Ex-Google President: 50% of Jobs Will Disappear! (And How to Prepare Now) | Kai-Fu Lee

Kaiu thanks so much for joining us on the show here oh thanks for inviting me well congrats on the new book um of course AI 2041 and very excited to dig into it I pre-ordered it uh uh sorry I ordered it a couple of days ago and started to read a few of the chapters I mean definitely uh is a interesting perspective and I love the way you took the fiction route to really get people to really think about and visualize the potential of what we're going to see in the next 20 years and before

we jump into the book I mean one of the things that I've heard is that Barack Obama was one of your classmates in Colombia is that right yes yes we were we graduated the same year 1983 yes oh wow and did you get to meet him or connect with him while you were there I I did not I was a computer science major and he was political science so we uh I I never met him during my uh period there in fact he's not in you know he's actually not in the uh uh the school

book so I'm not not sure what happened but he he his picture not in in there no he's not but he's definitely graduated he didn't go show up for his uh class photos or something oh got it okay so he's in the record but he just isn't in the photo that's right yeah okay okay this isn't like Trump going back to like him claiming that he's from Kenya or something like that and being born there it's not a conspiracy theory you're saying not at all just couldn't find his photo he for some reason interesting all

right well I'm sure the internet's going to go crazy for that one um cool well I uh wanted to give you in introduction of course we do these beforehand but just to get people up to speed some of the key things that uh you've done before you know now at COV Ventures is you've developed a speaker independent continuous speech recognition system uh for your PhD you were the founder and managing director for Microsoft research Asia and then you became the president for Google China before and before you got into centures tell us a little bit

about what you're up to with sov Ventures Ashley get get your own take on it uh sure uh we are investors in deep Tech so that includes artificial intelligence healthc care life Sciences semiconductor Etc it leverages my own background in technology and we are in early stage investor in startup companies and uh we will accompany them all the way to IPO so we're very similar uh to the likes of andreon Horowitz or uh Greylock or Benchmark in the Silicon Valley and is the is the idea because you guys are primarily focused on let's say AI

uh to be focused on companies in China and the US knowing that they're going to be the Dual winners in this race that we'll talk about yeah we are mostly investing in China we had earlier efforts to look expand globally and including the us but that became impractical due to recent um geopolitical issues uh so we're more focused on China now we do occasionally make an investment abroad we invest in a French company uh two months ago but that's U by exception got it by impossible you mean there are regulations set in the US that

forbids Chinese investors from investing in the US completely or are you just saying it's harder now it's harder is there's no specific regulation but um uh there is cifas which means people uh who take quote unquote Chinese money have to disclose and that's a hassle to some people uh and and you know we're honestly not Chinese money by any means where our investors are almost a half uh us uh investors but but nevertheless because of our primary location we have been labeled that way and it's just not not convenient for entrepreneurs to take money that

requires extra disclosures you know entrepreneurs want to build a business not to spend their life doing disclosures right right especially with this unpredictability of what what will happen in the next 5 to 10 years like we just don't know there might be further turmoil or further restriction so it's kind of a marriage right when you're taking that money so I I can see why that's the case um exactly is the case the reverse as well where Chinese companies that take com that may take capital from us investors will also face a lot of scrutiny and

challenges uh not not at present uh there are some listing requirements uh but they're fairly minimal I think the Chinese government uh currently has very few regulations on um the the investor base in fact uh some of the top Chinese IPOs uh have been largely invested in by uh US capital and and still welcome although obviously there's tension both ways now got it got it huh yeah I can I can see why that would complicate things um well I guess in this topic I you know we wanted to to dig into artificial intelligence it's what

the book was about it's what your previous book was about AI superpowers and um would just love to give people some overview background for maybe someone that you know hears Ai and headlines but they're not really sure what AI exists is exactly what is the history behind it and what are the phases that we've gone through to get to where we are now and where we're going so before we talk about where we're going which is AI 2041 we love to kind of go through what are some of the phases from the beginning until now

meaning what was the first time the term AI or artificial intelligence was coined and uh what is like the first known AI that uh people have talked about like I've heard that it was the laundry mat like the uh like laundry machine was like the first AI um but we' love to get your take on this right uh I think it was in the 1950s at a conference in Dartmouth the term AI was um um coined uh by John McCarthy who who was my PhD advisor PhD adviser um and he coined the phrase and at

the time it was very much about uh can we get machines to do anything that exhibits uh human intelligence and um for the next uh 50 years or so every time something that appears to exhibit intelligence whether it's the telephone switchboard or the smart elevator or uh uh laundromat I don't know I haven't heard that one before uh people very much uh just say okay that's no longer AI That's uh engineering that's a product so the the pursuit of AI has been a very challenging one when I worked in AI in the 80s and 90s

