324. Rethinks: Defining Where We Want AI To Take Us

[00:00:00] Matt Abrahams: AI is changing how we work, think, and communicate. As these tools become more capable, knowing how to use them effectively matters more than ever. I'm Matt Abrahams, and I teach Strategic Communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to this Rethinks episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. We're opening up the vault to revisit my conversation with Stanford Professor Russ Altman. Listen in as we explore how AI can help us communicate more clearly, sharpen our thinking, and solve problems more effectively, while reminding us why human judgment, curiosity, and connection remain essential.

[00:00:40] Connection and the ability to explain where we are and where we need to go is critical for success in communication. My name is Matt Abrahams, and I teach Strategic Communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. Today I'm excited to speak with Russ Altman. Russ is a professor of bioengineering at Stanford University. His primary research interests are in the application of AI and data science to problems relevant to medicine. Russ is also the host of Stanford Engineering's The Future of Everything podcast. Welcome, Russ. I'm a big fan of your podcast and really enjoyed the opportunity we had earlier today where I was a guest on your show. 

[00:01:27] Russ Altman: Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. I share enthusiasm for this podcast, and it's kind of a thrill. I think it might be my first podcast as a guest, and it couldn't be a better one.

[00:01:36] Matt Abrahams: Oh, well, thank you, and I'm excited for the, what we're about to do. You ready to get started? 

[00:01:40] Russ Altman: Yes. 

[00:01:41] Matt Abrahams: Excellent. Each of your podcast episode titles starts with The Future Of. So let me start by asking you for your thoughts on the future of communication, especially how AI plays out in it. 

[00:01:54] Russ Altman: So first of all, I'm glad you mentioned that I had you on my podcast because the answer is you told me the future of communication. But I actually thought about it before we chatted. I'm an AI enthusiast. I use AI in my research. I'm part of the Human-Centered AI Institute at Stanford. AI in general has exposed lots of things that were hidden in our society. So a lot of people hear about bias and unfairness, and that is a problem with AI.

[00:02:17] On the other hand, it was a problem before, and in some ways we need to give AI credit for exposing the unfairness and giving us something that we can work on to try to improve. And the reason I mention this is I think for communication, in some ways it's the same answer. If you're worried that a ChatGPT type tool can replace you, I think you need to think about why am I communicating? What am I trying to say? Am I being authentic?

[00:02:42] Do I have a message? Because really, if those things are true, it shouldn't be a problem. It should actually just help you amplify and improve your message. So I think that we're at a time now where people have to ask hard questions about why they're communicating and how they communicate, and I think that the AI is bringing these issues to the fore that were kind of insidiously in the background. So you can see I'm an AI optimist, and I think this will help. 

[00:03:05] Matt Abrahams: I also think AI can bring a lot of value to communication. And, and I really like your response that the thing to worry about is, do I have a clear goal? Do I know what, uh, is important to say? And how can I craft it in a way to be helpful? And I think AI can be an assistant in it. For example, I have many non-native speaking students. AI's a wonderful tool to help them learn some of the vernacular and learn other options for ways of saying things. 

[00:03:28] Russ Altman: It is interesting how good it is when you say, "Please explain this at the level of an eighth grader or at the level of a high school student." And I think that's something we all can get better at because understanding who your audience is and then making sure you're delivering at the right level is always a challenge, and that seems to be one thing that it's kind of good at. 

[00:03:46] Matt Abrahams: Absolutely, and you can actually use it to flag jargon and terms that others might not understand. You mentioned that you happen to use it in your communication. Do you mind sharing some of the ways you use it? 

[00:03:55] Russ Altman: My favorite story, if I may, was I had written a grant proposal, and I ran the one-page summary of the grant through the, uh, large language model, and I said, "Please summarize the strengths and weaknesses of this summary of my research that I'm about to submit to the National Institutes of Health for, for research dollars." And it came back, and it had a few, you know, pretty good positives and negatives, but my favorite negative is it said, "You seem to be leaning on prior accomplishments too heavily." And it was absolutely right. So I've used it as like, as a pre-human screen. Before I go to my colleagues even, even my trusted colleagues, let's just see what the LLM has to say. Maybe I'll fix it up and then give it to my buddy down the hall to take a look. 

