Simon Brown (00:06.575)
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Curious Advantage podcast. My name is Simon Brown and today I'm here with both my co-authors, Paul Ashcroft and Garrick Jones.

Paul Ashcroft (00:18.062)
Right there.

Simon Brown (00:20.527)
So today I'm very excited that we are joined by Dr Michael Houseman. is the founder and CEO of AI Accelerator. He's also bestselling author of this book, Future Proof, Transform Your Business with AI or Get Left Behind. For more than 15 years, he's been helping organizations harness the power of AI and building and deploying AI platforms for everyone from high-growth technology startups to Fortune 500 companies.

His work sits at the intersection of technology, of business transformation and decision making, and his research has been featured in some leading publications like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and The Atlantic. He holds a PhD in applied economics and managerial science from the Wharton School and is a frequent guest lecturer at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. So warm welcome, Mike, to the Curious Advantage Podcast.

Dr. Michael Housman (01:22.072)
Yeah, thanks for having me. Very excited to be here.

Simon Brown (01:24.783)
Likewise and having code on an AI podcast at EY with you for a season and I'm really thrilled that we've managed to get you finally on the Curious Advantage podcast as well. So maybe to kick us off Mike, how do you personally think about curiosity? sort of, how do you think about it and what role does it played in getting you to where you are today?

Dr. Michael Housman (01:47.736)
Yeah, I th I really think it's it's first kind of acknowledging the things you don't understand about this world and having this intense drive, this desire to to try to learn them, to try to just take in as much information as possible. And I think that's especially relevant. I know we'll talk later about kind of lead existing in a world of uncertainty, right? When there's change in the world, kind of wanting to learn more about well, what's driving that? What does the future state look like?

You know, and and really just taking upon yourself to to kind of become as knowledgeable as possible about, you know, how how our world is changing.

Simon Brown (02:26.978)
Not that there's a lot of uncertainty in the world at the moment. So maybe then take us through how that took you to writing Future Proof. So what's Future Proof about? Why should we be future proofing ourselves? What do you mean? And why now, I guess, because of all that uncertainty.

Dr. Michael Housman (02:30.189)
Yeah.

Dr. Michael Housman (02:48.247)
Yeah, I'll I'll give you a kind of, you know, the story of I mean, got a PhD in two thousand nine in condometrics. I decided didn't want to go into academia. I was much more interested in kind of learning about how companies were harnessing the power of data. And I will say I think curiosity has really driven my entire career. I didn't expect to be in this place to be an AI speaker and and teacher and builder, but it was just following, hey, what's what seems the most interesting and what am I most curious about?

And that ultimately led me to build AI platforms for 15 years for startups. And we transformed hiring and lending and fraud detection e-commerce. and in the course of doing that, found a pretty amazing niche just teaching about it, right? Helping to unpack it for executives. And I tell everyone for a data nerd, I'm I'm not bad at engaging audiences and kind of explaining things and meeting them where they are.

So anyhow, that's a kind of long way of of saying that's that's how I've really my career is kind of taking this unusual, these unusual twists and turns, all led by curiosity. And then November 2022, Chat GPT came on the scene. All of a sudden, just the L and D, which was a side hustle, kind of blew up. And I realized I was having more fun doing that than I was just building as a coder. And so I decided to lean into that. but I realized that doing this for groups of fifty or a hundred at a time.

wasn't you know, I th I thought I had some pretty interesting ideas about how the world is changing, how companies can future proof themselves, but you know, it's not scalable. I can't fly everywhere and be everywhere at once. And so I wanted to write this book as a way of distilling these ideas and allowing anyone who wants to to to go online and and pick up a copy and and read. And hopefully it would lead them to think about the world differently than they do. And so I I realized that's it the last thing is I think

organizations justifiably are very nervous about how the world is changing and how they have to evolve with it. And so that's really what the talks are positioned to do is try to help them understand what do I do next, how do I future proof myself and how do I make sure that I remain competitive in in this, you know, rapidly changing world. So that was the kind of driver behind the book. And it was really a labor of love. And I tell everyone the the the book kind of wrote itself, but I didn't realize like it was three months to get a draft. It was

Dr. Michael Housman (05:13.891)
twice as long to get it edited and proofread and designed. And, you know, these are these are I I did not realize at the time like how much work goes into a book, but I'm thrilled to have it out. And the response has been amazing. The reviews are, you know, basically all five stars. So I'm I'm so happy when I have friends and colleagues that can engage with me and say, hey, I read this book and it led me to try my curiosity, led me to vibe code an app, or now I'm totally overhauling my company. So it's been great.

Paul Ashcroft (05:42.734)
Congrats on the book. We were saying we know the effort it is to write but not just write to get a book out there. So congrats. It's a great read. Let's click into this. You talk about future proofing and you just mentioned future proofing of business. Let's click into that. What do you mean by that? And also, why are so many organizations still underestimating the scale of change that AI is going to bring?

Dr. Michael Housman (05:52.313)
Thank you.

Dr. Michael Housman (06:06.967)
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think what it really means is is just preparing yourself for you know, companies have adapted to whatever environment they exist in, but that's changing rapidly. I tell everyone in the book, this is the third digital disruption that we've experienced. And so I like to draw from historical examples. The internet, nineteen ninety-three, it emerges, it connects all the world's information. so many businesses had to adapt and evolve to be able to frankly survive and thrive in an internet age.

