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Episode Overview:
Unlocking Empathic AI with Minter Dial is a pioneering exploration into the intersection of technology and human connection. Spearheaded by Minter Dial, a leading expert in digital transformation and empathy-driven leadership, this initiative seeks to harness the potential of artificial intelligence to enhance human experiences and relationships. Through insightful talks, workshops, and cutting-edge research, Minter Dial empowers individuals, businesses, and technologists to leverage AI for not just efficiency but also emotional intelligence. Unlocking Empathic AI is a visionary journey that bridges the gap between technology and empathy, promoting AI solutions that are not just smart, but also compassionate, and ultimately, cultivating a world where technology amplifies our humanity rather than diminishes it.
Additional Resources:
Skot Waldron (00:01.917)
Minter, How's it going?
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (00:10.074)
It's going very well and I am from the heart.
Skot Waldron (00:17.894)
That is it. Well said. Uh, well said. Um, I'm excited to talk about this. I'm sure the world is excited to hear about this because. No, that's how many listeners I have. I have about 2 billion going on, you know, all over the world. So you're going to get some good exposure here. Um, mentor we're, we're talking empathy and AI and I sit there and go, well, that sounds weird. Can AI.
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (00:30.798)
Excellent.
Skot Waldron (00:45.645)
like empathize and I heard this, um, I'm going to throw this out there really quick. There was a podcast I was listening to and they had this, um, woman on there that was a researcher engineer starting and working with AI and she says right now AI's brain is about the size of a squirrel's brain, if you get, you know, related to something and it's doing what it's doing.
What happens when it gets to the size of a human brain? What will AI be like? What will it be doing? Will it be able to truly empathize? Does it already empathize? So I'm interested. I'm gonna set, I'm setting up the conversation with that and I wanna hear what you say.
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (01:28.822)
Well, so to the first point, I would like to say, can humans empathize? There's a lot of research that shows that over the last 40 years, our ability as human beings to empathize is declared to be much lower. In fact, 40% lower as far as students are concerned in United States. And in general, in pretty much study after study, they are witnessing a reduction in empathy. So I think the idea that
machine can be empathic. Well, we should put it in the context of our human abilities and our desires to, for example, listen to one another, learn from one another. And it strikes me, Christopher Lasch wrote a book called The Age of Narcissism in 1978. The tolerance or the desire to learn about somebody else, to listen without judgment has been...
on the massive decrease. And if you program intelligently a computer, which has, although small brain if you say, well, I get that in a moment, but which has a huge amount of processing power, storage capabilities, and a lot of data to go from, will probably have a lot more patience if it's properly coded and a willingness to listen to you without judgment. So on that, I think there's a lot of room.
And as far as the AI machine, the brain is concerned, there's an interesting, well, there have been two major projects trying to mimic the human brain. One was in Geneva and one was in Japan. And neither of them worked despite hundreds of millions of dollars really, if you add them up, invested in them. One was a 10 year project and they gave it up. And the other one,
after 10 years effectively managed to replicate 1% for one second of the brain. One second of 1% of the brain they were able to replicate through machines. And that took 40 minutes.
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (03:45.13)
So if you think about how long it would take us to, then replicate 100%, and all the time. We're a long way from there.
Skot Waldron (04:01.061)
That is quite a long way. So what would you say to the people that are afraid of AI taking over the world?
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (04:07.326)
Well, as far as taking over with autonomy and all that, I'm pretty sure that is distant fiction, or at least far out there. Because at the end of the day, what that would require would be a whole lot more data and a desire for that to happen, because you'd need to program computers to do that. The idea of giving over our total agency and an intention of takeover.
would be something that the human being would have to encode into it. That's my opinion.
Skot Waldron (04:43.225)
Okay. I can go along with that. I am of the camp of, we have had technological advances since a long time ago. I mean, everybody thought the Gutenberg press was going to change the landscape of the world. It did in good ways. There's always, and again, on this podcast where they were talking about these things, it was the idea that temporarily,
There will be a loss of jobs temporarily. There will be some pain temporarily. There will be that immediate reaction of that immediate, those people that are directly impacted. But when you look at the following generations that come from that technological advancement, they all thrive. So there is some give and take with every single advancement that we have in technology. And...
