Flying Higher, Digging Deeper: Birds, Frogs, and the AI Revolution

Two Ways of Seeing the World

Freeman Dyson—renowned physicist, mathematician, and long-time professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton—once observed that mathematicians divide into two types: birds and frogs. Birds soar above, scanning the horizon for patterns and unifying concepts. Frogs live closer to the ground, immersed in details, solving problems one at a time. Dyson’s insight was about mathematics, but its power extends far beyond the academy. It provides a way of understanding human personality, decision-making, and even how we partner with artificial intelligence.

History offers striking examples of both types:

• René Descartes, the bird, sought to deduce the laws of nature from pure reason, lifting his vision above immediate facts.

• Francis Bacon, the frog, insisted that truth must come from careful accumulation of evidence, grinding through details.

• David Hilbert, a bird, framed 23 grand problems to guide mathematics for a century, while the frogs who followed solved them piece by piece.

• Marie Curie, a frog, spent years processing tons of ore to isolate radium, detail by painstaking detail.

• Albert Einstein, a bird, saw beyond contemporary physics with sweeping insights into relativity, though he often relied on assistants for the calculations.

Together, these figures show that progress depends on both types. Birds provide the sweeping accuracy of vision, while frogs supply the precision of mastery. And while history often highlights individuals who lean strongly one way or the other, most of us carry elements of both within us. The balance may shift with context, but personality and neurobiology often nudge people toward a natural home—some thrive on big-picture thinking, while others flourish in the details. Those who learn to cultivate both bird-like and frog-like abilities, however, are often the most adaptable and resilient.

In business, this distinction is clear: large public companies behave more frog-like, rewarded for delivering proven products and services at scale, while entrepreneurs are bird-like, flying toward the unknown to create new offerings that fill gaps and serve society.

Still, it is worth noting that the world has often rewarded frogs more than birds. Frog work—whether in laboratories, boardrooms, or policy shops—tends to be practical, measurable, and certain. Bird work deals with the unknown and can look speculative until hindsight reveals its value. Here, AI emerges as a great equalizer. Frogs will benefit by gaining even more precision at scale, but birds may gain most, as AI supplies quick mastery of adjacent knowledge, enabling them to extend their exploration of the unknown further and faster than ever before.

As a behavioral economist, I see the frog–bird framework as a tool for decoding how people learn, create, and adapt. Frogs and birds are not rigid categories but tendencies rooted in both personality and neurobiology. When layered with emerging technologies like Generative AI (GenAI), the metaphor sharpens into a practical guide for the future of work and learning.

About the author: Jeff Hulett leads Personal Finance Reimagined, a decision-making and financial education platform. He teaches personal finance at James Madison University and provides personal finance seminars. Check out his book -- Making Choices, Making Money: Your Guide to Making Confident Financial Decisions.

Jeff is a career banker, data scientist, behavioral economist, and choice architect. Jeff has held banking and consulting leadership roles at Wells Fargo, Citibank, KPMG, and IBM.

Frogs and Birds as Personality Types

• Frogs thrive on precision. They focus narrowly, go deep, and extract mastery from details. Neurobiologically, frogs lean more heavily on acetylcholine, the neurotransmitter that sustains focus and deliberate practice. Their satisfaction comes from getting the details right and repeating the performance with consistency.

This link between acetylcholine and sustained attention is well established in cognitive neuroscience research on learning and memory.

• Birds thrive on accuracy. They seek broad context, connect adjacent domains, and imagine what lies beyond the visible horizon. Birds are propelled by dopamine, the neurotransmitter of reward and curiosity. It drives exploration, motivates risk-taking, and fuels the joy of discovery.

Dopamine’s role in novelty-seeking and reward processing is supported by decades of behavioral and neuroeconomic studies.

Both types are necessary. Frogs ensure rigor; birds ensure relevance. Frogs prevent us from building castles on sand; birds prevent us from losing sight of the bigger picture.

Precision and Accuracy: Frogs and Birds in Action

Borrowing from my earlier writing on the 2-for-1 Brain, the frog–bird split can be mapped onto precision versus accuracy:

• Frogs → Precision: Repeatedly hitting the same target. The value lies in reproducibility, in knowing a process can be trusted to deliver consistent results. This enables the frog to dig deeper.

• Birds → Accuracy: Aiming at the right target in the first place. The value lies in direction-setting, framing the problem, and aligning efforts with meaningful goals.  This enables the bird to fly further.

True progress emerges when accuracy and precision reinforce each other. The bird charts the course. The frog ensures the path is walkable.

AI as the Frog’s Ally

Generative AI has already proven itself to be an astonishing frog-like tool. It excels at:

• Scaling narrow problem-solving.

• Generating dozens of practice problems or design variations.

• Providing fast, precise summaries of existing knowledge.

• Going deeper into a single topic than most humans could sustain alone.

In essence, AI mirrors the frog’s strength: precision at scale. It can tirelessly repeat, refine, and reproduce outputs, giving humans a powerful ally in detail work. For frog personalities, this means multiplying their depth. For example, a data scientist can use AI to test hundreds of scenarios overnight. A writer can polish dozens of drafts in minutes. Frogs, armed with AI, become super-frogs.

Why Birds Benefit Most

Yet the real breakthrough comes when AI pairs with birds. Birds do not need help imagining the unknown—they need help managing the known. This is where AI steps in. By quickly synthesizing knowledge across disciplines, AI allows birds to:

• Add adjacent mastery in fields they would otherwise struggle to cover.

• See patterns across many disciplines, such as economics, biology, psychology, and technology.

• Fly higher and farther, extending their vision beyond today’s horizon.

AI gives birds a scaffolding of mastery across multiple domains. Freed from wading through every detail, birds can concentrate on charting new frontiers.

