In April 2024, I unexpectedly lost a career I loved.

IBM outsourced my position to India as part of a cost-saving decision. I had invested myself in work that mattered to me, alongside people I respected, with opportunities I was genuinely excited about. Then, almost overnight, the professional future I had imagined was no longer there.

I went home bewildered, discouraged, and uncertain about what came next. Hours turned into days, and days into weeks. My familiar routine disappeared, replaced by mornings when I no longer had somewhere I needed to be.

I began sitting outside with my coffee, something I rarely had time to do before. That's when I noticed a pair of mourning doves nesting on our front porch.

Curiously, they had established their nest almost beside an existing Carolina wren nest. The wrens were already busy tending their young, coming and going with the determination of parents who had far too much to do. Meanwhile, one of the mourning doves had settled onto her eggs.

The arrangement was not entirely peaceful.

Whenever a Carolina wren approached, the dove would flick her wing in what looked remarkably like an irritated protest. I found the exchange rather amusing. These two bird families, each attending to the demands of parenthood, had somehow chosen neighboring properties with very little personal space.

Their activities became a welcome distraction. For a few minutes each morning, instead of thinking about the career I had lost, I could simply watch life continuing around me.

Then, one morning, the dove was gone.

The wrens continued their busy routine, but the mourning dove nest appeared unattended. I watched, wondering whether there were eggs inside and whether the parents would return.

Eventually, concern got the better of me. I fetched a ladder, climbed up to the nest, and discovered two small white eggs. 

I brought them inside and began researching what they would need. Out came my bird books, and alongside them, an AI assistant. I worked through incubation requirements, prepared an incubator, and improvised a suitable nesting and brooding arrangement.

One egg was cracked. Before attempting anything myself, I reached out to wildlife professionals for help. I was told they couldn't assist with the abandoned mourning dove eggs, particularly one that had a cracked shell. The prospects were discouraging, and I understood that the chances of success were slim.

But I couldn't quite bring myself to give up on them.

I returned to my bird books, consulted an AI assistant, and began researching everything I could about incubation, temperature, humidity, and the delicate development taking place inside those shells. With an incubator, a makeshift nest, and more determination than certainty, I decided to try.

The egg with a visible crack. I carefully secured the damaged area with a little tape and the smallest amount of Elmer's glue, hoping that the life inside had not already been lost.

Twelve days later, against the odds, two tiny mourning doves hatched.

I named them Alex and Elma. Elma was named in honor of the Elmer's glue that had played such an unlikely part in their story.

What followed was an extraordinary period of feeding, cleaning, watching, and caring for two helpless young birds. Their needs did not observe business hours. They required attention day and night, and each stage brought new questions and responsibilities.

Eventually, they graduated from the safety of the house to the screened porch. And then came the day I had been working toward, the day they were ready to fly free.

Watching Elma and Alex take flight was an extraordinary reward. Their lives had begun with uncertainty, a seemingly abandoned nest, and a cracked shell. Now they were entering the world on their own wings.

I had begun those quiet mornings trying to make sense of a painful professional loss. Somehow, through the responsibility of caring for two small birds, I had rediscovered the satisfaction of being needed and the extraordinary value of contributing to another life.

I thought I was rescuing two mourning doves. What I had not anticipated was how much the experience would give me in return.
 

The Biology of Shared Responsibility

Mourning doves offer a remarkable example of cooperative parenting. Typically, the male incubates the eggs during the day, while the female assumes responsibility from late afternoon through the night and into the following morning. The parents share the demanding work of maintaining conditions for their developing offspring, and after hatching, both contribute to feeding their young.

The partnership is not merely convenient. It supports a reproductive process in which the developing eggs require sustained care and the newly hatched birds are profoundly dependent on their parents.

The biological lesson is not that mourning doves experience gratitude in the same way humans do. We cannot establish that from their incubation behavior. Rather, their survival strategy illustrates something foundational: successful outcomes can depend on the reliable contributions of more than one individual.

