Why ‘Co-pilot’ is the wrong metaphor for AI

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airplane flying in sunset sky

As a regular flyer, one of my favourite YouTubers is Swedish airline pilot Petter Hörnfeldt and his channel, Mentour Pilot. Petter dives deep into the inner workings of commercial aviation, especially the systems and protocols that keep millions of people safe in the air every day.

One of his most memorable explanations isn’t about technology at all – it’s about how pilots decide who’s actually flying the plane.

In a modern commercial cockpit, there are two pilots: a captain and a first officer. Before every flight, they decide who will be the “pilot flying” (the one with hands on the controls) and who will be the “pilot monitoring” (the one who manages supporting tasks, checks systems, and keeps an eye on the pilot flying).

Crucially, both pilots are fully briefed and capable of performing every part of the flight plan. If the pilot flying becomes incapacitated, the pilot monitoring can seamlessly take control. That’s the essence of co-piloting – two fully trained, fully capable humans working in tandem, ready to back each other up when things get difficult.

That’s not a job for AI.

When Microsoft and others use “Copilot” to describe AI, they’re unintentionally assigning it a role it was never designed to play.AI is much closer to an autopilot system:

  • Great at handling routine tasks.
  • Helpful for reducing workload during normal operations.
  • Useful in assisting during certain critical phases of flight.

But the autopilot does not step in when things go wrong. It doesn’t take over from the captain in an emergency. In fact, in turbulent or unexpected scenarios, pilots often switch it off. It’s the pilot monitoring — a fully capable human — who steps up. Not the autopilot.

The aviation industry is built on layered safety systems and shared responsibility. The co-pilot metaphor implies equivalence, or at least shared accountability. AI doesn’t meet that bar. AI can:

  • Accelerate routine work
  • Spot patterns humans might miss
  • Improve decision-support in stable conditions

But it cannot:

  • Fully understand context
  • Manage edge cases outside its training
  • Take accountability when the unexpected happens

We’ve already seen what happens when automation is trusted too far. The recent AWS outages were a reminder: when the system encounters something outside its model, everything stops, and humans scramble to fix it.

The lesson from aviation is simple: Use AI as autopilot. Keep people as co-pilots.

Never use AI as an excuse to not train your people to the fullest extent necesary. Invest in their ability to understand, monitor, and override AI when needed. Don’t let the “copilot” marketing metaphor lull you into delegating responsibility to a system that isn’t designed to carry it.

AI can make the flight smoother. But when the storm hits, you’ll want a human in the left seat.

Keynote theme – Better Choices = Better Futures

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When it comes to professional communication, you often only need one powerful idea – but it needs to be a good one.

A little while ago, someone asked me how I structure my keynote presentations – how do I decide on the themes I build them around? The truth is, I don’t have a dozen themes. I have one. It’s a single idea that has shaped how I think about business, leadership, and life.

It came to me many years ago in a place far removed from boardrooms or strategy offsites: a refugee camp in northern Uganda.

Many years ago while reporting in Africa, I witnessed an event that made me reassess exactly what it means to have a good life. I’d been visiting a refugee camp in Northern Uganda, which at the time was a hotspot for activity of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) under its leader, Joseph Kony.

As we made our way back to Gulu (the regional centre) that evening, I noticed dozens of people walking into town. The longer we drove, the more the numbers increased, even as the light faded.

These were the “Night Commuters.” Each evening, they faced an impossible choice: stay on their farms and risk abduction or attack or walk for hours into Gulu to sleep in makeshift community shelters, then return home the next morning. Neither option was good. But one offered a better chance of safety.

Neither choice was a ‘good’ choice, but it was easy to see why they chose one over another.

As a journalist, I’d spent much of my career reporting on businesses that struggled – or failed – to adapt. Many didn’t collapse because they made spectacularly bad decisions. They collapsed because they made no decisions at all. They delayed. They hoped. They waited. And as time passed, their choices narrowed. Eventually, they were left with a bleak version dilemma: “Do we end it today, or do we end it tomorrow?”

The key difference, of course, is that the Night Commuters’ situation was imposed on them by circumstance. The businesses, on the other hand, created their own lack of options through inaction.

The choices we make today shape the choices available to us tomorrow. Failing to choose isn’t neutral – it’s a decision with consequences.

Leaders who act early, thoughtfully, and decisively keep more doors open. Those who stall or hesitate often find themselves backed into a corner with only bad options remaining.

The ability to make good decisions isn’t luck. It’s a skill – one built on gathering and synthesising information, weighing risk, and acting before the window narrows. It’s something individuals and organisations can learn. And it’s something they must learn if they want to thrive over time.

