The AI Coach: Accountability and Behavioral Design

Voiceover Artist | 00:00

Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a more fulfilling, productive life? Then you’ve come to the right place. Welcome to ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity. Here are your hosts, Ray Sidney Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

Ray Sidney Smith | 00:17

Welcome back, everybody, to Productivity Cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity. I’m Ray Sidney Smith.

Augusto Pinaud | 00:24

And I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade | 00:25

I’m Francis Wade.

Art Gelwicks | 00:26

And I’m Art Gelwicks.

Ray Sidney Smith | 00:27

And welcome to our listeners to this episode of ProductivityCast. This week, we basically advance ourselves in our series, our ongoing series, The AI-Powered Professional. And we’re going to be exploring today basically everything that we want to dive into how AI can move beyond simple task automation, simple task completion, to more of helping you with personal development, but just accountability and behavioral design.

So let’s talk about some of the tools we can use, some of the principles behind it, And we’re going to start off with really discussing why we need… Technology to coach us in the first place.

So Let’s go ahead and dive into what the problem is, and then we can opine on whether or not AI can help us. So why would you need an AI coach? Who cares about having an AI coach?

Francis Wade | 01:22

I had a friend who was a master’s in exercise physiology. Shed clients. She was training them and she was meeting them at the gym every morning and She eventually gave it up because she said that with her Exercise Physiology Masters She was doing nothing more than bringing them all to bed. And delivering them to the gym. And standing by while they exercise. In other words, she wasn’t actually applying anything she learned. All she was doing was being an accomplished nanny. It illustrates the reason why we do need this kind of assistance is because we’re not, left to our own devices, we’re not reliable. And there’s a whole part of the coaching experience or delivering coaching experience That really is just about reminding on the one side and then holding accountable on the other. All the words. A lot of it has to do with just creating structure. And if that could be outsourced to AI, then, hey, Hold to us.

Art Gelwicks | 02:22

AI coaching to me is… Better defined as coaching light. It doesn’t carry any of the gravitas of an actual human coach. You can ignore an AI if it’s telling you something that you don’t really want to do?

Yeah, it’ll prompt you. It’ll bug you. It can do all the things, but it’s really… It’s a way to get those reminders without the confrontation possibility. As part of the exercise. And I’ve seen people start to use AI in that kind of coaching approach and seen applications where they start to integrate this AI reminder into a process to encourage you to go through. And that’s nice, and that’s convenient. But it is still a device.

So… I would definitely qualify AI as… Coaching light. A true coach is going to look at you and go, Yeah, but you can ignore that. You can’t ignore me.

Ray Sidney Smith | 03:17

Yeah. So stepping back to the core problem, which is that humans are really good at… Accomplishing things, utilizing accountability as one of the motivational paradigms.

So we don’t want to feel like we have reputational harm by not completing something. And so we can use accountability for that purpose. As I’ve talked about before, we have four layers of accountability that we can really think about. And the framework is that you have kind of self-accountability where you can keep yourself accountable to do something. You can have one-to-one accountability, whether that’s a friend, a family member, or a professional. A professional coach, professional trainer, service provider and you are having them hold you accountable to do that thing, then you could step up to a group of then you can step up to what I call public accountability, where you claim publicly you’re going to do something so that a vast majority of people beyond your close network know about you doing that thing. And so with these four layers of accountability, we know that we can get things done. And with AI coaching, we’re really in that one-to-one accountability space. And I, like Art, really fundamentally believe that right now, at least as the technology is evolving, and how it’s designed. Can’t really replace a human coach. It can fill in gaps really well. I think that humans have the challenge of self-reporting We tend to be poor judges of our own consistency. We are not objective. And the AI can provide that objective, nonjudgmental, data to you on your actual behavior versus your stated goals. And since we have a human coach. Has a limited ability. To be available? The AI coach can basically provide nudges To be at a precise moment and place so you can have it monitor where you are, when you are and say, here goes this thing that you said you wanted to do and help you define whether or not you want to deviate from that plan.

