A Future So Bright w/ Kate O’Neill
Kate is a “tech humanist” and the author of A Future so Bright as well as three other books. She speaks globally to audiences about how data and emerging technologies like AI are shaping the future of human experiences, and she’s addressed organizations like Google, IBM, Coca-Cola, Colgate, Cambridge, Yale, and audiences of world leaders at the United Nations. Among her prior roles, she was one of the first 100 employees at Netflix, created Toshiba's first Intranet, and led one of the first digital strategy and analytics agencies.
In this episode, Kate talks about her inspiration for her books and how they boosted her career as a paid speaker. Also discussed: Whether AI will take over the world and enslave us all.
Kate's Links:
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Josh Steimle: Today, my guest is Kate O'Neill. Kate is a tech humanist and the author of A Future So Bright, as well as three other books. She speaks globally to audiences about how data and emerging technologies like AI, are shaping the future of human experience. She's addressed organizations like Google, IBM, Coca-Cola, Colgate, Cambridge, Yale, and audiences of world leaders at the United Nations. Among her prior roles, she was one of the first 100 employees at Netflix, created Toshiba's first intranet, and led one of the first digital strategy and analytics agencies.
Kate, welcome to the show.
Kate O'Neill: Well, thank you. Thank you for having you on the show.
Josh Steimle: This is going to be fun. Before we dive into talking about your books, give us some of the background from before the books, where do you come from? How did you get into this world of tech and AI and everything? And yeah. Tell us what you do.
Kate O'Neill: Yeah. So it's funny. I mean, you sort of gave the highlights of the bio, but the funny thing for me is that I was a linguist by education and the way that the intersection happened is that I was at the University of Illinois at Chicago when the web came about. So I saw the web as a text-based browser, you know, so I don't know how many of your listeners are old enough or savvy enough about the history of the web to know that before we had graphical browsers, the very first browser was called links. It was a text-based browser. And so it looked just like any console you've ever seen where it's just lines of text and it wasn't that exciting. Cause I would see stuff that was kinda happening on the internet prior to the web. But when I saw the graphical web for the first time, where we first had embedded images and sort of formatted fonts and stuff like that it blew like circuitry in my brain.
I had this moment where I just said, this is going to change everything. And of course it did. But it shifted my entire perspective on what I wanted to do too. It really made me question. It made think of connectedness and how humans use tools to gather, to communicate, and create community. So I pursued that and throughout all the work that I've done in content and in information architecture and user experience, all through 25 years of working in technology, there has always been kind of this underlying theme of how humans connect with one another and how we use tools to create more meaningful experiences for ourselves and others. So that kind of underlies all of those disparate experiences.
Josh Steimle: I'm excited to chat about AI with you. I think we're kind of from the same generation perhaps. And one of my favorite movies when I was kid was War Games with Matthew Broderick. That was my first exposure to AI, if you can call it that. A huge Holcon computer that spoke through a phone modem and did text readouts and stuff and was threatening World War III and stuff. What's the state of AI today? Like it's progressing so rapidly. Where is it? Is it going to kill us all? Like what's going on with AI?
Kate O'Neill: I'm probably the only person who would laugh, like giggle, at the question: Is it going to kill us? No, I actually think that, it's a hotly contested answer to that question, you know, where is it right now? Because I feel like a lot of AI experts are saying that the emergence of generalized artificial intelligence is sort of the stuff of fairytales and honestly just about never happen. And then other experts will say, “It’s pretty much already happened. And it's just a matter of interpreting what you mean by generalized artificial intelligence.” And I think, you know, I'm sort of a both and thinker in every respect. So I think that there's a little bit of truth in both of those answers.
I think that our relationship with AI, our human relationship with emerging technologies like machine intelligence is going to be the more interesting facet of the discussion. It's going to be how do we re-invent our value and our connection to one another and to the world around us, in a world that's increasingly driven by data systems and by machine intelligence.
And I think that question is what drove me to both Tech Humanist, which is the second to last book and A Future So Bright, really thinking about how do we create a world in which meaning, which I believe is sort of the central human condition or the central aspect of the human condition is really at the core of the experiences that we build, whether they're through technology or amplified through technology or not, or organic. The answer is complicated on that, but I think the bigger, the more interesting aspect of it is how is it going to get us to a more fulfill enlightened version of ourselves? And the answer to that is pretty complicated too.
