88. Becoming Irreplaceable

Intro: Duration: (02:22)

Opening music jingle & sound effects

Jeff Hunt:

Welcome to the Human Capital Podcast. I'm Jeff Hunt. I'd like to start this episode like I often do, asking some thought provoking questions. When I say the words artificial intelligence or AI, how does that make you feel? Do you have positive feelings or negative feelings about AI? Bye. Are you excited about it, or are you feeling fearful?

AI is transforming our lives so fast that I've felt compelled to host yet another episode on this topic. Let's face it, AI is changing our businesses and our personal lives faster than any other technology that has come before it. Just like the internet itself, there's an extreme polarization that exists with AI.

Which is already creating both tremendous benefit and harm for humanity. Regardless of whether you're a business owner, a leader, or an individual contributor, the lines between human skills and AI are becoming increasingly blurred, making it difficult to understand how to navigate these fast changing waters.

At the end of the day, people making plans and decisions about AI that are grounded in discernment rather than fear are going to win out, even in a world where this technology Is rapidly reshaping entire industries. One thing is for sure that AI is here to stay. So let's spend some time learning how to not only live with it, but how to make ourselves irreplaceable as humans, which happens to be the title of the book that we're going to discuss on today's show.

My guest today is Pascal Bournet. Who is the author of this great book called Irreplaceable. This is by far the best book I've read on this topic and I highly recommend it and we will put a link to the book in our show notes.

Pascal is globally recognized as an expert on AI and automation with over 1.4 million followers on LinkedIn and over 20 years of experience at McKinsey and EY. Yeah, where he's really been at the forefront of AI's evolution and revolution. His work has helped organizations reduce billions in cost while avoiding errors, fraud, and accidents. Pascal is not only an innovator but also a thought leader whose insights are shaping the future of work, making him a perfect guest to explore with me what it means to be irreplaceable in the age of AI. Welcome, Pascal.

Pascal Bornet:

Thank you, Jeff. Thanks for having me. Great introduction.

Jeff Hunt:

Ah, thank you so much. , I'm excited to have you on the show and talk about this critical topic. And I was thinking about this topic in the beginning of our conversation, and I think I'm going to ask you a question that only you can answer, Pascal, which is, And not AI, AI can't answer this question, which is, how are you feeling today?

Pascal Bornet:

I'm feeling great. Thank you. I'm looking forward to share my passion with you.

Jeff Hunt:

Wonderful. As I mentioned, this is a great book and we're going to, we're going to dive into the book and have you give our listeners sort of an overview and framework of what you're trying to communicate.

Before we do that. Take a few minutes just to give our listeners a thumbnail of your career journey so we can learn more about who you are.

Pascal Bornet:

Yeah, definitely. As you said, I worked for McKinsey and for EY. So basically I used to be a consultant for more than 20 years. And as a consultant, I was specialized in AI and automation.

So basically implementing those technologies for companies around the world. And when I say around the world, I'm literally saying that in the sense that I'm originally French. You might hear it by my accent. I moved. from France for five years to China in Shanghai, China, and and then moved to Singapore for six years and then moved to San Francisco for four years.

And recently a year ago moved to Miami. So you can see how I changed places and consulted with companies, helping them implement those systems around the world. Really across industries and across countries. And and from this experience, I wrote a first book four years ago, which was called, which is called Intelligent Automation, which is more for CEOs and leaders, business leaders where I share the critical success factors of implementing those technologies in companies.

And and I'm releasing, I've just released a few days ago, irreplaceable, which is for both individuals and business leaders on how do we make ourselves and our companies irreplaceable. From those 20 plus years of experience implementing AI, one thing. Pink was very important and this is really the outcome of all this experience.

And that is at the center of all my work. I've never seen an AI or automation initiative succeed without putting the humans at the center. in the center of the transformation. Meaning through change management, through education, through empowerment, incentivization, and so on. And that's really what's driving my passion. It's, I, from this experience, I can't consider that we as humans build an AI or any technology that wouldn't serve, you know, People because those technologies are built by people for people. And so without this purpose of use being useful for humanity any technology would be a waste, a waste of energy, a waste of time, a waste of money and any resources. Sure.