Social media was the second. It changed the games, the the rules of play, and companies had to adapt to social media and think how do we weave this into everything we do in order to get in front of customers? And so this is the third digital disruption. We've seen the sort of disruption that those two created. We can anticipate the same, if not more, because of AI. And so companies need to actively be leaning into these technologies, need to be exploring, need to be experimenting.

and need to be guarded against the fact that inevitably there's going to be disruption. Someone's gonna come in, an AI native competitor, and say, Hey, you know, I wanna eat their lunch, your lunch. And so th they really have to be thinking about, well, how could I be that disruptor? How could I be that AI native company to come in and kind of redefine the the rules of play? so that that's really what I mean by by future proofing and

You know, I talk in the book, and we can go into more detail about strategies for for for doing that, right? For adapting to this constantly changing environment.

GAJ (07:41.294)
Do you think honestly that AI is gonna eat the lunch of most of the companies the way we're doing things? Or do you think it's just another disruptor and yet becomes a series of tools that we will apply and it's business as usual but with new a added benefits, if you like? that th that's really a c a question I wanna know, because do you think it is as big a disruption as the hype is you know, about?

Dr. Michael Housman (08:09.623)
Yeah. Yeah, I I do. and and back to Paul's question, his second question, which is I think Amara's law says that we tend to underestimate we tend to underestimate the impact of a technology in the short run and we tend to sorry, sorry, sorry, I reversed it. We overestimate the impact of technology in the short run, we underestimate it in the long run. So I think what that means is there's a lot of hype.

GAJ (08:30.039)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Michael Housman (08:34.763)
Early in a new technology's evolution, but the technology hasn't gotten robust enough yet. And so that leads to a lot of disappointment. And you've seen it already in the last couple years. There have been a lot of articles talking about the hype cycle and you know, is this thing overblown? And you see folks playing around with Chat GPT and Claude and Gemini and you know, using it effectively as a glorified search bar, but not really taking advantage of the full range of opportunities that agentic AI presents.

I absolutely do think that in the long run, we're gonna see a lot of disruption, right? You're gonna see w we have already SaaS companies, I think, are very scared because SaaS is gonna it makes a lot less sense in a world where A, you can vibe code your own application, and B, you might not even need a graphical user interface because at the end of the day, you just want agents to execute whatever, you know, roles and jobs you need done. so I do think that we're we're

without question going to see disruption. But I will say, Garrick, the one thing that I think I'm seeing companies do is really lean in. I think we've learned from history. And if you look at the stats, adoption is still relatively low given how powerful these tools already are, but it's higher than it was at comparable periods when we look at the in emergence of the internet and social media. And so I think

Because we've seen this movie before, because we've seen that disruption, and because we have those stories of the Netflix Netflix versus blockbusters, that we understand, you know, intuitively, hey, this is game-changing technology. And I'm seeing more companies kind of lean into it. You know, I fewer and fewer are saying there there's definitely conversation, hey, is this overhyped and are we spending too much? But there are fewer that say, hey, this is a fad, right? This is gonna go away. I I don't encounter that very often when I'm

Out giving talks and you know, companies aren't pushing back. They're more they're more curious about, you know, what what do I do? Right? How do I start to future-proof myself?

GAJ (10:38.195)
Right, we've been talking to a lot of legal legal firms, a lot of industrial firms, financial finance tech firms, and of course consultancies and so on. There's no doubt that all of them are

you know, facing amazing change, certainly the legal profession, just you know, as one, is having to get its head around technology that can read all precedent and can create an opinion, you know, on the fly. And and yet at the same time they've they're realizing they have to create their own large language models, they have to create their own bubbles, and that's gonna differentiate them from the other players. So they're sort of getting their heads around that people we're talking to. I'm given all of these this

change that coming. I mean do you have a checklist and I'm sure you do in the book, but do you have a checklist for the the kinds of big themes that you would suggest the C suite pay attention to when it comes to this disruption?

Dr. Michael Housman (11:35.47)
Yeah, I mean I will say, well, f to your first point, l you know, law, and this is a good example. A good friend of mine does corporate and transaction law. And a year and a half, when I said, Hey, are you using ChatGPT or Claude or any LLM? He said, Don't bother. They get a lot of things wrong. They hallucinate. Don't I'm not worried about this. I met up with him a few months ago and he his response was the opposite. He said, Lord, we have to use these tools.

They've gotten really robust. They now like he basically said, hey, I need my job is going to evolve and you know maybe it just changed dramatically. So, anyhow, to your first point, law I think is is center stage. Any knowledge work is center stage. And you see this technology and it's basically going exponential. So, anyhow, that that just to your first point, it kind of jot jumped out at me. As far as what companies can do, you know, I outline it in the book. I think there's two ways to be thinking about AI right there's the incremental and there's the transformational.

And the incremental, I think, is what every company is doing right now, which is saying, hey, where are their repetitive processes? Where are there things that agents could take off my people's plates in order to allow them to free up their time and to do, frankly, the parts of their job that are more innately human. And I and you know, that means taking an AI census, sitting down. I leave these workshops all the time. Sit down, get your arms around where are all the opportunities. Don't start with the sh bright, shiny tool.

start with the pain point and then work backwards to the tool and then evaluating them based on kind of the value they create for the organization, how much cost, time, risk is involved. The thing I don't see as many companies doing is looking ahead three, five, ten years into the future and saying, hey, where is this disruption going to come from? You know, what is the core job that I'm doing? There's an exercise in the book called Jobs to be done.