[00:04:39] Matt Abrahams: Did it recommend you need to see some therapy about some narcissism or no, no, no? It didn't. 

[00:04:43] Russ Altman: That goes without statement. But if, if I had asked, I'm sure it would've added to the chorus. 

[00:04:48] Matt Abrahams: I want to pull this thread a little farther about grants. You have been incredibly successful at raising money for the projects that you do through the grants that you apply for. Many of our listeners have to write proposals asking for funding from their bosses or from external organizations. What guidance do you have when it comes to drafting proposals and grants?

[00:05:07] Russ Altman: Yes. I am passionate about this. In general, the first thing you have to do is understand the mission of the person or institution to whom you are making a request because if you don't hit that mission on directly, it's end of the game. Given that, you need to have a big problem that you're, that you wanna be part of the solution of, and then a focused problem that you are actually gonna provide the solution to. You have to show that that sub-problem is not solved.

[00:05:34] Then you have to make the case that there's an opportunity that you and maybe others, but certainly you have. And then you have to boil it down to three to five action items, followed by a summary of the state of the world when you're done. And I believe that that formula can be used from everything from a grant to a federal funding agency to a marriage proposal. And I've tried it in all different settings, and it really is the fundamental structure of any proposal.

[00:06:02] Matt Abrahams: When, when we turn off the microphones, I wanna hear the future state that you used to propose to your wife. 

[00:06:07] Russ Altman: Happiness. No, it's an easy one. "Honey, you will be happier then than you are now." 

[00:06:13] Matt Abrahams: Excellent. So it, the key takeaway from what you just said, I think, is, it, not only do you have to know your audience and what's important for them, and that's critical, regardless of if it's a proposal or a pitch or a presentation. But this notion of where we are to where we're going to, from to to, is so important in pitches, in presentations, and it sounds like in types of proposals. 

[00:06:34] Russ Altman: Absolutely. 

[00:06:34] Matt Abrahams: And I like this notion of saying, "Hey, there's this larger problem, and I'm gonna focus on this subset, and my unique value or my team's unique value is what's gonna help us solve it. Here's the specific things, and then here's what the world's gonna look like." 

[00:06:46] Russ Altman: Thank you for listening, Matt. 

[00:06:48] Matt Abrahams: What you did there is something I'd also like to ask you about. Your work in the academic world is incredibly complex, is incredibly detailed, and yet you're so good at explaining and making that complex information accessible. What are your thoughts on how to do that? I know you do it strategically. I know from the conversation you and I had earlier you like using the whiteboard. What are the things you think about when you take complex information to make it more accessible to people who just don't know as much, without dumbing it down?

[00:07:18] Russ Altman: I think that you know this very well. Stories are what people remember. Stories are what people like. It's a, it's actually frustrating 'cause part of my work is statistics, and statistics is really much more robust than a story. We always say you might have one good anecdote, and that doesn't replace lots of actual data, but I'm afraid that sometimes, a lot of times, a good story does stand in for a lot of data because it's so compelling to the human mind. So we're always looking for stories. Analogy is a key part of both stopping the conversation and letting people catch up, but also saying, "Okay, wait a minute. Let me rephrase what you just said, but let me map it onto an everyday situation like going shopping.

[00:07:58] So you're telling me that the internet and the way it works is like a very complicated mail system," or whatever. And so can you listen to what the expert is saying and see an analogy to an everyday life thing? And you're checking your understanding, but on the chance that you're right, you're also helping the entire listenership or readership understand what was just said. So that's important. Related to that, you always have an antenna up for jargon, and you, I'm sure you do this too. You have to be willing to stop the conversation cold and say, "Oh, you just said NIH. That's the National Institutes of Health. They fund research in America."

[00:08:36] And so part of what I'm doing always is a little antenna listening for words that need to be defined or abbreviations that might not be commonly, uh, understood. So I think analogy, stories, and then adjusting the level. So sometimes when you're talking with someone, you just have to send them signals in real time that we are talking at a level that requires a PhD, and I'm going for high school, college students here. And then it's practice. And one of the great thing I love both about this podcast and about your book is you don't say that you either got it or you don't got it. All of this can be practiced and learned. 

