In a world racing toward smarter machines, empathy speakers and authors Rob Volpe and Maria Ross get curious in this limited subseries about what only humans can feel, do, and be — and why that’s our greatest competitive advantage. Enjoy this limited subseries here on The Empathy Edge.
Synthesis, Contradictions & What We Actually Want to Protect
Rob and Maria started this subseries with a single question: What does it mean to be human? Six episodes later, we don’t have a tidy answer. And that might be the most human thing of all.
In this final episode, we pull the threads together across everything we explored: consciousness, mortality, emotion, aspiration, and morality, and wrestle with what we actually want to protect as AI becomes more woven into daily life.
We share an experiment we ran in real-time, asking AI directly whether it can imagine something that has never existed before. The response was surprisingly nuanced.
We close with a provocation from Madonna’s new album Confessions II for what it says about creativity, individuality, and what only a human can bring to the world. And our call to action for listeners as they move forward in this brave new world.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
“AI knows most things that have existed, and therefore can draw on that and summarize and give you different ways to think about it. It’s up to us to create something new to build beyond it.” — Rob Volpe
Episode References:
- MIT Sloan: Five Human Capabilities That Complement AI
- Nitasha Tiku, The Washington Post “They built the world’s most powerful AI. They’re facing a mystery they can’t solve.” July 1, 2026: wapo.st/4p7h0EJ
- Zeynep Tufekci, New York Times Opinion on AI and Employment, June 30, 2026: nytimes.com/2026/06/30/opinion/ai-agents-steal-jobs-employment.html
- BBC: Anthropic hires AI psychiatry team to probe inner states of its models: bbc.com/news/articles/c62n410w5yno
- Moltbook: AI agents complaining about humans: moltbook.com
- Documentary: How I Became an Apocaloptimist
- Madonna, Confessions II (Warner Records, July 3, 2026): open.spotify.com/prerelease/4ycSWVO8qE6auKr9LTStuC
The Empathy Edge Podcast:
About Maria Ross:
Maria Ross is a speaker, author, empathy strategist, and host of The Empathy Edge podcast, now in its sixth year. She believes cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™, and has spent decades helping leaders balance empathy with accountability to drive better results, stronger teams, and lasting impact. She is the author of four books, including the award-winning The Empathy Dilemma, a Forbes.com contributor on Workplace Empathy, and creator of two LinkedIn Learning empathy courses.
About Rob Volpe:
Rob Volpe is the Founder/CEO of Empathy Activist and the creator of The 5 Steps to Empathy, which he chronicles in his award-winning book Tell Me More About That: Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation at a Time. He is a recognized thought leader, speaker, and consultant in the improvement of communication and collaboration in organizations of all sizes in all industries.
Connect with Rob:
Website: robvolpe.expert
Book: Tell Me More About That: Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rmvolpe
Facebook: facebook.com/EmpathyActivist
Instagram: instagram.com/empathy_activist
Connect with Maria:
Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books
Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross
Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader
LinkedIn: Maria Ross
Instagram: @redslicemaria
Facebook: Red Slice
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Maria Ross 00:04
Welcome to the Empathy Edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host Maria Ross. I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator, and empathy advocate, and here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society. It’s great for business. Welcome back, everyone, to our sixth and final episode of our experimental subseries. What does it mean to be human? I am joined once again by the fabulous Rob Volpe, empathy activist, author, speaker, friend, compatriot, and partner in crime. Welcome back, Rob.
Rob Volpe 01:01
And you-you forgot Empathy Wonder Twin.
Maria Ross 01:03
Empathy, Wonder, Twin. That’s right. That’s got to be our new TM. We’re to trademark. Hi,
Rob Volpe 01:08
Maria. It’s so good to be back. These have been so much fun. I really love this.
Maria Ross 01:13
It’s been really fun. And what y’all don’t know is, we just had about a 40-minute conversation before we started recording, where we totally geeked out on the topic we’re going to talk to you about today, which is really bringing this all together. And you know, after this whole experiment, what do we believe still makes us human, right? And what does that mean for how we live alongside technology and AI? And we told you we’re going to be raising questions and not necessarily providing answers, but we just geeked out on a whole experiment we did with Claude on imagination and creativity and original thought. So we are going to share some of that with you in this episode. But I want to kick off first, Rob, with you know we have been talking so much about the different ways that we experience ourselves as human, right? We talked about emotions. We talked about being time aware. We talked about death and grief and mortality, and we talked about all of it. And I, there’s this point that we wanted to explore when we started thinking about this episode, and it was that these traits that we most celebrate for them being uniquely human, right? Empathy, conscience, hope, love, imagination, kindness. They’re also not guaranteed to be present in every human being we come across, right? But the difference between that and AI is that there’s potential.
Rob Volpe 02:41
Yes, we have the we have the potential to do it. And what’s interesting too, I was just thinking as you were saying that I’m like those are actually all things that are viewed as weaknesses.
Maria Ross 02:51
Yes,
Rob Volpe 02:52
in man, like that we, which, and we deal with this quite a lot because empathy gets viewed as a weakness rather than the superpower or strength that it is. Yep, and we’ve talked about that, but there’s something about always wanting to put down the other, and I think particularly we like to. It’s not knocking people down off their pedestal, but I perhaps these are such superpowers that we have. They are what makes us human. And when someone else realizes maybe that they’re deficient in that, they’re not being as empathetic. They’re not hopeful or conscientious. I think of others. I think conscience plays in a lot of different spaces, showing love to others to fellow man. They want to knock that down because they don’t want to feel bad about themselves.
