AI and Executive Function: The Future of Agency
Welcome to the Executive Function Brain trainer podcast
Erica: Welcome to the Executive Function Brain trainer podcast. I'm Dr. Erica Warren and I'm
Darius: Darius Namdaran and, we're your hosts. Hey, Erica.
Erica: How are you doing, Darius? I'm great. It's wonderful to see you and I am stoked for this conversation. So tell us a little bit about what you'd like to talk about.
Darius: Well, I want to talk about AI and executive function. And sometimes it might seem like, oh, that's just an artificial connection between AI and executive function. Two big buzzwords, one within the world of education and the other one within the world of business. But what really struck me was I was listening to the all-in podcast, which is a very famous business podcast, and they were talking about people in the workplace and how a lot of people are finding it hard to get jobs in America at the moment. in a certain sector of jobs, which is the young graduate job entry market. And so there's a high employment level happening in America increasingly, but actually one sector is feeling it the most. And there's a big debate about whether it's because of AI. But then they said, we think it's because of executive function and not AI. And I think it's fascinating when the world of executive function just starts getting talked about in high level business podcasts that are talking about all sorts of much bigger topics. And I think the whole realm of AI and executive function is very important because a lot of people are wondering, what's going to be my role in a world of AI in three to five years’ time when AIs become more and more competent? Where's my place? And fundamentally, your place is in the world of agency, being the person who sets the course and the direction for an orchestra of agents. And so that is basically executive function. So the final thing that you've got to contribute to a world that is saturated with AI is actually, ironically for our podcast, executive function agency. Like, there's agency.
Ivy's mission is to solve note taking for visual thinkers worldwide
I really want to accomplish this mission. I really want to solve this type of cancer. I really want to solve. For me, my mission is solve note taking for dyslexia worldwide. I want to solve it within the next three years. I'm doing it right now. I know the tools I've got. How do we solve note taking for dyslexia? And I believe that dyslexia will solve note taking for visual thinkers worldwide. And technically, what I'm doing is solving note taking for visual thinkers, not just dyslexics.
Erica: Is anybody that's a visual thinker?
Darius: Yeah, yeah. And, the reason why I'm bringing that up is not to talk my own book, but to help explain that there are people in the future who will have very big visions that can be achieved with AI, but their contribution is being able to choose a mission, choose a goal, be the agent of that change and instruct all the resources round about them and channel them towards that end. Which is basically what executive, function is. It's channeling resources towards achieving what you've decided. But in the future, the resources will be so much bigger with AI. And how does executive function use AI? And how does AI end us up in a world where the most useful skill we have is not necessarily what we're being trained for, law or medicine or whatever, but actually executive function is what's remaining.
Erica: Yeah, I think you're onto something really interesting here, and that is that what we really need to be successful moving forward is analytical thinking skills that we need to be the conductors. So metaphorically you are taking on that role. Like executive functioning is the conductor of cognitive skills. You are being the conductor of note taking for visual learners. But the instruments are AI. They're AI instruments that you're using. Yeah, but you have to conduct them. Right. Some of them are people, some of
Darius: them are organizations, services, tools. Just like what we've got right now, but with this added extra of AI.
Erica: But it's that ability to be analytical, but being able to see the big picture, simultaneous processing,
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Erica: being able to actively organize, really be an executive. Right?
Darius: Yeah.
Erica: Executing, collaborating.
Darius: The thing is, we talk about. So let's just talk about that whole topic. AI and executive function. Where are the overlaps? Where are the relationships? Explore it. We don't have definitive; answers we're exploring in these podcasts that we've got from our experience. One of the things is we touch base monthly now and look back over what's been our experience with executive function within our own sort of professional lives. And I think spend a lot of my time thinking about what's going to happen in 2 to 3 years’ time? M Because of the business I'm in. Just for the context, for anyone who's not listened before, I'm making a piece of software which solves visual notes for visual thinkers. And basically what it does is it uses AI to record the audio, do a transcript, take the transcript and turn it into a mind map in real time and selects icons for you and graphics for you, and pulls out the keywords and finds the pattern and organization and synchronizes it all so you can click between the Map and the transcript. So basically that's kind of like the concept. And so I have to be very aware of what's going to be happening in two- or three-years years’ time as our business grows. What will the market be wanting, what will students be wanting, what will the workplace be wanting? What will be obvious like zoom notes is, oh, we'll give you a meeting transcript and a meeting, summary of action points and so on. And some people go, well, why would I need Ivy if, if I've already got a transcript in a summary? And the answer is, well, there's a whole section of society who don't like even reading a summary. They like seeing a diagram, a structure, an order that makes visual sense to them that was created in the moment so they can connect to it rather than after the fact.
Erica: And, and it's not only that they can connect to it, but they can interact with it. I mean, one of the things that I love about your tool, Ivvi.app, is that you can interact with it. And if you don't like the heading that it creates, you can alter the heading. It has emojis. And to me, what the big thing is, it's not just visual but it's simultaneous in the fact that it, enables you to see the big picture. It's like a map. It's like trying to conceptualize the world is really difficult, but when you see a globe, it's so satisfying. It all makes sense because it's all there in front of you and it's interactive and that's what's cool about Ivvi.
Darius: And the point of that is I'm building this now for what will become much more popular in two years’ time. For example, at the moment it's very small, it's only really known in the UK, et cetera. And you know, but the reason I bring it up is that I have to spend a lot of time trying to work out how are people going to operate in two to three years’ time within universities and the workplace and sort of skate towards that puck. Where is the ball going to be? Where is, what are we going to need?
Erica: What are we going to need? And the interesting thing is I, love this conversation because it's very close to my heart. What do I need to be teaching my students? Yes, right. What do students need to know? What are the skills that people need to have walking into this new workforce? And yes, it's executive functioning skills. And I think it's extremely important that instead of this passive teaching of organization, time management, being able to manage your own learning and executive functioning. Attention, metacognition, all of this stuff, it's just too vague. We need to make m it more explicit. We need to teach people the tools that they have within executive functioning so that they can grab those tools and use them.
