Human Choices in an AI Future (Part 2)

Tom Stoneman: Hi, I’m Tom Stoneman and this is The Intelligent Enterprise, where every two weeks we take a break from the chaos of enterprise life and get inside a big idea by getting outside of it. Each episode, we meet an industry expert who helps cut through the noise from all the updates and rollouts while exploring one of their favorite breaktime activities. It might be over coffee, a workout, or even a game of ping pong, something that gives them some head space when they’re deep in a problem.
This week we’re continuing our conversation with Karthik Ravindran, general manager of enterprise data and AI at Microsoft Corporation. In part one, Karthik described the mindset shift required to successfully navigate an AI-driven world and the idea that each of us owns the proverbial pen and paper we need to write what comes next. In part two, we build on that foundation, breaking down ways to embody the mindset of agency and exploring how individuals can turn AI into a tool for personal growth, not just disruption.

Karthik Ravindr: AI can predict, but foresight is very different from prediction. Foresight is having lived experiences. It’s having context that is not captured in data that can be used to train AI.

Tom Stoneman: Let’s get inside the future of enterprises by stepping outside of them. Maintaining a mindset of agency around AI takes discipline and resilience. I wanted to know how Karthik himself builds those skills outside of the office. He told me about his CrossFit practice and how it helps him stay engaged and keeps his ego in check too.

Karthik Ravindr: It’s a super humbling experience to really be pushed beyond the limits that you would normally try doing yourself in a workout class. I love that feeling of just being flat on the floor at the end of a session. It truly makes you stretch beyond what you think you can do. And things, especially from a workout perspective, I can’t imagine myself pushing myself to do the things that the coach pushes us to do, so super enjoy that. And most important of all, I think it’s the continuous learning mindset. It’s a journey. There’s never a destination. You keep getting better with each class and you get a lot of joy from those small incremental steps. And a lot of these attributes to me, they also play back in my professional life. Being able to push your limits, continuously learning, being humble and CrossFit helps institutionalize several of those things.

Tom Stoneman: My son was a quarterback all the way through college and he did CrossFit. So I got to pick him up a few times and it was interesting because this was quite, it seemed so informal to me. I came in and it was almost like a garage. And then I see there’s another one I drive by every day getting from working back and I see people, they put them out on the street and they have a whole team of them go out. And so it seems like there’s the solo part of it and then there’s also the team part of it.

Karthik Ravindr: 100%. The community facet teaches you a lot about team sport. People constantly supporting each other, helping each other reach their personal best. And while it’s a community, it’s not competitive. I mean, of course there’s CrossFit games and competitions and everything else, but in the workouts that we do, it’s very much about each one trying to be the best versions of themselves on a day-to-day basis and continuously getting better at it. So at the end of it, you feel both fulfilled as well as you feel humbled, which is something that I truly enjoy. It’s like there’s not a single day when you’re not flat on the back on the floor. First wondering, why would you go through this? And then really appreciating the goodness that it’s doing for you.

Tom Stoneman: That sounds like something that I’d like to consider, but right now I’m pretty happy just going to the gym.

Karthik Ravindr: Yeah.

Tom Stoneman: So Karthik, I think we can all agree on the importance of accountable data ownership and that it’s key to enterprise AI evolution, both from a security and a usage standpoint. What are some of the values and the strengths employees should anchor to help their organizations achieve success with all of the inevitable transformations that are just barreling our way?

