Why AI Will Never Replace Human Ingenuity and Adaptability

"AI takes one feature of intelligence – logic – and accelerates it. As long as life calls for math, AI crushes humans," Fletcher writes in the book "Primal Intelligence."

"It's the king of big-data choices. The moment, though, that life requires commonsense or imagination, AI tumbles off its throne. This is how you know that AI is never going to run the world – or anything."

Introducing Primal Intelligence

Instead, Fletcher has developed a program to help people develop their primal intelligence. This program has been successfully used with groups ranging from the U.S. Army to elementary school students.

At its core, primal intelligence is "the brain's ancient ability to act smart with limited information," Fletcher said.

In many cases, the most difficult problems people face involve situations where they have limited information and need to develop a novel plan to meet a challenge.

The Power of Story Thinking

The answer is what Fletcher calls "story thinking."

"Humans have this ability to communicate through stories, and story thinking is the way the brain has evolved to work," he said.

"What makes humans successful is the ability to think of and develop new behaviors and new plans. It allowed our ancestors to escape the predator. It allows us to plan, to plot our actions, to put together a story of how we might succeed."

The Four Primal Powers

Humans possess four "primal powers" that enable us to act intelligently with limited information.

Those powers are intuition, imagination, emotion, and common sense. In the book, Fletcher expands on each of these and their role in helping humans innovate.

In essence, he says these four primal powers are driven by "narrative cognition," the brain's ability to think in terms of a story. Shakespeare may be the best example of how to think in story, he said.

What Shakespeare Can Teach Us

Fletcher, who holds an undergraduate degree in neuroscience and a PhD in literature, discusses in the book how Shakespeare's innovations in storytelling have inspired innovators well beyond the literary world. He quotes people from Abraham Lincoln to Albert Einstein to Steve Jobs about the impact reading Shakespeare had on their lives and careers.

Many of Shakespeare's characters are "exceptions to rules" rather than archetypes, which encourages people to think in new ways, Fletcher said.

What Shakespeare has helped these pioneers – and many other people – do is see stories in their own lives and imagine new ways of doing things and overcoming obstacles, he said.

AI vs. Human Adaptability

That's something AI can't do, he said. AI collects a lot of data and then identifies probable patterns, which is great if you have a large amount of information.

"But what do you do in a totally new situation? Well, in a new situation you need to make a new plan. And that's what story thinking can do that AI cannot," he said.

Military Applications of Primal Intelligence

The U.S. Army was so impressed with Fletcher's program that it brought him in to help train soldiers in its Special Operations unit. After seeing it in action, the Army awarded Fletcher its Commendation Medal for his "groundbreaking research," which helped soldiers see the future more quickly, recover more quickly from trauma, and act more wisely in life-and-death situations.

In the book, Fletcher gave an example of how one Army recruit used his primal intelligence to overcome obstacles in the most literal sense.

As part of its curriculum, Army Special Operations had a final test for recruits: an obstacle course of logs and ropes. The recruits were told they had to ring the bell at the end of the course before time expired in order to pass the test.

This particular recruit knew he couldn't beat the clock. At the starting line, he thought of a new plan: he ran around the obstacle course, rather than through it, ringing the bell in record time.

While other military schools would have flunked him, Special Operations passed him, based on his ingenuity in passing the test, Fletcher said. As the Army monitored his career after graduation, it found that he outperformed many of his classmates on field missions.

Implications for Business and Leadership

The value of primal intelligence works in all walks of life, including business. While business often emphasizes management, Fletcher said primal intelligence shines when leadership is needed.

"Management is optimizing existing processes. But the main challenge of the future is not optimizing things that already work," Fletcher said.

"The challenge of the future is figuring things out when we don't know what works. That's what leadership is all about, and that's what story thinking is all about."

The Role of AI in the Human Future

In business and elsewhere, Fletcher said AI has a role to play. But it should not be seen as a replacement for human intelligence.

"Humans are able to say, this could work but it hasn't been tried before. That's what primal intelligence is all about," he said.

"Computers and AI are only able to repeat things that have worked in the past or engage in magical thinking. That's not going to work in many situations we face."