Form Frustration to Foresight: the Art of Anticipation, with Marcela Sabino

Welcome to be and Think in the House of Trust. My name is

Servane Mouazan from Conscious Innovation and

in this series a welcome people who

ignite social and environmental change, the

way they invest or influence and move

financial, social insights, capital to

make this world a bit less brutal. And

together we think about trust, future kind

collaborations and we notice the differences

that make a difference. And

today I'm excited to welcome Marcella

from Brazil. She's an investor, futurist,

entrepreneur and the chief exec officer of

Rare Light Immersive. She's fascinated

by the practical impact of

exponential technologies such as artificial

intelligence, digital fabrication, robotics B

hacking big data and the Internet of things

on society and much more.

And I remember many occasions we

met among others in Rio, Brazil where she

was at some point head of Innovation at

the Museum of Tomorrow. What I most remembered

from Sabina is her curiosity and

curiosity sparkles in her

eyes when she find herself on the intersection of various

disciplines when things are not clear.

So let's settle in.

Welcome Marcella.

Thank you so much. Great to be here.

Before we start, I had a little quick view on your

academic records. You got a BA in

Anthropology, Political Science. You've got

master in Public Policy and Political and Economic Development

and you've got master in Design of Entertainment

from the European Institute of Design.

What connects all of these disciplines? Why

these wide interest coming from me there?

I can't expect the answer. But I really want if you

to shed a light on that for us.

Yeah, sure, sure. So basically my

first part of my career was around

development, right? So developing economies, political and economic

development. And I did the

Harvard Kennedy School as you mentioned,

where we think about how to develop and I was

really taking it through you kind of the development lens

and the business lens. Also how can you put businesses to

help develop econom. So I worked around

microfinance, microfranhisising and inclusive

business, as a consultant in the World

bank, the IFC and the idv.

And then I use my anthropological and political

science from my BA and then my

political and economic development

master, doing that kind of work. And

then after that I moved to Dubai and

worked in these large scale strategic projects

in Dubai, Abu Dhabi. So working on

how to put Dubai to the next level. This was in

back way in the beginning. Then I worked in Mazdar,

which is a carbon neutral solar powered

city again on strategy,

technology aspects. So that's, that's

where that kind of first aspect Went, and

then I was ah, later on I moved to

Brazil. originally it was born in Brazil, but

I left when I was three, moved to the US which is

why I have this accent. And then basically

studied at the European Institute of Design because

I was the head of innovation and lab director at the Museum

of Tomorrow. And I didn't have a

background in kind of in curation

or in kind of the arts and design. So

that's where that one came from.

All right. So what I'm taking from there is wherever you go,

there's an opportunity to study and to dig deeper and

to explore.

Yes, always, always. We have to always keep

learning, lifelong learning, especially now, these days,

I can't.

Remember who quoted that, who said that quote. But the

systems don't change, they learn.

So what is it that

you learned that made you what you do

today? And if you can explain to us what you are doing

today.

So today what I do is

after these experiences that I was mentioning, I

went kind of. I worked at a VC called 500

Startups. I was in the innovation strategy lead

and also created a foresight practice for 500

startups which is not 500 global. And so with

that it was really around thinking about

how can entrepreneurship develop the

economy of a certain place. So it still kind

of picks up from the development theme from earlier

on and really thinks about

how disruptive innovation,

this kind of placing big

bets on the future. Because often

tech entrepreneurship, these are people who are really focused

on thinking about the future. And so from

my museum days, the Museum of Tomorrow is a

museum of applied science that thinks about the future

50 years from now. So I really got

very in depth with foresight

and futurism, at the museum, using

it and everything I did. And since then that's become a

mega toolkit for me. And I think everybody

should also learn how to do that. Especially in these times

where it seems like the future is coming to the present.

So to answer your question, today what I do is I'm

a business growth consultant. So I help

companies double their revenues through strategy

implementation, and market

expansion. It's very fun and

very interesting. There's a few things you can do to kind

of switch the trajectories of companies, and make

them see growth quite quickly, especially when you're thinking

about where the future is going, how you

can act today. That's what I've been doing and I've

been working on products, go to market, strategic

partnerships and business development for These kinds of

companies that are within the 500k to 5

million, revenue range.