Karthik Ravindr: Yeah, no, that’s a great question. And interestingly, the characteristics or traits that I’m about to share with you have very little to do with technology. They are more, I would say, behavioral and cultural than they’re actually technical in nature because the technology, as we know, changes on a daily basis. So I think the more durable skills and traits that folks should think about intentionally are the following. The first one I would say is curiosity. You’ve got to be incredibly curious. You’ve got to be curious to keep seeking to learn and understand what is shaping and curious not just in understanding the how of the technology, but really trying to deeply think about the why and the what. And the curiosity to learn the tech but to also correlate it to the purpose that the tech could be serving, should be serving that can really, really help people wrap their heads and unpack everything that’s happening around us in AI.
And I personally found that to be the best way to get the clarity, to find that inner common peace that, “Hey, the tech is really your ally. It’s not here to take away your role or replace you.” And that curiosity is incredibly important. The second thing I would articulate is continuous learning. The only thing that’s going to be constant in this industry and in AI current and forward is change and evolution. And being able to constantly learn and apply the learnings, experiment with the learnings and getting joy out of it is a very, very critical fundamental for anyone who wishes to build a career in the high tech space, even in the applied industries, I would say, because almost every applied industry is also a technology driven organization in some shape or form. So that ability to keep building on the curiosity, but not just stop with the curiosity, but to actually roll up sleeves and get into the applied hands-on learning is going to be incredibly important.
And then the last quality that I would really like to highlight is grit. And this is extremely important because as you go through this journey, not everything is going to play itself out exactly the way you want it to play out or the way you would wish it plays out. There are going to be changes and evolutions that’ll come at you, which you cannot control. Depending on the organization you work in, depending on the philosophies, depending on the modes of those organizations, it’s like that will be decisions that are made at larger scales and levels, all of which you may not necessarily be able to control the pen on. But when you have grit, you have something that’s more fundamental to navigate and thrive in those types of situations. When the changes are favorable, of course, you get to apply your craft and your skills to really energize for new opportunities of growth that are presented to you and where you obviously need to be at the leading edge of showing and creating what that could be.
But even in adverse situations, situations like, for instance, your role is being considered as a role that could be outsourced to an AI agent. Or there’s a new leader or a decision maker who comes in and really, really wants to get what they think is more efficient by trying to replace your function or your role with AI. Those kinds of situations are things that you also have to prepare for. By being curious, by being continuous learners, you’re going to have the best answers to navigate those situations. So the way I like to put it is like, while there’s a lot of talk about AI competing with and replacing and taking over human roles. I personally think that it is humans who demonstrate the curiosity and continuous learning to evolve and get better, to get to the next levels with this technology, who are going to be the folks who can really, really thrive. And who are the folks that you really should be looking to get inspired by and with, not compete with, but inspired by and with.
And when you start doing that for yourself, you will find yourself in states where you can navigate these types of changes that are thrown at you, the curve balls that will come at you from left field. And trust me, they will, by either being able to rationalize with a reasonable leadership team in your current organization and show them what could be as opposed to what they think it is. Or you would be well prepared for your next opportunity and pathway by virtue of demonstrating these durable traits, which there will be leaders and organizations out there who will appreciate and who will look to reward.

Tom Stoneman: So I’ve heard you talk a lot about people’s uniqueness and how you use that. That’s your core, right? That’s your core strength. So for me, I’m pretty creative. I always have been. And so I’m often in meetings, I’m the one that comes up with ideas that create some eye rolls occasionally. And the good part about that is sometimes those help to put something out there that our competitors didn’t think of. The hard part is there’s risk, right? For me, if I come up with an idea and it’s never really been done before, the first thing is, well, how do we know this will work? And well, you don’t sometimes, but you have to be able to manage that, right? And I see AI as actually an adjunct to that that helps me. So I wanted to ask you, what do you feel your uniqueness is and how do you have those good, bad, and the ugly parts with that?

Karthik Ravindr: That’s a great question, Tom. So I look at the uniqueness as being a set of dimensions that I think applies to all of us. I’ll tell you how I think about them, but I don’t think what I’m about to share with you is anything specific to just me. In fact, I think each of us have it in ourself to recognize and then to practice these unique traits. So to me, it comes down to the following. I think the first and foremost is foresight. AI can predict, but foresight is very different from prediction. Foresight is having lived experiences. It’s having context that includes context that is not captured in data that can be used to train AI. And there’s a lot of context that just exists from experience and hallway conversations and real-life navigations such that those signals that you get from the collective of those learnings are not signals that are always going to be in some data artifact or dataset that your AI model gets trained on.
That foresight and experience is something which if you truly pay attention to and continue to develop is going to be a unique mode that separates human practitioners from the AI that helps them scale. The second big thing is storytelling. AI can look at a bunch of numbers, it can make predictions, it can take actions on your behalf and it can show you what might be possible. But technology and technology speak is relatable to a few folks, folks who are technologists, largely. Being able to contextualize the benefit and the value of technology to a much wider group of audiences, business stakeholders, customers, partners that you also have to galvanize and energize, that requires the art of storytelling. The art of storytelling that can take complex technology, simplified into narratives that are widely relatable, that are contextual to each of the personas that you are looking to rally and land the story with. That is storytelling and that is something which every human practitioner needs to get really, really good at.
Adaptive leadership, right? Things are going to go wrong. And you made a great point about, I think, trying things, experimenting, the probabilistic nature of work. Guess what? AI at its very core is all about probabilities, right? It’s less deterministic, it’s more probabilities. And it is subject to the exact same, I would say, risks and opportunities that we as humans are subject to when we experiment and take probabilistic approaches to solve problems and AI is no different. So the ability to truly demonstrate the judgment, the decision making when it comes point in times to make adaptive choices, that is something that’s very human. And the human ability to have the context to have the foresight to be able to narrate the stories and languages that others can understand apply as much in those situations when things don’t go well and work as they ought to have.
And that is something which is also unique, I would say, human superpower. So humans can really focus on building each of these modes and can really think hard and critically about how these modes will continue to complement the things that AI can really do well. What can AI do well? It can process signals at speed and scale. It can synthesize information across vast data sets. It can pattern match in ways that humans cannot through the spectrum of data that it looks at. AI can be a thought partner. It can help you scale, but at the end of the day, it needs context. It needs foresight, it needs judgment, and eventually there’s got to be a human somewhere who takes accountability and trust and has the empathy to navigate the tough situations that will inevitably be a part and parcel of every AI journey.
So I think humans really have to bring it down to the raw innate characteristics that make us human in the first place and now recognize how those characteristics when applied together with the power of the tech can lead to the most transformative outcomes that organizations and themselves as individuals can achieve.

