware, teaching us something about ourselves.

For more than twenty years I've been interested in why we do the things we do, particularly when we're trying to change them. I've watched organisations introduce new technologies, new processes, new systems and new ways of working, often with the assumption that if we make something more efficient, people will naturally adapt.

But they don't always because people aren't systems. We have preferences, fears, memories, loyalties, habits, relationships, values and a rather inconvenient tendency to behave in ways that don't always make logical sense.

AI is forcing us to confront that.

When you think about the language we've used around technology for years, it’s clear that we have spent years trying to remove the human:

Efficiency. Automation. Productivity. Optimisation. Frictionless. Seamless.

All of these sound corporately positive, and often they are. Nobody wants to spend half an afternoon filling in a form that a computer could complete in thirty seconds. That in itself shows how we started treating friction itself as the problem.

And some friction is. But not all of it.

A conversation takes longer than an email. Making something by hand takes longer than simply buying it. Learning something properly takes longer than asking Siri to explain it. Sitting with a difficult decision takes longer than asking for the answer. However, all of these things have value precisely because they take time.

AI is extraordinarily good at removing the unnecessary effort from things for us.

The question we now need to become much better at asking is:

Which effort is actually unnecessary?

If we automate everything simply because we can, we may eventually discover that some of the things we removed were doing something rather important for us.

There is another uncomfortable question we should be asking.

What happens when machines become very good at doing things we once felt valuable for doing?

For some people, that will mean losing work. For others, it may mean work becoming easier. For many of us, it will probably be both.

Work gives us structure. It gives us identity. For some, it gives us a reason to get up. It gives us colleagues, conversations, recognition and a sense that we are contributing something. AI is also exposing how much we crave certainty.

One of the things I find fascinating about AI is how quickly we have embraced the idea of asking a machine for answers. It makes sense, of course it does. We are a lazy species. Or efficient, depending on how you look at it. Answers are comforting. Questions aren't.

A question leaves us somewhere slightly uncomfortable. It creates uncertainty, and uncertainty is one of the things humans tend to avoid. I've spent years encouraging people to ask better questions because questions create movement where statements can keep us fixed. AI, then, presents us with an interesting paradox.

We have created something capable of answering almost anything, at precisely the moment when we may need to become better at deciding which questions are worth asking.

Having an answer doesn't necessarily mean having understanding.

You can ask AI what career you should pursue, where you should live, what business you should start or how you should resolve an argument. It can give you an extraordinarily convincing answer. Some of my closest friends even use it as a therapist.

But AI doesn't have to live with the consequences. We do. Perhaps we will start valuing what cannot be automated.

Since I began working with clay, this AI question has been a big part of my reflection because there is no particularly efficient way to make a pot by hand. You take a piece of clay. You put it on a wheel. You centre it. You open it. You pull it. You trim it. You fire it. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.

And if it doesn't, you do it again. There are faster ways to produce a vessel, of course. There are machines capable of producing thousands of identical objects with extraordinary precision - b ut, for me at least, there is something deeply satisfying about knowing that a pair of hands made something.

Not because the machine-made object is necessarily worse but the human involvement means something more.

This is one reason I think craftsmanship may become increasingly important in an AI world. I’m not suggesting that everything needs to return to being handmade. That would be absurd. But when technology makes infinite production possible, the things made deliberately may become more meaningful. And that goes for customer interactions, customer pathways, workplace cultures etc. When everything can be generated, perhaps we will become more interested in what someone chose to make - and now value it more.

A thought worth considering:

If AI could take away ten hours of work from your week, what would you actually want to do with those ten hours?

What would make your life feel more like your life?

That might be one of the more important AI questions.

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Jez Rose is a #1 bestselling author and top 10 leading keynote speaker on how to change, creating high performing culture and the human challenge of AI. thatjezrose.com