When you work with these companies, these new ventures,

helping them, you know, to grow, to scale up,

what kind of first of resistance do you meet

from them? And how do you help them

see the future, see the world differently?

That's a great question. So first, what

happens when you work, when you first start

working with a company? There's a lot of frustration

involved. They are at a point where they're

stuck, which is why they're, looking to work with me.

They have had some success. They've,

figured out their product market fit,

in many cases, and they're doing something right. But

for some reason, there's a few things, maybe, that

are stuck. Often these entrepreneurs are very

frazzled and exhausted. Exhausted

is a word I hear a lot. I'm exhausted.

You know, a lot of times it's a very

strategic work, but it's also almost a

psychological work as well, because you have to

deal with this mental exhaustion and the

burnout that happens so often today. I

mean, we are so bombarded with information from

all sides, and our minds have not changed

very much, and we can only process a very

little amount of information.

And the idea, the way that we work

is to really focus on very few things. We kind of

try to clarify, simplify,

and implement. That's really what we work on.

I remember a few weeks ago I saw

you put a quote from that actor Jerry sign

file. He said, we're smart enough to invent AI,

dumb enough to need it, and so

stupid, we can't figure out if we did the right thing with

that. Marcela, I'd love to discuss with you the

art of not knowing and playing with

anticipation. What can we do?

How can we do that without making the world an even worse

place than it is now?

So I think that that's a great question,

because when we're dealing with these systems,

there could be unintended consequences. So

there's a very famous thought experiment of

the paper clips. I think it's by Nick

Bostrom originally. He's a thinker

around AI, safety. And the

idea very quickly is this idea that

you can give a very innocuous,

goal for the AI to think

about or to implement. Right?

Make paperclips. You optimize for making

paperclips. The AI starts to kind

of orient. This was the idea, this was years ago,

but. So AI agents didn't even exist at that

point. But, imagine the AI

starts and kind of Organizes a factory and then

gets more factories and then basically

starts to extract metals from the

earth to make the paperclips. And

then eventually the humans are getting in the way so

they get rid of the humans in the whole process and just

everything turns out to be paperclips. That's like

optimization to an absurd

degree. But machines don't know this. They

know what you tell them to optimize

for. And I think that recently in

reading about what's been happening and following it,

they've had a few, experiments where

scientists are experimenting with putting

AI in some environments, whether it's

Minecraft, whether it's like lab environments. And

they see the AIs interact with each other.

So it would be a bunch of AIs together.

And you have, in some cases

AI is s. Kind of, kind of, trying to organize

themselves. You know, in some cases AIs were

creating constitutions. In some cases they were passing memes m

along with each other. And in one

case some of these AIs have gotten together and TR to

created a religion, quote unquote, and

got others to be part of it. So

you start seeing that even in these enclosed

environments, just because all the AI is, is

getting the information that exists that humans have

created and are replicating it

based on what's most probable. Right? So these

are the things that are on the Internet. You know, whether it's

the very old AI called Tay from

Microsoft that very quickly, in

record time became racist,

misogynist and homophobic. That

was years ago, to these things. Now it's

not right now it's no longer about

can we do this? Because the answer is yes, we can

do this, but should we do this in every

instance? And I think that the more that

we. The other day I saw Bill, Gates saying

that within 10 years, most of the jobs

that we know of are not going to be there

anymore and that we need massive, reorganization

of the economic system. And

I think we're seeing that slowly now. But what happens with techn

technology is that it's exponential. So I mean, especially these kinds of technologies

where you see you can't even keep up with models,

or one human being can't keep up with a number

of papers being published daily. It's impossible.

So not one human being knows everything that's going

on. And we have AIs that are

being created at breakneck speed. You see

this in the startup world. So

I think that there needs to be a question

of how can we think about

what this means and also at the same time

think about what systems that we have to

create so that human beings

will be able to survive this,

this, this situation.