Tom Stoneman: Really well said. Thinking expansively about AI is admittedly easier when your career feels stable, but what about the people who feel the roles or their industries are radically changing or possibly in jeopardy? I wanted to hear from Karthik about what he recommends to help those people overcome or even prevent the potential adverse impacts of AI on their jobs or their careers.

Karthik Ravindr: It’s very challenging time. So I also want to address this with the utmost empathy and there’s two sides to this. One is like what to do when you’re adversely affected and the complementary other side of the coin is what can you do to best prepare and even prevent the states from potentially occurring? And they both, I think, anchor on one common dimension, which is the dimension of reflection. So I think if you take the first case where you’ve been adversely affected, the first thing I would recommend people to really think about and internalize is that whatever happened is not about them as a person or as an individual. Going back to the point about that being factors that are much wider than any of us as individuals. And the way I like to put it is no one is immune. No one is immune in any role, in any function, at any level of seniority or capability from the changes and evolutions that can come at us in the time ahead.
But what we can do is we can prepare and we can reflect. And if you’ve already been impacted, then the first thing to do is to A, realize that it’s not about you, number one. And number two, reflect. And when you reflect, you’re almost always likely going to discover that there are things that you could have done to prepare you better for that state, potentially even avoid the state. And this takes us to the other dimension, which is the preparation part where if we intentionally practice the notion of preparing every single day, not with the fear of trying to guardrail and prevent what can happen, including adverse effects, but more preparing for the sheer joy of learning curiosity and elevating ourselves to the next levels in our individual crafts and being. That preparation is the thing that’s going to help you get past anything that you might face, both good or not good.
And that preparation will also help you reflect a lot more thoughtfully where you might find yourself in circumstances where what happens is not what you desire, but you’ll be able to face what might happen and what you’re not in control of with a lot more fortitude, confidence, and belief and positivity that this happened because there’s something better ahead of you. More often than not, it goes back to the point we just talked about. Each of us own the pen to our next chapter. There’ll always be considerations and factors in states where you can’t control everything. And when you can’t control everything, just realize it’s not about you. Now get back to square one and focus on what uniquely made you who you are. Believe in that, have conviction for it and take that experience and convert it into something more positive and something more energizing for the path ahead.

Tom Stoneman: So the answer is mostly within.

Karthik Ravindr: Yep. It’s within. You got to find that personal leadership. That’s the crux of pretty much a lot of what we’ve talked about today.

Tom Stoneman: Exactly. Yeah. I like the common theme. So let’s wrap up here with a couple questions really just asking you about what you see coming, what your vision is. But I guess the first question I’d like to ask you, is there any part of your life where you would like to see AI free, where it’s just humans, no AI?

Karthik Ravindr: Yeah, I definitely wouldn’t want AI as my CrossFit coach if that’s one part of my life. I would like to keep AI out. Yeah, but that apart, look, it’s like I’m a big believer in the human plus AI potential. I’m not anti-AI. I truly, truly believe in the potential of the tech, but I’m also equally, I would say, vocal about the fact that the tech by itself is not going to achieve the opportunities that are envisioned for it without the humans in the mix. And there’s a lot of talk in some circles around a person working with a team of agents and building the next killer company or running an entire function within a larger company. And I’m like, holy crap, no. It’s like I would much rather work with humans and scale together as a human team, together with AI as a technology that helps us do that.
And how myself, each of my teammates and each of us intentionally think about writing that next chapter, owning the pen on it, including AI as a core force function in our penning of the next chapter. And creating all the clarity that we can for our stakeholders and our decision makers on why the one plus one is greater than three is really what my hope is. So yeah, I can’t think of many instances where I would not want the human connection and presence to complement what AI can do for me and for other humans that I work with and collaborate with and live my life with.