I don't see this as any different. I think it's just going to run its course.
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (05:43.214)
I would agree with you. I think one of the things that's interesting, Scott, about AI or these technologies in general, I think, but specifically with AI, and it's been proven in a few studies actually very recently, is that the way you evaluate or what you think of AI will inform your outcomes as well. So if you're really fearful of it, then it's going to be very hard to act with it and act on it.
And there's a study that showed that with a chatbot, half of the people interacting with it were told that this was a caring chatbot and the other half were told that it was a not so caring chatbot. I can't remember the verbiage for the opposite, but in any event, it was exactly the same chatbot. But the people who were told that it was a caring chatbot had very positive outcomes and the people who were told that it wasn't had negative outcomes.
even though it was exactly the same process. Exactly.
Skot Waldron (06:40.385)
If we look for it, we find it.
Skot Waldron (06:45.001)
Yeah. Um, how did you get to this point? And your journey? I mean, you've, you've been where you are. You've created film documentaries. You have your speaker. You've been in the leadership space. Why this topic for you? How did you land here? How did you become what we'll call an expert in this topic? Because, you know, we just need to be better than somebody else. And then we're an expert, right? So, um, how'd you get there?
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (07:14.634)
as they say, you said it, I would rarely wish to call myself an expert. But so let's say that I have always had two parts to me, part geek and part poet. And I lived that, let's say when I went to university in America, where I would spend my evenings down in the VMAX center with these huge computers and learning how to code Pascal and basic and C plus.
That's back in the 80s. Meanwhile, studying trilingual literature and reading one book a day or a novel a day. So I've written lots of poems. And so I've always enjoyed the creative side of things, but I've always been, and I would say I was more prosaically interested in the typewriter. An economist came to my university and made a speech that really impacted me. Lester Thoreau, to name him. He said, all future executors
we'll know how to type. And at the time we're talking in the eighties and typing was not something that executives were doing. Back in those days we had secretaries and stuff. And anyway, I leant into that whole idea of tech. And then when I was at L'Oreal, my last position I was head of, amongst other functions, technology or the head of IT if you will.
at least digital expressions, not the IT itself, but how to use digital internet. And so I kept that close link with it. And then when it came to this particular topic, this is the second edition of this book, I actually initially took the reason of the instigation for writing the book was actually, because I lost a friend of mine.
and I just wanted to do some therapy for me. So I was like, what could I really do that would elevate the debate in his image? And because I have, ever since I was 37, had this sort of internal motor about wishing to elevate the debate. And so that was how I started the idea. And then the idea of bringing more empathy into the world felt like a good way to elevate the world. And then the specific idea of
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (09:34.399)
Empathy in AI?
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (09:38.462)
I was thinking very much about the types of people that I worked with who didn't have a lot of empathy. And I thought for them, it might be really intriguing if they wanted to delegate the empathy that they might want to bring into an organization to a machine because it's not for them to change. It's not for them to do that listening to clients and employees whine on. And the book was initially designed to help people who are empathically challenged to become more...
empathic themselves rather than just delegate it to a machine. That expresses, I suppose, in a long-winded manner, Scott, how I got into it. Then I wrote the second edition because so much has changed in the last four years to make the need for more empathy in our world and not but, but and to make AI smarter and better and more effective.
Skot Waldron (10:36.653)
So why do you think, and I'm going to say because we need it as human beings. Like it just seems like a natural ingredient that we need. You know, that whole empathy thing. You stated that kind of jarring fact statistic at the beginning. Um, why do you feel the need for more empathy? Yes, there's a deficit running, but what about the other side of it? So what are we missing out on?
because of this lack of empathy? What's the opportunity?
