Mo Gawdat - The Future of Al and How It Will Shape Our World | Prof G Conversations

if you're a a leader of a Nation you can have protection around you and can have everything to protect yourself we've seen examples in in the 2024 Wars where a specific person is targeted anywhere in the world and killed you know a tiny little drone carries that bullet seeks you with AI finds where you are stands in front of your forehead and then shoots and these Technologies are unfortunately under development now think about what that does to democracy think about those who own that Weapon by the way they they don't necessarily have to be governments

and how they can influence the distribution of power M where does this podcast find you uh I'm in Dubai today I am uh battling with the with the surprises of February so far and uh yeah enjoying every bit of it well let's start there surprises of February what what are what are surprises in February from an individual such as yourself in Dubai Dubai is wonderful in February but it you know we we occasionally remember last year we had this incredible flood uh that was really really quite uh you know and and just a couple of

days ago we had a bit of rain that sort of like triggered the same fears uh but but of course you know the real the real surprises where deep seek and the responses in the market and how the world uh you know I I feel overreacted a bit and then under reacted a bit and you know uh life life there you go I hear you so uh let's bust right into it the last time you were on I think it was about a year ago and you're a little you're sort of our go-to of this

mix of spirituality and deep technical domain expertise and we were talking as you might guess kind our need control the response to AI what give us what you think the kind of current state of play is and AI given some of the recent developments and how that may have influenced or did it influence your worldview or your predictions around or thoughts around the future of AI you have to imagine that the short history of what I normally refer to as the third era of computing you know basically the two years uh between the time when

Chad GPT came out and today uh you know that short history was a that Humanity has never ever seen before I think uh you've seen uh what I used to refer to as the as the first inevitable where basically everyone is in a prisoners dilemma don't want the other side to win so everyone's competing throwing everything on it uh you know at it and basically you'd get releases of new technology that are sometimes separated by weeks uh if not month at at most and I think what most people don't recognize is that at least with

within the areas where we invested we have made massive stride on Tech uh so um when it comes to the march to AGI if you want uh which I think Humanity will continue to disagree about for a while because we don't really have a definition an accurate definition of AGI um you know uh is is still steady and very very fast right so we're going to get there my prediction is we almost have already gotten there and that's you know when it comes to linguistic intelligence they've won they're winning in mathematics uh they're winning in

reasoning uh you know and and everything we will pour resources on uh they will get to become better than humans so it's just a question of time really the part that hasn't changed in my mind Scott which now I think is very very firm and much more uh accurate if you want is that the impact uh on Humanity uh in the short term is going to be dystopian and that's that has nothing to do with the existential risk that people speak about with AI it has a lot to do with the value set of humanity

uh at the age of the rise of the Machines uh basically unelected influential Powers uh making decisions on Humanity's behalf in ways that completely determines how things happen uh leading to massive changes in the very fabric of society and basically paying to an agenda where I tend to believe we will end up with very few big platform players completely in bed with governments uh completely um um you know feeding on Hunger for power uh hunger for wealth and uh sort of depriving the rest of us of the freedom to live the life we live uh

I I can I can sort of so I summarize this in an acronym that I made seven seven changes to our uh way of life I call them face rips and we can go into them in details if you want uh but basically I see this as inevitable I see that U the short-term dystopia uh is going to be upon us very very soon just because the massive superpower that is at the disposal of agendas uh is going to be in play very very quickly you said unelected officials that are reshaping Society are you talking

about Sam Alman Elon Musk who who are you referring to 100% I mean with all due respect why is my life being determined by Sam Alman we we all had an accord Unwritten rule if you want that we won't put AI out in the public uh sphere until we're uh you know um until we're we feel that we've tackled safety or alignment or you know ethics if you want uh all wonderful dreams to have Sam Altman very soft spoken comes out every now and then and says this is the the priority of what we believe

in but in reality it's a publicly traded company creating billionaires everyone's rushing very very quickly yeah it's all about the money and you know if you and I have lived in the tech World long enough to to understand that what um you know that all you need is a very clever PR manager to to craft a message that it's almost exactly the opposite of what you focus on every day uh but you say it over and over until you yourself believe it the truth is is uh the world is is not ready for what is

about to hit us whether you take the simple things like the economics of the world and how they will change as a result of AI all the way to the change of the Dynamics of power and and you know the the resulting the privation of Freedom you know all of the all the way to how uh the economics of the world are going to change and how you know the the jobs are going to change and how the human connection is going to change and how our understanding of reality is going to change and these