Darius: Yes. And I hope the listeners are also thinking, where will I be in, two- or three-years years’ time? What will be the skill set that will be in most demand in two to three years’ time that adds the greatest value within their life and works, but work. And I don't operate exclusively in the world of executive function. This is just a side aspect of what I do. My main thing is dyslexia. And it's surprising me how often it actually narrows down to executive function. And you're like, oh my goodness me, oh my goodness me. And I'm just shocked by it, quite honestly, how often it boils down to that. Because I listen to all these AI experts and they're like, we know the robots are going to do this. We know
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Darius: that the models are going to improve to get to this level. We know that they're going to be able to control the this on your computer. We know this, we know that we know that. And then everyone's going, well, what's left for us to do as human beings? And you know what? They go; I don't really know actually how it's going to turn out. And then everyone else is going, well, that's good for you, because you know what's going to happen for you and your world and your software or your machine or your robot or your model or you're Ivy or whatever. Do you know what I mean? But what's it going to do for a regular person with AI? What have they got to give that is the highest value?
Students need executive functions to get the degree that they're wanting
And I actually think it's in this realm of executive function because we're going to experience something we've never experienced before, which is what it's like to be truly an executive. We use the term executive function because we're kind of relating to it in that, oh, yes, you're the executive of your life. You're the executive of all the resources you've got in your life. So if you're a student, you need executive functions to get the degree that you're wanting. If you're a student at school, you're the executive of a certain parameter of task with certain resources, narrow resources, your own ability, your own memory, whatever tools you've got. But to be an executive of a company, that's kind of like, I've got an executive board where there's five of us, we've maybe got 300 staff, 500 staff, six departments. All of these people are taking instructions, doing things. You've got, you're sitting on a very powerful organization, and you've got to steer it. Now, very few of us have actually experienced what it's like to be an executive. And they are using executive function skills to the max.
Erica: Well, if they're successful.
Darius: If they're successful, yes.
Erica: But the thing is, is that it's so important that we start to teach what are the skills needed to be, an executive? It's vitally important, and I think it's more important now than it's ever, ever been. And the other piece of that that's really interesting is that we have to learn how to use AI because AI is a robot. It's as good as. It's really a reflection of us.
Darius: Yeah.
Erica: And just teaching my students how to use it appropriately, they're like, no, no, no, it's cheating. I'm like, no, no. Yeah, it can be, it can be used that way, but it can also be used as a way to think. It can also be used as a way to create. It can also be a way to expand your working memory.
Darius: Yeah.
Erica: It can also be a way to organize your information. It can be a way to study for exams.
Darius: It can be a way to reprocess information. This is completely small fry. Okay. And the point about the two, I agree. But the point about two to three years’ time, which is absolutely mind blowing for me, is the AI agents that we will have the capability to act as if they are whatever you choose in terms of expertise. As if. Let's take it in our environment. As if they're an expert executive function coach. As if they're an expert dyslexia, reading teacher.
Erica: As if they're an expert social media marketing person.
Darius: Yes.
Erica: As an expert physical therapist.
Darius: Yes, absolutely. There's just so many. And what will happen is we will have this opportunity to say, what expert would you like to fill out your organization? Okay.
Erica: Right. Well, what experts do you want to manage?
Darius: Yes.
Erica: And to be management. M. That's right. That's right.
Darius: Be the executive of. So let's say, let's take this scenario as a thought experiment. You've got this. Parents of children with dyslexia, for example. And my heart goes out to them at school, for example. We'll just take that scenario. We'll choose others. Maybe ADHD workplace Whatever. But let's just take one little scenario. You got a typical parent who's maybe discovered their child's got dyslexia, maybe when they're nine years old and they've been fighting with the school for two, three years to figure out what's going wrong. And then they get an assessment and they go, oh, my goodness, that's it done. They've got dyslexia. There will be a plan. They'll have the dyslexia choice.
Erica: That's the beginning.
Darius: Sort that out. And then you realize, oh, no. Dear Parent, dear Mom,
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Darius: this would be my message to that dear moment. Because quite frankly, it often falls to the mum who feels the pain the most and is just motivated, whether they got dyslexia themselves or not. Bless you, mums. And I'm not being sexist there. There's plenty of dads that do it, but as the majority is overwhelmingly mums. So I'm going to speak to the moms. I'm sorry to say that you are going to have to get really good at writing letters. You're going to have to be really good at reading an educational plan, of tracking how that plan is being implemented, of tracking finances, of you're going to have to become a advocate, and understand what you're entitled to, what you're not entitled to, how to advocate for yourself in a way that doesn't put people's backs up and negotiate nicely to get what your child needs without becoming that mother and that sort of thing. And then you're going to have to think about your own mental welfare, how you're dealing with it emotionally, and you're going to have to deal with the financial costs of it, where you're going to have to be a homeschooler whether you like it or not, whether official homeschooling you take sometimes, or where you're actually homeschooling them at home, after work, after they've gone to school, and you're going, let's go through that report. Let's help you write that essay. Or all these things that you'll be doing literally for years. I'm sorry to say, even with the best help, goodness, that's a lot of work. Okay, but imagine this, and I've done this with parents. Imagine you had one agent that was dedicated to being in charge of the educational plan. They knew the education plan. You would ask it, by the way, where are we with the timings on that? And it would go, oh, yeah, we said it would be. They would implement that by the 17th of January and it's the 14th now. It's three days away. Would you like me to send them a reminder? Oh, gosh, that would be really useful. Oh, is it to Mr. Bernard, the head teacher still? Yes, it is. And is it this email? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. Could you do that? Oh, thanks very much. Here's the email. This is what it would say. Does that sound good? Yes, send that.
