AI: What kind of leadership do we really need?

Open the newspapers, and you read critics state it’s crucial for the Netherlands to invest deeply in AI infrastructure to maintain our competitive advantage as country. On company level AI is absolutely not an IT topic anymore but a ‘Chefsache’. AI is projected as the holy grail. But is it? What kind of leadership do we really need?

I fundamentally would like to offer a different view on this. Nature; species, organisms and ecosystems are with their being and doing creating conditions conducive to life.

A beaver for example, is a keystone species. It builds dams, and by doing so the beaver creates a nursery of which all type of other species benefit from. Moreover, the beavers’ work results in water-penetrated soil and vegetation, preventing wildfires. So, a beaver is more than a ‘smart’ species as its natural intelligence contributes to the larger whole. This in contrast to current AI-infrastructure, that could be seen as an invasive species. It extracts water, energy, and attention at a scale that undermines the system’s carrying capacity it draws from, instead of increasing that capacity, like a beaver does.

It’s time to take a step back and reflect

I think it’s time to take a step back and reflect if the AI-race that seems to take place, all makes sense. Do we really need all this ‘calculation’ power? Why and with what intend? Is the AI used doing something that is better for the larger whole, as species, organisms and ecosystems do?

Well, if AI helps to discover new medicines or diseases to help save lives, indeed, AI is helpful. If AI helps to determine species to support the restoration and protection of natural habitats, the use of AI is reasonable. However, I don’t need deep digging to know the vast majority of AI applications around are for more volume-growth, more consumerism, more screen-time, more ‘convenience’ resulting in unhealthy habits for individuals, the community and the planet. This makes AI from a bigger picture perspective not helpful. Nor is it creating conditions conducive to life. It is a factor in the degeneration of ecosystems, communities, trust and so on.

The right question for leadership

Let’s zoom out. The questions leadership should ask are not ‘how much efficiency do I gain or costs am I saving with AI’, but ‘ is this AI enabled business model strengthening the ecosystem and communities it and my business depends on?’ Cultivation of cooperative relationships is one of the Life Principles to thrive and survive on this planet Earth. And one of the big problems of AI to me is that there is this huge disconnection between AI application and what it ‘costs’ in water, energy, pollution. But as well the effects on decrease of human critical thinking power, decrease of sense of purpose, community-belonging and real human heart to heart connection and super power skills as empathy and compassion. To me AI can be a big risk for interconnectedness. Resulting in loosing connection with each other, with the rest of nature, our autonomy, our thinking and feeling ‘selves’.

Missing Feedback Loops

This is not so much about whether AI will be connected like nature does, it’s about the nature of that connection. Natural interconnectedness works through reciprocity and feedback. What you take from a system, you give back in another form, and if it gets out of balance, a signal emerges; think of Life’s Principles like responding to feedback and nurturing cooperative relationships. With AI, that feedback is exactly what’s missing and there is no self-correcting mechanism.

To make it tangible and digestible; who is measuring how much its AI (enabled business) model consumes in water and energy? These are not externalities, make it part of your responsibility to regenerate. Moreover, let’s have popular AI machines show users how much water and energy a prompt requires. This will hopefully bring some sense, if you’re tempted to ask AI some diner options for tonight or writing your birthday party-invitation.

I hear some of you thinking that AI can help us in our challenges on climate and biodiversity. Maybe, but are we using intelligence to reduce resource use and negative impact on the planet or are we building super resource-intensive infrastructures to become ‘more’ intelligent? Moreover, tech fixes with help of AI are not more than future promises, the impact of AI operation and its supply chain, is now.

What AI does to our resilience

Another topic to explore is the risk of what AI does to our resilience, as individual, community and society. I feel the need to advocate in this context for less AI as I think we should continue to train our brains, our critical thinking power and skills to communicate and empathize as humans with other (human-)beings. This, instead of being driven as zombies, by an abstract and unknown algorithm and AI-training-model.

Courageous leadership

So NO, we can’t leave it to AI. We humans can be a key stone species as well, we need to take back and own our role to have a positive impact. The leadership we need is courageous leadership. As from the French word ‘coeur’, heart. We need the heart, in in person contact, to activate our superpower to really care about something. Screens, AI-generated decisions and excel sheets are abstract, creating ‘distance’ and ‘dissociation’. Positive impact and regeneration is per definition place- and community based and this starts with real relationships, caring about a specific community, it’s cultural and historical DNA and the ecological nature of this specific place.

To me this whole AI and leadership discussion circles back to ethics and really show what we are made of. Some present it as something inevitable that AI is becoming smarter than humans and will be taking over. But we humans can still decide if and when we use AI and how AI(-infrastructure) functions.

A call to redesign, not reject

To close, above plea is not a rejection of technology but a call to redesign this technology and infrastructure based on Life’s Principles, such as locally attuned, low energy-processes, use readily available materials and energy, and cultivate cooperative relationships. Great leadership questions would be ‘How would AI look like if it would function following nature’s Life’s Principles? This would include feedback and correction mechanisms to balance natural interconnectedness.