Topic 1. Who or what inspired you along the way? (06:04)

Jeff Hunt:

Well, I appreciate that perspective so much because as I mentioned in the intro, I think there's a lot of excitement about AI, but there's also a lot of fear. And so what you're saying is that because of this critical dependency on putting the human in between the AI and the results, then you're making a place for people that's unique and changing.

But highly, highly valuable. So I want to unpack that and get into that, pick your brain about that. But I have one more question about your career journey. Was there any one person that really inspired you along the way? One or one or more people that inspired you?

Pascal Bornet:

Many, many leaders that I worked with, yeah, definitely in those consulting companies. Yes. I mean, some of them I'm still in contact with some, that some others know what I really value, I think again, here are leaders who are able to to achieve results without without losing it. From sites that the human element and, for me, a leader who's we succeed by himself and, or herself and without the others, without the team is is not successful at the end of the day.

Topic 2. Irreplaceble (07:18)

Jeff Hunt:

That's a great sort of fundamental leadership lesson for everybody for sure. And so this, let's talk about this book for a second. And I think it, one of the things I was wondering is you came up with this title of irreplaceable. And I appreciated reading, you gave a story in the beginning of the book about how you actually came up with this title.

And I'm wondering if you can share that with our listeners.

Pascal Bornet:

Yes, definitely. Definitely. So not only the title of the book is is provoking but also the cover of the book which you can see behind me and you can see here, which is basically robots taking a human and kind of throwing it.

So replacing it definitely. And so yeah, so short, short story. I was with my family two years ago, we were back from a weekend in New York where this was the first time for the kids to visit the city. We get to the gate of our plane and we see that there is a delay, long delay. We didn't have lunch.

So we go for a sandwich. We come back and we sit just close to the, to the gate, you know, to eat our sandwiches and at the end of eating your sandwiches, you have your hands full of dirty things. You want to go to the washroom, you wash your hands. So we go to the washroom, all of us together.

I mean, my two kids and my wife wash our hands and come back to the gate. And we see that the gate is getting closed almost. So we are, I mean, like last people were in the line. So we kind of rush, get there. And. to hear that the gate is closed. The attendant told us, yeah, the gate is closed. But I mean, like everybody's working inside and I mean, we could see the people in front of us, they were just behind the door, but we could, I mean, they were just a few feet away from us.

So, but I mean, how can you say that we can't enter? , so they told us, but the door, The automated door has closed. So, that's finished. We can't accept any more people. Yeah, but okay, so it was difficult for us to understand and we told them anyway, we were just here, the flight is delayed, we would be already in the flight if everything would have worked as normal and you saw us, we were eating our sandwiches just close to you a few minutes ago.

This door is automated. I can understand, but you're here and you have a role to play as a human. So make this door more human than, than the automation you're here for that. I mean, like, okay. The door is, um, and, um, so, uh, I mean, it was impossible. So they told us it's completely impossible. We can't do that. We can't open the door. The door is closed. It's closed. It's closed. Good luck. So I mean, you can imagine we were like quite upset because we would need to take the next flight, which mean coming back home late and the kids had school the day after. So we were upset and, in my emotions came the idea that I think I told this lady I think you, you think you might think you're irreplaceable in your job but.

you're not even doing a human job because you're not even making this process being more human, you're just listening to what an automated door is telling you. So, and if you think that your job is not replaceable you're completely wrong because The door doesn't need you if you can't do anything for the clients.

And that's where I came the, so it came from a burst of, of anger.

Jeff Hunt:

It's such a great story because it also honest in on the central message of your book, which is really as humans, if you're the gate agent, your value is derived in making complex human decisions, transcribed that are going to keep your job secure and make the experience for the customer better.

Versus, and if we don't advocate for ourselves in this way as employees, and if we also don't pay attention to this as leaders and executives and organizations to reshape the way we're leveraging AI to make sure to insert the human aspect, then we're going to be in trouble, right?

