Mark: Here’s a wild statistic for you. NASA, of all places, did a study to find creative engineers and they started by testing kids. They found that 98% of five-year-olds test at what they called a 'genius level' for creativity. Michelle: Ninety-eight percent! That’s basically everyone. Mark: Exactly. But here’s the kicker. They re-tested the same kids at age 15. That number had plummeted to just 12%. Michelle: Oh, wow. That is… depressingly familiar. That explains my stick-figure art and my inability to come up with a decent birthday gift idea. So what on earth is happening to us between kindergarten and high school? And more importantly, how do we get that genius back? Mark: That is the central question, and it’s at the heart of the book we're diving into today: The Human Edge: How curiosity and creativity are your superpowers in the digital economy by Greg Orme. And this isn't just some philosophical musing. Orme is a serious innovation expert who's worked with huge global companies, and the whole book, which actually won the Business Book of the Year Award, was sparked when a CEO asked him a very direct question after a speech: "In a world of AI and automation, what's left for humans?" Michelle: That’s the billion-dollar question, isn't it? So, is the book’s answer just… get that 98% childhood creativity back? Is it that simple? Mark: It’s a huge part of it, but the book argues it's part of a much bigger, more profound shift in how we see ourselves in relation to technology. It’s not just about being more creative; it's about becoming, as he puts it, a "more human human."

Michelle: A 'more human human.' I like the sound of that, but it also sounds a little abstract. What does that mean when you’re worried about an algorithm taking your job? Mark: Well, let's start with what it doesn't mean. It doesn't mean trying to compete with AI on its own terms. The book opens with these powerful stories that show just how futile that is. Do you remember when IBM's computer, Watson, played on the game show Jeopardy! back in 2011? Michelle: Vaguely, yes. It played against the all-time champions, right? Ken Jennings was one of them. Mark: He was. And he was the best of the best. But Watson didn't just win; it demolished them. It was a cultural moment where you could almost feel the collective human ego deflate. After the loss, Jennings famously wrote on his screen, "I for one welcome our new computer overlords." It was a joke, but it captured a real anxiety. Michelle: Right, the feeling that we’re being outsmarted. That our unique cognitive abilities are no longer so unique. Mark: Precisely. And this isn't a new fear. Orme connects this moment to the Luddites in the 19th century. We think of them as just being anti-technology, but they were skilled textile workers who saw new steam-powered looms and correctly realized their entire livelihood was about to be destroyed. They weren't just smashing machines for fun; they were fighting for their place in the world. Michelle: Okay, but isn't that a losing battle? Whether it's a steam loom or a sophisticated AI, resisting technology feels like trying to stop the tide from coming in. You can't win. Mark: And that is the book's exact point. You can't win by fighting it. The Luddites lost. Ken Jennings lost. Trying to be a faster, more efficient fact-retrieval machine than Watson is a fool's errand. The book’s central argument is that we need to stop competing and start differentiating. Michelle: Differentiating. How? Mark: By cultivating the skills that are uniquely, profoundly human. Orme boils them down to what he calls the 4Cs: Consciousness, Curiosity, Creativity, and Collaboration. These are the abilities that AI struggles to replicate. The goal isn't to be a slightly worse version of a computer; it's to be an excellent version of a human.

Michelle: Okay, the 4Cs. Let's break those down. The first one, Consciousness, sounds the most… well, philosophical. How does being 'conscious' help me keep my job? Mark: It's a great question, because it does sound lofty. But in the book, Orme defines Consciousness in a very practical way: it’s about having a purpose. A 'why'. A machine operates on code and instructions. Humans operate on meaning. And he uses one of the most powerful examples imaginable to prove this point: the story of Viktor Frankl. Michelle: The psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust. Mark: Yes. Frankl was imprisoned in Auschwitz, where he lost his entire family and was stripped of everything that makes up a life. He was surrounded by unimaginable suffering. And what he observed was that the prisoners who had the best chance of survival were not necessarily the physically strongest, but those who had a reason to live—a purpose to cling to. Maybe it was the hope of seeing a loved one again, or a project they felt they had to finish. Michelle: He wrote that "He who has a why to live can bear almost any how." Mark: That’s the quote. Frankl realized that even in the most horrific circumstances, there is a space between the stimulus—the horror around him—and his response. In that space lies our power to choose our attitude, to find our meaning. A machine doesn't have that space. It just responds. That's Consciousness. It's the engine. Michelle: Wow. Okay, that grounds it in a way that's incredibly powerful. So purpose is the engine. What's the second C, Curiosity? Is that the steering wheel? Mark: That’s a perfect analogy. If purpose is the fuel, curiosity is what directs that energy. It's the drive to learn, explore, and adapt. And in a world changing as fast as ours, the ability to learn is everything. The book tells a great modern story about this: Bill Gates' "Think Weeks." Michelle: I've heard of these. He just disappears into a cabin with a pile of books, right? Mark: A huge pile of books and papers from Microsoft employees. Twice a year, he would completely disconnect—no family, no staff, just him and a stack of ideas. He would read for up to 18 hours a day. It was during one of these Think Weeks in 1995 that he wrote his famous "Internet Tidal Wave" memo, which completely pivoted Microsoft's entire strategy to embrace the internet. Michelle: So he was deliberately carving out time not just to work, but to be purely curious. Mark: Exactly. He was strengthening his curiosity muscle. Orme argues that curiosity isn't just a personality trait; it's a discipline. It’s the engine of lifelong learning. And in the 21st century, as the futurist Alvin Toffler said, the illiterate won't be those who can't read, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. That is a skill powered entirely by curiosity. Michelle: That makes so much sense. Purpose gives you the resilience to keep going, and curiosity ensures you're going in the right direction, always adapting. It’s like an internal guidance system. Mark: That's the perfect way to put it. That's the inner toolkit for your human edge.