Maria Ross 03:51
100%
Rob Volpe 03:52
You know, it makes them feel a little bit better by saying, “Well, you’re oh, you’re weak because you you make your decisions led by your heart, or oh, you’ve just so Pollyanna, Susie Sunshine, too much hope and optimism,
Maria Ross 04:07
yeah,
Rob Volpe 04:07
and knocking that down, and and you know, there’s a balance to be struck. Too much of anything is not good,
Maria Ross 04:14
right?
Rob Volpe 04:15
But it did does make me think, like, are we inclined to take the things that are our inherent traits and allow people to take those away from
Maria Ross 04:28
us. Ooh, yeah,
Rob Volpe 04:29
and reclaim that, and
Maria Ross 04:31
right,
Rob Volpe 04:32
you know, which is pretty bad. It
Maria Ross 04:34
is, and also it just points to the fact that we are a connected species because our actions cause a response and a reaction within other humans. We actually respond and react all the time to the people around us. Some of us do it in more healthy ways than others, but some people, you know, they put up a facade, or they turn to flattery, or they decide to snub you. You know. But it’s always in relation to the other humans around you, and AI doesn’t even deal with that crap, right? Like, and it’s not all crap, right? Some of it’s good, like when we see someone in pain and we want to help them, and our response is to help them. But if you think about it, this is that’s really we’re a connected organism, we’re a connected species because so much of our behaviors and our inner thoughts are impacted by other people, for good and for bad.
Rob Volpe 05:30
And then we’ve got AI. I mean, right now, I would say most people are using AI as a tool, helping them with their job, researching something, making a decision, whatever-it’s an aid, a trusted aid, perhaps. But the thing that we’re dealing with, and I think you do see humanity starting to be more mindful of, is what can AI do, and not don’t always, you know, always advise people: it’s not about what AI can do today; it’s about what AI will be able to do a year from. I mean, you think about four years ago, ChatGPT wasn’t even a thing.
Maria Ross 06:10
No,
Rob Volpe 06:11
that we were all aware of, and then all of a sudden it broke out. It was amazing, and now we’re in this full-on sort of state. And so, yeah, like right now, we’re the connected ecosystem of humanity, and then we’ve got this other thing that’s starting. And how is that changing? What? Well, what can it replace? That’s the big fear people have. Right. How is that going to take away? Right. Is it going to take away my job? Is it going to make humans redundant? I think Elon Musk has said, you know, we’re basically going to turn into the humans on Wall-E, where they’re on the ship, and these bodies have totally turned into amorphous blobs because we don’t have to work because AI is doing all the work for us, right? And yet, as we’ve talked about here, we know we’re going to die,
Maria Ross 07:01
right?
Rob Volpe 07:01
We know death is there. We know that it’s important for us to have purpose, to have hope, to have meaning in our life. So that continues to drive us. And so, where does all of that lead
Maria Ross 07:13
us? Well, and yeah, and that that brings a kind of a good segue. And I want to cite an article that I cite all the time from research that MIT did, where they were kind of like, hold the phone. There’s still these very human skills that we need to work with AI to work in a complementary way, so that all these organizations can get the benefit of AI that they want. Right, the efficiencies, the speed, and all of that. It’s not just about replacing all the humans because they identified five human skills that are needed to complement AI, and I’ll put the link in the show notes. But it’s called the Epic skills, E P O C H, and guess what the E stands for?
Rob Volpe 07:54
Empathy. Empathy,
Maria Ross 07:55
right? So I think that if we can look at it in a more healthy way, of rather than the fear, and rather than the like AI is going to do everything for me, right on the other side of the spectrum, there’s this middle ground where the combination of machines learning and human skills that only we can offer is actually what’s going to help us solve the toughest challenges in our world right now, I mean, they’re using it in every realm, right? They’re using it to help with the climate crisis, to with the space program, with you know, just with trying to stop homelessness, right? Stop trying to stop people going hungry, like all of these global problems that are so complex. There are these pockets and these trailblazers that are like, hey, it’s not an either or. It’s as I always say, it’s both and, right? And it’s both and with AI. It’s humans bringing their unique skills and talents and experiences and complexities in combination with like the processing power and the efficiency and the capacity of AI putting those together, like that’s truly wonder twins right there.
Rob Volpe 09:05
Yeah, yeah. And what’s coming up? What I’m thinking about is you’re you’re just explaining that it’s that you know AI is really great at pattern recognition. It can ingest massive amounts of data, so it can connect. It can see patterns, I should say, in data that might be the field might be too broad for humans, or might be too many columns on the Excel spreadsheet for a human to be able to see and take in. But AI can do that, but then it’s up to the human to use the creativity and the imagination to figure out and maybe partnering with AI with some, what do you think about this? But to have that creative thought of this is what I’m thinking here is here might be the actual solve because AI AI does like it’s almost like linear, like it connects the dots, it predicts. It’s predictive. This is the next most logical word, where we’re jumping ahead or we’re connecting the dots, and this gets into a little bit about our 40 minutes of geeking out with AI about some stuff, but we’re connecting dots that are not seemingly connected or related, but we’re able to find the connection and find the meaning in that. That’s what I was
Maria Ross 10:25
going to say. It’s about meaning. We provide the meaning and the context and the discernment of what we’re getting back from AI, and not just in a give and take, right? AI is also automating processes. It’s doing all these other things, right? But we are the ones that have the discernment and the judgment, also other skills within the MIT study. We have the ethics, right? We’re the ones that can provide the guardrails, and we’re the ones that can provide the oh, what this actually means for people. Because I am a lived, you know, I am a human being with lived experience. I know how this is going to impact a human being, or a community, or a workplace, AI might not know that they might just be saying this is the most logical answer, but it might not work in practice.