Pascal Bornet:

Exactly. Exactly. Uh, it's about these and yeah, it's about also avoiding being, becoming the slaves of technology.

I mean, like, and this is exactly what we what I saw at that time. And I think we all been in these cases where the process or the technology is dictating what those people have to do and they don't have the choice and, But to your point, to a more leadership point of view of it, it means that, and I explained it in the book, and you might, um, I'm sure you'll have some questions later for that, but it's, it talks about the growing economic value of the human touch in a world where Technology is taking more and more space where it's becoming a commodity where all companies will be using the same AI soon.

How can companies differentiate and it's by, in my view, combining the human element with this technology on a different way. Exactly. Exactly. And I'm sure we'll talk about this later, but I, I talk a lot about it in the book and there are some specific abilities on which we can work. There are specific ways to re model the job roles.

Topic 3. The intersection of AI and humans and its importance (12:44)

Jeff Hunt:

Pascal, I'm curious to have you share a little bit more about this, this common theme in your book. Which is really the intersection of AI and humans and why this is so important. And just talk a little bit more about that, because I think a lot of people don't understand that, what this is first and foremost, and why it's so important.

Pascal Bornet:

I like to give the image of an equation which is AI plus human. This is what I think is the key to success. So in solving this equation, I plus human, we know quite well the human side of the equation. We know at least we are working a lot on the AI side, but there is one critical component that we all need to work on, and that is the key to, to the success of this equation is the plus that is in the middle.

The plus, which is the connection basically between the humans and the AI. And I really think that this is where we can build the highest value for ourself.

businesses. So it's about finding the right way to connect those two. And so that AI offsets our weaknesses. while we can benefit from the strengths of AI and offset its weaknesses as well. Okay. So it's at the end of the day, kind of a symbiosis that you can imagine like we see in nature and how to get to that, how to get to that.

And to become irreplaceable, which means three things, which means being able to leverage technology and AI to the maximum extent so that we can augment ourselves and we can automate tasks that are repetitive, tedious and non value add. In order to, I mean, we becoming irreplaceable when we know how to do that and we know how to mitigate also all the negative aspects and the risks and dangerous coming technology.

The second is we know how to build the capabilities that AI will never be able to master as well as we do as humans. So that we can create really this complementarity, this synergy that I talked about. And third, we are living in a world that is moving faster and faster. The speed of change is going exponential. It is boosted by technology. And and there is a big gap between our own, capabilities and capacity to evolve, which is linear, which is one plus one, one day after another. And the exponential curve of our environment boosted by technology, which is times two every day or times to every, every year.

So this gap you see the two curves, this is a going linearly and this is the, so this gap between the two is growing. And this is the cause of stress. which is according to the World Health Organization, one of, I mean, the pandemic of the 21st century which and so stress is also the cause to depression, to to anxiety and all of those things that, you know, A brain that is a few hundred thousand years old can't, can't match in a world that is changing by the minute.

And so it's about, it's all about adaptability and resilience. And I like to talk about the reef. I mean, the cap, the necessity to refine the wisdom from our ancestors, because we are still here as a species. Homo sapiens species because we've been more resilient and adaptable than other species.

Our ancestors have built these capabilities that we are kind of losing with comfort of our new, of our current world, but that we need to relearn in order to be prepared for these exponential times. So it's about relearning the wisdom of ancient times to face modern challenges. I like this sentence.

So It's about becoming irreplaceable. To become irreplaceable, we need to build basically the three competencies of the future. This is valid for us and as individuals, but also for companies. So it's exactly the same framework that I present. And this framework is, first of all, being AI ready. So as I said before, it's about Understanding those technologies, understanding AI, what are the benefits, the opportunities that it's giving us, but also what are the risks and dangers it's coming, that are coming to us.

The human ready is the second of the three competencies of the future. It's about identifying and building to the highest extent, those three abilities that make us different from technology and that help us and that enable us to build the complementarity that brings the synergy between technology and us.