What is the sat the need that I'm satisfying for my clients and my customers? And then saying, hey, how would an AI native disruptor try to, you know, displace me? And that and you know, that means looking at you know, if you didn't have all that infrastructure and legacy architecture, you know, how could you leverage your resources to be able to be that AI native disruptor? and I will say that I think

Dr. Michael Housman (13:52.42)
Companies are realizing that in an age of AI, data and subject matter expertise is are are really the moat. So anyone can build agents and technology now is becoming ubiquitous. But if you have a massive data moat and if you have subject matter expertise and relationships that are difficult to replicate, those are your differentiators and those are the things that allow you to be the disruptor. And so I think that's

You know, it's scary, but it's exciting because it doesn't mean everything is is in, you know, being in a process of upheaval. There are ways you can lean into that and make sure that you you manage to kind of remain in your, you know, spot or even leapfrog past peers.

Simon Brown (14:33.75)
If I think that, Michael, I think it's...

Two and half, three years ago when we first met in Palo Alto, you ran a session that I attended, our disruptive tech program where we got hands on with some of these tools. And I remember it sort of blowing my mind of what could be done in such a short amount of time. Considering how much has changed in that two and a half years and what is now possible with the sort of very latest models that we have today. Is there another side to Garrett's question of, you know, is it all hype?

actually, are we taking it seriously enough? Is there actually another side of it that many organizations are not appreciating what the very latest tools and technologies can actually do? And we may be underestimating where some of it is. People sort of put it down to, it's just a tool, it's a technology, I've seen blockchain come, I've seen whatever come before, it's just going to be something else. Is it that we're actually underestimating where it's going to take things?

Dr. Michael Housman (15:34.263)
Yeah, I mean, I think, especially amongst individuals, we absolutely are, right? If you look at kind of the range of adoption, I latest stats are somewhere around 10% of people are using it daily. So one in ten are making it a part of their daily workflow. That's insane to me, given how powerful the tools are. you have this massive gap. You know, OpenClaw emerged, I think, three months ago, followed by all the agentic tools. They've really come into their own.

And I remember a coup a month after Open Claw came out, and my technologist friends won't stop talking about it, yet I took a survey of audience members, very smart, mid-career folks, top of their game, who here has heard of Open Claw, and not a single hand went up. And so for me, that that gap is unbelievable. And you know, and Simon, I try to in those workshops, we make sure that hands-on experimentation and and kind of following your curiosity is a core part.

Because I really try to architect architect those mind-blowing, you know, light bulb moments. and sometimes folks will get it. Like I will shoot, we have a workshop, build your own agent, and we give folks, you know, time and guidance for building an agent. and some, you know, it's fascinating to see the reaction because some will automate, you know, hey, grab news from the web and you know, post it in my feed or in my Slack, and that's great. But

I'd say it's not, it's a rare, it's a minority that says, my God, I could automate all my calendaring and my emailing. And I spend a lot of time man me personally managing engagements, talking to clients, booking flights, contracts. It's hard to get them to the point where they realize, no, everything I do on my laptop can be automated. And so it's it's it's difficult work because I really want everyone for me, it's mind blowing, right? Once I started playing with the tools, I realized like, my God.

I have a massive journey and me and my company have this massive journey ahead to consolidate all our knowledge and then to build agents on top of it. but I still don't, as much as I'm out there evangelizing, I still think a very small minority of people actually understand the true power of these tools. And so I think you're exactly right. It's like on one hand, people are saying this thing is overblown and hyped up, and and on the other, I once in a while people say like, this isn't people don't.

Dr. Michael Housman (17:51.179)
even realize the full capability of what's coming. It's this huge gap.

Paul Ashcroft (17:56.751)
I think I would agree in your book you have this great phrase technology is easy people are hard. I'm reminded of the book David Graeber's book Bullshit Jobs from a few years back where I forget the exact percentage like 70 % plus of jobs are frankly utterly pointless. And now here we have bit of technology that's coming along that perhaps is

Dr. Michael Housman (18:07.609)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dr. Michael Housman (18:16.697)
Ha ha.

Paul Ashcroft (18:20.62)
taking away at least the part of those jobs that is pointless to people and makes them uninspired and unengaged in their work. So just to continue that point about adoption and people engaging in the change, in the new technology, in doing things differently, what can leaders do? What do organizations need to do to get out of the way and to enable people to actually get involved and get into this and be part of that future?

Dr. Michael Housman (18:50.093)
Yeah, I you know, the story in the book, technology is people, technology is hard. I'm sorry, technology is easy, people are hard, came from spending years on the front lines building this technology, deploying it to people on the front lines. We built hiring software and we could show that if you used our software to hire people, you'd end up with better outcomes. At some of our clients, we saw a huge lift, at some, not at all. And so we would dig in and say, Well, why is it flat at certain sites? And what you would find more often than not is you'd have a hiring manager on the front lines.

Who you take him aside, him or her, and they'd say, Listen, you know, Dr. Egghead, I've been doing this for 20 years. I know how to hire people. Your algorithms, as smart as you may be, your algorithms aren't gonna help me do a better job. And that's, you know, that's one of many stories from my career of how people frankly push back and don't trust algorithms. And there's also a lot of fear of AI taking people's jobs. So I I outline in the book a lot of strategies for encountering what I what I call the people problem.

