Latest news with #humanpotential
Forbes
25-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The Future Of Growth: When Human Capital Meets AI Innovation
Business investment and AI artificial intelligence data analysis technology. Businessman and robot ... More future investor, stock market, forex, and crypto currency finance investment. A recent Wall Street Journal article titled, "Corporate America is convinced: Fewer employees means faster growth," casts a spotlight on a troubling shift in today's corporate strategies. Companies across industries are reducing their workforces, fueled by a belief that leaner operations equate to greater efficiency and faster growth. At first glance, this approach may seem both logical and inevitable in a world increasingly shaped by generative AI and automation. However, as we dig deeper, we're forced to confront an uncomfortable question: Are we sacrificing long-term sustainability and undervaluing human potential for the sake of short-sighted numerical goals? This response unpacks the risks of such strategies, emphasizing the enduring value of human capital. Yes, technology has revolutionized how we work. But without a disciplined partnership between human ingenuity and technological innovation, we risk losing more than we stand to gain. The Hidden Costs of Doing More With Less The Wall Street Journal article notes a growing sentiment among corporate leaders that those employees retained after workforce cuts should do more with less. While this mantra may sound efficient on paper, its implications for employees are far from empowering. For many, the expectation to continuously deliver amid shrinking teams and mounting pressures results in burnout, stalled creativity, and a growing disconnect from the organization's mission. The 2025 Microsoft Work Trend Index Annual Report captures this reality. It reveals that 80% of the global workforce feels they lack the time and energy to meet business demands. Employees are interrupted an average of 275 times a day, every two minutes during core work hours. This chaotic environment is not conducive to the deep focus or creative problem-solving that drives growth. I've seen executives deploy cost-cutting measures only to watch their organizations suffer long-term. Talented employees leave, innovation pipelines collapse, and team cohesion erodes. What remains is a workforce that is physically present but emotionally disengaged. Their fear of expendability creates an innovation vacuum where unique ideas and vibrant collaboration once flourished. Organizations may gain short-term efficiencies by trimming headcount, but the broader cost to their culture and resilience is immeasurable. Research shows that workers who feel dehumanized no longer bring their creativity or passion to work, and the ripple effects are devastating. The Peril of Over Reliance on AI The Wall Street Journal article underlines the accelerating role of generative AI in displacing jobs and streamlining operations. While the efficiency benefits of AI are clear, we must resist the temptation to view it as a one-size-fits-all solution to complex challenges. The 2025 Work Trend Index frames this issue within the context of 'human-agent teams,' where AI augments human effort rather than replacing it. These teams enable businesses to operate with agility while retaining the human elements of empathy, creativity, and judgment. However, over-reliance on AI threatens to compromise these strengths. Innovation doesn't arise from algorithms alone. It is the product of diverse human perspectives coming together, often in unexpected ways. AI can process data and provide insights faster than any human, but it cannot replicate the spark of intuition or the depth of relationships that drive meaningful transformation. Machines solve problems, but it's people who envision possibilities. The long-term risks of neglecting this balance are profound. Organizations that treat AI as a total substitute for human capital will find themselves outpaced by those who understand the indispensable value of creativity and collaborative ingenuity. Leadership at a Crossroads The Wall Street Journal article indirectly raises an essential leadership challenge for our time. What does effective leadership look like in an era of workforce reductions and technological upheaval? It's tempting for leaders to measure success by how quickly they can cut costs and streamline operations. But leadership isn't about efficiency at all costs. It's about creating environments where individuals feel valued, supported, and inspired to do their best work. Flattened hierarchies may look efficient, but cutting critical layers of leadership erodes mentorship and trust, leaving employees adrift during periods of change. The 2025 Work Trend Index introduces the concept of 'agent bosses'—leaders and employees who work side-by-side with AI systems, guiding their contributions to advance organizational goals. This shift requires leaders to expand their priorities from cost-cutting to empowerment, trust-building, and innovation. Great leaders reject the view of employees as mere costs and instead lean into their role as stewards of both human and technological potential. By doing so, they create organizations that are not only efficient but enduring. Striking a Balance Between Technology and Humanity Organizations don't have to choose between humans and technology. The 2025 Work Trend Index highlights 'Frontier Firms' as trailblazers in the art of integration. These companies combine AI's analytical power with human creativity to achieve optimized results. They move beyond efficiency to focus on adaptability and sustainable growth, demonstrating what's possible when organizations invest equally in people and innovation. The report also reveals that 82% of leaders see this as a pivotal year to rethink core strategies, and that's the essential call to action. Organizations that recalibrate their focus to balance technological advancements with the enduring power of human capital will ultimately lead the future. The question for corporate leaders comes down to this: Are you building an organization that is merely fast, or one that is truly resilient? Your willingness to invest in people, upskill them, and empower them to work collaboratively with technology will define your legacy. If leaders want to build companies that stand the test of time, they need to prioritize human capital reinvention alongside technological adoption. The most successful organizations will be those that align AI's power with the creativity, judgment, and emotional intelligence that only people can provide. The 2025 Work Trend Index offers a compelling roadmap. 47% of leaders are prioritizing upskilling their workforce, and 78% are considering adding AI-focused roles. These actions reflect a clear shift toward integrating human and technological capabilities rather than sidelining one for the other. Now is a critical moment for corporate America to move beyond quick cost-cutting measures. It's time to stop viewing employees as expenses and instead see them as the architects of innovation. The complex balance between human and machine is not just a challenge, it is the new mandate for leadership in the age of AI. Only by recognizing the irreplaceable value of human capital can we ensure both lasting growth and meaningful impact. The future is in the hands of those who embrace reinvention readiness through continuous learning, unlearning, and relearning. And it's just getting started.
