DisruptTVShow Episode #104
Interview on DisrupTV
Liza Lichtinger, owner of MindfulExistenC and Future Design Station, Intelligence Human Machine Design Institute, talks about the importance of Resilience in development of technology, the role of Ethics and Virtues, EPICC correlations, what remains at the heart ❤ of things, people.
Q: As one of the top futurists in the world, tell us a bit about your research and how it started?
A: As I started to work at Pfizer in 2001, I was not yet of legal drinking age, was handed a blackberry at age 20, told to await a call from China at 3AM. After 2005 and deep study into Human Capital Development, I left Pfizer to complete a Mental Health Counseling program with Research Focus on Applied Mindfulness and Decision Making. Long term intent to bring it back to the workforce, Fortune 500s, implement in Recovery Centers worldwide.
From direct impact, what I saw at the Fortune 500s I was working in off Grand Central, the “work / life” balance necessitated a great shift. I advocated for the Interns and myself to work remotely in 2002, at least to take walking lunches and meetings, to take creative breaks as well as to gather in same rooms to replace “group think” with creative inspiration, what is now the encouraged Co-Working spaces, most popular amongst Startups.
Most recently this has turned into Resilience Research — how to sustain and maintain equanimity of the emotional, cognitive, and physiological kind in person to person, person to machine, and collective intelligence interaction.
Human Interaction with communication technology as a service, and how to improve such tools. This can involve the technology which is the human vehicle itself, already a quite intelligent system, human digital interaction, and human robotics interaction. Resilience project involved a survey with my coined acronym EPICC™. This was developed for Executive Leadership and doubled for the graduate students at Hong Kong PolyTechnic School of Design, via a grant purposed at improving the curriculum at the Institute of Advanced Executive Education at PolyU. EPICC™ measures:
Equilibrium
Identity
Coherence
Connection
The potential to flourish through maintaining a stable perspective, harmony in your communication, systemic orientation, in today’s environment of adversity and uncertainty. Measuring the ability to have an overall sense of sustainable engagement and consistent harmony in life and relationships, as well as the ability and capacity to switch quickly between fluid and crystallized intelligences, and measuring the if and when they are combined.
Fluid := original thoughts, use of logic to solve a new problem, how to identify patterns.
Crystallized := application of already learned knowledge, drawing from experiential sources.
The growth mindset popular with Entrepreneurs , athletes, and long term educators. Fluidity in intelligence is not capped, it continues which is what prevents atrophy and apoptosis. A fixed mindset can be useful if crystallizing and repeating a pattern that needs not much modification, such as brushing one’s teeth, anything that can be automated.
People measurement looks at change and adaptation, how resilient individuals, groups, and organizations are over multiple dimensions (attributes such as Emotional Intelligence and metacognition, empathy, automation and related) and link this change over time in parallel to traditional business metrics.
Q: You are also a trained psychologist; how does your research on Wellness and Mental Health play a role in helping executives, especially startups?
A: My background in Psychology, Neuroscience and Human Capital Development first helps to assess what is the applicable investment in Human Capital that pays off in terms of higher productivity and effectiveness.
Example := Education.
Collective skills, knowledge, intangible assets (such as measured by my EPICC™) can be utilized to create economic value for employers, governments, organizations while maintaining wellbeing for employees.
Two points for simplicity:
1) Executives and Startup Founders want production, to maintain this optimal level of operation. The people are the nodes, at the core of any Startup, which make up the system.
2) Take note to pay attention and focus. Simple when running a recovery center years ago starting in 2009, we received a high percentage of executives from hedge funds, wall street, well known film producers from Los Angeles and Hollywood, diplomats from overseas, owners of banks from various Islands, famous basketball players unable to access flow… The level of distress and turbulence impacted these individuals to the point where they had to take leave.
This is where I saw even more so the importance of Preventative Medicine, Biohacking, Mindfulness and Mental Health measures playing a significant role for my clients returning to peak performance athletics and also the corporate world, especially when making billion dollar decisions.
Q: When we break down the Psychology of Innovation, what are the first top 2 key parts?
A: Innovation is not linear, it bends reality and taking a risk is necessary. Fundamentally changing the economics of culture. Large organizations need stability and predictability, to fulfill plans with numbers, where failure is not OK nor is it a traditional part of the DNA. Innovation is TESLA, speed and not perfection. Innovation also is about applying and implementing these new learnings into the core of the business in efforts to share this information.
How this affects international relations
How this affects global stability
What makes the successful Innovative Mind
Building of Innovative Thinking
Systems Thinking in decision-making process
The role of combining both crystallized and fluid intelligence
Collaborative Tech (Paul Daugherty’s terminology) will be what supports humans to — in a type of mind meld — unite the parasympathetic and sympathetic sides of their autonomic nervous system in support of the cognitive processes to shorten the time switching from fluid to crystallization.
As the Entrepreneurial Brain takes a different process in wiring and mapping to mold, Innovation from a NeuorPsych and NeuorEconomical perspective makes perfect sense. Topics I will cover at my next lecture on the Psychology of Innovation to include:
In the market, what psychologically enables socially supported society towards innovation?
Effects of impact of the human psyche on human (consumer) behavior (globally in fintech)
Effects of impact on cultural shifts occurring and persuasive tech driving this forward
Example:= Facebook
The Psychology behind Innovation as a herald of a revolution in Entrepreneurial revolution.