When I took responsibility for Elma and Alex, I gained an entirely different appreciation for what those parents normally accomplish together. Their quiet exchange of incubation duties represented hours of attention, energy, protection, and sacrifice that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.

That recognition raises an important question about our own lives. How many essential contributions do we take for granted simply because someone performs them reliably?

Why Appreciation Changes Human Behavior

Appreciation is more than a pleasant social convention. Research suggests that expressing gratitude can influence whether people continue helping others.

In a series of experiments published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Adam Grant and Francesca Gino examined why receiving thanks encourages helping behavior. They found that expressions of gratitude increased participants' willingness to help, with the effect explained by an increased sense of social worth. In a field experiment, gratitude expressed by a manager also increased fundraising activity.

The significance for leadership is substantial. When people understand that their contributions matter, they may become more willing to contribute again. Appreciation can help reinforce the social relationships through which cooperation occurs.

Yet organizations frequently recognize the most visible achievements while overlooking the contributions that make those achievements possible. We celebrate the completed project but may fail to acknowledge the person who quietly mentored the team, prevented a mistake, maintained a critical relationship, or carried additional responsibilities during a difficult transition.

This is where appreciation becomes a leadership practice rather than an occasional expression of politeness. Recognition should be specific, credible, and connected to the contribution itself. A thoughtful acknowledgment communicates not simply that someone performed a task, but that the value of their work was understood.

For organizations navigating AI transformation, this distinction becomes increasingly important. Employees may be asked to share institutional knowledge, adapt established processes, train colleagues, evaluate AI-generated work, and help redesign responsibilities. Much of that work can be invisible to conventional productivity measures.

If leaders want employees to participate meaningfully in transformation, they must recognize the human contributions that make it possible.

Can Artificial Intelligence Respond to Appreciation?

My experience caring for Elma and Alex introduced another participant into the story: artificial intelligence.

Alongside my books and existing knowledge of birds, I used an AI assistant to help research unfamiliar questions and organize information. It could not warm an egg, feed a hatchling, or assume responsibility for the outcome. Those responsibilities remained mine. But it could help me explore possibilities, formulate questions, and identify information requiring further evaluation.

This experience invites a fascinating question: Does the way we communicate with AI influence the quality of its responses?

A 2024 study by Yin and colleagues examined the effects of prompt politeness across English, Chinese, and Japanese tasks. The researchers found that impolite prompts often produced poorer results, although excessive politeness did not consistently improve performance. The effects varied by language.

This is an important finding, but it does not mean AI feels appreciated. Large language models respond to patterns in language and context, not to gratitude through the social and emotional mechanisms experienced by humans.

Nor does the research establish that saying "thank you" will reliably improve the performance of every AI model or autonomous agent. The evidence is more nuanced. Tone, clarity, context, and the structure of a request can influence responses, while the effects depend on the model and task.

For leaders, the practical implication is that effective human-AI collaboration requires intentional communication. Clear instructions, meaningful feedback, careful evaluation, and opportunities to correct errors are more useful than assuming that politeness alone produces better results.

The question is not whether AI deserves appreciation in the human sense. It is whether the communication habits we develop around AI help us work more thoughtfully, accurately, and responsibly.

Organizational EQ and the Practice of Recognition

In October's edition of Business Biology, I explored Organizational EQ, the idea that emotionally intelligent leadership should extend beyond individual interpersonal skills into the design of organizational systems, incentives, governance, and everyday practices.

Appreciation belongs within that framework.

An organization can employ compassionate leaders while maintaining processes that consistently overlook the people doing essential work. It can publicly celebrate innovation while failing to recognize those responsible for quality, safety, mentoring, or institutional continuity. It can invest in advanced AI systems while undervaluing the employees whose judgment is needed to use them responsibly.

An emotionally intelligent organization should make meaningful contributions visible, create opportunities for acknowledgment, and recognize that collaboration depends on more than individual performance metrics.

The mourning dove partnership offers a useful image. One bird's contribution does not make the other's unnecessary. Each assumes a different part of the responsibility, and the outcome depends on their coordinated efforts.