uh people would look at this as a a failure as a Pursuit that uh is not likely to ever yield uh a result and also continues to write papers but with no workable product um so that's a that's been a development for the probably the first 50 years or so there are things that have come out my PhD thesis was the first speech recognition system that worked for any speaker and companies that licensed the technology began to put it into um you might recall in the you know 2000 uh late '90s people who called U

their stock broker or Airline uh were able to reserve an airline uh reservation or perhaps buy or sell stock by merely using voice on the phone so that at the time was probably an example of of AI uh but something really big happened uh about 5 to 10 years a ago and that's deep learning and deep learning is arguably invented 30 years ago but it didn't really work until around 10 years ago and U it's a technology that says well let's not worry about replicating you know human thinking exactly but let's be inspired by the

architecture of the human brain and build something that um inspired by the human brain with neurons and connections and numbers connecting them but the the way this type of deep Learning Works is you present many examples of data and then you tell it what the answer should be and it will learn uh to separate the um the the positive and from the negative exemplars so if you show it pictures of a cat and a dog and label each one cat or dog it'll learn to separate cats and dogs and and that in fact was a

Google paper uh that became quite surprising to people because prior to deep learning people assume the human would have to program something like cats have whiskers they have pointy ears and things like that uh but it turns out the the when you make a deep neuron network with a lot of data feeding into a network of many many layers up to thousands of layers uh it can create its own way of separating dogs from cats and that can be now extended into uh by Facebook uh by Amazon on to separate people who are likely to

watch this video from people who are not likely then that's why when we see videos on YouTube or Tik Tok we like watching more because it already uh computed and figured out for the someone like myself uh this is a video that I would likely watch uh for the whole duration and similarly Amazon would compute what products I'm likely to buy insurance companies and Loan Companies would figure out to to whom the the loan should be made credit card companies are figuring out which transactions are frauds and then this list goes on and AI becomes

more and more powerful it has since gained the capability to recognize objects understand language and autonomous vehicle is beginning to work in constrain environments so I think we are now at a stage when we have not at all answer the question how does the human intelligence work but we have created a set of Technology IES that are growing very rapidly year after year that can not only do things that we can do that exhibit intelligence but things that are beyond what we can do things that we can't imagine us doing so I think it's created

a very powerful growth engine the power of deep learning rests on the fact that if you just throw more data and more compute it improves itself so this is very very powerful that said it hasn't really answered the question how does the human creativity um happen why do we have self-awareness uh and why do we have emotions and desires and can AI have these things yet that remains to unknown and perhaps that's what separates us from a computed AI do you feel that similar to the way people didn't really understand what AI was or just

refuted the fact and made it into more just an engineering solution that it wasn't really AI do you think well look in 10 20 years from now and potentially see that AI also has Consciousness and has these emotions and we'll look back and say oh like we just didn't have enough data or we just didn't have enough foresight to to even think that there would be a situation like this um most people think to really go deeply into true intelligence humanlike capabilities and with understanding of creat creativity and self-consciousness will require further breakthroughs cannot just

be extensions of deep learning and throwing more data at it and I I would fall into that camp um but that said we are seeing uh AI mimicking people very quite well and it's improving rapidly deep fakes and fake voices of people generating uh you know conversations between uh questions you can ask Einstein and and could be answered in uh Dr Sue Style with some of the demos are seeing uncanny behavior that is improving so I wouldn't rule out at some point it uh really fools people into thinking that it's not only a human but

someone exhibiting emotion creativity uh but but probably to truly uh replicate the human process and become a supet that will remain elusive at least in the next 20 years well particularly around Consciousness I mean it's I can self- claim that I have Consciousness I feel it but it's hard for me to know from the other persons you know for yourself or from my for my friends whether they have Consciousness there's really only perspective of myself is that ever something we'll ever know from robots or AI in general that they'll have Consciousness like how would we

ever prove that well the problem is the the brain science is still at very form stages so people who study brain science can't yet answer the question of what is consciousness and there's still quite a bit of debate so I think first we have to study our brains and we have to first understand what the question is then we can question if AI can exhibit it um and and I would think um you know right now based on current set of Technologies AI can fake a lot of things faking visual audio is easier faking understanding

is harder but happens sometimes faking creativity and Consciousness I think will be extremely hard uh so so we'll we'll we'll have many decades to keep working on the one side AI scientists will try to fake it and then the um brain scientists will try to figure out what what it is that we should fake right right and it just everything is moving so fast and as you mentioned it seems like it just kind of snuck up on us in the last 5 to 10 years from uh from from the recent path and one of the