So say that I am in a particular application at work and I all of a sudden go to Instagram. The AI coach can now say, hey, Ray, I noticed that you went to Instagram instead of your work email. Is this a distraction? And now it can help just by that little nudge, helped me move myself toward the future. Planned activity as opposed to the unplanned activity that I was planning. We’ve had this indeterministic software for some time, but now we have AI versions of this, which is that it can block. Tools completely so that you can’t go to a particular And that’s a form of kind of coaching light, as Art was saying as well.

So there’s this notion that we’re going to be able to do this. Providing a boundary to our access to things and that helps us stay on the pathway.

So there’s a lot of different reasons I think that can help us here in the coaching space but it’s not a human. And even when we get to the concept of embodied AI, where we have robotics that are humanoid or humanoid-like robots, that then have AI embedded in them and they can be in your physical presence, I still don’t see them as being the same thing as a full-blooded, bag-of-meat-and-bones person in front of you with the potential reputational harm of not showing up to do the thing. There is just something… Human to human about that I don’t think a robot’s really going to replace.

Francis Wade | 06:54

Interesting you say that because my experience is that an AI coach, and I’ve not used the Actually, I have used an AI coach for my writing. But an AI coach… Is somewhere between just a Blind reminder, an alarm clock. On steroids. And a real person. It’s moved up into that realm. But it’s not doing the moving. I am.

So what I’m doing is essentially I’m empowering people A voice. An automatic voice. To be more human than an alarm clock. And I think I could do some of the things you’re talking about if I were to do it. I’m sure you’ve heard about the ideas around setting up a countermeasure mechanisms that involve creating a punishment for yourself if you don’t. Accomplished the task. And I think there was a website. Allowed you to set up these punishments. And it was extremely effective.

So there’s nothing to stop us from having an AI persona. That For example, we say, if I don’t stick to my diet this week, AI, you have the full permission to go into my… For the record. And tweet out to the whole world that you’re punishing me in public for not… And you do something that’s that I don’t want you to do. And like, you praise up. Political party that I want to have no part of or something like that. But I sort of a punishment that creates a bit of a game that may not be necessarily dangerous or damaging in the long term, but it’s at least somewhat annoying. I think I would respond to a game like that because I don’t want my account tweeting out support for a party that I don’t support. If that were the punishment, That would be enough motivation for me.

So I think we could set up, we could use AI to set up this kind of It’s not human, so you’re right, Ray, yes. But it’s not an alarm clock. There’s something in between. There’s some new possibility being created in between. And if I had an LLM that was only for coaching… Where I could set up some of these things. I think I would use it.

Right? No, I could do it, but It just seems like it’s really hard because it, but if there was one service that offered this, I think that would use it.

Ray Sidney Smith | 09:10

The psychological principle you were talking about was loss aversion. And the whole concept of loss aversion is that humans will do things in order to maintain an asset, whatever that asset is. And that could be emotional stability, psychological safety, all those kinds of things.

So. You will basically, in preemption of losing something, you will act differently. Or act accordingly to not lose that thing. And the application I’m pretty sure you were talking about was Stick with two Ks. I’ll put those in the show notes for folks. Okay, here goes the problem, right? Is that while the science is, on this is pretty clear. If I put a gun to your head, then you will do what I want you to do pretty easily. Okay?

So loss aversion is well validated, right? Fine. Understood. How… Does that harm you though in the long term? From the moment we are able to crawl… We take risks. And it’s actually a fundamental understanding of a well-adjusted human being is that when they crawl away from their parent or guardian when they’re infants, And they look back, they see that parent or guardian there, they know they’re safe, and they continue to take more calculated risk, right?

So humans are calculated risk takers. And from that moment forward, they will learn to crawl, they will learn to walk, and they will do many great things by virtue of calculated risk. If you start to compete with your ability to take calculated risk by corrupting your psychological safety, I think that there are deleterious effects that happen under the surface that you’re not aware of, and you won’t take those kinds of risks if you use loss aversion, basically punishment, as a form of motivation. I think we should be using positive behavioral mechanisms on a consistent basis to make sure that we are promoting positive behavior through positive behavioral interventions.

So that’s where my thought is that it better be something really important. For you to use something like STICK. Instead of using… A positive point or positive intervention in that sense.

