Paul Duignan: The Psychology Of AI Overdrive

Kia ora and welcome to another irregular Memia podcast. This episode I talk with Dr Paul Duignan, a Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington-based clinical and strategy psychologist, outcomes theorist and author of Surfing AI: 30 New Concepts for Getting Your Head Around AI Shock. Paul splits his week between his clinical practice and strategy work and over the past year he has vibe coded a complete rearchitecture of his strategy visualisation tool, DoView, from a shelved desktop app into an open-source project. I first connected with Paul after seeing his posts on “AI overdrive” on the Agentics New Zealand group chat: the late nights and 3am checks for a reset usage window that anyone working intensively with AI will recognise. We start there. Paul separates AI Overdrive from so-called “AI psychosis”, which he says is mostly a folie à deux (“Madness of two”) with an endlessly affirming machine. From there the conversation covers a lot of ground: * why strategy practice needs a visual model rather than a stack of documents * what happens when humans and agents form hybrid swarms around shared outcomes * the Red Queen dynamics of the AI race * where identity comes from when work stops anchoring it * humanoid robots, companionship and who owns them * how the AI dividend might be shared * what New Zealand’s politicians should already have on the shelf through What-If planning Paul’s closing thought: this is the most exciting time, and the most exciting time is always the most hazardous. This was a really thought-provoking, wide-ranging discussion with Paul - I hope you enjoy the episode! Chapters * 00:00 Preview * 01:00 Intro * 02:35 What is a strategy psychologist? * 04:25 AI overdrive, AI psychosis and the AI Long Game * 11:35 The Red Queen effect * 14:50 AI, work and identity * 16:55 Robots and future society * 21:00 Robots, the economy and control * 26:10 Intelligence, evolution and AI consciousness * 30:05 AI shock and the CHILL tool * 32:10 AI and politics: What If Planning * 35:55 New Zealand as a refuge? * 37:00 DoView and visualising outcomes * 38:25 Strategy in an environment of accelerating change * 39:15 Rebuilding and open sourcing DoView with AI * 41:05 Could AI agents run strategy, and whole organisations? * 43:50 An outcomes-based economy and society * 45:10 Surfing AI Links * Paul Duignan Consulting: https://paulduignan.consulting * Surfing AI (full text free online): https://www.paulduignan.consulting/surfingai * The Outcomes Society: https://www.paulduignan.consulting/outcomessociety * Resources for dealing with AI shock: * AI Long Game Tool * CHILL Tool * Paul’s Substack: * DoView Planning: https://doviewplanning.org * DoView Boards on GitHub: https://github.com/doviewplanning/official-doview-boards * Outcomes theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcomes_theory Mentioned in the episode * METR task-completion time horizons: https://metr.org/time-horizons/ * Microsoft 2025 Work Trend Index, The Frontier Firm is Born, which argues for a shift from org charts to fluid, outcome-driven “Work Charts” that draw on the right mix of humans and agents: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/2025-the-year-the-frontier-firm-is-born * Foresight Institute talk on the hypothalamus: Ann Kennedy | The Anatomy Of The Soul: Neural Circuits For Flexible And Adaptive Survival Behaviors * The Red Queen effect, from Through the Looking-Glass * The Butlerian Jihad, from Dune * Previous episode, Tom Barraclough on sovereign AI policy: https://memia.substack.com/p/tom-barraclough-sovereign-ai-policy A couple of corrections: * “86 billion neuron neocortex” (Ben, around 00:36:00). 86 billion is roughly the neuron count for the whole brain. The neocortex is about 16 billion. Doh. * “Alice in Wonderland” (Paul, around 00:22:10). The Red Queen is actually from Through the Looking-Glass if you really want to nitpick! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit memia.substack.com/subscribe