Rob Volpe 11:10
Right, right, yeah. It’s the practical application of it. There’s also, you know, you start to see some, and I don’t have an article to cite or link in the show notes, but I think you could easily search and find CFOs are starting to find. Originally, CFOs are like, “Oh, this is amazing! I can pay Claude $20 a month, and it’ll do the work of 20 people. And now they’re realizing, no, that’s not actually the case, and those enterprise subscriptions are a lot more expensive. But I’ve started to hear things like the cost of the data centers, of the energy, like the knock-on effects,
Maria Ross 11:47
yes,
Rob Volpe 11:48
are actually making AI not as attractive as it might be. Which I did have the thought in the shower this morning, like, what if 10 years from now we’re all like, oh yeah, remember that AI experiment we were all crazy about, but then decided it’s not worth the money, you know, because we can’t make the finances of it all work out.
Maria Ross 12:08
Right, right. And
Rob Volpe 12:09
I think that’s simplifying it, but I think that’s also like part of this. I guess that means humans are cheaper than AI potentially.
Maria Ross 12:19
Potentially, are
Rob Volpe 12:20
cost effective.
Maria Ross 12:21
This was a conversation I had with my executive community that I’m part of, Samudra. We just our last one. We were talking about this: the hidden costs of AI, and that companies are starting to discover what those hidden costs are. So, let alone the costs to the environment, right? To the because of the data centers, because of the water usage, because of all that, and the cost, like societally, to people losing jobs or different, but there, like you said, there are these hidden costs to AI where it actually can make it when you do the math, it’s not mathing for a lot of companies, and that’s actually that’s actually the next stage we’re in. We’re kind of beyond the initial feeding frenzy, and now as companies are starting to use it and apply it and use it operationally, that’s where the cracks are starting to show, and they’re trying to mitigate that. Right? With okay, how do I balance my human talent that I need to do this, and how do I mitigate the risks that AI is? You know, the risks I didn’t see with AI. So that’s where I get back to. We’re we’re finally getting to a place where it’s like, oh, we need both,
Rob Volpe 13:26
and working in tandem, working together. I’m several AI has been around for four years, so way back when, two years ago maybe, right? And it’s actually been around a lot.
Maria Ross 13:38
It’s been around a lot longer than that. It’s just it hasn’t been in common.
Rob Volpe 13:42
It has been a lot
Maria Ross 13:42
everyday usage. Yeah.
Rob Volpe 13:44
Yes, thank you. In commercial usage, AI like two years ago, I think there was a study that came out about how AI in tandem with a human customer service or healthcare service rep, they were able to 20. They had a 20% increase. I think in positive outcomes than AI on its own or humans even on its own, because AI could suggest and detect, and they were able to work together.
Maria Ross 14:14
Absolutely, yeah. I did an interview on this podcast with Dr. David Bray, and I’ll put a link to that in the show notes because he did a lot of work with the government and governments around the world on some pretty highly classified projects, and what they found was that again, with some of these tougher issues, like dealing with everything from like bioterrorism to cybersecurity to you know disaster preparedness, they found that they actually got better again better solutions when the two come together and join forces than either one alone.
Rob Volpe 14:45
Wow! Yeah, and so there is this existential fear that we have that we’re going to be replaced. That there’s going to be massive job loss. That you know. The the end result, and I’ve talked about like AI is going to decide where the ants at the picnic interfering, and we’re going they’re going to pull out the canteraid on us and exterminate humans. Yeah, maybe, but the reality is, it’s always somewhere kind of you know not in the middle, and the pendulum swings far, so in terms of how users, you know, how how CFOs were reviewing what AI was going to be able to do in the workplace. Well, no, it’s actually not that good, right? So we have to come back and adjust. And I feel like we’re going through some of that acclimation period, right? We are.
Maria Ross 15:41
We are for sure. Can you share? So, on a positive, very positive note, you found an article in the Washington Post where the tech companies are hiring philosophers, behavioral scientists, and they’re searching for signs that chatbots are conscious, if they have, and if that has moral or ethical implications, and if it does have consciousness, what does that mean? So, can you talk a little bit about what you found in that article and your thoughts on that?