Because in business, as in life, the most dangerous place to be is where the only choices left are the ones you never wanted to make.

And this is what I talk about in keynote presentations.

No one is waiting for you to deliver value

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There is a reason why news stories have headlines. They are the advertising for the story that follows, saying just enough to catch your attention, provide a spark of relevance, and make you want to read on.

Then comes the sentence that follows — the lede (in old newsroom parlance — not lead, as it’s often misspelled today). The lede tells you everything essential in a single breath.

“A bus crash on the Monash Freeway this afternoon resulted in the deaths of four people”.

In that one line, you know what happened, when and where it happened, and its tragic outcome. You’re also probably hooked – curious to find out why and how it happened.

This form of newswriting is called the ‘inverted pyramid’. All the value sits at the top, tapering off as you move down. The style emerged in the print era, when writers never knew how much space their story would get. Subeditors would trim from the bottom, and a good reporter made sure that nothing important was lost in the process.

It’s also incredibly effective at holding attention – and that’s something every presenter should aspire to.

When you’re building a presentation, especially for an audience that’s tired, busy, or distracted, start with the value. Tell people what matters most first, when they’re most alert and receptive. Hook them early, and they’ll stay with you for what follows – just like a strong news story.

The difference is that unlike a news article, your presentation needs to finish strong. That’s easy – just circle back to where you began. Remind your audience of the promise you made at the start and show how you’ve delivered on it.

The key difference with a presentation however is that you also want to finish strong. That’s easy – just go back to the start.

A good presentation doesn’t have to be long. It doesn’t have to be profound. But it does have to be engaging.

Borrowing from journalism might seem reductive, but after a couple of hundred years of refinement, it’s proven to work.

The more you say, the less they remember

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The human brain is an extraordinary piece of technology, but it comes with limitations. One of the most important is memory.

I’m reminded of this every time I walk out of a presentation thinking, “Wow, that was a lot” – only to realise ten minutes later I can’t recall a single point.

This isn’t just anecdotal. It’s measurable. Ask someone to remember three items – say, three animals – and they’ll recall them easily. Increase the list to ten, and recall drops sharply. Memory retention falls from near 100% to something far less.

Now apply this to professional communication. If your goal is to influence, overwhelming your audience with every last thing you can think of is not going to help you acheive your aim. You can’t persuade someone who can’t remember what you said – or worse, who only remembers the wrong bits.

The more points you cram in – especially irrelevant ones – the more you dilute the ideas that matter most. Every extra detail competes for mental space, reducing the odds your audience retains the core message.

That’s why the best communicators practice ruthless focus. They know influence depends not on how much you say, but on what sticks.

When presenting to influence, always:

  • Focus on the essentials. Know the one or two things your audience must remember.
  • Reinforce them. Repeat the key ideas in different ways that useful, relateable, and engaging, so they lodge in memory.
  • Cut the rest. Jettison everything else.

It’s tempting to tell your audience everything about you, your product, or your idea. But the danger is simple: the more you say, the less they’ll remember.

Because it’s hard to influence someone if they can’t remember you.

The Heroic Handover – turning audience members into protagonists

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Every story has a hero – or at the very least, a protagonist who drives it forward.

So when you are using storytelling to persuade, one of the most important questions you can ask is: who is the hero here?

Take a standard sales presentation, like a customer case study. There are three possible answers.

The first is you.

If you’re telling the story of how you helped someone overcome a challenge or achieve an extraordinary result, it’s natural to see yourself as the protagonist. You’re the one driving the action.

The second is the customer.

To avoid looking like you’re seeking the spotlight, you can shift the focus to them. After all, they took the leap of faith. They listened to your idea, convinced their colleagues, found the money, and had the courage to follow through. You may have done the work, but they made it happen.

Both perspectives work. Both can lead to strong stories.

But if your goal is persuasion, there’s a third option, and it’s the most powerful.

The hero is the audience.

Great persuasive storytelling helps your listener see themselves in the hero’s role. You want them thinking: “That could work for us. We could do that.” The ultimate aim is to have them carry your idea back to their workplace, where they can apply it, solve a pressing problem, or seize a new opportunity — and in doing so, elevate their own standing.

In other words, you want them to imagine themselves as the hero of the sequel to your story.

To make this work, you need to shape your story with the audience in mind:

  • Relevance: Will they recognise the problem or challenge you’re describing?
  • Practicality: Is your solution something they could realistically implement?
  • Value: Does the benefit clearly outweigh the effort, risk, or cost?

These are simple idea, but too often they’re lost in the noise of a presentation.