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (11:08.774)
Well, the growing divide, isolation, because people no longer are connecting with one another. It's sort of small talk at best because so many topics are off base. You can't talk about things without jarring or triggering somebody to go one way or the other. And if we don't know how to be cohesive as a society, the one you're living with presently, the people you see on the streets,
and who live in your neighborhood or whatever, this is gonna make for an unfortunate, maybe uncivil environment. And I think that could go ballistically wrong if we don't get better. So that's sort of a big issue. And then otherwise, from a business standpoint, empathy is useful in pretty much every aspect of the business. And hear me out on one thing, which is that I don't think it's about being empathic
all the time with everybody in every situation. Absolutely not. But a degree more of empathy is what I'm sort of preaching for, if you add more empathy into your design process, if you add more empathy, even when you're saying something that's nasty or difficult to hear for somebody, like I have to let go of people, but if you do it in an empathic way, it can do so much more good for the person who's receiving the bad news.
So there's many, many opportunities for more empathy.
Skot Waldron (12:46.245)
So AI, you said earlier, maybe there's a place for AI for leaders that don't wanna do that job or maybe they're just not natural. It just doesn't come natural for them. I'm gonna sit there and argue, well, just because it doesn't come natural doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. It just means maybe you just need to work on it, get better at that thing. There will always be an opportunity to practice empathy in some sphere. Can you outsource empathy? So can we program?
Do you believe in programming empathy into AI?
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (13:19.946)
So I'm going to maybe just fine tune one piece, which is the idea of the book was for those to have to capture those who say, oh, good, at least I don't have to be empathic. I can just delegate it out. But the first half of the book is all about you have to start with you being empathic. And what does that look like? And how do you become more empathic as an individual? Because in the end of the day, if you want to make change happen in your organization, you need to embody the change you wish to see.
And so if you're the leader and you're thinking, well, I don't have to change, well, stop and rethink that. And there's another statistic that's very worthwhile that Business Solver came out with, they're an HR tech company, and they said, they found that 77% of CEOs felt that if they were too empathic, they would be perceived as weak. So there's a whole lot of misconceptions out there as to what is empathy and...
and how to enact it. Because empathy doesn't necessarily mean being nice and it certainly doesn't mean being weak. It can be a tremendous strength to doing it. And as far as putting it into AI, I'll start with this piece, which is that the way you define empathy, typically in sort of empathic circles or empathy expert circles, we will generally, but there are plenty of variations on the theme, have two different types of empathy.
Some people don't believe in the dissociation, but one of them is affective empathy, which is emotional. And that is when I have, let's say you have an emotion, let's say you're laughing, I laugh with you. If you're crying, I cry with you. I feel your emotion. Now that is a tall order to believe that a machine will actually feel your emotion. It could mimic your emotion, but it won't feel it.
On the other hand, there's cognitive empathy and cognitive empathy is the ability to understand what you're thinking, feeling and experiencing. So I see you in Atlanta, in your office, in your context, I see you maybe scratching your brow and then therefore maybe thinking hard and or furrowing and not understanding what I'm saying. And so I'm trying to think, I'm trying to understand what you are feeling.
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (15:47.426)
thinking and experiencing. And that is something that with the powers of all the data processing, that a machine can do actually probably better than most human beings, to the extent that the machine isn't gonna be distracted by bings and wings and tings and notifications or other things that pollute our minds as human beings. And so the ability for a machine to have cognitive empathy
is definitely more accessible. And we're already seeing machines becoming more empathic. But Scott, the one thing that's important is that on the one hand, we have the idea of the empathic machine and the other piece is how can empathy that is appropriately coded help us human beings become more empathic in our day-to-day business. And there's a lot of interesting initiatives on that count too.
Skot Waldron (16:48.793)
This all comes back to humanity and how we conduct ourselves as humans. I'm going to take it to the leadership space in a second, but I, cause I, cause I, you know, major audiences is in that space, but I want to talk about something else is how about us as parents or. Mentors like with.
a younger sibling or within our family circles or in that influence circle that we have. How would you see AI and empathy and this idea playing into that role? Because right there, it's like on the leadership side, I can see, well, there's putting these into processes and how we do things operationally and whatnot.
