AI Is Killing Our Ability to Think | Will leach Behavioral AI Expert

Full Episode Transcript

This is the full recorded conversation from The Human Protocol Podcast, published by The Human Protocol Group. © 2026 The Human Protocol Group. Please link to and attribute the original episode when referencing this conversation.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (00:01.561)
There is a version of the future being sold right now that asks you to stop thinking, to reach for the easy path every single time. And let's be honest, we are humans. Given the easy path, what do you think it's gonna happen? We're gonna take it. So when the tool is built to reward doing less and we are ready wired to do less, the thinking doesn't get augmented. It gets handed over. That's not augmentation, that's atrophy.

Will Leach (00:01.836)
Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (00:30.38)
A brain you never use is a brain you eventually lose. So stay with me. Welcome to the Human Protocol, the podcast about staying human while building the future. I am your host, Michael Salomon. My guest today has spent his whole career on a single question. Why do people actually do what they do? Usually without knowing why themselves. Will Leach ran insights at PepsiCo, wrote the bestseller.

Will Leach (00:47.915)
Okay.

Will Leach (00:53.539)
No.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (00:58.264)
marketing to mind states teaches beh behavioral science at SMU and Texas AM and now builds behavioral AI. And he's watching something happen right now that should worry all of us because AI makes thinking feel optional. People are quietly handling their over. So Will, thank thank you for being with us today and welcome to the human protocol.

Will Leach (01:01.026)
Yeah.

Will Leach (01:26.892)
Michael, thank you for having me on your show. I'm really looking forward to our conversation today.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (01:31.789)
Same, I'm excited. I know this is something that is very dear and near to your heart and I think it's a conversation that that needs to happen. and to get things started, we'll is there anything from the introduction that I just made about you that you would like to add for for my audience to get to know you a little bit more?

Will Leach (01:50.038)
No, I think it was really well done. I mean, my passion is understanding the whys behind all of our actions. I've done it professionally. I teach it now at different universities. And I have a company that helps other companies try to apply behavioral sciences to marketing and to business decisions. So I think it was a great job at that's talking about my passions and how that's gonna interface with AI in the future.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (02:12.946)
Absolutely. So to get things started, right, there's a lot of human decisions that are made in a daily basis that is non conscious. What's really driving it?

Will Leach (02:26.135)
Yeah, it's great question. So let me put it in perspective. This is not just a lot of decisions, Michael. There are 35,000 decisions that you're making roughly every single day. So, like I tell my students, the vast majority of those have to be made at the non-conscious level because you couldn't do cost benefit analysis on every one of those 35,000 decisions. So if you just take that into perspective, understanding the non-conscious is incredibly important to understanding yourself, the people you love.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (02:35.008)
What wow.

Will Leach (02:55.243)
The clients you serve, et cetera. And at the highest level, what influences these decisions are three different factors, really. Social factors, the people around you. So we have social kind of norms and contracts with society in whatever society you live in that influences how you think about different decisions, how you think about.

particular options, what's appropriate, what's not appropriate. So imagine if you go into a church, that's a very different social construct and decisions you'll make versus you being at a bar. The second one would be environmental. so the things, the way that things are presented to you, how you're the environment around you, whether it's hot or cold or whatever, those things influence us as well, all at the non-conscious level.

And then it's the one that everyone really knows is psychological. We call them personal factors. You know, how are you feeling psychologically, physiologically, and also just habits and rituals sit in that space as well. So 35,000 decisions are highly, highly, highly influenced by where you are, who you're around, and how you're feeling. And that's why it's so important to understand behavioral science.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (04:08.008)
Is that thirty five thousand on a daily basis or what's it's that an average I would I would I would assume?

Will Leach (04:13.665)
Yeah. It's about an average. I mean, you know, it's hard to tell but because the the studies have shown that depends on what you decide is a is or consider a decision. So I'm not talking about automatic responses. I'm thinking at things like whenever you decide to not read an email, that's a decision. Every time you decide to look at your phone, that's a decision. When you decide to ask a question.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (04:31.825)
Even if we're not thinking about it as a decision that we're making, but we are making a decision at that time. Yeah.

Will Leach (04:36.811)
Yeah. In the vast majority of you're not really making a decision. In fact, I tell my students the number one decision you make every day is to not decide. You do it all the time. You look away from that awkward experience when somebody's walking over to you. You you flip the book and decide not to read it. Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (04:45.202)
Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (04:49.968)
And you avoid it. Yeah. It's funny that we're humans, we are just wired that way. It's that sometimes, you know, I have some friends that they even tell me, you know, it's you see someone that you don't want to see or interact at that time. And you know, even though they're making a decision not to interact at that time, they're thinking that they're not making an actual decision. But they are substantially, right?

Will Leach (05:15.821)
That's right. That's right. So it's good import it's important to understand the decisions you make, but also most importantly, it's probably the decisions you decide not to make. And those are the hard ones because you're not really often aware.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (05:25.532)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And and why is it that we are just wired this way? well.

Will Leach (05:30.946)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I I you know, I think you could go look at behavior or evolutionary psychology. and I I have some I'm a fan of some of that work, not of all of the work, but the idea that we are automatically responding to stimuli. It was it was a way of preserving ourselves and our future species, right? So going all the way back into days where you know, where if you want to talk about hunting and lions and all those things out in the prairie for us to survive.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (05:36.583)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (05:50.461)
Mm.

Will Leach (05:59.82)
We couldn't do cost-benefit analysis of is that a is that a tiger? Is that a happy tiger? Is that an unhappy tiger? We have been brought up to learn that all tigers are probably scary tigers. We should avoid them. So, but also, you know, imagine that if your mind, I think I think the mind is incredibly complex and you know designed to

Help us get the most out of our experience, right? And so the human mind is looking at all 35,000 of those decisions, and it's helping you to take some of those decisions, in fact, the vast majority of those decisions, and make them habitual and make them automatic. So the decisions that matter in life, the decisions that what job am I gonna take, how should I respond to my wife who's angry at me, those things matter and it frees up resources. So I think the human mind has been designed.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (06:40.912)
Mm-hmm.

Will Leach (06:50.273)
To only focus on those things that really, really matter. And so that's I I I truly believe is why we're kind of programmed that.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (06:56.987)
Hmm. It could that be a reason why we are always thinking or maybe not even thinking on taking the easy way out and the easy path, the less effort in and and and by you know, by default, we are wired in a way to avoid effort, to avoid things that are hard.