Which is, hey, if you build this amazing technology, you spend a lot of money, you deploy it, and it doesn't get into people's hands, they don't use it. It's like the tree falling in the forest. Did you even do anything at all? I think a couple key pieces to this. Number one is leaders have to get engaged. there's actually research that just came out of Microsoft and they studied what gets people to that frontier, right? What encourages and enables people to really dig in. And it's actually two times

more important, the culture they live in and their direct manager than the individual characteristics like their proclivity for technology and their demographics. And so that means, and when you dig in, you say, well, what about the managers that lets people that encourages people to dig in? The manager themselves is really fluent with AI tools. They carve out time for experimentation, for curiosity, right? And they and they provide an environment that's safe to be able to explore, experiment, sometimes fail.

And so I think that's number one is start with the top, make sure that the leaders are leaning into this technology. and then the second is you know, I think via you know policies and culture, you know, I worked with an a CEO who gave his people a small budget for AI experimentation and said, Hey, here are the rules of engagement. Don't send it anything you shouldn't, but try new tools, explore, experiment, follow your curiosity. if you find a winner,

Dr. Michael Housman (21:13.197)
There's a Slack channel or a Teams channel that you can send out those, you know, trumpet those wins and encourage others to do the same. Working with companies that have a committee that fast tracks AI applications so they don't go through a six to twelve month procurement cycle that they can quickly get into people's hands when they find a winner. and then lastly, this is something I've done with my teams for years, and it speaks to curiosity, which is we we borrow from Google's 20% rule.

And their thing is, you know, 20% of your time, Fridays typically, are devoted to exploring, experiment, follow some project, some passion project that does create value for the company that's not, you know, totally independent. But do you know, explore and and let's carve out time for that. And I know it sounds hard to do in companies where everyone's busy and we all have a million different things, but some of the most amazing breakthroughs, some of our research, there's so much.

powerful stuff that comes out of that 20% time. And so I encourage companies to to do that and say, hey, 20%, your 20% of your week is AI time. It could be the mornings, it could be Fridays, but experiment, explore, try new things, you know, fail, and then get back up and find things that work for you.

GAJ (22:26.563)
We had a wonderful podcast some years ago with a futurist friend of ours from Boston who you remind me about you know the need for experimenting and setting that time aside in in organizations is so powerful. And he would talk about that from the big bang from the Big Mac to the Big Bang, how ants would find some food, but they always have other streams going out there and looking at other opportunities. So they might be all focused on the Big Mac.

But if the rain washes that away, something they will have other opportunities and they'd redivert their f their forces, if you like, to keep keep the the hive alive. I I also think about change and how it's always been with us and change is constant, more change than ever. And how people are are so afraid of what's going on with AI and will it take all our jobs? And yet we know that every time large change comes, it

Dr. Michael Housman (23:04.153)
Yeah.

GAJ (23:25.289)
opens up enormous opportunities because problems emerge, you know, things have to be solved and there's work to be done. So it's about redeploying resources to my mind and not to be afraid of it in in that way. And the other thing one one of the challenges we we focus on I'd interested in your in your opinion on this. One of the things we foc certainly focusing and see in London a lot is with the professional services firms is the question of young people coming through. Now every time you you work on AI, you know, you you got your

prompt engineering, you've got your sense of what question you're asking, and and your experience gives you sophistication in how to ask good questions and and know what a good result or good response is from the tool. But that takes experience and that takes time. And what we're seeing in some of the professional services law again is that some of those entry-level jobs are very sparse and it's becoming very difficult for young people to find their way in. I mean it's how

Happened very quickly in the last year. So, how how do we solve that problem? J I mean, just for a moment, in terms of the the change challenge that we're facing not only as organizations and but as societies, how do you think what do you have any ideas about how we solve the problem of of bringing the next generation through and in and allowing them to get the experience that you know is beyond just being on their on their screens?

Dr. Michael Housman (24:49.965)
Yeah. I mean I've I've two thoughts. number one, th this hits me on a pr you know, I have friends who will have their recent college grad connect with me and they'll say, Hey Mike, AI's changing the game. could you talk to my recent college grad? Because you're right, the stats show junior level hiring is declining. We know that without you know, for a fact. And so I'll talk to them and it's very, you know, it's chat like you can see the desperation in their eyes and almost the frustration. Hey, I paid my dues. I went to college like my parents told me to.

I can't find a gig. You know, to them, I I will say two things. number one, they have a certain digital plasticity that you don't see in the mid-career folks that I'm often working with during these workshops. so you know, I think that's an opportunity, right? They are so native to just working with, you know, computers, SaaS tools, internet, and AI, and they get it immediately. And they'll often

Just speed ahead with these workshops and they'll create things in half the time. I think that's a d advantage. I think that is something they need to really lean into. And so what I tell all those grads when they get time with me is hey, learn, learn the crap out of AI, right? You can you have a distinct advantage because you don't have to relearn anything. You don't have to kind of retrain your brain. You can be AI native and you can basically multiply your throughput.

Because you're going to create leverage because you know how to build agents, right? You can create five or 10x, the throughput you would ordinarily have. so that's number one. that said, it doesn't really address the question of like subject matter expertise and experience, right? And that's a that's a challenge. So, you know, I'll talk to tax professionals and they'll say, listen, I'm only in this position of leadership because I spent 10, 15 years grinding on tax returns and I know the ins and outs of them.

And so that's how I've reached this point where I can think strategically because I did all those calculations, you know, almost by hand for years. That's trickier. I see organizations actually exploring apprenticeships. So, you know, almost thinking, hey, if you're going to be groomed to be a leader, maybe you don't need to spend the 10, 15 years grinding on whatever it is that gets you there. Maybe you can just learn leadership skills from the folks that you're eventually going to be replacing when they when they age out. so I think that's an interesting model.

