Human Trust Is the New Intelligence

Ron Schaub: Wonder about the future and how you'll be working and learning. Welcome to you in 2042, the future of Work with your host, Danielle Wallace.

Danielle Wallace: Hello and welcome to you in 2042, the future of Work. Joining me today is Ron Schaub.

Ron Schaub: Hey, Danielle, great to see you. And talk to you today. A little bit about myself. I am, um, the founder CEO of two companies. One is Bizly, which is a platform for in person connection allowing you to book events. And the other is Perch, which is a new type of professional networking system that allows you to go deeper with the people you know. I used to be a vc. I used to have a show on cnbc, but now I'm on the other side and I'm just a founder.

Danielle Wallace: Just a founder. It's amazing that you're able to bring that wealth of knowledge and have even greater impact for something that truly you're passionate about. And maybe we'll unpack a bit of that today, especially as it relates to this idea of the future. AI seems to be this hot topic that's not just a topic, but a pervasive theme without all of our human connections. I'm curious, Ron, to get a sense of we think about the future. 2042 coming really close. Since I've launched this podcast and there's been more thought given to the types of even tasks that I might replace. Give any thoughts on that?

Ron Schaub: Yeah, I do. By 2042, AI is going to replace basically all tasks effectively. Anything that we're wasting time on, um, that we can imagine today, all the basic minutia will be handled by AI agents. And actually that will happen a lot before 2042. From booking flights to even taking out the garbage. All the tasks that we don't want to do will be handled by AI. And so we will be in 2042, though the tasks will be the least of our worries. Unfortunately, by 2042, we will be dealing with some significant crises and challenges that we've never seen before, from climate to social upheaval to restructuring of government systems. So, yes, the AI will be taking away the little tasks, but we'll have bigger fish to fry, as they say.

Danielle Wallace: I hear you. I think I'm aligned with where you're thinking because there is so much more to our lives than just tasks and such. And even as we're looking at AI adoption as we're seeing in organizations, it feels like we're missing maybe some of the essence of what we should be thinking about when we think about AI adoptions. Where do companies go Wrong with this, with this idea?

Ron Schaub: Yeah. You know, look, I think that if you think about how AI as we know it now in 2026 works, it is a very siloed set of work streams. So today, as we know AI, it lives on your computer, it does things on your computer for you. And so it will handle writing documents, writing emails, taking care of workflows, maybe even responding to emails. It does a lot of things for you in a silo by itself. On a computer. What most people are predicting and we're starting to see is agentic interactions. So your AI, uh, on your computer will start doing business with my AI and my computer and there'll be inter agentic workflows. But where we're trying to. The big thing we're missing, the biggest thing we're missing is how do people, what are people's roles in the AI and what are personal networks? What are their roles in the AI? So what I mean by that is, for example, you might be sitting in Claude or Gemini or one of these other tools, you might be writing your new business plan for your new idea, but Claude and Gemini have no idea who you know in your world that can help you challenge your assumptions, that can help you make your dreams come true, maybe has access to a customer you need, an investor, you need a distributor, you need. So these AI systems are kind of living in a silo, not fully aware of your human world. And so that's what's actually missing as far as, like, how AI is being considered and the paradigms around AI today. And I think that's the biggest gap that we're facing. And actually none of the systems I'm aware of are actually even considering that gap. Another massive gap is our physical world. So, yes, we've heard about robots. We know there's Waymo on the roads, we know there's all types of robotic elements and um, humanoid robots being built. However, there's many aspects of the human condition in the physical world. How I'm going to meet with Danielle for coffee when I'm in Toronto, how I'm going to mobilize a group. Because we know that there's certain things that happen when we're together in person that cannot be replaced through a zoom call or through another forum. So there's just a number of paradigm layers to AI that are not being considered by any of the AI labs today. That, that I think is where there are some real things to consider.

Danielle Wallace: Ron, I hear you. And it feels like within the ecosystem of AI, everything is more just focused on the tech, not the humans, which are actually the most important thing in this entire ecosystem and moving way, way, way. We're not talking about human in the loop, like, no. Like connections, like actual people. And I have so many thoughts and opinions on this and this need to. This enduring need to have connection, which many of other guests have alluded to in pieces, but it's all kind of coming together. As we're looking out into 2042 or 2027, what are your thoughts on how we're looking at this piece of the human connection?

