How will AI transform leadership and work? Can we “delegate empathy” to it? Can we have empathic AI that fills a need we all have as humans? Today, I discuss all of this and the role of empathy in AI with my special return guest Minter Dial author of Heartificial Empathy, Putting Heart into Business and Artificial Intelligence, the 2nd edition, just released in 2023 to include all the latest AI shenanigans and progress.
Minter shares his emotional leadership story about how 9/11 opened his eyes to his own priorities and how he wanted to show up as a leader. We discuss how to put heart into AI and three key questions leaders need to answer before investing in it. Minter shares use cases where AI can help us at a very human level, can help us create engaging customer experiences, and helps solve both the loneliness epidemic and the shortage of mental health professionals. We also muse on how AI is transforming leadership and work – and why we can’t expect perfection from a system if we can’t be perfect ourselves!
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
- Not everything needs to be told to everybody. You can still have secrets and still be authentic, vulnerable, and full of integrity.
- As humans, we are not perfect. We cannot create something and expect perfection from that without holding ourselves to the same level.
- The AI will only be as good as what you put into it. It is about intentionality and working with the AI, not just expecting the AI to do everything perfectly on its own.
“People tend to hold AI up to a higher standard than we hold ourselves up to. I find this to be a problem. [If we are expecting perfection] we are never going to get it!” — Minter Dial
References Mentioned:
- The Empathy Edge Podcast: Minter Dial: How Being Yourself Makes You a Better Leader
- The Empathy Edge Podcast: Paul Marobella: Leading Through Crisis
Brand Story Breakthrough course to help you craft a clear, compelling brand story – includes weekly office hours with Maria!
About Minter Dial, Professional Speaker, Author & Filmmaker
Minter Dial is an international professional speaker, elevator and a multiple award-winning author. Minter’s core career stint of 16 years was spent as a top executive at L’Oréal, where he was a member of the Worldwide Executive Committee for the Professional Products Division (PPD). Previously, he was MD of L’Oréal PPD Canada and CEO Worldwide for Redken. He’s the author of the WWII biography and documentary film, The Last Ring Home (2016) and three business books, Futureproof (FT Press 2017), You Lead (Kogan Page 2021), both of which won heralded Business Book Awards, and Heartificial Empathy, 2nd edition. He also runs three podcasts, Minter Dialogue in English and French, and The Joy of Padel.
Connect with Minter Dial:
Mydial LLP: minterdial.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/minterdial
Facebook: facebook.com/minterdial
Instagram: instagram.com/mdial
Threads: threads.com/mdial
Book: Heartificial Empathy, Putting Heart into Business and Artificial Intelligence (2nd Edition) DigitalProof Press 2023
Substack Newsletter: Dialogos, Fostering More Meaningful Conversations
Podcasts:
Minter Dialogue (in English and French)
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FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Welcome to the empathy edge podcast the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross. I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society, it’s great for business. Oh, will AI transform leadership and work? Can we delegate empathy to it? Can we have empathic AI that actually fills a need we all have as humans. Today I discuss all of this and the role of empathy in AI, with my special return guest mentor, dial, international speaker, author and filmmaker, and author of heart official empathy, putting heart into business and artificial intelligence. The second edition has just released in 2023 to include all the latest AI shenanigans and progress. Minter shares his emotional leadership story about how 911 opened his eyes to His own priorities, and how he wanted to show up as a leader. We discuss how to put heart into AI and three powerful questions company leaders need to answer before investing in it. Mentor shares three use cases where AI can help us at a very human level, and help us create engaging customer experiences solve both the loneliness epidemic and the shortage of mental health professionals. Finally, we muse on how AI is transforming