Will Leach (07:17.495)
That is exactly what's happening and why that matters. I loved how you set up the set up the conversation. So if you know, and as a species, human beings like as little effort as possible. It's not just your teenager, it's everybody, right? We take the path of least resistance. That's why we read emails that are simple to read and small. That's why we sometimes just want to watch a silly comedy that doesn't make us think, but it just makes us laugh.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (07:26.297)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (07:31.596)
Mm-hmm.

Will Leach (07:43.276)
So you are conditioned to take the easiest route possible. So if you know that as a species, it's really hard, in fact, for you to try to try to create friction and try to make hard decisions. Your mind naturally wants to make the easiest decision possible and move on. And I so it's a fundamental human truth. We're all like that. We like to pretend that we're thinking hard and we like we're we like to pretend like we're very rational. But frankly, like I said, if 35,000 decisions are being made,

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (07:44.153)
Hmm.

Will Leach (08:11.263)
You're not thinking about those. You're taking the easiest path forward. That's why behavioral design, the work that I s that I work in in the world of behavioral psychology and marketing, oftentimes the marketing is most effective when you make it the easiest possible message possible. So it doesn't have all these constant motivations. It's about being simple because the human mind loves and craves simple and simplicity. That's why we do so many things ritualistically, so many things habitually.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (08:36.471)
I I want to to to to to pick you on that and and and to expand on this part of the conversation 'cause I think it's important because you know for some people maybe taking the easy way out or the easy path maybe s seen as you've been lazy, for example, because you don't want friction, you don't want to face hardships or you don't want to dive deeper on specific topics.

But then others may say, but really conserving my mental energy, it's it's really the smart thing to do. And and I'm curious when it's actually one way you've been wise about it and when is that you're being lazy about it? Because that definition it's not clear to me, and for a lot of people most probably could it's kind of a thin line that you don't know.

Will Leach (09:21.293)
That's a great, great question.

Will Leach (09:28.877)
I love that question. So, Michael, I defer I'm more on the second option that it is good that our minds are designed for this laziness, if you will. And I hate that word lazy, but for efficient thinking. Because when you have established, like, let's say a brand that you like, let's say it's Coca-Cola. A long time ago, you tasted your first Coca-Cola, and over the course of many ex times of using co or drinking Coca-Cola, you know it's gonna deliver. So you shouldn't have to think through the

Cost benefit of a Coca-Cola every time. Like you know it works for you. Get that decision made and move on to the decisions that matter most. So I think it's actually good that our brains look for simplicity. We I don't want to like think of as lazy, I think of it as is efficiency, right? There's so many decisions you make that don't have big consequences because you've made that decision, it's worked out for you. So so that this is true. So, and I there's this concept called ego depletion. And you kind of reference it at the end of the day when you're tired.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (10:11.35)
Mm.

Will Leach (10:27.025)
you know, your the idea of making these simple decisions, these efficient decisions, allow you to have resources, cognitive ability, you know, the ability and the and the thinking power to make bigger decisions. That is absolutely what the human mind is doing by making these decisions easier or going after the easy decisions, right? So, in this concept of cognitive depletion, what happens is you only have so much resources for thinking. Like your mind is.

burning calories. Like I I believe that it's the second your the the the brain is burning the second most calories in the entire human body. So it because it's always on, even when you're dreaming it's always on. So what happens? Your brain, just like your muscles, need to have a break. And so that break comes from this idea of ego depletion. But the idea is that when you use your thinking too hard, your mind needs a break. Or if you don't give that mind a break, you are more likely to make bad decisions or emotionally

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (11:03.145)
Mm-hmm.

Will Leach (11:22.229)
Unintelligent decisions, right? So this concept of your brain is reserving resources absolutely is true. Absolutely is true. And all these decisions don't really matter for you. Making sure making sure that you have resources that when you need to get on that report, when you need to have that awkward conversation with somebody, that your mind has the ability to actually in real time make good decisions. So that is a biological truth.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (11:24.413)
Mm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (11:29.013)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (11:47.669)
I I I'm fascinated by the human brain, okay? I have to be honest with you. It's something personal with me. The more I I study and I learn about the human brain, the more that you better understand why we human beings interact and act and and make decisions or not make decisions. And this part of having breaks, right? And and make sure that the brains actually rest because it's not a machine.

And you touch on a point that I think is extremely important because sometimes you need to be, you know, in in a state that you're resting to avoid making bad decisions. And it's hard to have a break lately, right? With everything and technology and and our especially in our culture. Especially in our culture, we're wired to be hard worker, to work, to work with to work.

Will Leach (12:35.981)
I clean our culture.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (12:45.831)
And an AI is coming to the place and we're gonna touch on that, but usually I don't think people are having these conversations enough that they understand that it is important for you to have your breaks and for you to rest, right? There are decisions made because of the state that the brain is at that time.

Will Leach (13:05.995)
Yeah. So one of the things I tell students all the time is, and you probably feel this if you've ever gone grocery shopping when at the end of the day, when you're tired and hungry, it's one of the worst times you could ever go grocery shopping, especially if you're on a diet.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (13:19.556)
You fill up the the the card with everything that you probably don't need or you're gonna eat.

Will Leach (13:25.163)
That's exactly right. Your mind, your brain, even though you know you should eat healthy, it's going for cookies. It's cognitive overload, it's cognitive depletion, it's that ego depletion we're talking about, to where you don't have those resources to say, no, I don't think I want to go for down the cookie aisle. When you have those low mental resources, you make poorer decisions. That's just a natural fact. When you go to Las Vegas and you stay up all night at the craps table at four o'clock and five o'clock.

When you want to go and gamble, that's the worst time because you have lost the resources, the cognitive ability to say, it's time for me to leave. So all these things matter. Rest matters a whole lot. Now, you're right, in our culture, we don't rest enough. And remember, we you before the show started, Michael and I were talking about my my vacation. It's the first time I take a vacation in a couple of years. And I didn't say this, but it's it's kind of true. And it's I'm ashamed to say it. But I think of vacations sometimes like salad. Like I know.