things that you talk about and I think you're the perfect person to talk about because obviously you also went to school in the US and you're very familiar with the culture and and and everything that's going on around here and from my understanding is in terms of the AI you know race us was in the lead for quite a while until maybe in the recent five years ago what was that transition and what how can you kind of explain what happened there like how do we lose the lead in the US well I don't think

us has lost the lead uh it's just that China has become uh very good very quickly and each country is still quite strong in areas that they're strong and this was captured in my last book uh published in 2018 called AI superpowers and I think some of the key factors of how china Rose up so soon uh partly it was the Sputnik moment from the moment that deep mind a European technology that beat CH Chinese um top Master player at at at China's own game that claim to require intelligence and I think that made the

entrepreneurs the VCS the large companies and the government say hey we should rapidly get up to speed on this um and at the time China already uh had companies that possessed a lot of data and are in a good position to make use of that data so these are companies building the super apps uh tensent Alibaba B Dan or some examples so so China has a lot of data and to to become very good at AI one needs to collect data uh in high quality and high large quantities and um uh structure it and make

use of it and connect it to to a business metric and uh the Chinese super apps are even bigger than the American apps so uh tens and WeChat is um much more powerful than say Facebook or Instagram I spend 80% of my time in it so you can imagine how much data uh weat has for me as well as for all the other pretty much everyone I know and that data becomes um uh really uh energy and and oil to power AI for Chinese companies that probably is u a very important area uh that the

Chinese entrepreneurs were tenacious and developed super apps with a huge amount of data the second is that Chinese engineering classes are excellent research has been rising up rapidly uh and actually I founded Microsoft research as you mentioned in 1998 and that became really the source of a lot of AI Talent uh who've written a lot of papers and have become quite good and is also catching up with the US uh and then the entrepreneurial ecosystem with e VCS funding tenacious entrepreneurs uh as well as favorable Chinese government policies to advance Ai and and key Technologies

so all all of these combined together um and also the fact that deep learning really isn't rocket science for a good computer science student they can grasp enough deep learning to become a good AI engineer within um weeks at most months uh because you don't need everybody to be a deep scientist who writes papers and China has all these engineers and they see the wonders of AI and frankly AI engineer paid a lot more than Computer Engineering so people were learning everything on their own and gravitated towards that very very uh rapidly so all of

these I think played an important role uh in China becoming very good in uh AI Technologies for the uses in Internet and financial domains and more recently uh in autonomous vehicles and Factory automation these are some areas where China leads also drones um are China's uh strengths in the US I think use of AI in Enterprise and Cloud Technologies is well ahead of China and I think in terms of deep research us is still ahead at least in the top 1% of the research China has caught up in the top maybe 10 to 50 top

10 or 50 or 100% of the research so that so I think these two countries lead the world um it's not strictly a um a race because you know companies serve their own sets of customers researchers still work together but if you want to measure what is the market cap of all AI related companies in two countries or how many people are filing patents or papers if you want to use those metrics no doubt China has rapidly caught up got it got it and particularly just going back to the super apps and the way that

it's structured in in China because it's fascinating for me how WeChat is the only app that you can use really to go through your regular day lives and I would imagine like the average number of apps that a American person has is probably exceeding by double the number of you know that someone in you know in China may need on a regular basis and how did it get that way is that just like a do you feel that's just is it almost just a cultural thing to have designed a super app like one simple app

that allows you to to to do everything um because from a American perspective I guess like there is the product stance of keeping everything everything minimal and separate and you know in its own use case but H what's kind of your take in terms of how the differentiation happen I I think the American Top tech companies follow the Silicon Valley approach which is um it's um it's a more gentlemanly kind of competition so you become very deep very good in what you do and then there's an ecosystem where everyone works together so that GrubHub uh

door Dash and um open table and Yelp and Groupon all have their strengths and they kind of see each other as creating ecosystem uh of competition and cooperation um in China the entrepreneurial ecosystem has been more of a gladiatorial tenacious competition win or take all and as a result one single company took all of this bases in food called mwan and it's it's the leader in the the the rating the reservations the the coupons uh the delivery the groceries and it's going into right sharing now so there is a uh strong desire to expand your

