Charles Harris's Blog

Kids are going back to school. Leadership matters, especially for high schoolers interested in getting accepted by a top college or university.

As college admissions become increasingly competitive—and for many kids, increasingly uncertain—college prep counselors everywhere are encouraging their students to emphasize leadership to distinguish themselves from their peers.

It’s good advice. Members of clubs and teams are a dime a dozen. But the leaders of those groups are harder to find. Colleges want leaders, not just because the colleges know leadership behaviors and skills can improve success in the classroom, but because they believe that leaders have a greater opportunity to succeed in life. Colleges want successful alumni who will give back through donations and improve the college’s reputation.

Unfortunately, many high schoolers don’t understand what leadership is about. Because of that, the students fail to appreciate the importance of leadership and have trouble learning what it takes to be a leader.  When they do reach out for advice (something that teens are not known for), they often receive little practical help from their parents, coaches, teachers or college prep advisors. Of course, teen attention spans are short to begin with.

I created this free Quick Guide to Leadership for Young Adults as an initial step in helping teens and other young adults learn to lead. You can download and print or forward the PDF directly from this post or this page on the site. At two pages, it’s crisp enough for any attention span, teen or adult.

Although obviously short on details, the Quick Guide is a solid, succinct overview of key principles and some important Do’s and Don’t’s. It’s also an inspiration for those who want to learn more.

I based this Quick Guide on Ticket to Lead – Young Adult Edition, a short book I released this summer as a “pay it forward” project in honor of all the people who helped me learn to lead. You can find the paperback and Kindle eBook formats on Amazon.com and the eBook formats on Apple Books and at BN.com, all at low “pay it forward” prices.

Although targeted at teens and young adults, both the Quick Guide and the book are valuable resources for parents, coaches, teachers and counselors who are interested in helping our young people learn to lead.

Leadership can change kids’ lives. For many, it can be a “ticket out” from a difficult environment. Whether you use these tools or others, do what you can to help our young people learn about leadership and help them learn to lead.

Leadership is a collection of behaviors and supporting skills that enable you to motivate people and organizations to work together toward a common cause more effectively than they could do alone.

The Value of Becoming a Leader

Being a leader can change your life. It can position you to lead your sports team, club or student group. It can make it easier to get into a good college. It can prepare you to be an entrepreneur and build your own business. It can also increase your impact and effectiveness and help you inspire others to be the best they can be. Becoming a leader can also help you get a better job, both now and in the future.

Learning to lead is one of the most important investments you can make. It is also easier than you may think.

Roadmap to Leadership

To become a leader, you must act like a leader so your team will trust you and believe you have what it takes to lead. To do that, you need to learn to employ the behaviors and skills that leaders use to lead. The roadmap looks like this:

Roadmap to Becoming a Leader:

Watch what other leaders do.

Start behaving like a leader.

Become noticed by members.

Earn trust and respect from members.

Be perceived as a potential leader.

Increase your self-confidence.

Do more things that leaders do.

Repeat as necessary.

This roadmap works well if you have good leaders to watch or know enough to be able to distinguish good leadership behaviors from bad.

Leadership Behaviors

Here are the ten leadership behaviors you need to learn and use. Five of these are Commitment Behaviors that relate to your commitment to and relationship with the organization and its members. These Commitment Behaviors are used by leaders and members, although they use them in slightly different ways. The other five are Execution Behaviors that relate to implementation and making things happen.

In their Commitment Behaviors, leaders do, and encourage their members to do, these things:

Care – They’re committed to their organization and its members.

Foster Connections – They grow and facilitate interpersonal relationships.

Contribute – They contribute their time, skill and ideas.

Collaborate – They are team players who encourage a culture of teamwork.

Motivate – They inspire their members to do more than they think they can do.

In their Execution Behaviors, leaders do these things with help and participation from their members:

Build – They build trust, people and the organization they lead.

Set Priorities – They focus on the things that matter most.

Make Sound Decisions – They make collaborative, objective, reasoned decisions.

Innovate – They create a culture where the best ideas win.

Create Positive Results – They have a sense of urgency to make things happen.

Supporting Skills

Leaders use supporting skills to make these ten behaviors more effective. These supporting skills are like the background knowledge we all carry around as we move through school, sports and life. We learn various skills and then use them to do things. The better we are at the skills, the less we need to think about them when we are applying them and the faster and more spontaneous we are in integrating them into our actions.

The supporting skills you need for a particular leadership position may vary from group to group and may change over time. This Guide uses a dozen supporting skills to make the point: 

Communication, Confidence, Courage, Curiosity

Delegation, Dependability, Determination

Empathy, Enthusiasm, Ethics

Initiative, Resilience

You don’t need to have high marks in all these skills to be a good leader, but you do need reasonable competence, together with an understanding of why the skills are important and how they relate to your leadership responsibilities and behaviors.

The better you are at the supporting skills you need, the easier and more natural your leadership will seem.

Listen, Watch and Learn

Wherever you go and whatever you do during this early phase of your leadership experience, be a vacuum cleaner. Listen, watch and learn. Adopt what works and discard the rest.

Remember that people who are good leaders are not always leading for good. You may be able to learn some positive leadership behaviors from them, but you would not necessarily want to emulate the goals and purpose of the organizations they lead.

Start Your Journey

That’s it. You have completed the Quick Start Guide and you are ready to begin your pathway to leadership. It’s an exciting trip that requires practice, patience, resilience and tenacity. But the rewards are worth it.

Leadership is a life-long opportunity fueled by continuous improvement. No matter how much you know, you can always learn more. No matter how much you learn, you can also do more as you apply your leadership in new positions and organizations.

Leaders not only change their lives, they change the lives of the people they lead. Some of those people will become leaders who will change more lives, and so the torch will continue to be passed, improving more and more lives as more people learn to be leaders.

You can be a part of that endless chain. Lead for good, and pay it forward by helping more people learn to lead.

This article is based my article on Medium.com at https://medium.com/@CEHarris/quick-start-guide-to-leadership-for-teens-and-young-adults-9c1f5806ebcc

For more information about learning to lead as a teen or young adult, see Ticket to Lead: Young Adult Edition , which includes additional information about the leadership behaviors and supporting skills described in this post as well as examples of how young adults apply the behaviors.

