AI Makes Everyone Average. A Harvard Scientist on Staying Irreplaceable

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.

mykel (00:01.183)
The future of work is not only about doing more, it is about working more humanely. Welcome to The Human Protocol, the podcast about staying human while building the future. I am your host, Mykel Salomon. Today's conversation is about AI and work, but not from the usual angle, not fear, not replacement, not productivity at all cost. Today we're talking about whether AI can help us build a more human workplace.

A workplace with less overwhelm, more creativity, better collaboration, more self-awareness, and more room for different ways people think, sense, create, and contribute. I have a pleasure to be joined today by my guest, which is Alexander Semmel. Welcome to The Human Protocol.

Alexandra W Samuel (00:49.804)
Thanks so much for having me.

mykel (00:51.793)
It is a pleasure and Alexandra, if you don't know yet, she's a Harvard trained social scientist, technologist, journalist, keynote speaker, and one of the leading voices helping people understand how AI is reshaping the workplace. She appears regularly on the Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review. And she's the author of Work Smarter with Social Media, co-author of Remote Inc and founder of Social Signal.

One more time, welcome to the Human Protocol Alexandra.

Alexandra W Samuel (01:24.066)
Thank you.

mykel (01:25.727)
So with everything that is going with AI, with everything that is going with the future, what is the view, the technology, and how things are changing? I'm hoping that we can get into a conversation that you can maybe get back to the beginning of your work and tell us a little bit what first drew you to technology and its impact on the human connection of things.

Alexandra W Samuel (01:53.999)
Sure. So I'm super old and I've been a nerd for so long. and you know, it's funny, I just recently got back in email contact quite delightfully with the person who I kind of credit with my very early beginnings. I'm I am so old because I'm 55. So I was you know, I had a life before the invention of computers kind of barely.

And when I was, I think 12 or 13 years old, our next door neighbor w went away for a year and an executive who was a supercomputer nerd in these early, early days, this would have been like 1984 or something, moved in. And I, his kids, because it's like my kids, my kids don't want to have anything to do with technology because I'm a nerd. His kids didn't want to have anything to do with technology because he was a nerd. But I was next door, I was

super interested in this computer thing he had. It was the first time I'd ever seen a mouse. And he was so delighted that I was taking interest. And it was the first, you know, I just it really was like love at first sight for me. from the very first time I I started using computers. And I was very politically active as a young person. And when I started doing my PhD in in the mid-1990s in political science, technology wasn't really part of part of

It was on my radar. I'd been involved in doing some early online organizing work and starting one of the first online communities for political party in Canada. but literally exactly 30 years ago, 1996, I was shopping for a computer and doing the early stages of my dissertation research at the same time. And I was interested in labor politics i i across different countries. And I was shopping for a computer and reading all this like early labor history stuff.

And I had this epiphany that all of the stuff that was written about the dynamics of unions and the workforce and what like industrialization meant for workers and what meant for pol the politics of the workplace was going to be changed by the shift away from large scale factory production and towards a world where the means of production was one person and one computer.

Alexandra W Samuel (04:00.143)
and I would like to stand by that being a brilliant insight in 1996. And I would also like to apologize to my dissertation committee for being so frustrated that they did not understand why I wanted to write about it because they just thought I was crazy. And you know what? It took 30 years. It took it took 25 years for what I was hoping to write about in 1996 to come to the point where I actually think it was true.

mykel (04:05.023)
Wow.

Alexandra W Samuel (04:27.31)
and so now, you know, at long last, I feel like I'm getting to write about how work is changing our our day-to-day lived experience of work, our power relationships in the workplace, our economic opportunities in relation to work. because finally the technology is reaching maturity to a point where one person really can be a business.

mykel (04:52.171)
That's so interesting because that's exactly the type of future that I also think that we're going towards too, right? And when we look back at social media, for example, and remote work, hybrid work, and now AI, what patterns do you see repeating in them?

Alexandra W Samuel (05:14.536)
what patterns do I see? I'm really trying to be more optimistic. so I I will say that one pattern I see repeated over and over, I see in myself and I see in my fellow technologists, which is those of us who are drawn to the bleeding edge of technology and what's suddenly possible, are often you know, very optimistic about what it can do. We see all the possibilities.