[00:09:12] Matt Abrahams: Absolutely. That's a big point I like to try to make, and you are helping all of us learn this. Something that I think can also be helpful, and I'd love to get your input on this, is there's work you can do in advance. So you can actually stockpile some stories or think about some potential analogies that might work. It doesn't all have to happen in the moment. You can pull them in. And at the same time, some pre-work you can do is you can prepare the audience. So in a meeting invite, for example, you could say, "And we're gonna be talking about concepts like this," so people come in primed, which I think makes your job easier. What are your thoughts on that kind of pre-work? 

[00:09:46] Russ Altman: I totally agree. I had one more point written down, and I just had decided that I had talked too long a second ago. But I said anticipate the tough spots and validate that they're tough. So say to the audience, "This guy's talking about quantum physics. This is hard stuff. Here's how we're gonna try to manage through it together." So I just wanna say that you're absolutely right. I think the key idea of prep for an interview or for creating a document or, or any kind of communication is anticipating the tough moments, the tough concepts, and saying, "Okay, I'm gonna try to fly with this analogy. I think this'll work. I think it'll make it more accessible, more relatable."

[00:10:22] And that's part of doing your homework. And before I talk to you, before I talk to anybody, I spend the night before basically Google stalking you, looking at what have you said, what have you done. Part of it is so I can have emergency topics to talk about if it turns out that you're, you know, reticent to speak. That wasn't a problem. However, the other thing was, what might he say that might be surprising or troubling, and how am I gonna manage that? And then you go in with this confidence that kinda whatever comes down the pike, we're ready for it. And you may use 'em or you may not use 'em, but having them just has you, this sense of preparedness.

[00:10:53] Matt Abrahams: Right. And that helps you be confident and more present because you're not reaching ahead thinking what's coming. You do a good job of preparing to ask the questions you ask on your podcast. That preparation in advance, although I don't know that I'm recommending everybody cyberstalk people. But I do think it's important to do your homework. What advice do you have for asking questions that can really help focus and guide communication and conversations? 

[00:11:16] Russ Altman: Specificity in the question is key. Uh, specificity rules in the world, in my opinion. People wanna hear stories that are specific, not general, and you, they wanna hear questions that are specific. But then my second tip helps take up a little bit of pressure off 'cause I think the follow-up question is arguably more important than the initial question 'cause the initial question gets the listeners and the guests, if we're talking about a podcast into a certain space. And there might be some hemming and hawing as they gather their thoughts, but then they say something. Now they're warmed up, and their audience is warmed up, and now you can come up with a follow-up question that might be the meaty question. And I've heard people who are very good who do, who interviews, you know, Letterman, Johnny Carson. If you watch, their follow-ups were always very good. 

[00:12:01] Matt Abrahams: In addition to being specific and, and being open to asking follow-up questions, the use of questions isn't just for people who do interviewing. You can be very effective in a meeting, in giving feedback through asking focus-specific questions. And in some ways, I think people receive that in a more open way than if I give you some declarative statement. 

[00:12:21] Russ Altman: I think you're absolutely right. I notice that my PhD students, the last thing that they get good at before they're ready to launch and graduate is answering questions after a seminar, because they come to it thinking that questions are an attack. And so they get defensive. Their answers are almost off-putting. And so there's a mentorship that you do to say, "You need to consider every question as a little gift." It's a gift. It shows I listened to what you just said, I've processed it, and now I actually want to have a conversation with you. That, like, it doesn't get any better than that. So yes, questions, uh, can be powerful. They can say thank you. They can say I heard you. And they can say, "And I have a little bit of an opinion here," without even saying it as "I have a little bit of an opinion here." 

[00:13:07] Matt Abrahams: Seeing questions as opportunities rather than threats and challenges is a fundamental mindset shift, and I love that you spend time with your students helping them get there. Because it's instinctual. When somebody comes up with a question, we get defensive. But if we can see it as an opportunity to connect, to learn, to collaborate, I think is wonderful. 

[00:13:25] Russ Altman: My best friend is a sports writer, but really more importantly, he's a journalist, and he's famous for making his points with these very understated, beautiful questions where he doesn't even have to follow up and tell you what he really thinks because it's obvious from his question what a great journalist he is because of this skill.

