The Rant
Insights on Leadership and Innovation from Paul LeBlanc
What does it take to lead a university through two decades of transformative change? Join us as Paul LeBlanc, the former president of Southern New Hampshire University, unpacks his remarkable 21-year tenure. Recorded at the ASU GSV Summit in San Diego, Paul opens up about his decision to step down, the growth of SNHU under his leadership, and his vision for the future. You'll learn why timing and leaving an institution in a robust position are crucial for any leader considering a transition. Paul's reflections offer invaluable insights for anyone interested in the evolving landscape of higher education.
Ever felt out of place despite the allure of prestige? Paul shares a personal anecdote from 2003 about nearly accepting a prestigious role that turned out to be a poor fit. This story serves as a gateway to a broader conversation about the changing paradigms of leadership. We discuss why authenticity and vulnerability are becoming more essential than traditional markers of authority and expertise. In a world where trust in institutions is waning, connecting on a human level has never been more important. Listen in as we explore new leadership models that resonate with today’s challenges.
The future of learning is here, and AI is at the forefront. We delve into the visionary work of Human Systems, a public benefits company co-founded by Paul, aimed at designing a human-centered learning model for the AI era. We challenge conventional educational assumptions and consider how AI could redefine knowledge work, freeing us to focus on crucial human-centric roles. We also touch on the turbulent transition predicted by economist Carlotta Perez, emphasizing the need for preparation for significant societal shifts. Join us as we envision a future where meaningful human jobs are not just preserved but celebrated.
What does it take to lead a university through two decades of transformative change? Join us as Paul LeBlanc, the former president of Southern New Hampshire University, unpacks his remarkable 21-year tenure. Recorded at the ASU GSV Summit in San Diego, Paul opens up about his decision to step down, the growth of SNHU under his leadership, and his vision for the future. You'll learn why timing and leaving an institution in a robust position are crucial for any leader considering a transition. Paul's reflections offer invaluable insights for anyone interested in the evolving landscape of higher education.
Ever felt out of place despite the allure of prestige? Paul shares a personal anecdote from 2003 about nearly accepting a prestigious role that turned out to be a poor fit. This story serves as a gateway to a broader conversation about the changing paradigms of leadership. We discuss why authenticity and vulnerability are becoming more essential than traditional markers of authority and expertise. In a world where trust in institutions is waning, connecting on a human level has never been more important. Listen in as we explore new leadership models that resonate with today’s challenges.
The future of learning is here, and AI is at the forefront. We delve into the visionary work of Human Systems, a public benefits company co-founded by Paul, aimed at designing a human-centered learning model for the AI era. We challenge conventional educational assumptions and consider how AI could redefine knowledge work, freeing us to focus on crucial human-centric roles. We also touch on the turbulent transition predicted by economist Carlotta Perez, emphasizing the need for preparation for significant societal shifts. Join us as we envision a future where meaningful human jobs are not just preserved but celebrated.
Hi, this is Eloy Ortiz-Oakley, and welcome back to the Rant, the podcast where we pull back the curtain and break down the people, the policies and the politics of our higher education system. In this episode I'm back one more time at the recent ASU GSV Summit in San Diego. This time I get to sit down with a very special guest, a friend, colleague and somebody I admire very much Paul LeBlanc, former president of Southern New Hampshire University. Paul recently stepped down as a longtime president of Southern New Hampshire University, making his mark on how he, his team at Southern New Hampshire, serve working learners. He's made Southern New Hampshire a household name throughout America and so it was my pleasure to sit down with him just ahead of his stepping down as president of Southern New Hampshire to talk about his tenure at SNHU, how he's thinking about his next chapter in life, and we talk about the ASU GSV Summit and what he feels is in store for learners and society with now the rolling out of artificial intelligence. So I had a lot of fun sitting down with Paul. I want to thank him personally for his leadership throughout the years.