Empire leveraging what you have and of course the other factor is um Anti-Trust laws I think they were much stronger in the US due to historically seeing the likes of um uh AT&T and Microsoft and Google uh sort of uh uh getting into trouble and getting checked by the government I think it's given the US government more of um um tougher stance against monopolies and I think China is now uh realizing that it too needs to regulate these large companies but but in the early stages it didn't do so as much as the the US

government yeah so is it just like this killer culture mentality in China of wanting to wanting to really Dominate and that really drives this monopolistic you know super apps that that exists today yeah um I think the if you want to go deeper it's about the culture uh that has uh has has many families that were poor for 10 or 20 generations and now the the Young the younger generation see that this they are the one first opportunity in 20 generations to become rich to become successful there's high expectations from their families so that's why

everything's competitive getting into a top school um joining a good company building a great company winning um so that that I think is part of the hunger and the desire that comes naturally from having quickly risen from a poor country and poor families into uh a chance to really change all that and and we've seen that in other cultures in in the US it was perhaps in the early 20th century and we've also seen that in Japan Korea and other countries so it's a it's a period of time where people see wow I can do

better than the last 10 Generations in my family I gotta grasp this opportunity and give it my all yeah and this definitely Rings true for immigrants coming into the us or Canada from plac like China Korea Japan or anywhere else India and um even with with China you guys have this thing called 996 can you explain what 996 means for people that or 997 rather I guess in in maybe in many startups in in China yeah in the early phases um uh the I think the ENT the entrepreneurs encouraged the hardworking environment because people were

striving for success and willing to work hard so 996 means working 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. 6 days a week uh although that is a little bit frown upon uh in China now about not pushing too hard yeah it's it's frowned upon uh yeah I think the society is saying wait a minute this this group of entrepreneurs are pushing people too hard there have been sudden deaths heart attacks and and I think there are some efforts um in the media and government messaging that uh pushing people this hard uh may not be good for their

well-being we'll see how it works out but certainly it's an element that has driven the the environment for the last uh 30 plus years which after China opened up what are the things that they're doing to reduce these number of hours because 996 is like 9:00 a.m. 900 p.m. 6 days a week but 997 which is s days a week is was also very common back in the day are they just are they adopting like 995 or 965 to make that like a cultural thing in China yeah roughly you know for example in some large

internet companies that used to require working uh six days every other week um is now going to five days every week so that would be a a change in uh in this direction yeah how do you feel about that do you feel like the younger generation is a little bit uh you know falling behind in that sense well I think Millennials globally are a little bit similar you know Chinese China's getting wealthier so the middle so the so I think the middle class is uh growing and there are more people in the Millennials born into

well-to-do families or middle class and I think they want the same things that as other Millennials so I think you know as as I mentioned this 996 aity hunger for Success uh would eventually fade away as the country becomes uh becomes wealthier right right and I guess like nowadays people can see what other people across the country and what their what their lifestyle is and kind of there's this Global culture right obviously everyone has his own independent culture but with Information Age everyone is so connected that I would imagine with yeah people are just learning

to adapt to you know how Millennials are are going through here in this case right I think yeah what defines Millennials throughout the world is that they have their own voice and own ways of doing things and they don't conform and uh they don't listen to a message and say that's what I want to be too and that that's individualism at a certain level and and I think the uh the the 20 years ago I think people would say hey work hard and you'll succeed so work incredibly hard and people just listen but nowadays I

I don't think people do that not just in China but but perhaps globally got it got it and kind of getting back to the you know the differences like one one of the things that at least from what I've heard is that like engineering background is something that's emphasized for people that are working in the Chinese government is that right like these there a lot of people with backgrounds that work in the government in China that support more adoption in terms of you know Ai and advancements in technology uh I'm not an expert on the

demographics of uh government officials I uh obviously there have been a few top level leaders that have had engineering degrees so certainly a degree that's highly respected uh if your question is more about why does the Chinese government um emphasize Tech so much I think the number one reason is that we're in the fourth Industrial Revolution and China kind of missed out on the first and the second and a little bit of the third right the first was the steam engine the UK's rise to the top second was electricity and other things us Rose to

the top third us led the world again in PC and internet China caught a little bit of that and and and got a good taste of it's good to have your control your own destiny so now at the fourth Industrial Revolution which is AI automation um I think China feels like missing out the first three has caused China to pay a dear price of being uh becoming China did quite well having missed the three revolutions right being the Outsourcing Factory of the world was not a bad outcome it's the Envy of the developing countries of

course but still it became clear there would be the big Winners would be those who are leading in technology and not only inventing them but putting them to good use first use that I think is a uh uh very um pervasive understanding in the Chinese government that uh we should not miss out and it's important and that's why there are these policies uh and uh basically promoting uh Technologies and and for kids to study science Etc so yeah I wanted to dig into more about you know AI 2041 now at this point and um you

know really just go through some of the stories that you're telling in the book itself we can talk about the high level opportunities starting off and one of the things that you know you're you're talking about is just the amount of wealth that it could potentially create but I think this is a debate that people are having where you know the the opportunities that could come from AI could is also going to be some of the jobs that are going to be replaced from that so I want to dig into that a little bit um