There's a place where AI fits as a parent, as a brother, as a son. How do, how, what is there a place for that in my life from a personal standpoint?
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (17:58.238)
Well, I would argue that, well, AI is already in our lives. I mean, it's sort of there. I feel like the bigger argument must be get rid of tech and focus on the human things. And I think that's contributed to some of the deficit and empathy is the desire to be more on my cell phone or my smartphone than face-to-face with people. The number of people who are dissing
breaking up with people through a text message is disheartening. The lack of family dinners where we all sit around without any telephones on the table and have full-on conversations about a book that we might have read or something far more cultivated than just what happened in the sun and the sports team that won this or that, having a strong, interesting debate at family dinners. And there's one other thing I would like to address.
communication bias. So for those who have studied empathy, they will know about this. But this is something that happens when you are dealing with people with whom you're close. And so the easy target would be your spouse. So you come home, hey how was your day? And then the person, your spouse tells you something and you're almost cutting them off before they have finished their sentence because you know what they're about to say.
And whenever they talk, you're already thinking about what you're going to be saying next as part of a history between the two of you. And you do have an inbuilt knowledge. What that means is that the other person doesn't get hurt or feel hurt. And that creates chasms. So especially when you're dealing with family, what an interesting thing to do is really just listen deeply.
what the other person said and not quickly bring it back to you about, well, that reminds me of my story, you know, how we tend to bring it back all to me. Or think, well, I'm just going to give a solution to that, which is not what the person was necessarily thinking about. A kid just wanted to tell you about my bad day. Well, you should go over and tell that teacher this, or you should go over and stop that bully or whatever parental advice you might be giving. Just, hey, ask them more. So how did that make you feel?
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (20:28.95)
What are you going to do about it? What should we do next? That kind of approach, as opposed to a lot of cutting off people, a lot of lack of listening and not enough time, you know, when your kids, you know, coming up to you and trying to grab your shirt. Hey, Papa, I got a question. Oh, it's not now, a little later.
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (20:53.974)
Lot of opportunity there.
Skot Waldron (20:57.121)
Yeah, what's the message we're sending at that? We're communicating something. Either I don't think what you're wanting is as important as what I'm doing, and you're a lower priority for me right now. And no, we'll say things like, oh, I don't have time right now, but you do, you're just choosing something else in that moment. And...
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (21:03.49)
There they are.
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (21:09.026)
Yeah, I'm, I'm silly.
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (21:23.352)
100%.
Skot Waldron (21:25.933)
having that realization for ourselves, I think is powerful and empowering. Cause a lot of us feel victims to time, a victim to tech, a victim to, especially now that, you know, we do a lot of things virtually, we set meetings from 11 to 12 on the dot, and then we get from 12 to one on the dot, and then we forget that there was like some mingling afterwards and some inter-relational connectivity and, and what we used to do. And, uh, I think we're missing out on that, that human-ness.
And I think that that's a little bit of what you're talking about here is that connection that is going. So as we move into the age, more so of AI and how it's we're using it in our lives.
Skot Waldron (22:11.045)
How do we balance those things? How do we not lose the humanity of who we are and what makes us human and not replace that with, you know, right now I feel like we're a little bit out of control with the whole tech thing and that's why we're like craving the, everybody put your phones away and we're gonna talk. And it's like, I can't imagine somebody saying that 20 years ago, you know, but we're saying that now. So how do we not replace that?
