Understanding the Differences and Benefits of Aerobic vs. Anaerobic Exercise with Dr. Gunnar Newquist
In an age where Artificial Intelligence can write poems, compose music, and generate stunning visuals, a profound question echoes through the creative and business worlds: What happens to the uniquely human art of storytelling? As entrepreneurs, our stories are the bedrock of our brands, the currency of connection, and the foundation of our legacy. Does the rise of AI threaten this foundation, or does it offer a revolutionary new tool?
Learn How to Leverage Your Story through our Story To Asset Framework.
This very question was at the center of a recent live audio event on LinkedIn, where experts gathered to discuss how originality in storytelling directly impacts revenue and brand loyalty.
See the full interview with Dr. Gunnar Newquist
It’s a conversation we continue on The Obehi Podcast, where we explore how to transform your personal narrative into a powerful business asset. In a fascinating episode, I sat down with Dr. Gunnar Newquist, a neuroscientist, AI developer, and co-author of Artificial General Intelligence: A Revolution Beyond Deep Learning & the Human Brain, to unpack the intersection of AI, neuroscience, and the future of human connection.
The Ghost in the Machine: What AI Truly Understands
Dr. Newquist began with a crucial distinction that every leader and creator must grasp. The current AI models that have captured the world’s attention, like ChatGPT, are not on a path to true intelligence. They are not thinking, reasoning, or understanding. They are, in essence, incredibly sophisticated statistical predictors.
“These models function by analyzing statistical relationships between words from vast internet datasets,” he explained. While they are masters at predicting the next word in a sentence to create human-like text, they have critical limitations:
- No Conceptual Understanding: They don’t grasp the meaning or logic behind the words they generate.
- Lack of True Reasoning: They cannot make the intuitive leaps required for genuine problem-solving.
- A Tendency to “Hallucinate”: Because they lack a grounding in reality, they often invent information.
The insight here is powerful: simply making these models bigger will not lead to true Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which Dr. Newquist defines as the ability for a machine to learn and understand anything, much like a human.
This is a vital lesson for anyone looking to “own their story.” Your unique perspective, born from lived experience, cannot be replicated by a machine that only knows patterns.
Learning from the Ultimate Storyteller: The Human Brain
So, where do we go from here? Dr. Newquist advocates for a return to the original source code of intelligence: biology. To build truly intelligent machines, he argues, we must bridge the gap between AI development and neuroscience. He suggests two pathways inspired by the human brain.
The first is a top-down approach that studies cognition. Humans build understanding not just from data, but from multi-sensory experiences. We form concepts by connecting language to sight, sound, and touch. Our deepest learning happens through storytelling, where we create relationships between different ideas to make sense of the world.
The second is a bottom-up approach that examines the biological building blocks of learning. Dr. Newquist points to simple associative learning, famously demonstrated by Pavlov’s dog.
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The dog learned to associate a bell (a neutral stimulus) with food (a meaningful outcome). This basic ability to use one cue to predict another is a fundamental principle of intelligence, observable even in single cells.
This biological inspiration teaches us that true understanding is rooted in experience and connection, two cornerstones of Obehi Ewanfoh’s Story to Asset Framework.
Your story becomes an asset not just because of the words you use, but because it connects your lived past, your roots, to your present relevance. It is this authentic connection that AI can never manufacture.
AI as a Collaborator, Not a Competitor
Viewing AI through this lens transforms it from a threat into a powerful collaborator. Dr. Newquist envisions a future where AI serves humanity by enhancing our innate abilities, not replacing them.
He sees AI as a tool that can:
- Solve Global Crises: By analyzing complex systems like climate change, AI can propose solutions our politically-divided world struggles to find. The challenge, he notes, isn’t the AI’s capability, but our human willingness to act.
- Enhance Creativity: For storytellers, AI can be an incredible partner. It can access and organize the world’s information in novel ways, sparking new ideas and helping us “step outside of our own limited experiences.” It can help with the structure, but you must provide the soul.
- Foster Human Connection: Dr. Newquist is developing a companion robot designed not to isolate us, but to encourage us to maintain and strengthen our real-world human connections.
The call to action is clear. Instead of fearing that AI will write our stories for us, we should use it as a tool to help us tell our own stories better. It can help us research, brainstorm, and structure our narratives, but the core emotion, the vulnerability, and the wisdom must come from you.
This is how we build a bridge “from roots to relevance” that is both technologically informed and deeply human.
Your life and legacy are forged in the fires of your unique journey. Embrace AI as a partner in sharing that journey, but never forget that the most powerful stories are not generated, they are lived.
To explore this groundbreaking conversation in full, listen to the episode with Dr. Gunnar Newquist on The Obehi Podcast. For more insights on leveraging your personal narrative for business growth and impact, discover over 2,000 articles and resources at AClasses Media.