I'm supposed to eat it, but doesn't mean I like it. And I don't think that's right. Like in our culture, I felt like when I was on vacation, I get back to my job. So I'm missing out on calls. I have to get back at my job. And if I Yeah, but really what you're saying is I'm losing cognitive functioning over the course of weeks and weeks, years and years of not going on vacation. And I could argue that I'm making worse business decisions because I haven't been able to deplo to plug away. So that's why, you know, in in the Christian faith, we talk about

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (14:27.993)
Yeah. Like you were missing in life for being out.

Will Leach (14:49.409)
The Sabbath, right? Or in lots of faiths, taking a Sabbath one day a week. And it shows that it matters so much, at least from a neurological perspective, but it's just so hard to do in our culture. So hard to do.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (14:59.717)
Yeah, it is. It is. and and and and I'm totally with you. It's usually you're taking vacation and then you're already almost at the end of it or within your vacation, you're already thinking when when you get back, what's gonna what's gonna wait for you. and it should not be, it should not it should not have an impact in you and how you're feeling less or more just because you're taking vacation. It's it's not it's just something that we humans we need to be able to

Come into play with that.

Will Leach (15:30.251)
Yeah, and I think there's some identity in that, right, Michael. Like if you have, and this is really hard in America. So our identities, our kind of our culture rewards people who are self-sufficient and that who are strong and powerful. So if you've built an identity around that, which by the way, I have, or I wouldn't feel that way, I that that that you when you go on vacation, it is naturally putting tension on your identity. If you see yourself as a, I'm a business owner and I'm a go-getter, and I'm the type of person who doesn't need to rest, that

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (15:40.579)
Mm-hmm.

Will Leach (15:58.924)
matters that every day I'm resting, it's going against my identity. It's telling you I'm not the person I want to be. So there's all sorts of other psychology in there, but your identity is being informed by culture. And so depend if you're not really smart and really, you know, deliberate in making sure that your identity is coincides with your beliefs and your values of who you are as a person, it can really interrupt like your life. Like that's why there's, I mean, there's at least a part of why there's so many divorces, why there's so many things in life that

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (16:07.341)
Mm-hmm.

Will Leach (16:28.321)
people go through it's because culture has told us to to identify as one thing, but that probably aren't good for us o over the long term. That's why obesity is such a big deal, right? Because we don't eat well healthy because we're too busy working and not thinking about, you know, eating healthy. And there's all sorts of things we could talk about from

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (16:44.877)
Yeah, that opens a lot of doors for sure. So, so you know, we started the show that we don't decide for the most of our life, right? It's it's kind of a default. We default into it, so we are wired to do less. That's clear. Now, give the brain a tool that is actually built for us to do less or reward us to do less, like it's the case of AI.

And this is what I want to go next, because I think it's important in all this conversation as we try to link both of them. And and and I think part of your research that you mentioned to me is that the research got so easy right now that companies are talking to customers less than before, right? And I see that as a problem and I think that you are concerned about that as well, especially in your field. And and what do you think happens to to to their judgment?

When they do.

Will Leach (17:43.736)
Yeah. So, you know, so I'm in the world of market research and I do market research studies for global 100 companies out there. And what we've seen over the last in fact, the last 18 months, but I would argue the last four years, is that more and more dollars are being spent on technology and building out infrastructure and and tech stacks, and less dollars are going to doing traditional, let's go talk to our customer for research.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (18:02.38)
Mm.

Will Leach (18:11.285)
Lot of reasons for that. We're all we're all kind of in this real world of technology allows us to do things faster and cheaper, right? That's it's scalability, things like that. But what has happened, and I think a big a big problem in our industry is that the initial models that are have been built, or you know, I'm sorry, the initial models that were built and even the models that are being built right now are all based upon data that was

It's kind of a virus in it, if you will, the way I think about it. And that virus is this thing called the say do gap. The say do gap is this understanding in market research is that we say certain things, but we behave differently. So I just told I want to eat healthy, but I eat five guys on a Friday, right? I'm not lying when I tell somebody on an interview that I want to eat healthy. I'm not lying, but remember we have these cognitive resources, culture, all these things that are happening. And in the moment,

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (18:44.722)
Mm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (18:56.554)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (19:08.318)
Yeah.

Will Leach (19:10.677)
On a Friday night, rather than getting salad, I go to five guys. Our existence has this massive say do gap. We say one thing, we're really bad at predicting our future behaviors. So these models have been built upon people's conversations. Well, people saying one thing, but they do something totally different. My whole industry is supposed to be.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (19:26.59)
Yeah.

Will Leach (19:32.878)
Trying to figure out that distance between what people say and what they do, that say do gap. That's what I do. My job is to figure out what really truth is. What will people actually do? And the problem is, is our investments are being used to technology that doesn't talk to people in the way that we can identify what's that bridge between the say do gap. It's too hard. It's really expensive for me to talk to people, a hundred people over the course of an hour. So a hundred hours worth of work, it's really expensive. You know what's not expensive? A $20

Subscription to ChatGPT where I can get Chat GPT to ex to pretend like it's a person. And when you look at it, Michael, you know it looks really good. It like you get this output, it looks great. And you're like, gosh, my consumer, they say that you really want this or whatever. That's not your consumer. It is an algorithm. And the algorithm was was created off of data that had this say due gap in there.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (20:13.096)
Yeah. Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (20:26.438)
Because it's coming from humans. So you know, so sometimes and I'm and I'm hearing you talking right now, sometimes I feel why are we surprised? Because at the end of the day, these LLMs are built on human data. So our biases, the way we interact, the way you know, everything, the good and the bad is there. So that's what we're gonna get. And and you know, if you're not smart, exactly.

Will Leach (20:28.839)
That's right.

Will Leach (20:35.245)
Mm-hmm.

Will Leach (20:46.029)
That's right.

If you're not smart, you can be smart about it if you understand these biases and you have models to fit not quantitative models, but just theoretical models of understanding things like identity and your social norms, like we talked about, or your motivations. If you can look at that old data and you can filter it through those these different factors, we talk about in my book, Marketing Mind States. If you can filter things through these social sciences and these constructs, then at least you you when you look at that model, like, I'm getting closer on that say do gap. We're actually able to build.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (20:53.607)
Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (21:04.4)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (21:09.22)
Mm-hmm.