Speaker 2:I know many of you have different opinions about Southern New Hampshire University. I have my own opinions, but one thing we can say for sure is Paul and the Southern New Hampshire team have really made their mark in this country when it comes to serving working learners, and we all have learned something from his leadership. I also want to take a moment to thank Southern New Hampshire University for being a sponsor of the Rant and making this opportunity down with Paul at the ASU GSV Summit possible. So with that, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Paul LeBlanc. Paul, welcome to the Rant Podcast, eli, it's always great to be here. Thanks for having me. Well, you are one of the few people that is now a two-time Rant Podcast guest.
Speaker 3:Oh, I am honored.
Speaker 2:You know it will be like SNL one of these days when we'll issue the robes. So you've got a number two on your robe for now. I like this Second stripe, that's right. So it's great to see you. We're here at ASU GSV the gathering of a sea of people talking about all sorts of things education, technology and all sorts of interesting things AI in particular. But before we get to what's going on here at San Diego, let's talk about you. So you recently announced that you're stepping down from Southern New Hampshire University. You've had an amazing run as a leader there. I mean, you've built a machine, you've built an organization that really cares about adult learners and you've influenced a lot of us in higher education. By the way, we should be thinking about adult learners. So tell us about that decision. Why now? And what do you have planned for?
Speaker 3:after this. Well, first of all, thank you, eli. I think you're being very kind People I get to work with who have built this organization over time. It will be 21 years when I step down on June 30th. I'll be handing over the keys to our university provost, lisa Ryerson, who's an amazing leader, and I think there are a number of things that weight into the decision.
Speaker 3:So one you know there's never a great time to leave, but there are certainly bad times. You always want to leave on your terms, on their terms. You always want to leave on your terms, on their terms, and you want to leave when the organization feels like it's in a good place. So SMH is in a very good place. Our enrollment continues to grow. Financially we're very robust. I think we're getting better and better at the work we do. We've built a great team and it is not a place that's dependent on one guy at the top Right, or one woman. At least it takes place Because our culture now is set, and I was talking about this in a panel earlier today here at GSV, in which I get called out by entry-level advisors if they think that I'm somehow suggesting a violation of our mission or this is not good for students. And sometimes they're right.
Speaker 3:Like, oh, you're right, I hadn't thought through the consequences of that. So I feel like the time was right. I'm 66. I've got some good work that I want to do, but it's not five more chapters, there's three more chapters. When do you make that decision? And we're going to be grandparents for the first time in June.
Speaker 2:Our baby is out here in.
Speaker 3:San Diego. We'll spend more time out here. So I just like to think of confluence of things. You know I'm not a person who's ever loved organizations. I like people. I like people who have never loved organizations. But in my 21 years I have fallen in love with this university and it's far different from the one that I found when I came, and we have about 20 students now and it was not an easy one. It was not an easy decision to make. I had laid right over this for a long time, but I also know that fresh eyes.
Speaker 3:There's another period now of change that will come to snhu. Well, we never don't change right, but snhu has to look a lot different five years than it does today. And the the question is do I want to start setting in motion a whole bunch of changes and block out in the middle of that? That's a bad time to leave. Right, so this is the right time.
Speaker 2:I completely agree with you. When I was thinking about leaving the California Community Colleges, I spent six years as Chancellor of the system, but also 20, some odd, 20, some odd years working in college, 10 years president, and you know I just had to stop and think what value am I bringing to this conversation? Now? I'm further and further removed from the experience of today's learners. You know new eyes, new perspectives, different ways of thinking about it, and you know you and I have talked about this before New generations think very differently about how to solve the problems that you and I have been trying to solve, and sometimes I agree with it, sometimes I disagree with it, and then, ultimately, when I walk into a room of legislators and they're all in their 20s and 30s, I have to stop and think okay it's time for me to move on.
Speaker 3:Well, I think your point about fresh eyes. Our old friend from Arkansas once said to me you know, Paul, if you have a pile of dirt sitting in your living room and you walk around it every day, there's going to be a point when you forget you have a pile of dirt in your living room until the company comes over right. And it's when a new leader comes in and lisa said no to me. Hey, why do you do this? It's like god, I don't know. We've been doing it for so long. I forget why we do it this way. Right, can I change that? Like you're the boss and I think that's going to be really healthy for us nature right, no, I, I agree.