Films such as Star Wars worked because kids could imagine themselves as Luke Skywalker, Han Solo or Princess Leia.

Your challenge is the same: can your audience imagine themselves as the hero of the story you’re telling?

The practitioner’s curse – what, why and how

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When it comes to persuasion, a little knowledge can be dangerous. Too much can be downright counterproductive.

One pattern I see again and again in my work as a communications coach is how domain experts struggle to explain their ideas to people outside their field. We all recognise that knowing something and explaining something are two different skills – but there are subtler ways expertise can undermine communication which often go unnoticed.

A recent client session brought this home. He was leading a major technology-driven transformation program and needed to secure the backing of senior leaders. As a technologist, his instinct was to explain how the program would work and what others would need to do.

But when we reviewed his presentation, one glaring omission stood out: the why.

To him, the benefits were obvious – so obvious that he jumped straight to implementation. But for his audience, the absence of a compelling why meant they heard only disruption, extra work, and unfamiliar processes. With no reason to believe in the change, there was no reason to buy in.

Balancing the what, why, and how is the cornerstone of effective change communication. Without the why, the audience has no stake in the outcome – only a sense that something is being imposed on them. In my experience, at least half of failed change programs can be traced back to this very oversight: failing to win support by clearly articulating the reasons for change.

For leaders driving transformation, the sequence should be simple:

  • Start with the what. Define the change quickly and clearly. This usually requires the least time.
  • Expand on the why. Connect the rationale to outcomes that matter for your audience: better customer experiences; a stronger organisational future; or improvements in their own work. Don’t be afraid to tap into the “what’s in it for me?” factor.
  • Save the how for later. Early on, avoid drowning people in complexity. If the how is simple, explain it simply. If it’s complex, offer just enough detail to reassure them that a plan exists, that support will be provided, and that specifics will follow at the right time.

Getting this sequence right shifts communication from a technical explanation to a persuasive story – one that makes people not only understand the change, but believe in it.

So what is organisational culture?

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Today I was part of a group discussion at the Clutch Events Project Management Technology Summit in Melbourne, where someone asked the question ‘what is organisational culture’.

For me – that’s an easy question to answer: organisational culture is the manifestation of individual behaviour at scale.

It is an emergent quality that is the sum of the actions of the people that contribute to it.

When people behave in ways that are supportive and demonstrate ethical decision making, then their organisation’s culture will reflect that.

You can plug in different behaviours and the output will reflect them accordingly. Hence when behaviours are individualistic or geared towards profit at the expense of all else, the organisational culture will form accordingly.

So the second question that naturally arises is: what are the key factors that influence organisational culture?

If you’re willing to accept my argument about culture emerging from individual behaviour, then there are two critical factors that I believe outweigh all others.

The first of these is the organisation’s statement of purpose. Whether this is a single sentence or is expressed through a set of a dozen leadership principles, the organisation’s purpose provides a test that can guide workers in their decision making, simply by offering the opportunity to ask, ‘does this action align to our purpose’.

This makes the defining of purpose and principles something that must be considered with great care, as they can influence critical actions right through the workforce and will go a long way to shaping its culture.

The second factor is the behaviour of the leadership group. Culture may emerge from behaviour throughout the organisation, but it is set from the top, which means that the behaviour of senior leaders is critical to shaping the culture

If leaders preach inclusivity and supportiveness but behave in an opposite fashion, workers below them will mimic the behaviour, not the rhetoric. Worse still, they will understand that the leadership is duplicitous, and the resultant culture will reflect all this trait.

These realisations arose thanks to a research project I was engaged in several years ago, when I had the chance to examine numerous businesses up close and pose the question of why some were able to undergo successful transformations, and others weren’t.

Amongst the findings was the realisation that organisations which were able to transform successfully had a strong statement of purpose that workers could align with, even in those times when the transformation was directly disrupting their lives. When they could see that result of disruption would enable them to better serve their purpose, then disruption became something they were more willing to put up with.

which led me to my final contribution to yesterday’s discussion – never discount the importance of organisational culture as a factor in successful transformation programs.

Welcome to the era of Human Intelligence

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Late last month I travelled to Queenstown, New Zealand, to deliver a speech to a group of property managers and investors on the topic of technology-driven change and the choices we face (thanks to Dinesh Pillutla and the team at Core Property Research for inviting me to speak).

It was an interesting experience, not only for the chance to delve into an industry that is itself undergoing significant change, but also because the speech that I gave wasn’t the one that I had first set out to deliver.