Dr. Michael Housman (27:13.537)
Right. but yeah, the question becomes do you need do you need to have spent all that time grinding and the and the weeds and the details? If AI can take that off your plate, you know, it's kind of like having an electric calculator. Like I rely on it to do calculations. You know, I can do most of them by hand. Some more complex stuff, like it would just take a lot of pens and paper. But at some point, if I know it's gonna give me the right answer, maybe I just need to be able to work with it, right? And I don't need to replicate everything that goes on under the

GAJ (27:14.049)
Yeah.

GAJ (27:25.847)
No.

GAJ (27:42.604)
It's fascinating. You you're talking about, you know, professionals and the need for ex expertise and their number way throughs thro numbers of way through. I really r I really respond to your point about apprenticeships and and and perhaps guilds. Maybe that's a a weak signal. Maybe we'll see the expansion and the return of of the guilds and apprenticeships to teach people the kind of expertise alongside AI as they move into the professions. perhaps that's

Dr. Michael Housman (28:08.781)
Yeah. Yeah. And I would say I think I'm I'm big on mentorship. I think it's it's such a underrated kind of philosophy and approach to work. I I makes me sad that because of COVID, it's much less the norm to go into an office and to be there physically. You know, we've rebounded a bit, but yeah, that's the th you know, I learned I I'm big on learning in person. There's nothing like

GAJ (28:27.827)
It's the challenge, yeah.

Dr. Michael Housman (28:34.763)
standing over someone's shoulder and saying, okay, here's where that mistake in your code base is and this is what I would have done. And so that's the other thing is if if I was twenty two right now, I'd learn the crap it of AI, I'd be looking for a job where I can learn directly, next sitting next to someone, and I can pick their brain, versus doing it remotely. You don't have that that water cooler time to be to really kind of suck up knowledge.

GAJ (28:51.714)
Yeah.

GAJ (28:57.42)
Yeah.

Simon Brown (28:59.434)
I agree with you in those two pieces Mike in terms of that sort of yeah and get asked quite regularly as I think it's like AI skills but then also you still need some sort of that technical knowledge of whatever it is you're sort of studying but you need to supercharge it with the AI skills and I think it was Jensen Hwang from Nvidia was sort of talking about it. If I'm gonna hire an accountant I want the accountant with AI skills, if I'm gonna hire a lawyer I want the lawyer with AI skills or whatever so if you're in the job market having the qualification is fine but you need the AI skills on top.

spent the weekend with a friend of mine who's a teacher and it didn't sound like the schools are looking at AI in that same way of expecting that people need these skills when they come out on top of that sort of base level of education as well. In the conversations that you're having, you seeing the universities or the schools starting to pick up on the need for this AI skill or?

is what you're seeing, the sort of view that it's cheating and avoid AI at all costs.

Dr. Michael Housman (30:02.328)
Yeah, I mean a little bit, but I still think they predominantly think it's cheating. and it's it's on for you know, so I have fen friends of mine that are professors at universities and they basically come up with all sorts of ways to make sure that folks aren't using AI to do their jobs. And I think that's a little misguided. I think if anything, you should embrace it, right? And and almost require it. And I'll give you an example, a friend of mine is a marketing professor at University of Texas.

Simon Brown (30:07.799)
Yeah.

Dr. Michael Housman (30:31.299)
He desi he teaches a design thinking course where they develop a business plan and a you know basically a business from scratch. They'll create videos. Well, he knew the work that I do and and I went in there and I taught his students how to do all of that with AI, right? Developing a business plan, ideating, ideating with LLMs, doing deep research using tools like perplexity, data analysis, tables, graphs, all that using various LLM-based tools.

even creating a video that showcases the product, they're able to do it in a fraction of the time that it would have taken them otherwise. The results are better. And I promise you guys that it's not less thinking that goes into this process. It's more, right? Because they get to focus on thinking more strategically and they're not in the weeds, you know, crunching numbers in Excel. So, you know, I I would argue, and I know Ethan Moloch at Wharton has done the same thing where he has an entrepreneurship class

And this process that was an entire semester got boiled down to I think a few weeks, maybe a month total. So it's not a cheat, you know, it shouldn't be banned from the classroom. I think faculty and you know, I don't envy them because it's really challenging, but I think they need to take the opposite approach, which is how do I really enable, encourage them to lean in, to use these tools, to complete assignments, to to create whatever it is we would have for this course.

Paul Ashcroft (31:54.349)
It's fascinating. You mentioned the calculator house and I am wondering, it was probably before my time, when the calculator was introduced into school teaching, how...

how long it took before the teachers in the curricula caught up to say, actually, no, don't. Yes, learn how to factorize, but you can just put it in your calculator. Yes, learn to draw a graph, but also just put it in the calculator. there's that transition period. I don't know whether it's one year, three years, five years, 10, right? Yeah. want to, just to move us on, I wanted to ask you about agentic because there's explosion in AI agents.

Dr. Michael Housman (32:32.078)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Ashcroft (32:33.25)
becoming more more autonomous, there is a huge amount of experimentation, which as you say, is starting at the level of work process, existing jobs to be done, figuring out what can be automated. What are your thoughts on that? What are your watch outs? How should organizations think about it in terms of trust, oversight, accountability? When and where do you keep humans in the loop? What are your thoughts on, on agentic AI?

Dr. Michael Housman (33:02.051)
Yeah, I mean I think the the first off, the technology is so incredibly powerful. I mentioned when you have that light bulb moment, you kind of can't stop seeing all the opportunities for agentic AI. I have a long list of tickets in Asana where I'm like, I need to identify this and this and this, and it's gonna take me months, but it's already saving me a huge amount of time. I will say there is a trust building exercise that has to occur when you're working with agents.