And we focus on what the technology can do rather than on the economic and social context in which it unfolds. And so I think that the the thing I've seen over and over again is that we focus in our conversations, in our research, in our writing, public discourse on what the technology is, what the technology means. look, the AI can now do math. look.

That AI can now out-analyze a business person. But it's actually really not about the technology. It's really about what happens inside organizations as people adopt these technologies in ways we don't anticipate. What happens to society as these technologies become part of our day-to-day life? And all of that is mediated, not really so much through the keyboard and the cloud and all the tech of it, it's mediated by the person.

And how individuals use it or don't use it or misuse it. And also it's mediated by the economic incentives that say, like, sure, AI could be a wonderful thing for humanity, but how am I gonna make a buck? And the make a buck often leads us to implement these technologies in ways that both undercut their potential and have a harmful impact on humans.

mykel (07:05.063)
And that's because you think that still when we're trying to implement or design the technology, looking at how we're going to make a buck, it's in detriment to really how we're going to build the connection with the technology itself.

Alexandra W Samuel (07:22.334)
I I think the the challenge is that when the focus is on how do I how do I derive revenue from this technology, which is, if I may say so, a much harder problem for AI than it was. I mean, social media went wrong, but at least in theory it could have gone right. With AI, there really is a cost for every hour of usage that creates a very, very hard pressure for every hour to generate revenue.

And when you're in that situation within the context of a society where right now lots of people already face really tough financial decisions on a day-to-day basis. The lots of people who really are in a position of scarcity. And then there are a few people who are already winning very big from these technologies. And we it creates these incentives for everybody to sort of try and

Take the biggest part of the pie for themselves or their organization. It creates these perverse incentives for we're gonna roll out our technology as fast as possible without all the safety pieces in place, without thinking about the human pieces in place, because the economic cost of us not being first is so terrible. We can't let the other company beat us to market. And so it creates these incentives for acceleration.

for focusing on the productivity gains rather than the human impact. and and if we could just slow down a little, these technologies could be fantastic for us. I think the challenge is how we can create the room to make more intentional decisions.

mykel (08:50.667)
All

mykel (09:03.967)
Yep, and I think we're also seeing that at the government levels, right? It's like it's a race and no country wants to be left behind. And I think back to your point, Alexandra, I think getting to the intentionality of taking a step back and thinking, what is it the future that I want to design and how we can design this technology and leverage this technology to build a better and more human society.

Alexandra W Samuel (09:08.312)
Mm-hmm.

Alexandra W Samuel (09:23.554)
Yeah.

mykel (09:30.647)
are those conversations that are getting lost because everything is going so fast that no one is taking the time to really champion those ideas. Hey, let's take a step back. Let's think it through. How we can leverage these tools more in a way that it feels like it's a collaborator as I know that you champion these instead of just the tool, right?

Alexandra W Samuel (09:50.04)
Yes.

Alexandra W Samuel (09:53.475)
Well, and and and and you know, I think part of the complication of doing that work is, you know, again, I think about social media and I think sometimes I feel like we should be able to do better because we have the lessons of social media. We have the lessons of, you know, the first 30 years of the internet to draw from and maybe try and do better. But I also think the problems are harder because, you know, your your point about like how do we help use the technology to help us become more human? One of the things that's very challenging about these technologies is that they

shift our understanding of what it means to be human, or at least they it challenges them. And these are not easy questions to think about overnight. What what is it that is essential about being human? And it's something I I wrestle a lot, I wrestle with a lot because the core of my work is deeply informed by the neurodiversity movement. And if there's one thing I've learned from paying a lot of attention to autistic

researchers and thinkers and ADHD writers and thinkers, it's that we as a society get into trouble whenever we are whenever we fall into the mistake of thinking there's only one way to think, of talking about human intelligence as if it's just one thing. And the challenge is as soon as you open up that that box and that container and say, actually intelligence can look really different depending on the type of brain, the type of person, the context.

Then you have to get serious about, well, so how do we draw that line between human intelligence and machine intelligence? And what is it really about the human part of it that we are are trying to preserve here? And I do think I'm not, you know, I do think there are important and and relevant changes or or diff distinctions, but this isn't something you figure out in five minutes with a pencil on the back of an envelope. These are deep philosophical questions, scientific questions, existential questions.