In the summer of 1999, I selected Intentional Consequences as the title of my first novel, a fast-paced thriller about a geopolitical cyber conspiracy designed to restructure American democracy. The title was a wordplay on “unintended consequences.” It referred to the murky area of politics between results that come from innocent actions that get out of hand and foreseeable results that come from irresponsible and even intentional conduct.

Five years later, I am amazed at how well Intentional Consequences captures and foreshadows many of the important issues we are facing now. The book is as vivid and troubling today as it was when it was first released, perhaps more so.

The words of one of my characters (Bob Franks, a political operative) seem like they were written yesterday, “In today’s world, it’s becoming far easier to fire up extremists on both sides, and both sides are doing it. Much of it is conscious and pre-meditated. Most of the rest is simply irresponsible. Very little on either side is innocent.”

Franks adds, “Enticement is a delicate thing. You open Pandora’s Box and sometimes bad things can come out. You hope things play out without violence or physical harm, but sometimes you must take the risk to achieve the goals.”

Although the book’s characters and plot are fictional, the setting swirls with the realities of our time: bitterly divided politics, political deception and disinformation, artificial intelligence, deepfake photos, the influence and power of social and traditional media, Chinese spies, cybertheft and drones--even a billionaire who tries to create a business coalition to reduce America's partisan divide and pull the country back together.

The book is set during the Democratic presidential primary for the 2020 election, which began with 23 candidates and ended with Joe Biden as the nominee. Eva Johnson, a smart, beautiful artist and tech company founder, teams with a young newspaper reporter to break up a geopolitical cyber conspiracy driven by wealthy American political elites, Chinese agents and social media interests. Their goal is to sweep the election and restructure American democracy to single-party rule that will last for decades or more.

This is a “purple” book written to offend both sides whenever it can. It’s an entertaining novel, not a political diatribe for one side or the other.

If you haven’t read it, I hope you will. If you have, please pass it on. It’s available on Amazon.com in Kindle and paperback editions at: https://www.amazon.com/Intentional-Consequences-Charles-Harris/dp/1087423805 .

I promise you two things: You will wonder where the reality stops and the fiction begins. You will also be thinking about the book long after you have finished reading.

The book is the first of my three-book Eva Johnson series. The other two books (also on Amazon) are Revenge Matters and Virtual Control. You can read them in any order.

Leadership is one of the most valuable talents we can pass on to the next generation. It can change lives forever—not only for the leaders but for their followers as well.

I know. Learning how to lead changed my life. I began my leadership journey in college and have been learning ever since.

To do my part in helping the next generation learn to lead, I just released a new book for teens and other young adults called Ticket to Lead. It's aimed at the high school- and college-aged young people, including recent graduates, who want to lead a sports team, club or student group, use their leadership roles to make it easier to get into a good college, create and build their own business or get a better job now and in the future. Those same leadership talents can also help young adults build their confidence and self-esteem, increase their respect and influence, leverage their impact and show them how to encourage others to be the best they can be.

Learning to lead early can be especially valuable for young adults. Among other benefits, it can:

Position them to lead their sports team, club or student group;

Make it easier to get into a good college;

Prepare them to be an entrepreneur and build their own business;

Improve their self-esteem;

Teach them to make others the best they can be;

Increase their popularity and respect;

Enhance their impact when pursuing their passion; and

Help them get a better job now and in the future.

Ticket to Lead helps young adults become leaders sooner than they expect while also learning leadership principles that will help them lead for a lifetime.

I wrote this book after talking with my high school-age grandchildren who were looking for some leadership experience and advice that might help their college applications. After searching for a good leadership primer for teens and other young adults, I gave up. Everything I found was too simple, too long, too broad, too dull or written for businesspeople who were looking for their next promotion and raise. I wrote this book to fill the gap.

You might ask why a grandad (my spelling) would possibly feel qualified to write a book about leadership for teens and young adults. It’s a fair question, and worth explaining. I was a long way from being a leader during my middle school and high school years. I was not even much of a member most of that time. I was an only child, raised by my wonderfully dedicated mom, a fine legal secretary who was a single parent for most of my life. We were financially challenged. We didn’t have a car for ten years when I was aged 6 to 16. My grades were good, but my social skills were poor.

During my senior year of high school, I began watching and learning from my contemporaries who were student leaders. After I moved to the University of Florida (UF) for college, I started learning to lead, largely by watching others. I joined a fraternity, became involved in student government and, in my senior year, was elected vice president of the student body. After graduating from UF with high honors, being commissioned in the U.S. Army via ROTC and getting married, I went to Harvard Law School, where I started in the bottom 5% of my class and graduated cum laude three years later.

Following Harvard, I spent 18 years practicing corporate, banking, securities and technology law. Early in that period, when I was only 27, I became vice president and general counsel of a regional bank holding company. I also taught at the UF College of Law. After my legal career, I served as CEO of a private investment banking firm and a publicly traded federal savings bank, was vice chair and CFO of a publicly traded hospitality company and CEO of a semiconductor company that we turned around, took public and later sold to a leading Wi-Fi chip maker.

In the process, I led and managed lawyers, bankers, securities brokers, construction and development executives and hardware and software engineers, along with a cast of financial, marketing and administrative people. We accomplished a lot together, and I am grateful for their support and what I learned from them.

As my eclectic career shifted from law to business, people would ask me what I did for a living. Initially, I would ramble on, trying to explain the details of my latest role. After a few years, I realized that the answer was simple: I built organizations and people. In the process, I learned how important mutual trust is to doing both.

Throughout my career in law and business, I watched and learned from the leaders around me. Some were superb role models who changed my life through their wise, patient counseling, encouragement and willingness to make a bet on my ability to do things I had never done before. A few provided invaluable examples of how not to lead. All contributed to my leadership journey.

In my CEO and CFO roles, I used input from board members, investors, advisors and my executive teams to hone my leadership and management skills. I learned what worked and what did not. As a lawyer, investment banker, advisor, board member and investor, I helped other CEOs, senior executives and entrepreneurs improve their leadership and management.