Mark: And once you have that internal guidance system fired up, you need a way to express it in the world. That brings us to the final two Cs: Creativity and Collaboration. Michelle: Creativity. This brings us back to the NASA study. It feels like the hardest one to get back once you've lost it. The book debunks a lot of myths about it, doesn't it? Mark: It does. The biggest myth is that creativity is a magical gift for a chosen few—the tortured artists and eccentric geniuses. Orme argues it's a skill, a process, and most importantly, an attitude. And one of the most powerful stories he uses to illustrate this is about an engineer at General Electric named Doug Dietz. Michelle: An engineer, not an artist. I like that already. Mark: Dietz was a senior engineer who had designed a new MRI machine. He was incredibly proud of it, a marvel of technology. But one day at the hospital, he saw a little girl who was terrified to go into it. She was crying, her parents were stressed, and he realized that for this child, his beautiful machine was a monster. He learned that up to 80% of child patients had to be sedated just to get through the scan. Michelle: Oh, that's heartbreaking. As an engineer, that must have been devastating to see. Mark: It was. But instead of just tweaking the specs, he got creative. He took a design thinking course, and he started to practice empathy. He watched kids play, he talked to pediatric specialists, he even went to a children's museum. He started thinking not like an engineer, but like a child. And he had a brilliant idea. He painted the MRI machine to look like a pirate ship. Michelle: A pirate ship? Mark: A full-on adventure. The room was painted with murals of the sea, the nurses had a script where they'd say, "Okay, we're going on an adventure! You have to lie perfectly still in the boat so you don't get spotted by the pirates!" The scary noises of the machine were reframed as part of the game. Michelle: That is absolutely brilliant. What happened? Mark: The results were astounding. The number of children needing sedation dropped from 80% to less than 10%. Patient satisfaction scores soared. He didn't change the technology at all. He changed the experience. That is creativity in action—it's empathy, it's problem-solving, it's seeing the world through another's eyes. Michelle: That story gives me chills. It’s such a hopeful example. And it perfectly sets up the last C, Collaboration, because he had to work with the nurses and doctors to make that happen. He couldn't do it alone. Mark: He couldn't. And that's the final, crucial piece of the puzzle. The myth of the lone genius, working in isolation, is largely a fiction. Orme tells this hilarious and eye-opening story about a design student named Thomas Thwaites who decided to build a simple toaster from scratch. Michelle: From scratch? Like, mining the ore for the metal? Mark: Exactly. He went to a mine in England to get iron ore, he tried to extract copper from rock, he tried to make his own plastic from potato starch. It was a complete and utter disaster. After months of grueling work, he ended up with this lumpy, pathetic-looking object that, when he finally plugged it in, immediately melted. Michelle: (Laughs) Oh no! But what a point it makes. Mark: A profound one. Even a cheap, ten-dollar toaster is the product of a global network of thousands of people with specialized knowledge—miners, engineers, chemists, designers, factory workers. No single person on Earth knows how to make a toaster from scratch. It's a collaborative miracle. And that, Orme argues, is our ultimate human edge. AI can process data in isolation. But humans can connect, share ideas, and build things together that none of us could ever build alone.

Michelle: So when you put it all together… the 4Cs… it paints a very different picture of the future. It’s less about humans versus machines, and more about what kind of human you choose to be. Mark: That's the core of it. The book reframes the entire debate. The real threat isn't artificial intelligence; it's our own potential for human incuriosity, for a lack of purpose, for a failure to connect. AI is a tool. A powerful one, but a tool nonetheless. The chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, after he lost to Deep Blue, eventually came to this same conclusion. He started organizing "Centaur" chess tournaments. Michelle: What's a Centaur in this context? Mark: It’s a human-AI team. A human player paired with a chess computer. And what they found was fascinating. The best Centaur teams, often composed of amateur players with a great process for working with their AI, could consistently beat not only the most powerful supercomputers, but also the top human grandmasters who were also using AI. Michelle: So it wasn't the best human or the best computer that won. It was the best collaboration. Mark: It was the best collaboration. That is the human edge. It's our ability to find purpose, to stay curious, to apply creativity, and to collaborate effectively with our tools and with each other. Michelle: That’s such a powerful and, frankly, much more optimistic way to look at the future. It seems the question we should be asking ourselves isn't 'Will a robot take my job?' but rather, 'Am I actively cultivating the human skills that no robot ever could?' Mark: That's the question right there. And it's a daily practice. Michelle: I love that. So for everyone listening, maybe think about one small way you can practice one of the 4Cs this week. Ask a 'dumb' question you've been holding back. Take 15 minutes to brainstorm a silly solution to a real problem. Find out the 'why' behind a task at work. We'd love to hear what you come up with. Mark: A fantastic challenge. This has been an exploration of how to find our place in a world of machines, not by fearing them, but by embracing what makes us irreplaceable. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.