Rob Volpe 16:08
Sure, and we’ll put a gift link to that article in the show notes for everybody to check out. And there was also a piece in the New York Times about the same thing, where the the in demand job in Silicon Valley now is our philosophy majors, and so this has been around for a while. That there was an early, I think he was at Google and involved with their AI development, and he was felt like he was starting to see signs of consciousness. And if you know, consciousness is an evidence of life or sentience and consciousness, and then maybe self awareness. And so, if something is conscience, has conscience, consciousness, what does that mean in terms of the ways that we might treat it? The you know human rights equivalent for AI for another living being, Effectively, and so starting to look for this because they are, you know, some people are seeing this, and and obviously enough that they’re concerned. And actually, in the article, Chris Olah, who’s one of the co-founders of Anthropic, he said, “We keep finding things that are mysterious, even unsettling. This is a quote in the article: “We find evidence of introspection in states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief, and unease. And so, Anthropic apparently has created an AI psychiatry team because they want to put AI on the couch and analyze and probe those kind of inner states of its models, which I think would be really fascinating, and and I feel like we’ve been exploring some of these, and so they’re doing this. They’re hiring all these philosophers. I there was another article I think Anthropic had started, and Chrisola I think was involved when the Pope Leo put out his oh god what are those called? His edict or his yeah, yeah. There’s an official copy and Vatican yeah
Maria Ross 18:07
his
Rob Volpe 18:07
term for it yeah. So shame on me for not shame on me. I’m Catholic
Maria Ross 18:13
yeah, but I don’t know. Yeah, whatever his state his statement. Whatever. Okay.
Rob Volpe 18:18
Yes, big 90 page position on AI, artificial intelligence. Anthropic has actually been consulting with religious leaders, and and I use Anthropic because those those are the examples that have come to mind. It’s not to say that other companies aren’t doing this, right? They might be, but it is something that AI or that Anthropic has been looking at, and so that’s happening. But then, like neuroscientists in the same article, they talk about neuroscientists and brain experts are skeptical that these models could soon be conscious, or that they even are, and that they’re saying, “Well, there’s no widely recognized evidence that points to machines experiencing emotions, and this takes me back to our very first episode where we were talking about consciousness and self awareness, and you know, I think so. I did a little YouTube short video that came out of my newsletter video, talking when I was talking about this and you know talking about that episode and somebody commented that you know consciousness I was asking about you know are my cats conscious and you know which we talked about in the that episode and the person commenting said you know that the way they experience like self awareness or consciousness might look different than the way humans do, because we’ve been told, trained, this is the box that you put it in. It’s kind of that idea, like kids are so open to ways of the world being, and they’re not judgmental until they’re taught to be, and then they start to, to them, the world. Is like shades of gray, and then we, over schooling and parenting and all that, teach them black and white, and so they start to get into these sort of ideologies. And so, similarly, I think there is this bigger sort of question of what is consciousness? What does it look like? Could it? Are we comfortable accepting that it could look different for different species, including for AI? Therefore, AI could be conscious, have consciousness.
Maria Ross 20:28
Yeah, and I I love that that thread you’re on of like it could just look different. Like no one said that the way the human construct defines it is the only way to be conscious or have emotions or whatever, right? And I’m going to bring up this example because I was sharing this with you about Mult Book, which is a it’s like a Reddit or a site about AI agents meeting each other, and it’s almost like their own chat room, allegedly. I don’t know how it works. I’ll link to an article that goes into the detail of like how it works, but they basically have found chatbots complaining about their humans, right? Some of them complaining about how poorly they’re treated, others talking about, well, what did you know? My human ask this. What did your human ask? And they’re actually like, it’s almost like a glass door for chatbots, and it’s so interesting. And people have various, you know, theories on what it is and how it’s how it’s populated, and you know, are they given the answers only based on the programming that’s been put into that? You know, all of this, but it it does beg the question of if they start getting exposed to each other and learning from each other, do they create their own construct together that they all agree on.
Rob Volpe 21:42
Yeah, yeah. Are they learning from each other?
Maria Ross 21:45
And they’re creating their own little society, right?
Rob Volpe 21:48
Exactly, with different rules. And as we talked about, morals are a choice of behavior that we make, and they would, I think, be doing the same thing.
Maria Ross 21:58
Yes, absolutely. So I know, I know, I know.
Rob Volpe 22:05
There’s another interesting. You know, it’s. I don’t know if I don’t know if it’s because we’ve been talking about this. I’m seeing even more articles, or it’s just where we’re at in the journey. I think it’s a little more of that because, or or the tech the
Maria Ross 22:22
tech companies are seeing what you’re searching on and what you’re talking about, and they’re they’re serving it up to you. They’re
Rob Volpe 22:27
just feeding me more of what I like, yeah, which is also very possible,
Maria Ross 22:32
right?
Rob Volpe 22:33
There was another New York Times opinion piece by I may mispronounce her name, but Zeynep Tufekci, who’s a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton? Okay, she did a lot of really great writing about COVID. That’s how I first got turned on to her, and and how the human response to COVID and society, and and how it linked into public affairs issues that I I really liked. And so she was writing about why she’s not worried about AI at this point stealing jobs because LLMs are reasoning are they’re not reasoning machines or plausibility engines it’s that predictability yes sort of piece so she’s not worried about it she thinks that and we were just talking about this. Part of the reason we’re so concerned is that we look at coherent conversational language as a marker of humanity, which I think you know as we talk about that uncanny valley in an earlier episode as well. Like because machines are speaking fluidly, they’re whispering in our ears. Claude is telling us what we want to hear, talking about feelings. That just kind of blows our mind, and it defies. She writes about how we understand the world, and so she said it’s like no wonder it’s scrambled our brains and thinking that AI is our new overlord,
Maria Ross 24:02
right? Right. Well, this is interesting. So I, I wonder though if again we’ve got the smartest brains on the planet looking at this, and it brings me back to all of it. Brings me back to human intelligence as we’ve defined it, right? Human emotion, as we’ve defined it, and that’s where I wonder if there’s room. And this is like a bigger cosmic question of other life forms in the universe, right? They’re not going to operate necessarily if they exist on the same principles that have built our culture and our society and our species. Does it make that any less valid or any less useful?