are decisions that are not made by us anymore I you know think about it this way uh Spider-Man's with great power comes great responsibility we've disconnected power from responsibility uh there is massive massive power concentration concentrated in hands that do not answer to anyone so I 100% agree with you the the idea that everything from which buildings are these targeted bombs bomb first what you know our perception of our government election strategies all of these things are now being decided by algorithms programm by a very small number of people that creates I think a lot

of concern the Steelman argument is that if we don't iterate around the Public's usage of these things that other entities will leap ahead of us and their intentions are even more malicious than ours that while capitalism perverts things at its heart it's not malicious it might be indifferent but it's not malicious and the fear is that if we let other entities run unfettered with AI in the sense that it becomes the wild west and the public provides feedback and these models leap out ahead of ours that ultimately the trade-off between a capitalist motive is worth

it relative to letting other societies uh get out ahead of AI respond to that argument I find that this is a very valid argument if if you think of the of of the short term if you think of the longterm it could lead to a very dystopian place so so let allow me to explain a competitive uh race arms race that basically says if I if I don't build the nuclear bomb first someone else will build it uh does not you know necessarily lead to a world where you're the only one that owns a nuclear

bomb as a matter of fact it leads to a world uh that has more than one owner of nuclear bombs and I think what you what you saw from Deep seek for example is a very interesting uh result that that comes out of okay we're going to consider this a war we're going to compete against the other people we're going to you know apply s sanctions we're going to try to you know limit their ability to to progress and what do they do as a result you know necessity is the mother of all needs and

so basically they find ways to do things differently now when you really look at uh the idea of testing things in public which is an argument that's used very frequently but by open AI I think the analogy almost sounds like uh let's you know test the the trinity in Manhattan not in New Mexico just to see how it impacts Humanity right that's not how you do things the the way you do things is when you are uncertain of the outcome you know you you you normally can test it in ways that are much more contained

but that's you know that's this Genie is out of the bottle long ago because the truth of the matter is that everyone is racing already the other outcome Believe It or Not uh and I say that with a ton of respect uh you know is that yes the US might lead uh you know the arms race or China you'll never really know uh you know it might be go open AI or it might be alphabet you'll never really know uh but the problem with that is that a you know a more a polar world where

such concentrated power is not a fair World either it's not a fair world to the world but it's also not a a fair world to most Americans and I think that's what most people don't recognize that you eventually uh sooner or later as more and more power is concentrated in the hands of very very few uh which is the only way the US can have can beat China if you want on in in this technology those very few eventually will turn on the American citizen and say you know what you're not really bringing any productivity

we care about maximizing the same Target we've been chasing so far more power more wealth and you're standing in the way and I think you can see that in the American society very very clearly today before AI takes over the the only answer in my view Believe It or Not which I know sounds really idealist idealistic if you want is a mutually assured destruction conviction is that we both understand uh you know both by by both I mean every two arch enemies on both sides that we are shifting the mindset and the and the existence

of humanity from a world of uh scarcity where for me to be to feel safe I have to be stronger than the other person where for me to gain economically I have to compete with the other person to a world of total abundance I mean we spoke about this last time we met uh um Scott and and you know my definition of the current St age of AI is what I call the the um intelligence augmentation so so we're now augmenting human intelligence with machine intelligence in ways where if I can lend you 250 IQ

points more imagine what you can invent right and and I and I say that publicly all the time I dare the world I say give me 400 IQ points more and I will harness energy out of thin air so why are we competing if that's the possibility ahead of us uh when the competition you know drives us to a point of absolute mutually assured destruction it strikes me when we talk about mutually assured destruction it strikes me that the two entities that would have to come to some sort of agreement around regulation or ause or

it would be the US and China and I'm sure there's other entities but those are the those are the lead dogs right do you think it's realistic that the Chinese would be sympathetic to this argument and that there's enough Mutual trust to say look we got to I don't want to say slow down but put some of this behind wraps share with each other I mean this was sort of oppenheimer's was it oppenheimer's initial Vision that we share this technology and say okay when one gets too far out ahead of the other that's a problem

we need we need to control it together and realize that if one gets too far out in front of the other the temptation to destroy the other is too great at which point that person will destroy will we'll make sure they can strike back in some limited fashion do you think it's realistic uh and maybe realistic or not it's something we've got to do that we try and strike some sort of treaty with the CCP and with China it's not realistic in the current political environment unfortunately you know the current geopolitics of the world is