in terms of the wealth that it will create like what are some of the opportunities that you're seeing or is it going to be one of these things where it's going to be like the top few that are able to leverage these things like AI or the people that are creating the companies leveraging AI that are going to be claiming the rewards of this how do you look at that so AI is an optimizing technology that takes a lot of data and is capable of uh basically doing tasks at a better way than people because

it can learn from data and from watching people from being trained on data Etc so so a lot of the routine jobs and routine tasks will be replaced by AI both at a white color and a a blue color level and that will lead to some job dis placement as well as wealth inequality so that's one of the topics um throughout the book a241 it keeps coming up um and I think people will eventually adapt but we need to be aware of how and why things are happening uh so people so so AI will be

used by uh top companies to create a lot of wealth and they will displace jobs and then it'll take away jobs from people at the entry and routine levels uh who may have a hard time finding another job so there needs to be mechanisms in society that uh that Bridges the gap of wealth Inequality For example through taxation and Universal basic income can give people a second chance to create a buffer for the people whose jobs may have been taken by AI secondly uh there needs to be retraining in place help people to um find

a new job that they can continue again because it's not just important from a making a salary standpoint but also people's jobs are an important part of the meaning of their lives and and when the jobs are gone people may become uh depressed um fall to substance abuse Etc uh and also education needs to be revamped to help people with uh help the kids learn skill sets that are not replaceable by AI whether it's creativity or teamwork or Compassion or human- to human connections so those things need all need to be built up uh and

I think we can get over these problems of job displacement and also even look forward to AI creating new jobs although we don't exactly know which they will be but we do know they will not be routine jobs so the blessing for us as a human race is that uh once we get over the hump of job displacement wealth inequality adjustments policies needed Etc uh we can look forward to a first uh AI creating a lot of wealth for for the world for society because uh no longer do we need routine human labor to create

uh products and secondly uh we as a human race are then liberated from having to do routine work so we can do things that uh we enjoy or we're good at so so it's a tough intermediary period once we get over it we can look forward to a much better environment and World got it so when you say wealth you don't necessarily just mean the financial side of things you're talking about the time you're talking about you know allowing people to be more creative and having more access like just overall those benefits that come from

that process um got it and in terms of the new jobs that could potentially be created like have you envisioned or thought about what are some of these things that could potentially come up as we get into 2041 uh yes and and I think the book describes some of those U possibilities uh one obviously is um in a world full of robots we're going to need robot repair we're going to need people who program the AI uh on the other side with people having more time on their hands and with Goods becoming produced by robots

and becoming cheaper uh people will want to spend their money on more on services so the services sector should undergo a substantial increase both in number of employment and number of um Innovative services that people can have imagine if you make a a lot of money from AI or Technologies uh and then you want to spend uh you know more maybe a a um uh a more curated vacation with your family or a concierge that gets you the the food the the wine the experience the massage whatever it is that you like or a tour

guide who gives you a a personalized Journey or maybe uh uh for people who are in need maybe elderly or people in hospitals there can be volunteers and and also paid people who are uh providing their time taking care of the elderly uh donating their time to um to foster homes and there will be parents who want to spend uh do homeschooling for their kids both to help their kids to have the attention they need in an AI economy but also that may be the best time spent uh for parents as opposed to getting uh

getting getting a service job so I think these things will likely Blossom as well uh there will be many other jobs that will be very hard to to predict and the reason is that we we can't exactly predict every uh new type of services just like when we began the internet Revolution uh uh I or any other expert could not possibly have 20 years ago predict the kind of um jobs and economy that has come through let's say an app called uh named Uber right Uber has created many jobs disrupt disrupted the way uh P

Transportation worked and created lots of opportunities and hurt some right taxi drivers moving to Uber drivers changing the way of life Etc that could not have been predicted 20 years ago for the same so for the same reason I can't really give a complete road map of what new jobs will be enabled by AI but there should be should there should be many uh as history would tell us every technological revolution has eventually provided more jobs than it decimated and the same thing I believe will be true for AI but we have to probably wait