Neurobiology of Curiosity and Mastery

Understanding frogs and birds through neurotransmitters deepens the metaphor. These tendencies often reflect natural preferences shaped by our biology—yet they are not fixed. Our brains are remarkably adaptable, and with effort and practice, neuroplasticity allows people to become more frog-like or bird-like depending on what life demands.

• Dopamine (Birds): Fuels exploration, curiosity, and the drive for accuracy. Birds thrive on the anticipation of discovery and the thrill of new ideas.

• Acetylcholine (Frogs): Enables focused attention and disciplined practice. Frogs thrive on incremental mastery, sustained effort, and repeated precision.

• Oxytocin (Both): Builds connection and trust, reinforcing learning through mentorship and collaboration.

In this light, frog and bird orientations are neurobiological defaults, but they are not destiny. Training, deliberate practice, and new experiences can rewire circuits, allowing individuals to cultivate complementary skills. A natural frog can learn to broaden horizons; a natural bird can strengthen focus.

AI accelerates these natural pathways. Frogs receive immediate, detail-oriented feedback, strengthening acetylcholine-driven focus. Birds receive dopamine rewards from rapid insights across disciplines, keeping curiosity alive and productive. By working with our neurobiology rather than against it, AI amplifies our capacity to adapt—helping us become more versatile learners and decision-makers.

The 2-for-1 Brain in Practice

The workplace of the future will increasingly ask: Does this candidate bring one brain, or two? A single human brain is powerful. A human brain paired with AI is exponentially more valuable.

• For frogs, the AI serves as a tireless research assistant, providing precision, scale, and reproducibility.

• For birds, the AI acts as a cross-disciplinary tutor, filling gaps quickly so they can extend vision beyond the known.

Together, human plus AI is not a zero-sum substitution but a complementary fusion. The human provides accuracy, judgment, and context. The AI provides precision, depth, and speed. This is the essence of the 2-for-1 brain.

Implications for Education and Work

The frog–bird framework, sharpened by the rise of AI, has profound consequences for how we teach, learn, and organize work. Education at every stage—from early schooling to professional development—must prepare individuals to balance precision and accuracy. At the same time, organizations must recognize that their greatest strength lies in blending diverse thinkers and leveraging AI as a catalyst. With this context in mind, three key implications emerge:

1. Education must teach both frog and bird skills. Students should learn to master details (precision) while also framing problems in larger contexts (accuracy). Primary education can nurture these dual abilities early, while continuing education helps adults rebalance as their roles evolve. AI tools, paired with human teachers and mentors, can scaffold growth at every stage. When used properly, AI accelerates learning—allowing people to absorb knowledge faster, apply it sooner, and scale solutions that benefit society. This is a win-win: individuals build skills more efficiently, while communities benefit from innovation deployed at speed.

2. Workplaces must hire for dual fluency. Employers increasingly look for candidates who can show mastery without AI and fluency with AI. Those who can demonstrate both frog-like precision and bird-like accuracy will lead the market.

3. Leaders must design mixed teams. Just as ecosystems need diversity, organizations thrive when they blend frogs and birds, supported by AI. Strategic visionaries paired with detail masters create resilience and adaptability.

Looking Ahead: A Balanced Flight

The future belongs neither to frogs nor to birds alone. It belongs to their partnership—with each other, and with AI. Frogs ground us in depth; birds lift us toward vision. AI, with its relentless precision, strengthens both: making frogs deeper and birds higher.

The challenge for all of us is not to choose sides but to cultivate balance. We each have frog and bird within us. With AI, we now have a tool that can amplify both tendencies—if we learn to use it wisely.

Conclusion

Freeman Dyson’s metaphor, expanded beyond mathematics, offers a lens on personality, neurobiology, and technology. Frogs and birds represent two fundamental human orientations: detail and vision, precision and accuracy. AI enters this ecosystem as a frog-like engine of depth, but its greatest gift may be enabling birds to extend their flight into the unknown.

In a world that prizes adaptability, the 2-for-1 brain is no longer optional. The winners of tomorrow will be those who master their frog and bird sides—and who know how to harness AI to make both stronger.

Resources for the Curious

Anchoring Sources

• Dyson, Freeman. Birds and Frogs. Notices of the AMS, 56(2), 2009, pp. 212–223.

• Hulett, Jeff. The 2-for-1 Brain: How Human-AI Learning Creates a Career Superpower. The Curiosity Vine, August 18, 2025.

On Neurobiology and Learning

• Dweck, Carol. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House, 2006.

• Ratey, John J. and Galaburda, Albert M. A User’s Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain. Vintage, 2002.

• Sapolsky, Robert. Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. Penguin, 2017.

On Curiosity, Motivation, and Neurotransmitters

• Hulett, Jeff. How our neurobiology impacts our life's pursuits: Are you from “Dope-land” or “Acetyl-ville?” The Curiosity Vine, September 18, 2023.

• Schultz, Wolfram. “Multiple Reward Signals in the Brain.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 1(3), 2000, pp. 199–207.

• Sternberg, Robert J. (Ed) The Nature of Creativity: Contemporary psychological perspectives. Cambridge University Press, 1988.

On Decision-Making and Bias

• Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.

• Tversky, Amos, and Daniel Kahneman. “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.” Science, 185(4157), 1974, pp. 1124–1131.

On AI and Human Learning

• Hulett, Jeff. The Essential Guide to Partnering with GenAI: Achieve Both Accuracy and Precision. The Curiosity Vine, January 19, 2025.

• Brynjolfsson, Erik, and Andrew McAfee. The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. W.W. Norton, 2014.

• Luckin, Rose. Machine Learning and Human Intelligence: The Importance of the Human in the Loop. UCL Institute of Education Press, 2018.