is is heating up more and more but it wasn't realistic in the case of Russia and nuclear weapons either uh by the way I am not for slowing down at all I'm actually for speeding up all the way but speeding up in a direction that is not competitive but rather for the prosperity of the whole world I mean and at the end of the day Scott again you know give me 400 IQ points more and I'll I'll solve every you know problem known to humankind and this is quite you know straightforward really you and I

have both worked with incredibly smart people and you understand what the difference of an 100 IQ points means right uh give me better reasoning better mathematics better understanding of physics and I can do things that Humanity never dreamt of and and this is a promised Utopia that is at our finger tips so I'm not saying slow down I'm simply saying there is no point to compete the issue that is facing our world is not a a problem of Technology that's moving too fast technology has always been good for us right it's a a problem of

trust that if the other guy gets the technology before me I'm in trouble and and that trust is not established in the lab it's not established in the data center it's basically established with a realization that we can create a world world of Absolute Total abundance total abundance I could know every piece of knowledge that ever existed can I I know you I know you well Scott I know how big of a dream this is for people like you and I all love to learn right and I can use that knowledge in ways that will

make me richer but but how many Ferraris does anyone need I think this is the challenge we have the challenge is you know the the founders by the way I I don't believe this is a question of money for the founders of of AI startups I think this is a a question of ego rather than greed I'm the one that figured it out first I'm the one that you know uh uh uh provided this amazing breakthrough to humanity but if you if you look back just 150 years at the you know king or queen of

England they had a much worse life than what anyone today has you know anyone in any reasonable city in the US today has air conditioning has Transportation has clean water has hot water has sanitation so we're getting to the point where more doesn't actually make any difference anymore it it is a a a morality question of can we just shift the mindset to abundance instead of scarcity we'll be right back stay with us support for prop G comes from 1 800 Flowers roses are a classic way to say I love you and since Valentine's Day

is coming up you might want to start thinking about how you're going to celebrate it you can gift a beautiful bouquet to a special person this year with the help of 1 1800flowers.com they offer stunning highquality bouquet and each one is crafted with roses picked at their Peak and cared for every step of the way they're shipped fresh to ensure lasting Beauty and right now 1 1800 Flowers has a special offer when you buy one dozen they'll double your bouquet to Two Dozen Roses so you can get double the roses for free our own producer

Claire ordered from 1800 flowers and she thought Claire bomb in here what did you think what did you think of those flowers uh they're the best roses I've ever received they're beautiful so happy to happy to get them there you go their bouquet are selling fast and you can lock in your order today win their heart this Valentine's Day at 1 1800flowers.com to claim your dou roses offer go to 1 1800flowers.com slpro G that's 1 1800flowers.com slpro G do you think sequestering China from our most advanced chip technology was a mistake 100% that's the biggest

mistake ever I mean since when did we you know I mean strategically as I said of course you know uh um the two big sanctions that America did in the last you know few years were you know backfired Mass L against America the the move against Russia you know basically got a lot of people to try and dollarize a little bit and the move against China drove China to become more inventive it's as simple as that but it is also a massive statement of you know what I'm going to try everything I can to beat

you and I don't know how to say that in a in a polite way but I've gone the first time to America in the 70s and it blew me away it was a world apart from anywhere else in the world I get that feeling today when I land in Shanghai uh it's you know it's not it's not an easy fight it's not a it's not a a determined fight let's say 70s 80s '90s definitely you know post Berlin the us could do whatever the f they wanted in the world I don't think it's as easy

a slam dunk as it has been in the past anymore I think America needs to recognize that when you win it's going to be through strategies like what Trump is talking about by increasing defense uh you know spending even further than what it was you know loading the the the the the American Debt Clock even further than it is loaded and you know I had a um a very good boss of mine that used to say when when we're under pressure we tend to do more of what we know how to do best but what

we know how to do best is what got us under pressure in the first place and I truly and honestly think that imagine a world where there is an agreement that America adheres to by the way that basically says let's just deliver that world that everyone's dreaming of deliver a world where there is no need for you to attack me I think of a little bit of this your what how I would couch some of your comments is you think we're entering into what I'll call an age of equivalence I don't I don't know how