Josh Steimle: It's interesting though, because there are books out there, like Rise of the Robots, and you've got Elon Musk saying this is super dangerous and stuff. And other people with large platforms, spreading doom and gloom. And then of course, Hollywood doesn't help anything because a movie about positive AI isn't that interesting. Right? You need to have AI that's out attacking everybody. That's what makes a good movie, but there is this extremely positive side of what's going to happen.
When did you start thinking about that more positive side of it? And then how did this lead into your first book that you published?
Kate O'Neill: Well, the how I started thinking about the positive side of it is, that to me, there's always a positive side of almost anything, right? I think that one of the things, and this is kind of with the latest book, one of the key concepts is that we talk about the future in a really polar way with this sort of dystopia versus utopia framework. And I find that that is an unhealthy and un-useful construct, in almost any respect, certainly about thinking about advanced technology, but in kind of general life. I think it's an unhealthy construct to think about, that things are either only going to go bad and we're going to be living in a horrific landscape or things are only going to go incredibly well. Which is incredibly naive.
So this concept of strategic optimism that I introduced in A Future so Bright comes naturally through my lifetime's worth of observing the world around me in a way that says, Okay, look, this is the fullness of the reality, like we can acknowledge that there are bad things happening and good things happening, and there must be a way to lean into the good things. Like there must be a way to say as long as we can see what's possible, as long as we can see that these technologies, for example, can be used to accelerate human flourishing, then why the heck would we be spending any effort or energy on anything else? Like we need to mitigate the bad stuff for sure, but we need to send all of our energy in the direction of what we think is possible. So that, I think, that mindset has been with me most of my life.
So you mentioned A Future so Bright and three other books. There's arguably four other books. This is sort of my fifth. I wrote a very, very short ebook that was called Lessons From Los Gatos, and that was just a capture of some of the things I learned in my time at Netflix. And then I have a memoir, based on the fact that I lost my husband and my father, both in my thirties. And, so I got to sort of process through what it meant to me to find meaning and joy and love and hope on the other side of so much grief. But there again, there's that both and mindset.
And then when I first approached my first business technology book was Pixels in Place, then it was 2016 that I published that. Well, first of all, Pixels in Place really deals with the interconnectedness of physical and digital experiences. So already we're talking about a both and mindset, but the idea is to say, if we've got, as we do, in the world around us, in the built environment, so much digital information, so much data, that's sort of following us around, that we're generating through everything that we do. How can we responsibly and reliably use that information to connect our experiences, both for ourselves and with each other and to make business more effective and more profitable at the same time, in ways that amplify the meaning of those experiences?
So you can already see this kind of running commentary through this work. And then it just came to be more focused on that in Tech Humanist, and even more focused on that everything is connected mindset for A Future so Bright. I come by it honestly. It's been a long time that I've been thinking about this way of breaking down the problem of the world is complicated, but if we're going to approach problem solving in any way, and to me it makes sense that we approach it from as positive and as optimistic as hopeful view as we can with a solid strategy, a solid plan behind it.
Josh Steimle: And is that what you were thinking when you wrote the Pixels in Place?
Was that your goal or was it something else with that book? What was the key motivation behind that?
Kate O'Neill: You know, that one was funny because there was a panel that I was speaking on just maybe a year or two prior to that, where a friend of mine was on that panel with me. And he had written a book, some years prior, that people were frequently referencing in the field that we were speaking in. And when we got done speaking, there was a short line of people to talk with me and asks me questions. And there was a long line of people to talk with him and ask him questions. And I went like, that's interesting. I mean, he's a very good, engaging speaker. But I knew that I had been too. And so he and I were chatting afterwards and he said, “All right, I'm going to light a fire under your butt.There's no reason why you don't have a book out there except that you just haven't sat down to write it.” I'm like, “Yeah, yeah, I guess you're right.” So it was a real challenge. I appreciated the candor and the challenge from him.
And I think he was right. I think that honestly made a really big difference in the perception of the audience members. You know, here was someone whose work they could really identify with because they had read it already. They already knew the perspective he was bringing to it and mine was coming at them more fresh and more new. And, you know, it resonated with some people, obviously, but not as much. And so I thought that was a real interesting opportunity to sort of take soc and codify what all these years in the field have really taught me. And what was valuable that I could pass on in this format.