Ron Schaub: I think no one's looking at it, to be honest. And so the way I describe it is, have you ever heard of the term collective intelligence? There's machine intelligence, which is where we're spending collectively, we're spending a trillion dollars a year or more on, um, machine intelligence, which is a noble pursuit because it's going to handle all the tasks we don't want to do. So that makes sense. And it's a new kind of business economic boom happening. So there's a lot of money going into machine intelligence, and that is going to space, that's building robots, that's building AI. But actually, what I'm really passionate about and thinking about the most, what is actually the most, to me, the most unmind opportunity, the most untapped opportunity, is human collective intelligence. So what does that mean? Let's be more specific. So if Danielle and I here today, we're on a podcast, but tomorrow we're tasked with communicating a vital message to humanity about a big climate issue that's gonna happen. If you and I had to put our minds together on how we're gonna best communicate this message, we need ways to do that which we do not have today. So that means maybe our agents are exchanging information first, right? So maybe there's an exchange. These are the things on Danielle's mind. This is what Ron's knowledge is. The agents can basically go back and forth on that information and then intelligently serve up the prompts to us. So AI should be serving the humans some prompts saying, hey, these are the two or three things that Ron and Danielle should be talking about to actually unlock how this should be framed and spoken and said to the world. And that's an example of human collective intelligence. And that is going to be the most important thing that we as a species need to do now over the next few decades in advance of 2042, is to figure out how to unlock our human collective intelligence. Because, as you might know, they say that humans only use a Very small percentage of our overall brain capacity. So that means the compute power that we have, AI hasn't even put up to us yet. So what we're going to need to do is unlock more percentage points of our brain capacity. And I think that can only be done with other humans together. That's what collective intelligence is all about.

Danielle Wallace: I echo that and I love that. And I see a path forward where we can, as humans, do that. But I also see this path requiring effort. I was looking at a 2023 study which was comparing computational power of humans for math and science skills. And yes, AI was doing better than that. But the ensuing skill atrophy of that is suffice to say that this is where we have the opportunity because we have so much more capability to have M. Absolutely. And we have opportunity to drive those skills that are needed, to forge those connections that are needed, and maybe have ways of facilitating that a bit easier than now where it's. Yeah, how would I do that, Ron? We're not going to be on a two day zoom call to do that. I like your future vision of how do we actually unlock that human, the human collective.

Ron Schaub: Yeah, I mean, look, I think that like, even more examples of this is like, for example, you know, you basically want to find ways to peel like you're peeling the onion back. You want to peel away all the noise and clutter and find the things that can kind of like pull the insights out of you. Right. So that could be a combination of the right person that has a special knowledge base or skill in a special thing. It could be a environment, being in a place with a beautiful scene overlooking the ocean that just gets your mind flowing in a certain way. There's things that are just innately human. And really, I think that's the thing that we're going to be really starting to think about and embrace over these next few decades is how do we pull out our capacity and increase it. And it's probably going to be a lot of new things that we haven't done before to do that. So that's what I'm excited about.

Danielle Wallace: And I can see a way forward with that, is that our networks, the peoples like our communities, because that's where we uniquely as humans gain so many insights that despite the computational power of various generative AI, no, I can still myself draw from all the various inferences and insights from many, many, many sources that, yeah, just based on my own experiences, like I'm serving up something that actually is unique. But M, my network becomes such a core Critical, critical piece of that. Otherwise, in a vacuum, meh, ah, there's no, no value there. So with that, Ron, where do you see in terms of like, what does future ready then look like for a workforce?

Ron Schaub: So here's what I think about the workforce. First of all, I think the facts are that we're going to see major displacement of jobs. That is just the first kind of layer that's going to happen is that as AI advances, less humans will be needed in the organization. And so immediate repercussion is that there are going to be job displacement. However, I think that being future read is comprised of a few things. Number one, I think you need to basically define your zone of brilliance, your zone of expertise. So whatever that might be, really, don't, uh, just sit on it. Don't sit on your laurels. Get that expertise out there. Make sure it's visible, capturable. The AI agents know about it. Make sure the world knows about whatever your zone of brilliance is. That means put a lot of content out there. Make sure that content is eaten up by the AI agents. Make sure your zone of brilliance is visible. Number two, I think that trust is going to be the biggest M currency of the next 20 years. And so what does that mean? What that means is that for the last few decades, we've been on the Internet and we've been going miles wide, but only an inch deep, right? So we've been swimming very shallow on across, uh, millions and millions and millions of people. What's going to happen now is with the proliferation of AI agents, you're going to have increasingly difficult time trusting what you see online. Almost nothing will be really what you're going to be able to trust. Everything will be synthetic, fabricated, not sure what you can trust. So what happens in an environment like this is you're going to now go back to the people you already know. So the thousands of people or at least hundreds of people you've met through school, work, life, most people you've touched their hands, you've shook hands, you know that they exist. Those are the people that you're probably going to go back to in these times, and those are the people you're going to want to do business with. You're going to want to maybe, uh, if you do lose your job and you need to be, want to go to contract work, you'll do gigs with them, you'll collaborate with them on new projects. If there's problems that arise, you'll want to find them again. So, and I'm building platforms for this but basically, how do you reconnect in deeper ways that the people you already know and trust is going to be how you future ready yourself in this age of AI.

Danielle Wallace: Well said. And some things that, uh, we collectively as an audience can also take in mind to carry ourselves forward, to be poised to harness our connections and to sow the deepness of those. Ron, where can people learn more about you?

Ron Schaub: Um, bizly.com is my main company right now, Perch. So is, um, my networking app. And then you can find me on LinkedIn. And I also have a substack called Rising sun. So lots of different ways to find me.

Danielle Wallace: Oh, uh, wonderful. And those will be in the show notes. Thank you so much, Ron, for the fabulous insights. Love it.

Ron Schaub: Thank you, Danielle. Thank you for being a part of the future.

Danielle Wallace: Subscribe now to stay current.