to my semantics might be up but I think of America was able to develop and sustain certain competitive advantages manufacturing mostly because the German and Japanese infrastructure have been leveled then Services infrastructure uh and then a technology you know whether it was because of Ip risk-taking multiculturalism and we were able to maintain one two three decade Le leads and find the next thing and establish more prosperity and create and consume a disproportionate amount of the world spoils and tell me if I'm saying this correctly you now believe that are competitive Advantage around these things is

shrinking from 30 years to 30 days so it it sort of should bring on this incredible age of cooperation and we should stop deluding ourselves that we're going to be able to get out of head and win is that is that an accurate summary of what you're that is a very accurate summary that it is it's it's still possible for the us to win I think the most important competitive advantage that you know you may have not mentioned here is that money has always been free for the US right you had the ability to print

money to create amazing wealth uh that was that got reinvested wisely and you know and sometimes unwisely unfortunately I think we're in a in a time where $500 billion dollar um on Stargate is you know sounds unwise right uh but uh you know at a point in time it was an no issue you know it's it's like okay if this is what it takes to build the infrastructure we'll do it what I'm attempting to say here is it's not that the US has lost the capability to crush other nations on whatever um you know full

spectrum dominance that the US has been attempting to uh to achieve for years it's that other nations have grown an ability to resist right and that the more the US is becoming uh you know I again I I worked my entire life in Corporate America so don't don't take that as an attack to to to the American Approach at all I'm I'm basically saying that the more America will bully the world the more you'll get responses like deep seek across the world uh you know where people are simply going to say uh you know what

we don't like this anymore I I you know I I will openly say I don't like the fact that there is a a small chunk of my of whatever money I made anywhere in the world that was somehow handed to America because of the US dollar dominance right uh you know I I I don't I don't feel as a wealthy man I don't feel that this tax if you want on all the money made everywhere in the world that this export of inflation to everywhere in the world is a just uh setup for all of

us to succeed and so you can see across the world you know actions from Japan from China from Russia for sure that is basically attacking the US where it becomes painful which is the US dollar dominance it's not going to go away anytime soon but it makes things a little painful and and it is you know in a typical environment in a typical environment the US would say you know what I'm going to crush you I'm strong enough and you are strong enough you know I'm going to apply tariffs as As Trump would say and

make sure that nobody has access to my wonderful Market yeah makes sense it does make sense but it also causes pain on the US side right and it comes from a mindset of we're still competing for limited resources where the world was made up of metals and Millers you know and and and and and power was acquired by by weapons I think we are on the cusp of a world where everything is possible just understand understand that from a difference of of manufacturing point of view right with enough understanding of nanophysics and and an understanding

of uh uh you know a level of intelligence that helps us Bridge the remaining bits of nanophysics we could manufacture things out of thin air just reorganizing molecules of air right instead of competing for minerals and resources and this is on at our fingertips it's years away there is a need for a mindset change I always like to pause and double click on or at least cement and highlight what I think is real striking Insight in the notion of an inability to sustain an advantage and all it does is create fear and weaken relationships and

make one side more likely to strike all they ahead and create workarounds because they're you know nothing creates Innovation like War and the threat of survival right and what also really resonated was and I've been saying this I think Sam Alman is Cheryl Samberg with hush tones shell Samberg was weaponized her femininity her charm her maternal instincts a gender the important conversation on gender to basically take what was a company that was creating rage making our discourse more coarse depressing our teens and make it seem more palatable to basically rub Vaseline over the lens of

pretty mendacious behavior and I feel like Sam in his hush tones and his that's a real concern you know Senator I'm worried too meanwhile I'm about to raise $40 billion at a $350 billion market cap I mean it's just I have been to this movie before and we are falling for it again and again and so I want to I want to propose something and have you respond to it and this is literally you just inspired this thought similar to the way we have the UN or NATO we have a new organization and the two

founding members are China and the US and it's total open there's offices in DC Silicon Valley Shanghai and Beijing every room every team has a mix of us and Chinese scientists Regulators such that it's almost impossible to hide anything we're all working on the same damn thing and we're trying to solve the world's most difficult problems food distribution Health poverty we're working together but we're also making sure there's a very very thick layer of supervision and enforcement such that we are constantly testing how would you make bioweapons and then we're sending our crawlers out to

see is anyone working on this that we don't want working on this and we together try and create you know like what interpole was doing where we had multilateral cooperation around the drug trade and arm shipments but we have this multilateral organization that says there total transparency and our job job is to Dole it out where we see the most opportunity to increase stakeholder value and the stakeholders are all 7 and a half billion people on the planet and we're there to ensure that there's trust and transparency and ensure that the bad guys don't get