Well, the question.

Augusto Pinaud | 11:19

Is, what you’re expecting. Of this coach in many This… They are coached. Can’t meet. Very effective.

Plus, I tell people it’s better having something than having nothing. We all need Dad. Little notch. Okay. And as you know, that is you don’t configure your AI coach very well. You will get Person who is telling you basically a digital version of your grandmother. But for some people, that’s not bad. For some people, that may be what they need right now to get them out of that hole. The question is, How you evolve that coach. Because the problem with coaches is Coaches are not a one solution for all. It doesn’t matter. You work with a productivity coach. There is a moment that coach need to evolve, that your relationship with that coach need to evolve, that maybe it require even change. And get a new coach. Because you get into all those human things. Things of, okay, now I know this is going to happen, so I’m going to push in a different way. The AI doesn’t care. Okay. If they need to tell you, that’s a great advantage over a human. If I’m coaching you and I need to tell you every morning at 7.15 a.m., Capgrim now. Okay. Hey, Ray, don’t go to Instagram. Okay. There is a moment that as a human, I’m done. Okay. Go to Instagram. Bye. The other approach has the great advantage that they don’t. There is no, I’m tired of telling you not go to Instagram, instead go to your work email. For certain things, that is very good because one of the things that this coach or AI coach will allows you to do is to create certain systems and don’t deviate out of those certain systems because that coach doesn’t get bored of telling you that.

So, The question is how well. Or how much knowledge or how much skills you have to a greedy program. That AI took to really program that coach on that and that required then a prior point. And are you using this coach to discover the system that you need to implement? Or are you implementing the system? And using the coach or this AI coach so you can accomplish that. And I think there is a difference. And I don’t know if the answer is use a first version of this AI coach to create the system and then create a second coach that is the one who is going to execute such systems.

Art Gelwicks | 14:04

Now, there are some clear bonuses to having an AI coach. For example, They’re always in your pocket. We mentioned the accessibility. Your physical coach may not be accessible when you need them. AI coach can always be there reminding you to do the things that you need to do and to follow the steps. The second thing is they can… Actually be less combative, which can be one of the appealing things. If you’re struggling, really struggling on a given day, Some coaches… Think that, okay, we’re going to push you harder to get you through this wall. But an AI coach is never going to have that same sense of gravitas and force to their action because they’re in a little digital box.

So that for some people can be okay. I’ve hit a hard point, but this is going to help me through, ease me through the steps to the next continuation of this process. There are definitely some possibilities to how it could be used, but I think The most important clarification is What does a human coach bring to the table that an AI coach could never do? And that’s awareness of presence. That Human coach can look you in the face, look you in the eyes, and when you say, I’m fine, and they know you’re full of it? They can call you on that. And an AI coach will never be able to do that. They can try. They can get pretty close. But it’s always going to be a fake out. There’s never going to be that true empathy and sympathy and understanding as to the difficulty and challenge.

So. While it may be reminders on steroids, it’s never going to replace that physical and emotional presence that a national human coach brings.

Ray Sidney Smith | 15:49

I think there’s going to be a point where the technology is probably a pretty good facsimile. But I think you’re right, Art, that it will never get better. Fully 100% there, right? A facsimile is still a facsimile. And the… Degradation will be apparent as humans are very aware of the uncanny valley between what is real and what is not real. And even in the best AI video and the AI art that we see now today, we still have a sense of skepticism when we see something that could potentially be false. We are designed to fear things that are not real. And because that could be harmful to us, right? Our brains automatically go into alert when we see these things.

So I can see a point where, say, I have an embodied AI sitting in my living room and they have smell receptors, right? They can pick up the chemicals in the air. They can basically smell me. They can take hundreds if not thousands of data points based on micro movements of my facial muscles and determine my emotional state, and they still won’t know my heart. They won’t know what it’s like. For me to have felt that way. And that’s what a human can do. They have basically mirror neurons where when we see someone across the way from us, we actually can We can physically feel what they feel on a level. And. I don’t know that Ken… Help you when it doesn’t have that necessary ability. It’s an organic ability. And That doesn’t make it bad. It just It doesn’t have that capability. It’s like you don’t expect your toaster to give you financial advice. I Roll it for only five bucks.