Speaker 2:And so you've seen a lot of changes over your years, um at southern new hamps, new Hampshire, and all the work that you've done. You've witnessed the recent influence of AI and, before that, machine learning. You're one of the pioneers that, using technology to reach learners throughout the country. And so what? What are the most impactful events, as you look back, that have shaped the way that you think about higher education?
Speaker 3:We set out to grow our online operation, the work we did around advising and this question of helping students feel like there's someone in their corner, that they matter. We did a lot of that instinctually. The woman who led it, amelia Manning, who's now our COO, who's been at my side for 19 of those years, was an architect of that work. And if you think about organizations, there's sort of an old axiom that says really great organizations have to be really good at three things and then choose one of those threes to be excellent at. So the three are operations, product and people. So Amazon is a great example of someone like we're good at all three, but we're gonna be amazing at operations.
Speaker 3:Prime right next day, same day delivery. Apple would be. We're gonna be good at all three things, but we'd be great at product design. You know, every time I sit on a plane and I open up my PC, some 25 year old looks at me like okay, grandpa, why are you not on a Mac?
Speaker 3:Because, people love Apple's product design. If you think about people, the Reds, zappos, zappos shoes are cheaper but the customer service is remarkable. So most of higher ed plans it's flagged all three but excellence. That's going to be about product. We'll talk about curriculum until the cows come home. We'll argue why our intro to psych class is better than your intro to psych class. Curriculum committees will spend hours and hours laboring over it. You know this right.
Speaker 3:So we planted our flag on people and we said for our students who have not done well, often in higher ed, where it hasn't fit their lives very well, we're going to do everything possible to sort of make things work for individual students at scale.
Speaker 2:So our advising model.
Speaker 3:They're advisors with you through the whole of your experience. They have an intimate advisors with you through the whole of your experience. They have an intimate relationship with you. It's lonely to be 10 o'clock at night in your dining room. Your family's in the other room watching TV and laughing at their favorite show. So your advisor's checking on you. It's a very we have to be good at academics. We have product. We have to be good at people. So you need transcripts because you have prior credits. We're going to chase them down for you. We're going to pay the $10. We pay, not you. You don't get billed for it later. Right, we've built that into our operations. You have a problem? You're not going to have to wait three, four, five days for someone to call you back.
Speaker 3:We're going to call you back immediately you say you're interested in one of our programs, we're going to measure how much time it takes us to get back to you.
Speaker 3:We average about three and a half minutes. We aim to get back to you in under eight. That's operations and people. So so that's where I think that was a. We did it, I watched it be successful and I finally was able to articulate it intellectually in the book that I wrote in 22 broken, and the first chapter is all matter because you can't transform a life of someone who feels like they don't matter to you right thought, basic, most existential question.
Speaker 3:So I think that was a real learning. I think when we got to scale, I had to learn to lead differently because, and you know, because you led a massive system, what two million students about 1.8.
Speaker 2:No, well, that was about 2.1 when I started. It was about 1.8 when I left, so massive scale lots of institutions, right.
Speaker 3:So at size and complexity, you no longer can be everywhere checking on everything. Right, and I think I was still trying to lead like I had a smaller institution and I remember having dinner with my board some years ago and saying we are at that point, we're about 500 million dollar operation. At that point we were about a $500 million operation, so I came in when we were $50 million. I'm still leading like I'm the same organization. I used to be able to know everyone's first name. That's impossible now right.
Speaker 3:And I said to them I need six to nine months to see if I can be the leader you need me to be, and I'd like to tell you that I'm not. Before you figure it out, I hope I'm going to tell you that I think I can do it for you. So that was a real key inflection point when I had to delegate trust, understand systems more than people like really thinking about what is the framework in the system. And then I think about two years ago, three years ago, I had a guy who's really become a great coach and consultant and friend, who took me inside and said, Pauline, your people really love working for you and I said, oh, over here, something's coming.