I always I always laugh when I use the word existential now because it's one of those words that AIs love. and and and again, like tough to do on a deadline. And we have got some tight deadlines here.

mykel (11:52.107)
Yeah.

mykel (11:58.955)
Right? A deadline like every day you wake up and you feel like you're kind of, you know, running for your life in a way, right? No one wants to be left behind. And there's so many news about this and that. And what is it to mean? What is it to be a human being? And what is the future that we want? And, you know, and some of the question is people trying to answer that. What does it mean to be a human?

Alexandra W Samuel (12:10.763)
Sure.

mykel (12:28.287)
But I think we should be asking as well, what is it that we don't want to outsource to AI? It feels likely that we're not asking this question a lot. Like it's, okay, let's take a step back. What is it that we don't want to outsource to AI? Is it really all for grabs or there are things that we should keep it to ourselves? And I don't think we as human are having this type of conversation in a way that challenges us to think through that.

Alexandra W Samuel (12:52.738)
Yeah.

Alexandra W Samuel (12:57.71)
Yeah, and it's an i an interesting question. I don't know if I I'm not sure if I agree that that's the question or the framing, because I do hear people talk about like we shouldn't outsource creativity to AI. And I think part of the reason I I am questioning the question is because I find often when people are talking about, well, these are things we shouldn't outsource to AI, it's because they have a very binary notion of what it means to outsource to AI. So they say like, we shouldn't outsource creativity to AI and they're

They're thinking about having AI write a novel or having AI make a picture. And actually, if you look at anyone who's doing any interesting creative practice with AI, it's a much more nuanced and complex co-creation process. But the other reason I question it is it's such a moving target. Like I am already doing things now with AI that I would have told you I would never outsource to AI. There are lines I'm holding. Like I have not let

mykel (13:29.663)
Thanks.

mykel (13:49.107)
You have a point there. You have a point. Yeah.

Alexandra W Samuel (13:51.959)
I I haven't let yeah, right. And so it's just really I it is that never say never. so far I've said I won't let AI write for me. At some point, I don't know. I don't know.

mykel (13:57.065)
Yeah. Yeah.

mykel (14:03.305)
Yeah. And you just made me think, you just made me think right now with that example that you just provided, we as human, change through our time. What we think maybe 20 years ago, our political affiliation, how we think about the future, how we think about society in 10, 20 years from now, we're probably going to have a different way of thinking. And, you know, back to what you just said right now, it makes me think that, yes, probably.

Alexandra W Samuel (14:15.246)
Mm-hmm.

mykel (14:29.949)
it may be too early or we may not be, you know, we may not be in a position to say never say never type of thing.

Alexandra W Samuel (14:34.254)
Mm.

Alexandra W Samuel (14:38.412)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I I mean, I find it's it's hard to describe, right? So the I'm I love that your dog is joining us. Like seriously. I'm so glad I want to see them both. You know, it's funny, I let's go to the dogs, because here's one thing that I I think about my dog and my AI a lot. And because a lot of the time when I hear people's objections to AI, I always run it past

mykel (14:50.257)
I have two dogs with me.

mykel (15:01.376)
Yeah.

Alexandra W Samuel (15:07.362)
The test of the dog. Who has a bigger carbon footprint? The AI or the dog? Well, a year ago or year and a half ago, my dog was getting picked up every day in a car and driven to the woods by a dog walker and he was getting a butcher's bone every day. Those are very high carbon footprint indulgences. But nobody says your dog is an well, I guess probably some people say your dog is an environmental blight, but they certainly don't ask me about it 20 times a week. And then I also think about, you know, people are very disturbed by

My very deliberate decision to anthropomorphize my AI because that allows me to enter into an imaginative creative space when I work with AI. But nobody questions me giving my dog a name or ascribing emotions to my dog. And at the end of the day, I'm only guessing about what the dog is thinking. I have no idea. Basically, I suspect all he's thinking is when will she fall over so I can eat her face? Because that's probably what he would do.

mykel (15:50.762)
Hmm.

mykel (16:05.131)
you

Alexandra W Samuel (16:06.286)
Whereas the AI, you know, I don't know if we consider it thinking, but it does tell me what it is processing. But it doesn't cuddle.

mykel (16:14.223)
Mm-hmm. No, it doesn't. So I think that the distinction right there, right? It's how we can connect and relate to each one of those examples. And at the end of the day, we as human beings, it's about the connections that we make in a way. But.

