The case for more empathic polymaths in tech leadership

“My fundamental concern … is if I go ahead and build this enormous robot army, can I just be ousted at some point in the future? …if we build this robot army, do I have at least a strong influence over this robot army? … I don’t feel comfortable building that robot army unless I have a strong influence.”

That was Elon Musk on the most recent Tesla shareholder meeting call.

In a world hurtling toward existential tech unknowns (from AI super intelligence, synthetic bio, autonomous weapons, quantum computing, and so much more), have you ever asked yourself the question: Should humanity have more empathetic, stakeholder-aware leaders that understand the implications of what may very well be exponential tech life and death decisions?

Put a little differently, do you want the man who threatened to quit Tesla if he didn’t get his trillion-dollar 10-year pay package, whose track record includes carelessness towards other humans (see his recent work at DOGE, dismantling USAID, and Grok - the chatbot found to be the least empathetic of all); who has admitted to repeated and casual ketamine and other drug use; who has proactively engaged in far right wing, racist, even Nazi-sympathizing salutes and posts; who has fueled a global social media anti-democratic, authoritarian movement via his control of X algorithms – do you want this richest man in the world, CEO of at least 5 exponential tech companies, to be in charge of his own personal robot army, your safety and maybe the safety of humanity? 

We should all care about this. We should do our best to demand, find, and empower those tech gurus, innovator,s and decision-makers who tend towards empathy and emotional intelligence – caring about and understanding the impact of their inventions and innovations on stakeholders like users, customers, bystanders, children, the vulnerable, employee,s and the environment. In my forthcoming book Governing Pandora: Leading in the Age of Generative AI and Exponential Technology, I  call these folks the “Tech Guardians of the Universe” and the “Human-Centric Innovators” And when tech leaders don’t exhibit these qualities, shouldn’t there be institutional, governance and practical guardrails to prevent the abuse of such extraordinary power by those less than fit to in effect rule over us?

As sociobiologist Edmund O. Wilson said in 2018 (well before the dawn of GenAI): “The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.” To which I would add – we have boundlessly powerful tech innovators, some with reptilian ids or godlike personas, who are deploying unbounded and untested exponential tech without actual or proper institutional oversight or even voluntary guardrails.

In other words, in a world of unleashed tech innovation sometimes led by single-minded, unempathetic, emotionally unintelligent, narcissistic, and even sociopathic leaders in charge of mind-blowing invention and billions (maybe trillions) of dollars, we are in dire need of empaths and polymaths, or better yet, empathic polymaths to be in charge.

So, what is a polymath? A Renaissance person by any other name – one who can straddle across and excel in several different fields almost seamlessly and with elan and be damn good at it. Examples from history include Aristotle (384-322 BCE), a great philosopher and scientist; Hypatia of Alexandria (350-415), a philosopher, mathematician and scientist, and one of the few women ever cited historically as a polymath; Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519), the quintessential Renaissance man; Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), who not only helped draft the US Constitution but also discovered electricity, among other things; and in our modern era, Stephen Jobs (1955-2011) easily comes to mind.

While I’m not a psychiatrist or psychologist, I’ve been studying and working in the field of leadership trust, ethics, organizational governance, and responsibility for decades, and one of my biggest conclusions over the years is that the top leader of an organization sets the tone for the culture of the entire entity. This means that if your CEO/founder/leader is behaviorally unable to be empathetic or understand the impact on key stakeholders, engages in anti-social or even toxic behaviors, the culture of the organization will suffer accordingly, and its employees, partners, and other stakeholders will all be at risk and possibly experience various levels of damage or harm. 

In our era, while most of the super successful tech innovators might be considered “polymaths,” only some of them are emotionally intelligent empaths or empathetic humans. This matters more than ever. To survive and thrive through the coming age of exponential tech, we must demand, enlist, and empower as many empath polymaths and guardrail or curb the enthusiasm of narcissistic or sociopathic polymaths as possible.

On the empathetic polymaths' end of the spectrum, I would place Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Sundar Pichai (Google), Tim Cook (Apple), and Dario Amodei (Anthropic). They have all exhibited great knowledge, innovation, and the ability to lead emotionally intelligently through the exponential tech revolution with a substantial degree of awareness of the impact of their tech and care for key stakeholders (customers, users, the environment). 