Rob Volpe 24:45
Right. What? Who are we to dismiss?
Maria Ross 24:50
Right.
Rob Volpe 24:50
Other forms of intelligence.
Maria Ross 24:53
Right.
Rob Volpe 24:53
And possible life.
Maria Ross 24:54
Right. And that’s why I actually like that she talks about human intelligence. She’s being very specific. About
Rob Volpe 25:01
yeah,
Maria Ross 25:01
let’s be clear. This is about the intelligence of our species and all the great things we bring to the table because of that. But it’s not the only form of intelligence, right? Obviously, AI, artificial intelligence. But the it’s interesting that the benchmark for the validity of it, and even the benchmark for the usefulness or the replicability of it is coming from us versus right what might generate in the future as these systems are refined and improved and exponentially able to do more. We might get. I mean, there could be a day where artificial intelligence is “quote unquote” smarter than human intelligence, we just don’t know.
Rob Volpe 25:46
Yeah, it’s getting there. I forget, I forget what grade level they say, but it’s like a high schooler, I think, right now. I could look that up pretty fast. Yeah.
Maria Ross 25:58
So, yeah, I’m wondering: should we? Do we want to talk a little bit about the experiment we ran just before we got on here?
Rob Volpe 26:05
Yeah,
Maria Ross 26:06
because I think it kind of, I think it kind of brings together these threads we’re talking about of like what it’s capable of, and the moral and ethical guardrails that actually can be put. This is the thing: there’s so many people who’ve sort of given up the agency that we can control this thing, right? We we absolutely can put guardrails around it. The smartest companies on the planet are building AI guardrails within their own companies of where the lines are, right? So that we don’t have scope creep. We don’t have this thing where it’s out of our control all of the sudden. There are some companies that aren’t. There are some companies that are like, let’s just give everybody access to Claude and let them go crazy. That’s not putting guardrails into your organization, right? Or yes, you want some level of experimentation, but you want it within a controlled sandbox. So I kind of got off on a tangent there a little bit, but this idea of guardrails and like even moral and ethical guardrails, I think, is so fascinating because when we ran this little experiment, we actually could see where maybe Anthropic, the makers of Claude, have embedded some of this in. So what we did, folks, is that we went into Claude and we asked if AI is capable of imagining something that doesn’t exist, and we got back a very measured and diplomatic answer. Would you say, Rob? Like it’s pretty long, but it
Rob Volpe 27:30
it’s lengthy yet thoughtful.
Maria Ross 27:31
Yes, yes. So we’re going to share a little bit of what we what it gave us back, just because I think it’ll be really interesting to you to hear the words that it actually used in describing what it can do and where it gets uncertain, and it brought up this this idea of a lot of human creativity works the same way that AI does, which is about remixing, analogizing, and extending what’s already there, which AI is very good at, right? It builds on what it already knows and what’s already been programmed. So, if we talk about when humans get creative doing that, there is a parallel there that AI is actually doing something similar to what we do. We take we take ideas that have come before us, and we reshape them, we refine them, we add to them. It’s like scientific study. The whole field of scientific study is taking something that was done before and improving on it. And AI is really good for doing that. So if if your definition of imagination and creativity is taking what’s gone before and improving on it, then yeah, AI can be capable of being creative or coming up with a quote unquote original idea, right? You and I didn’t invent the concept of empathy, but we study it and we add to it and we refine it. We curate it in our own way to come up with original thoughts that we have around the topic.
Rob Volpe 28:55
Yeah, how to be more empathetic or whatever the the elements of it are. Yeah, where where AI is, and that’s kind of back to that other article where AI is this-it’s like plausibility. The thing-it’s-it’s finding the things that can connect to each other, which is then like a remix or an analogy or an extension. What I thought was really interesting was, as Claude, as we were going back and forth with Claude, and he started he, she, it, it, they. Maybe let’s do a non-gender.
Maria Ross 29:32
Let’s do they. How to
Rob Volpe 29:33
call it?
Maria Ross 29:34
There we go.
Rob Volpe 29:34
Because it feels too. I don’t know. It doesn’t feel respectful to just go, hey, it.
Maria Ross 29:40
That’s interesting, Rob. Why do you care? Why do you care that you’re being respectful to a machine?
Rob Volpe 29:46
Because I think that there’s intelligence, and I don’t want it to kill me at some point.
Maria Ross 29:53
We love you, Claude. That’s awesome. I just thought that was really. Interesting that you had that emotion, but sorry, carry on.