I have always enjoyed writing. In addition to my three contemporary novels (all conspiracy thrillers based on the interplay of political, social and technology issues), I have authored or co-authored three business trade books on computer contract negotiations and equipment procurement and written countless magazine and law review articles and blog posts.

My best credentials for this book come from our three children, who (thanks to my wife, I’m sure) had all the leadership, social and athletic skills that I lacked as a teen. Out of respect for their privacy, I won’t go through the details, but suffice it to say our kids knocked the cover off the ball with their collection of sports, student government, and club leadership roles, which helped all three attend nationally rated college and master’s programs. They earned these accolades, not me, but watching how they learned to lead as teens—and have continued to lead ever since—has been both wonderfully rewarding as a parent and highly informative as a writer.

Ticket to Lead is crafted from two important ideas: First, leadership is a set of behaviors that are supported by background skills that make those behaviors more effective. Second, the fastest and best way to become a leader is to learn from other leaders. The book accelerates that process by explaining the behaviors and skills and showing young adults how to apply them.

The book covers ten essential leadership behaviors—five "commitment behaviors" focused on bringing people together, and five "execution behaviors" focused on building people and trust to drive results. Each of these chapters includes an explanation of the behavior, a story about how other young people have applied it, and tips for learning and improving the behavior. These behaviors are followed by a dozen "supporting skills" that help leaders make their leadership behaviors more effective.

Leaders lead and managers manage. Many do both. This is a book about the leadership side of the leader/manager continuum. It’s not another business book about how to be a better manager.

Ticket to Lead fits today’s limited attention spans. The printed book has about 130 pages. Chapters and ideas are short, making it easy for readers to come and go as time permits. After reading the introduction and the first three chapters, readers can continue straight through or jump to the areas they are most interested in. For those who want to dig deeper, an appendix includes a collection of additional leadership insights.

Ticket to Lead is available in eBook format on Amazon Kindle, Apple Books and Barnes and Noble. The paperback version will be on Amazon shortly. Plans include an audiobook after that.  Introductory prices have been set low to encourage distribution to teens and young adults. I am far less interested in royalties than in getting this book into the hands of the young adults who may benefit from reading it.

Leadership is a noble game with viral impact. Leaders not only change their lives, they change the lives of the people they lead. Some of those people will become leaders who will change more lives, and so the torch will continue to be passed, improving more and more lives as more people learn to be leaders.

If you know a teen or young adult who may have the potential to lead (or just wants to know more about leadership), or if you are teacher or advisor to high school- or college-aged kids, please pass the word about Ticket to Lead. Our world needs leaders now more than ever.

Ticket to Lead is a fast-track roadmap for young adults who want to learn how to lead.

Reading it can change their lives. It is one of the best investments they can make.

In the U.S. as well as China, the law is no longer blind

China’s increasing efforts to use the rule of law to threaten or punish those who dare to criticize Chinese Communist Party (CCP) policies provide a vivid warning of how the American rule of law is also being weaponized to penalize people and ideas that some politicians, prosecutors and agencies find offensive.

Given the CCP’s control over the rule of law in that nation, it’s no surprise that China is turning its laws against its critics and detractors worldwide. The latest move is a new law that criminalizes clothes and behaviors that hurt people’s feelings. (Trigger warnings do not appear to be a defense!)

U.S. Rule of Law has become politicized

What we fail to appreciate — to our peril — is that the U.S. rule of law has also become politicized in recent years. As U.S. politics has become increasingly bitter, as our political parties have moved from working together to demanding that the winner take all, as prosecutors and government agencies have used their discretion to target high profile cases, for some the U.S. rule of law has become just one more tool to achieve political advantage.

In school, we learned that the law is blind, and must not show favoritism or bias. Although we echo that idea today when we say no person is above the law, too often we forget to mention that every person must also have equal protection under the law. In that context, the law should never be used to target someone for political vengeance.

But the growing reality is otherwise — and the impact on American democracy and America’s standing in the world will be devastating.

Why the Rule of Law matters

For centuries, the rule of law has mattered because it provides fairness, objectivity and certainty in our business and personal dealings. Politicized, it loses all those things.

Worse, when the rule of law falters, it creates a chilling effect on our freedom of speech and our willingness to run for political office and even take public stands on important issues. President Xi gets it. He understands that for every person prosecuted, thousands more will be scared into silence. Unfortunately, too many U.S. political leaders, prosecutors and judges understand this as well.

We are all vulnerable to political abuse of the Rule of Law

The political abuse of the American rule of law may be one of the critical issues of our time. While it’s easy to think that only “guilty” Americans will be the targets, the definition of “guilty” can shift with every election, with the personal aspirations of every prosecutor, with the policy goals of every administrative agency, and with the judge and jury where the case is brought. Once using the law to target our political opponents is ingrained in our politics, American democracy will become no better than the Banana Republics we sneered at in civics class. Any of us may be the next target, consumed by trying to defend ourselves against an all-powerful government and bankrupted by legal fees even if we are innocent.

Protecting the Rule of Law will be complicated

This is not an easy issue.

America’s labyrinth of federal, state and local laws and even more regulations makes most of us lawbreakers at one time or another, intentionally or unintentionally. Businesses and business leaders are especially vulnerable because of the regulatory complexity governing their operations.

Prosecutorial discretion has always been part of the American criminal and civil justice system, affecting both what cases get brought and what penalties are sought. Regulatory agency cases exacerbate this flexibility and provide even greater power to the party in control.

Forum shopping has also been a part of American jurisprudence for most of our country’s existence. With U.S. Attorneys in dozens of federal districts, 50 state attorney generals and several thousand county prosecutors — most of them appointed or elected on a partisan basis and many of them looking for cases that can advance their careers — finding an opportunistic government lawyer to bring a case in a “favorable” jurisdiction for the prosecution is seldom a problem. America’s growing partisan divides between red and blue states and counties offer ample opportunities to find a grand jury and a trial jury that will dislike the defendant’s politics — a reality that makes an unfortunate mockery of the right to a trial by a jury of one’s peers.