Imagine if you could employ seven agents to help parents with dyslexia
Thank you very much. Done. Right, okay. I've got to think about his homework, etc. Yeah. And then it becomes the homework tutorial agent that has,
Erica: Or it can even access the information on the Internet of what the homework is. Because, I mean, sometimes the kids just have trouble finding what is.
Darius: Yeah, yeah.
Erica: Because each teacher puts it in a different folder or.
Darius: Yeah, yeah, you would say, where do we put. Where is the English one? Oh, yeah, they do that on, Google Classroom. I've got it here. Oh, this other one does it on this. I've got it there. Oh, thank goodness. Can you find the actual report? And I'm not talking about this hypothetically. This will be as if it's a real assistant who completely understands your area of knowledge and is always there at the end of the phone sort of thing. Can you imagine if you had that kind of series of experts around you, maybe five or six, and maybe you've got a food plan as well. And you're like, oh, my goodness, I know nutrition really affects my son's, my mind. And you've got the chef and they're not cooking it for you. Well, maybe Optimus the robot will be, but the chef will be an agent that is tracking what meals you've done in the past, what the meal plans coming up, what we could. What am I cooking?
Erica: I guess technically they could even track what your child is eating because you don't always know what your kids are eating.
Darius: Yeah. And you don't want to. Impotent. Just take a quick photo.
Erica: There's a lot hidden that parents don't know.
Darius: Maybe there'll be some blood tests, and you take sugar readings and whatever else, and you put that in and that person go, oh, that's interesting that this blood test saying there's a big spike in sugar at this moment. Oh. And they're eating tons of sugar in their bottom drawer at 8, 9 o' clock at night because they've gone off their medication for ADHD and they suddenly get hungry and they just munch on sugar and it's not their fault. And you go, gosh, we really need to make sure he eats much more at lunchtime, so he doesn’t get the munchies, and it keeps him up at 2 in the morning because he's got sugar spike. So there is just so much logistically for that one person, okay? And if they had a dyslexia specialist, they could just have at their side and help like that costs us, maybe $70 an hour or whatever, or a reading specialist or whatever. You could literally have, if you wished to employ and bring into your life these seven agents, okay? And that's just the life of one mother looking after one child with dyslexia at nine years old. In three years’ time, that will be their world. Then if you make it five years, all of those agents will probably be embodied within
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Darius: an Optimus robot or something like Optimus figure who will actually go and cook the food or go to the shop and go, oh my goodness, I didn't pick up his meds. And they'll go, right, I'll go play
Erica: ball with them or help them tie their shoes.
Darius: Or maybe you'll be doing all of that and they'll be doing all of the stuff that takes you away because I don't know, it's like the grunt work are being all that grunt work. You're utterly exhausted. You really love your child, but you've just finished that essay with them. and it's 8:30 at night. You didn't go out and play that ball or play golf or.
Erica: Well, and some sometimes that the help is help through anger and anxiety too, because the parents are over tired and their fuse is short and their tears, there's frustration. Sometimes people say things that they wish they didn't say. There's a lot of support coming. There's a lot of support.
Darius: 8:30 at night. You may be pushed your child too hard to finish something off. Whereas if you were a dyslexia person or an expert like you in executive function and specialist remediation or whatever, and they were your teaching assistant or your coaching assistant in that environment. And maybe it's called Erica, you go, oh, Erica, what should we do with this? And Erica goes, look, do you know what? Darren is exhausted right now. He's had a huge heavy day at school. This is the question that needs answered. And actually you're both dyslexic. You've expanded the scope too much. It's not meant to take an hour and a half to do this. And sometimes even parents who've got dyslexia and pass it on make it too big. Of a job out of it and their child pays the consequence. Whereas if you had the tutor or the teacher right beside you, that agent might end up speaking at 6:30 at night to the teachers learning assistant agent and saying, by the way, Darren's having difficulty with that. Does the teacher really mean that he's got to do this hour of work? Oh no, no, no, no, you've got it wrong. What she really meant was they just want to decide what the topic of the discussion is tonight, not do it.
Erica: You know, I hope, I hope your vision is clear and that we are moving in that direction. We don't know, we don't know for sure. We don't know.
Darius: There's absolutely no doubt.
Erica: But you've got moving in, that yes, I agree with you, but you've also got a really benevolent spin on it, and I hope you are right. That's all I'm saying.
Darius: No, there's going to be benevolent and there's going to be malevolent uses of it. And the whole point with executive function is there will only be benevolent uses of it if you employ them to be benevolent and you give them that task. So in the future instead of oh, I'm just drowning and so on in all of this, what I would encourage you to do is to start thinking when you've got that agent. You go, well, what agents would I have? Well, I would love an expert dyslexia reading assistant at my fingertips whenever I want for the next six years. I would love an expert advocate to write all my emails and track the educational plan for the next seven years, starting whenever I can. And the benevolence only comes if people use agency to do it. So the worry about malevolence is highly unlikely that models will have internal malevolence. What is highly likely is that other people with their executive functions will use the model to be malevolent and they will use their executive function to organize a heist or whatever, just like we use other tools. So a knife can be used for malevolence or for love by cooking a good meal for someone or by stabbing them in the gut, one or the other. And it all depends on what the person holding the knife chooses. And that's the same with AI. It comes down to our choice. And if we comes down to the conductor.
The proportion of executives and employees is going to shift dramatically in the future
Yeah, yeah. So this is the incredible thing that we don't have yet, but we will be having in three to five years’ time. We've got the glimmers of it now.
Erica: So my question to you is, how do we Prepare for this in a way that we can nurture benevolence and we can manage this in, mature and healthy way.