And I'll I'll give you a very concrete example, which is I wanted to build out I I wanted to build out an email autoresponder. Everyone spends a lot I spend a lot of time responding to email, especially from clients, and they usually take on a similar flavor. And so I thought, okay, it should be easy to build that out. And the answer is it it could automate responses, but it didn't know the context in which I knew someone. So it would respond to Simon the same way it would respond to someone I've just met, even though I've known Simon for

three years and we've worked together for, you know, for just as long. And so then I used vibe coding tools to build out a tool that would basically collate all of my communications. And I thought that was really cool that it now knows all the context of my relationship with Simon. But before I then turned it out loose into the world, I needed to kind of create some guardrails, right? So the first thing is, yeah, you can draft an email, but don't, I'm not going to send anything out unless I've seen it first and I've gotten my eyes on it and I

There's that process of getting more and more comfortable with what the AI is doing. You know, I started giving it limited access to various SaaS applications, but over time I got more and more comfortable and I said, okay, we can broaden the aperture. And then, you know, over time now I've gotten to the point where I have I really fully trust the agents, right? I'll probably get to the point in the near future where I could say you can send emails out on my behalf without me seeing, or at least certain types of them. but it's a

process of getting, you know, more and more comfortable. And I will say that governance, think of that governance in the same way you would onboarding a new employee. So I think one of the mindset shifts, and Ethan Malik talks about this a lot in co-intelligence, these tools aren't like Google or Excel or a hammer. They're not really tools. Think of them more as colleagues. And so I think that's a really good mindset shift. If you were onboarding a new intern and you were saying, hey, you're going to automate a respond, you know, new chief of staff.

Dr. Michael Housman (35:27.063)
You're gonna start sending emails out on my behalf. Well, you would have rules of engagement, you'd be very clear about your expectations. You would say, Hey, at first I want you to run stuff by me, clarify and ask where you're confused, before you gave them full control over everything. And so I think companies would do well to think of agents in the same way you do a really smart intern, but one that needs to be shown a lot of the ropes. And you start very restrictive.

GAJ (35:32.631)
Mm-hmm.

GAJ (35:51.693)
Mm.

Dr. Michael Housman (35:53.796)
And you say, hey, here are the guardrails, here are the things you can't do, here's the things you can never do. But over time, I think we're gonna get more and more comfortable with agents. And I think eventually we'll get to the point where, you know, you trust them, you know, with with frankly every application that we engage with.

GAJ (36:09.543)
It's fascinating the future. That's coming. We had a a great chat, a couple of chats actually with Alexa Campbell from Microsoft who was involved in the kind of frontier organization research that you referred to. And she was bringing up the point about you know agentic and working alongside these new agentic colleagues colleagues who work twenty four seven and and just keep going. And then the question is how do you account for them? There's a problem we haven't solved. How do you how do you account for the value they add to the organization? how do you

write it off on the balance sheet. You know, it's like these are basics. I if you were sitting with a CEO today, Has, who what you know, someone who wants to future proof their organization over the next three years, what are the two or three biggest shifts you think they should be making right now?

Dr. Michael Housman (36:56.621)
Yeah. Yeah, like I said, I think first they themselves need to be in the tools. They ne need to set aside time to experiment. The cul it culture flows from the top. And I think that's especially true of new technology like AI. and I've often talked to CEOs that say, you know, my my my people need to be on AI yesterday and then I'll ask them, Well, how are you engaging with it? And they're like, I play around with Chat GPT once in a while. I you know, search for whatever it is articles. So no no no no.

No no one get gets to sit this one out. Everyone needs to lean in. so I think starting with that, like I said, empowering employees, giving them time to experiment, I think doing that AI census, sitting down, I think all hands like a full day workshop, and those are the things that I lead every day. Getting everyone on the same page about what this is, trying to give them hands-on experience, that architect, that mind blowing, you know, the the the shift in thought so that they get excited.

not fearful. I can't overestimate how much fear is out there about AI. and then starting to develop a shared vision, getting aligned on what the future looks like. So we'll spend the afternoon and we'll do a lot of strategic thinking. We'll do that AI census. We'll start to think about what's the job to be done. How would an AI native competitor come in and try to take our lunch. And so I think that's that's the first step, which is let's get everyone on the same page, excited about AI, carving out time for exploring, experimenting, and and really

thinking about what the future looks like. And then, you know, the the other analogy I I've been using a lot is it's a fitness journey. So th those workshops are great. Folks get supercharged, but you think of it as like getting into the gym. Like you work out with a trainer once or a week. That's not going to get you fit. These tools are constantly evolving. So you need to continue to be consistent. You need to have that discipline and it can't just be a

You know, let's get excited about this and let's move on to the next, right? And so I think companies are struggling with that a bit. And and I'm, you know, now basically helping them think about, you know, I've kind of acting like a personal trainer for the AI fluency. but yeah, those are the those are the things. Let's get aligned, let's get everyone excited, and then let's make sure that we've built out mechanisms that will keep us consistent, that'll keep us on that path.

Simon Brown (39:11.566)
Something you mentioned there that I think is different about AI from everything that's been before, which is this constantly evolving element of it, of sort of something I tried last week that didn't work. If I go in today, maybe it will work. how do you seeing that people are getting their heads around that difference? Because I guess if I think back a year ago, people tried a tool, didn't quite do what they wanted, write it off.

tried that, done, no. Are you finding people are shifting their mindset now to actually see it as a sort of constantly evolving capability or are people still in the sort of, I tried it, it didn't do quite what I wanted, I'll write it off now.