this and start doing and we're going to cooperate around either sequestering this or or ensuring that the development of it to make weapons or create a new super virus that we are hip to these things before anybody else and acting against them with that type of organization do you think that's possible and in your mind do you think that that has Merit that would be a dream I mean let me just double click on a very important comment that you said there at the end what what both parties are unable to recognize while they are

uh putting their heads down and competing with each other is how many bad guys are putting their heads down in silence and working against both them the thing about AI is a massive democracy and massive set of Open Source once again because of this speed of this thing you know it it took Linux tens of years to actually be I mean at least around 10 years to be established it took massive open- Source models weeks to be established right and so there is access you know anyone today can download a deep seek uh uh you

know model to their computer in the jungles of Colombia and do something malicious without ever being detected now the dream here is that we work together to say look again mutually assure destruction if we are not both together against the bad guys there is harm that can come to all of us and I think it's a beautiful dream but believe it or not there is a bit of that dream that's already happening I mean I don't know if you know the statistic but 38% of all AI top AI researchers in America are Chinese you know

it's quite staggering when you really think about it and if you if you count if you count the Indians and if you count you know some of some that have Russian origin and so on and what percentage of that 38% are spies great question and and in all honesty in the world you're defining it those spies are assets to humanity and it's quite interesting that if you do not have a reason to spy then they become more of an asset to humanity I I think I think the the truth here is there is no winning

there's truly no winning and and I of course I don't want to to be grumpy but you know a massive advantage in AI is not going to Trump the card of nuclear Holocaust so we're competing in the wrong Arena if you think about it because in a world where we have so many superpowers uh of which almost four or five can completely wipe out our planet in less than two hours right the Quest for more power for for a dream that I can Crush someone else is a very dangerous Quest nobody in this world today

can crush anybody I think this message needs to become really really clear what are we competing on what are we competing on and so of course you know what you what you recommended by the way can be done by governments which I think is an Impossible Dream but believe it or not if just a few billionaires got together and built those things the creation of the world of abundance will basically nullify the need to compete you see the the challenge we have in our minds is we we're not in that world of abundance yet right

and so and so we're still living in our capitalist way of every one of us has to to to to play to to aggregate more wealth which delivers more power and then that I take that wealth and power and protect my wealth and power and make more of it this is a a world that's about to end it is literally about to end for six billion of us as soon as Jobs go away nobody's talking about this so you and I both know uh you probably more so but I would say I know personally or

somewhat well I don't know a dozen or two dozen billionaires and what what I have found is that the majority of them have what I call their very expensive go back and that is they have a plan whether it's anti-Semitism or uh nuclear war or some sort of AI catastrophe or Revolution and they have their gstream 650 ready on a moment's notice and pilots and they're bunker in New Zealand and what I've said when I've talked to a few people about this is like let me get at this if things really get that bad you

don't think your Pilots are going to get you to your destination and then kill you you think they're going to sacrifice themselves to save your family you don't think that everybody else is going to figure out where the billionaire bunkers are and come and take care I mean it's just it's such a ridic I feel like it's not only a stupid thesis it's an unhealthy one because they're under the impression that their money can buy them a rip cord a way out and they can't and so shouldn't you be focusing all this energy on making

sure that we just don't get to that point I don't colonizing Mars well oh here's an idea take your immense talent and capital to make this place a little bit more habitable because you're not going to want to live on Mars Mars is an awful place you don't want to be there that's worse that's worse than death that's not space exploration it's space execution isn't this I mean don't we have a real virus it's almost like capitalism collapsing on itself where we get so caught up in our selfworth and our masculinity and our power around

the number and we see this way to a billion 10 billion a trillion dollars which will increase in the current age my worth as a human don't doesn't this require an entirely different zyed endlessly you see you see both directions of this dilemma are quite interesting one of them is you know remember last time I don't remember when we were when we had a drink at after the event uh we spoke about the idea of what you can do with money you know there there is there is a a specific um you know range of

wealth uh where money makes a difference you know if you've never driven a sports car before and you manag to get yourself a sports car you go like ah I made it but then if you drive a real sports car and you know how annoying and broken they are and you know how they you just eventually go like I don't need any more of this the problem is it the game of billionaire or multi multi multi-millionaire is wonderful okay it's a it's a nice game but it has no significant impact on gains that you can

achieve as a human you'll still sleep in one bed and you can make it as fancy as you can but it's still one bed you can still drive only one car there could be 600 other cars 600 thousand other cars in the garage but you're still driving only one and by the way when you're a billionaire you're not really driving it comfortably anyway because you're targeted all the time the other way of this crazy dilemma is even more uh you know worthy of discussion because we uh remember the times when uh if you had an