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (22:39.39)
Well, I think we need to be intentional about it. And I, sorry, I, my, um, a lot of myself has done in French and I have this, it's great in French doesn't work in English, but the, uh, there's an expression, le j'ai pas de temps, which means in French, I don't have time, but it also means, uh, the pas de temps is the pace of time, the, the way you organize your time. And so it, you need to be intentional about wanting to allow for the time. So you can't have.
an agenda that looks back to back. First of all, you're not giving yourself time and you're not giving time for others who are going to maybe solicit your time. You don't know when that might happen, but you need to allow for buffers enough, just like at home, just like at work. So I used to, when I was working in a large organization, L'Oreal to name it, I would attempt and certainly with my assistant's help.
carve out 50% of my time not to be in meetings. And that would allow me to amongst other things, the right strategic notes, see clients, but also allow for employees to come in and speak to me when they needed to speak to me, or at least there was opportunities for them to knock on my door that was open. So I think you need to be intentional. Another thing which I think is important is to, and this is something I think I really is also
related to our out of controlness is that we've lost touch with who we are ourselves. We have these images of ourselves, these projections that sometimes are on social media, but in general, that are more and more dissociated from who we really are. And we don't spend the time on thinking about ourselves enough, which includes things which are not so easy like,
What are my bad sides? What are my imperfections? What are the things that I'm carrying with me from my childhood that are really impacting the way I am? Because if I'm not grounded in that space, when I'm listening to a kid or somebody else, I'm gonna have this little thing in the back of my head, little devil on my shoulder or whatever, that's gonna cloud my ability to listen to you in an unfiltered way, without judgment.
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (25:05.45)
without preoccupation or the zit on my nose. And if you don't have that sense of presence, that will confound your ability to be properly empathic because it does require being present and in the moment with that other person, not preoccupied by some unconscious or some subconscious issues that you've never resolved or wanted to be at peace with.
Skot Waldron (25:33.729)
I see a connection a bit with your books. You've got the second edition of Heartificial Empathy. I love the title by the way. So good, Heartificial Empathy. And then you're finishing one on meaningful conversation and then you kind of touched on it just a second of losing our identity, but this idea of like avatars and that's another idea that you're.
coming up with and that identity of who we are and are we losing ourselves and what we are? Is that where you're getting on that one?
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (26:07.222)
Yeah, it's all related for me. And even my book on leadership is about, I mean, the subtitle is, How Being Yourself Makes You a Better Leader. And so the thread throughout all of this is to spend, it's ironic at some level, because we have so many narcissists and egocentric people running around, but it's spend some time on thinking about who you really are, not the projection of what you want or what you think you should be giving.
And if we have such huge mental health issues, one of them is lack of knowledge of self and discomfort with anything to do with anything imperfect because that's not how society rolls, much less things like pain, risk and death. And so this mental health issue is also related to things like a lack of connection amongst one another.
In this topic, I'd love to put in a plug for a book by a guy called Yohan Hari, an English journalist who wrote a book, Lost Connections, which talks about depression and mental health, which he had suffered from. But he provides a really interesting blueprint for reconnecting and how to reconnect. In today's world, we've seen study after study that we've lost that strong circle of friends. We used to have five.
And then about 20 years ago, it went down to four and the last one is about to come out or just came out. And it's, we're down to three friends that you can call. So this lack of connection, lack of strong bonding, I think also will be helped if we can go back to having some more meaningful conversations, not just, you know, how did the Yankees do or the Braves?
Skot Waldron (28:01.029)
I'm impressed with your knowledge of Major League Baseball. That's good. You have enough connections. Yes. Basically you live half your life here. So, um, that's, that's powerful. Here's something I want to talk to you about is, um, some takeaways for everybody. I mean, is there like what is.
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (28:04.083)
I went to university in America.
Skot Waldron (28:24.557)
Is your advice for those leaders out there that are like, I just the empathy thing comes hard for me. I know it's important. I see it. It's important. I don't necessarily want to outsource it to AI. Like there's this thing. I know I'm going to have to do it as a leader. Well, how can we become better at this whole empathy thing? Are there any tips you have that you've used in your book or anything else that you've used to coach leaders in the past?