Art Gelwicks | 17:31

Think I saw that on T-Move.

Ray Sidney Smith | 17:34

Five.

Art Gelwicks | 17:34

Bucks. But you’re absolutely right. It’s the kind of a thing when you have an AI coach, the one thing that you will never get from it, you will never accept as a statement is I’ve been there. Because, you know, it has even whoever the programmer is. It could never truly evolve that to a point of being an equitable.

Yeah, I get that. I have that common feeling. And I think that’s realistic. And it applies not only just with coaching, but with AI in general. Understanding its inherent limitations because its lack of humanity. To be able to say, okay, so what can this do really well that a human struggles with. Can we take advantage of that? We make the argument about what’s good, what’s going to prompt you like your grandmother, it’s going to poke you to do the things.

Yeah. And I have reminders on my phone and reminders on my watch. How is this better than that? How is it reactive to my failings in that negotiated procedure and process between it’s going to do its job of prompting me along. I’m going to do my job of fulfilling my part of the equation. Lather, rinse, repeat. That’s one of those things where I think it can be extremely powerful. It can be adaptable in situations. It starts to utilize pattern recognition to say, all right, you know what? Every Thursday at 11 a.m., you’re really struggling with this. Why? That may take a human coach a long time to recognize that pattern, whereas… Digital, data-based, it may be able to infer that more quickly. Balancing that from our perspective, as potential coachees. We have to look at this technology and say, It may look and act and sound like a human person. But I have to go all the way back. And if those of you who are much younger than me, which is pretty much everyone. Go back and Google Eliza. When Eliza first came out on DOS and things like that, It was a… Digital therapist, for lack of a better term. It looked like it. It felt like it. Again, based on the time and the technology. But it was… Everybody’s yeah, this could be where it goes. And it’s been decades and it hasn’t gotten much better. It’s gotten… More human looking and acting but it hasn’t crossed that uncanny valley like you mentioned earlier.

Francis Wade | 19:54

I think we… For the Uncanny Valley. We don’t need… We don’t need to have an AI device. Cross the valley to be valuable to us. I’m thinking as we’re speaking that When you’re coaching someone, there’s a number of… Capacities you’re using. Among them are the most human, empathetic capacities But I’m wondering if that’s not, 20%. And the other 80% of what the coach does. Could be replicated with AI.

So I think there’s an activity here to break down what a coach does. Into the parts that will never become replicatable. The parts that can be replicatable, which is rapidly growing.

And then there’s a kind of a fuzzy, maybe like a gray 20% in between. That Maybe you could fix someone, Otter. Maybe for the 20%.

So imagine this. I have the Automated. Wotchi Park. Of an app or an LLM or a coaching persona. It does all the things that you would expect it to do.

So it watches me 24-7. It gathers data. It’s on all platforms. It’s in my phone. It’s in the cloud. It’s everywhere. It does all these very useful things. Things that you would expect it to do. And it just gathers the data passively.

So I go to it. When I have a question.

So it’s been watching me But it doesn’t necessarily intervene in the way that Ray said. It doesn’t intervene with empathy. Instead, I intervene in my own behavior and I say… I’ve been noticing I’ve been feeling a little tired lately. Look into my data. And tell me whether or not my sleep pattern or something else Find a cause, whatever the cause might be. And this automated bit would go and It would have been searching. It would not apply. Its knowledge to my data. And it would then come back to me. No, the difference is that I’m the one who’s doing the intervening.

So it’s getting into the 20%. But it’s not very different than if I go to a coach and I say, Coach, I’ve been noticing that I’ve been sluggish lately. And the coach asked me a certain number of questions. I self-report. My own warp data.

And then the coach tries to make sense of it. So an AI could improve that interaction. If I’m the one who’s initiating it, if I’m the one who’s doing the inquiry, so I don’t necessarily need the empathy to And I don’t need the interruption because I’m not interrupting. The coach isn’t interrupting me. I’m interrupting me.

