Discussion Questions Week 4

Response 1

Heffernan, a former CEO, attempts to explain the need for human qualities, as forecasting with technology cannot be solely relied on in the future. In the TED talk, Heffernan first attempts to connect with her audience by using a joke,  in which coconuts are used in the reference as an example. I thought it was well done by Heffernan, as it got her audience interested in hearing more about what she had to say. After using examples of things that AI cannot forecast, such as when a group of high schoolers will need to buy coconuts, Heffernan uses “we” a significant amount. Heffernan is most likely referring to the human population due to how much she references human nature and the qualities that humans have, unlike technology. Along with using “we”, Heffernan does a fantastic job at blending in everyday real-world examples of why human qualities are essential. Heffernan does this by speaking about a hospital that had a strict schedule for each patient, which was changed to a more relaxed schedule based on what the nurse believed was necessary. A nurse who is sitting in the audience might be interested in hearing more about this topic. She uses other topics of individuals in the business world, thereby making other people within that field interested. By referencing a wide range of different industries, Heffernan can appeal to a variety of people in different areas, yet all have one thing in common. Efficiency does not always mean effectiveness, as numbers are not 100%, and cannot predict the future. She also used a personal anecdote where she said she spoke to some rising CEOs, asking who their friends were at work. The CEOs stated that they had no time for that,  in turn not being able to create lasting connections with other meaningful people in the business world.

The most critical part about her speech though is that she spoke more in a conversational tone. She did not bring up any relevant statistical evidence in her examples, rather she spoke through the reasoning. Technology, on the other hand, would solely rely on numbers, not human intuition. For this speech, Heffernan only relies on human interaction and appeals to the audience as “we” to illustrate the need for human interaction and emotions to be involved in organizations.

Response 2

Heffernan chooses to work with evidence in the exact opposite way that AI would work to form an opinion. Instead of using numerical data to back up her findings, Heffernan relies almost only on anecdotes in different organizations to prove her point. To make her points more effective, Heffernan develops her ideas by initially stating what she believes to be true, which is that we must not rely on technology completely, as humans are useful due to their ability to form connections and have emotions. After doing so, Heffernan chooses to use a real-world example to illustrate this point. For example, Heffernan states that having an efficient well-laid schedule may not be effective. Nurses discovered this after following a strict schedule only allocating a small amount of time for each patient and then turning to a schedule where they were able to spend as much time as they would like to with any given patient. After switching schedules, the cost went down while patient recovery times also improved.

Heffernan throughout the speech keeps us on our toes, as she speaks on the fact that no one knows when the economy is going to tank, or when the next epidemic is going to happen. Although this talk happened in 2019, I think it is really interesting. No one ever could have imagined that the COVID pandemic would happen in 2020, as we really could not predict it. Being able to look back on this video two years later is fascinating to me because it solidifies her point that forecasting and technology cannot predict everything in life, especially because ”Efficiency works well when you can predict exactly what you are going to need. But when the anomalous comes along… efficiency is no longer your friend.”  She speaks about how there are organizations that help research vaccines and variations of sicknesses or diseases. If we did not already have research on other diseases such as SARS, then we would not have been able to develop a vaccine as quickly. However, due to some amazing researchers who continued to research SARS a vaccine was developed fast. Some may not have thought that it was efficient to be studying something that was not impacting our society at that present moment. However, it became effective in the long run and helped develop a vaccine.

Another reason why Heffernan is so successful at conveying her thoughts is because of the way that she addresses her audience. She addresses the audience as “we” because both she and the audience have emotions and are people. One of the main points that she tries to illustrate is that the thing that makes an organization successful is the people within it. I believe that her speech was less of an argument and more so went through a step-by-step process of her ideas, which were laid out through logical reasoning and stories.

By using both imaginary and real-world anecdotes to convey her point, Heffernan does a fantastic job at conveying her point about why technology cannot be fully relied on. I enjoyed listening to this TED talk especially because it aligned with many topics covered in my management classes last semester.