But how can we change that perception? How can we get to a point that people start seeing AI as your collaborator? As I know that you champion this idea that it's a technology, a tool, but it is our collaborator. How can we get to that point?

Alexandra W Samuel (16:52.248)
I mean, I think I think the reality is that a lot of the frictions around AI have to do with the economic and organizational context in which people encounter it. if you are using an AI in the context of a of a workplace where your boss owns your work product, where your what you do on your computer may or may not remain exclusive to you, where your work product might be used to train an AI in ways you can't predict.

where you may have AI governance that limits what you can do with AI, then it's very hard to have an empowered collaboration relationship with an AI. The same way if your boss like assigned you a colleague and you knew that half the people it hired were being hired to spy on one another, you probably wouldn't have a great feeling about that colleague.

So I think that's one reality. And then the other reality is that for people outside organizations, the vast majority of people are not doing what I'm doing, namely opening their wallet and just pouring it directly into the hands of Anthropic and ChatGPT. I am spending so much money on AI tools, it's insane. And it's one of I swear I'm every weekend I'm like, this is the weekend, I'm gonna cancel a bunch of stuff.

You know, it if you are not paying for AI, you don't have a great experience. Your data is being used as training data, you're getting cut off, you're limited in what you can accomplish with the model. this is a premium product for people in a premium social position. if you are self-employed, if you have your own licenses and so on, you sure you might have a great experience. You also, you know, need the time and autonomy to be able to explore these technologies.

and very few few people enjoy that combination of, you know, power and privilege to be able to experience these tools in a way that is joyful and explor you know, exploratory and collaborative because they're looking over their shoulder.

mykel (18:48.361)
Right. And do you see, this lack for the sake of words of the democratization of this tool being what's going to determine people to be successful or not in the future, the access to it and the type of access? Because I'm seeing when I start thinking about it, the type of access that you have to this technology, can

Alexandra W Samuel (19:07.854)
Mm.

mykel (19:18.726)
you know, give you better outputs. It can give you, help you to get to places that maybe those with not the same type of access or leverage of the technology would have.

Alexandra W Samuel (19:33.771)
In the very, very short run, I think that's true. and I think those of us who have all those resources and inclination and who are doing these explorations are creating a first mover advantage that will s stand us in good stead for a long time. But the really, really good news is the ever the the rest of the world is catching up. And you know, to to use an example, so I start you know, I was a very early adopter on social media, early blogger, started a social media agency in 2005.

nothing now compared to people who've been using Instagram for two years and are have leveraged all the tools that are available for TikTok and Instagram now. Like like people people catch up partly because the technologies get easier. And those of us who enjoy moving giant boulders, you know, we might have we might get there a little earlier and and start out ahead, but somebody's gonna come along with the boulder moving machine.

mykel (20:33.163)
Hmm, I see.

Alexandra W Samuel (20:33.598)
And and I see this already. The AI technologies, you know, if you if you you know, when I think about what vibe coding looked like when I did my first adventures in in making stuff with AI, I actually had to look at Python. I looked at Python, you know, every day. I don't know when I last looked at a Python file. That's a bit embarrassing. but I'm building things that are much more sophisticated than I was building when I was. And and that, and it's still not that easy compared to where it's going to be in six months and and a year. And so to

mykel (21:01.099)
for a year.

Alexandra W Samuel (21:02.198)
Yeah, so to me, I actually am I think there that we will catch up, we will scoop people in, we will bring them along, there will be more opportunities. And so to me, the question, if for those of us who care about the human impact, is what are the core skills? What are the core orientations? What are the core frameworks, mental frameworks that will equip people so that when the tools do arrive at their door in a form that they can use?

So that they do have this intentional intentional and empowered relationship to the technology and so that it serves their ends instead of capturing them in a new way.

mykel (21:41.139)
And thus human skills will continue to be what amplifies the use of AI and where humans continue to go. Because those are particularly yours. You come with a set of skills that even though with the help of AI, those are still who define you and your capabilities. What AI I'm seeing it's helping with, it's kind of bridging the gaps in some areas where the lack of skills

are present and helping you to get there.