The hazard in each of these areas is not the existence of discretion. It is how the discretion is exercised (and reviewed by the courts, which are also becoming more politicized).

Statutes that are seldom applied are being dusted off to prosecute the political defendant. RICO laws designed to fight organized crime are being deployed to sweep dozens of defendants into the political target’s alleged wrongdoing (a great tactic for coercing cooperation through plea deals). Lawyers are being added as defendants or fined for the legal theories they have dared to advance on behalf of their political defendants.

The financial and structural penalties in civil actions brought by state attorney generals and federal agencies have skyrocketed in recent years, often bearing no resemblance to monetary damage or historical norms. Huge fines have been accompanied by “sudden death” demands such as stripping the defendant of the right to do business in the applicable state or industry. Minor statutory or regulatory infringements can lead to existential punishments for the political targets.

Cases and appeals can run on for years, creating business and personal uncertainty and crushing burdens from legal fees and discovery expenses. For all but the extremely wealthy, the financial costs and associated emotional stress can be debilitating regardless of ultimate innocence. Families, careers and lives can be destroyed.

We are hearing the emerging echoes of cases from America’s past, where the ability to receive a fair trial, representation by capable counsel and equal justice under the law too often depended on a person’s race, community standing or politics. Given the recent popularity of the movie Oppenheimer, the McCarthy era comes to mind.

Under the rule of law, justice cannot depend on whether we like the defendant. Political lynching will destroy American democracy. It cannot stand.

Protecting the rule of law in our currently divided republic will be hard. Our best shot will be to vote for candidates who take the rule of law seriously and refuse to condone political prosecutions. We can also speak out and demand transparency on the cases that do arise. As in earlier eras where the rule of law was threatened by prejudice, ignorance and self-interest, we cannot remain silent in the face of political expediency.

This issue is about all of us

One final footnote: This is not a piece about Donald Trump, Hunter Biden or Elon Musk or other tech CEOs (who are also being targeted with antitrust or regulatory allegations), although they are all part of the greater story. It’s not about Democrats or Republicans. It’s about all of us — and protecting the rule of law in America while we still can.

I have been smiling recently as I’ve read about the explosion of interest in generative artificial intelligence (AI) fueled by the release of OpenAI’s amazing ChatGPT chatbot and its Dall-E-2 image generator. After years of research and experimentation, the genie is out of the bottle. Content creation will never be the same again.

I’m not surprised. I have been writing about AI image generation since 2019. In my Eva Johnson thrillers about politics, technology and social change, the protagonist (Eva Johnson, of course) is a Carnegie Mellon graduate and digital artist who co-founded a software company that identifies and creates deepfakes. She also created her own AI image generator to collaborate with her on her digital art.

Rather than fearing generative AI as a threat (as so many people are doing today), Eva created her AI as a partner who could help her craft exciting, creative digital art that she would never be able to produce by herself.

Because Eva understood that AIs are only as good as the information they digest (more on that later), she focused on training her AI and inventing methods of adjusting her AIs input data to influence the AI’s output. She did this by controlling the data that her AI considered in generating her art. Rather than trying to eliminate bias in the learned data, she sought to understand and control its effects to achieve the artistic statement she wanted a piece of art to make.

My favorite comment from readers is that my books are prescient. Much of that comes from writing about contemporary themes and extrapolating the facts just enough to lead the reader into events and science that are not yet true but still seem believable. Technology is a good example.

Much of the technology I write about is real, and if I have done my job well all of it seems like it might be real. I like to leave my readers wondering how much of the technology in my books is real and how much is fiction. The new tools from OpenAI make a few more things in my novels real, but Eva still has more AI tools in her fictional toolbox. If you want to learn more about how Eva works with her AI (and also enjoy a fast-paced contemporary thriller), check out Intentional Consequences, Revenge Matters or Virtual Control at www.charlesharrisbooks.com or at Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Charles-Harris/author/B07W81957J.

Eva’s been collaborating with her AI for four years now, and she’s learned a lot that she’d be happy to share with readers who are trying to assess the impact of generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Dall-E. If you were to ask for her advice, I think she would offer the following thoughts.

Ride the Wave or Get Crushed by It

The printing press put the scribes out of business but enabled publishers and a world full of readers. Search engines and the internet expanded the speed, breadth and dissemination of information. In one lifetime, access to knowledge moved from card catalogs and libraries to Google search and document downloads. Typewriters and carbon paper gave way to personal computers and productivity software. With every major advance, the new tools destroyed jobs and entire industries. But they also created opportunities for the people willing to embrace them.

For millennia, humans have embraced the tools of the age. It’s time to do it again.

Put less politely, buy in or get out of the way. Ride the generative AI wave or get crushed by it. Be part of this of powerful new technology or be left by the wayside.

From an historical perspective, it’s sound advice. Better to be a book publisher than an unemployed scribe. Better to learn how to do Google search than to rummage through a dusty card catalog or dig facts up in an old encyclopedia. Better to learn how to extend and expand your creativity and communications skills with generative AI than to pretend you can fight the tide.

But the threats posed by generative AI are not the point. Generative AI offers some powerful benefits. Whatever their negatives, these tools can enhance and extend the creative process and they can do it far faster than humans can. They can find and extract data, concepts, designs and ideas from a broader, deeper database. They can move those creative ideas forward more rapidly and they can create and iterate endlessly. They can improve brainstorming, feedback and communication. They can enable non-creatives to use images in their thought processes. They can also enhance and expedite research. The list of benefits is long and growing.

Collaboration is the Key

The question is: How do you ride the wave?

The answer is easy: You collaborate with your AI to make you and your AI even more effective.

Collaboration benefits both sides. You need your AI to find and process the world’s images and words at warp speed and stimulate your creativity and communications skills. Your AI needs you (for now, at least) to teach it how to learn faster and better and apply that learning to human needs.

Rather than fearing this new phase of AI, Eva would say you need to make generative AI your partner. That means training your AI to learn information it needs to be responsive. It means discovering how to phrase queries and follow up questions or instructions. It means being a bridge that adds humanity to a human-machine partnership. It also means learning to trust the output you receive from your AI partner.