Will Leach (21:17.709)
True empathy, even with previous data. The problem is nobody's doing that work. Very few people are doing that work because frankly, a lot of people would just rather get an answer and move on with the day. Why? It's simple, less effort. That's right. That's right. That's exactly right.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (21:27.085)
Less effort we started. We started this conversation. So we're getting back to basics there. It's it's it's it's such such a fascinating topic the way we're seeing all this because you know there's a lot of conversation out there, people outsourcing you know the thinking to to AI, and it's exactly because of that. They're just taking the the easy output, whatever it's it's been brought, and

And that's very lazy from us, if that's what we're using this piece of technology for. The key and the magic is really trying to work with it in a way that can augment us, right? Instead of just replace totally our thinking. But that takes work. That really takes work for you to dive in, understand what makes sense, what doesn't make sense, and and that's where the difference of all this is. And there's a lot of

conversation out there today about AI slots. Most probably you've you've seen that. Just people writing posts and content and that it's all AI generated with the very, very nothing from you on it. And I think that's a shame that we have this amazing piece of technology and we're just using it just to for for that purpose.

Will Leach (22:25.526)
Yeah, sure.

Will Leach (22:43.937)
Yeah. And and a big part of what we're talking about is judgment, I think. And so imagine so my son is in fact, today is his first day of school for his junior year in high school. So it's a big day, right? You watch my kid and he goes to school, right? Big day, big day. And what what what what surprises me or what maybe kind of weighs on my heart a bit is that he's gonna go into a future where

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (22:59.162)
Big day, yeah.

Will Leach (23:12.425)
It's going to require his own judgment, experiences to be able to look at artificial intelligence output and say, I don't agree with that, or I would take this in a different direction to push back on it. And that requires experience and judgment. And imagine if you're going to grow up in this world where you're getting a very easy answer, it looks plausible.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (23:32.366)
Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (23:35.756)
Yeah, it always looks very plausible. Always.

Will Leach (23:38.2)
It looks very plausible and you don't have the judgment, the reasoning, because we're not learning that as much in school anymore, because AI is going to be like we we hear this all the time, right? Where well with AI, now we can do the work that matters. You know, you can take away all that old stuff that you didn't have to do so that now you're gonna get to be more strategic. But if you don't have judgment and experience and you don't know your own true kind of

Knowledge and capabilities, then how are you supposed to be how are you supposed have the judgment to be able to push back? And I and I don't know we have an answer, honestly, Michael, but I do know that in the next 10 to 15, 20 years, we're gonna have a lot of people that can run models but cannot push back on models because they won't have the ability. Right now, it's a more of a lazy kind of thing. Like, you know, between us, it's it's harder to push back. I I gotta get this stuff done, so it looks pretty good. I may tweak at something here or there, and I go.

That's kind of that bit of laziness thing because we're trying to do more with that. But my kid in 10 years may not have the judgment. He may not understand how to think through problems because our because AI is doing the thinking for all of us. So I really hope academia, especially at colleges, are helping people with judgment through their minds, not asking AI to be the better judge, but be able to push back on AI. I really hope that's the case. Or in 10, 15, 20 years from now, it's going to be a much

Our society's gonna be in a lot of trouble, I believe. A lot of trouble.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (25:01.152)
Yeah, I you know, I know that we all hyper focus on getting more from it, like more output, being more efficient. Sometimes less is more, especially if you care about the quality of the work that you do. If you care about the legacy that you're building, the problem with this next generation using AI and just not developing critical thinking is AI pushes everybody to the middle of the curve.

Right? Everybody will be in the middle. If you don't think and if you don't try to work with it in a way that it still pushes you towards the way that you want to go, it will continue to have the majority of people that are not thinking really there. Because the outputs are based on data, are based on what you are asking for, and most of the people will remain there. And if you don't develop that type of critical thinking, you know, back to

To your concern, what you're gonna have it's a lot of people not being able to make decisions because they don't have experience. so how are you gonna build judgment of an experience that you haven't been able to be part of it? Right? Of being able to make mistakes, build the

Will Leach (26:16.353)
Yeah, that's so true. It's so true.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (26:21.364)
that judgment as well and making mistakes nowadays it sounds like it's a bad word. No one everybody wants to be perfect. What's it's

Will Leach (26:29.205)
Yeah. Why aren't you using the technology to be smart? Like, why aren't you using the technology? The technology is not wrong. And imagine how you and I grew up on, right? We grew up probably, you know, what else that's called the 90s or whatever, where artificial intelligence in these computers were were never supposed to be wrong. Like I they're not supposed to be wrong. And so there's a whole positioning thing that's happened with AI that some people trust artificial intelligence because we grew up thinking AI and robots and machines were much smarter. They don't make mistakes. Well.

You know, that's not true. They it does make mistakes. We may not think of those as mistakes, but it'll take us down a path. If I use Grok, it could take me down a totally different path than I if I use a Chat GPT model, right? A totally different path. And I can b think both of those are are what I cr what we are conditioned to think. Well, it's AI. It's not making it's not making a mistake. Well, it's not technically maybe making a mistake, but it's going down a different line of thinking that will take you to a totally different place. But I think that there's a positioning thing when you and I grew up on that.

Robots don't make mistakes. AI can't make a mistake. So why would I con why would I push get push against AI? It's it's kind of an interesting dynamic. Like we're we're almost conditioned to not think of AI as making mistakes, but of course it makes mistakes because let's go back to the data again. It's based upon human data. And we were making those mistakes 50 years ago, 100 years ago, all that stuff. There's mistakes built into that data. And we just don't the models don't know what's truth and what's not. It just knows what people have said.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (27:37.938)
Because

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (27:51.038)
And it's so easy to get something out of it with the prompt in a matter of seconds. I mean, it's very easy. There is no friction on that experience. It learns your tongue, it gives you the answer that you're looking, and it makes it look like it's reasonable. Right, that feels right, right? It may be total nonsense, but you read that and they're making sense out of it. And you say, okay, this has to be right.

Will Leach (27:54.103)
Yeah, yeah.

Will Leach (28:10.487)
Feels right. Yep. It feels right.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (28:21.391)
It's coming from AI and this sounds legit.