Darius: Yeah. Well, I think it's understanding that this proportion of executives and employees is going to shift. So at the moment, let's say the proportion is 1 to 10,000 or 1 to 5,000 people. If you average out the number of executives that are truly being an executive in the business world, to those who have got jobs
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Darius: to find roles, this is your job. This is a process you have to follow. This is what you've got to do. That is going to turn into. A lot more people are going to end up needing to be executives of agents who can do those regular procedural jobs instead of them. So gradually, you and your children are going to be moved into a realm of where you choose to be an executive of some mission or activity, or you choose to be.
Erica: I. I'm curious because there are those people that have no interest at all in managing or being executives.
Darius: That's right.
Erica: How do they handle this shift in expectation, delegate to somebody else that is more comfortable with managing management? I mean, you could, right? You could have a personal, A person, literally a personal assistant that could help you with the management. So this is the interesting thing because a lot of people are very afraid of all of their jobs being doled out to AI. But we are going to need those individuals that are really gifted at executive functions, that are gifted at management and that can help those. We're going to create new disabilities. If.
Darius: What if.
Erica: What if that's your disability? What if that's your disability?
Darius: You're. It's interesting in your language you're talking about management. It's interesting. This is not management. Okay, so if you think about a business.
Erica: Well, it's reasoning. It's reasoning. But what.
Darius: Let's all executive.
Erica: Okay.
Darius: Much more than.
Erica: I understand that. But what if that's something you're not good at and you don't want to do?
Darius: It'll be solved. So if you think about it, in these layers, you've got, technical layer, management layer, executive layer in an organization, just as a basic structure, the AI will move up through those layers. It will go through the technical layer, which is going through right now. And then in the next year probably it will start becoming much better at management of multiple systems and processes and making sure some stuff happens. But that doesn't mean they're an executive. It means they're managing projects. They're not deciding what projects get done. they're not responding to changes in circumstances that are big, that require changes in tax. That's the executive's job.
Erica: I'm one of those people that notices that AI makes mistakes
Erica: Now, what about those people, and I'm one of them that notices that AI makes a lot of mistakes.
Darius: Yes, it does.
Erica: Do you think it's going to get better? Is it going to still make? Because it feels to me, and I don't know if this is true or not, but it seems to me that it makes more mistakes now than it did in the beginning.
Darius: Well, it depends. So, yes, it does make a lot of mistakes. And what we're talking about here is not AI now, but where AI will be in two, three to five years.
Erica: So you're thinking in two to three, five years it's going to be less fallible.
Darius: Absolutely. Erica, it's just absolutely mind blowing what it can do.
Erica: I know, because you go into this, you do this research, you know, people
Darius: go and do a bit of AI stuff and they're kind of doing AI stuff that is two years ago. They don't actually know what happened two weeks ago, which is transformative. So if you don't know it's there, you don't use it.
Erica: Exactly. I, mean, I can't tell you how much. I have a lot of students that are so anti AI and it's hard.
Darius: That's fascinating. Tell me more about that. That's,
Erica: Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I've got quite a lot of students that are like, oh, no, I'm not interested. I don't want to have anything to do with AI. I'm thinking of one in particular.
Darius: Okay, how old are they? Give me the context.
Erica: All ages.
Darius: Well, give me a range then. What sort of age range are we talking?
Erica: 13-year-olds, 13 to 26 to college students, High school students? I'm thinking of one in particular who I'm very, very fond of, who just doesn't want to have anything to do with it. And so I lightly walk them in. They just, they're not interested. I think a lot of kids have been told in school that it's cheating,
Darius: they don't want to be a cheater,
Erica: they don't want to be a cheater, but they also just have a bias towards it, and it makes sense because
Darius: they want to actually learn, they want to actually think and grow.
Erica: Yeah, they want it to be theirs, they don't want it to be someone else's thoughts. And AI often gets wrong and. Or their teachers are putting it under AI discrimination, or they're discriminating against it and saying, like, we think this might be AI. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. So they're so afraid. I mean, teachers have really embedded
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Erica: in some of my students a deep frame fear of it, or that it's just evil. There are all sorts of okay kind of thought paradigms there. But it's really interesting because I was working with this one student on, NoteBookLM and I said, forgive me for being so aggressive and assertive with you about this because we were studying for a test, he had a midterm coming up, and I'm like, will you just entertain me? Can we take your slides and just put it into NoteBookLM?
Darius: Because they had a lot of resistance to it already.
Erica: Big-time, big-time resistance. And I've been working with a student for a few months now, and it's been just baby steps and just keep cracking the surface. And so we were using NoteBookLM, which by the way, has two new extraordinary features. They now can do an infographic, and they now do visual slides that are tremendous. If you haven't seen it, look at it. Because the imagery is phenomenal now. Anyway, so once we got it in there, because he had to answer questions, his teacher gave him a study guide, and he had to find the answers in the text in all of the slides. And he's like, yeah, we have four of them. And I did the first one and it took me forever, ever. And I'm like, okay, well, just entertain me. Just entertain me for this one hour. And he's like, okay. So we put all the slides into NoteBookLM. And I said, just ask the questions. He said, that's cheating. And I said, no, it's not cheating, because really all you're trying to do is learn the content for the test. Is that true? And he said, yes. I said, so if this takes out all the grunt work, I said, when you have to search for the answer, it takes up a lot of time, takes up a lot of cognitive energy. It's hard for you to maintain attention. This is going to take away a lot of the pain of the process. So just try it. Put one of the questions in and let's see what happens. He puts in the question and then it goes across all the different slides, and it tells you where it got the information from, but it compiles all the information. So, yeah, you could just look for the answer in there and write it down and. And that's not going to be that helpful. But what if you actually read the few paragraphs that they put together there and then from reading that, create your own answer? I Said, try it. He said, wow, actually that was really helpful because it pulled, all of the relevant information together. And I was, and now I really understand it well. And I put down the answer. And he said, that's going to be a lot faster. That's really cool. I said, yes. And now the beautiful thing about this is that, all right, now once you've done this, all of your information is in there. Now we can create a podcast. I said, you're a verbal learner because he spiked out on verbal learning. I said, now we can do a podcast. Now you can interact with the podcasters. You can even ask it to create a podcast based on the questions that your teachers ask asked you for the study guide. And then you can ask them to ask you the questions and then you can interrupt and you can answer it and they'll riff on your answer. I'm like, this was made for you. Now you're reprocessing in a way that works for you. You also like to see the big picture. Let's create a mind map. Let's see what that does to your brain. Wow, that's really helpful. I can see how everything kind of fits together now. Now I can kind of see the big picture. That's really helpful. Yeah.