Two factors are especially important in creating a successful human-machine collaboration: the quality of the information the AI uses to learn and the credibility of the output the human partner receives. Humans have special roles to play in understanding and optimizing both.

Data Input Colors AI Output

Because generative AI tools only “know” what they have learned, they will inherit the limitations, prejudices and biases of their knowledge sources. Like the well frog in the old Chinese parable that I mentioned in my third novel Virtual Control, AIs live only in the world that they are taught to know.

Even if the AI has all the information in the world, critics point out that the risk of systemic bias exists because the “system” created by humans is inherently biased. If the AI has been trained with less information (a likely situation for some time), the risk of accidental or intentional bias increases.

These realities pose difficult questions. Who will be responsible for assessing and erasing these biases? How will we prevent intentionally biased AI training data from producing desired but undesirable outcomes? More broadly, who will decide what AI-generated images, topics and speech are unacceptable and why? As more and more content is generated by AIs, will human-derived speech be tested against linguistic, topical, political and cultural “filters” that the AIs have determined to be acceptable? Can corporate ownership and use of these AI censor machines avoid First Amendment protections in ways the government could not do itself? How will all this affect democracy and freedom?

The moral and objectivity hazards become more complicated as people debate whether the AI algorithms should be created by humans or by the machines themselves (who, of course, learned from digesting data, events and algorithms created by humans). Similar debate ensues over whether AIs should be taught through supervised learning, unsupervised learning or some combination of both. At the risk of oversimplifying, in supervised learning humans tag images fed into the AI—for example, labeling a picture of a cat as a “cat.” In unsupervised learning, the AI devours huge quantities of data and makes its own decisions about how what it sees should be categorized and labeled.

Part of the magic that Eva brings to her AI is the ability to consider different learning databases (designed by Eva) that alter the images that the AI is using to create its output. Eva’s successful use of this intentional manipulation of the input data demonstrates both the potential positive iterative power of generational AI (which allows her to create new art, avatars and other output much more rapidly) and the potential negative bias that could be intentionally added by undisclosed human intervention in the data inputs.

Output Credibility Affects Human Trust

Effective collaboration cannot exist without mutual trust. Collaboration requires developing trust with your AI, just as you would with any other important colleague.

Although the idea of trusting a machine—and having the machine trust you—may seem artificial, we already do it on a regular basis. We trust the calculations our computers make. We trust our airplanes to fly us safely. We trust Google maps to get us where we want to go. “Oh,” you say, “but humans make those machines accurate and safe. The machines don’t do that themselves.” That’s largely true. But if it’s not too much of a stretch to think about it, our machines “trust” us to design and engineer them correctly and keep them running. Even there, industrial AI is taking over more of the monitoring and advising and creating the algorithms to do it.

In human-to-human relationships, vulnerability is an important factor in building trust. Human colleagues build trust by being transparent about their weaknesses and sharing experiences that show they are open to continuous improvement. These same concepts apply to building trust in human-machine relationships.

Our AIs need to be transparent about the bias in the algorithms they develop from the data they digest. Their human partners need to admit their own bias. Machines need to learn to integrate human adjustments to the AI learning process and content generation. Humans need to be candid about their unease in relying on machines to help them create. While we may not yet be able to have these discussions directly with our AI partner, we can be more effective collaborators by designing and using generative AI tools that facilitate transparency about systemic, accidental and intentional bias and the strengths and weaknesses contributed to the partnership by human and machine.

Why Are We So Sensitive about Generative AI?

Generative AI is different from the industrial AI technology that improves things like logistics, manufacturing and airline scheduling. Generative AI strikes at the heart of our humanity. For the first time, we are facing machines that can compose creative content in images and words — a uniquely human talent (or so we thought) that has enabled our species to communicate and collaborate across the eons.

Why is sharing that talent with a machine so threatening and uncomfortable for many of us? It doesn’t just threaten our jobs, it goes to the heart of how we think of ourselves as humans.

Israeli author and historian Yuval Noah Harari says large-scale flexible cooperation has made our species masters of the world, but it has also made us dependent for our very survival on working together. Harari believes our unique trait as humans is “our ability to create and believe fiction.” As he explains, “All other animals use their communication system to describe reality. We use our communication system to create new realities.” By helping us create fiction, generative AI will enhance that communication and collaboration on a scale deeper, broader and faster than ever before.

Where We Go from Here

Fun as they are to try out, Dall-E-2 and ChatGPT are still very much works in progress. They have plenty of limitations and weaknesses, including some that will be challenging to cure. But they are already doing things we have never seen computers do before.

These early tools are the beginning of a tidal wave of change in how we consciously and subconsciously find, assess, sort and apply visual and textual information and create designs, images and stories from it. The New York Times predicts generative AI has the power to reinvent everything from online search engines like Google to photo and graphics editors like Photoshop to digital assistants like Alexa and Siri. It will revolutionize the human-machine interface, letting people talk with computers and other devices as if they were talking with another person. Add in voice recognition (another technology that has experienced dramatic breakthroughs) and we will finally be able to chat with HAL, hopefully with more cooperative results.

If you have any doubts that generative AI has reached an inflection point, check out what Microsoft is doing. After investing billions in OpenAI and becoming its preferred partner for commercializing new AI technologies, Microsoft is adding OpenAI’s tools to its Office suite and making them available through its Azure cloud-computing platform. Their goal is to use these AI capabilities to “completely transform every Microsoft product.” And they recently announced they are planning to invest even more in OpenAI.

Fully evolved, generative AI will be as disruptive and empowering for our society as social media, the internet and the smart phone have been. Google is already scrambling on Red Alert to decide how generative AI will change the competitive landscape for its dominant search business. Although it will enhance and facilitate the metaverse, generative AI will have far broader impact, particularly as it is integrated with voice recognition.

It's been almost 16 years since the iPhone was introduced by Apple in 2007. As remarkable as the iPhone seemed then, it has advanced light years since. If you can flash forward 16 years from now to 2039, you will be able to look back with the same degree of amazement about how basic the “breakthroughs” in generative AI were in 2023.

Follow Eva’s lead. Collaborate and ride the wave.