So it makes me think, okay, there’s a 20%. Cases in there where I’m interrupting myself and I’m asking the data. The codes, the AI codes, They use all the available stuff that a real coach… Could never have access to.

So that makes me think that there is something new that could be arising that I could take advantage of.

Ray Sidney Smith | 22:44

There is a reality factor when it comes to dealing with AI. And to your point, Francis, when we’re thinking about this, we want it to satisfy the capacities that we know it can and can’t have. Right.

So if it can’t empathize, that’s fine. But as Art said, it’s a pattern recognition mechanism.

Right? It is an idiot savant. At pattern recognition. And I don’t want it actually to take over my task manager. I want it to be monitoring my task manager as a collaborator. And so it can look at my task list and say, hey, by the way, I noticed that you had these three tasks and four questions. Efficiency You may want to do them together. But then as it learns me better and knows that I actually work on a project basis, not on an individual task bulk basis. Basis, it can say to me, I know that you actually don’t like to Make a phone call and then make five more phone calls at the same time. You like to do all of the things that are grouped together with that particular category and do them all together.

So you’d rather do a phone call than an email than a document and then move on to the next thing because I know that about you. You actually have your task list misaligned today let’s move these things here and let’s move those things there If it could do that pattern recognition mixed with its ability to objectively deal with the things on my list. That’s the value. I think that’s the Whether it’s the 80% or the 20% that we’re talking about here in terms of its value, I see that as the thing it can do without care or concern about its agency or its emotional capacity. I think we will get to emotional intelligence based AI, but. It will still not be human, but its capabilities are still there.

Art Gelwicks | 24:30

AI could become an amazingly powerful coach’s assistant. Not a… Truly, The Assistant Coach. The one that is with you all the time that is reporting back to the coach from a large group of people. Saying, hey, this person’s doing well, this person’s struggling, this person’s having this challenge. Based on the criteria of the coach because the One, it’s really good at that, as we’ve mentioned. But second, and this is probably my concern, utilizing an AI coach as a replacement for a coach means that someone else is not learning how to be a coach. You’re, dampening down the pool of good quality coaches because you’re taking away their opportunities to learn and interact with others. Being able to have the equivalent of assistant coaches running around looking for specific things, an AI who’s focused on meeting management, an AI that’s focused on information capture or research or whatever.

And then being able to give you that feedback to say, hey, they did really well here. They struggled here. This doesn’t look like it’s connecting. Then when you have that one on one session with them. It’s really rich content. It is to the core of what the problem is. That I could see incredibly powerful within the environment itself. But that goes to the bigger, broader statement. AI should never be a replacement. It should be an enhancement.

Francis Wade | 25:58

I’ve taken to recording. My workshops. But partly because I want Clients, mostly because I want the client to have the benefit of the data. And the conversations happen so fast and they happen so, they’re very rich and the strategic planning stuff.

So it’s Big picture, smart details, all kinds of stuff. And there’s no way to keep notes, write notes, to capture all that happens. In these conversations, which I did an Ito recording the other day, for example. But I just had the thought, so what Art said is I could ask this thing. How can I improve what I’m doing from my point of view? Then I could actually… There’s no one else in the world that could do that other than this AI at this point. Even if I told a coach, I sure couldn’t, they sure couldn’t replicate what the AI is. Could pull up. Now if a coach use the AI and had the data and they were facile at querying my data. They could probably, as art is implying, they could probably make some good How do we? They could probably… Not listen in, but they could query the transcripts is what we would say if they did. You could prompt.

Art Gelwicks | 27:11

You’re right on a really fascinating path. Take the transcript of 100 sessions that you do with your clients. Put those transcripts together, generalize them, and say, What’s the commonality? “What are the things that I’m talking about all the time But what are the things that are in there all the time that I’m not talking about? That people are struggling with. Have their new things started to show up in this process.

