EP. 91: Lucas Miller: Becoming Superhuman in the Age of AI
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My guest today is Lucas Miller, it’s his second time on the show; please look up his earlier episode. I highly recommend it. We met over a year ago in Zurich, where I shared with a small group of investors what I learned about my life, investing process, and work in general during the unusual pandemic years. We bonded right away since Lucas told me that my lessons rhyme with what he is studying and researching as a cognitive neuroscientist and human performance researcher at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, where he is the youngest faculty member.
At Berkeley, Lucas teaches MBA students and is best known for his course called "Becoming Superhuman: The Science of Productivity and Performance".
Since COVID began, Lucas has given over 600 talks and keynotes to financial institutions, private equity firms, and investment funds on how to optimize their workflow and enhance creative thinking.
He’s been featured in Forbes, Wired, and the Wall Street Journal
Few might now, that when Lucas was 21, he published his first book on the science of successful learning and getting work done. He wrote most of the book during a summer off in Nepal, and, of all places, the book became most popular not in America, but in Hong Kong! I’m including a link to a free digital copy in the notes to episode: bit.ly/beyondbrilliance
Today, we discuss the aim of artificial intelligence (AI) to recreate human intelligence, its evolution with large language models like ChatGPT, and its ability to generate answers and summaries from vast amounts of data, despite occasional inconsistencies and hallucinations.
Lucas shares that outsourcing lower-level thinking to AI tools allows humans to focus on higher-level tasks and ask better quality questions, emphasizing the need to verify AI-generated information and ensure accuracy and reliability.
My guest tells me to avoid overconfidence in AI and to maintain human judgment in decision-making.
We explore how AI can automate low-impact tasks, augment human work, and transform industries, noting that the speed of AI adoption and improvement is faster than previous technological revolutions.
We highlight that AI can enhance human capabilities and elevate work, but certain tasks will always require human involvement.
The combination of human judgment and AI processing can lead to new levels of innovation and problem-solving, as AI is a tool that can be leveraged to expand the capabilities of the human brain.
We talk about the impact of AI on different fields and tasks, which will require individuals to adapt and find new ways to add value.
Lucas shares insights on how the brain evolved to help humans survive and reproduce, not to optimize and make rational decisions, leading to errors in thinking and judgment due to its limited capacity and finite processing power.
My guest tells me that AI cannot replace human qualities such as trust, empathy, creativity, and moral judgment.
Stay tuned until the end, when you will hear how success for AI in the next 50 years would involve avoiding catastrophic outcomes, creating abundance, solving diseases, extending human lifespan, and addressing climate change, with the challenge of distributing abundance and ensuring meaningful work for humans.
Chapters:
05:00 Introduction and Background 11:00 Understanding Artificial Intelligence 16:46 The Potential and Limitations of AI 26:15 Verifying AI and Ensuring Accuracy 32:06 Automation, Augmentation, and Transformation 38:13 The Impact and Transformation of AI 41:11 Enhancing Human Capabilities with AI 47:31 Expanding the Human Brain with AI 48:58 Adapting to the Impact of AI 49:09 The Evolution and Limitations of the Human Brain 52:20 The Unique Qualities of the Human Brain 58:12 The Adaptability and Constraints of the Human Brain 01:02:47 Fundamental Human Drives and Needs 01:05:46 The Importance of Trust and Human Connection 01:11:46 Success for AI: Avoiding Catastrophe and Creating Abundance 01:14:42 The Challenge of Distributing Abundance and Ensuring Meaningful Work
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