Forbes
15-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
AI Forces Leaders To Rediscover The Missing Humanistic Component
In boardrooms across the world, a familiar scene unfolds daily: executives hunched over spreadsheets, dissecting metrics, optimizing processes, and chasing the next quarter's numbers. It's a dance of efficiency we've perfected over decades, one that has undoubtedly driven remarkable progress. Yet beneath this symphony of optimization lies a quieter truth: we've been playing only half the song. The other half, the humanistic component that transforms good organizations into great ones and sustainable success into legacy, has been relegated to the background, often dismissed as too soft, too unmeasurable, or too idealistic for serious business consideration. But as artificial intelligence reshapes our landscape rapidly, we're being handed an unexpected gift: the opportunity to finally address this imbalance and conduct the full orchestra of human potential. Our modern obsession with quantifiable outputs has created an optimization trap. According to Stanford's 2024 AI Index Report, AI capabilities continue to advance rapidly across multiple benchmarks, yet many leaders remain focused primarily on efficiency gains and cost reductions. This narrow focus has led us to optimize for what we can measure while neglecting the underlying melody that makes organizations truly thrive, the human elements of trust, creativity, empathy, and meaning-making. The obsession with key performance indicators has led to a counterproductive switch from 'measure what you treasure' to 'treasure what you measure'. Consider the difference between a technically proficient musician and a master performer. Both can play the notes correctly, but only the master understands that music lives in the spaces between the notes, in the emotional resonance that transforms sound into experience. Similarly, great leadership isn't just about hitting performance targets; it's about creating conditions where people feel valued, inspired, and connected to something larger than themselves. Organizations that have thrived over decades understand this intuitively. They recognized that while systems and processes provide the framework, it's the humanistic elements that provide the soul. These elements, emotional intelligence, moral courage, authentic communication, and genuine care for stakeholder wellbeing, create the conditions for innovation, resilience, and sustainable growth. It is a win-win-win-win – for the humans we are, the institutions we belong to, the country we are part of and the planet we depend on. The current AI revolution, rather than threatening our humanity, is offering us an opportunity to confront what it truly means to be human and humane. As machines become increasingly capable of handling routine cognitive tasks, we're forced to grapple with fundamental questions: What uniquely human capabilities should we cultivate? How do we create value that transcends mere efficiency? What does authentic leadership look like in an age of artificial intelligence? Hybrid intelligence combines the best of AI and humans, leading to more sustainable, creative, and trustworthy results." This isn't about humans versus machines, but about recognizing that our greatest potential lies in thoughtful collaboration, what we might call the complementarity of natural and artificial intelligence. The key insight here is that AI's growing capabilities don't diminish human value; they amplify our need to focus on what makes us irreplaceably human. While AI excels at pattern recognition, data processing, and optimization, humans bring contextual understanding, ethical reasoning, creative synthesis, and the ability to navigate ambiguity with wisdom and compassion. This realization opens the door to prosocial AI, systems that are intentionally designed, trained, tested, and targeted to bring out the best in people and organizations while serving the broader good of society and planet. Rather than simply automating existing processes, prosocial AI amplifies human potential and creates conditions for collective flourishing. AI systems can be designed to promote positive social outcomes rather than simply maximizing engagement or profit. But these positive outcomes will not happen as an automatic derivative of ever more sophisticated technology. Ultimately the technology of tomorrow will be as good or ugly as the humans of today. Garbage in, garbage out or Values in, values out. We have a choice, but we need to make it. The vision of prosocial AI aligns with a deeper aspiration: creating a world where everyone has a fair chance to fulfill their inherent potential to flourish. This isn't utopian thinking; it's practical wisdom. Organizations that prioritize human flourishing alongside performance metrics consistently outperform those focused solely on short-term gains. Making this happen requires humanistic leadership. Designing the future requires a more nuanced vision of life and living. Beyond discussions of AI and the future of work, it is time to envision HI and the future of life itself. The future belongs not to humans who excel with artificial intelligence alone, nor to purely human-driven approaches. The catalysts of positive social change will be those who master hybrid intelligence—HI—the dynamic interplay between natural intelligence – NI – and artificial intelligence – AI. It is time to move beyond either-or equations. Think of it like learning to dance with a partner who has completely different rhythms and strengths. The magic doesn't happen when one leads and the other follows, but when both contribute their unique gifts to create something neither could achieve alone. Human intelligence carries the weight of millennia — our capacity for moral reasoning shaped by countless generations, our