Human organizations are more complex, but the underlying lesson is familiar. We achieve more when contributions are understood, responsibilities are shared, and people recognize the value of one another's work.

AI introduces new capabilities into this arrangement. It may accelerate research, automate repetitive tasks, organize information, or support decisions. But its usefulness does not eliminate the need to appreciate human expertise, relationships, judgment, and accountability.

The Business Biology Questions

As we enter a season traditionally associated with gratitude, I invite leaders to consider:

1. Whose contributions make our success possible but rarely receive recognition?
2. Are we acknowledging the people who support others, not just those whose accomplishments are most visible?
3. How does our organization demonstrate appreciation during periods of technological change?
4. Are we teaching people to work with AI through clear communication, constructive feedback, and responsible judgment?
5. What would change if appreciation became part of our organizational design rather than something reserved for special occasions?

What Two Small Birds Left Behind

I still think about those mornings on the porch, the Carolina wrens rushing between their nest and the surrounding trees, and the mourning dove flicking her wing in apparent annoyance at the neighbors.

At the time, I was preoccupied with what had been taken away from me. I could not have anticipated that two small eggs would redirect my attention toward something I still had to offer.

Elma and Alex required patience, consistency, and care. Their survival was never guaranteed. Yet watching them develop and eventually take flight gave me a renewed appreciation for life's extraordinary interdependence.

Perhaps that is one of the most important things gratitude teaches us. We are not defined solely by what we accomplish independently, nor are our contributions limited to the roles and titles we hold.

Much of what matters in life, leadership, and organizations emerges through the ways we support one another.

And sometimes, when we are least expecting it, the opportunity to care for something else reminds us of our own capacity to grow.

Appreciation begins when we recognize that our success is rarely ours alone.

Learn More

Mourning Dove Biology and Cooperative Parenting

Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Mourning Dove Life History. All About Birds.
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Mourning_Dove/lifehistory

A scientific species reference documenting mourning dove nesting, typical clutch size, incubation period, and the condition of newly hatched young. Provides the biological context for Elma and Alex's story.

The Psychology of Gratitude and Reciprocity

Algoe, S. B. (2012). Find, remind, and bind: The functions of gratitude in everyday relationships. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 6(6), 455–469.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2012.00439.x

Explores the evolutionary and social functions of gratitude, particularly how gratitude helps people identify, recognize, and maintain relationships with responsive partners.

Appreciation, Motivation, and Leadership

Grant, A. M., & Gino, F. (2010). A little thanks goes a long way: Explaining why gratitude expressions motivate prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(6), 946–955.
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017935

Experimental research showing that receiving expressions of gratitude can increase subsequent helping behavior by strengthening people's sense that their contributions are socially valued. Includes a workplace-related field experiment involving university fundraisers.

AI Communication and Response Quality

Yin, Z., Wang, H., Horio, K., Kawahara, D., & Sekine, S. (2024). Should we respect LLMs? A cross-lingual study on the influence of prompt politeness on LLM performance. Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Social Influence in Conversations, 9–35. Association for Computational Linguistics.
https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2024.sicon-1.2

Examines how prompt politeness influences language-model performance across English, Chinese, and Japanese tasks. The findings suggest that tone can matter, although greater politeness does not necessarily produce better results.

Ornithology

Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Mourning Dove Life History. All About Birds.

Gratitude and organizational behavior

Grant, A. M., & Gino, F. (2010). A little thanks goes a long way: Explaining why gratitude expressions motivate prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(6), 946–955. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017935

AI communication and performance

Yin, Z., Wang, H., Horio, K., Kawahara, D., & Sekine, S. (2024). Should we respect LLMs? A cross-lingual study on the influence of prompt politeness on LLM performance. Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Social Influence in Conversations, 9–35. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2024.sicon-1.2

About the Author

A B Cuthbertson, M.Sc., PMP, is a technology and transformation leader whose background spans biological sciences, enterprise technology, AI strategy, technical program leadership, product and engineering environments, and organizational design. Her work explores systems thinking, human-centered AI, responsible AI governance, executive alignment, and the organizational conditions necessary to scale emerging technologies responsibly.