Remember when Satya Nadella became CEO of Microsoft a decade ago and had a couple of public faux pas about inclusiveness and diversity? Well, he pivoted and rapidly listened to others and fixed the situation immediately. And his actions were not a flash in the pan - he has remained a paragon of CEO empathy, emotional intelligence, and wildly successful business acumen since then. That’s what I call an empathic polymath.

On the other end of the empathy spectrum – in other words, polymaths with little or no stakeholder empathy - we find the likes of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Peter Thiel (investor), and Sam Altman (OpenAI). These individuals are hyper-focused almost exclusively on increasing their own wealth, influence, and power, and live in a winner-take-all world where only one of them (and/or their companies/interests) can be left standing, and the concerns of the stakeholder universe matter little unless they affect their financial bottom line or path to glory. 

Remember when Zuckerberg and Musk almost engaged – literally - in a cage fight about a year ago? Luckily, humanity was spared the spectacle, but the point stands – unempathetic polymaths are unable to understand the world around them from a stakeholder empathy or impact standpoint. Indeed, they may be constitutionally oblivious and unable to do so. That’s why the rest of us need to help them not hurt us via proper guardrails and intelligent incentives.

And somewhere in between these ends of the polymath empathy spectrum are the likes of Jensen Huang and Jeff Bezos, both incredibly successful founders, intensely disciplined, and sometimes ruthless. Huang tends toward the more responsible or inclusive end of the stakeholder empathy spectrum while Bezos has a more hard-nosed track record of general stakeholder apathy and, more recently (since retiring as CEO of Amazon), greater narcissism. Looking at where Just Capital positions each of their companies in their deep analysis of stakeholder rankings for 2025 makes this point clearly, with Nvidia in their top 100 listing at 43rd and Amazon at 267th.

There is hope. There is always hope. So, I will leave you with a few positive and hopeful thoughts which revolve around what might be called next-level leadership in exponential tech – these are tech stars with a proven track record of emphasizing and including stakeholder concerns, ethics, and safety in their work. 

The so-called godmother of AI – Fei Fei Li – is well known for pioneering AI safety and ethics and is rising in recognition as a well-rounded, empathic polymath. Follow her work in what she is now calling Spatial Intelligence. 

Follow the leadership and the work of two ex-OpenAI technologists and leaders – Ilya Sutskever and Mira Mrati – both of whom left OpenAI as a consequence of the governance, safety, and ethical AI turmoil that has suffused OpenAI under Sam Altman’s leadership. Check out what they are doing as founders of their own companies – Thinking Machines Lab and Safe Superintelligence, and what they have to say about critical stakeholder issues. 

Follow the leadership of Mustafa Suleyman, the head of Microsoft AI (and author of the great book The Coming Wave), who, under the overall leadership of Satya Nadella, has been given the remit to develop next-generation responsible AI products and services. Check out his latest blog on “Human-centered AI” here, in which he states: “Technology should work in service of people. Not the other way around. Ever.”

In a world as complex and fast-changing as the one we live in – where GenAI is only one part of the broader, deeper, and paradigm-busting period in human history, we need leaders (in every sector) that are well-rounded, empathetic, multi-disciplinary humanists in addition to being tech experts and innovators.

The “Tech Masters of the Universe” (or Tech Broligarchy) need to work together with (and not against) the “Tech Guardians of the Universe” (those advocating for the ethical and responsible development of frontier tech).

The exponential tech leadership sweet spot

Source: Figure 14.3 “The Exponential Tech Leadership Sweet Spot” from: A. Bonime-Blanc, Governing Pandora: Leading in the Age of Generative AI and Exponential Technology. Georgetown University Press 2026.

Put another way, we need tech innovators to become human-centric innovators and work together with the tech stewards, who in turn should become more amenable to being visionary stewards and reach (as in the above Figure from my forthcoming book, Governing Pandora) more of a shared “exponential tech leadership sweet spot” for the sake of humanity and the planet.

The bottom line on all this? The world needs more empathetic polymaths, fewer sociopathic or narcissistic ones. We need polymaths with purpose.

illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.

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