Dr. Michael Housman (39:56.814)
Yeah, I mean I think yes and no. Like I think people are having their minds blown at how quickly new features emerge, how quickly the models are being released. It's faster and it's exponential. So it's faster and faster. And no one denies the pace of change is unlike we've anything we've ever seen before. That said, you know, Simon, I I don't know if folks are taking the time to then re-engage, right? I don't know if they're saying, hey, you know.

This didn't work six months ago, but let's try it again. I think I d I don't see that same plasticity. You know, I think folks are somewhat inclined to say, okay, it screwed something up or it made some hallucination. AI is is you know not everything it's cracked up to be. And you know, myself and others, I have certain prompts that I I'm constantly experimenting with tools. I'm trying to compare, you know, Claw just came out with Opus four point eight. So I want to compare. I've been using

Four six and four seven, let's see how good four eight is. Like what are the nuances? How does it push back? Because one of the things they've said they've they've eliminated is that syncopitzi bias. So yeah, I think I unfortunately I think adoption is the is the long pole in the tent. I don't see folks continually experimenting and exploring as much as I would hope that they do or should. And and I think that that's an opportunity for any anyone. Like I said, twenty percent time, try something that didn't work six months ago.

You know, and I will say, been doing some media generation work with a partner of mine, and we have been building out effectively like a short film for a client. And the truth is when we started the project, the tools were were not good enough. They w they weren't production level quality. And they were a little frustrated by that. And they said, okay, you know, we could have or should have hired a production crew to do it the traditional way. But the project has taken long enough that now the tools have caught up and we're going to complete it successfully.

and deliver them a stunning documentary style video that you know it was it was a relief to me because I never like to have anyone disappointed, but it's it's amazing to see the tools evolve to such an extent that something we knew we couldn't do six months ago, they're now very happy with the result.

Paul Ashcroft (42:08.972)
interesting you say in 4.8 they removed the sick and fancy tendency I was beginning to rather like that everything I ask I'm it's a fantastic idea how did you think of another great idea

GAJ (42:17.299)
Yeah, so I have to like that.

Dr. Michael Housman (42:18.553)
Yeah.

Yeah, but yeah I I will say, Paul, to your earlier question about governance. So I called that little communications hub house party and I built it out and I got really excited because I was like, Okay, this will be a really fun project. And the agents would just go and do things without really checking in with me. And so they'd be like, Great, let me go and do it. And then they run for two hours and they'd be like, Hey, I deleted all these records in the database. And I'd be like, No, why did you do that? Like, or they created duplicates. And so, you know, there there's a trust building, we need I

I created it's a clawed MD file that defines the rules of engagement, but I asked them explicitly like push back, clarify assumptions, tell me if you think I'm wrong. Like, yes, it's a it's a fun ego boost to be like, Mike's great house is great, house is brilliant. But you know, in my company, I stress psychological safety, and I'm sure you guys are, you know, are big on that, which is you need to create an environment where people can push back when they're running small experiments, they're they they're willing to fail, but you know, in small

Doses. And so I had to tell the agents over and over in that Claude MD file, like, push back, tell me if I'm wrong, ask clarifying questions. Don't just run off and do things. And so that was for me, that was the most interesting thing was working with agents. you d it's the building the culture around agents is as critical as building a culture around human beings, right? And it's not just send them on on their way.

Paul Ashcroft (43:45.199)
100%, exactly what was coming to my mind, that you have to pay attention to the culture that you're creating. If your agent team is working alongside your human team, whether it's 10 % or 50 % or 80%, you've introduced a new culture of working in the organization. And if that culture of working is, hey, human, everything you said is amazing, then you're probably taking your culture down in the wrong direction.

Dr. Michael Housman (44:01.785)
Yeah.

Dr. Michael Housman (44:10.497)
Yeah. Yeah, same. If you hired someone, an intern who was super eager and they always said, Hey, Paul, that's great, I'll just go off and do that. I don't think that's a good hire. I try to encourage my people to push back. And I I will say, I think there's a whole yeah, governance is now evolving and there are companies coming in to figure out governance with agents. I think culture is something people agentic culture, people aren't talking about that nearly as much. And I think that's gonna be absolutely critical. I think there's gonna be a lot more attention on that in the future.

Paul Ashcroft (44:37.346)
Yeah, that's one more question for me. You've obviously been working hard on the book and your work, but just to find out something more about you beyond your current work, what are you genuinely curious about right now?

Dr. Michael Housman (44:51.351)
Yeah. this stuff, you know, I'm always reading. I've you know, big fan of like the Adam Grant, Malcolm Gladwell, Freakonomics types of books. So any anything nonfiction that makes me think differently about the world. and then the other thing is I'm kind of a fitness guy and I've been doing I mentioned in the book, I've been on my own fitness journey and worked out, you know, five days a week for 16 years, and now thinking more about some of the biohacking stuff. And there's a lot of

snake oil out there. But, you know, I am trying to think, but beyond diet, sleep and exercise, which I think I'm pretty good at, how do I you know, how do I optimize my performance when I'm a crossfitter and and how do I get the most out of my body and how do I, you know, try to show up as best I can. And so that's the stuff that I'm often digging into is hey, are there any things I could be doing differently? so yeah, I think that the human body's fascinating. Everyone

There are a zillion different theories out there. There are a lot of hacks, I'll warn you. but I'm always open to let me gather more information, let me learn more about how this machine works and how I can make it even better.