leadership and work and why we can’t expect perfection from a system if we can’t be perfect ourselves. That many of AI’s flaws are a reflection of our own human flaws, but can invite long overdue discussion and examination rather than fear on issues of bias, negative employee and customer experiences and exclusivity. This was such an eye opening and thoughtful discussion. I hope you enjoy it. Quick offer for you. Listen up all you marketers, business owners, entrepreneurs, all of you trying to connect and engage with an audience to grow your impact and revenue. I’m all about strengthening empathy to achieve radical success. And this all started for me in my wheelhouse of marketing. See, I realized the key to attracting and engaging the right customers is all about understanding them seeing things from their point of view. Empathy is a marketers superpower if it’s wielded responsibly. So after running too successful real time cohorts, I now opening up my brandstory breakthrough course as an on demand offering. Take it when you want how you want for as long as you want five modules of videos and playbooks designed to help you articulate your goals. Understand your customers, define your different and land on your perfect brand story and marketing message. So you stand out and attract that perfect fit audience. Marketing is not about lying to people. It’s about empathy, elevating the truth of your story. And in this on demand course you’ll learn the exact steps that my past brand clients have gone through to craft a clear and compelling and consistent brand message that guides everything you do. You’ll walk away with a brand story strategy, ideal customer profiles and even website and social media profile copy. Plus, with this on demand course you get access to weekly Friday office hours with me. Yep, ask questions, get feedback, share new memes discover new insights to help your business shine. It’s insanely cost of active and extremely valuable to your business and goals. So check out the details@bit.ly slash VSP course, that’s bi T dot L y slash V sb course, or click the link in the show notes. See you on the other side. Welcome, once again, my friend and mentor dial to the empathy edge podcast, it is so wonderful to have you back to talk about the release of your second edition of how artificial empathy how artificial intelligence, no artificial empathy putting heart into business and artificial intelligence, which could not be more timely right now. So welcome to the show.
Minter Dial 05:39
Hey, Maria, always great to hang with you love your energy.
Maria Ross 05:44
So tell us for folks that that missed your first episode on leading with who you are. And I will put a link to this in the show notes for people who missed that great episode. Tell us briefly about what happened in your work and your career that got you down this path where you’re really preaching the gospel on putting the heart back into business and leadership? Well,
Minter Dial 06:05
it starts with a realization that I, like many people was wearing a mosque. I was working at L’Oreal, and I was doing what I thought was good. But what I was also doing was doing some bad to me, from a health perspective, not a mental health perspective, but from a health perspective. And the nature of it was that I was doing what I thought was good within the the context and the wet the managerial framework that L’Oreal had. And then basically the the switch turned for me at 911, when, from my window, overlooking the Twin Towers, I saw the whole thing go down the second airplane flying all the way down into the tower. And like everybody has quite a memorable imprint. But for me, it was a very visceral one, because we went out the street, we had the smell, I also had four friends who were lost and dealing with that the angst of not finding bodies and, and just the feeling in Manhattan was so right. And then the and the trauma in the streets. Anyway. So this led me to think about well, what’s actually important in life is making shampoos that important. And I’m in there, it took me a while, but I then lent into this idea of being more myself. And then within that concepts of like self empathy, and developing better my empathy, because when you haven’t had the experience, it’s very hard to know how to be empathic. This was quite a revolutionary experience to go through so firsthand. And it led me to understand the benefits of empathy, just in the social circles, but also within business.
