AI and the human conversation

From KLCC Studios, this is Oregon on the Record.

I'm Michael Dine. It's arguable that the Venn diagram of employee feelings about artificial intelligence or AI right now contain a good deal of intersection between fear and inevitability. Fear that AI might take their jobs, but inevitability about AI's continued use and probable ubiquity. But what about the employees who aren't going to be replaced by AI and will instead have to work with it to better the company and hopefully their employment? Are business leaders having the right conversations with employees before they implement AI? Today on the show, you'll hear from a national business consultant and bestselling author who works with company leaders to better explain and prepare employees for AI usage. Sometimes these are difficult conversations, but according to our guest, absolutely vital. That's next on Oregon on the Record. It's hard these days to have a conversation without AI coming up. Whether you think AI is a great innovation or is a leading contender to end civilization, it's a major conversation starter. And today on the show, a business expert and author joins us to talk about how the AI conversation can be successful in helping employees better understand its power and effectiveness. Dr. Gleb Sapersky, CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts and a behavioral scientist with a new book out about AI. Doctor, welcome to the program and tell us about the new book that you have coming out.

Happy to. It's a peer-reviewed book out with Georgetown University Group Press called The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work, From Resistance to Results. It argues that companies are not adopting AI in the right way, which is why we have a new study from MIT showing that 95% of AI pilots are failing when they're scaled up. And that's a big problem. We can talk about why. That's what my book is about. But the key is that they're approaching AI as a typical technology adoption tool, but it's not. With AI, it's much less about the technology. It's much more about the psychology.

and i want to get to that because i would imagine for business leaders and business owners you know a a word that might best be associated with ai could be something like innovation and efficiency but it seems like at this moment right now for the general public a word most associated with ai is fear as somebody who studies the behavior of the human mind how can we overcome this fear. And I'll even pull that string further. It isn't just necessarily of job replacement. I think there's a lot of fear about what AI can do to us as a society.

You're absolutely right, Michael. And here's the thing. AI is the first technology that challenges our identity. It is the first technology to do so. So when you think about typical technology adoption, let's say a CRM or an ERP, So customer relationship management, enterprise resource processing, these are typical database adoption. They are top-down standardized adoption processes, and it's a hassle to learn them. So it's a lot of difficulty learning them and changing your work habits. But they're not challenging people's identities. You just have to work within a new system. Instead of your