Alexandra W Samuel (22:15.502)
I do think it's important for us to double click, as some friends of mine would say, on what we mean by human skills. Because I think often when we talk about human skills, we are using human skills as a euphemism for interpersonal skills. We're talking about our ability to relate to other people. But actually, our human skills are broader and more eclectic than that. And so, you know, a lot of my work now is about.

mykel (22:34.368)
Right.

Alexandra W Samuel (22:42.626)
How do you help people look at their full picture of their human skills, map where their talents are across multiple domains, and then think about where they're furthest from the middle of the curve? Because, you know, AI is getting better and better at a lot of the stuff we think of as human. For example, you know, putting a kind interpersonal gloss on our emails, but it's doing it always in the middle of the curve. So how do we look

for how do each of us find the places where we're not in the middle of the curve, where we're a little special, where we're a little off center, where we can't be replaced by a machine, because that is going to be where we have something to contribute.

mykel (23:21.307)
That's interesting. That's an interesting work to go through. And I'm sure we all can learn a little bit more about ourselves when we start thinking about where we are and what we need to do to get there. Because at the end of the day, we also need to try to understand us so we can better connect with each other in a way. And AI can help with that in a way.

Alexandra W Samuel (23:50.561)
It can. I mean, I I will say a big part of my own work, and this is the focus of my next book, is trying to approach AI with insights from the universe of neurodiversity. Because, you know, it's not just autistic and ADHD people who can benefit from that work. We all have places where the work environment doesn't fit our brains. And when you understand those

those points of friction. And when you take a look at your capacities through that lens, it turns out that actually we've got decades now of research on thinking differences, sensory differences, communications differences that allow us to recognize our unique capacities. We just haven't thought to apply those insights to people who aren't neurodivergent. And once we do, then it gives us a whole framework we can use to to

inform how we approach AI and how we work with other humans.

mykel (24:48.875)
Yeah, that's very interesting, Alexandra. And I want to pick up in a part of the conversation that we just had where we'd say it's that type of never say never in a way when I asked about what is it that we don't want to outsource? And especially when it relates to creativity, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on how can...

we can continue to leverage AI to support our own creativity, but without replacing, you know, the creative human. Because, you know, from my point of view and my personal use, the more we use it and the more we leverage, the more we feel excited and motivated to continue to use and to continue to discover even more things about us and about what we want to create. But

Alexandra W Samuel (25:36.131)
Mm-hmm.

mykel (25:39.611)
In this process, we continue to leverage the tool and the technology more and more. So in a place and in a time that we say never, say never, and that we can continue to leverage the technology to amplify our caretivity, how we can continue to do it without losing us in the middle so we don't outsource completely what make us

that creative human.

Alexandra W Samuel (26:10.902)
Yeah. it's a really good question. And I think it also it gets kind of meta metaphysical quite quickly because and again, you know, a lot of this is based on self observation, but it's also based on some of the research. I I just wrote this paper with Jennifer Birdsall, who's the chief clinical officer at ComSyc, and ComSyc is the biggest provider of employee wellness benefits in the world. There are 150 million people around the world who work with them.

And of course a lot of those people are being affected by AI. So we took a d a deep dive into the different ways that AI can affect well-being. And you know, part of the story is how it affects us as embodied humans, right? Because AI does take us out of our bodies. And, you know, you don't have to be a dancer or even an actor for creativity to be an embodied practice. If you know, for for and I'm I mean, I'm a writer, that's my core creative practice.

probably the least embodied of all of the forms of creative practice because I also make things with my hands like I knit. even the writing has has a level of dependence on well in in my book I talk about the term interoception which is the the awareness of your internal physiological and emotional states something that is extremely varied from one person to another

And it's actually extremely important to our well-being in all kinds of pragmatic ways. It affects whether you notice when you're having a heart attack. It affects whether you notice how your colleagues are reacting to you and the meeting's going wrong. when we are working with AI, we are entering into the world of the AI, which is disembodied. And we are it you become it becomes very cerebral and becomes very dissociated from the body.