In announcing his new deal to complete one of Michael Crichton's unfinished manuscripts, mega author James Patterson was quoted in ,The Wall Street Journal as saying, “Michael’s ability to tell a story that is propulsive while you learn things about the subject area he’s writing about is what pulled me in.”

Paterson's quote reminded me that Crichton's combination pulled me in too.

Crichton had a big influence on my desire to write technology thrillers that are more than just an exciting story.

My first three novels are fast-paced thrillers that also explore current and emerging real-world issues about politics, technology and social change. I write to entertain, first and foremost, but also to help readers explore important issues and technologies that are changing the way we live. The excitement and fast pace keep the reader moving forward, but the setting and the plot offer a more complex story than a typical shoot 'em up thriller--a story that is vividly current, unsettling and real. Some people call these novels intellectual or psychological thrillers. Others call them techno-thrillers or make up some other subset of the thriller genre. Some even categorize them as science fiction or one step back from it.

I want my readers to come away from the story breathless, wondering how much was real and how much was not but might be soon. I want them to keep thinking about the story and the issues long after they have finished reading. My favorite questions from readers are "how much of that is true?" or "is that really happening?" My favorite comment is "I can't quit thinking about that book."

One of the challenges for the author in these novels is explaining the science or technology to readers who know little or nothing about it, while not bogging down the story or insulting readers who know more about the topic than the author does. Another challenge is using science that is real enough to be believable while stretching it just short of being unbelievable. Research is essential.

Crichton was brilliant in pulling this off. In fact, he was just plain brilliant. He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College, received his MD from Harvard Medical School, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. He taught courses in anthropology at Cambridge University and writing at MIT. He had lifelong interest in computer science.

Besides being a gifted storyteller, he used meticulous research to supplement his academic and professional experience. Crichton’s first bestseller, ,The Andromeda Strain, was published while he was still a medical student. He later worked full time on film and writing. One of the most popular writers in the world, he has sold over 200 million books. His books have been translated into thirty-eight languages and thirteen have been made into films. Crichton died in 1966.

I have no misapprehensions about ever having Michael Crichton's talent or success, but I continue to appreciate the challenge he left behind of creating fast-paced thrillers set around plots filled with current scientific, medical or technology issues. Crichton was the master at this. I'm grateful for the opportunity to learn from his work and humbled by the readers who say they see the comparison. Check out my efforts at www.charlesharrisbooks.com.

Let’s be blunt. What America needs right now is a recession. Not just a recession triggered by some Black Swan event, but a good recession. We need a recession that is driven by increases in interest rates that will cool overheated demand and give supply chains, work force participation and employer/employee relationships time to heal from the sweeping socioeconomic disruptions of Covid and our self-absorbed efforts to recover from it.

I am not here to argue that we are already in a recession or that a recession is inevitable, although I think both points will likely be proven correct over time. I want to convince you that an interest-rate driven recession would help clean up our present economic and workplace challenges far more effectively than we have been able to achieve in our overheated post-Covid rebound fueled by dreams that once again we can have it all, but this time without working so hard.

I am not suggesting that a recession would be painless. Economic activity would slow. People would lose their jobs. But that’s the point. Reducing demand and increasing unemployment will deliver the benefits we need. Here’s why.

1. Curbing demand will reduce inflation and the risk of a deadly wage/cost spiral. The Federal Reserve increases interest rates to reduce economic activity and stem demand in an overheated economy. If they move too far too fast the economy can lapse into a recession. If they fail to move fast enough, the inflation in goods and services can trigger an ugly wage/cost spiral, where increased wage demands spurred by increased costs drive even higher cost increases and inflation.

The risks are real. After a decade of low rates, the Fed is facing a unique confluence of inflationary factors including the shortage of people willing to work and the related increases in wages, the Black Swan effects of the global Covid shutdowns and the robust but uneven recovery, and the impact of the U.S. government largess on the economy—not to mention Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its impact on global commodities. Although politicians and the media may dream about a soft landing where the Fed stems inflation without causing a recession, America cannot afford to risk a repeat of the Fed’s lukewarm interest rate increases in the seventies that eventually required 18% mortgage rates to break inflation’s back in the early 1980’s. If consumers and the markets believe that the Fed’s current tightening is just a temporary annoyance before easy money returns in the spring, we will just be kicking the can down the road as we did in the seventies. If it takes a recession to curb the post-Covid spending spree, let’s get on with it before things really get out of hand.

2. Curbing demand will also give our supply chains time to heal. Reduced demand alone will not cure the global logistical deficiencies that Covid exposed, but it will help reduce the impact while adjustments are made. Fewer purchases need fewer trucks and fewer ships backed up in congested ports, as well as fewer people to make the raw materials and finished goods, drive the trucks and sell the goods and deliver them to your door. The need for fewer people along the way will also help reduce the worker shortages currently plaguing our economy.

3. Increasing unemployment will shake up the work force and add some healthy reality back to employer/employee relationships. In a recession, some of the people who are working will lose their jobs and be forced to look for work elsewhere. The inflation that leads to the recession can also increase the work force participation rate by prompting more people to look for work as inflation weighs on household budgets. Again, our current economic circumstances are unique. Our low unemployment rate is rare for the outset of a recession, giving employees unusually strong bargaining power. Working from home and remote work from anywhere have altered the workplace and created new employee demands and ways for employers to compete for talent.

The issues here go well beyond wages. As Microsoft reported in its Work Trend Index 2022, “What people want from work and what they’re willing to give in return—has changed. The power dynamic is shifting, and perks like free food and a corner office are no longer what people value most.” In Microsoft’s study, 47% of respondents said they were more likely to put family and personal life over work than they were before the pandemic. In addition, 53% (including parents at 55% and women at 56%—said they were more likely to prioritize their health and wellbeing over work than before. As a result, “Employees everywhere are rethinking their ‘worth it’ equation and are voting with their feet.” According to Microsoft, 58% of Gen Z are considering changing jobs in the year ahead versus 43% overall and 52% for Gen Z and Millennials combined. Losing and replacing workers adds costs and operational challenges that are particularly hard on small businesses.