MBA you were like a a highly educated postgrad and you know now everyone has an MBA and then if you had a a PhD you know you became the special one and now everyone has a PhD and you know many have many and and the idea here is um there is an inflation to the value of something that you acquire right and and what is happening with wealth today with artificial intelligence is if you just look at the current trajectory we're going to see our first trillionaire within years for sure and that not only makes

that person acquire more wealth that is not necessary but it makes the price of every Rolls-Royce higher and then that makes the price of every Mercedes higher and that makes the price of every Toyota higher and so on and so forth which basically means that as more of those exist just in the single digits more of the millionaires become poor and then a few years later more of the 100 million millionaires become poor because they can no longer compete with that level of wealth to which everyone is now appealing and so if you take that

cycle and continue to repeat it over and over EV ually you'll end up with a very few like way less than 0.01 of 1% you know of all humans that have so much wealth but then the great equalizer is that the rest of us have no wealth at all so once again from an economics point of view we are getting to a point where money will have very little value as compared to a world where money has no has no value because everything is becoming a lot cheaper which is a world we can create with

AI so I buy it theoretically but what I've registered is that over the last 50 years money becomes an even greater Arbiter of the life you can lead when I was a kid the difference between my dad's house and his boss's house little bit nicer car a little bit bigger house but we were in the same neighborhood golfed to the same country club the market in a capitalist Society figure always figures out a way for you to offer you more with more money there's coach there's premium economy there's business class first class there's chartering there's

fractional jet ownership there's ownership there's a challenger there's a bombardier Global Express and there's a Golf Stream 650 then there's going into space my sense is life has actually gone the other way the last 50 years that the life that the 0.1% lead is an entirely different life it's like the Delta between being uh middle class and Rich has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger and so the incentives are actually the other way way that there really is a reason when you're the richest man in the world you can show up and turn off foreign

aid without being elected I think we're saying the same thing what what what that means however is that the majority of us even the ones that are now millionaires are going to become poor what you're saying is exactly true it's that the the range in which we're now talking about the difference between what between what you can do with a lot of money and what you cannot do if you don't have that money makes everyone almost equal at the bottom everyone gets a reasonable car but not a massively fancy car everyone you know becomes equal

as compared to those incredibly wealthy if you know what I mean we'll be right back stay with us Moda I want to propose a thesis and I'm going to do what we're supposed to do and that us talk about your book I was sort of Blown Away by this guy Robert Armstrong he proposed or he he talked about certain industries where the innovation has resulted in stakeholder value not shareholder value so we have fallen under the the notion that if I can come up with a better search engine I'm going to capture trillions of dollars

in shareholder value for me and my investors and my employees same way around social media same way around e-commerce I came to Orlando last night for a speaking gig I screed along the surface of the app atmosphere at 810 the speed of sound I don't have to you know eat my niece going over the Rockies with scurvy I don't get seasick for 14 days as my parents did coming on a steam ship it has changed Humanity jet travel the PC changed Humanity for better I mean it's just a superc computer that used to cost 10

you know billion dollars on a flation adjusted I can get for 300 bucks put it on my desk and increase the productivity of everything I was on the board a Gateway computer we were the second largest computer manufacturer in the world when I bought 17% of the company it was worth $130 million if you added up all the profits of the airline industry it's negative they've lost more money than they've made there are certain industries in technology where because of a lack of competitive modes the gains the value seep to humanity and to stakeholders they're

not able to be captured by a small number of shareholders and when deep seek came along it sort of dawned on me maybe and I think this is an optimistic V Vision maybe AI is more like the PC or the airline industry and that is many of the benefits will accrete to stakeholders and citizens but no one small set of company or people are going to be able to capture all of the value do you think there's do you think that's an optimistic view of where AI might be headed in other words do not participate

in the soft Bank rounded of $350 billion in open AI there is certainty in my mind that there is going to be a democratization of power more access for everyone to more things right uh you know unfortunately if you take a a a power hungry uh scenario in the recent Wars of 2024 in you know in in the world uh you got the ultra powerful you got a concentration of power some of it using AI by the way in terms of weapons that have massive impacts but you also got uh access to drones that can