So again, as an assistant coach, they’re looking for those things that you should be aware of as the head coach. But that at an individual level, starting to use AI, looking at your own notes, what are the things I’m capturing all the time? If I’m always writing this thing down, maybe I should have a process to be able to handle it so I don’t have to remember this thing all the time. We can’t look to AI to say, What are the things… That I should be thinking about to go look for those things. We have to give it a, we have to point it in a direction. We have to give it a job. The generalized generative AI and generalized AI are two confused terms because they have nothing to do with each other. But yet people will look at that and say, yeah, AI knows all things. It can process all things and it can come up with all answers. And that’s where we get into our challenges. And I think as coaches and as professionals, We have to be guiding people to say, yeah, this is an incredibly powerful tool that can give you answers, that can give you insights that you don’t have. But what it’s not going to do is replace your part in the process.

Ray Sidney Smith | 28:40

So a couple of things here, I think that make sense. And then we can start to wrap up today, which is that I think that. AI will someday soon have contextual awareness in ways that we maybe have not anticipated. Not just time, location. And schedule and those kinds of things. But it will be able to optimize time and frame. For motivation, for commitment devices, for corrective action, those kinds of things. And I think that’s a place where it can actually do a lot of really good. And this is embedded in the design of the technology.

So before we started recording, we were talking about Google Health and its new AI built into it, formerly Fitbit. And so Google has rebranded and we have this whole new paradigm for thinking about interacting with Fitbit, which is through this AI coach, which basically pulls together disparate, seemingly disparate data. Nutrition, your sleep, your step count every day, the different metrics, health metrics. And now it is coming to fruition, my absolute dream for things as a quantified selfer, right? I want all of the data around me, all the health metrics around me to help inform me living a better life. And I don’t want to have to run a bunch of Python scripts and pull up various software to have to run all of the data on it. I just want the AI to do that.

And then it can, I will, again, as Art said, I’m going to point it, I’m going to say, I want to optimize this thing, give me feedback on that. And since it’s been collecting, passively collecting this data for me, now it will be able to summon the best case scenario for that answer.

And then I could take it to my human doctor, my human coaches and say, I need this advice. And this is what the data says. And I think that’s a really rich surface for us to be able to explore over time. I will say that there’s a couple of boundaries I think we should think about. But we need to maintain personal autonomy and we need to prevent being overcoached in our lives in a lot of ways. If we lose agency, then learned helplessness kicks into place. And so we need to make sure that we retain that internal drive to get things done.

So I think that we should explicitly instruct into AI in some way, shape or form or fashion the kind of a fading mechanism, which is that it gradually withdraws support from. For any particular routine or habit that we’ve ultimately cemented so that we can ensure habits become internally driven as opposed to consistently externally prompt. And we need to review failed accountability attempts, not for blame, but to design better future systems, as I like to think about it. When I didn’t do X at X time, Why? And ask it to go ahead and suggest future interventions.

So using it from that perspective, and I think you can really see wonders happen. I just think that if we use it too much as a crutch, then we turn off our own mechanisms for cognitive effort, and that becomes a problem.

So there is this nice, fine middle ground, where as long as we’re not using it too much, or not at all, then we’re really finding optimal solutions. Capabilities. Final takeaways, gentlemen. What are some takeaways that you have gotten from this conversation or sparked thoughts for you or want to suggest for folks who might want to get into using AI for coaching?

Augusto Pinaud | 32:04

The important thing for me is understand why You need this coach. And I think that’s one of the difference when you work with a human coach. Because I may not know, hey, I may need a productivity coach. Okay. I may not know exactly what do I need to improve. And When you work with a human, Okay, you have the chance that this human can… Work with you, study with you, understand exactly Not what you think you need, but what you need or how can get you to that place. The problem with the AI coach is that you need to do that part of the work. And That requires a different set of skills than… It’s not just getting a coach. No, it requires how you’re going to do that self-discovery that is going to be needed to be able to get there. And that’s where the challenge is. I think it started for many.

Francis Wade | 33:02

And there’s a new kind of coaching coming. Based on what we’re seeing where The human coach is at the apex.

And then there’s all this… Other kinds of AI activity. That the human court uses. And I think a coach… I think of myself, if I were coaching someone in strategic planning, I could coach. Maybe I could coach 20 people. If I had all their recordings of all their sessions. And I could apply AI to it. For example, and I could give them very targeted insights maybe 80% of it from the AI, but 20% from me. And the reason I’m thinking 20 coaches is because maybe I could scale what I do because… The part that I do is now much smaller than the part that I would normally do. Which, boy, that’s, I don’t know what to think about it, but. Can someone coach 100 people if… They all have the right AI… Thank you.