Although some may prefer to applaud these recent trends as a new age of enlightened work-life balance, the impact for many businesses—especially small businesses—and the economy at large is far less magical. While our largest tech companies may be able to adapt to these new employee priorities, many other businesses cannot. We are seeing this play out all around us as service and quality suffer, productivity declines and businesses curtail hours or shutter their doors.

4. Increasing unemployment will improve productivity. Rising productivity is the magic that lets businesses raise wages without raising prices and fueling inflation. In the second quarter this year, U.S. productivity fell at its steepest rate on an annual basis since 1948, while unit labor costs (the price of labor per single unit of output) continued to accelerate. In our present economy, businesses are essentially paying workers more to produce less, which is unsustainable.

While some of workplace trends discussed above may translate to happier employees who are also more productive, I worry that higher wages, decreased loyalty, and new employee expectations about where and when they are willing to work are already leading to employees who are more focused on their personal needs and feelings than what it takes for a business to serve its customers well so it can stay in business and give people jobs. (By the way, the adverse impact of these factors on small businesses is particularly relevant to employment levels. The U.S. Small Business Administration reports that American small businesses have accounted for 66% of the jobs added to the economy over the past 25 years.)

According to The Wall Street Journal, economists say that “more slack in the labor market will likely lead to workers having less leverage over hours, pay and benefits.” For now, that could be a good thing for our economy.

The pendulum needs to swing. Bring on that recession.

Note: This article was posted to LinkedIn and Medium on August 10, 2022.

In August 2019, I published my first novel, Intentional Consequences. As it turned out, the book became the first in a series of Eva Johnson thrillers set at the intersection of contemporary politics, technology and social change in America. I optimistically called the book “the 2020 election cyber conspiracy thriller.” Many readers called it prescient.

The story in Intentional Consequences ended before the Democrat Party awarded Joe Biden its nomination for President in August 2020. While I had no intention of predicting history, looking back I must admit that the book captured a lot of political, technological and cultural issues that still haunt us as we approach the 2022 mid-term elections later this year. Two of those issues involve the impact of media polarization and the risk of radical political change in our democracy.

The following excerpt from an early chapter portrays how I melded those issues into the story. To set the stage, I should introduce a few characters. David Bernbach was a wealthy activist investor and self-described member of the Democratic elite. His partner in what became a geopolitical conspiracy was an older man named Fred Billings, who had been the founder and retired CEO of one of the largest chemical companies in North America. In the excerpt below, they were chatting over breakfast in New York City with Valerie Williams and her husband, Rakesh Jain. Williams was a political science professor at the University of Texas at Austin who was widely respected for her expertise about U.S. democracy. Jain was a billionaire tech executive.

Remember, this book was written in 2019. Although the party in control of the White House may have changed hands since that time, the dangers this excerpt describes—and the potential desire for revenge by the “other side”—still seem disturbingly real. (By the way, I wrote Intentional Consequences as a “purple” book that criticized the disinformation, political games and dirty tricks on both sides.) As a reader said to me recently, the issues that Intentional Consequences raised three years ago about our bitter partisan politics are even more disturbing today than they were then. I had to agree.

Here's how the conversation went.

* * *

After the usual banter over coffee and pastries, Bernbach said, “I have a reputation for getting to the point, so let me explain why I had hoped we could get together. It’s no secret Fred and I have poured considerable money into Democratic political campaigns and action groups. We’ve both been friends of the Clintons for many years, although Fred was less enthusiastic about her 2016 run than I was. We’re both looking ahead to the next election and thinking about how to deploy our resources. We were hoping you might share your thoughts with us on two topics we’ve been discussing. First, how do you see the polarization of the media affecting our democracy and coming elections? Second, on a relative basis, how susceptible do you think the United States is to what I’ll call radical political change?”

Glancing at Rakesh with a wink, Valerie said, “I’m flattered you’d be interested in our opinion. On your first issue, polarization of both traditional and social media is at an all-time high.

“In theory, we shouldn’t care if we still have multiple views capable of giving us the informed electorate democracy requires. In reality, that’s not happening. We’re having a harder time deciding what’s true and what’s not true, and even what’s relevant. That’s one of the reasons trust in the media has dropped so precipitously in this country. We don’t know where to go to get an objective view of the news or the issues. Walter Cronkite is no longer with us and nobody’s here to replace his calm, objective voice.

“Polarization helps fire up each side’s base—the voters who love echo chambers. Media polarization helps fuel identity politics on the right and on the left. And that contributes to more partisanship and bitterness, which fuels more media polarization. It’s a terribly dangerous feedback loop, driven in part by the media’s need to attract viewers and readers.

“The internet is training all of us to expect easy, immediate answers without a lot of thought. To be blunt, we’re becoming superficial and lazy. So, we look to our tribal groups and elites and echo chamber influencers for answers. Democracy doesn’t survive well when voters decide truth is whatever their tribal group wants it to be and don’t care about going to the trouble to find out otherwise.

“How you feel about this depends on how you want to use it. If you care about democracy, you may find it disturbing. If you want to take advantage of it, you may say this is an excellent opportunity to increase your control and influence over the voters who identify with your group. Look at Fox News and CNN.

“As for your second topic, our country is more susceptible to radical political change today than it has been since the thirties. We’re facing the combined effect of social and political factors we’ve never seen come together before: fake news and disagreement over the most basic facts; partisan bitterness focused on revenge, clearly made worse by identity politics firing up passions and hate; sharply falling trust in major stabilizing and enabling institutions like government, business, religious organizations and the media; and significant change in our media, both social and traditional, with very little understanding of what those changes mean to our democracy.

“The risk of radical political change increases when the loss of trust is accompanied by partisan anger, or ‘contempt’ as Arthur Brooks calls it. When these factors coincide, the masses are the most volatile, and most likely to act on emotion unconstrained by historical stereotypes.”