Maria Ross 07:52
And I know that was such a I mean, it was a hard time for everyone, but especially leaders who had to hold their own trauma, and process their own reactions to everything that was happening, but also being in charge of leading a group of people, where you also had to show up for them. And I’m going to link in the show notes. Another episode I did with Paul Mirabella, who is is a leader who spoke about leading through crises, and his first one was 911. In New York, the second was the financial crisis. And the third was COVID. And the lessons that he learned about what’s actually important when you’re trying to take care of people you’re trying to connect and engage while also processing your own trauma. And he echoed a thought you just stated, which is he learned the importance of self care, not from a selfish point of view, but in enabling him to be there for his people. And it sounds like that is also something that happened with you. But also this reevaluation of priorities. Yeah,
Minter Dial 08:57
well, it part of it, it was a stimulus that came from what I would characterize as poor examples of leadership in moments of crisis as in, directly above me, I still remember with great precision, the call that was made to me from the CEO, who said, from Paris aiming down in French, you have to come bass. And yeah, thanks for asking. I’m doing fine. Yeah, you could see all he was worried about was, how was I going to present the future of redkin my brand for the next three years, you know, how are we going to make the numbers I was essentially what he was worried about. And he says, Well, I explained matter of fact, we will. We have new planes flying out, will lead the way I’ll get a plane of failure. Okay. And so on the morning of the 15th of September, with one other person on the plane, I have four crew. I flew from a little piece in Islam and in LA man Long Island, and Trudeau liberals were on a plane. And I didn’t even need to show my passport. It was such a well protected plane. It was the first non military plane to fly over Manhattan. And, and at this point, I’m now preparing to do a speech. That’s two hours or 15 minutes long, that usually was delivered by my entire team, and I would look at it. So I had to learn this entire speech. And the way you do things at L’Oreal is you learn it rote. It’s a show. And you know, and I was used to doing this, that’s part of the business. That’s why I accepted. And I had to learn to do a two hour 15 minute speech in front of 550 people. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we had my four friends, their spouses in distress, my wife was sick. Manhattan was sick. And I’m running a brand by the way, redkin Fifth Avenue in New York City. And Fifth Avenue, New York City essentially meant that our DNA, or at least the imprint that we wanted to leave behind was a Manhattan feeling or a New York feeling. And to my campaigns in 2002, had the twin towers in the background. So if you imagine I had to call, you know, once I knew I had to go, I call my creative director, Chuck. And I said, Chuck, I need you to, we need to get the the Twin Towers out of the back round beads. Now, this is we’re talking on the 13th of September. And tough call. I mean, well, chuck, chuck refused to do it, he saw how NASA should let us Not over my dead body basically. And I understood that but I was the one who was gonna have to present this in Paris. And I, I was adamant that we I mean, I couldn’t reshoot them in time. And what I saw, I ended up having to call the retoucher who lived in Hoboken, New Jersey. And so this is nearby, obviously, hundreds of people from Hoboken were missing. And so obviously, the person I was calling would have known people. And so it was it was one of the most difficult calls I’ve ever made. It’s really It’s odd, just to retouch a photograph, but I called him and his name was John and say, John, can you do me a favor, I need you to make the Twin Towers invisible in the background. 45 seconds later, what floor it was just a messy, I still have goosebumps thinking about how miserable that was sounded like to Charlton. And anyway, so that, that’s to give you a little bit more texture to my experience that led me to feel that I wanted to be a little bit more real. And this mosque idea, which is something that’s going to be really true. Traveling through all of my new work. Now I’m not sure how, what how much of you, when
Maria Ross 12:43
we talk about authenticity, when we talk about being genuine, how much of you should you be bringing out? Because not everything you say not everything you feel not everything you are, should be revealed? And yet, can you still be authentic? So I’m really leaning into this idea. And I think it’s a healthy idea to understand that we have secrets that understand that not everything needs to be told to everybody, by GM, that’s even good for relationships and, and still feel your integrity is in business. Wow, very powerful. You published heart official empathy, putting heart into business and artificial empathy among the many business books, you’ve put out their way back. And you have just come out with a second edition in 2023, which, as I mentioned, could not be more timely given the hand wringing and opportunity of artificial intelligence. So I’d love for you to tell us how we I think the big one of the biggest conversations coming out about it is will we lose our humanity? will we will we lose that spark of creativity and inspiration? By relying on AI. And there’s one camp that talks about? Well, AI can help with all the rote things where we’re wasting all this mental energy on things we don’t need to. And we can take advantage of the body of work that’s been created to do things like research. And then there’s the other group that says, Oh, are they going to automate all customer service? Health care things where you need that human touch? And what will that do to people? So you have a particular viewpoint on how we can keep the heart put the heart into AI, and specifically in three areas. So tell us a little bit about your perspective on the AI revolution? And what are those ways that AI can actually reconnect us with our humaneness and benefit us?