ability to read between the lines of what isn't said, our gift for creative leaps that defy logical progression. We carry the wisdom of bodies that have felt joy and heartbreak, minds that dream in metaphors, and spirits that yearn for meaning beyond mere efficiency. Artificial intelligence, meanwhile, brings a different kind of power: the ability to hold thousands of variables in perfect balance, to spot patterns across vast landscapes of information, to maintain unwavering consistency in analysis. Where we bring depth, AI brings breadth. Where we offer intuition, AI provides systematic thoroughness. What the research doesn't capture: the qualitative shift that happens when organizations stop asking "How can AI do this job?" and start asking "How can AI help humans do this job better?" And maybe even, "how can AI support humans to be better?" The difference isn't semantic — it's foundational. Effective hybrid intelligence emerges not from clever technical integration, but from a fundamental commitment to amplifying what makes us most human while leveraging what makes AI most useful. This means designing systems that create more interesting work, not less. More meaningful connections, not fewer. More opportunities for human creativity and judgment, not replacement of them. To develop the kind of Hybrid Intelligence that serves both performance and humanity, leaders need a practical framework. The A-Frame approach builds on four foundational elements: Awareness: Developing deep understanding of both human and artificial intelligence capabilities and limitations. This means cultivating double literacy to encompass human literacy (a holistic understanding of self, others, and social systems) combined with algorithmic literacy (understanding what AI is, how it works, and where it falls short). Appreciation: Recognizing and valuing the unique contributions that both humans and AI bring to complex challenges. This involves moving beyond the binary thinking that sees AI as either savior or threat, instead appreciating the complementary nature of human and artificial capabilities. Acceptance: Acknowledging the current realities and limitations of both human and artificial intelligence without falling into either technophobia or techno-utopianism. This includes accepting that neither humans nor AI are perfect, and that their combination requires ongoing attention and refinement. Accountability: Taking responsibility for the outcomes of NI-AI collaboration, ensuring that the integration serves ethical purposes and contributes to human flourishing. This means establishing clear governance structures, feedback mechanisms, and guidelines for prosocial AI deployment. The A-Frame approach rests on developing double literacy, a combination of human literacy and algorithmic literacy that enables leaders to navigate the hybrid intelligence landscape effectively. Human literacy involves deep self-awareness, emotional intelligence, understanding of social dynamics, and appreciation for the full spectrum of human experience. It means recognizing that humans are not merely rational actors but complex beings driven by emotions, values, relationships, and meaning-making. Leaders with strong human literacy understand how to create psychological safety, foster authentic relationships, and inspire others toward shared purposes. Algorithmic literacy, meanwhile, involves understanding AI's capabilities, limitations, and appropriate applications. This doesn't require becoming a technical expert, but it does mean understanding how AI systems learn, what kinds of biases they might embed, and where human judgment remains essential. Leaders with strong algorithmic literacy can make informed decisions about when and how to deploy AI tools while maintaining appropriate oversight and accountability. Together, these literacies enable leaders to orchestrate human-AI collaboration that amplifies the best of both worlds while mitigating risks and unintended consequences. Developing hybrid intelligence isn't an abstract concept, it requires concrete action. Organizations can begin by conducting honest audits of their current approach to AI integration, asking not just whether AI is improving efficiency, but whether it's enhancing human capabilities and contributing to meaningful outcomes. This might involve redesigning workflows to leverage AI's analytical strengths while preserving spaces for human creativity and relationship-building. It could mean establishing cross-functional teams that include both technical specialists and humanities-trained professionals who can provide essential perspectives on AI's human impact. Most importantly, it requires leaders who model the integration of analytical rigor with humanistic wisdom, executives who can read both spreadsheets and the emotional temperature of their organizations, who understand both market dynamics and human psychology. The AI revolution presents us with a unique historical moment, an invitation to step back from our relentless pursuit of optimization and remember what we've been optimizing for. It challenges us to embrace both the power of artificial intelligence and the irreplaceable value of human wisdom, creativity, and compassion. The choice before us isn't between natural and artificial intelligence, but between narrow optimization and holistic flourishing. By embracing hybrid intelligence through the A-Frame approach and developing double literacy, we can create organizations and systems that don't just perform better, but contribute to a world where technology serves humanity's highest aspirations. The missing melody hasn't been lost, it's been waiting for us to remember how to play it. Now, with AI as our accompanist rather than our replacement, we have the opportunity to conduct a humanistic symphony that is in sync with human potential.