[00:13:43] Matt Abrahams: We had a whole episode with Deborah Schiffrin on how to ask good questions. She said to pause. So after you ask the question, pause, and after the person answers, pause even longer 'cause more comes out. I'd love to move to another area where you are an expert. You work on highly complex topics, but you also work in highly complex teams. What best practices do you use to foster creativity and collaboration while trying to avoid destructive conflict and repetitive actions and wastes of time? 

[00:14:12] Russ Altman: It has become clear that team science is the most effective and is the most exciting in many ways. You must understand and acknowledge the rewards and motivations of your collaborators because they're unlikely to be identical to your own. And if you leave that unstated or, worse, not understood, it's just a recipe for a lot of wasted energy and wasted words. And that leads to number two, which is you have to build the relationship, the human relationship separate from the scientific or business collaboration.

[00:14:43] But that time, which is kind of a pain in the neck 'cause it means you have to have lunch with them, and maybe you don't want to have lunch, maybe you want to just take five minutes to shove food down your throat because you're busy. But the time to build that relationship pays off in spades. So those two things come first. Then you have to, I think diversity in teamwork has become, there's now literal evidence that if everybody looks and sounds like you and has the same training and the same perspective and the same goals, that is not the recipe for the best team. So you have to take a hard look at who you've invited to the room.

[00:15:15] And if you're really brave and courageous, you will say, "This is a good group, but this is not the right group for this project, and we either need to add to it or I need to make some substitutions." And then it's about, uh, roles and responsibilities. And with the relationship in place and with an understanding of the reward systems and with a diversity, now you can say, finally, "Okay, here's what we're trying to do. How are we gonna break this down, and how are we gonna do roles and responsibilities so that people feel like they're part of a team that is functioning?" And then having mechanisms for both formal and informal communication in place and understood. 

[00:15:51] Matt Abrahams: A lot of richness in that answer.

[00:15:52] Russ Altman: Yeah, sorry.

[00:15:53] Matt Abrahams: No. No, no. It's all, it's all good. The fact that you first have to get alignment on goals and expectations is critical, forming those relationships that which then allow much of what you've said. And I will just put an exclamation point on this notion of diversity. Diversity of opinions and experience and goals is what brings around the richness, but also requires that you have to define the roles, responsibilities, and ways of communicating because if people have those differences, they bring that different way of communicating, too.

[00:16:21] I wanna drill down on one aspect that I was very specific in the question I asked. I said avoiding destructive conflict. I know in the work you do that encouraging some disagreement and conflict is actually helpful to achieving the goals. How do you thread that needle? 

[00:16:37] Russ Altman: Where it comes up in my life literally every week is that all the students and post-docs in the lab take turns every week giving what we call a group meeting. It's a, it's a research in progress talk about how they're going. So what's supposed to happen? What's supposed to happen is we're supposed to be supportive. We wanted them to feel comfortable, but they're supposed to be practicing for an audience that may be hostile, like scientific colleagues can be hostile. And so I, as the leader of the group, have to figure out, how do I set this up so that they are getting the hardest questions, scientific, technical questions from these people that they sit with every day, but it doesn't lead to a toxic environment, lack of trust, and people saying, "I don't wanna give my group meeting.

[00:17:18] I don't trust this group." So I have to set it up so that they can present, I can ask hard questions, but then we have a culture of thanking them for their talk, acknowledging the hard things that they've uncovered as hard, thanking them for the solutions that they've produced. And if, if I see problems, I have other communication methods in the lab to try to identify those and deal with them outside of that forum. But you're absolutely right. This is, like, the number one thing for a team leader to be aware of 'cause the rigor/support tension is there all the time. 

[00:17:53] Matt Abrahams: You know, Russ, one of the things I love about hosting this podcast is the ability to talk with amazing people. I always learn something. What is something that you've learned from your many years of hosting The Future of Everything that you think might help the listeners of Think Fast, Talk Smart?

[00:18:08] Russ Altman: The people who I interview, what they do is the thing that they think is the most important thing they could possibly do. So you talk to a civil engineer. It's not that this is one little interesting problem in civil engineering. This is the most interesting problem in civil engineering to this person, and indeed, it's the most important thing they can think of doing. And so the passion that scientists and engineers, 'cause that's what we focus on, but the passion of scientists and engineers in approaching their work probably shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. And I learned that you need to get to people's passion to really understand what makes them tick.