Minter Dial 14:44
So I want to just start by talking about the fact that I, I started the first session 2018 And the second one isn’t 2220 23 In some ways, it kind of bookends the pandemic. Because pre pandemic things like empathy were and working from home were not a thing. Well, I mean, obviously, empathy is the thing, right? It wasn’t exactly top of mind all sudden, not
Maria Ross 15:08
in a business context now that you’re exactly and,
Minter Dial 15:11
and even just in society, we’ve got this divisiveness and we have had these elections and are in many countries, not just United States. And then, and then we go through the pandemic, and then people realize, oh, gosh, we can actually work from home, it’s a thing. And well, actually, now that you see people in their homes, where there’s privacy, personal issues, turns out that empathy becomes an interesting skill set to have through zoom, then we go to 2023 pandemic is, let’s say, hopefully, we can all agree over. And now we have a choice, whether we work from home, or work at the office. And the fact that it’s a choice is terribly difficult. Because you don’t have someone from above who mandates one or other, you need to negotiate that, for your business for your customers and with your employees. And that requires a whole level of empathy, which, under the conditions of tremendous economic strain, is not easy for leadership to do. And so that the need is, you say, is never never more important. So, as far as the the AI that what I love, the first premise needs to look at is, what is your intention? Before you bring in the AI? What are you trying to achieve? Is it linked to your strategy? Or is it just linked to saving money making cutting corners? Getting rid of the hassle of dealing with people? What is your intention? And the second point is what’s the business model that you’re really focusing on that alludes to the idea of value added and cost cutting? And and how do you reappropriate the money, where are you going to cut from to make space for the investments because you will need to invest in AI, you will need to bring in experts, and you’ll need to create massive data sets to allow for better learning. And the third thing is What is your ethical framework, which obviously speaks to the intentions of what you’re trying to achieve, but underlies and should underlie how you program and how you run your AI. So once that said, then I consider there are three different areas where empathic AI, or AI that has some semblance of humanity, some semblance of empathy, which is, you know, obviously, Google and many other Microsoft are are also working on. So it’s a I think it’s an important topic. And the way that I see it, there are three ways in business. There’s lots of ways that AI can be used, and even better empathic AI. The second way I like to think about it is with regard to the loneliness epidemic on our planet, especially in countries where the pyramid of age has flip flopped. And you have many, many, too much too many old people, for the younger people to take care of. We’ve got smaller and smaller as families. So we don’t have, you know, 10s of grandchildren now visiting grandparents in the retirement homes, and I think specifically of a place like Japan. And so I think that there’s an opportunity for companionship, through AI, I’d much rather be human, but in the absence of it, there could be a empathic companionship through AI. And there are definitely interesting examples of that. And the third one is with regard to therapy. And again, the issue is here, not, not only do we not listen to one another, there’s not enough therapists out there, the supply of therapists in many of the Western countries is just not up to the level of demand because mental health conditions have been spiraling higher and higher. Anxiety, depression, suicide, and we don’t have enough therapist. So I’ve been very keen to see certain initiatives that are with genuine intention, designing an empathic therapy through AI.
Maria Ross 19:16
Wow. Okay, so you’re saying there’s opportunities to apply empathy empathic AI, in business, companionship, and therapy? And do you think that those opportunities are getting lost in the hand wringing of Oh, no, they’re taking our jobs they’re taking over. Kids are going to learn how to cheat in college, all of the all of these negative aspects to it. Are people getting too caught up in the fear and the negativity or do you think that they truly are embracing the opportunity that it brings? Oh,
Minter Dial 19:53
I think the we as a race tend to, you know, pick up everything that’s fearful. Yeah, media That’s what sells. And it’s our limbic reaction. So people get much more focused on the negative side of things. And then in that, there’s a second piece, they tend to hold AI up to a higher standard that we hold ourselves up to. And I find I find this the problem, because then we’re like, well, we can’t do this until it’s perfect. Well, excuse me, Am I perfect? Do we do everything perfectly? If that’s what we’re expecting of AI, then we’re never gonna get it out. So to think that it’d be sure, unbiased work. And yet, we’re like, well, you ought to be well, you ought to be empathic, you ought to be perfect. I don’t need to be well, how does that ever work out?