Will Leach (28:24.897)
Yeah. And Michael, one thing you said, and I don't know, you know, if if anyone out there is a business owner, you're working in a corporation, or let's just say if you're a business owner, you do marketing. What's happening right now, and I loved what you said, we're all all of our marketing is kind of being pushed into the middle because we're all using like like we're all using models to make our messaging faster, quicker, easier. And I can even argue better. I can even argue like the messaging that's out there now.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (28:45.5)
Right.

Will Leach (28:50.603)
Some has less punctuation issues, logically it's structured better than some people. But what if you've seen in this week, right, that that's happening is LinkedIn, if it believes or if you believe that it's AI slop, like we talked about AI slop, if you read something on LinkedIn, you can press a button and say it's AI slop. Now, what's interesting about what LinkedIn will do now is that one, it will if somebody says no to that, it says, I think that's AI slop, or it's just AI generated, right? It will stop that post from expanding past your network.

Okay, that's pretty scary. Or you know that as of I think it's in the next couple of weeks, if you do a if you do something with Claude, if you work with Claude in any way, there's an invisible stamp on your output, you say that's a big deal because marketers for the last year and a half, two years have like, we want to automate marketing. So we can get more messaging out there faster, easier. I can get on with my strategic thinking. So your real voice, like your real voice, not AI that's been trained on your voice.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (29:31.054)
I saw that.

Will Leach (29:50.85)
Because AI that's been trained on your voice will still have this little invisible signature that I promise you may not happen in the next month, but in six months from now, something could come out. Somebody will be able to find that voice, that little stamp, and say, you know what, Will, you had Claude write that. It will be a it will be a badge on you. And most people will look at that badge as saying, you're relying on AI. That's not even your own thinking. So here's why I'm literally starting it today. And I encourage you guys to do this. anyone out there. Well,

We'll have to see how well it works. I'm forcing myself to do my own podcast. It's gonna be a 30-minute podcast. I'm gonna do it today. It's not gonna live. But what it does, what I do, what I'm doing is I am speaking to five bullet points, and I'm using my real voice, not AI generated all. I'm just gonna talk. I know it's not gonna be good, but here's what it is gonna do. I'm gonna use my voice to talk about, and I'm gonna talk about goal theory. So for for that's what I'm doing today, about two hours from now.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (30:37.156)
Mm-hmm.

Will Leach (30:45.217)
And I'm going to talk about goal theory and I'm going to have these five bullet points. I'm going to speak to 10 minutes, 15 minutes, or whatever. But it'll be my thinking, my voice. I'm going to take those transcripts, and rather than think that's right, because I think the future, very soon, in fact, is going to be that people automatically know when you're not in the average in the middle. They already know, feel they feel it, right? And if you're using AI to do your marketing, even if you're trying to go back and forth with AI, you're getting into the middle that you're kind of you're not on the you're not on the tails.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (30:54.934)
And you oblot it there.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (31:05.7)
Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (31:12.664)
Yeah.

Will Leach (31:14.751)
of your of your curve you're on the you're in the middle and we're more more importantly now is that there are going to be tells there are tells in the data there are these invisible stamps that are gonna say what this what he what will wrote that's not his own thinking what you wrote is not your own thinking so i'm using those transcripts to then take that and build out blogs build out my build out posts things that so it's almost like even with ai I have to go backward a bit in time because ai now

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (31:32.951)
Mm-hmm.

Will Leach (31:41.611)
It's going to a point there. So many people are crafting so much messaging and it's so generic. Even when they're trying to make it special, you're going to be penalized for it. We'll see how it does.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (31:51.68)
Yeah, I I've been doing that for I think seven, eight months where I yeah. I the pot I've been doing the podcast for a year. So this at the end of this month is gonna be the first year anniversary for the podcast. So I've been actually training Claude and Chat GPT with my own voice the way I think and and continue because it's you know, you have to continue to work with it.

Will Leach (31:56.879)
really?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (32:16.012)
But that's also something that I recommend everyone because at the end of the day, it's not that we want to avoid using the tool. It's what we want is to use the tool for augmentation purposes. But augmentation coming from a place that it helps you improve from where you are and take things to the next level. And it's still sounding and keeping as much of the critical thinking and who you are, right? So to avoid getting you to the middle of the curve like everyone else. Because people.

Will Leach (32:39.981)
Who you are.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (32:46.059)
But you know also, Will, I think this conversation about using AI and AI slob, it's also I think it drives the narrative towards people being afraid of acknowledging that they use AI. I don't think we should be penalized because we are using AI to write some posts and and to improve our writing. And I think people get things to the extreme because this case of LinkedIn that you just mentioned.

Linden has a lot of AI tools within the tool to help you write and improve your writing, resumes, and now they're saying ASLOP if people I don't understand where this is coming from.

Will Leach (33:19.872)
Yeah.

Will Leach (33:25.931)
I don't either. Well, apparently that they they they said I don't I haven't seen LinkedIn yet, but apparently they're gonna remove the ability to have AI rewrite Slave was swinging way too far. Like they're they're saying we are not gonna help you. Like the whole point was like, wait, I thought the whole point of your AI was to make our posts smarter, more logical, whatever. So it it is a swing. And there's just like I think there's a lot of backlash right now from society with whether it's data centers being built or you know, what is what is our future with our jobs, that there's this natural kind of tension of like I want to push back.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (33:35.563)
Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (33:50.092)
Yeah.

Will Leach (33:55.17)
But I'm with you, right, right, Michael. Like AI can be incredibly valuable. My thinking is way smarter today than it was pre these models because Claude and these models will push back on my thinking. Like the things that I wrote wrote in 2022 are very different than what I wrote now. Not be not because my thinking has changed, but Claude has made me a better writer. It structures my thinking smarter, right? It just does. And so my communications.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (34:17.531)
Absolutely.

Will Leach (34:22.059)
My my ideas can get out to the masses that are e that are better able to understand what I'm trying to say. So those things are very, very, very valuable, very valuable. And I I I wonder if the swing against AI is taking my job, it's a bad economy for a lot of young kids. They feel like AI is, you know, hurting their job prospects. you have this AI slopping, you have these data centers. I I I'm I'm wondering if we're moving too far away and thinking, man, we are

hurting AI development. If you're out there thinking that you don't need to take this seriously, you need to take this serious. It makes you a better person. Just use it responsibly, right? That's what you've been saying. Use it responsibly.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (34:56.932)
Use it wisely at the end of the day. It's you're gonna you know you're gonna get what you put in, right? Garbage in, it's garbage out. So if minimum effort, you're gonna get minimal effort responses from from the tool. But I'm with you on that. It's like the more you use it and the more you build this as a partnership with the tool, the better you get at whatever you are building. If it's a better writer, you

probably will continue to work with it until you're fully satisfied to what you get. And that's the the beauty of it. It's really, it's really help you to put all your thoughts in a way that is a structure and and to help you also visualize a lot and and and you know patterns within the data. That's something that these LLMs and these tools are great at. Sometimes we have a lot of data to look at and we don't even know where to start or it's going to take us a lot of time to go through it.