And finally being change ready. That is the third of the three competencies of the future, which is about building adaptability and resilience to a whole new level as well. And this is valid for again, people and companies. Happy to jump in any of those. As you want.

Jeff Hunt:

And by the way, I don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but you have some great resources in the book around this and the ability to, you have a, your website isn't it irreplaceable.ai? Correct. And you have you have a sort of an assessment that people can take on that site, which I think if I'm correct, speaks to what you're talking about, right?

Pascal Bornet:

Exactly. So that's the irreplaceable quotient. You can take it online. You can find it as at irreplaceable. ai on the web.

And and you're right to mention this now, because in, in our discussion, because before learning about those three competencies of the future, why not assessing yourself and understanding where are you in each of those three competencies of the future? So that, you know, what you need to, how you can improve basically on what you need to compensate.

Jeff Hunt:

Exactly. It's a great benchmark. Exactly.

Pascal Bornet:

That's a good starting point.

Jeff Hunt:

Yes.

Pascal Bornet:

You can retake the test any time, so you can improve in time.

Topic 4. How AI can help us become more human (19:27)

Jeff Hunt:

Yeah, that's great. One of the things I was struck by what you just said, Pascal, is how you painted a picture of how AI can actually help us become more human in the future.

Which I think is a contrary view or perspective to a lot of people that are less familiar with AI and how it's going to affect us. I think that's where we come back to that concept of fear. Yeah. But great quote in the book that I'll just read. It's, it says, AI is not the destination. It's the vehicle that takes us to a more human future, which really provides a sense of hope in contrast with much of the doomsday sort of reporting we've heard about AI. And I'm wondering if you can just elaborate a little bit more about that.

Pascal Bornet:

Yeah, definitely. AI makes us more human for two main reasons. The first one is, thanks to ai, we can automate a lot of those tasks that we don't like to do that are repetitive to just non-value add managing data, uh, sending those emails that we don't like to send spending time uh, building reports.

I mean, we all have all those things that we don't like to do, and that can be automated thanks to ai. So in a way, those repetitive robotic tasks, okay, that we can give to technology because we give them to technology, allow us to be to focus more. They give us something huge, which is time.

And this time we can use it to be human, basically. So spending time with our team members, spending time with our family, spending time educating ourselves. So that's the first reason. The second reason is. In order to build the highest synergy with AI, you remember the human ready competency of the future, which is about building those capabilities that AI will never be able to achieve as well as we do.

Those capabilities are purely human capabilities. So if we want to create the highest synergy with AI, we need to build to the highest extent those human abilities. Which is the second point here in order to be the highest value with AI, we need to get as human as possible. So let's talk maybe about those three abilities, because if I were, if I was listening now, I was saying, well, I don't want to, he's talking about this.

So, the human ready competency is based is basically based on the points. That's AI and technologies are progressing very fast in terms of the capabilities they can perform. We've, and we've always thought that there were some capabilities that would remain human and for example, creating I mean, creativity, writing, we thought were human, uniquely human, until Chad J. P. D.

Came and told us, okay, I can write poems for you and I can even have Dali draw, uh, images and, and paintings for you. So what's remaining for us humans? What are those capabilities that AI will never be able to achieve as well as we do? And because, yeah, this is scary that because we can, we come to the point of, we thought these capabilities were defining our humanity, but finally technology is taking it.

So where are we as humans? So based on my research, I identified three humics or uniquely human abilities. Okay. That's a contraction.

Topic 5. Uniquely Human Abilities. H.U.M.I.C.S. (23:20)

Jeff Hunt:

HUMICS, H U M I C S, right? HUMICS?

Pascal Bornet:

Correct. Three HUMICS. Thee first one is genuine creativity. Okay. The second is critical thinking. And the third one is social authenticity.So, let's start with the first one uh, genuine creativity. So you might tell me, come on, Pascal, you just told us that, you ChagPT is very creative. And so why is creativity uniquely human ability? So what ChagPT and other systems can do is combining different existing components to create a new component.