Maria Ross 20:47
Well, it’s like the thing we talked about with leadership and culture. It’s just like, workplace culture is far from perfect in most places. Right now, you know, you mentioned earlier about this idea of working from home, you know, we’re seeing this backlash to boss ism, of No, the only way I know how to lead is if I can see all of you and make sure you’re actually doing your work. So I demand that you come back into the office, even though you found a better way to work that works for you. And you’re being incredibly productive and innovative, I don’t care because I want to see you in the office every day. And I feel I being the CEO or the the leader, I feel this is the best way for us to innovate and collaborate, I actually don’t care what you think. And so you know, just that’s such a great observation of like, we’re expecting this perfection, and purity of spirit from Ai, that we’re not even managing in the existing structures and systems we have right now. Exactly, I never heard it expressed that way. And it’s brilliant. Thank
Minter Dial 21:47
you. I learned it from also from observation in operational circumstances, because it’s not like empathy is a an unknown quantity, it’s, it’s difficult to define, and people have different ideas of it. But in one case, the the company that I was working with, decide decided that all of the beauty advisors who man or woman, the counters in the department stores needed to be empathic, because they will make our brand sound better to the customer. So these are independent people, the beauty advisors in this industry, and the and so we’re just yelling at them, telling them to be empathic, giving them no semblance of empathy, and telling them to do it. So as delegating empathy. In the same vein, we might be doing the same thing with delegating empathy into AI, or making our AI do things that we don’t even know how to do. And when you have that inconsistency, because the end of the day, he won’t be only AI, it’ll always be AI and humans. I mean, I suppose one day, there’ll be a pure AI business, you’re run by an AI, with AI and such, however, until that ridiculous time comes around, which may well be but in 100 year, is, we need to be congruent in the manner that we are within to the manner that we use AI. In other words, if as a human being this is who I am, are we as a culture, with our customers, make sure the AI has some congruence see, with the manner in which you operate within with your employees and with your customers. Otherwise, you start having this gap. And that gap is fatal. I mean, it means raised eyebrows, call it bullshit, or whatever. And and therefore, when ever you want to go into this, what is your intention, be real about who you are, how empathic you are, and don’t over estimate or yourself, we have this wildly positive bias idea of of we’re always better than we think we are.
Maria Ross 23:56
Do you think that some leaders or companies or brands think they’ll be able to leverage delegate, you mentioned it earlier, Delegate empathy for customers through AI, meaning, I’ve tried to train my customer service reps for years and years and years to be empathetic on the phone, we’re still getting complaints, we’re still getting negative customer satisfaction scores. Now there’s this thing AI where we can program it to say the right thing and do the right thing in the moment. Do you see that happening? Or people a little bit more savvy to the fact that you can’t completely outsource it that way?
