Collaborating with Life – Mia Jafari's new book tackles how we can combine Tech, AI and our own humanity

If you are questioning what technological breakthroughs mean both for you and to you, you are not alone. Many of us have tech anxiety (Pew found that, on average, 34 percent of adults in 25 countries were more concerned than excited about concepts like artificial intelligence). The question of "how will IT impact me?" resonates far and wide. And yet, for her first published work, serial entrepreneur and innovation expert Mia Jafari takes an approach that we all should be able to relate to.

Her book, named 'Collaborating with Life', begins by pointing out that technology itself is meaningless without purpose. There needs to be a why behind all of the innovation, and ideas such as AI need to help us solve both big societal issues as well as our own personal problems. Just like the evolutions before it – think of the industrial revolution, followed by the shift to service-based economies – technology will transform us. But we will remain fundamentally who we are.
Mia's writing focuses on how AI can either augment or strengths or exaggerate our fears. She shares stories on how we can promote the former and lessen the latter. Mia speaks about the future of AI, and how we can shape it for our own benefit, a focus that should be of particular interest to entrepreneurs. She speaks to and shares examples of how AI can be used to co-create and amplify our own imagination to build, create and explore. She uses the terminology of parenting, which is an apt description for how we should be developing our own AI tools.

The book dives into the question of choice, and how choice should not be a binary option of pursuing our passions or learning about technology. As Mia rightly says, this should not be an either/or, but rather yes to both. For a piece of writing on technology, Mia keeps returning to the central tenet of what makes us unique as a species – it is our empathy, presence and purpose that make us and our ideas stand apart. And, in an age that is defined by artificial intelligence, what we need most is relational intelligence.

As we approach the conclusion, Mia shares the paradigm shift that we all need to experience, how we need to adapt to the new normal that we are facing, and how we retain those qualities that make us so special, which is particularly true for any current or aspiring entrepreneur. She tackles the obstacles that we need to remove if we are going to embrace the coming age of AI, and shares a guide on how we can make that shift and learn to love what AI and technology in general can do for us.

If you, like me, are asking yourself how to lean forward and embrace these new ideas which seem to be all encompassing, without losing sight of what makes us special, then you need to grab a copy of Collaborating with Life. It may just change your own approach to both entrepreneurship and living. You can read more about the book here.