Japan Times
23-05-2025
- Sport
- Japan Times
Anti-doping bodies speak out against drug-fueled Enhanced Games
Anti-doping bodies on Thursday condemned plans for the first edition of the Enhanced Games, an Olympic-style event where athletes will be free to use performance-enhancing drugs. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and bodies across the world have taken aim at the event after organizers revealed the date, venue and format for the competition. The Enhanced Games will be staged in Las Vegas in May 2026, with athletes participating in three sports — athletics, swimming and weightlifting. Athletes will be allowed to use drugs that are banned across international sports such as steroids and human growth hormones, with winners of each event receiving $250,000, and a bonus of $1 million for anyone who breaks a world record. Aron D'Souza, the Australian entrepreneur who is the founder of the event, says the Enhanced Games are an exercise in testing the boundaries of human performance. "The Enhanced Games is renovating the Olympic model for the 21st century," D'Souza said on Wednesday as details of the games were revealed. "We are here to move humanity forward. The old rules didn't just hold back athletes, they held back humanity. "We are not just organizing competition, we are in the business of unlocking human potential. We are the vanguard of super humanity." The Enhanced Games will take place from May 21 to 24 at the Resorts World hotel in Las Vegas. Swimming will hold 100- and 50-meter freestyle events, along with the 100- and 50-meter butterfly. Athletics events include the 100-meter sprint and 100- and 110-meter hurdles. Weightlifters will compete in the snatch and clean and jerk disciplines. WADA, the global anti-doping watchdog, on Thursday condemned plans for the event as "dangerous," voicing concern it could lead athletes around the world to dabble in illicit substances with potentially deadly consequences. "WADA condemns the Enhanced Games as a dangerous and irresponsible concept," the agency said in a statement. "The health and well-being of athletes is WADA's number-one priority. "Clearly this event would jeopardize that as it seeks to promote the use of powerful substances and methods by athletes for the purposes of entertainment and marketing. "There have been many examples of athletes suffering serious long-term side-effects from their use of prohibited substances and methods. Some have died." Travis Tygart, the head of the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), said the event was a "dangerous clown show that puts profit over principle." Australia's anti-doping body, Sport Integrity Australia (SIA), condemned the risks posed to athletes participating in the Enhanced Games. "We work to ensure that sport is safe and fair to all," SIA Chief Executive Sarah Benson said in a statement. "The Enhanced Games is promoting the complete opposite and poses a significant risk to athlete health and safety." Matt Fedoruk, USADA's chief science officer, highlighted that many substances had been banned in conventional sporting events because they were dangerous. "These things aren't just banned because they're effective at making athletes stronger or faster," Fedoruk said in a post on USADA's website. "Many are banned because they've been proven to be dangerous for athletes, with some harmful side effects being potentially irreversible." D'Souza, however, has pushed back on those criticisms, insisting that the competition would be conducted "safely." "We live in a world transformed by science — from vaccines to AI," said D'Souza. "But sport has stood still. Until today. We are not updating the rulebook — we are rewriting it. And we're doing it safely, ethically, and boldly." The Enhanced Games have received financial backing from investors who include billionaire PayPal founder Peter Thiel as well as investment firm 1789 Capital, in which Donald Trump Jr. is a partner.