That's the creativity they use. Okay. It's just a recombination of existing component, mix and match of What is already existing, what we bring as humans is something very different, which we call novelty, which is from scratch, being able to create something. And when I say from scratch, yes, it's not combining existing elements that have already been created by other humans, necessarily, but it's coming, but why do we have this novelty?

Because we've all grown up. We all have a life story. We all been kids. We've all had stories and lived experiences. And from those experiences, uh, that are in our memories, we will create something that is unique. Secondly, we have our personalities, our, uh, which are very different. And when you have kids or even pets, you can understand that they are very different, even if they are in the same environment, using the same, everything, They are different.

And thirdly, we are, as humans, we have emotions. And those emotions are something that are purely human. , so the combination of all these makes create genuine, I call it genuine creativity for this reason. It's not creativity only. It's something that is specific to humans. And that's only us can do.

Can master. And the game in the future is to, into, is to build to a highest extent those humics. The second of the humics is critical thinking. So think of critical thinking different dimensions in this. The first one is to work well with. AI especially, we shouldn't take for granted any of the income that it gives us like, asking it to write an email and sending this email right away.

No, you want to read it. You want to review it. You want to criticize it. You want to evaluate it. You want, I mean, you are, question it and so on. So it's about this aspect of the thing. And you want also to add your human touch to it. not doing it would be falling into the obesity trap, which we discuss later.

And another dimension of critical thinking is is. Technology can answer the how of things, but we'll never be able to answer the why of things. Okay, so the reason why we do some things, the goals, our purpose is something that is purely human, that is only ours, and where we drive technology to help us to achieve.

So in the house, but in the how, but not in the why. And finally, and very importantly, we don't want any technology to design for us. what is good or what is bad in the human world. So basically all that we call ethics is human ethics. Okay. That's something that we don't want anyone else than humans to build.

So this is for critical thinking. And finally, for social authenticity, you might tell me, yeah, but look, ChatGPT is talking to me like a human. And what, why are you telling me that empathy, communication. You can do the same what about predicting what is the next word that should come after a certain word. Okay. So it's purely mathematic. It's purely probabilities and statistics. It doesn't understand at all. What is the meaning of the words? What is the meaning of the, I mean, without going into the feelings, just one word for it is just a, it's just a one and zeros.

And that comes after another one in zeros. And okay. So this. nuanced understanding of the world make that. no one else than a human can understand and interact better than another human. Okay. That and and this will remain true forever. The same way as a dog speaks better to another dog, we speak better to another human.

And yeah, even though you, you might tell me as well, you know, our smartwatch is they know us better than anyone else in terms of empathy. Like, understanding one, one another. What I reply to that it collects data and it mimics some of our emotion.

It can mimic. The authenticity is not here again. It doesn't depend what it does. It just responds to a trigger and to some responses that we have programmed into it. That's all the three humics, uh, the three humics to, just to, to recap the gemini creativity, uh, critical thinking and social authenticity all of them just to finish.

10 seconds on that. All of them, they have, those three humics are very extraordinary because first of all we all born with them. So we are equal on that. Okay. All of us, you go, you're going to playground. You will see the kids. They play, they play, they be, they be castles in sands. That's creativity.

When your kid comes and asks, can I play with you? Yeah, of course, come with us. That's social authenticity. And they will say, no, but you shouldn't do that. You're not allowed to do that in the game. That's not the rule of the game, that's critical thinking. So we are all born with that.

We all have equal chance of building them. And that's the second crazy thing about those humans that there is no limit in how we can build them. And the strongest humans of the future will be those who will be able to build them to the highest level. The most empathetic people, the most creative, the most critical thinkers, philosophers will be those ones who will rule the world because they will be able to create the highest synergies with AI and create the highest value with the technology.

Topic 6. Efficiency vs Authenticity. AI helping creativity (29:51)

Jeff Hunt:

That's incredible. Yeah. I'm actually just reflecting on how the generative side, generative creativity is really so impactful in the arts, in like music creation and theater and the caution that artists are taking.

