Humans + AI = Infinite Potential, creative process mapping, WEIRD in, WEIRD out, and more...

September 22, 2025

“The great promise is not replacement but amplification—humans doing what we do best, with machines doing what they do best.” — Andrew McAfee

Humans + AI at FuturistXSummit

I will be in Dubai this week for the fully booked-out Futurists X Summit, where I will deliver a keynote on Humans + AI = Infinite Potential. My keynote has evolved substantially since I did the opening keynote at Human-Tech Week in San Francisco in June with the same title. The audience is different, my thinking has further developed, and the world of Humans + AI has moved further over the last three months…

I’ll report back next week!

Be well!

Ross

 

📖In this issue

  • Framework: Creative process mapping

  • Humans + AI update: The impact of AI on human thought, cultural distance from AI around the globe, modelling financial market committees.

  • From Humans + AI Explorers Community: Meta-skills for humans, AI in professional services, impact on psychology, and more.

💡Framework: Creative Process Mapping

Creative processes, across science, problem solving, product development, strategy, and more, follow a similar sequence. Understanding the phases can facilitate applying AI to best advantage across the process, leading to specific tools, prompts, and approaches as complements to human insight.

🧠🤖Humans + AI

The impact of AI on human thought

“To prevent AI from eroding our faculties, it is crucial to train users in thoughtful use—combining AI with active pedagogical activities that force the learner to remain cognitively engaged…. AI assistants could be programmed to ask users questions instead of giving direct answers, thus inviting them to think for themselves before receiving machine assistance.”

“WEIRD in, WEIRD out”

“Here, we ask, “Which humans?” Much of the existing literature largely ignores the fact that humans are a cultural species with substantial psychological diversity around the globe that is not fully captured by the textual data on which current LLMs have been trained. We show that LLMs’ responses to psychological measures are an outlier compared with large-scale cross-cultural data, and that their performance on cognitive psychological tasks most resembles that of people from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies but declines rapidly as we move away from these populations”

Interactions between AI simulations to predict committee behavior

Researchers at The George Washington University have used AI to simulate the members of the U.S. Federal Open Market Committee under different conditions, including political pressure. The authors simulated real FOMC members as LLM-driven agents (digital twins), each with a persona built from real-world data, including biographies, speeches, behavior patterns, career objectives, and conditions in the districts they represent.

🌐From Humans + AI Explorers Community

Selected highlights from Humans + AI Explorers Community (content for members, free membership options).

Beth Kanter shared her thoughts on 9 “Meta-skills for Humans” we need in the age of AI, sparking a great conversation and additional ideas.

A fascinating live event and ensuing conversation on How does AI change the client-consultant relationship for strategy?, a topic we will be diving into more.

A recurring theme with some great sharing on positive paths forward is the Impact of AI Use on Physical, Neurological and Psychological Health of Users.

A rich discussion in A School for Alphas? on the much-discussed AI-centric Alpha secondary school, how it works, and implications for education.

And far more!

Thanks for reading!

Ross Dawson and team