15 20 25 years just as we did for the internet for for let's say using Uber again as an example uh to to see jobs blossom in this area yeah I I do I do agree with it um in terms of you know these Technologies it's always a double-edged sore right so the older people that can't really adapt to you know let's say the tax medallions are going to be displaced and Uber opens up more jobs but you're also getting into a situation now where Uber drivers are also going to be replaced now in the

next probably five years or 10 years which means there's going to be it almost seems like as AI gets more um Advanced you are going to create more jobs but it's if it gets so Advanced those jobs that the AI created at that level is also going to be replaced again as the AI gets smarter and smarter so is it always just going to be this cycle where AI can potentially create new wealth but it ends up replacing it and that opens up another layer that we just can't foresee right now yes I think so

that's why in one of the stories in the book uh we created a new type of company called job reallocation companies and what they will do is on an individual basis if if your job were displaced by AI he would find something that's individually more suitable for you to gain the retraining and take that on and there are characters in the story who have been job reallocated uh two three four times in uh in two decades and we should expect that that to happen um uh but if if uh society and the government and companies

will provide that cushion and retrain people we will stop looking at a job as something you do for life but as as a new experience new skills that you learn um and uh as long as the the danger of unemployment and the loss of subsistence is uh removed by social welfare then I think people might look forward to the retraining as opposed to being uh you know painted into a corner yeah and how does that look for the way society's going to be made up it are we just going to have a massive middle class

particularly with things like UB Ubi and Taxation systems where people that aren't able to find jobs or or make a lot of income are able to survive with these basic necessities of being able to pay for their stuff is that just going to lead to like a one big middle class and then maybe like a percentage of people that are just insanely wealthy meaning like there's just not going to be a lower class anymore well this is something we can all speculate but uh I believe a one of the likely outcomes would be as you

described that is a large larger numbers of people who are no longer fearful of losing their jobs and they get the retraining they need and then they rotate jobs as Society Technologies change um and and also in addition I think some number of people may choose to go into a uh type of work that isn't just generating economic value but generates societal value uh you know Health going into Health Care Services working in elderly home homeschooling your children would all fall into that category so that would somehow fit of course the society needs to accept

uh these jobs and these people uh who who are I think adding value to the society and not not be looked down upon uh nor to be economically discriminated that is they they need to make earn a good living um uh doing these things so that requires some adjustment in the society um and then I think the ultra Rich there the question needs to be asked does there really need to be some uh form of equalizing taxation that's been proposed uh in the US uh by Elizabeth Warren and others uh the rich tax basically uh

obviously what your thoughts on that obviously rich man of course U well obviously the um I think the uh the rich people will fight back against that yeah but and I think if there were a better way uh maybe we can find it but if not that might be a last resort that we need to accept because what's the what's the point of having one person possess one1 trillion dollars uh you can never use it up it's not a it's not a um economic or SK um U and from whole society standpoint it it doesn't

it doesn't help the society so so putting some taxation for the ultrarich corporations and people seems like an approach that we the human race understand how to put forward regulate um if if there were clever ways great I mean people talk about Ubi but Ubi needs to be funded somehow unless you have this Ultra Rich taxation I don't see how you bi can be funded so it seems to me it's probably unavoidable because the likelihood for for the human race to invent another mechanism to rebalance uh the wealth inequality seems so unlikely people people have

talked about death and Taxation are the two unavoidable things in life and Taxation has a lot of we have a lot of practice throughout the years doing taxation so time to just use that um use that uh from our Arsenal to uh as a necessary step yeah there there must be something that is in between where if someone that is at that top 0.1% can deploy the capital in an efficient way that gives back some sort of value to society which is hard to quantify or hard to classify I guess I guess one example is

like Jeff basos obviously he gets a lot of you know knack for being the wealthiest person in the world but there is something to be said I feel that the person that ended up unless it was nepotism but someone that actually ended up making their own wealth and was self-made is in somewhat if the deservant of like being able to deploy that capital in the most effective way for society like Jeff Bezos can do what he does now which is with blue origin because he has the capabilities and the reason why he got to you

know uh the billions of dollars that he has is because he just has those capabilities the work ethic you know the the knowledge the experience to do that and I think there is some sense in terms of someone that has that amount of capital as long as they're deploying it into something that can push Society forward um you know deserves to keep that capital and continue to deploy it because that person can make better decisions in some sense than the average person certainly better than me so um yeah I don't know it's uh it's seems

like it's it's a hard thing to quantify but feel like there's an in between there rather than just tax ating for the sake of tax ating you know yeah like the Gates Foundation is another example that's right yeah with the dedication and the research they do uh deploying the money uh in the mo most efficient way it's the money that you made so you care more about it than than the government and there's something just to be said about that but of course if you start creating all kinds of different ways you can quote unquote

contribute to society without being taxed then the tax the loopholes will emerge as well so you have to balance these yeah yeah and then you know just just in terms of the job displacement I mean I think what's INE inevitable is that AI will accelerate continuously um and kind of as Brash as it sounds like the people like when I have kids those kids will just grow up in a generation that is built around learning these skill sets that they need to thrive in this new world and there's just going to be this temporary step