be flown from a very far away distance and for $3,000 cause a lot of harm right and and I think that dichotomy if you want that Arbitrage between a massive concentration of power at the top and a a democratization of power at the bottom is going to drive a very very high need of for control once again I I love the hypothesis or or the ambition for AI to become that uh uh net positive to the world because it's not really driving only profits to the top which it will but I think that that the

opposite direction of that is that when you have massive power at the top and you sense that the bottom has a democracy of power and that that can threaten you at any point in time you're going to have to uh oppress them and so that will take away the benefits that uh you know that uh the majority can get and and I give a very Stark and maybe a bit graphic uh example think about a world Scot where where um a bullet could kill but if you're a leader of a Nation you can have protection

around you and can have everything to protect yourself we've seen examples in in the 2024 Wars where a specific person is targeted anywhere in the world and killed you know a tiny little drone carries that bullet seeks you with AI finds where you are stands in front of your forehead and then shoots and these Technologies are unfortunately under development now think about what that does to democracy think about those who own that Weapon by the way they they don't necessarily have to be governments and how they can influence the distribution of power how they can

ensure that whatever is created is directed in a way that's different than uh than what would benefit the majority yeah in every war there's a a new weapon that kind of changes the game and I think don't talk about this enough but I think drones are the new weapon uh that's going to I mean I think about millions of selfhealing assassin drones and Ai and the AI under the direction of some individual puts together a list of people who are not in the way of my wealth or my power and those drones can be released

at one of a you know thousand different I mean you can you can really get very dark very very fast here so I'm going to try and segue out of this into something a little bit more positive the first conversation where I'm grumpier than you yeah yeah we're about there's this is a there's yeah it's definitely Grumpy Old Men it's grumpy it's grumpy grumpier and grumpiest but I do find I do whenever I speak to you I you like managed to distill something down to something understandable and actionable for me I love the idea of

this multilateral agency I was thinking in a zero some game philosophy that we need to get out ahead we need to develop AI we shouldn't be shipping Nvidia chips to China was part of that crew and what you have taught me is okay what if we cooperated uh around not only releasing it to for you know the betterment of humanity but also quite frankly policing the bad stuff together and being 100% transparent with each other and just saying there not only are there no secrets but it would be impossible to have secrets amongst each other

because we're we've just decided we're in the same office space I really love that idea and I think that as I think about candidates that I want to support in 2028 I I do or 2026 I do have access mostly because I have money but I think this is a really interesting view anyways thank you for that your latest book on stress practical guide for stress rele living addresses the pervasive issues of chronic stress in Modern Life in an interview on The Diary of a CEO with by the way Stephen Bartlett who I believe is

going to be the next Joe Rogan you described stress as an addiction and a badge of honor say more why are we so addicted to stress part of the of the fakeness that leads us to success uh is I'm busy I'm busy I'm busy uh which I have to say I found almost always quite shocking because um you know if you if you go across the uh the range of intelligence if you want I think most of us know that a good 80 to 90% of all of the efficiency that you bring to any job

that you do is done within 20% of the time but yet uh you know part of your ego is I'm going to fill the other TW you know the you know the other 80% of the time with 20% work that's taking a lot of toall on me because it basically means I'm driven it basically means you know that I am maximizing my uh my my performance maximizing my deliveries between waking up in the morning at 5:00 a.m. to run an Iron Man and then you know going in the evening to attend I don't know what

and flying all over the world and so on and so forth the truth of the matter is um this is a self-perception a form of ego that says I am doing amazing okay but it isn't and I think the biggest challenge we have is that we believe that the world stresses us the world does not stress us I mean when I wrote uh when I wrote unstress I started from physics I basically said look the easiest way to understand physics in to understand stress in humans is to look at stress in objects and the stress

in object is the force applied to the object but that is divided by the cross-section of the uh of the object how much resources the object has to carry that Force right and so typical reality of our life especially the lives of busy Executives who live in busy cities and so on and so forth is that there will be multiple challenges and forces applied to you every day but that the crosssection of you your capability your skills your connections your your your abilities and so on the more you have those and apply them properly the

less stressed you feel there might be more Force applied to you you might be carrying more challenges but you don't feel stressed just like an object doesn't break when it has a bigger cross-section and the reality of the matter is that part of the badge of honor is not that I'm carrying a lot of things it's that I'm busy and I'm angry and I'm stressed and I'm this and I'm that and and I find that honestly yeah and I worked with many people who are very successful who are who appear to be that way and