For instance, my son happens to be a singer songwriter, Hayden Everett. And he's got, 30 or 40 million downloads. So he's making his way as a musician has just finished a West Coast tour. And has had his song purchased on songs, purchased on some, TV series and things, and I was talking to him about AI and using AI in the creativity of his music, and he said, he will never do it because.

All of his songs come truly from his heart and his passion. And he does not want, even though there could be some efficiencies associated with it. He would lose elements of himself in the music. And so I just appreciated that perspective. And I'm curious as to your thought, cause it's not all musicians. There's many musicians that will use AI and leverage it.

Pascal Bornet:

Yes. I'll, I'll my advice to him, I would be, first of all, I think he's doing the right thing, which is about building his hummix to the highest level. That's great. But what is great with AI is we can build synergies. So it means whatever he's creating today as a single human, he can build factors of multi multiplied of it just because he augments himself with technology.

It doesn't mean he will lose. his humanity, he will expand, amplify his humanity. So it's the opposite, but maybe he needs, first of all, to consolidate and make sure that, his creation and his authenticity build it, finalize it so that he can come to the point where he can bring in AI and together do something that is, that is beyond what he's doing.

Jeff Hunt:

Yes. And it's almost as if I'm, as you're saying this I'm sensing that he could, and other musicians and artists could preserve their core creative selves. And yet leverage AI to either become more creative as who they are in themselves. And also maybe more efficient so they can do more creativity.

Yeah. And more production. And that feels authentic to what you're trying to communicate in your book, which is really this one two combo with the human and AI, right?.

Pascal Bornet:

Two things. We can automate tasks so that we have more time, tedious, repetitive tasks, and we can augment ourselves to amplify our strengths. Thanks to AI. So that's those two work in hand because we have more time thanks to automation. Then we, we can focus on amplifying ourselves. So we talked a lot about the, I mean, it's easy to see how those three competencies of the future can be used as at an individual level, but they are, this framework is also valid and extremely beneficial for companies as well.

And you can see that AI ready is about for companies. About embracing AI to the maximum extent, meaning implementing AI at scale to grow the impact, the business impact. While Managing the dangers and mitigating the risks, which are also an opportunity currently to build trust with partners and clients.

And I'm especially focusing on three components. First one is biases, managing our biases and biases that we have in technology, basically are coming from us. Huh? So from. Yeah, tech, we build AI using the data that we have generated. And because we are biased animals, those bias, we find them in AI.

So it's about not giving it or identifying it and managing it in ai. The second is managing privacy. Data privacy to build trust that's, I mean, trust is becoming, in my view, one of the most important points in a world of AI, where you see deep fakes everywhere. You see that, I mean, really, we need this trust.

And I think blockchain is still in the lack of capacity technically, but it's going to solve this issue. And we need this, we need this as soon as possible. We see how with the election, everything is like, everybody's so intention of. Having those fakes coming in and the cyber attacks coming and I mean all this is I think blockchain will help a lot.

And another one is about transparency and explainability of those the systems that we built. It's so important to explain to the users to give the level of information they need so that they can use while the system and they contrast. The outcome that is coming from the system. So that's about AI ready for business.

Eng ready for business is quite easy as well to, to think about it. It's about busy building the level of adaptability and resilience in business by managing the culture and then the structure of the company so that we can adapt to the new disruptions that are coming. And finally, human ready.

For business is very interesting because this is where we talk about the value of the human touch. And I like to give the example of two glasses of water, you know, and I like in, in my keynotes, I show, I showed this slide where you have two glasses of water, basically two glasses that are, have the same function.

You drink water with them. They are made of the same components. But one of them is 1 and the other one is 100 and people will buy both of them equally. The reason why is one, the 1 one is made by a machine and everybody is ready to buy it because it's very cheap and the other one has been made, blown by hand, by a craftman and it is unique and it has in it all the expertise, experience and life stories of this craftman and we are ready to buy it because it's unique.

