What Human Psychology Teaches Us About AI Strategy | Prof. Michael Muthukrishna
There's no such thing as an AI strategy that ignores human psychology. That's the view from Professor Michael Muthukrishna, Professor of Economic Psychology at LSE and NYU and author of A Theory of Everyone, who joins Adi Ben-Ari, Founder and CEO of Applied Blockchain and Applied Edge, to explain what centuries of research into human cooperation and cultural evolution reveal about why some companies get real value from AI, and most don't.Michael explains why he's unusually well placed to bridge the two worlds: trained as an engineer before becoming one of the only people at the LSE to train neural networks from scratch, he pivoted into evolutionary psychology to study how humans became the only species to build a "collective brain," learning from one another at scale. That same science, he argues, explains exactly why most enterprise AI rollouts stall: companies treat AI as the goal instead of the business, run the same pilot in a dozen different corners of the org, and set up the kind of zero sum incentives that kill the cooperation adoption depends on.He also makes a claim that should give every leader pause: AI model capability has been doubling roughly every seven months since 2020, meaning a model that can reliably manage half a day's work today will be handling a week's worth within the year, and most organisations are planning as if the technology they have now is the technology they'll still have next year.→ PlusThe Enron story behind why "rank and yank" incentive structures destroy AI adoption, why AI is a general purpose technology like electricity, and why Michael believes humanity has never, in its history, outsourced the thinking itself, until now.→ Mentioned in this episodeA Theory of Everyone: Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We're Going, Michael MuthukrishnaHit Refresh, Satya NadellaSapiens, Yuval Noah HarariElectric Twin, synthetic audience / consumer insight platformThank you for tuning in.appliedblockchain.com | appliededge.com | silentdata.comDisclaimerThis podcast is strictly for educational purposes and does not constitute financial or tax advice. It is not a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or make financial decisions. Always consult with a professional and do your own research.