[00:18:43] Matt Abrahams: That's important for all of us to do with the people we work with and the people we socialize with, is provide them avenues to explain their passion. Well, I know you listen to the podcast, so you know that before we end, I like to ask three questions. One I create just for you.

[00:18:58] Russ Altman: Oh, my goodness. This is so exciting.

[00:18:58] Matt Abrahams: And, and two that are similar for everybody else I interview. Uh, you up for yours? 

[00:19:02] Russ Altman: Yeah, absolutely. 

[00:19:03] Matt Abrahams: All right. You are very future focused. So what is one thing about the future that you're particularly excited about? 

[00:19:11] Russ Altman: I am excited about young people. Young people starting to form their lives and their direction gives me hope for the future. As you may have come to your attention, the world is currently facing a lot of problems, and it's very easy to get very negative. And if you want to combat that negativity, be involved in an admissions process or a hiring process of young people, like for their first job or for their next job. If you're not inspired, then I think you need to do some deep introspection.

[00:19:41] Matt Abrahams: Yeah, I love that answer simply because I have lots of friends who are getting curmudgeonly, and they will say, "These young people, what's this world gonna amount to?" And I say, "It's us that's causing the problems." Because if you come in and see my students or the people I coach, there's a lot of hope and there's a lot of excitement, and I'm, I'm glad you echoed that. Question number two, who is a communicator that you admire and why? 

[00:20:03] Russ Altman: My dad. 

[00:20:04] Matt Abrahams: Tell me why. 

[00:20:05] Russ Altman: He had a great voice. He had an FM voice. And he did lots of the things that you discuss all the time. When I'm trying to do my best at communicating, I'm channeling Dad. 

[00:20:15] Matt Abrahams: I actually am getting a little choked up because I feel exactly the same way about my father. Uh, my father had an amazing resonant voice. And when you said FM voice, my father actually did a little radio, and he was always very structured. Get to the point. What's the point? And it really helped me try to be more focused and concrete. 

[00:20:32] Russ Altman: So be, if I may. 

[00:20:33] Matt Abrahams: Yeah. 

[00:20:33] Russ Altman: Between the podcast we did this morning and the one we're doing now, I gave a talk and somebody said, "What's the best piece of advice you ever got?" And I said, "It was from my dad, and it was get to the point." 

[00:20:43] Matt Abrahams: Oh, how funny. Uh, question number three, what are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe? 

[00:20:51] Russ Altman: You need to know who you're talking to. You need to know the audience, a little bit about their goals, hopes and dreams. Second, you need to think about what you're specifically trying to tell that person. And then the third one I'm gonna go with, make sure you try to keep it fun, light and enjoyable. Like, life is short. And if you can do something with a sense of joy, why not do it with a sense of joy? So even if it's the most mundane message, think about, how can I make this a positive experience for me and for the person who's about to listen to me and have a conversation with me?

[00:21:24] Matt Abrahams: This notion of connection and engagement through the energy you bring to your topic is really important. There are people who study things that I don't understand and prior to hearing them talk about it or write about it, I didn't care about. But their passion and their ability to connect it to me and make it engaging makes a big difference.

[00:21:43] Russ Altman: I agree. 

[00:21:44] Matt Abrahams: Russ, thank you so much. You did an amazing job of educating us and keeping it engaging and interesting. I appreciate it. All of us can learn from you in terms of how to connect with our audiences, manage some of the tricky situations through questions and in structuring our environment so that we can take the advantage of conflict. I appreciate your time. Best of luck on the podcast. Thank you. 

[00:22:06] Russ Altman: Thank you very much. I really enjoyed this, and congratulations on your successes. 

[00:22:12] Matt Abrahams: Thank you for joining us for another episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, The Podcast. It was great learning from Russ. One of the ideas that really resonated with me is that AI is most valuable when you use it to help complex ideas become easier for others to understand. To learn more, please be sure to dive into our library of past episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Our back catalog is full of helpful communication tips and tools to help you be a better communicator. This episode was produced by Katherine Reed, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder with special thanks to Podium Podcast Company. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to check out fastersmarter.io for deep dive videos, English language learning content, and our newsletter.