And so we can see that, yeah, the value of the human touch is so important and growing as I said before, that the world is changing. Companies are using AI, all the same AI, at the same of the day, at the end of the day. And AI becomes a commodity. The human touch becomes what? Allows, enables companies to differentiate so how to implement it it's about reviewing the job roles of people currently making sure they use AI the right way.

So let's take the creative activity, for example let's say I'm a designer and I want to create the cover of a new book. I. There is two cases. The person who doesn't use IOL, who will just say, okay, write a prompt to, to, to any of those large language models and tell it. Give me a cover for this book.

I'm thinking of this and that. Text it and send it , to the printer and the other one. Who's using AI the right way? Who's, first of all brainstorming. So collecting everything that he, this person thinks is important to create this cover. So it can be feelings, it can be covers of magazines, anything that makes like smells, even anything that collect all this, give it to a large language model and ask it.

Can you give me a few options of a book over that would. That will encompass all those elements. The large language model will come back with. What 10, 20 options, maybe you as a human, you choose from those options. So I prefer those two or three ones. Can you work on those? So you will iterate back and forth with each of those options.

Can you make it more like this, more like that? And sometimes the large language model will give you great ideas. Sometimes you will fine tune these ideas. And at the end of the day, you will choose the option that you prefer and you will finalize it, fine tune it. with the AI first, making sure that at the end of the day, it is, it includes all the ethics that we are all the, that we're expecting from humans, the nuanced, uh, components that we only as humans can bring and and yeah, and finalize fine tune it finally.

So as you see it's the role of a leader basically to explain how to use the AI to avoid what I call AI obesity, which is exactly the first case where you take for granted. What AI gives you while you satisfy yourself with a shallow, good enough outcome, and you just send it right away, where you will be replaced, basically, because you're just useless, and back to the late, to the door story in the airport, just, you're just, the human aspect here is useless you're useless as a human in this process, and you accept it.

So you'll be replaced. So that, that was, yeah, another way to explain AI obesity. And we see it too much in, in our world today, but there is a good reason why, because we are not, most of us are not AI ready. We've not been educated. No school ever taught us how to use AI, or how not to, how to use it, but also how not to use it.

And yeah, and so part of AI Ready is this AI literacy that we all need to build, which is about understanding what's coming out, what are the new opportunities coming from AI, what are also the new risks and dangers. I recommend spending 15 percent of our time, working time looking at what are those new tools made available to us and assessing whether they are worth or not being used and what are their limits as well.

Jeff Hunt:

I really appreciate your reference to efficiency versus quality. And what I'm hearing you say is that basically. The people that are going to succeed and the organizations that will succeed in leveraging AI are those that won't sacrifice quality for efficiency. They will always take the slower route and make sure that what they're delivering is very top tier versus those that are just having the knee jerk reaction and trusting that the AI is producing something.

That they want, which it might not be, or the quality may not be there. Isn't that correct?

Pascal Bornet:

Exactly. We are less efficient than AI, so let's leave efficiency to AI, but AI is less effective in a human world than us, so let's focus on that part, so that both of us, we create more value.

Jeff Hunt:

Exactly. Well, Pascal, I've got one more question for you before we shift you into some lightning round questions. And that's really your reflections on the future. You've been steeped in the space for a long time. Some people didn't even realize that AI was existing, 20 years ago. And so when you reflect on the past few years and you think about what's coming, what rises to the top, what do you see coming to the best of your knowledge over the next 1, 2, 3 years?

Pascal Bornet:

In AI specifically, it's it's what we call agents, agentic ai, which is the capacity for AI to not only give us an outcome, but, give us a goal, let us achieve a goal.

Jeff Hunt:

In other words, it could determine what the outcomes should be.

Pascal Bornet:

Correct. Exactly. It should be, at least, it should, it has to, by itself, autonomously identify how to reach a goal that you give it. So basically what are the steps? What are the ways to get there? The how again, the how? But we would tell them what do we want and why basically, which is based on the why. And so that's a very interesting future trend.