So Pixels in Place was of that moment and recognizing that we were in this transitional place with the internet of things and sort of sensors and beacons and a lot of digital based experiences in the physical world. And now it's just an observation of the moment. So I think that that's what really led into that to say, “I think this is an interesting topic.” It's something a lot of people are going to be thinking about over the next few years. Funnily enough, I of course could have never anticipated COVID and us all having this transition to so much digital transformation of being in front of screens for almost every aspect of education, healthcare, shopping, you name it, food delivery, et cetera, not to mention things like this, but it became even more relevant then.
So it was fun to have anticipated the need for thinking about that interconnected experience. But certainly I would credit the friend who lit the fire under my butt to say, “Sit your butt down, write this book.”
Josh Steimle: So did you notice a difference then after your first book came out, did you notice, “Hey, the people are lining up for me too now when I speak.”
Kate O'Neill: Yeah. What's really interesting to me about that is that I keep track a spreadsheet of inquiries for my speaking and have for several years and what I noticed is not only the books, but actually almost anything I've published that's of any level of significance, like significant blog post or a guest feature in an article, in a magazine or outlet. Almost any time I publish anything, there's a significant increase in inquiries for speaking. So I share that with your audience too. I don't know how many of you are tracking that sort of thing. If there is a speaking or a similar type of measurable kind of interest in your business, but something to consider is that I think there is a sense in which of course there's credibility that comes with having a book to your name. But I think just the act of publishing kind of keeps you top of mind. And I think there is this kind of trust element to it too. Like I was describing with the guy that was on the panel with me, people, I think, could already understand what ideas this person's bringing forth into the world and that gives some opportunity to connect on this sort of relevant mindset level. So I think that's a generous act to your readers, and to your audiences to say, “All right, I'm going to sit down. I'm going to take the time. And I'm going to put something together that means something to me, but I think there's going to be value in it for you. And here it's all in a digestible format for you to be able to take and absorb and take away.”
Josh Steimle: Yeah. You mentioned the trust factor. I noticed when I published my first book, I was already doing public speaking at that time and I was getting paid to speak, but I was getting offers of like $2-3,000. Plus we'll cover your room and board. And I published the book and instantly it was like, I could go out and ask for 10, 12, $15,000 to speak and I was getting it. And it was just like, whoa, like what changed? It's like, well, I've got a book and I wasn't even speaking on the topic of the book. It was just anything. Just the fact I had a book made me look, appear different to event organizers. And I thought this is amazing. I should've done this like 15 years ago.
Kate O'Neill: Yeah. I think it really substantiates you. And I think we're both saying that the trust factor, that there's an element of a sense in which you've bothered to boil down your ideas. You've bothered to put something down on paper, literally on paper that you're willing to be held to. Right? It's not just, I'm not just going to speak about this topic or that topic. It's not kind of on a whim. I clearly have enough to say that has enough coherence on a particular topic that it can be put into this format.
And I don't know that how many people would kind of articulate that that matters to them. But I think it does. I think it really has some significance for people that there's a marker of that level of expertise and trust.
Josh Steimle: Yeah, well, you've spoken at IBM. You remember the saying, “Nobody got fired for buying IBM.” That used to be their sales line. Right? And I think it's kind of like for event organizers, I think it's “No event organizer ever got fired for hiring a speaker who has a book.” It's like, well, they had a book. How did I… I mean, I thought they'd be good. They had a book. They must be the expert on this topic. And they must know how to talk about this because they've got the book.
Kate O'Neill: Right? They didn't get fired for that. They might've gotten fired for something else, but not for that.
Josh Steimle: Yup. Yup. So then you wrote your first book, you published that in 2016. What was then the motivation for the second book? I'm really curious here because you've published four books in essentially four years. Right?