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (28:51.774)
Well, so just before I get into the tips themselves, the first is to have that kind of self-awareness. So you just talked about Scott where you're like, well, I know I'm not really good at it or I know I don't have time or don't really understand it. So being self-aware is a great first step and also being aware of your level as an organization of where you are. Then what I would tend to do would be think about, well, what...
are strategic issues that you might have in your organization. And you know, you, if you're the leader, then presumably you have articulated the strategy for the next year or two. And, and you will have a good understanding of what your issues are. So I am, I'm really struggling to recruit really great talent. We need to get more new clients. Our innovation cycle is not good enough, not fast enough or whatever it might be. Well, there's a very strong chance that empathy could help in that.
thing. So if you know you're not good at it, you got that self-awareness, you know as an organization where you sit and you're not over estimating yourselves, because we have an incredible ability to overestimate ourselves, especially when we're successful and up there with arrogance. When we have that sort of self-awareness and honesty about it, then applying empathy into your strategic issues will give you an extra motivation to go for it.
to get over the hump of, oh my God, I'm gonna be too weak if I'm showing an empathic. It's actually gonna be highly productive and useful for you as a business. So that's sort of like the preamble, Scott. But then in terms of how do you become more empathic? Well, so cognitive empathy is something that you can really truly learn and practice. Affective empathy is not something I believe you can learn. It's like, how do I teach you to love? Or how do I teach you to cry? I mean, you can do that in acting school,
when it's inauthentic, any form of empathy is not useful. So it's a muscle, so you can practice it. So let's say you're not so hot at empathy, you don't really understand it. Well, why not start with, for example, when you're out talking with strangers on a bus, going to work or on a train and you're sitting beside somebody and rather than tell them about your lives and how amazing you are, just listen to the other person.
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (31:17.078)
Hey, so what do you do for a living? I do this. That's really interesting. Tell me more about that. And what's it feel like to work in that industry and blah, blah. It's supposed to bring it back to you. And then when they say something like, you know, it's really difficult to fire people. Oh, well then what does it make you feel like to fire people? Well, then they will load on. And they won't even know that you're reformulating what they talk about. They'll just, they'll carry on.
And it's amazing the feeling you get at the end of the train ride. The person will inevitably say, you're an amazingly interesting person. Yeah. They have no nothing about you. They've connected into you. So practicing it out with strangers, for example, dad home, go back home and, and then just be prepared to listen and practice listening and, and understand making sure they understand or they know that you understand what they were saying.
So I see you're frowning, my dear son, why are you frowning? And tell me what that makes you feel and ask them questions and be legitimately, genuinely curious about them. So that's practicing empathy outside of work. And it's sort of the low stakes. I mean, it's higher stakes for your family, but with strangers, it's no stakes really. But at work, you can also do it. You can't do it all the time with everybody everywhere.
But at times it might be useful. So, you know, when you, when you, when you, I used to do is I used to have a lunch with members of my team or, or one lower rank and so on. So I could sort of farm out and find out what's happening. And I would just ask them what's going on in their lives and ask them real genuine curiosity, genuine desire to learn about them and their situation. And if you don't have the genuineness, then it's probably a non-starter, but those are some good things. And the last thing I would say, practice meditation.
It's very important to be present when you are listening deeply to somebody. And meditation is a great way. You can do it more guided in the morning, 20 minutes or whatever in the morning or 10 minutes even. But then you can also just be aware of your emotional state. When you go in, you know, you're like, oh, I'm a big boss. I'm going to come in, rah, rah. I'm going to, I'm, you know, I'm supposed to be this way.
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (33:40.066)
But if you didn't sleep well, if you had a fight with your spouse, your rah-rah idea, the, oh, well, I can do this, it's gonna come out. Either it's gonna come out or it's gonna hurt you internally. So being aware of your emotional state, that sort of self-empathy, thinking about breathing before you speak because you feel your emotions coming up here. You're getting triggered by it.
For example, you might have an employee who you always find is a little bit lazy and the employee comes in, oh, I can't do that. First reaction is gonna be, oh, fuck, now here he goes again, right? So how do you do that? Well, right, so I'm aware that that's gonna happen. So I'm gonna do some small exercise so that I don't immediately have that negative thought that of course the other person's gonna feel even if you don't express it. So these are some ideas as to how to, I hope.
practically bring empathy into your business.