So from humans

frustration and exhaustion

to AI self

teaching, it's little during their

little tea parties to

the moment where humans have to

consider how to survive because of the stuff they're

created. At what point does AI become

frustrated with humans?

Well you know, it's funny, I saw a

headline, ah, just before coming on here saying that

a lot of people are using AI as

therapists and AIs are starting to

show kind of it's very dangerous to

anthropomorphize. Say AI is s feeling this or AI is feeling

that because it's not, it's an algorithm created

by humans and all these kinds of things, but these are

the patterns. And so now there has been some

talk of AI having to

be, you can't even say

calmed or kind of helped through this situation

because there could be some kind of a burnout. And it's so

funny because years ago, I think it was about 10 years

ago I saw there's a company called

A company in NGO was more kind of a, I, ah, guess

a provocative movement. This is

like over 10 years ago called People for the

Ethical Treatment of Reinforcement

Learners. Which is, you know, reinforcement learners

are the type of AI that was there back in the

day, reinforcement learning algorithms and

things like that. And this idea, this concept

that AI could eventually

feel upset or sad or have, or feel

right. I say this thing with quotations because.

But then there's lots of thinkers that

call this into question.

What does it mean to feel? What does it mean to have

consciousness? Consciousness is a very big debate in this

field. And what does it mean to just

treat Chat GPT badly or treat

Gemini badly or all these kinds of things? what does that mean? Or

robots. We've seen people kicking robots

and all these kinds of things to show how they work. But what

does that actually mean? What does consciousness mean? We still don't know that

question. So the answer to that question so it becomes very

difficult. So it's a really

wild field once you

start to think about what these implications

may be. And even more so when you think

of getting robotics and now there's all this work being

done with organic robotics and

joining that with AI, you know, so

that, that's why robots haven't actually come

into our world so much. But when you join those

two, and you have robots that are Gonna be you

working side by side. There's lots of questions

there. What does this mean? And you know,

there are thinkers that, even though I may not agree,

I think there are thinkers that do think

about the consciousness of these

machines. What is, you know, because consciousness comes from a substrate,

ours happens to be kind of flesh and blood and all these things. We

don't know how that generates consciousness or

awareness. But who is to say that another

substrate can't generate consciousness as well, even if it's

electronic? I mean, you know, so

questions to ask. And then meanwhile we're

all trying to struggle here with the economy.

So we may not even think about these things. But

my assertion is that I think we need to start

questioning, what are these new

AI agents? What are they doing? What are they

allowed to do? Can they go out in the world? I

mean that's where we're going, right? They're going to go out in the

world and do things on your behalf. What does it mean if they do

something bad or wrong? I think

if anybody can take anything from this conversation

is we need to focus on today, you know, growing our

businesses, all these kinds of things. But at the same time, you know, don't

be exempt from these conversations going

on in culture because that's where we're gonna

live in the future is being created today.

When these things happen and it'not'a way that it's not

going towards where you want it to be, then

vote, vote don't buy things

if it's from companies that are doing

things that you don't agree with. I think that having agency in

today's society while managing your

own like let's say quote unquote,

business survival or survival in companies. We know

there's massive layoffs. We know that

it's getting difficult for companies to

survive with the economic situation

going on. I think it's like how you balance.

Those two things well that

the call to the action.

What I like is more in the form of a question. Ask

yourself this question. Where is your emergency or

priority? Lies. but don't forget to think

about the implication of what you think, the

implication of what you buy, the implication

of, you know, who you connect with and what is the

culture of and the art of

not knowing or not judging, but just welcoming,

maybe scenarios, welcoming

options.

Exactly.

Creating all these, these kind of stories ahead and see

where you position yourself here. Oh, it's so

complicated, but we love it.

Yeah, I guess, you know, even if you're scared. Just

look at it anyway and try to, try to

see. I think what I don't, what I hope people don't do

is just, you know, just don't deal with it because it's

there whether you put your head in the sand or not, you know.