When it's going, when true agents will really be there. I don't think it's a matter of months. It's a matter of years. And that's, but when this comes, the, you remember, we have two things we can do with AI. One is automation. The other one is is augmentation. The automation part will grow, grow to a point that we will be able to see companies built, I mean, made of agents, or at least made of hybrid teams of agents and humans.

It's really about, yeah. Think of agents like. Any employee that you have in a company that, I mean you, in your team, you say, this person is in, in charge of managing this part of the business with these goals, uh, which are, which we call KPIs the agent will be able to perform exactly the same.

So we will find also some other ethical issues. We will need to give some limits we'll give to, but that's that's a very interesting trend that is coming and and maybe coming too fast where we hear a lot of. Things around it and a lot of, I mean, I'm coming from the world of automation and AI where we used to, where we are still, where I used to, at least for my clients, implement those automated end to end processes using AI and automation.

And I, I hear a lot of people talking about agentic when they talk about this, which is, which we are very far from because real agentic is, uh, is an AI that is able to perform to achieve a goal based on the goal. Okay. So you don't need to explain it, what to do and what are the steps to achieve.

Topic 7. Lighting round questions (43:50)

Jeff Hunt:

That's great. Yeah. Well, thank you for that. Are you ready for some quick lightning round questions?

Pascal Bornet:

Yes, I don't know exactly.

Jeff Hunt:

That's the point. Once again, AI can't answer these, only you can.

Pascal Bornet:

Okay, very good.

Jeff Hunt:

And the first one is, what are you most grateful for?

Pascal Bornet:

I think living in a world where we can be creative and where we can, the limit is just our imagination.

Jeff Hunt:

What's the most difficult leadership lesson you've learned over your career?

Pascal Bornet:

So many ones. Maybe, perfection is not human. And and perfection can be the opposite, an an asset. And yeah, sometimes when we want to reach perfection by micromanaging or by micromanaging some other people or even ourselves, huh and we are not focusing on the right things.

Jeff Hunt:

I love that. Perfection is not human. That's a good, we're gonna quote you on that one. That's a good one. Who is one person you would interview if you could, living or not?

Pascal Bornet:

Oh Plateau.

Jeff Hunt:

Mmm. Oh, yeah. That would be fascinating.

Pascal Bornet:

Yes, definitely.

Jeff Hunt:

That's a good one. Do you have a top book recommendation other than your book? Irreplaceable. What's another good, uh, book recommendation?

Pascal Bornet:

Oh yeah, it's a, so the I would on purpose not talk about tech books but, um, one of my favorite book is Eckart Tolle. The Power of Now. That's a huge book. Sapiens maybe as well.

Jeff Hunt:

Very good. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received or anyone's given you?

Pascal Bornet:

Maybe, uh, focus on what you can control. We are so tempted to to, yeah, to be willing to control everything. And that's the reason why, I mean, that's hardwired in our brains. But we can't achieve that, that's not possible.

Jeff Hunt:

A lot of wisdom in that comment right there, for sure. So Pascal, this has been so rich with so much information.

If you had to distill things down to maybe one or two kind of key takeaways for our listeners, what would you want to share?

Pascal Bornet:

So for sure we will all lose our jobs to AI, but that's a good thing. The only thing we need to focus on is. Our skills and our capacity to evolve them. And that's the key adaptability feature that we have as humans that made us, that have made us successful over millions of years and that we will still keep, but this time we might need to cultivate it and build it on purpose.

Jeff Hunt:

Well, that's an encouraging and motivating way to finish this episode is really with hope that we can develop ourselves and we can live in this new world in a way. That is fulfilling, right?

Pascal Bornet:

Exactly.

Jeff Hunt:

Yes. Pascal, thank you so much for coming on the show today. This has been a fun conversation.

Pascal Bornet:

Thank you, Jeff.

---

Outro(47:24)

Closing music jingle/sound effects

Jeff Hunt:

Thanks for listening to the show this week. We release new episodes every other Tuesday. Let me know what you thought of this episode by emailing humancapitalgoalspan.com. Human capital is produced by GoalSpan. Subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts. And please share this podcast with your colleagues, team, or friends. Thanks for being human kind.