Speaker 2:Right and talked about they feel the sense of mission.
Speaker 3:They value leadership. You're so like that, blah, blah, blah. He said, well, you're really failing your leaders. And I said what? And he said you know, when I asked him questions about why do you do this, he said, well, paul really likes it this way well, paul said he wanted to say did you disagree? Well, I, don't know if I really fully agree, but I trust Paul to know he's like that's not training leaders, you're not developing leaders, and it really it was a big. Honestly, it felt like I was kicked in the guy.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Because I thought, like you know, I grew up Catholic so I should have known better. I think the week before I was saying to my wife you know, after all these years I think I've got this thing figured out. And she's like, don't you do that. She's not Catholic as well. You know bad things are going to happen. And, sure enough, a week later he tells me I'm failing as a leader, like, oh yeah, so there are the key inflection points and you know this, as you move through, the playbook that gets you to a certain level is often not the playbook that gets you to the next level of leadership.
Speaker 3:And how do you still keep growing? I think the leaders you and I know who we watch struggle is oftentimes that lack of growth, that lack of adaptability to understand what's demanded of their leadership and sometimes to understand that it's time to leave.
Speaker 2:Right. Well, I can't tell you how many leaders I've known over the years who just don't understand that last point. I mean, there has to be a time when you just realize that the institution will be better off if you make more room. Yeah, because it relies too heavily on one person or one person's way of thinking. A good friend of mine once told me making changes on a college campus is like a rubber band. You stretch that rubber band and if you're not careful, as soon as you walk out it just bounces right back. And so I've always approached it from the point of view that some of that rubber band may bounce back, but I'm going to stretch it so hard that it'll never go back to the same again.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, it's a really good point. Knowing when to leave is almost as important as knowing when to plan to leave. Leaving is as important as arriving.
Speaker 2:Well, to your point, around arriving so many leaders, up-and-coming leaders, just want to take whatever job is available, whatever presidency, whatever role they can get into.
Speaker 3:It's seductive. There are great jobs. You've aspired to be a leader. You want to be president.
Speaker 2:It sounds great, but they don't think about the fit, or exactly how their personality, their way of thinking is actually going to work in that environment.
Speaker 3:Can I share a quick story on this one? In 2003, when I was in the search for the SNHU search, I was also in the search at a very selective New England liberal arts college.
Speaker 2:We'll go in there and it was so seductive I mean they had money, they had status.
Speaker 3:I was only even considered because I'd been president for seven years of Longborough College and I raised a lot of money. So I think I was an attractive candidate. And I remember going to the search committee and that was such a big search committee that they divided up in group A and group B and I met with group A and Eloy, I tell you, I was hitting them out of the park. I had them laughing, I had them crying, they were eating out of my hand. I'm thinking I don't know if I'm going to be the president, but I'm getting that campus visit. I'm going to be one of the three people they bring to campus. Give me a little bit of a break. I go to the second group, I go down like the Hindenburg.
Speaker 3:I'm doing all the same things, but within 10 minutes I'm going to have to call a fourth. Like we know you're not hiring me, right? Can we leave now? And what I realized was the second group were the trustees, the senior administrators, and I was challenging, and the first group they're the kids. So they love the challenges. Like I don't know if you're as good as you think you are about, but well, the chair of the board was pretty sure they were just as good as they thought they were. They were smart because I would have been a terrible fit, but I was seduced by the endowment. I was seduced by the status. I was a first-generation immigrant kid.
Speaker 2:Like I could be president here.