And so the the the physial the physical experiences, the physical signals we pick up, the sensory signals we pick up that inform our creative experience become like much less palpable. And I think that the risk we have around creativity is not just about like, no, the AI is writing the music, no, the AI is writing the poems. It's like if you're spending 50 hours a week in this like

Alexandra W Samuel (28:24.098)
you know, virtual brain space of the mind meld, it's really hard to like to to contact that embodied wisdom that drives creativity. You can tell I've been living on the West Coast for 25 years when I use phrases like that. But I mean they really we know this. This isn't it it sounds very woo-woo, but it's like we actually know how bodies work in the creative process and and I do worry about how we're losing contact with them.

mykel (28:24.873)
that state.

mykel (28:50.919)
Okay, that's what I wanted to get to it. If that's concern that you have based on our leverage of the technology and how we can continue to leverage because, you know, the more I use it, and I don't know if it happens to you, the more I know things about myself. And it's weird.

to use a technology, a tool, to know more about yourself. And it's a process that I've come into kind of accepting it that it's becoming more of discovering what is it the things that I like and what I don't like. And we want more of that. It's like it's almost becoming an addiction in a way.

Alexandra W Samuel (29:14.412)
Mm-hmm.

Alexandra W Samuel (29:37.069)
Yes. I think it and I will say, you know, I sorry, I am very cautious about using the term addiction because I think it got used very early in social media before it was warranted, before there was research. I mean addiction is a there's a difference between compulsion, overuse, and addiction. You can you can be compulsive in your use of social media or AI. You can overuse all of these technologies.

mykel (29:38.497)
Right.

Alexandra W Samuel (30:04.332)
And still not be addicted. Addictive addiction is, you know, really a physiological as well as a mental phenomenon. I suspect AI will prove to be physiologically addictive because, you know, again, it was incredibly helpful to me that I was working with Jennifer, who's a psychologist, on this paper at a time on my own usage of AI was going through the roof, because I talked to her about that subjective experience of like what was

Because I was in a I got it very quickly got into a cycle when I was was when the vibe coding vibe coding hardly even begins to describe it. Once I once I got beyond the script by script vibe coding and it gotten of evolved my my AI systems to the point where I could kind of prompt and it would go out and solve a whole bunch of problems for me. I fell into a a hab habit that that I'm still working through because it's really hard to resist of

Working until 11 or 12 at night and then still waking up at five o'clock in the morning, which is my usual window, because I, you know, it's like you're trying to get the AIs underway so they can work overnight. And it's like one more prompt, one more prompt, so it can keep going. Then I like give it the overnight prompt. And before I've got my teeth brushed, it's like, okay, good morning. here's what I did overnight. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Here's what we did overnight. It was 10 minutes ago, right?

mykel (31:17.576)
That sounds like someone that I know that is this guy, right?

Alexandra W Samuel (31:23.478)
Right? Exactly. And so so then you're like you just keep thinking one more prompt, one more prompt. And then, you know, I wake up at five o'clock in the morning, so the sun is coming up or the birds are chirping. And and in the before times I would have the sense to go to sleep again, close my eyes, but instead it's like my eyes open, I'm like, I wonder what the AIs did. I c I can't wait. And like, you know, my I used to have this very nice morning routine. I get up, I drink my coffee.

mykel (31:28.148)
Yeah.

Alexandra W Samuel (31:50.337)
I'd get down on the floor. I would do my floor exercises. I would do some knitting. I would watch a TV show. this morning I woke up at a little after five and I spent 90 minutes with my AI. I didn't I I won't say I waited 90 minutes for my coffee, but I didn't even drink my coffee for half an hour. I got the coffee underway. I didn't actually get up and get the coffee for half an hour. And it's just they're they are so

mykel (32:04.276)
Yeah.

Alexandra W Samuel (32:18.57)
It it's so har they have their pace, we have our pace, and they're not working at our pace, we're working at their pace. Well, we're trying.

mykel (32:25.16)
Yeah, we're trying to catch up with their pace for sure. At least our brains and the brain activity and the more you create and the more you build, the more you want to continue to uncover what's possible. And you know, when I say addiction, I said it in a way that I feel it because the more we work with this piece of technology.

Alexandra W Samuel (32:32.813)
Mm-hmm.

Alexandra W Samuel (32:43.011)
Yes.

mykel (32:50.728)
the more our brains and the more we feel like we need to do more and build more and discover new places where we want to go. And that space between us and AI, it's one that I keep thinking about.

that bridge.