Tom Stoneman: And then lastly, can you imagine something that AI will be able to do for us either now or the near future that’s never been done before?

Karthik Ravindr: My kids think they’re huge fans of this movie, WALL-E, the movie that paints the future state of humans pretty much being in a lethargic state because of AI taking over the universe. I certainly am not a fan of that, nor do I want that. And there are times when my kids will literally tell me, it’s like, “Oh, dad, are you building the WALL-E tech?” And I’m like, “Heck no.” But that apart, it is like, look, I think if you break down AI into its primitives, there’s three things that AI can do in layman terms and this is agnostic of the technical dimensions of the tech. And the three things it does is it predicts, it creates, and now it can act. Your classic AI as it was known was all about predicting based on pattern matching and learning from data. Generative AI was all about taking that to the next level and being able to not just predict what’s next, but also create what’s next.
And Agentic AI is now being able to take that to a whole new level and action what’s next. So it all comes down to what’s next. And in some ways, if you bring those three capabilities together from just a PR human perspective, setting aside the tech for a moment, there’s opportunities for the tech to complement and help you scale in every one of those dimensions. And when combined together, they can result in some total outputs that are far greater than just any one of those capabilities. So my hope is that as we go forward, what I would really, really like AI to achieve, and this is not just AI itself going to be achieved, it’s going to be AI plus leaders, plus each of us as humans and our personal leadership that we talked about is how do we truly get this tech to be something that becomes a force multiplier of humanity?
How do you make this become a force multiplier of the various facets that make up humanity like empathy, economics, like really being able to help people realize and fulfill ambitions that they probably could not have just by themselves. How do you change the conversation and the tone of this technology and what can the technology itself do to guide humans to think intentionally about those opportunities? We haven’t gotten to that phase of AI yet. Everyone is talking about AGI and artificial general intelligence, but the focus is more and more on trying to automate and replace people, at least in the tech speak.
But I would love to get to a place where the tech itself evolves to a state where the tech brings in that consciousness, like brings in that socioeconomical responsibility that shines light on the fundamental supply chain principle. Which is at the end of the day, the tech is not going to go far if no one exists to pay for the tech and if people don’t have the propensity to not just be able to use the tech, but to also support the economics that are required for the tech to be able to run and scale. I would love to see the future builders of models and platforms and the technology to think intentionally about how can the tech become the solution to the problem that we are all facing today. Which is energizing humanity and energizing people to embrace it as something that can help elevate each of us to the next level versus this field-based narrative that is shaping around replacing humans and roles.
I think the pioneers of this tech going forward, if they can figure out a way to shape this and take it to a place where that intentional judgment, that intentional responsibility, that intentional ethical, I would say, behavioral facets are increasingly demonstrated by the tech. To keep the humans in check and balance on how the decision makers are intentionally led to a path where the second nature behavior of first and foremost putting the people and the humanity facets upfront and how the tech can help shape and evolve and scale that. Becomes something that the tech can support as opposed to leaving it completely in the hands of people to go figure it out. So I think I would love to see AI get to that place where these less spoken about dimensions become a part of the solutions that are built, leading organizations and leaders and people to become better versions of themselves.

Tom Stoneman: I agree. I think we’ve been handed the most powerful tool in history or in our history and yeah, I hope we use it wisely.

Karthik Ravindr: Yeah.

Tom Stoneman: Karthik, thank you so much. I really appreciate everything you’ve done to take time to be with us and we hope we can have you back on soon.

Karthik Ravindr: Yeah, super appreciate it. Thank you so much, Tom. Really enjoyed this.

Tom Stoneman: So for Karthik, in a world defined by constant technological change, it’s the human qualities, curiosity, continuous learning and grit that endure. As he describes, these aren’t just nice to haves. They’re the foundation for navigating and shaping what comes next. It’s hard not to think about that CrossFit mindset he described. The CrossFit example he shared is a perfect analogy. True growth doesn’t thrive in comfort, but in breaking from your perceived limits. That’s the real lesson. In an AI world, curiosity, learning and grit are not merely advantages. They are the work itself, the daily difficult reps that build the mental resilience required for whatever comes next. Thank you for listening to The Intelligent Enterprise, a podcast where we get inside big ideas by getting outside of them. I’ve been your host, Tom Stoneman. Please remember to follow the podcast and leave a comment or review wherever you get your shows.
See you next time.