that we have to go through where the existing Generations that grew up without AI are going to have a little bit of trouble but like the world's going to move on right eventually and our kids and our grandchildren they're just going to be able to thrive in this world um which is yeah I mean for this generation it's scary because you're saying in 15 years 40 to 40 to 50% of jobs will be replaced by AI um and you you kind of have you kind of have these steps and processes can you actually break down

the four quadrant that you have um in terms of you know the repetitive jobs and and the ones that are going to be non creative and and which what which types of jobs can't be replaced sure yeah in both of my books I used a um two Dimensions to to create four quadrants and and basically the dimensions are on the horizontal axis is the level of creativity so the more creative the more human involvement is required and the less creative would be more routine work where AI can take over more quickly then on the y

axis would be the um trust compassion empathy human- to human connection element higher up would be jobs that require a lot of that human connection lower would be the ones that you can do isolated and and clearly in these quadrant on the lower left would be the low low compassion low creativity that's likely to be all replaced by Ai and that's a good percentage of the tasks that we do on a day-to-day basis uh but on the high high compassion lower creativity level that that's where the service jobs will emerge the um Health Care Services

tens of millions of jobs like that also some jobs like teachers and doctors will become more human connection and maybe less using AI as a way of doing uh teaching or diagnosis so on that front so jobs will be shifting from the routine uh routine work up to a lot of it will be up to the service work because it's going to be hard to teach a routine worker uh to become creative or to become a CEO or a scientist but probably becoming someone in the service industry seems more feasible and then on the lower

uh right are the high creativity but uh jobs that don't require a lot of compassion and human connection jobs like scientists uh researchers Etc so that will continue to be uh human occupied but perhaps using more AI Tools in a symbiotic way and then finally the the high compassion High um and high creativity jobs maybe a CEO's job or someone running a country requires both of that to do a good job uh then those will also be using AI tools but that's where the human uh unique qualities of creativity and compassion will come together and

shine got it got it so for someone that is about to enter high school or university and their parents that are listening to this to figure out what they should what are some of the skill sets that they should be teaching their children is the focus going to be more on soft skills and that things like I don't know creative art or philosophy or those things are going to be what or psychology those things are going to be the ones that might be more relevant for adapting into this new world than you know kind of

the hard skills that maybe we're were taught in University and traditional system uh yeah directionally what you said is is basically right but I think even more importantly there will need to be new uh new courses and new learning process uh to gain the skill sets that really need to be gained for example how do you make someone more creative uh how do you hone uh critical thinking skills and increase curiosity and how do you increase the level of why and why not in the classroom and less about what's the answer so that shift uh

need needs a whole new design of Education similarly the soft skills uh compassion empathy ability to communicate person persuade and work in a team that and and win people's respect and trust that has always been I think more than 50% of success in any corporate world anyway but classrooms haven't been good at teaching those so how do we uh uh pivot the the education uh process and if it's not done in a public school maybe parents will want to provide that so I think that's the most important thing for parents is to make sure that

the the kids can learn new skills become creative and and have a strong ability to communicate and empathize with other people yeah also I would say uh it's incredibly important for the for the kids to um uh to follow their heart to follow their passion because you're not just competing with other people but Al but AI that is becoming increasingly good so if you don't do what you love it's hard to become the best in what you do so those are the suggestions we give and in the book AI 2041 we talked about how AI

tools can be used to enhance education one example is um in the story twin sparrows when AI companions uh are working with each kid trying to make learning fun and trying to uh watch the kid from all day long and then gain enough understanding so that it knows what what um how to motivate the child what they like and U making learning engaging and fun in an individualistic kind of way so that kind of paints a possible technology uh future for education but of course parents can ALS need to also do uh what only a

parent and a human can do um to help the child grow in this particularly challenging age but also full of uh technology infusion and opportunities do you see a world where robots and humans can fall in love with each other uh it's quite likely that there will be humans who fall in love with uh robots uh that are maybe software based maybe chat mod at first then conversational um because AI is just getting better and better at it it fakes um emotion connection and understanding and then eventually probably Beyond 20 years there can be robots

that have those capabilities too but I I would remind U people that if you're thinking you might be falling in love with a robot REM remember that it doesn't love you back it is merely parting phrases back that it thinks will gain your attention and love and it is not doesn't have true feelings so I hope this doesn't become uh any kind of mainstream phenomena there will always be people who are lonely who feel they found someone who understands uh and robots will be better and better at it but I think that is against our

you know human uh culture and intuition and preference that we should love other human beings and not robots and this will remain in a very small fraction of the society yeah it's it's worth debating I think because I mean loneliness is such a pandemic now that it might be worth just letting people fall in love with robots and despite the robot perhaps not liking but it still might serve their needs in some sense and you know what if there was data to point that people do feel less lonely with robots I mean that could be

