From Poetry to AI and Beyond: Building Blocks for a Brighter Future

The challenges of leadership only increase in complex and disruptive times. What roles will technology, policy and perspective play in reshaping industry, business and society? And how do we build better connections between work and meaning?

AI and other technological innovations aren't the only things that will influence our future. This week, we look ahead to a world shaped by multiple factors such as, yes, AI, but also policy, culture, and perhaps less expected, poetry.

Spotlight:?One of the Best Investments for a Leader? A Book of Poems

“Poetry inspires. It surprises. It enriches. It perplexes… Perhaps more surprisingly, poetry can also help us become more effective leaders.”

Imagination is the first step to realization, and that is true for everything from personal goals to corporate restructuring. In this?new essay,?Aspen Institute?Business & Society Senior Advisor?Nancy McGaw?challenges us to look beyond standard business books. Instead, she argues, we would do well to consider the benefits of poetry, a genre ideally suited to help forward thinkers imagine creative futures for a complex world.

News Roundup

1. Robots Make Your Work Less Meaningful?(Brookings: Milena Nikolova, Femke Cnossen, Boris Nikolaev)?As we move from “techno anxiety” to increasing automation and AI, how will technology impact job quality as well as job content? Also see?History Already Tells Us the Future of AI?(Project Syndicate:?Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson) and?It’s the End of the Web as We Know It?(The Atlantic via MSN:?Judith Donath, Bruce Schneier).
2. Women in AI: Ewa Luger Explores How AI Affects Culture — and Vice Versa?(TechCrunch: Kyle Wiggers) ?“When we say to our kids that we’re trusting them to be responsible, what we mean is, don’t do anything illegal, embarrassing or insane. It’s literally the basement when it comes to behaving like a functioning human in the world. Conversely, when applied to companies, it becomes some kind of unreachable standard. You have to ask yourself, how is this even a discussion that we find ourselves having?” ?
3. Piercing the Veil: How Linguistic AI Analysis is Decoding Ambiguity in Corporate Disclosures?(LinkedIn: Joseph Byrum) When it comes to corporate disclosures, how can we balance the transformative potential and hard reality of AI’s predictive power??And are corporate boards ready for “AI observers”??As AI Shakes Up the Boardroom, Bots Are Joining the Table?(Axios: Ryan Heath).
4. FTC Bans Most Noncompete Agreements Between Employers and Workers?(NPR: Andrea Hsu) Noncompete clauses, commonly associated with industries like finance and tech, have become increasingly prevalent for lower wage and hourly workers. How will this rule change the playing field for the 30 million American workers subject to noncompetes, and their employers?
5. I’m a VC. Here’s Why I Believe We Need to Guarantee Everyone’s Basic Needs?(Fortune: Roy Bahat)?“What if raising the floor—of social benefits like income, health care, housing and more—might actually accelerate our economic growth?”

Also on Our Radar

What else caught our attention this week?

• Starbucks is at the Supreme Court?and supporters say that the?Volkswagen union vote?is a sign of the future.?
• As climate and technology change, we are rethinking everything about our vision of the future.?Who will build it??
• Biden just signed a potential TikTok ban into law. Here’s what happens next.
• And Climate Doom Is Out. ‘Apocalyptic Optimism’ Is In.

One for the Road

We’d love to hear your ideas, and thanks for reading, forwarding and following. Until next week!

— The Business & Society Program