Paul Ashcroft (45:59.353)
Also, I have to confess, have a similar mind. I was asking Claude, how can I improve my longevity regime? He went through all the things I do. said, actually, the thing you could try is Nordic interval training. He's like, that's pretty hard in here. Improve your VO2 max. And then I told another friend and they said, yeah, that sounds pretty intense. You do know that the AI is out there to try and kill us, don't you? Be careful what advice you take from it.

Dr. Michael Housman (46:13.281)
Wow.

GAJ (46:22.251)
Ha ha ha.

Dr. Michael Housman (46:22.475)
Yeah.

Simon Brown (46:27.054)
Yeah.

GAJ (46:27.075)
Paul is always telling me that I I just have to stay alive long enough for the technology to enable me to live forever. my doctor told me I just have to get to sixty-five and I'll then I'll probably get to si eighty-five. So my current goal is just to get a sixty-five, which is five years down with

Dr. Michael Housman (46:27.351)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Dr. Michael Housman (46:46.009)
Yeah, there's I will say so Peter Diamondes, who founded Singularity, is big in biohacking and his and they're all about the exponential curve. And so he gave a talk for his Abundance 360 group. And the punchline is don't die because of anything stupid. Like if you just take care of yourself and you continue to to kind of live, like medicine is gonna take care of the rest, and you're gonna eventually get to escape the life.

Simon Brown (47:10.978)
Five years, I think, isn't it? They give it five years and we reach the escape velocity where we then can live forever. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Dr. Michael Housman (47:15.703)
Yeah. So that's the punchline for this whole talk is just don't die of anything stupid and you're gonna be fine.

Paul Ashcroft (47:21.614)
Thank

Simon Brown (47:23.778)
Cool. So we're coming up to time. So let me maybe do a quick recap of some of the things that we've covered and then come to your house for sort of one takeaway to leave people with. So, I mean, we've covered a lot. We've gone into how you found this niche of being a data nerd, but able to actually put things over in a way that execs can actually understand it, which I think you're incredibly good at. How when in November...

At 22 we had Chachi BT come out and you made this pivot into really focusing around AI. Now you see it's the third digital disruption. So we had the internet, we had social media, and now we have AI coming. Talked about the law where we overestimate within the short term, but maybe underestimate the impact in the long term. So maybe actually the hype isn't giving us enough of what it's going to have in terms of disruption in the long term.

We went into the AI is great, but then it becomes the data moat, the importance of the subject matter, and then the impact of people and the messiness that is trying to change people's attitudes and behaviours around it. How people are underestimating it, so only 10 % actually using to an advanced level on a daily basis and things like open claw that maybe people need to be paying way more attention to than they actually are. Yeah, tech is easy, the people are hard. We have this underlying fear maybe of the impact it may have on our jobs.

but actually that there's some hope if we look at the digital plasticity that some of the new grads and things come. And we need to then look at new forms of apprenticeship where we can build on some of the other capabilities that they have. Talked about education a bit and some of the leading practices where people are taking it like Ethan Molyk to the extreme of what you did in the whole semester now you do within a couple of lessons and instead of just doing one assignment you build the company, you build the videos, you build the marketing, you do whatever on top of it.

Dived into agents, how we maybe need to think about our agents as our smart intern that you have to show the ropes, you have to build up that level of trust before you empower it too much. And if we're talking to a CEO, then A, just get in there and use the tools that the culture comes from the top. And it's not enough just to be reading about it, you need to really get your hands on and then empower the team, have hands on experiences, create excitement rather than fear, and then have this sort of shared vision for where things go.

Simon Brown (49:42.687)
and then a little bit about your own curiosity with fitness. a lot to be covered. If there was one thing in all of that to leave our listeners with, what would that be?

Dr. Michael Housman (49:51.832)
Yeah, it's really just dive in, right? I mean it's going back to curiosity. you know, you you need to, you know, I'm sure folks are curious about how the world is evolving. I'm hoping that they're curious about how they can offload a lot of repetitive work so they can focus on the things that, you know, about their job that make it human. So I think that curiosity means hopefully take the opportunity, sign up. All these tools have free subscriptions up to a certain point, play around with them.

explore, experiment, it's kind of addictive, right? Has been my experience, which is like it's almost hard to to let go once you start talking to an agent. And and yeah, I would just say follow follow that curiosity to whatever AI tool kind of hits your fancy on any, you know, given moment. So

Simon Brown (50:37.794)
Love it and would absolutely echo that. Dive in, be curious. And on the way, do go and buy Mike's book, Future Proof, in order to get some great ways in which to do it. So thanks so much, House, for joining us.

Dr. Michael Housman (50:43.853)
Well,

GAJ (50:49.154)
Yeah.

Dr. Michael Housman (50:50.647)
Yeah. Thank you guys, this is fun.

Paul Ashcroft (50:52.472)
Thanks so much.

GAJ (50:52.834)
Right.

Simon Brown (50:54.658)
You've been listening to a Curious Advantage podcast. The series is about how individuals and organizations use the power of curiosity to drive success in their lives and businesses, especially in the context of our new digital reality. It brings together the latest understanding from neuroscience, anthropology, history, business, and behaviorism about curiosity and makes these useful for everyone. As always, we're really curious to hear from you, so do connect with us on social. Do check out the Curious Advantage book that's available on Amazon worldwide and keep in touch with us exploring.

So see you next time, thank you.