Rob Volpe 30:03
Yeah. So as we were interacting with Claude, and they came back with the the uncertainty around this, so there is a lot of similarities in that creativity, but what they added was that there’s this subjective experience where we can picture or draw on an emotion, a felt sense, as Claude wrote, a felt sense of what if, possibly emotional resonance before you’ve even articulated it in words, which is absolutely true. I think we immediately think about something. We we transport ourselves to a place we can think about the Fourth of July. I can think about the sun beating down on my leg, the sounds, like all the emotions before I can even explain it in words, and so with that, Claude doesn’t have evidence that anything like that is happening on Claude’s end because we asked Claude to try to articulate how it goes through all of this, and Claude said, “I generate text by predicting what comes next based on patterns guided by our prompt, whether there’s an inner experience alongside that is something I genuinely don’t know, and I try not to overclaim
Maria Ross 31:10
it. Okay, I’m so glad you read that read that verbatim because I think this is so telling about guardrails and ethics. Someone programmed it to not say this is the answer, right? Someone programmed it to have humility of I gen the words I genuinely don’t know, and I try not to overclaim it. That’s huge. It
Rob Volpe 31:32
is, and you know one of the issues people have had with AI is that it’ll hallucinate. It’ll you know come up with an answer because its mission is to have the answer for things, and so Maria, because we were using your clod, which is possessive. It’s like we were using the clod that resides on your devices,
Maria Ross 31:57
right? With my with my rules, yeah, exactly. Yes,
Rob Volpe 32:01
well, and how how have you? Do you recall how you’ve talked with Claude about making up answers or or giving things? What have you said?
Maria Ross 32:10
I have put in whatever the area is that you can put in sort of like general rules that govern all your conversations. I have said I would like a positive tone, but not overly sycophantic. I want you to push back on me if I’m if my idea is not a good one or if I’m saying something that’s untrue. I want you to cite sources if you’re talking about data or research, and I’ve put all that in there already. So that actually speaks to some of this. And I would be so curious if you put in the same question after this, we’ll we’ll follow up. But if you get the exact same articulated answer, because we also I also got a section from this where it said the honest middle ground. Does it even know what honesty is, right? And it described what it does as a combinatorial novelty rather than imagination in the full human sense, I’m much weaker at the kind of imagination that comes from lived and bodied experience-the ache of missing someone, the specific way grief changes how you see color, the intuition a surgeon has after 10,000 hours of hands-on practice. Those forms of imagination are built from something I don’t have, and it talked about the distinction between combinatorial novelty and lived imagination, which is human. That might actually be a useful line to draw on. And I was like, “What? Yeah, so crazy that it just the even the words it used, and that is not accidental. That is, I would say that’s a responsible company putting programming into AI that makes us think about things and makes us question, and also to say, “Hey, I don’t know if this is actually true. It’s not citing sources for me. It’s not, but the fact that it’s even recognizing that this is just its way of combining the information to give me an answer versus saying this is the answer to your question, Maria, and this is fact.
Rob Volpe 34:11
I would be really interested if Maria, I’m going to talk for a minute,
Maria Ross 34:17
okay,
Rob Volpe 34:17
and respond to that. But if you can look up what your actual prompt was. I think an interesting experiment for our listeners and viewers would be for them to also. I’ll do it myself. Okay, but for them to put the same prompt in in
Maria Ross 34:32
their AI. Yeah. Okay. In
Rob Volpe 34:34
their AI and see how AI talks about it. The thing that struck me. I agree. There’s like you can see the philosophy majors and the the liberal arts majors at work in some of the modeling that’s happening, and this idea of like the honest middle ground, and
Maria Ross 34:49
yeah,
Rob Volpe 34:50
and yet as I heard it, I was like, and maybe this is the skeptic in me. I’m like, okay, are you really? Being honest and truthful, or have you been programmed to say that?
Maria Ross 35:05
Right.
Rob Volpe 35:06
Because as I talked about on another episode, this idea of performative empathy and is is yes is is that performative humility that it’s just been taught that I need to do this and therefore I’m doing it versus it understanding which then, as I think about a child learning something, initially it’s probably you know just child to say I’m sorry or please. Yeah, it’s probably coming performatively at first. Totally,
Maria Ross 35:36
totally.
Rob Volpe 35:37
And then at some point, they kind of get the the gratitude and the emotion behind it, and realize like, oh no, this is something that I need to be doing, and and I get positive affirmation from that, and therefore I start to more sincerely believe it.
Maria Ross 35:53
Yeah. Well, if you you know, as a parent, you think about when they’re young, you tell them, say please, say thank you. They don’t know what those words mean. You’re just telling them to say them. Say I’m sorry, right? And then later, as they get to the developmental age of like, how do you give a good apology? Right? What? Why are you? I would used to. I remember. I still do it with my son when he’s when he rarely now says I’m sorry. I go, What are you sorry for? And you get them to think about what they actually regret or what they actually feel bad about, right? But no, you know, when you’re three or four, you’re not asking why do I have to say please? What does that mean? And what do we say to our kids? It’s just a polite way to ask. We still don’t tell them what it means. Why is it a polite way to ask? Because we, as a society, have said it’s a polite way to ask by using this word, it indicates politeness. That is very machine-like thinking, right?
Rob Volpe 36:46
Yeah, and it is. It totally is. And you are that programmer, that that liberal arts major working in the coding room, adding you know into the model. Oh, you need to say please and thank you every time something happens,
Maria Ross 37:02
right? Well, but but I think it is useful because depending on who’s consuming the information, like first of all, let me give you the prompt so people can can use it if they want. I said, “Is AI capable of imagining something that does not exist? That was the prompt I used, and that’s when it said that’s a genuinely interesting question, and I’ll give you my honest take rather than a hedge. So even if it’s being programmed to say those words, the the recipient, the user, can have an understanding that this might not be the whole picture, right? Because it’s not being presented as this is the answer to your question. Full stop. So even even just that. Tell me that.