Kate O'Neill: Right, right. Well, yeah, exactly. There, Pixels in Place was 2016. Tech Humanist was 2018. And then I actually was planning on putting out a similar version of A Future so Bright in 2020, and COVID really changed the perspective of what I was writing and as I'm sure it would for anyone, but I think it changed it in a really important way. It jelled my thinking in a different way. So yeah, so it was every two years to now every three years, but I honestly think that this might be a schedule that I may stick to in the future. I think what's happening is that each time I write a book, of course, the act of researching and pulling together all of the random thoughts and things that I've been saying about a thing and what I'm hearing from my audiences and the questions that I'm feeling from audiences and all of that work certainly feels like there's a capstone to it and you get to have that as a done deal. And then you speak about that for a bit, this is how it's worked for me is that I ended up, I positioned that as a topic. I speak about it, but inevitably, within a few iterations of speaking about that book or delivering a keynote that's ostensibly about that topic, it starts to pull in new material with the questions that I get from the audience, the new emerging kind of trends that are happening, the landscape shifts ever so slightly. And so I think the topic just evolves and something new emerges in it over the course of speaking about it.
So I think this is just the normal course of being a professional keynote speaker, where there's enough opportunity to deliver this message enough times with enough sort of repetitions on stage, and then be getting enough feedback from people that there's kind of an ongoing iteration that inevitably happens, just organically happens. So that's what was happening with Pixel in Place. I found that over time, the conversation was shifting to this broader digital transformation discussion, that people did want to hear about the integration of physical and digital space. And that was really relevant in the say user experience community or sort of design strategy community. But a broader theme of digital transformation was happening. And I wanted to make sure that it was grounded in human centricity that we were really thinking about, how do we make sure these are relevant, meaningful human experiences that we're designing all of these transformed digital operations around.
And then that conversation started happening and it started evolving. I just kept hearing people having so much anxiety about the future and that really led me to wonder, not wonder why, I mean, obviously I understood why people were feeling anxiety about the future, but what can we do about that? And how could we frame that discussion in a way that had more agency and more empowerment for people so that we can have that conversation? As it relates to business and as it relates to technology, but also these kinds of broader topics like around the climate catastrophe and around misinformation and disinformation and sort of geopolitics and even the future of trust and truth are topics that I touch on in the book.
So I think that the model itself, speaks to all of these different areas. But I will find I'm sure over the next year or two in speaking about this topic that there's going to be emergent trends that lead me to the next book coming out in 2023 or so.
Josh Steimle: So walk us through books two and three briefly. What are they about? Why did you write them?
Kate O'Neill: Two and three meaning…
Josh Steimle: The second and third, after Pixels in Place in between, leading up to A Future so Bright.
Kate O'Neill: Again, since it's like, I don't know whether I've written three or five at this point, Pixels in Place leading into Tech Humanist. One thing that happened with Pixels in Place is I made the choice to self publish, to publish through, well, what was then CreateSpace is now Kindle Direct Publishing. After I had spoken with quite a few agents and editors and publishers and you know, various people in the publishing industry and just really being distressed about the timelines. Like the publishing timelines are so long that I knew that once this book came out, I wanted it to still have a lot of relevance for years to come, but I didn't want the examples to feel immediately dated. And when you’re talking about freezing a manuscript nine months or longer before it hits the street for a tech book and something about emerging technology and future trends, it just seemed like it was going to kill any freshness that it had.
That's one of the main reasons why I decided Pixels in Place needed to be self published so I could really get it done as quickly, not as quickly as possible, but from the moment I froze the manuscript to the moment it hit the streets, so to speak, that it would be as short of a timeline as possible.
I’d say that what happened though, is I learned with Tech Humanist and then with A Future so Bright, why there was such a timeline. Like each time I feel like I've been trying to increase the sophistication of my publishing process and with in doing so it's added to the lead time I need before the publication date actually arrives. So I'm sort of learning, I'm sort of justifying to myself now why the publishing industry buys the time that it buys with the way that they do things. But I still haven't come close to nine months. I mean, it's nice with A Future so Bright, I think it was a few weeks in advance of the date, of the publish date.
And with Tech Humanist, it was probably right up until that I was fixing some of the editorial stuff. But that process has been an interesting learning process. It's been trying to figure out distribution and make sure that I understand how to get things as well produced as possible. And that does add time. So, yeah, with Pixels in Place, that was one of the big decisions was it's going to be independent, it's going to be quick. And really quickly I learned that Amazon and CreateSpace were still separate, sorry, Kindle Direct Publishing and CreateSpace, were still a little bit separate at that point. And it was very easy to get Pixels in Place into the Barnes and Nobles and things like that. Tech Humanist came out almost the exact same, I think it was the same week, that KDP rolled space in under it. And it all totally went haywire.