A student used AI to help him study for a midterm
Well, look here, if you click on this button, we can create flashcards, we can create multiple choice tests, we can create images, we can do all of these things with this kind of bland information. You can reprocess it however you're comfortable. I said, now, this is the thing. When you usually study for a test, you study the day before, right? Yeah. Well, what if you just spend 10 minutes for the next 10 days just playing with all of these different resources? And I said, the cool thing is once you've done your flashcards, you can delete them and you can create some new ones and you can make them harder, easier, you can make them longer, and you can dictate exactly what you want and say, like, there's one section of this that, I'm a little weak on. Just give me questions on that.
Darius: What happened to him? What was his reaction to that? Did he.
Erica: He said, I'm surprised. I'm surprised, actually, this is really cool. I said, now I want you to think about how you felt before our session. Do you remember how you felt when you first came into our session? He said, yes. I said, I had a sense that you were really overwhelmed by this midterm coming up. He said, I was, and he didn't know when it was either. So we emailed his teacher to get that out of the way and first. But I said, now that we have taken these slide decks
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Erica: and put them into NoteBookLM and we've done all this stuff, I said, how do you feel in your body? He said, I feel good. I feel good. And then all of a sudden, I said, you seem to be doing something. What are you doing right now? He said, I'm taking the old slide decks and I'm putting them in right now. And I was like, yes, yes, sold. But I mean, NoteBookLM is just such a gem. It's such a gem because it allows you to process and reprocess it in, in new and fantastic ways. When you create flashcards. To create a new set of flashcards would be so time consuming. It's seconds. It does all the grunt work. And I said to him, I said, you're a smart guy. You have attentional issues. Part of the problem is most of the things that you have to do for school, it doesn't compute. You can't get through it fast enough to hold your attention, and you just get lost in the cognitive overload. I said, this now is going to give you the answers at a pace that is going to appeal to your brain. And he said, you're right, you're right. Because in the beginning it took me a while, it took me about 10 minutes just to get him going because he was just bored. His brain wasn't invested. Everything was too slow and he was just falling in these rabbit holes. And by the end, he was in it. He was in it and it was firing at a pace and a rate that was resonating with him. And I know we'll probably have a little bit of a setback next time, but each time I'm kind of gently pushing him. But I'm also being very honest with. I said, I know I'm being assertive. I know I'm pushing you a little bit. And honestly, after that, if he said, not interested, I'd have to really, I'd have to honor it. But he clearly was. It was really fun. It was a great session. I really enjoyed it.
Darius: Someone listening to this might go, yeah, that's great. You've just demonstrated the power of AI, but they might say, but have you not just done exactly what we're worried about, which is he's now losing some of that ability to find his own information within?
Erica: Well, he still is finding something like, that. He still is finding the information. Okay, he's still finding the information, but it's like instead of Giving him a really complex maze. I'm just pointing out where the information is. The thing is, is what are we trying to do here? He's just trying to learn the content for a test.
Darius: Yes.
Erica: So this is not the time to be giving them mazes.
Darius: Yeah. Okay. Is the goal to be able to navigate a maze to find a piece of information or is the goal to not.
Erica: Not at that.
Darius: Learn that information and use it in a test?
Erica: Yes, that's the goal for that particular.
There are ways you can use AI to help students improve their cognitive skills
Now, there are other things that you could do, but I also want to play devil's advocate here with you a little bit because. And I'll give you.
Darius: I'm being devil's advocate with you, and
Erica: I'm devil's advocate of your devil's advocate. So this is the thing, is that there are those teachers that say, okay, I want you to find an example of the theme of love in this book. You just find a quote, and that might take someone two hours to find it. They eventually find it like I found it. But honestly, like, how good is that for you? The whole time you're getting annoyed, you're frustrated, you're anxious, you're getting behind because you didn't get your other work done.
Darius: Okay.
Erica: Stamina is getting taxed.
Darius: I think that's when we have got to decide what our, role is in that situation. So if our teacher says, this is a form of comprehension test or critical analysis, I'm going to give you this passage. I want you to read this passage, and I want you to pull out certain things from this passage. Okay. Not two hours of a book, but maybe they do that in exams here in the UK.
Erica: I'm sure you've got absolute reading comprehension.
Darius: Yeah. And it develops into critical thinking and critical reflection of literature and so forth, comparing different passages and identifying different themes and techniques and so on.
Erica: But. But AI could take that same skill and break it down and scaffold it and say, okay, I'm going to show you how to do this. Now slowly pull it away so that they're able to do it. Unfortunately, sometimes when we get into inferences, we go from concrete to abstract thinking, and there's, like, no bridge.
Darius: Yeah.
Erica: And some m of these kids get lost.
Darius: And that's the key, I think, in all
00:40:00
Darius: of this for those who are, nervous about taking away our capabilities that are required for true learning. And I think it's this ability to give feedback fast. So it's kind of like if I was to do that comprehension myself, let's say we did have to. And he wasn't just learning it for the facts, but he was having to now go into the more find the information and comprehend it mode instead. How would that work with AI to approach scaffolding? The way I would approach it is I would go to the AI and say, look, I've got to do this,
Erica: I have to learn how to do this.