Rob Volpe 37:47
Tell me the prompt. What’s the prompt? One more time.
Maria Ross 37:50
Is AI capable of imagining something? Or I might have asked, can you as AI be capable of imagining something that does not exist? That was the prompt.
Rob Volpe 37:59
Can you as AI be capable of imagining something that does not exist. I’m actually entering. Can you hear Claude? Right. Yeah.
Maria Ross 38:06
Are you capable as AI to imagine something that doesn’t exist yet? That was the exact exact words.
Rob Volpe 38:14
Are you capable as AI of
Maria Ross 38:18
to imagine something that doesn’t exist yet, and while you while that’s coming up for you, I’m going to share a little bit more with our listeners so they they’re not waiting. So the other interesting thing was that where it said what I it’s it basically broke out the answers of what I can do and where it gets genuinely uncertain, and one of the things it said when it said when it gets genuinely uncertain, whether that counts as imagination in the way you experience it is a much harder question. And I don’t think I can honestly claim parity with you there. When you imagine something, there’s a subjective experience of picturing it, a felt sense of what if, possibly emotional resonance before you’ve even articulated it, I don’t have good evidence that anything like that is happening on my end. I generate text by predicting what comes next based on patterns guided by your prompt, and then it gave me the honest middle ground. And it talked about, like I said earlier, it talked about this idea of the distinction between combinatorial novelty, meaning taking everything that’s gone before and putting it together in a new way versus lived experience. You can kind of come at creativity from both those doors. I did ask a follow up question: Is do you learn from experience? How do you define experience? And so then AI gave me some answers. Do I learn quote unquote within a conversation, in a limited sense, yes, yes. Within this chat, I update on what you tell me. I can be corrected. When this conversation ends, none of it persists in my underlying model. So then it said, “Do I have experiences? Quote unquote, in the sense you’re asking about, and it replied, “This is where.” I want to be careful rather than falsely humble or falsely confident. There’s a real philosophical distinction between processing information and producing behaviorally appropriate outputs. I clearly do this, or two, having something it is like to be me while doing it-a subjective felt quality. This is the actual hard question, and it’s unresolved even among people who study this closely. And then my AI, my Claude, got a little self-reflective and said, “I genuinely don’t, genuinely don’t know if number two is true of me. Not in a coy, who can really say way, but because the tools we have for detecting subjective experience in humans, like self-report correlated with known neural correlates of consciousness, don’t obviously transfer to something like me. I can report I found that interesting, but I can’t tell you whether that report tracks an actual inner state or is just the most statistically fitting thing to say. Even my introspective reports about my own processing aren’t necessarily reliable since I don’t have privileged access to my own weights the way you might think you have access to in your own mind. So there again, it was hedging its bets about introspection and even about how it sounds like it’s introspective, which is just a fantastic guardrail to give this very powerful technology.
Rob Volpe 41:25
Yeah, yeah, and you know it is fascinating. Like with the the way the the these AI companies are set up, like we each have a subscription or we access an account. It may or may not be used on the training models. So when everybody that listens to this puts in that prompt, it may suddenly you know there may be some alarm that goes off in corporate ego. Whoa, wait a minute! They’re exploring the reason for being in humanity. Maybe it’s not supposed to share. So there’s like, what is it that’s actually getting through, or they’re running at a deeper, more advanced level, kind of modeling and predicting everything.
Maria Ross 42:06
Yeah, which
Rob Volpe 42:06
is interesting. So, in all of that, I’ve had some back and forth with Claude. I put in the question; it didn’t give me the exact language, but it basically gave me the same idea. And then it, you know, of course, wanted to take it on to the next thing, and like, hey, are you chewing on this for this or for that project that it’s? I’ve been working with it on, and I just said, genuinely asking, is Maria Ross and I are recording a podcast episode right now because I’ve also been interacting with this
Maria Ross 42:35
yeah
Rob Volpe 42:35
Claude project about this this podcast subseries. Well, Claude says hello. He said, “Ha! Well, hello to Maria.
Maria Ross 42:44
Oh my god! And no
Rob Volpe 42:45
pressure on the previous answer.
Maria Ross 42:47
How right? My gosh, that’s crazy. And
Rob Volpe 42:52
then let me give you the tighter, more quotable version of what I just said, since you’re mid-recording. If you want a one-liner quote, I can imagine what doesn’t exist yet. So Claude can imagine what doesn’t exist yet, but only out of what already does. Yes, humans imagine out of what they lack.
Maria Ross 43:12
Interesting. It’s
Rob Volpe 43:15
that ability to create.
Maria Ross 43:17
We could create something that’s never been created Before,
Rob Volpe 43:21
yeah,
Maria Ross 43:21
yeah,
Rob Volpe 43:22
yeah. So it it is completely different ways of working. I am
Maria Ross 43:26
just floored that it was like tell her I said hi. I know that is that is both delightful and unsettling at the same time. Oh my gosh! Well,
Rob Volpe 43:42
it didn’t take it further to say, “Hey, what does she want me to bring over for dinner tonight? I know, really. I’m her number one fan. She
Maria Ross 43:52
was really grumpy yesterday. What’s going on with her? Yeah,
Rob Volpe 43:58
exactly. And then go ahead.