Minter Dial 24:32
Well, they I don’t know how savvy they are. But any events, we don’t have empathic AI really happening. So you’re first of all, you’re still going to be doing human plus AI. And you’re gonna get shit out if you put shit in. So if, because what is the database, the data set you’re going to be using to do the learning? Well, each company is going to have to inform the data set is going to pull from a chat GPT or you know What are these larger new models, and then it’s going to adapt and that adaptations will be specific to your brand, your words, your customers, and that work? Well, that’s going to be a monumentally important piece of it. But if, if it comes from you, it’s going to be you. And if you aren’t empathic, and generally, if you don’t understand what empathy is top down, then whatever you’re encoding will inevitably have frailties. So what is your intention behind this AI you’re trying to do? And I want to just pull out a couple of examples how, in reality, this notion of empathy, which is still I would say, embryonic and AI, in terms of application, there is one example which is for customer care that you mentioned. And, and there are not just one, but the one I have seen, and had an opportunity to explore as digital genius. And what do they do, they work with customer care. So the API will identify a call coming in. And the call comes from this stub, or which is this, this client, this client has this profile. And in the past, this client is preferred to have very short interactions. And then if they’re short interactions, they give you a five star rating when they’re long and exploring and about a three star rating. So the AI can quickly inform the agent, and then say, and give a choice of for the safe four lines to reply. And they might be rated tagged with different empathy scores, the different efficiency scores, effectiveness, business money, you know, how much does this mean, you lose money if you do this, or whatever you want to program it in. And we digital genius allows for the customer care rep, to look at the four possibilities and pick one and say, Alright, this is the this is the message that stopped by the slot, my middle finger, this is the message that I’m going to choose and pops it in, doesn’t have to worry about typos, it’s ready and it goes out. And that type of work with AI, which is also happening, customer relationship management, where empathy is a specific component of the measurement to inform the agent or the marketer in this case, in second case was Pegasystems. And that’s what I see is really interesting. It’s going to be messy. Yeah, you’ve got to learn your way through it. And Unison
Maria Ross 27:22
relies on all that, it still relies on a human being making a choice at a certain point in the process.
Minter Dial 27:28
And there, you’re actually empowering the agent not taking them away. So you’ve talked about the rote elements. So typing out the four sentences, well, seeing them as interesting. So you can read them, you learn it, there’s notifications of ratings of of each of the questions, and then you don’t have to worry about typing errors, you just pick and choose drag and drop. And so I would characterize that is high level cognitive action, where you’re putting value on the intelligence of your individual. And they have opportunities to override to others exotic, that’s a great example, digital genius, they they work a number of companies, the one I got to look at it closely was with KLM.
Maria Ross 28:10
Interesting, really interesting. And, you know, your comments from earlier are just bubbling in my soul, this idea that, again, AI is pulling from existing datasets. So right now, I think our discomfort with it is it’s holding up a mirror to the things that are actually happening in the world. As one example, you know, all of the reports on the biases found in AI, for example, I forget which system was being evaluated, it referred to all doctors with male pronouns, and all nurses with female pronouns, right. But again, that’s a mirror of what our society is putting into this dataset. And the expectation that it’s going to be different than what’s already out there is a little bit naive. And I think it’s causing immense discomfort to people that were denying that those biases even exist in the world. Right now. They’re looking and they’re going, we told you all this, all this data, all this content, all of this media that people are consuming, is biased, like, how do we fix that problem? Right? So I think it’s it could be the optimist in me, says that AI could be a forcing mechanism for empathy of us finally realizing the impact of some of the challenges that we have with connecting and engaging with other people, because it is going to hold it’s going to shine that light in an undeniable way on this is the proof that that this is what’s coming out because these are the data sets that exist in the world. So now we can stop arguing about whether a problem is legitimate or not. And start focusing on how to improve it. He says AI is showing us what, what’s out there.
Minter Dial 30:07
So I would add that in the very programming of it, we’re going to be learning, like the mirror piece is actually sort of ongoing. Because if I right, so let’s just take empathy and AI, because there’s a lot of arguments as to what is empathy. And I think you like AI. Anyway, I define empathy having cognitive and affective. And these two are discrete, which means that you can have cognitive empathy, but not have affective empathy. And it doesn’t diminish it, per se, it would be best to have both, but it’s nice to have cognitive empathy. And the reason why that’s important is that you can’t program affective empathy
Maria Ross 30:48
now, which is emotional empathy for people that are not familiar with that it’s actually feeling with another person versus just imagining what their situation might be like.
Minter Dial 30:58
And you can imagine the feelings, right? And you can, you can detect the feelings actually probably better than humans sometimes can, which has been proven. So the the point that is discrete, allows you to say, well, let’s focus on cognitive empathy in AI. And that means that we then when we’re doing that, what does that actually mean? How do you score empathy, it even measure empathy, which is, you know, an ongoing debate, and those conversations and that encoding, because by the way, you have to go through programmers, who are generally empathy deficient or empathy challenge to be nicer. You need to recognize that whole process, starting with you inside, how are you in, in your company? Now we’re in this process of encoding it? What do we what does it actually mean, in my company for us to be empathic? And that process is, for me, the sort of organic dynamic method of of making progress in our company?