Having spent more than 20 years swept up the rapid changes of the technology sector, it is easy to forget that people outside the sector have a very different perspective on the role of technology, and a different appreciation for what it can and can’t do. As a speaker, this makes it all too easy to bamboozle an audience with demonstrations and prognostications of the technological utopia/apocalypse ahead – which might be entertaining (or unsettling) in the moment, but which holds little value over the long term.

This time I set out to take a different approach. My main thesis was that while technology is evolving quickly, we are putting our focus on the wrong things, in that we are focusing too much on technology and what it can do, not enough on what we want it to do.

In short, we need to stop thinking so much about technology, and start thinking a lot more about ourselves.

So when it came time to talk about AI, I choose to talk about something that technologists rarely talk about – human intelligence – and the skills and abilities that we already possess (and should be thinking about more) when it comes to understanding our role in a future world where AI is a major factor.

Why? Because getting from the first Australian computer (CSIRAC, built in 1949) to today’s AI took less than 75 years. We have gone from basic machines to a simulacra of intelligence in the blink of an eye. Evolutionary biology took approximately 750 million years to complete the same task.

It’s an impressive achievement, and not something we’ve needed to be overly concerned about – until now. Throughout history the development of technology has mostly been in support of human endeavour, and has tended to create more opportunities that it has erased. Now we may have reached a point where instead of supporting us, technology is competing with us (or more precisely, we are competing with it), and given its rapid evolution, we will fall behind quickly.

This is something we have seen time and time again throughout history – especially in sectors such as manufacturing – but now the emergence of more capable AI systems means that field of competition has broadened considerably. The most common question I get asked in any conversation about AI is ‘will AI take my job’. And the answer I give is most often ‘yes’ – it’s just a question of when.

At some point many of the jobs we do today won’t exist, but the expectation (still – and far from proven) is that more new ones will be created. The key for us as individuals is to anticipate which roles AI will perform better than us – and by when – and then work out what we need to do to ensure we stay relevant in that AI-focused future.

Hence the need to think more about human intelligence.

So in my presentation in Queenstown I posed the question of whether my audience would find their jobs replaced by AI, and then answered with a provisional ‘yes’ – that being if:

  • You had lost your sense of curiosity.
  • You were unable to listen and learn from diverse perspectives.
  • You cannot elevate yourself out of your immediate environs to see the bigger picture.
  • You lack empathy.
  • You are unable to align to others.
  • You cannot communicate.
  • You have stopped learning.
  • You are not adaptable.

If those traits describe you, then there is a very good chance that you will find your job replaced by AI. But it only takes the exercising of a few of those skills to provide a foundational capability that will help you maintain or grow your value in the turbulent years that lie ahead.

In summary – we need to be worrying a lot more about the exercising of our own human intelligence than we are worrying about the artificial kind.

No one can predict the future. We can make inferences and predictions, and we can run the risk of being very, very wrong.

But even though we can’t predict the future, we can consciously change the future through the actions that we take today.

And that is a capability that no machine can match (at least not yet).

ENDS

Why you really need an AI strategy

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Last month I had the pleasure of joining a panel session at the Municipal Association of Victoria’s MAV Technology conference, to discuss the challenges and impact of AI.

Not only was it a chance to sit alongside luminaries such as Adam Spencer, Lisa Andrews, Morris Miselowski, and our moderator Holly Ransom, but it was an opportunity to explore exactly what AI means for local government – which it turns out, is not dissimilar to what it means for many other mid-sized organisations.

The key question I considered when going into the session was whether an organisation such as a local council actually needs an AI strategy.

My conclusion was a resounding yes.

Despite its label, AI is a very human challenge – one that can create fear and uncertainty among workers, customers, and communities.

Having an AI strategy doesn’t mean developing a complex technological roadmap for the creation of AI systems. What it does mean is being able to articulate how an organisation is using AI today and its guidelines for how it will use AI in the near future.

Many of the applications for AI have come into common use almost by stealth, such as unlocking a smartphone using facial recognition, or using predictive text on a word processor, or shopping recommended items on a website. AI has been a part of everyday life for many years – it is only the accessibility of Chat GPT and similar generative AI tools and their ‘wow factor’ that has thrust AI into the spotlight.

This sudden rise to prominence has created a lot of questions – principal among them being “will AI take my job”. This is quickly followed by “should I use AI to help me with my job”, “should I be feeding data into an AI to improve its usefulness”, and “what are the privacy and copyright implications when I do?”.

These questions are only the tip of the iceberg, and they are being asked by executives, managers, and workers all around Australia. Without an AI strategy, where can they turn to for answers?