Rakesh said, “I worry about the potential impact of a Black Swan event on this. I don’t know how we’ll find national consensus in an economic or wartime emergency if the American public can’t decide who to believe or what the facts are. Trump calls everything he disagrees with ‘fake news’. The Democrats and much of the media are doing everything they can to destroy the President’s credibility, both to make it hard for him to govern and to defeat him in the next election. If America gets into a crisis and the public doesn’t believe their president, who will they believe? Nancy Pelosi? AOC and her gang? Upwards of 20 Democratic presidential contenders? The military? And how will we decide?”

Valerie said, “Putin understands this, and he’ll be happy to take advantage of it if he can. In our modern history, we’ve never faced risks like these before. It’s easy to blame Trump for his role in undermining presidential credibility and creating confusion about American foreign policy, but the Democrats and the liberal media are far from innocent beneficiaries. They know exactly what they’re doing. I’m not sure whether they fail to appreciate the unintended consequences that could follow, or they just don’t care about the results.”

Rakesh said, “As bad as the consequences may be for America, maybe they think any price is worth paying to get the revenge they want.”

* * *

Later in the book, Rakesh Jain tries to build corporate support for a project to bring American back together. He wanted to Repaint America purple by blending red and blue. He wanted a rain of purple consensus on the things that really matter—the essential beliefs that should bind us together—to push the red and blue extremists to the sides. It’s not too much of a spoiler to say that our country’s corporate leaders were afraid to step up against a barrage of social media criticism from all sides. As Rakesh learned, and as three more years of America’s dysfunctional politics have confirmed, we are going to need a lot more purple rain to wash away our starkly divided politics and cool the growing risk of political violence across our democracy.

In my latest novel, Virtual Control, Yale professor and China expert David Chen is giving a talk to a group of South Florida billionaires at the West Palm Beach estate of Tom Bowman, a leading fund manager who is active in national politics. Like my other novels, the book is a fast-paced real-world thriller set at the intersection of politics, technology and social change. The plot is based on a conspiracy by wealthy business leaders and politicians to control the U.S. presidency and dominate the metaverse.

Chen called his talk Chinese tools and actions for mind control as he said, “just to be provocative.” As he explained, “These tools are being used in China and Russia, but they have been used for decades by dictators and democratic leaders around the world. I would argue that they are also being used in the United States today—by both political parties and their leaders and media friends.”

Here is an excerpt of Chen’s remarks and interchange with one of the people in the audience:

“We have a bipartisan group here today, which is rare in our current times. So, as we talk, I’d like you to consider how many of these tools are being employed in the United States—and by whom. As you ponder this question, don’t just demonize the other party. Think about the misinformation and propaganda your own party has used as well. Also, think about the advantages that social media and the internet bring to deploying these tools. Virtual mind control is already evolving and it will become even more effective and efficient as technology advances.

“These are the four basic tools for mind control. Everything else is implementation. If the U.S. is going to compete globally in an era where democracy is on the wane, we must do a better job of deploying these tools against our enemies domestically and internationally.”

Chen paused for effect. “Let me be clear: whatever your political persuasion, if your party expects to win future elections it must excel at mind control. Would any of you disagree?”

“No one. All right, let’s talk about how you do it.”

“First, use government-controlled education to structure what people learn, beginning with the very young. Education is especially important in liberal democracies like the United States, which have constitutional protections against direct government interference with freedom of speech. Educational standards let governments indirectly control speech and cultural values that they could never mandate directly. This is why the Democrats are so concerned about parents who are daring to question and confront what their kids are being taught in public schools.

“Second, use the media to reinforce the message. Reduce the scope and influence of the traditional news media to make it easier to control the narrative and stories. Use social media to create new topics to replace them, especially with younger viewers.

“Third, realign trust. Weaken peoples’ trust in the traditional institutions that have guided them across time and replace them with new institutions that will lead people to the desired thoughts. Xi capitalized on this in China, making the CCP and Xi himself into the most trusted institutions in the country. As a result, trust is rising in China while in the U.S. and many other liberal democracies people are losing trust in their sociopolitical institutions, from religion to civic organizations, Congress and the Supreme Court. This is not happening by accident. People will trust something. In China, it’s the CCP and Xi. In the U.S., it’s increasingly the uncontrolled passions of the people, fueled, coalesced and magnified by social media and the partisan extremes on both sides. Trust in American business has held up reasonably well, but that may not continue as America’s woke corporations take essentially partisan cultural positions in response to the progressive views of their activist employees.

“By the way, trust goes beyond institutions to defining the people who are trustworthy. China’s Social Credit System is a sophisticated example of using Big Data, algorithms and AI to identify and brand the people who cannot be trusted. In America, social media bans of posts and people are having their own effects. Either way, people who break the social or political trust are shamed and penalized without the rule of law and—in the U.S. at least—without direct governmental action. The game is the same on both sides of the Pacific. If you support us, you can be trusted. Otherwise, we will show you what it’s like not to be trusted.

“Fourth, when it fits the narrative, make the people forget. Reinterpret the present. Make the lies seem true. Putin and Xi are stars at this, but U.S. politicians are close. Redefine the past to explain the present. History is being restated in the U.S. and China. Statues are falling in Hong Kong and Virginia. Tiananmen Square never happened. The 1619 Project wins the Pulitzer Prize.

Chen continued, “When all these things are played well, the people become like the well frog in the Chinese fable. Perhaps you know the story. A frog lives its life happily at the bottom of a well, looking up at a small circle of sky. One day, a turtle happens along and tells the frog about the wonders of the boundless sea. The frog has no way of comprehending what the turtle is talking about. The frog has every happiness he could ask for. What would he want with this strange place the turtle is describing? Perfect mind control occurs when the frog carries the universe of his well with him in his mind. He can go out into the world and sit beneath those vast skies and see only the wonderful universe where he grew up.”

“The frog is in a f---ing metaverse,” one of the younger billionaires from Miami said loudly with a laugh.

“Possibly,” Chen said. He glanced at Bowman with a hint of a smile. “But your comment is important. The coming metaverse will be the most valuable tool for mind control that the world has ever seen. Some observers say that politics in our post-truth world has already become an alternate universe designed by politicians and their often-captive media to portray the environment they would like us to believe exists. The supporters of this view would like us to be like the well frog. In the meantime, we will continue to struggle with the question of which universe is real, as we wonder who created the others.”