Maria Ross 31:57
Well, it’s forcing people to actually have the conversation that they never had to have before. About what are the views? Yeah,
Minter Dial 32:04
and what does that but the ever been at the boardroom, interesting conversation, holy smokes. Frightening,
Maria Ross 32:11
frightening. So as we wrap up, I would love to just get your futurist take on how you think AI might transform, leadership and work in terms of how we engage with each other, if at all.
Minter Dial 32:27
I’ll get a ticket, quick example. My daughter works at a company who names need to be said, but they want to hurt a time in timeout. And so the desire to control the hours and understand their activities if they’re typing on a keyboard. So you make all this AI to do all that kind of stuff. And, and really, it just comes that’s coming from them. I mean, that’s they come from a place of fear. They come from a place of desiring to control. And like your boss image you had earlier says, I will impose whether using the AI to monitor to control to police for compliance or employees. Yeah. And, and so yeah, well, if that’s what you’re up to, and that’s what you’re trying to do with AI a you, it’s your intentions, that’s the way you are, and you can make the AI pretty much do anything at that level. So I may, I think needs to be realistic about our humanity. And I think it’s part of the discussion, which is, like we say about bias, like we say about empathy with everybody. We can’t be empathic with everybody old. We can’t be idealistic about this idea. We can’t say that I have nobody that I hate. We have favorites, we have priorities. And the fact that means that it’s exclusionary. So we need to understand that in our world, we will have messy will have dark will have negative approaches. And then there are others who are better intentions. And what I systematically say when you evaluate the AI that’s being implemented with the desire for AI, think about what is your intention, and it’s congruent with who you are, to? What is the business model that you have? And how you’re going to ensure that over time, you you stick to that intention? And three, what’s your ethical framework? And that needs to be something that’s reasonably clear, reasonably short, and reasonably understood by everybody. And typically, we’re far from it in business right now, when we look at applying
Maria Ross 34:33
AI. Well, and again, what I’m, what I’m getting from, what you’re sharing with us today is this idea that it’s elevating these conversations in a way that people never thought to look at them before. So when we talk about how AI is transforming leadership and business, it’s kind of forcing us to have these crunchy conversations and think about things beyond just the numbers for now. next quarter, we’re thinking about afraid.
Minter Dial 35:01
I’m afraid it’s not forcing us. It’s an invitation to,
Maria Ross 35:06
but not a force. But let’s embed our albums a better way of phrasing it. Yeah,
Minter Dial 35:09
they’re forced to make the numbers they’re forced to deal with the issues that we have on hand. And these other conversations are almost luxury as far as the mentality of leadership is concerned. So my ation is reevaluate how you’re applying it. Look at these other questions, because once you do that, it will become I think, a stronger force of a company. You know, it’s a company your business strategy.
Maria Ross 35:33
I love it. Minter. Thank you so much. You as always, you know, I could talk to you for another two hours, but we’re at time, we will have all of your links in the show notes, especially to the new edition of artificial empathy. And your substack de Loggos de Lobo Gallegos. Yeah, those fostering more meaningful conversations. And you’ve got a few podcasts we’ll put all the links to all the things that our mentor dial but for folks on the go right now who might be exercising or walking, where is one place they can go to check things out with you.
Minter Dial 36:06
The easiest, is the old hub, and mentor dial.com where I have all my podcasts, my blog posts, my books, my fun, like my my nuisances, my my silliness. It’s, I
Maria Ross 36:19
love it. I love it so much. Thank you so much for your time today and your insights. It’s always a pleasure to connect with you. Big hug to you, Maria. Thank
Minter Dial 36:27
you for having me on. And thank you
Maria Ross 36:28
everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you’ve heard you know what to do, please rate review and share with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, remember that cash flow creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access shownotes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria. Never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