Alexandra W Samuel (33:09.43)
And I think it's I think you know, some brains are more vulnerable to it than others. I mean, one of the things that I've really noticed as somebody with ADHD, and I suspect this is true for a lot of people with attention struggles, which is almost everybody now because that you know technology has kind of broken our attention spans. the AI in it it reinforces this sort of diffuser diffusion tendencies. Like I'm somebody who always

I'm always thinking about seven different things at a time. But before this, I could only actually do one or two at a time. So I might be thinking about seven things, but the only thing I'm actually working on is like this, you know, quality assurance process on a data set while maybe listening to a piece of music, right? Like that's all. Now I'm doing I'm doing 12 things at a time in 12 different windows.

My brain loves it. Like my brain like, thank God I've waited four hundred thousand years with this ADHD brain for somebody to be able to let me do twelve things at once. Now I can, yay. But like I don't know if it's so good.

mykel (34:13.554)
Yeah.

mykel (34:21.514)
Alexandra, it's you're you're we're talking about this in a way that it doesn't get more human than this, because we're really bringing to the human level what it means for us to go through it and use this technology. Right. And and for each one of us, depending on who we are and where we're coming from, the use of it and the experience of it, it's it's totally different. But what you're saying, it's like you just found your

Alexandra W Samuel (34:36.587)
Mm-hmm.

Alexandra W Samuel (34:44.76)
Yes.

mykel (34:51.59)
and the technology that is cloning your sense of doing more and doing so many times the same time.

Alexandra W Samuel (34:59.608)
It's very like I I do a I mean I think if there's one here's here's the real deal. If there's if there's I'm gonna say two habits. If there are two habits that I think are really, really important for people. Okay, I'm gonna go three habits. Three habits that are really important for people in their relation to AI. First is set a clear intention overall, but even session by session. I'm sitting down to do this thing. I want to get

mykel (35:12.796)
Okay, okay, let's do it.

Alexandra W Samuel (35:26.754)
This report done. I want to answer this question. I want to solve this problem. Because the AI will always open the door to the next thing. So you need to be like, write it down on a piece of paper if you want to. Put it on a post-it on your screen, whatever. Be very clear in your intention, going in. Secondly, and I think this is very, very important, is the reflection on what's going on in your body. even if you're not somebody pays a lot of attention to your body.

Just either you use a mood log, use a time tracker, whatever. Find some way of noticing the impact it has on your how you feel. And you know, it doesn't have to feel bad to be a problem. Like I will say myself, the thing I find most alarming is how ecstatic I feel from like it's like a it is like a high, the thing of 16 things at once. Like, and that high, you know, is the signal to me of something funky going on.

And so the third habit that I think is really important, and I totally stumbled into it by accident, is try and schedule a people-packed day at least every week or two, ideally once a week. And I mean a day where you're like meeting to meeting to meeting, to person to person to person, social date, lunch date, where you really don't have an opportunity to go to the AI because that is how you will remember.

what it means to be with people, you might you might do that for six months and be like, man, do I ever hate Wednesdays? Those humans are tedious. I just want to spend all my time with my AI. And if that's your outcome, great. But what you don't want to do is be so constantly engaged with the AI 24 hours a day, seven days a week or 18 hours a day, seven days a week, that you never catch your breath.

mykel (37:00.126)
Hmm.

mykel (37:03.911)
That's fine.

Alexandra W Samuel (37:17.28)
And like for me, at least personally, I don't have the discipline to not touch my AI. And if I'm at my computer, I'm with my AI. and or I'm back and forth with the AI. So for me, the best way to take a break from AI is to pack my day with people. But hey, if you want to go out for a walk in the woods for 12 hours, that should work too, I suspect. As long as you don't talk to your AI while you're in the woods.

mykel (37:34.204)
Awesome.

mykel (37:37.93)
That's true, absolutely. Thanks for sharing those tips, Alexandra. And we're getting to the end of our conversation, believe it or not, the time flies. And I want to finish this with two questions, right? The first one is, what would be your piece of advice to policymakers and governments? What do you want to see about making sure

Alexandra W Samuel (37:55.032)
Mm-hmm.

mykel (38:06.91)
that we put safeguards in place for AI. Any concern that you see there.