Speaker 3:Holy cow, when I got to SNHU, I felt like I found home. These were my students. This was me as a kid. These were working-class kids. This was a college that was hungry to be better. It wasn't drinking its own kool-aid, it wanted to change. So to your point, fit is everything. And that's second group of board members is tell the story. People thought they were asleep at. The was like nothing, exactly what I needed to do. I would have lasted no time whatsoever mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:As you're now mature and have been around the block a few times, code for old. What would you say I? I mean you've seen the environment that leaders are having to move into across this country. It's. The number of issues that you have to deal with today is just amazing. What advice would you give to leaders that are coming into organizations, institutions right now, at this moment in time?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's so challenging, as you know, and I think it's because it's a fundamental shift in our society. There has been a deep and rapid erosion of trust in institutions, yes, and commensurate with that has been a deep eroding trust in their leaders. So university presidents used to command respect by dint of their title alone.
Speaker 3:Maybe not always on their campus with their faculty, but certainly broadly. If you walked into a public event, a university president was respected and we hired for blue chip backgrounds and storage CVs and for a long time it was white males and you know, certain height and gray hair like mine, et cetera, et cetera. Now we live in an age that doesn't only not trust authority, it actually questions all expertise. So I don't think you can lose. You know, we live in an age when doctor's offices now have to have signs that say your 20 minutes on WebMD does not equal my 10 years in medical school.
Speaker 3:We question everything that news. That can't be true. We live in a post-truth age. So I think leadership today can't lead from expertise. I think it has to lead from authenticity. We didn't demand that. In quite the same way, we want to trust leaders, but I actually think it's like the whole game now is do I feel like I connect with you and do you seem authentic? So I think leaders and university presidents today have to have a kind of willingness towards vulnerability. I think you have to sound like a human being now. So when you get in front of a congressional panel and you've been poorly prepared and you give an academic Too many lawyers talking to you, Too many lawyers an academic, legal answer as opposed to a human answer, because the answer was simple to the question is anti-Semitism ever acceptable? The answer is no. No. You can do all the caveats later in a different setting. But those presidents are magnificent human beings. Not one of them is anti-Semite. I would bet years pay. But they were poorly coached. And really what?
Speaker 3:we now need to do, I think, is lead very differently. I think we're in a new age of leadership, action, and I think that requires a different set of moves. Coming back and declaring something doesn't work anymore. You know, I just ran into Paul Fain, who was atime reporter, as you know, for Chronicle Inside High Red and a previous guest in the rant, just one of my favorite people in our industry, and some years ago I could tell that we were on a roll, like I was feeling pretty good and cocky.
Speaker 3:This is always gets me in trouble, right, but I also had a sense like not everyone's loving what we're doing.
Speaker 1:And I kind of had a sense of who I fit into right.
Speaker 3:So I sent an unorthodox invitation to them. It was 2011. And I said I'm pretty sure you don't agree with me on a number of things and I'm pretty sure you might be in the camp that doesn't even like me, and I'm hoping you'd be in the camp that will have dinner with me. I just want to hear you out. And a bunch of them put their hands up. Some objected no, no, I like you.
Speaker 3:But a bunch of them, and I rented a place, a private room at a restaurant, had them bring the food in and close the door, don't bother us. And for the next three hours I just listened and took notes and they got into me pretty good.
Speaker 2:I didn't agree with a lot of it, sure, but there was something like you know what we got to be better on this.
Speaker 3:And you're right, that was kind of a dumb thing I did and Paul Fane heard me talk about this and he wrote a story in the Chronicle. It was the second most shared article in the Chronicle back then, wow, and I think it was so because people were responding to something. It wasn't about the exercise of power by your title or your way you sit in the org chair. It was about exercising your role through human relationship and a willingness to talk to someone who does agree with you.
Speaker 3:And I think we need that more than ever in our country.
Speaker 2:Right, and we have leaders in our system that feel like they always have to be right. That's expertise, again right.
Speaker 3:No, it's not about expertise. What did you say? You may have been talking dramatically, but you're absolutely right. I remember as a young I was the president of the Faculty Senate at Springfield College when we voted no confidence in our president and I had to fight to have him removed. I was the bound, I know.