Darius: I've got to learn how to do this. I don't want you to do it for me. What I want you to do is to create two exercises before I do this. One where you create a passage or find a passage for me with some questions and then you show me how an expert would do it. And then the second one, I'm going to practice on it and you're going to give me advice. And then the third time I'm going to actually do my homework and it's going to be the end result that I want. Yeah. And then actually, it would be quite nice, once I've done that, for you to be the teacher and give me some sort of mark so that I can then go back to the teacher and see if what the teacher says is similar to what you're saying. But I'm not going to change it at that point. That's going to be my fixed response. I'm going to print it as a PDF and that's it. I'm not going to change it.
Erica: And this is exactly what I'm talking about. We have to teach people how to use AI appropriately.
Darius: Yes.
Erica: So many kids don't understand what. What you can. What you should and shouldn't do. Not that I like to use the word should and shouldn't, but there are ways where you can use it that can be extraordinarily beneficial. But also, we have to be honest, the teachers have to be honest and say, what is the purpose? What am I trying to teach someone? If I'm trying to teach them visual spatial skills, then, yes, I want them to do a maze.
Darius: Yes.
Erica: Or if I'm trying to teach them
Darius: some sort of diagram or infographic or
Erica: whatever, there's a benefit. There's a benefit to doing mazes, but it's visual spatial skills.
Darius: Yes.
Erica: Now, we don't need to teach visual spatial skills. If they're studying for a test, they teach memory, memory strategies. And maybe before they were studying for the test, there's some activities that you could give them where they have to search and find information. But when you're right down at the end and there's not a lot of time left, giving them these fill in the blank things is wasting too much cognitive thinking.
Darius: Absolutely. And so what you've just described, or what I just described in terms of that process of, would you give me those two pretests? And then the third one, I'll do it. I was being the executive and I was saying, right, what you're going to do is you're going to take on the role of a test creator, right? Then you're going to take on the role of a student and model a student. Thank you very much. I can see how an expert student would do it. Then on the second one, you're going to take on the role of a coach who's mentoring me through it, not the student. And then on the third one, you're going to take on the role of the marker or the assessor. Those are multiple agents that you already have in your life in some way. At school, there might be a particular student in the class who does them really well and use them as a role model. It might be your teacher fulfilling some of those roles, etc. But they're defined roles that you then become the executive of if you so choose. And that's the key thing. That is agency, and that is the most valuable thing and resource you can build up over the next two to three years. Your ability to be the agent of your own life and to determine, here is an outcome I want to achieve. And once you exercise that muscle, then you will be able to exercise this range of agents that will be available for you in the future.
Erica: It's. It's about conscious learning, and we've talked about this before. You get out of the back seat, hop in the front seat and start driving your own cognition.
Darius: Yes.
Erica: Be aware of it. Be in control of it.
Darius: Erica, we could literally have a podcast that was just AI and executive function that ran every week for the next three years, for example.
Erica: Yeah.
Darius: So much to it. And because. And also it will get more. We're not going to necessarily do that.
Robotic an AI agent workforce is going to flood our world
But that sort of approach, if you did pay attention as a listener, dear listeners, to how would being a really good executive work within the scenario where I'm good at? Maybe you're a really good manager in that environment. Maybe you're a really good technician.
00:45:00
There's not really that many people who are really good executives. It's really hard to be a good executive because it demands skills that were not taught at school. It demands skills that were not taught at work. Because at work, what we tend to be told is, here is the direction we're going. Follow Here is the plan. Follow it. Follow this process, follow this manager, follow this instruction.
Erica: Right. We don't want too many leaders because we'll have too many cooks in the kitchen.
Darius: That's right.
Erica: And that's the paradigm shift. Now we need lots of cooks in
Darius: the kitchen because we all need to
Erica: be our own pots. Yes, that's right. And we have to cook our own meals.
Darius: That's the interesting twist in the tail. Erica. We don't. Because you.
Erica: Oh, I'm just. I'm just using that metaphor, but it
Darius: ties into where we branched off in this conversation, because you asked me in this conversation, what about those people who don't want to be executives? M. What about those people who aren't good at that or don't like that? And then you started talking about managing and executive. And then I started to say, actually managing is quite different from executive. And then we started to talk about how students are starting to use this and having the resistance and this realization that this notebook LM can act as this range of assistance. Now the answer to that question is we won't need to work. We won't need to cook if we don't want to. In five years’ time, we won't need to work. Well, the only way we can do
Erica: that is if we have a lot of money.
Darius: Yeah. Yes and no. Yeah, a lot of money. But what's going to happen with this robotic an AI agent workforce that is going to flood our world. It's going to start in two to three years’ time. It's going to become much more mainstream in about 5, and it will be ubiquitous in about 7 to 10 now in that sort of range, let's say the next 10 years. By the time I retire, it is truly hard to think through the consequences about what's just about to happen. And AI will be able to do so much for us so cheaply. Okay, so cheaply. I mean, literally so cheaply, because. Yeah, you hope so. But that is going to be the forcing function. It's not a hope. It's actually a mathematical economical inevitability because it's a forcing function of competitive environment. If there was only one person allowed to do AI and robots, it would be very expensive. If there were multiple people allowed to do AI and robots, it will become very, very cheap. That's the whole forcing function of competition.
Erica: You know what's an interesting analogy is when phones first came out.
Darius: Yes.
Erica: Only elite people had them.
Darius: Yes.
Erica: But now you even see children in remote villages in very poor regions that have phones.