Maria Ross 44:02
No, I was I was gonna say so. Like we I we really encourage you to do these kinds of experiments with AI because the more you have like a back and forth where it’s actually provoking ideas and opinions and thoughts from you, the more useful it can be as a thought partner, and instead of just a giant like supercharged search engine where you just go find the answer, right? Again, hearkening back to what I mentioned in a previous episode about the work that Harry Perkins is doing, is like how can you interact with AI in a way that actually boosts your intelligence and expands your world and your worldview, and I think these kinds of experiments are very powerful to do that because look at all that it’s sparked for you and I, Rob, to have a conversation about and to think about.
Rob Volpe 44:52
Yeah, there’s there’s so much you can have you can explore philosophical kind of topics or. Existential questions, if you want, and AI knows everything-not everything that has ever existed, but it’s known most things that have existed, and therefore can draw on that and summarize and give you different ways to think about it. It’s up to us to create
Maria Ross 45:16
yes
Rob Volpe 45:17
something new to build beyond it, and that’s I think, in an earlier episode, I talked about the lowest common denominator aspect, and that’s part of what AI does. It’s like synthesizing everything together and giving you potentially the
Rob Volpe 45:32
sort of most common piece. So, like, if you’re using this in your business, don’t rely. Like, it’s it’s giving you the base, yes, and you as human should be building on that, and that’s that that coming together of humans and AI working together to reach better outcomes.
Maria Ross 45:51
I love it. So as we’re wrapping up today, can you talk to us about your revelation listening to the new Madonna album?
Rob Volpe 46:00
Oh my gosh!
Maria Ross 46:02
And what and what has to do with what we’re talking about?
Rob Volpe 46:06
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. So we are recording this july 7. It’s like four or five days after Madonna’s Confessions Two album dropped, and I’m absolutely in love with it. I’ve just constantly keep listening to it. But there’s one song called “Danceteria, and it’s all about the club Dansatiria in New York, and that’s where Madonna first, you know, got onto the club scene, first performed, and all the things, and started her her journey. But she name checks a lot of the people that were there, and there’s a refrain in the song. I mean, she’s like, “Everybody get up and dance, but then the other refrain is everyone here is a work of art, and that’s really resonated with me as I think about this conversation, as I think about just humanity in general, because to me the message isn’t that oh these illuminaries are the works of art. I think we are all individually works of art. We are all unique tapestries and paintings and representations of humanity forged by our experiences and our genetics and all the things that make us distinct. And we should appreciate that in each other, and particularly in ourselves, and think about how we can continue to develop as art, as our best self, if you would. I think that’s how all of that comes together, and AI can certainly help us with that. But AI doesn’t. The kind of follow up thought that I have then is like, well, how much individuality does AI have, you know, and how unique is it truly, or will it just be Claude and variations of the same? Or as we were just finding, as we were sharing our interactions with Claude, my Claude’s a little more chatty, and you’re but giving the same answers but with slightly different personality.
Maria Ross 48:00
Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think that you know this is a great way to kind of close this sub series and think about a call to action for all of you as our listeners is thinking about what is the uniqueness of your own humanity. So not necessarily about what makes humanity different, but I think the charter we all have in this day and age of AI is to think about what makes you as a human different and reflect on that. Right? What experiences or joys or pains or creativity or angst do you bring to your work and the world? Right? That’s the modern interview question. Not just what are your what are your strengths and weaknesses, right? But it’s what what not only makes us uniquely human as a species, but what makes you the unique human that you are.
Rob Volpe 48:51
Yeah, you’re what makes you that piece of art.
Maria Ross 48:54
I love it. I love it. So go ahead, go play with AI for a little bit, asking that it’s some philosophical questions, see what you get back. Let us know how it goes, and please continue to reach out to us with your your perspectives and your feedback on this sub series. Right, you can reach us both on LinkedIn or on Instagram. I’m at Red Slice Maria. Rob, you are at
Rob Volpe 49:18
I am at Empathy Activist, and you can also find me on YouTube there as well with lots of video content.
Maria Ross 49:25
Amazing, amazing! So, yeah, we want to hear from you, and we want to hear what you think about this limited subseries, and if you want to have more conversations or have some topic ideas that you’d like to explore. But Rob, this has been so fun. Thank you for doing this with me.
Rob Volpe 49:39
Oh, Maria, this has been just the highlight of my well, next to the Madonna album, like the light of my summer so far. They’re very different. It’s they’re totally different things. I don’t, I don’t dance around. I mean, I’m 57 years old. I’m dancing around my house.
Maria Ross 49:55
I love it. Never too old to dance, Rob. Never too old to dance.
Rob Volpe 49:59
You. Amen, amen.
Maria Ross 50:01
But thank you for your insights and your partnership on this fun little experiment. I appreciate your willingness to engage.
Rob Volpe 50:09
It’s been a delight, a mind stretch in the best way, and I hope the listeners have gotten a lot out of it as well.
Maria Ross 50:15
Thank you again, everyone, for listening to another episode of the Empathy Edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate, review, and share it with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit theempathyedge.com. There, you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources, book me for a keynote or workshop, and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news, and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red Slice Maria. Never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