Skot Waldron (34:42.741)
Ah, that's smart. I like it. I noticed questions was a foundational element of some of that is asking questions, asking questions, because as soon as we stop asking questions, we're pushing information. Um, and we're probably not listening as much. Uh, and that, and that's basically, I think. Yeah.
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (35:01.15)
And if I may, you need to make sure that more open questions rather than closed questions, because those are pretty orienting. Don't you think that's a bad idea? Questions are not good. But opening questions, tell me more about that. That's Rob Volpe's name of his book is reading. Tell me more about that. Or how does that make you feel? What are you going to do about it? As opposed to bring it to me.
Skot Waldron (35:12.481)
Yeah.
Skot Waldron (35:23.617)
Yeah. Yeah, that's really, that's really good. Yeah. That seems to be more proactive, you know, type of engagement and leadership and just self leadership and, and that light more than reactive, um, is. You know, my, uh, family therapist friend of mine, uh, we were, we were doing some speaking engagements and stuff together and he said one of the biggest aha moments for him.
was when he was speaking to a friend of his and the woman said to him, oh, my dad just passed away. And this friend of mine was like, oh, I'm really sorry to hear about that. Just reacting like we normally would, we've been conditioned to react in a certain way. And she said, it's the greatest day of my life.
He was horrible. He did really bad things in. He would treat it as poorly. He's affected our entire, like, and it was, and, and from that moment on, it's that assumption piece that we need to kind of get deprogrammed in, um, is to, is to say now what he says is, huh, how do you feel about that? So it's that.
Tell me more about that. What do you think about that? What do you feel about that? And understanding their perspective as opposed to imposing our thoughts, our preconceived ideas about that onto them. So.
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (37:00.15)
Well, I would add one more piece there, because I mean, on balance, of course, when someone's family members died, it's more often than not a sad occasion. So the issue here is to be able to detect the emotions. So if you're not present and you're sort of on an automatic dial, use my name, you will just go into that mode, right? But if you see the person crying, well, you don't need to say, how does it make you feel?
If on the other hand, they're not showing emotion when they say it, well, it might be that they're hiding other things. And so you need to be wily and smart about it, be very human about it. So allow for your intuitions to detect the emotions, not necessarily feel them, because that's another level of empathy, but to observe the... So I see you didn't say that with any emotion, Scott, or I see you're happy when you say that.
what's going on? Because if you're smiling, for example, and it's tricky because depressed people smile, but it turns out that they smile shorter smiles than happy people, so, or these non-depressed people. And so it is tricky and that often tricks us. People will say something that's very sad, smiling, as a deflection policy.
So it is hard to know and I think you're right. Your friend is right. Don't always assume and don't assume that your judgment, your experiences are the only and the right ones.
Skot Waldron (38:38.905)
So let's bring this back to AI. Does AI have a place in those conversations?
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (38:44.874)
Well, in those nitty gritty intimate conversations, I don't think so. But I will say, I mean, there was an experiment that was done when someone announced on LinkedIn that they just had a member of their family pass away. And then there were all sorts of condolences were expressed by people. And fair, my warmest condolences and such. But there were several that were kind of out of off base.
And then this person decided to use a chat GPT-inspired condolences moment. And that message was considered to be much warmer than very many of the human-written condolence notes, which were really quickly made. And so another study that was done in March of 2023 was with regard to doctors giving
responses to patients who had questions through a chat. And so, you know, oh listen, I've got these dots here on my wrist or whatever, the photograph or something. And so the doctors would give their responses and for the other half they were done by chat, a bot, a well-programmed smart bot, no doubt. And 78% of those people
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (40:13.75)
So because the bot has more time, can access more data quickly. Sometimes the doctors are pressed, they don't have that bedside manner all the time because they too are stressed. And so even in that medical field, they're already seeing how AI can help. You have AI plus human, which is a really interesting zone where AI could help and can help, for example, for you to craft an email.