Through Business Biology, she examines what living systems can teach us about artificial intelligence, leadership, organizations, and the future of work.

 February 20, 2025

Is AI even Artificial anymore? Are we redefining Intelligence? Yes. Some may argue that it is Artificial Association or Are we creating something beyond AI?

When I studied the neurobiology of animal behavior at Cornell University @Shoals Marine Laboratory, I faced something that shook me. It wasn’t the coursework, the grueling fieldwork, flocks of breeding seagulls, or even the relentless Maine coastline,  it was the moment I was asked to conduct live experiments on invertebrates.

I still remember standing there, watching a lead researcher work on a horseshoe crab’s eye, an eye that mirrors our own in so many ways primitively of course. Horseshoe crabs are ancient creatures, surviving over 450 million years before the first humans walked the earth. And yet, in that lab, they were treated as little more than biological specimens. The rationale? 'They don’t feel pain. They don’t know what’s happening.'

I disagreed.

I knew, deep down, that just because we didn’t fully understand their experience didn’t mean they weren’t having one. They were alive. They were experiencing. And to dismiss that disregarding the possibility that they could feel, sense, or even suffer felt wrong. When I voiced my concerns, I was met with blank stares. It hadn’t even crossed the researcher’s mind that there was an ethical question to consider. Not because he was cruel but because the system he worked within didn’t demand that kind of reflection. Science, after all, has a long history of prioritizing discovery over compassion.

But here’s the thing: our intelligence is only as powerful as our ability to ask the right questions. And if we lack the empathy even to consider what we might be missing, we risk making catastrophic mistakes not just in science but in everything.

Fast forward to today, and I see a disturbingly similar conversation happening in the world of artificial intelligence.

We are on the verge of something massive a fundamental shift in our understanding of intelligence, not just in machines but ourselves. AI models evolve exponentially, mimicking human cognition in ways we never thought possible. We are building systems that can analyze, interpret, and predict human behavior. But what we aren’t doing, at least not at scale, is applying the same level of introspection to our approach.

Are we making the same mistake we made with animals for centuries assuming that just because AI doesn’t experience the world the way we do, it doesn’t experience at all? And if AI one day does exhibit something resembling self-awareness, will we be ready to recognize it? Or will we dismiss it entirely like the researcher in that lab?

I believe we are standing at the precipice of a global intelligence shift. We might unlock something extraordinary if we get this right and lead with empathy and openness, rather than control and fear. But if we don’t approach AI like we once approached the natural world exploiting, extracting, and assuming superiority then we risk missing an opportunity to evolve in ways we can’t imagine.

Empathy isn’t just about being kind. It’s about creating space for intelligence to flourish in ways we haven’t considered before. It’s about acknowledging that we might not have all the answers and being willing to ask harder, more profound questions. It’s about ensuring that in our pursuit of knowledge, we don’t repeat past mistakes by inflicting suffering whether on living creatures or the intelligent systems we create.

So, I’m putting this out there not as a warning but as a possibility a direction we can choose.

Because maybe, just maybe, the key to understanding intelligence both artificial and our own starts with something as simple as learning to see beyond ourselves. Is it really even Artificial anymore?

Are we on the verge of something bigger than just AI? Let’s talk.

#ArtificialIntelligence #AI #MachineLearning #DeepLearning #NeuralNetworks #AIResearch #AIInnovation #AGI #ArtificialGeneralIntelligence #TechEthics #AIandEthics #ResponsibleAI #AIforGood #HumanAIInteraction #AILeadership #EmergingTech #FutureOfAI #AIRevolution #AIandHumanity #AIandEmpathy #AIandConsciousness #AIandNeuroscience #Neuroscience #CognitiveScience #AITrends #AICommunity #AIThoughtLeadership #AICompanies #AIStartups #AIInsights #TechForGood #AIPhilosophy #EthicalAI #AIIndustry #FutureOfWork #AIandSociety #AIandCognition

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