These tools are really, really it's fascinating how they do this. It really is.

Will Leach (35:57.575)
It's amazing. It is amazing.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (35:59.271)
Yeah. Will let's talk about behavioral AI, right? And and and this this comparison or or differentiation between behavioral AI and generic AI. I'm curious to see how is this any any different from the generic AI that most teams use are using today?

Will Leach (36:24.321)
Yeah. So I like to think of, and we talked about a little bit of that say do gap, but what behavioral AI does is it brings in the social sciences, culture anthropology, sociology, psychology, neuroscience, like the fundamental constructs of how we make decisions as human beings and what makes us tick and what makes love and emotion, all that stuff being built alongside with artificial intelligence so that you can make better decisions that are not just.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (36:28.029)
Mm-hmm.

Will Leach (36:50.917)
better for you, the organization and the and the corporation, but better for people. So the artificial intelligence embedded with behavioral science is helping you understand how people make decisions and and kind of what's, I don't say what's best for them, but how they truly tick, inevitably gets you to better decisions that help people. So that's the kind of AI that we're focused on.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (37:10.393)
And and it's it's is it safe to say that it's a type of AI that things like your customer

Will Leach (37:17.559)
Yeah, I like to think of it as behavioral AI not only thinks like your customer, but makes decisions like your customers and acts like your customer as well. So it's deeply understanding their goals, your customers' motivations, how they approach decision making, any cognitive biases and identity and identity constructs. And it's embedded in that data so that when you are using artificial intelligence, it knows certain biases that your customer has. It understands what motivates them. So

I like to think of this. We we talk a lot about empathy in this world. And if you want to be a big brand, an iconic brand, you need to empathize with your customer. And we need to walk a mile in our shoes. That's okay. I totally believe that's true. But I want to know not only just walk in my customer's shoes, but I want to know why she's taking the steps she takes. And it's the big why. And I think that's the part that's missing from a lot of companies. We we like to empathize with our customer, but don't truly know the why. Behavioral AI can help us understand the why because you actually said it, Michael.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (38:05.467)
Mm.

Will Leach (38:15.155)
AI is incredibly good at seeing patterns in data better than I am. So what I used to do in my research is I would do a piece of research with 30 different people and I would interview them for an hour, and that would take 30 hours worth of transcripts and line by line look at those. And I'm looking for tells. I'm looking for, there's a motivation. that's a person's goal. I'm looking for tells. I can use, and that would take me 30 hours. So like I'm already 60 hours into the study, and then I got to do 30 hours of analysis.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (38:19.255)
Mm-hmm.

Will Leach (38:42.805)
Artificial intelligence can do the exact same work better than me, way better than me. In fact, because it finds patterns I can't even see because I'm not smart enough. Nobody's smart enough to be able to pick up on those patterns. It can do it in a minute. That's the use of behavioral AI. You can find patterns in people's language that'll tell you, this is truly why they're they're eating salad, not because they want to get healthier, it's because they desire to be, they want to be around for their daughter's wedding. And so they're driven by fear.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (38:56.407)
Mm.

Will Leach (39:10.967)
That they're looking in the in the mirror and they don't like what they see. And so they're leading salad not to be healthier, but to not die. Those are small nuances. But if you knew that about your customer, you'd have a totally different engagement with them if you knew that they were scared about dying and they're eating unhealthy and they just want to be able to make it to their daughter's wedding versus, they just want to eat healthier. So let's go put a little 10% fewer calories. Like you would totally do something different. That's where behavioral AI can help you.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (39:37.176)
Got it. It's have you put some thoughts on things that you refuse to automate, for example, and how and what are the things that you think okay, humans needs to stay as part of this process in in the whole conversation?

Will Leach (39:49.228)
Yeah, that's a great, great question. I'll tell you industries I haven't worked in on purpose. ammunition and smoking, and and alcohol I've not really worked in. I don't know if I've ever thought about the things that I wouldn't explore. It's more I think I think the I think the question would be how is that information going to be used? Like I don't think in

Fundamentally, it's it's a bad idea for us to understand why do people smoke. In fact, I think I could argue that's probably good if we're going to use that information on helping to prevent smoking. If you're gonna use it for a company to how do I get more of my nicotine pouches into people's mouths, not so sure if that's the way. So I think it's less around what I won't study, but how will that data be used, which of course has some some issues with that? Like I could they could tell me one thing.

And let's say another, I I worked on I worked on a client a couple of years ago and I actually pulled out a study. I won't tell you the name of the the brand. You guys would know it out there, but it was for a college, one of these for-profit colleges, you know. And I at first has hesitated because I've heard about these colleges where, you know, you give them a bunch of money and they give you a degree and it's really fast. All of a sudden I'm a I'm a I'm a IT tech or whatever it is. You're like, really? But the person on the phone gave me such a great.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (40:45.677)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (41:05.057)
Right.

Will Leach (41:13.177)
The person who worked at this company at this college gave me so many great reasons to do work. And then after I did work for them, it sounded great. I felt really good about it. And then, like, not no lying, less than a year later, not this person, but the company was in front of Congress at a congressional hearing about fraud that they were using. I, and deep down inside, I go, I wonder if they helped my my community, my work helped them get people to defraud them of money. And I don't know. I'll never know that.

They end up having to go bankrupt and everything else because of these congressional hearings. But it is something looking back, like, should I have done their work on helping people that are at blue collar jobs to be feel inspired enough to go to college? That felt good to me. How it was used by this company? I don't know. Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (41:55.691)
Interesting. Cause it it makes me think let's it you're building this AI, right? And we're having this conversation about how people should use it in a way that it's actually an augment their skills instead of just being lazy and not thinking more. are you concerned that if we continue down this path, people using these tools like yours?

