Humility Is the New Smart
Rethinking Human Excellence in the Smart
Machine Age
We are on the leading edge of a Smart Machine Age led by artificial intelligence that will be as transformative as the Industrial Revolution was for our ancestors. Smart machines will take over millions of jobs, and not just factory work. White-collar jobs, including the professions, also will be automated. Not only can smart machines store more data and analyze it faster than any mere human, say Edward Hess and Katherine Ludwig, but also they're free of the emotional, psychological, and cultural baggage that so often mars human thinking.
So when it comes to smart machines, we can't beat 'em and we can't join 'em. To win, we have to play a different game. Hess and Ludwig offer us that game plan. The key is to change our definition of what it means to be smart. We need to excel at critical, creative, and innovative thinking and emotionally engaging with others things machines can't do well. Hess and Ludwig call it being NewSmart. In this extraordinarily timely book, they offer detailed guidance for developing five NewSmart attitudes and four critical behaviors that will help us adapt to the new reality.
The crucial mindset underlying NewSmart is humility not self-effacement but an accurate self-appraisal: acknowledging you can't have all the answers, remaining open to new ideas, and committing yourself to lifelong learning. Drawing on extensive multidisciplinary research, Hess and Ludwig emphasize that the key to success in this new era is not to be more like the robots but to build on the best of what makes us human and to excel at doing what technology can't do well.
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