become a lot very obnoxious and unloved by their people and I worked with a few that were totally chill you know I I used to be the one that used to tell my sales team I really think this pipeline is too wide I I really think you should focus on 30% of it and close it uh you know rather than waste your time on things that you will not serve well and and you know in a way you make more money that way you become more success successful that way you get more uh you know

customer satisfaction that way and the rest of the pipeline you hand over to a different channel that does it in a way that's suited for it so that it doesn't stress anyone how do we deal with stress in a more sustainable way and as we wrap up here are there any quick fixes I feel that what we don't what we want to deal with is not stress what we want to deal with is a break points so we want to avoid break points and I think I think there are three break points that happen to

us in our world today one one is of course burnout okay and burn out algorithmically is the sigma of all of the stressors that you're under multiplied by their duration multiplied by their uh intensity and basically most of the time when you burn out you burn out not because one big stressor is in your life but it's because of the aggregation of all the little things the loud alarm in the morning the commute the this and that and then one little thing shows up on top of it and you break down and so burnout to

me is a question of a weekly review literally every Saturday you sit with your yourself you write on a piece of paper everything that stressed you last week and you scratch out the ones that you commit that you will not allow in your in your life anymore you can you can either remove them from your life or make them more enjoyable so if you're if you have to be stuck in a commute or a long flight take some good music with you be healthy and so on and so forth the other uh break point unfortunately

is trauma right uh so basically massive stress that happens in a very short period of time that exceeds your ability to deal with it the loss of a loved one an accident you know being stuck in a in war or whatever and so on and and uh and and this unfortunately is not within our hands but believe it or not it actually is not the reason for the stress pandemic of the world so 91% of all of us uh would get uh uh at least one uh PTSD inducing like the the highest of all trauma

uh PDS PTSD inducing event once in their life but 93% of those will recover in 3 months and 96.7% of those will recover in 6 months and and all of those will will enjoy post-traumatic growth so there is no worry about uh about trauma if you want it's it's not within your control to prevent but you know if you work on it you'll recover the third and the most interesting reason for stress especially in younger Generations today is what I call an anticipation of a threat right and and the the challenge with it is that

uh looking forward with fear worry anxiety and panic uh are probably the biggest stressors for the younger generations and and and the funny bit is that uh fear is not a bad emotions fear is actually alerting you to something that you need to pay attention to so so that's okay right worry anxiety and panic are actually of a very different fabric so worry is not about I know there is a threat coming worry is I can't make up my mind if there is a threat coming or not and so you keep flip-flopping and you don't

take the action and and you keep feeling the fear but not doing anything about it when when you're worried you need to actually tell yourself openly look I'm going to decide if I should chill or or Panic right CH chill or or freak out if it's freak out then it's fear deal with it if it's chill then stop thinking about it anxiety is not about the threat anxiety is actually about your capability and most people if they really visit themselves when they feel anxious when you're anxious there is a threat approaching you but you constantly

think that you're not capable of dealing with it so the more you attempt to deal with the threat the more you feel incapable so the more anxious you become when you're anxious work on your capabilities not on the threat and then Panic is a question of time right and panic really is the stress you know the the threat is imminent it's approaching me too quickly and so accordingly when you feel panicked don't work on solving the problem don't work on addressing the threat work on giving yourself more time uh you know find someone to help

you or delay the you know the the the presentation time or you know or cancel a few meetings so that you have more time for the for whatever it is that you need to focus on and and what I mean by all of this this is this is a very very quick summary of a you know of a lot of stuff that we discuss in unstress but but but what I mean by this is that it's all it all goes back to your cross-section all goes back to skills and choices that we make so that

the external stressors that come to us from from the world don't uh don't kill us my one of my favorite Stephen Spielberg movies is this movie called Bridge of spies and this Russian spy who's been unmasked by the US government is in court he's being tried for you know treason or spying and he's potentially facing life in prison and his lawyer I think it's Tom heg says aren't you nervous aren't you stressed and he looks at him and says would it help exactly exactly anyways uh Gad is the former Chief business officer for Google X

the founder of 1 billion happy foundation and co-founder of unstress he's also a bestselling author of books including s for happy scary smart and that little voice in your head Mo I mean this in seriously you bring my stress down because I find you inspiring and relaxing and you distill things into uh kind of actionable solutions really always enjoy uh speaking with you I think you're really a a profound thinker uh thanks for your good work for