Comes with colossal opportunities as well as risks / threats to the human design
Leaders in tech driven products, rule the world on how we augment human minds, especially in places with less opportunity.
Innovation fosters bringing new Insights, comprehension of the Psychology behind Innovation to allow society to digest at the profound (and necessary level) the changes to resolve conflict in the age of our hybrid intelligence, to properly understand how to identify the most disruptive Innovations. Case for Future research of collaborative Intelligence and “AI” in terms of the important relationship between AI agents and themselves, not only with humans, how the AI agents will guide us to prioritize ideas and thoughts (time management), discard unnecessary interference (worries and trivial concerns), how to predefine the levels of control and access for the Intelligent guides.
Strategic thinking behind Innovation, the Psychological components to strategic foresight thinking (and the role of Consciousness / Creativity here).
Innovation not only from the defense industry, now tools open to all intending to understand the ecosystem, and tell us much more than knowing competitors and this is at the core of Innovation including the Conscious Mindset(which is important in transforming a company).
Q: Tell us how you apply your training to design of the Emotional / Behavioral AI Models implemented in Intelligent agent software and in robots.
A: Well so far what we have is Machine Learning, and the desire for consumers to have a more intimate communication with the technology they utilize as guides. To model the minds as an information processing agent — well it is more like mimicking the behaviors and as much as possible drawing from the most congruent outcome. There are dynamics that incorporate core drives of a human being, Psychological Dynamics such as Psi-Theory models have been created and some that I work with, what motivates us, and much like application dynamics for a role playing game, we use game theory(mathematical sequencing for the logic behind what inputs are connected to what outputs) when building the sequencing for the hierarchy of goals that we want for the software interdependence. The software is then placed in hardware, one example is a robot, another hardware example could be an education pod such as a talking audio guide, or an avatar on a screen.
Q: You have been working in the startup scene in HK with Hanson Robotics; tell us a bit about the Humanoid Robots and how you got started.
A: I was on a summer sabbatical, received a grant from Hong Kong PolyTechnic with a focus on Resilience Research, when I was asked to become involved as a Mentor at Chinaccelerator. Into my first two weeks in Hong Kong Ben Goertzel and Hanson Robotics invited me to visit their offices located at Science Park, the remainder is historical, or “history” as is commonly spoken!
Q: Where does the relationship resilience come into play (and by the way, didn’t you want an X-prize for that)?
A: Thanks! Let me clarify. The X-prize is related to the AI work with Ben Goertzel and Institute of Noetic Sciences. It would be magnificent to incorporate EPICC™ to measure levels of resilience and trait specific as well, however, right now we have only included a minimal portion of EPICC™ in the X-Prize project and are simply taking a look at the human software/robot interaction. There are resilience exercises for how to ignite Empathy as well. In short(the rest will come out in my Virtues / Ethics Software curriculum and my book Essential Vitality: Life Beyond our Perception of Mortality in the coming years). There are resilience exercises for how to ignite Empathy. In my brainstorm sessions with Dr. Molly Maloof, she suggested three senses of Resilience. Senses:
1) A sense of purpose in life 1,2
2) A sense of connection to others 3,4
3) A sense of control in life 5
I have used the acronym EPICC™ in my Resilience software in various cases, one being at Hong Kong PolyU and various clients in Silicon Valley.
Resilience := the ability to bounce back from adversity, is an innate human (trainable) trait. Scientific research helped identify several major modifiable sources of resilience that affect both psychological and biological health:
EPICC™
EPICC™
EPICC™ Presence Measure
EPICC™ Identity Measure
EPICC™ Coherence Measure
Q: Switching topics, what’s hot in wellness tech?
A: Quantified Self is still not globally known, however, has been around for years for us self-trackers, biohackers, and neuro experimenters. The world wants to track themselves, Quantified Self Forum has allowed anyone to build their own or learn how to do so out of their own home. Biotech and Bioengineering of course advances in food and agriculture.
“AI” has always been with us. R2D2 was faulty, agreed, however, any observer of a Lucas Film left the theatre with a sense of empathy and longing for their own personalized and customized bot. Now we can collaborate with this intelligence. This is at the core of our Loving_AI research in Social Robotics Experimentation. With robots we help to re-imagine what is real “AI” and what is not (glad to learn that Paul Daugherty focuses on this as well).
The new innovations will create a new understanding of what is FACE VALUE. Face Value will literally be your FACE as valued by facial recognition, and much more… Fascinating and concerning at the same instance.
A: That’s a really good question. From our EPICC™
E = equilibrium. It is a state of stable mastery and equal balance in unfavorable environments.
P = Presence. The ability for someone to have an adaptive process of performance thats stationed in embracing this adversity. Instead of this fight or flight thing, you don’t fly away and you don’t fight, actually your embracing and adapting.
I = Identity. Purpose reflected in your character.
C = Coherence. An overall sense of sustainable engagement. Consistent with harmony in your life.
C = Connection. To have a high sense of intentionality. To direct and be able to shift the relationship within ourself and that you are in with business colleagues, or family relationships.
Q: Where does mindfulness bring this all together? Tell us more about your favorite quote -
“The price of anything, is the amount of life you exchange for it.” — Thoreau
A: The amount of vitality and energy — the time you spend on anything, is where your focus leads you. There is a price to time, it is to be valued. The price of that which you place your focus, cannot be exchanged. Mindfulness is the way to train where you place your focus and what you pay attention to.