You know, and data? Is that possible?

Art Gelwicks | 34:07

I think the… Divergence of AI coaching from human coaching will become more and more pronounced over the next year or two. We’re going to see… The commoditization of coaching through a very similar to telehealth and that type of thing where it does scale and creates a large volume. But you lose some of the true deep quality. Love it. Can it be a gateway to a specific individual working with a specific coach? Absolutely. And I think that’s the way coaches need to look at it. As an opportunity to have that broad brush at the base, but understand their real value. Is what they bring to the table. Their experience, their unique composition of background, understanding, knowledge, and interaction. And I still argue that no matter how smart AI gets… AI doesn’t go through X number of years of just living on a daily basis to have that composite.

So it may look really close, but it’s never going to be the same.

Ray Sidney Smith | 35:12

Yeah, the substrate is silicon. It is not organic. And I think that carbon-based life forms… Have a natural understanding of each other. And I think there is maybe some dogma to that, but I think it’s actually quite relevant understandable by us. Just when you think about it, you just deeply understand that. And that’s without like any number of biases involved.

So I think that there is a way to get the most value from some kind of AI coach. And again, I’m using coach in the terminology that it’s just anybody way in which AI is basically helping you move toward an end. And so I think we need to treat it as a mirror reflecting our actual behavior, not just a source of motivation. And we need to be ruthlessly honest with the data you provide so that you are not giving it cherry-picked data.

And then be prepared to act on the objective data-driven feedback it gives to you. And I think if we can keep that in mind, then we can realize very quickly when the AI coach is not useful. And when it is incredibly useful.

And then we can optimize based on that for our own personal productivity. So with that, gentlemen, we are going to close out this episode. And in our next episode, we’re going to continue on in the series and talk about integrating artificial intelligence, integrating AI into our existing platforms and tools. While we are at the end of our discussion, the conversation doesn’t stop here. If you have a question or comment about what we’ve discussed during this cast, please visit our episode page on productivitycast.net. They’re on the podcast website. At the bottom of the page, feel free to leave a comment or question. We read and respond to comments and questions there. As well, you’re invited to join our listeners group inside Personal Productivity Club, a digital community for personal productivity enthusiasts that I host, where you can interact with the ProductivityCast team directly. To join for free, visit productivitycast.net forward slash community, and you can get started there. By the way, to get to any ProductivityCast episode fast, simply add the three-digit episode number to the end of ProductivityCast.net forward slash.

So episode 100 would be ProductivityCast.net forward slash 100. Episode 102 would be ProductivityCast.net forward slash 101 and so on. On productivitycast.net on each episode page, you’ll find the show notes, so links to anything we’ve discussed are easily jumped to from there, along with text transcripts to read and download. If this is your first time with us, please consider adding us to your favorite podcast app. If you click on the subscribe tab on productivitycast.net, you’ll see the instructions to subscribe and or follow us and get episodes downloaded for free every time a new one comes out. And if you enjoyed spending time listening and learning with us today, it’d be a great help to us if you added a rating or review in Apple Podcasts or your podcast app if it has a rating and or review feature. Your compliments motivate us and they help us grow our personal productivity listening community. Thank you to those who have left reviews. We’ve seen them and appreciate all the feedback. Keep them coming. If you have a topic or question about personal productivity you’d like us to discuss on a future cast, please visit productivitycast.net forward slash contact. You can leave a voice recorded message or type a message into the message box and maybe we’ll use it as a future episode topic. I want to express my thanks to Augusto Pinaud, Francis Wade, and Art Gelwicks for joining me here on ProductivityCast each week. You can learn more about them and their work by visiting ProductivityCast.net and visiting the About page. I’m Ray Sidney Smith, and on behalf of all of us here at ProductivityCast, here’s to your productive life.

Voiceover Artist | 39:07

That’s it for this episode of Productivity Cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, with your hosts, Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud, with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.