And you might write your email to your friend, John, hey, hey John, this is blah, blah. And the bot will look at it, scan it and say, you know what Scott, you might want to take out that second sentence and replace it with this. It'll be in a more empathic approach. And so I can see how it'll be more and more like that AI plus or AI, empathic AI plus human, making some of our communications better.
Skot Waldron (41:08.005)
Okay, so what you're saying is, you don't think it'll replace that, but you think there is a place for it to help supplement, to help filter, to help access the data that it has to understand what maybe more appropriate conversation would be or a way to phrase this sentence.
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (41:28.526)
So maybe I was mistaken. I was thinking more about the personal stuff at the beginning as opposed to the business side of things. So in a personal space, I'm trying to promote human and AI. And so there's times when you can be human, and there are times when it can only be AI. I mean, there are different places. And it's about finding that mix according to what your objectives are, your culture, and many things. But in the business place, where I
Skot Waldron (41:34.981)
Sure. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I would almost say it's either one.
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (41:58.686)
opportunity over the next five years will be using an AI that is infused with empathy to help you run your business. And so that could be in your customer relationship management, it could be in your customer service center, and you still have human beings. You try to remove as many as possible of the repetitive boring tasks, and you also try to enhance your human agents, allowing them to retain agency.
but giving them ideas as to how to be a little bit more empathic. Because sometimes it takes time and it takes data that you might not have at your fingertips. But if your AI is smart and goes out and says, this customer has had 54 interactions, 28 of them have been better because of this. Let me give you this type of advice. There's no way a customer agent is going to be able to get that. But when it's smartly programmed to help your humans, then it's less about fear of taking over my job.
but making me look better. And I think that's sort of the big avenue, the big opportunity for businesses with regard to empathic AI.
Skot Waldron (43:05.337)
Uh, I love it. Thanks for the clarity on that. That's, that's, that's gold. That's really, really good. Um, you've got the second edition of the, of artificial empathy that is out now. Uh, so people can get their hands on that. Your other books are coming. Um, if people, you speak all over about this topic and it's very timely, it's very relevant. And if
People want to hire you to come speak to their organization, to share your thoughts and knowledge with them, consult them, coach them. Where do they go to find you?
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (43:43.446)
Well, the easiest place will be to go to my blog, minterdial.com. They've got a little speaker tab, and you can find my agents who get me. Otherwise, you can directly contact me. I'm pretty much out there on all social media and all that, and I'm pretty good at getting back to everybody. But you'll find my books as a portal on my site. You have my podcast and various other ways
elevate the debate and make the world a little bit more meaningfully interesting.
Skot Waldron (44:20.097)
Elevate the debate you do title one of your titles is elevator Which I didn't know if that was a functional elevator or if that was like a you know, so They both do the same thing, right? They both lift us. So
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (44:29.166)
But there's a, I have a.
Well, elevators go down as well. But it's funny, I haven't really thought about it that way, Scott. But when I was younger, I came up with an elevator philosophy, which is if I get stuck in an elevator, always have something to do. And of course, those are days before smartphones. So I always carried around a book so I could read. Well, the premise was that there was electricity in the elevator, but that was my elevator philosophy when I was younger. Never.
Never fall victim to the elevator that breaks down. And I applied that, for example, to whenever somebody would come late to a meeting. Rather than get upset, oh God, they're late. Well, just take advantage of that time for you and have something to do that's useful. So you can plan for the fact that people do come late or things don't happen and elevators break down. That was my original elevator philosophy. But now it's really all about being an elevator, helping to help people rise.
and feel better about themselves, be the best that they can be. And of course, I try to do the same for me.
Skot Waldron (45:38.341)
Beautiful continuing this conversation wherever you are with mentor. He's open. So, and I love the fact that you've been open to talk to me and my audience all about this, because I think this song I've been excited about this. And we've gone extra long today because it has been so interesting and I've wanted to keep poking and asking. So, um, thanks for delivering a mentor and good luck on the books and good luck on everything you're doing.
Minter Dial, author, filmmaker, elevator (46:05.618)
Many thanks Scott.