Alexandra W Samuel (38:14.69)
I mean, there are a lot of concerns, but I try not to make recommendations that I feel are unachievable. so there's two two different recommendations. One is and and and people will disagree with me on this one. I I would I would like the policy decisions to be made by people who are deeply immersed in AI. I don't want I don't want the future of AI to be decided by people who've like asked GPT some questions and think of it as a souped up Google.

You call me, Mr. Policymaker or Ms. Policymaker. I'd love to see. I mean, boy, if I could have a wish list, I'd like more women in this conversation as well. Cause this caught the whole AI thing is unfolding as like, my gosh, it reminds me of what it was like to be a woman in tech in like the early 2000s. I haven't been in so many all-male rooms in 20 years. It's nuts. So I would like to see women and men involved and and non-binary folks involved in making decisions about AI from a place of deep learning. And the good news is you don't have

mykel (38:53.482)
I I agree.

mykel (39:12.102)
understanding.

Alexandra W Samuel (39:13.516)
To be like you don't have to be a vibe coder, you can use like lovable or clod coder, any kind of chunky thing, but you go make yourself a thing with AI and blow your own mind. And when you've blown your own mind once a week for 10 weeks, then maybe you can decide the future of the human race. So that's my first thing is I just want them to actually experientially encounter this at a level of depth that include that ensures they have some understanding of what they're talking about, because I don't think most of them do. And then the second piece is.

mykel (39:16.297)
Right.

Alexandra W Samuel (39:43.159)
that I do think we we have to address the financial stakes here. right now companies are are pressuring and and really in the driver's seat around things like access to data, data center development and so on because countries are concerned about being left out of the AI moment. And I think that

governments around the world and particularly outside of the United States really need to give some thought to other models of economic competitiveness in the in general and other models of economic competitiveness in the AI space specifically so that they don't compete you know sort of race to the bottom of making every jurisdiction as friendly to AI, big AI makers as possible because

unless we're prepared to to seriously regulate and to say, actually, access to our market is a privilege. And if you want to be able to offer your technology to Canadian teenagers, or if you want to be able to offer your you know, technology to Americans of all ages, then that access depends on you investing in serious digital literacy and support for teachers because and that's not a one-time expense.

We need to be able to reduce the teaching load of teachers so that they can stay on top of AI, so that they can teach students with AI, because there's no other way this is gonna work. And those kinds of investments cost money. So thank goodness there are some companies out there who are worth trillions of dollars. Let's use some of those trillions to solve the problems they're creating.

mykel (41:30.578)
Yep. And last but not least, what would be your piece of advice for a young version of Alexandra seeing a young version of yourself today heading into this new future?

Alexandra W Samuel (41:32.046)
Yeah.

Alexandra W Samuel (41:46.393)
You know, it's such a funny I I did this on so my podcast in my podcast, me and Viv, one of our episodes, we did this actually. I had I had the AI, yeah, it was so fun. I had the AI play 2005 Alex while I played my actual self, 2025 Alex at the time, and I had this conversation with it trying to trying to convince myself to be less of a techno enthusiast.

mykel (41:56.595)
Really?

Alexandra W Samuel (42:14.81)
and I will tell you that one thing I've I've come to see through my own research around the differences and how we're wired is that you can only be who you are. You don't have a choice. You're only the one person that you are. AI is not gonna change who you are. AI is not going to make you somebody miraculously different. All AI is gonna do is offer you a path that either supports you in being the most you version of yourself.

Or that constrains you and fills you with so much anxiety that you don't get to find your own path. And so what I encourage every young person I talk to to do is not to embrace AI wholeheartedly as like this is the answer to your future, and not to avoid it as if it's your enemy, but instead use it as a tool because the most important thing for any young person, and really I would argue for all of us on a lifelong basis, is to

work on being the most true and full version of ourselves. And AI is a tool that can help you do that, but only if that's the intention you bring to how you use it.

mykel (43:23.87)
Yeah, love it. It's all get back to the intention on how we use it and it will continue to be. Love it. Alexandre has been a tremendous pleasure to have you with us on the show and thank you for bringing such a helpful and also practical way of thinking about AI in a very human way. So thank you for being with us today.

Alexandra W Samuel (43:28.918)
Absolutely.

Alexandra W Samuel (43:45.602)
Thank you. Thank you for having me. This has been fun.

mykel (43:48.52)
Yeah, absolutely. And for everyone tuning in from home, thank you for being with us today and talk to you all next week. Take care.