It’s widely believed that ‘the data’ admits us to a comforting future of increasing precision and predictability. But there’s another, darker and far less explored, side to this precious coin.

Considering data today as simply an essential ingredient of information and knowledge is no longer adequate. It throws up genuinely existential challenges, forming an entirely new context.

The same data, devices and networks that enable our navigation of the phenomenal world, informing and enhancing our moment to moment understanding, decisions and actions, create another radically different, alien environment, for which neither the human mind nor society are prepared.

These abstracted, ethereal ‘maps’ not only create new ‘territories’: they have the power to influence and manipulate our experience, to undermine and even overwhelm it.

In a time when artificial intelligence increasingly mimics human capabilities - writing essays, creating art, and engaging in seemingly meaningful conversations - we find ourselves at a curious philosophical crossroads.

The work of psychoanalyst and social philosopher Erich Fromm (1900-1980), particularly his 1964 book ‘The Heart of Man’, offers a prescient framework for understanding the fundamental limitations of even our most sophisticated AI systems.

The true danger is not that AI will outcompete humanity, but that we may, in our fascination with the machine, adopt necrophilous values ourselves - prioritising control over growth, mechanical efficiency over organic messiness, and simulation over authentic experience.

As Fromm might caution us, in embracing technological progress, we must be careful not to lose the biophilic heart that makes human creativity, connection, and conscience possible.

The case of Dr. P, chronicled in Oliver Sacks' "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat", provides a powerful metaphor. Dr. P, suffering from visual agnosia due to damage to his right hemisphere, could perceive details but not wholes - he saw features but could not recognise faces.

As Sacks observed, "He approached faces - even of close relatives - as if they were abstract puzzles or tests. He did not relate to them, he did not behold them."

This neurological case study offers a striking parallel to the limitations of current generative AI systems. Both represent what happens when analytical, feature-detecting processes (associated with left-brain functions) operate without the integrative, contextual understanding typically provided by right-brain capabilities.

This session explores this parallel crisis and its implications for leadership in an increasingly data-driven world.