Speaker 3:But what I remember was that there were multiple moments that he stood in front of the faculty, and if he had simply said but what I remember was that there were multiple moments that he stood in front of the faculty and if he had simply said, I think I screwed up, I'm sorry, we would have rallied behind him, right. And I was going to say when I screw up, I'm going to own it, I'm going to get up in front of people and say I screwed up, and I think that, more often than not, just serves us really well as human beings.
Speaker 2:Right? No, I agree. In my view, it's a good thing. You know, learners today have much more agency than they ever have. Yeah, sometimes it goes overboard, sometimes there's a little bit too much privilege there, but the fact that they are demanding something in return for the time and the money that they're investing, it's a brand new concept. We call this in universities for learners, so I think that's a good thing and I think the leaders that sort of adapt to that. Think about how to do that, think about how to really create value. Listen to the learner, adapt to maybe not always what they say, but their behaviors. What are they actually doing in the way that they choose their courses, in the way that they're choosing online versus hybrid versus on-campus experiences.
Speaker 3:Those are the leaders, I think, that are going to thrive Absolutely, and I think there you have to be willing with a couple of things that work in what you say. So the one, the most important one, is how do we get really focused on students and not our institutions? Because I think a lot of higher ed is built for higher ed and you know people can malign Phoenix University it's heyday of massive for profit. What they forget is that early Phoenix was actually a pretty good place and they taught us a lot of lessons about the care of adult learners and working students. They kind of went sideways after that for a variety of reasons I think we all know, but early Phoenix taught us some things and they get very focused on students. I think that's a critical piece for sure. And then I think this willingness to change your systems around the students, not ask students to change their lives around you it's just a critical difference in who's going to be successful today.
Speaker 2:Well, as you know, that's been part of Southern New Hampshire's growth is seeing those choices and going to the choice that you feel accommodates your life better than the other choice, absolutely. You are obviously in transition. What are you going to be doing now? I'm sure you're not just going off to your cabin.
Speaker 3:No, actually we were here last year, acgsv George Siemens, who I'm sure you know I think one of the world's great leaders in AI, the field of learning analytics he was here. We were both bemoaning what we felt was a lot of talk about AI, but not enough talk about the sheer magnitude of the change we think is going to wash over society, right? So George and I would both say we're in the camp that thinks everything is radically changing and it felt more like, well, yeah, we'll use AI. And it's like, oh, big questions are going to be in front of you. So at the end of our chatting and kind of complaining and comm's, like, oh, big questions are in front of you. So at the end of our chatting and kind of complaining and commiserating, I said, george, this isn't public yet, but I'm going to be stepping down next year and I'm thinking about what I'd like to do next.
Speaker 3:How about you come join me, leave the University of Texas, the University of South Australia. You had a dual appointment. Why don't you leave? Come join me and let's see if we can reinvent learning. So that's all we're doing. We've created a public benefits company called Human Systems and it's funded by SNHU. As an investor. I know some people there, so they were generous to help us give us some funds. So it's a merry band of seven full-time people and about 35 contractors and the thing we've set out to do is ask the question what would it look like to build a human-centered model of learning for the age of AI that uses AI with a clean sheet of paper design? So no assumptions, no preconceptions. So no assumption that we're going to be titled for no assumption that we're going to be accredited, no assumption about the roles.
Speaker 3:What would that look like? What is our theory of the case, if you will. So that's what we're trying to build and I think the bigger question that sort of drives this is we don't believe learning any longer is going to be so much about epistemology what you know and how you know. We think it's going to be about ontological questions about what does it mean to be human in a world where we're not the most powerful knowledge?
Speaker 3:entities any longer, and yet it doesn't start to shift towards things like wisdom and judgment and creativity and sense-making and the kind of deep cultural consciousness we all walk around with, which is almost impossible to capture in the AI.
Speaker 2:Judgment and sense-making is not what our current leadership in this country excel at.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know it's funny, because I was saying to the panel earlier today that I kind of had that period of time, like so many of us. Oh my god, ai is going to upend all of our systems and I thought, well, which of our systems is working Like what? Our?
Speaker 2:politics.