Darius: Yes. I can't believe it. Because when I went to Malawi 15 years ago, I think it was, I had an expensive iPhone and a laptop. And we were finding it hard to get 3G in our house. We just got the regular, but we didn't get the fancy 3G in our house. And we were just outside of Edinburgh. We'd have to go to the window, put it at the window, and we get the signal, you know, I'm like, my goodness, why is it so hard? Went to Africa, Okay. And we are literally 10 miles away from the city center. We're in a village of 40 people in mud huts, literally made of mud. Okay. Sitting down with them, having dinner. They've got a mobile phone. They open up their mobile phone, I do too. And we share, you know, Facebook. They all do Facebook. Loads of Facebook out there. I've got 3G. I've got 3G. Everywhere I go. It's this dynamic of hopping, jumping, the technology sequence that developing worlds do. And they will hop onto AI faster than us, many ways because it will translate into English to them, into their language. It will do so many of these other things. It will teach their children. There will be so much. So the forcing function of the competition will drive down the cost of intelligence, will drive down the cost of a robot, and these robots will literally do so many things that we spend a lot of money on for very little money.
Erica: You're definitely more on top of it than I am. And I always enjoy riding on your coattails.
Darius: Thank you.
00:50:00
Darius: But at least this, it leaves this big question then. What have I got to contribute to that world?
Erica: Yeah.
Darius: And the answer is a lot.
Erica: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Darius: Because life is not just about a job, which is just over broke. J O B for a lot of people. I'm just over broke. I'm just making ends meet. I'm utterly exhausted.
Erica: I.
Darius: And my dreams I've left behind me because I just can't make them happen and keep food on the table for my children. What happens in this world where the robots start cooking them food, the robots start dealing with the, communications with your head teacher for their education plan, where your child has got an assistant that actually translates something into everything that's verbal or their particular visual way of processing or whatever is their way of processing, et cetera, that things are actually optimized around what we need, rather than what the main average, mean, normal person, typical person needs, which isn't perfect for everyone and is just enough for everyone.
Peter Diamandis says we need a fatalistic optimism about AI
What it means is that if you have agency, you can Achieve so much. If you don't have agency and you don't choose to have agency, can you define that? Agency is choosing to do something, setting your heart on something and using everything you've got to make it happen. That's being an agent in your own life.
Erica: Good.
Darius: That records the tools of executive function to get it done. But fundamentally you can have all the tools, but you go, do you know what I'd, rather do? PlayStation.
Erica: You know what it's about not being afraid.
Darius: Yeah.
Erica: A lot of people are afraid of the unknown. They're afraid of change.
Darius: Yes.
Erica: And we really need to let go of that and just step into the future.
Darius: Yeah. We need a kind of fatalistic optimism. Okay.
Erica: Like that. A fatalistic optimism. That's quite a contrasting term. Explain.
Darius: It is. And the, the dynamic is that we've got with AI, the option to resist it and slow it down and stop it happening. The perfect example of this change in thinking is Elon Musk. Okay, I know he's a controversial figure, you don't like him very much and so on. But let's just put all of that aside. He's a very perfect, a good example of changing in thinking. So 10 years ago, Elon Musk is kind of where we are right now. He's like, holy shit, I've just seen what AI can do. I've just been speaking to Larry at Google and the guy who runs Google, Larry and Sergey. I don't know them personally, I can't remember their surnames, but he calls them Larry and he's like, this is dangerous. We've got to do something about this. This is really dangerous. And he was all over the place saying, AI is really dangerous. We've really got to do something about it, like right now. And that's when he started OpenAI as an open, source counterparty to Google. Because he's like, we cannot have this in one company with one private individual controlling all of this. This could just ruin our world and our society. We just can't have this. It's terrifying. And he was all over the place talking about how terrifying this is. No one would listen to him. So in the end he says, we've got to find an alternative, make an alternative. And the alternative is to have an open-source AI where everyone in the world can have access to AI and not have to go to Google for it. So there's a balance.
Erica: Yeah.
Darius: So then OpenAI did the dirty on him, and so on and so forth, etc. However you want to view it. And they had a falling out because it wasn't going down that route and they were becoming like a Google of their own. So people would go to him and say, well, you're scared of all of this. What's your take on it? His take on it now is he said, I realized I had a choice to stand back and be an observer or to step in and to be a participant. Now when Elon Musk steps in and becomes a participant, that's Xai and now one of the most powerful AI software in the world. And he said, and that he's the guy who used the term fatalistic optimism. He said, I realized that I could no longer stop it or hold it back or slow it down, which is what I really wanted. I thought we should slow this down. But I've realized I have to accept the fate. And the fate is that this is going to happen one way or another. So that's where the fatalism comes in. This is going to happen one way or another. However, I do have a choice of whether I am going to bias myself towards being optimistic or pessimistic. Now at that time he was speaking to Peter Diamandis, I think seven days ago in his podcast,
00:55:00
Darius: very good podcast. And he said to Peter, I'm not as optimistic as you are because there are some significant risks and threats, but I've chosen to be optimistic instead of pessimistic because if I'm fatalistically pessimistic, it will definitely go wrong. But we have to be fatalistically optimistic to maximize the chance of it going right. And that's why I think we as individuals have our own level of choice to make whether or not we choose to be optimistic and engage and be an agent in this and an agent for good, because there will inevitably be agents for bad. That's a given. But who will stand up and be good, do good with it? And that's the core question right now, is who that is there out there will step forward and say, I will choose to be, accept that this is going to happen and do everything I can to create an optimistic future for
Erica: myself and my children in my world.
Darius: My world.
Erica: Yes, our world. That would be nice. I think that there's definitely, particularly in the States, a lot of people are struggling. It feels, it's difficult and we need to pull together and have some optimism. I think it's. That's what we need.
Darius: Yes. And it's absolutely mind-blowing what people will be able to achieve. And I think it will often come hopefully from children, young people who've got more of an open mind. But it's interesting to hear a lot of them are being poisoned against it and are becoming pessimistically.