And the distribution never worked nearly as smoothly as it did before. So hopefully now they've got that all fixed up and I think A Future so Bright is a little more smooth sailing out into the distribution waters, but it's been quite a process.
Josh Steimle: So who is your target audience with A Future so Bright? Who are you trying to reach? Who are you trying to get that book in their hands?
Kate O'Neill: So I speak a lot to executive audiences, executive leadership audiences, and there's a particular profile of person that I'll speak about digital transformation, but it's these kind of larger concepts of how to lead your company through digital transformation in this human centric way. And then I have people come up to me after, and let's just say, it's like the CTO of a large company or the Chief Technology Officer of a very large company. And he or she will come up and very sincerely, very genuinely seem to say, “I have been listening for this kind of message for a very long time and no one has given it to me and I needed to have the vocabulary you just gave me. I needed to have this sort of framework, the lens that you just offered in order to take this back and have this conversation with my colleagues at the C level and with the board and so on.”
And so I've just heard that enough times that I feel like that's what I'm supposed to be doing, is giving that vocabulary and those frameworks to the people who are in a position to help change them ever so slightly, even change the direction of their business so that it is making more responsible, more sustainable choices for the sake of humanity, really.
So it's them, it's the people who are in a position of power, but don't necessarily know how to use it in the way that would make them feel like they were making aligned decisions with what their values are, what their conscience wants them to do, but they feel like they have to operate within this very strict profit centered, growth centered sort of environment. And those really are, they're not incompatible, but they feel incompatible I think at the moment that you're making very quick decisions in the corporate space. So I'm all about trying to give people who have power, more awareness of the human nature that they're bringing to these roles and how to help them align themselves better.
Josh Steimle: And with your books, how do you make sure that it gets in their hands? What have you done to promote the book or get it in the hands of these executives? What are some things you've tried? What's worked what hasn't worked?
Kate O'Neill: So speaking is a really big key to this. Getting a chance to speak and have the book be a bulk purchase sometimes by the event organizers. I've moved far more books that way than I would've ever moved in retail. But another thing is, I've really tried to find people who exemplify this and get them to do blurbs and testimonials, I've had conversations on podcasts or in various kinds of hosted video kind of shows. The blurb on the cover of A Future so Bright, if anybody hasn't seen it is, I'm just delighted that it's the Chief Technology Officer at NASA's jet propulsion laboratory, Chris Mattmann. And I just, I thought it was so delightful that I was able to resonate with him, that my message resonated with him enough that he wanted to endorse the book.
So I feel like there's such an opportunity for these executives, these types of executives. And I think it's really seeing the credibility for them to see that other people who are in their sort of analogous roles are finding value in it. That really helps. So that's been very helpful, kind of getting those types of people out, talking about it themselves, and sort of selling it in a sense to their peers. That's been super helpful.
Josh Steimle: So now you do a lot of public speaking, do you also do consulting? Are you advising, are you doing other things or is your main focus on the speaking?
Kate O'Neill: My main focus is on speaking. I do not like to do very much consulting and advising just because I'm not set up for that. Really I'm set up to do the speaking far more. But yeah, some opportunities come my way and I will size them up and occasionally take them on. They usually have to do with a strategy around digital transformation. So kind of white boarding with executives about how to align the language of their organization, how to think culturally about the kinds of data challenges that they're facing and how to think in a different way about that.
But that mostly it is speaking. It's trying to get the most people in the room at a time to hear the message and resonate with it.
Josh Steimle: And so how did you adjust your speaking business during this pandemic? When all of a sudden everything was getting canceled and everything was moving to zoom.