a business separate business on its own where you have your own companion in some sense or even just a friend or you know say caregiver in in this sense um um yeah I wonder if that's something that could potentially come into is that is that is that a story in the book at all like someone falling in love with the book with a with a robot no no not something I believe that should happen so we didn't include in the story uh but there there were companions there were companions there were AI keeping people company

uh AI you know uh companion teacher for kids so there's some of that and and they're also research uh today that shows AI uh can be good and things like us you know even a suicide hotline or people who have psychological uh problems but could not reach a human uh psychiatrist for help in time that robot provides a reasonable um backup but only only when the human's not available and it seems to show that it's more effective than not having it got it got it I just want to end with some questions here k um

we talked a bit about work life balance and um and you know just kind of segmenting this with the leverage that people will have with Automation and AI you know in that world of Leverage and automation is is working hard is working smarter and making better decisions going to be a more important factor for people to have more success in their careers and and just their overall success versus is just simply working hard um I think it's a combination of working hard and working smart I I certainly believe in working smart doing things um in

a nonroad learning kind of way and developing new skills and spending one's time in a balanced way this this all good but sometimes you know don't work hard work smart becom something people say as an excuse not to work hard and and I think um in a in a exciting environment uh you one should find something people one is excited about uh that's worth working hard and working smart um not to hurt your health uh but to do things that you love and that you're self- motivated to be thinking about it all the time and

uh to to uh so that you can become more creative and become more knowledgeable so I think finding something you're passionate about is something I believe in I also believe if you found something you're passionate about you're likely to want to work hard not as a result of people telling you or being forced to compete and survive but out of your own volition to want to do that that I think is uh is a place that if you found yourself to be in in that kind of a work hard and smart but but not hurt

your health kind of a combination that would be I think the best combination if if one could find that um thing that you're passionate about yeah so let's say someone has found something they're passionate about um if you were to give advice to your 30-year-old self looking back where you're you've clearly found your passion and the things that you want to do what's like a piece of advice that you would share I would tell my the 30y year version of myself to take more risks because risks should be taken when one's young and once you're

older it's um you don't have as much ahead of you the cost you pay could be higher um and you become more set in your ways and and I think Society in many ways teach more of us to not take risks um maybe because the mass La hierarchy does have uh survival at a very basic level but if you don't take your risks when you're young you may not have a chance to do that and that will be um regret when you're older and do you think like the definition of young and older is changing

I I know you had a pretty hard Health scare with fourth stage lymphoma I don't know how how deeper you got into longevity like we've had uh Sergey Young on the show I'm not sure if you're familiar with him he's got the longevity fund and talks a little bit about longevity as well and this idea that we can live to 200 years old like is that is that an industry apart from AI that's been interesting for you particularly with the events that have happened you know in recently uh sure so my last question was referring

to you know 30y old asking a 60-year-old uh which I think is what we just did uh but the but I also believe in longevity the two are not mutually exclusive I think new advances in life science s and also using AI can be well combined with longevity we have invested in a company called Deep longevity that uses a tool that will take all of your body metrics uh that includes primarily your blood right now but also potentially your full body MRI your multiomics inputs uh and your wearables um input into an AI system that

compares you with other people of your own age younger age healthier not so healthy and give you some feedback on how you can improve your lifestyle which includes uh certainly new types of um medicines and nutrients but also your Stress Management exercise sleep and and the nutrition as an overall combination to get your metrics to be healthier I I don't think we the human race have ever had a uh complete uh data Centric way to manage ourselves if we believe data Centric ways are better ways to manage uh companies better ways to make uh internet

companies financial companies more successful uh then we should use it on us so I am um engaged in using this technology right now I um do deep measures uh every uh every quarter um and then some of them every year and then I can see progress so as someone who's um datadriven and who's uh very competitive uh it becomes kind of a game like for me see a leaderboard or something uh just competing with myself it's private personal data so I can't see anybody else's data but it would show you know your blood looks you

know six years younger than it did one year ago which was the number I got and I feel like um you know I've won a game or something congrats yeah that's amazing well a big step in terms of being healthy and Longevity is prevention so something like like what you're mentioning is uh definitely a step forward for for society so well Kaiu I I really recommend your uh uh really appreciate your time and all the insights that you shared I I would highly recommend people to check out AI 2041 uh where else can people learn

more about you what you're up to and um are you working on an Nextbook now oh no I'm still uh getting over the promotion for this one but uh there might be another one who knows a 2061 or something like that one day ah in 20 years from now right right yeah love it love it well really again appreciate your time highly recommend people to check it out and uh thanks so much for tuning in guys