Will Leach (41:58.861)
Mm-hmm.

Will Leach (42:09.495)
The call.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (42:25.523)
And teams maybe they will be inclined to continue to take the easy way out and and and and not put a lot of effort on it.

Will Leach (42:37.069)
So Mind Tools specifically, I love what you said because there's a theoretical conversation we could have on this, but mind tools specifically are being used for marketers to make messaging that is optimized for their customer subconscious. So that's what it's being used for. Now, I've had this conversation before. It's like, well, wait a minute. If you understood these deep psychological, you know, reasons on why, is ethically the right thing to do? Like, is that the right thing?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (42:46.752)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Will Leach (43:04.173)
So that your advertising is better than somebody else's. So you get them to drink your soda versus somebody else's soda. And I, and here's what I would say I think marketing is at its essence the use of persuasion for commerce, right? It's it's it's using anything you know about, you know, you're making your advertising better than somebody else's so that they'll buy your product. Could I scare somebody into buying a product? You bet I can. Can I use sex and sexy ads to get you to notice my my product and buy it?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (43:17.795)
Mm. True.

Will Leach (43:33.954)
You bet I can. And I've talked to clients who, I said, you can do those things. I can scare you, right? You can scare somebody into using your product. I won't go into the industry. But I will tell you that if you do that once or twice, that feeling, that fear feeling will overh overhang to your brand. It'll halo to your brand. And long term, you may get the short-term sales, but long term it'll hurt your equity, your brand. So you better be really sure that one, if you're going to use these psychological factors,

That you're using them in a way that doesn't hurt your brand long term, which is a big deal for brands today. Or secondly, even if you you use, you didn't scare somebody, but use like you understood that somebody's identity, you know their identity really well. So you you attach these feelings to your ad and they buy your product. If your product can't deliver on that, it's going to hurt you long term. They may not even know it, but they'll go, Holly, man, that that brand, you know, it just didn't deliver. That's what they'll say.

But it was because you overpromised in your ad, because you knew these psychological factors that you're driving, driving your customers. And you were able to, and I hate using the word manipulate, but your level of of persuasiveness was better than others because you knew these things. So I don't worry so much around the laziness of AI because that's not not that that's not important. I just don't, that's not my world. My world is helping optimize marketing. And I think good marketing that's been optimized for your customer subconscious.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (44:54.809)
Uh-huh.

Will Leach (45:00.073)
And you deliver on that promise is great, by the way, because my marketing is trying to help you become my marketing is focused on brands helping their customers achieve the desires that they have, their deepest like emotional needs. I think that's good. If when products do that, we may become we become better people. If your product sucks and you're using these things.

Then we have an issue. And so I think that's the part we're all worry about. Like you haven't done any of your product. Your product is not good. It's nicotine pouches. And you're using these constructs to sell more nicotine. Is that the right thing? I don't know. I don't know.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (45:31.962)
Hmm. Yeah, a lot to land in there because you know, historically execution was the primary driver of you know companies being able to deliver for for their for their customers, for brands to be able to stand out, and the more execution keeps getting cheaper lately, what is the thing that actually is gonna win? It's what is gonna separate one brand from the other?

If if the execution and the core of it continue to be based on AI and AI is providing that core, and and that's a perfect segue for our next segment, which is talking about what's the standout for companies and brands today, which is still our human judgment, right? Because everybody will be able to get outputs and execute for the most part.

But the magic of it all, what's gonna continue to make your brand still feel like your brand and no nothing like no one else is still human judgment.

Will Leach (46:37.335)
Yep. And I would argue not even just, well, the judgment of knowing which ad you should go forward with, here you mean judgment, but also is your business and your brand and your marketing and all your messaging, does it tap into people's goals, their motivations, their regulatory approach, their cognitive heuristics, those mind states that I talk about in the book, Marketing to Mind States, that will become a moat. It will have to become a moat because you're right. It used to be the moat used to be.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (46:42.68)
Mm-hmm.

Will Leach (47:07.051)
I have more people on my team that can do marketing faster. And we have the creative team that we can tap into this, you know, social media.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (47:08.632)
Yeah. Yeah.

Capacity and execution. Capacity and execution.

Will Leach (47:15.809)
That is done. That is done. I can absolutely get Claude to generate just as many ads as your biggest as if I have the credits to do it. I can make just as many ads as an agency down the street that has 18 people working at that agency. So that is no longer a moat. What is will be your moat is do you understand people better than your competitors? And I believe it's through the social sciences and deep psychology, is where you will. And that with your judgment on what makes a good ad.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (47:40.867)
Yeah.

Will Leach (47:42.475)
What does it does it relate back to my brand and my brand essence and those types of things?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (47:48.236)
That's that has to be and that will continue to be the real edge. I'm with you on that. But it will require teams and organization to adjust to that, right? It's a way it's a new way of working.

Will Leach (48:01.517)
And they're not incentivized right now. They're not incentivized to do it. They're incentivized by working faster, working cheaper, and A B test yourself into hopefully you you make profits off of that. Now we'll see how how that works. But there's a whole incentive structure that says just get more ads out there because it's faster and cheaper than in than it ever used to be. And that used to be the moat. That used to be the moat. So it made sense that the incentives were that way.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (48:22.089)
Yeah. Still organizational leadership still measuring the old way which is output, output, output. No, this is a whole new era.

Will Leach (48:31.649)
Yeah. Even like you said, there are people be incentivized, but how many credits did you use? Like that that's not so much anymore because credits and tokens are so expensive now. But that last year used to be your PDR, your ratings were on are you using AI? Well, how do we know? because you know, Michael, he used thirty seven thousand tokens last month. So he must be really good for our organization.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (48:52.691)
It's wild, yes. It's wild and you know it's and and part of the problem that I that I see and you probably have seen that, it's really starts at the leadership level. They really need to understand what this is. And and and only understanding what how they can leverage this to get their business to the next level, that's when they're really gonna come along on what is it that they need to do.

Will Leach (49:17.709)
Yep, I agree. I agree.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (49:17.936)
espe especially on the skills other people are gonna need. And and I want to ask you, what are those skills that you think people, especially leaders and marketers, they will need in the next decade based on what you see today?