So I think just, just be aware

of what's happening and whatever you can do in your small

circle of influence is already a lot.

So you've explored foresight practices.

I mean you've just explained how you did that. You've explored that for,

for a long time. If people,

are you listening to you now and say, okay, I'm

just not going to keep my head in the San. I'm going

to explore and be curious, be less

judgmental about the future, be open.

What else should people do or should

teams do? Consider

or consider when they're starting their

foresight journey. Light touch.

That's a great question. I think in a few minutes here,

I think that one of the best ways to do it is

to search for signals. So what

signals are or weak signals? Let's say they

are little bubbles of the future that are

in the present. Right. So

anything that you read or you see or

anything that any new company that's

coming about or anything that comes out from research laboratory

that makes you do a double take

or that's different from what you've

seen, for example, I'll give you a simple

example that's not connected to AI so maybe you can,

because they're all, all over the place. You know, I read

one a few years ago which has kind of really made me stop and think,

which is farmers in certain

area in Southeast Asia, they stopped

cultivating chickens and they went for

ducks. And the reason for that was

because their farms were getting

flooded every so often because of climate change,

you know, and that's the big driver. So the signal always has

a driver. So it can be climate change, you

know, political change, it could be economic, it can be

technological, all these things. But

that, that's one was really interesting. And

it makes you stop and be like wow, that, that is really interesting.

I haven't heard that before. And so what

I would suggest for companies to do and even

smaller companies or anybody really,

I have an Excel, spreadsheet that I have a

bunch of signals on and I have the name of the signal,

the little description I have, the driver is very

nerdy. And then the web paage where it came

from, and then I keep them there and every so often I look at

that and think, and then you should always keep on doing that

for maybe for your area, for things that have to

deal with your area. So, for example, a very

big one that happened recently, it was, CHABT and its

new image, capabilities that

has driven all the marketers mad now,

because it's so easy to generate these

incredible, advertisements and stuff like that. That's one. And then

you put that in there, you catalog it, and,

then you put those together, you see which ones are similar to each other,

and you see what's going on. And then you kind of

think, where could this lead? If this keeps on going,

is there going to be more of this or less of this in the future? If you think

it's more than how would you deal with it? That's how I would think

through it. And obviously, if you want to go deeper, then you'd have

to get somebody who knows how to translate that

into company strategy. That's something that gives you an idea

of what's happening in the future

and how it will be relevant to you. You know, you can start

thinking that way.

I love that. You know what, how I play with. I've got such an

Excel sheet as well. It's so funny

this time of AI. We've got Excel sheet and

list. Just wordless, very nerdy.

but I also put one signal with another one that has

absolutely nothing to do with each other. I forced myself to

create a story. So I would take your ducks or your

chickens and see what happens when

we cross. We correlate that with a chgpt and

imagery, story. And then I go wild.

Yeah, yeah.

Super cool, super cool.

But thank you so much for, for giving us a little tip here

for teams to just start tracking signals.

And really the point here is to not

ignore this SAMB bys because

they can become quite noisy.

Exactly, exactly.

So here we have technology, we've got AI, we've

got robotics, we've got everything. And we end up with a very

practical thing, very journalistic thing, as well as

to capture the news, come back to it

and start thinking. Thinking, on your own, but thinking

with others and start discussions and conversations. Say, where

is it all going if we continue, in that

direction? And what does it mean for our company

or for a movement or for our community?

Exactly.

Is there any more that you are

dying to share with me that I haven't asked you,

Marcela?

Yeah, I think the only thing I would say

is act in

the way that you want the

future to be. Decide whether it's decisions,

whether it's, projects you work on,

whether it's, things you volunteer in.

You think about where that what's the future

that you want, and then how can you act on it today? That's what I would

say.

Right. Second call to action. Thank you so much for being

with us in the House of Trust today.

Thank you. Thank you.

Well, that's it for us today. Come back soon to the House of

Trust. You can share this episode, comment,

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It's for people who love to invest in change and ignite

hopeful actions. Keep connecting. Goodbye.