For local government, there is also the need to answer the questions of rate payers, many of whom may be concerned by the use of AI and how it might impact their privacy and other rights.

The use of facial recognition without consent is already a contentious topic, and the Robodebt scandal has further eroded people’s trust in government and its use of technology. Recent months have also seen many council meetings interrupted by people who are concerned about how technology is being used today to manage communities – and how it might be abused in the future.

At the very last, an AI strategy needs to consider:
– Guidelines and commitments regarding where AI will or will not be used, in alignment with expectations of privacy and human rights. This needs to be specific in relation to the use of AI in activities that involve with the general public (chat bots for customer service, automation of penalty notices, use in video surveillance, etc) and should provide clarity for staff whose working lives may be impacted by these technologies (such as customer service agents).
– An inventory of where AI is being used today, and why. This may require an investigation of existing software applications to determine their own use of AI.
– Clarification of decision-making processes and guidelines to be used when making future investments in AI based technologies.
– Guidelines for managers and staff as to which AI services are cleared for use, and for what purposes.
– Further guidelines regarding how different data types can be used in relation to AI systems.

This is not an exhaustive list, and the creation of a strategy should start with the creation of a stakeholder group that can work though a more comprehensive set of considerations.

AI has massive potential to do good things for local government, such as improving services and reducing their cost of delivery. But as with many fast-developing technologies, the potential for backlash – and very real damage – is equally strong.

Why talking quickly takes your nowhere fast (and what to do about it)

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Photo credit: Morgane Le Breton

As a communications trainer, there is one piece of advice that I find myself offering up more than any other. It’s also a piece of advice that I find the hardest to implement.

Slow down.

Rapid-fire delivery is one of the most common crimes committed by speakers, be it on stage, in interviews, or in general conversations. It is also one of the most likely reasons why your communication efforts may not be having the desired impact.

Just because you can speak quickly, that doesn’t mean your audience can listen quickly. And there is no chance they will retain or be influenced by what you’re saying if they can’t keep up with you.

I know this from the repeated experience of being on the receiving end of fast talkers. As a journalist who sometimes records interviews, I’ve heard things in the recordings that I never heard the during the interview. I’ve even asked questions that had been already answered earlier.

When you speak quickly, your listener will hear a few components of what you have to say, but they are unlikely to retain much of value. Like a stone skipping across a pond, you offer no chance for your words to sink in.

Listening is not a passive process (Oscar Trimboli can tell you a lot more about that).

When a person is listening, they are also often learning something new, and trying to assimilate that knowledge with what they already know. By speaking too quickly, you fail to give your audience time to absorb what you are saying, which can lead to them falling behind and quickly losing interest.

Fast speakers have offered me plenty of excuses for their rapid-fire delivery. For some, it is a habit they developed early in life that they have found hard to break. For others, fast speaking arises from nervousness, and the feeling they need to say everything they need to say before they forget it. And for some, it comes about simply because they are excited and have a lot to say and are trying to cram in as much information in as possible (which is the excuse I most often give myself).

None of these excuses alleviate the suffering of the audience, and no matter what the reason, fast speaking will always mean you are less likely to influence your audience in the way you wanted to.

Unfortunately, there is no fast remedy for fast speaking, other than enforcing a stricter discipline over your delivery speed. Trust me, I’ve looked.

There are however some techniques you can use to make things easier for yourself and your audience.

The first is to pause every now and again. This works especially well on stage by providing a moment for your audience to catch up.

The second is to repeat the things you most want your audience to hear. This tends to also work best in presentations, but can also be used to great effect in interviews or even conversations – just don’t overdo it. You might also want to come back to key ideas several times in different ways (for instance, placing them in context using examples) to ensure they sink in.

Neither strategy is as good as simply slowing down though, and that means being conscious of your speed of delivery and taking the steps needed to moderate your flow.

The great thing is, slowing down not only helps you’re audience, but it also gives you greater control over what you are saying. Slowing down enables you to think further ahead, as your brain is able to catch up to (or get ahead of) the words coming out of your mouth. This means you can start to guide the discussion, and you can also buy yourself the cognitive capacity to pay more attention to your audience and their non-verbal responses.

And you also are likely to become more economical with your use of words. Faster speakers tend to use more words than they need, as they are using ‘verbal polystyrene’ to pad out what they are saying and buy time to think about what they really want to say.

Slowing down gives you more time to think about what you are saying, which can see you using less words to say exactly what you need to say in the same time it would take if you were talking quickly.

Most importantly, slowing down creates a better experience for the audience – and that is crucial if you truly want your words to have any chance of changing the way they think, feel, or behave.