Speaker 3:Our you know capitalism right now Environment sort of politics. Or you know capitalism right now environment. So maybe a little artificial intelligence could go a long way. For the limitations of the human intelligence that's not working very well right now. So I have a more optimistic view of what I mean. Look, at. I'm not. I'm not gullible. I know there are a lot of ways AI could go sideways and we could be ill served, but I do feel pretty optimistic about what's possible.
Speaker 2:Let me ask you one last question as we begin to wrap up. We're here at ASU GSB. You've been to several summits. We were here this time last year. The big news was sort of the public unveiling to the masses of chat GPT. We're here now, a year later. There are multiple large language models or multiple opportunities to access AI. What has surprised you about what you've seen here, and is there anything that makes you hopeful about all this technology?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, as I said a moment ago, I am generally optimistic about what's possible. I don't love what I've heard or not heard here. What I've not heard is a whole lot of talk about students, right, or the ways, the, where, the places of intersection between humans and these amazing, this amazing technology. So the way people will sometimes talk well, there's definitely a human in the loop, which is just a shorthand way of saying well, we're not going to screw over everyone.
Speaker 2:We don't really know what that means, but just most.
Speaker 3:And I do think so. I'm a fan of the work of Carlotta Perez. You may know her, she's an economist and she really looks at what happens when paradigm shift in technologies come into a society. Typically, they've been around for a while in some fragmented form, but then a catalytic event happens and that catalytic event was chat GPT at the end of November 2022.
Speaker 3:which he says then happens, and this is where I think we are going. Now. You get an in-between period which goes to sort of third phase of this four-phase work, and it's pretty bad. It's the period in which wars happen, civil unrest you know, the World Economic Forum predicts that 85 million jobs will be displaced next year by AI. Jeez Right. So buckle up, right, buckle up. This is not going to be easy for a while. Eventually, it sorts itself out and you come out the other end.
Speaker 3:so my optimistic view is that a lot of knowledge work will, in fact, go away if you're a university today and you're not asking questions about your majors and what people need to know, won't happen overnight, but it's gonna happen a lot faster than I think that people realize, and so, if that's true, my optimistic view is maybe we'll get back to the human jobs that we actually don't like to pay for anymore. But make all the difference. Right, and if we did that, we would flood our K-12 schools with amazing teachers and social workers and counselors and coaches. Right, if we did that, we would rebuild a mental health care system that has been decimated in America. If we did that, we would build an affordable compassion system of geriatric care for an aging society. If we did that, we would go back and rebuild broken inner cities. We would fix a criminal justice system that dehumanizes people at every step of the way. There's no AI that will do those jobs. Right.
Speaker 3:We have massive need for people to do them. And if I have a job that's making all the difference in the life of another human being and I'm supported and paid well and treated fairly, which is not what we do for all those jobs, right. But if I have that and you said to me, hey, I've got this alternative knowledge work job, and I'm stealing from Stuart Russell, the Berkeley computer scientist, who said if they had told their ancestors that there's a future, imagine this where you go in this box called a car and you drive up to a big box called an office building and you go inside and you go to a little glass box called a cubicle and you spend a whole day standing in a lit box called a computer monitor. They would say no, thanks, that sounds like hell.
Speaker 3:So what if we can actually move away from knowledge jobs and move back into human jobs that actually make society thrive and flourish? That's my most optimistic hope. Color pros are like. That's absolutely possible. Those changes happen. But boy, the transition is ugly. There are winners, there are losers, there are power struggles, there are battles, governments fall, so buckle in. I think it's going to be a hard ride for a while, but that's why we need collectively to own and shape and bring compassion and heart to the work Right.
Speaker 2:Well, on that hopeful note, Paul, really appreciate all your leadership throughout the years. Look forward to what you're going to do next.
Speaker 3:Thank, you Thanks for being on the rant. You've been a great colleague and I look forward to continue to work with you. Thanks for being on the rant. You've been a great colleague and I look forward to continuing to work with you. Appreciate it.