Will Leach (49:30.487)
Yeah, it's a great question. Cause if you would have asked me this five years ago, I would have been like, you better know coding. Like that would be it. Like you better know the mathematics of coding.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (49:38.697)
I think two years ago, still two years ago.

Will Leach (49:41.506)
Right. Now like, no, don't go to coding. Don't learn it. I I I truly believe as we've swung so much to letting artificial intelligence run our businesses, run our lives, you know, we have agents paying for products nowadays. I think it will be empathy, but deep, deep empathy. I think I would feel really good, and I do feel good about my son going into a col into college, thinking that he is curious himself.

He's not just gonna go down the easiest path of least resistance, like so many people do. So it'd be curiosity and that empathy. Like he truly at his heart wants to understand people and he can relate to people. That will be where we we won't have judgment because he won't have experiences like you and I grew up, like, hey, project you're gonna run and you're not gonna you you had to come up and you had to fail and you had to learn your points of view. That's gonna be harder to come up with, you know, at his age. I think the most important thing will be.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (50:10.131)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (50:25.961)
Mm-hmm.

Will Leach (50:37.705)
Okay, if you don't have those experiences, are you curious, really truly curious about any problem out there? And then, you know, with that curiosity, you're curious about people. And then do you really empathize with people? And I, like I said, that's why I'm so happy about behavioral sciences, because that's the science of empathy, if you will, to trying to understand how people tick.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (51:00.018)
And where do you think experience will come if if is if you know if experience historically for humans had been you doing the job, you learn through it all, you make mistakes, you learn, you keep moving, you repeat the task, you keep moving. And AI it's absorbing some of that, if not a lot of it already. Are you concerned?

Will Leach (51:02.967)
So good.

Will Leach (51:24.385)
I don't I think experience will come because you are still gonna make mistakes with AI. I just think it's gonna come so much slower because you can rely on AI to do your thinking for you, your critical thinking for you. So your experience used to be: I thought this. I was penalized for whatever reason. I thought, you know, I should say this to my girlfriend, and I really made a big mistake. That's experience, right? Where artificial intelligence.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (51:43.045)
Mm.

Will Leach (51:53.87)
Tells you say these things to your girlfriend, really bad analogy, right? But go with me. Then you don't know because it's probably a little bit more plausible. It's doing a pretty good job until it makes a mistake. So I think the cycle of experience will be longer. So therefore, you may be 25 and still acting like a normal 16 year old because you don't have enough life experience because artificial intelligence is doing thinking for you and you don't see the consequences as easily. So I still think that exp I think experience will come.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (52:13.885)
Mm-hmm.

Will Leach (52:22.411)
Because we're still making decisions, we're still using AI. I just think that experience will be slower. If you're in the job market, that matters. Because if you're 18 or 20 years old, you're coming into the job market, you get your college jury and you want to come into your job market. What are you gonna tell somebody that has artificial intelligence at their disposal that has the thinking of a well-experienced new hire? What are you gonna say? I don't know. So I think what I wanna do with my kid, anyways.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (52:45.842)
Yeah.

Will Leach (52:51.177)
Is one, I'm encouraging him to create his own business as fast as possible. Let him fail. Just create your own businesses, not with AI. In fact, just go create businesses and have to something, right? Just something that he's gonna be somewhat more aware of his real thinking and and and the way he makes decisions and his judgments and his values and things like that. That's what I'm trying to encourage him to fail as fast as he can. So he has these stories that he's built up and in these things that he can go to an interview.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (53:00.088)
That's a great advice. That's a great advice.

Will Leach (53:20.213)
And going to his first two jobs and really have experience to know AIs tell me to go down this path, but that's when I when I did this two years ago myself, that didn't work out of my way. If he doesn't have that critical experience, he's gonna do what AI tells him to do. Path of least resistance. We're gonna go all the way back to the front at the end of this conversation. Path of least resistance. When we don't have judgment and knowledge and experience, we are gonna look at somebody else's judgment, AI's judgment, and we're gonna rely on that because we have nothing to push back against.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (53:39.128)
Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (53:48.62)
It get us back always to the beginning. Why we humans do things the way that we do, why we you know, we're avoid friction and and why we make decisions the way we do it. So at the end of the day and and and we'll last but not least, because we're getting to the to the end of this conversation, you have spent your career decoding how people actually think and why they choose, why they do what they do, right?

Till this date, in everything that you have learned from working with human beings, what still surprise you about human beings?

Will Leach (54:28.033)
That we are so quick to stop going towards our goals. So there's this concept called goal theory. It's the first part of my model in the mind state model. It's that all behaviors, whether you know it or not, are directed towards a goal that you have. And biologically, there's a whole bunch of things going on that that that tell us that we go after our goals. And so now the problem is some of those goals are non-conscious, right? Fine. But

What I find that's so interesting is that we may have a goal for healthy eating, but yet we don't eat healthy. We have a goal of being happy, but yet we marry the wrong person. and there's a lot of things going on there. But what I find is that so many people either take actions that go against their goals. Even when you can have counselors talking to them, they'll still do actions or

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (55:19.123)
Mm-hmm.

Will Leach (55:23.809)
The saddest part is that people won't take action at all. And so they have a goal of running the starting their own business, but then they've gone 40 years without ever doing that goal. And that's a sad part. So it's so funny that we know that human behaviors are always towards our goal. We may even know the goal we have, but even then we hate we hate change. We have we have biases, things like we have we change. And so that we don't go after our goals. It's still so surprising.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (55:27.095)
Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (55:42.594)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (55:50.208)
Yeah, that's that's interesting 'cause you know, at the end of the day also I think how intentional we are towards our goal or towards the things that we want to accomplish, it's a huge part in in all this conversation. And and how can people reach out to you, Will?

Will Leach (56:07.735)
Yeah, the best way I do a lot of my writing on LinkedIn. So if you look at Will Leach, L E A C H, look me up on LinkedIn. I write every week almost articles on LinkedIn. That's my main go to source for thinking around behavioral science, behavioral AI, everything else. So you check me out on LinkedIn.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (56:23.685)
Awesome. Thank you very much. It's been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show today. Thank you. And if you take one thing from this today, the same tool that can augment your thinking, it can also atrophy you. Follow us and stay with us for next conversation when we meet next week. Thank you all.

Will Leach (56:28.333)
All thanks for having me.