Darius: What would be the opposite of fatalism? It. Fatalism is like, it's inevitable it's going to happen, but they are, they believe that they can do their bit to stop it happening. And the thing is that.
Erica: Or they can just put their head in the sand and do it the old-fashioned way. But unfortunately, the old-fashioned way is going to be a paradigm that's not going to work.
Darius: Well, it does work. It does work in certain scenarios.
Erica: There's some places where you just go,
Darius: I am not going to accept that this is inevitable and I'm going to choose a different way. That's that.
Erica: And I'm sure there are going to be some parts of this world that will completely cut all technology out and we'll go back to old fashioned ways of being.
Darius: Yeah, like an AI form of the Amish or something like that. Yes, absolutely. And there will be a place for that.
Darius: AI is like a tsunami wave for the mainstream
But for the mainstream, this is one of those things that is like a tsunami wave. It has a ready habit.
Erica: And there are a lot of tsunamis. There are a lot of tsunamis happening. Right. If you brace for it, it's.
Darius: Yeah, I'm bracing for the tsunami. I'm going to stand here and I'm just not having it. It's just not happening. And that wave is just not happening. And it's a tiny little wave in the background. And your dad's beside you going, Darius, I think that's quite a big wave. No, I'm going to hold on to this pole here I've tied myself on. I'm, going to happen. And it happens. I watched it. When the tsunami happened, do you remember the tsunami that happened? What was it, 10, 15 years ago? They held themselves onto which tsunami? The big tsunami that hit south of India. What happened on Christmas, Boxing Day, 10 years ago. And it was, I can't remember, but basically it was a massive worldwide story and tens of thousands of people died. There was an earthquake tremor in the middle of the ocean. Right. The rest of the world knew it through the news sources, but the people on the island did not. There was not an early warning system. They stood on the shore, and they watched the tsunami wave coming in. Some of them said, we're going to high ground. And they were laughed at. Other people looked at this remarkable surfing wave that was coming in because it doesn't look like much on the surf on the, in the horizon. And then when it got big enough, they looked at it and they realized this is quite big. And they held onto things and, and then they went up into their building when they decided that wasn't enough and it flattened the building. And you had these videos of people holding onto tree trunks as the tsunami broke over them and then just pulled them away and killed them. And the harrowing part of it all when you watched it, because I watched some of this live afterwards, was that all they had to do was walk 200 yards away and get to an elevation of about 50ft and they would have been fine, those people who did that. And we're in a similar scenario with
01:00:00
Darius: AI. It is a tsunami. The earthquake has happened miles away from us. It's created this wave, it's building up energy and it's coming towards us. And then there's people who are looking at from higher up going, I'm tracking this. This is coming in two to three years’ time. And then there's other people going, no, this is ridiculous. I'm against tsunamis. I'm going to stand here and resist this. And I'm looking at them going, oh, my goodness, please don't take that approach. Except that certain houses are going to be destroyed. You're going to go up, you're going to save your life, you're going to come back down and you're going to rebuild it. Except in this scenario, you can have robots and AI to help you rebuild the house that you really wanted in the first place and live an even better life if you choose to. So that's the kind of scenario we're talking about here. It's serious stuff.
Erica: Interesting, interesting metaphor.
Darius: And a lot of it comes down to, well, if I'm standing on this shore for two to three years, what should I do? Make my house stronger, make my job future proof my business or whatever? No, learn executive function skills so that you are ready to be the executive of a whole battery of people that you would have to pay tens of thousands of pounds, 30,000, £80,000 a year each, just to have in your life. Ten of them would cost £800,000 a year or dollars to have them in your life. Like a, but now you're going to have them in your Life for like $100, $150 a month for those 10 experts. What could you do with that?
Erica: A lot, people will have to learn how to use these things. I mean, that's going to be an interesting business. Is teaching people how to use AI.
Darius: Yeah. Yeah.
Erica: Well, what an interesting conversation. That was really good.
Darius: I don't have all these answers, but I'm thinking about this so much and, the thing that keeps coming to the top is how to be a good executive.
Erica: Yeah, definitely. Well, and I'm also going to throw out there how to be cognitively flexible.
Darius: Absolutely. Erica. That's a biggie. So big.
Executive Function Brain Trainer talks about cognitive flexibility and working memory
So big mic drop. Because actually, yeah, that is probably the biggest skill in all of this. That.
Erica: And that's that. And that is a vital, vital piece of executive functioning.
Darius: We don't talk about it that much, do we? We just kind of. We have that sort of. Oh, yeah. We talk about working memory and inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility, those three key aspects of executive function. But then we often talk about working memory and inhibitory control. But cognitive flexibility, we kind of take that a bit for granted. That. That's just. Yeah, try and do a bit of that.
Erica: Well, and maybe that'll be an interesting discussion. Maybe one of these days, in the future we will talk about cognitive flexibility in AI.
Darius: Oh, that would be great. Because it's something that I've not. Well, it really relates to those students as well, because you actually asked that student to just put on pause his resistance and be cognitively flexible and he did that. Credit to him. And then he was like, right, now I'm going to see how this actually adapts. Ah, to me. Yes.
Erica: So, yeah, that's. Maybe next month.
Darius: We'll talk about it next time. Yeah, yeah.
Erica: Well, this was really great, Darius, and thank you so much.
Darius: Thank you, Erica. I enjoy the talks. It's great.
Erica: Yeah, me too. Until next time.
Darius: Until next time. See you.
Erica: Sponsored by the Executive Functioning Remedial Assessment, an online tool that quickly identifies challenges and delivers targeted strategies for success.
Darius: Sponsored by Ivy. Imagine turning your meeting's audio into a live mind map instantly so you remember what matters. Well, try Ivy for free now at ah, Ivy App. that's IVVI App. thank you for joining us at, ah, the Executive Function Brain Trainer podcast.
Erica: Check out our show notes for links and resources and follow us on social media.
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