Kate O'Neill: Yeah. So luckily, virtual keynotes came up right away. I didn't really spend a lot of time in that churn mode of thinking, “Gosh, you know, am I going to have a business? Do I need to set up online courses or whatever?” So I think for me it was pretty clearly all my events were moving from in-person to virtual. And my husband is a photographer, so we had some good lights already. So that was really handy and a good camera. So with that I got to adapt really pretty easily. And I think that was a luxury compared to many of my colleagues. But now it's been kind of interesting, a little more than a year and a half in, I finally have been getting back out in person and it's so refreshing, but it's also a little weird, like this hybrid of that. But yeah, I get the impression that coming back into in-person gatherings that we're bringing some of what worked really well in the online, the virtual experiences, because one of the things that I really liked with the virtual and I hope to keep doing this now and then is, I will ask a question of the audience and have them put it in the chat, the answer. Because you can't get applause, obviously, when you're in a virtual meeting, but when you see this flurry of responses that just run up the chat, it kind of feels like the same energy as applause. Like there's a real thrill of everybody being able to see and feel and connect with one another at that same moment. So, I think for me, it was a real opportunity, it was a great thing that COVID didn't kill my business and it only meant a shift to virtual. And now I'm just trying to make sure that we take the best modalities from each one and learn how to adapt and how to bring the best of all of that into each space.
Josh Steimle: So I want to dive into the book a little bit. What are some of the key points that, or what are some of the stories? What are some of the examples that you bring up when people talk about AI as being a negative thing or technology or the future being dystopian? What are some of the examples you'd like to point to, to say, well, look at this, look at what's happening over here and look what they're doing here.
Kate O'Neill: Yeah. So there's two things already I have already pointed out that there's this thing I talk about with dystopia versus utopia and rejecting that framework. And there's also this both and mindset, right? So I think that there are some legitimate harms that are happening with AI, with algorithmic bias and so on. So I want to make sure in any conversation about AI, that we do acknowledge that because we have to make sure we're mitigating the real world harms that are happening for real people. And at the same time, what I find is the biggest opportunity and the most exciting thing about AI is that you can think about it in alignment with what's going to solve human problems at scale.
And so the roadmap I've found for this, that makes the most sense to me, because the work's already been done, frankly, is the United Nations sustainable development goals, which if any of your listeners are not familiar, it's a set of 17 goals that were articulated in 2015. And the idea is to say, if we can improve life measurably in each of these 17 ways, then it will improve the quality of life on this planet for not even just humans, for all life on this planet. So it's things like no poverty and gender equality and life on land and life below sea, but also things like sustainable cities and infrastructure and things like that. So, it's pretty diverse. What I find is interesting about that is just about every business out there can align in some way with at least one of those goals. Like there's something that the business is doing fundamentally at its core that relates to one of those 17 goals. And even more interesting is that there are already proofs of concept in place with artificial intelligence, with emerging technologies, like artificial intelligence, that amplify what can be done in any of those in alignment with any of those goals.
You might have a machine intelligence helping to do plastic removal from the oceans, for example, or AI helping to optimize wind farms to make sure that the energy being harvested from wind farms is as efficient as possible. And then there's any number of further examples helping combat human trafficking or trying to remove some of the bias from hiring so the gender parody can be better achieved and it just goes on and on. And I actually do it as you saw yourself, probably in the book, have a pretty comprehensive list. And it's really only a sampling of what's been happening in AI that aligns with each of those 17 goals. So I think when we look at that and we use that as an example, and an inspiration, a source of inspiration, like, aha, we could be doing work that actually helps business align with what it's business is trying to achieve some kind of purpose.
What does the business want to do at the end of the day, like what does the, why was the business formed and why does it exist? What's it trying to do at scale? And then in alignment with that, how could the business, in its objectives, be moving forward, some human objective, how can we make sure that as the business succeeds, it brings humanity with it.
And that I think is where technology like AI can really come into play. And really speed things along and we're going to need it. We're at the point where we're very seriously in need of some acceleration in these areas. So I'm excited that to bring that discourse to people and help people think inspirationally about what AI can do for us
Josh Steimle: Well, I'm excited too. I tend to focus on the positive. I think we can make it positive, as positive as we want to make it. And if it's going to be negative, it's only going to be because people make it negative and hopefully we can get rid of those people.
Kate O'Neill: Maybe those will be the ones the AI takes, I don't know
Josh Steimle: It should, but, or at least we can keep them out of power or something.
Kate O'Neill: That's a good plan.
Josh Steimle: Kate, Thank you so much for being with us here today on the podcast. If people want to get ahold of you, connect with you, learn more about you and your books, where can they find you?
Kate O'Neill: My website, my business website is koinsights.com. And you can also find me, I'm pretty active on Twitter at Kate O.
Josh Steimle: Perfect. Thank you so much for being with us here on the show today.
Kate O'Neill: Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure.
