Tech Whistleblower: You Only Have 3 Years Left Before This Hits! - Mo Gawdat

1. 0:00 – 2:29

   Intro

   1. MGMo Gawdat0:00

      We have video evidence of people abusing children and not a single person got arrested. How can you call that a democracy? So humanity is at a crossroads where for the first time ever, we need to wake up and realize that we're ruled by maniacs, and what we believe is democracy is not democracy, and what we know is not the truth. Like companies and governments will blame the geopolitical and economic challenges we have on AI, but the truth is AI is not the enemy. Like I'm not worried about AI turning against us. I'm worried about humans telling AI to turn against us. Like when I worked at Google, we were building amazing things, believing that we were making the world a better place, and we were. But then suddenly there is a moment where you recognize that maybe the world will not use what you're making the way you want it to be used. And sadly, this is upon us.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett0:51

      So I have lots of questions.

   3. MGMo Gawdat0:52

      Okay, that's good.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett0:54

      So what's your take on this job disruption point? What is the risk of these very intelligent models that the creators of these models don't actually understand themselves? Do you think Sam Altman's pro-humanity? How do we get to a point of ethical AI when the incentive structures are so highly competitive? And then I wonder if there's a path that ends in AI being net positive for humanity.

   5. MGMo Gawdat1:12

      For sure. Somehow we've been pre-programmed to believe that this is upon us and we cannot change it, and I refuse that. So we will talk about the solutions.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett1:20

      But are you optimistic?

   7. MGMo Gawdat1:21

      I'm very optimistic about the future. I'm not optimistic about the next year.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett1:24

      Why the next year?

   9. MGMo Gawdat1:25

      Come on, Steven. You don't want me to say it? Ugh. So-

   10. SBSteven Bartlett1:32

       This is super interesting to me. My team give me this report to show me how many of you that watch this show subscribe, and some of you have told us, according to this, that you are unsubscribed from the channel randomly. So favor to ask all of you, please could you check right now if you've hit the subscribe button if you are a regular viewer of the show and you like what we do here. We're approaching quite a significant landmark on this show in terms of a subscriber number. So if there was one simple free thing that you could do to help us, my team, everyone here, to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over week, it is just to hit that subscribe button and to double check if you've hit it. Only thing I'll ever ask of you. Do we have a deal? If you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make sure every single week, every single month, we fight harder and harder and harder and harder to bring you the guests and conversations that you wanna hear. I've stayed true to that promise since the very beginning of The Diary Of A CEO, and I will not let you down. Please help us. Really appreciate it. Let's get on with the show. [upbeat music] Mo Gawdat, I spoke to you

2. 2:29 – 5:26

   Why Mo Warned About AI Before Anyone Else

   1. SBSteven Bartlett2:29

      I think about four years ago when you wrote a book about happiness, and I remember you came in and you'd written this book about AI, but I particularly wanted to speak about-

   2. MGMo Gawdat2:36

      Do you remember that?

   3. SBSteven Bartlett2:36

      ... the subject of happiness 'cause I was fascinated by it. What I find a- astonishing is the fact that you were talking about AI before anybody was really talking about AI. No guest that had ever come on my podcast had ever mentioned the subject of AI. It just wasn't interesting to the world. And then this thing called ChatGPT came out, and suddenly everybody got to feel it for themselves and became fascinated by it. My first question, and this might be a question for people that don't know you, is why at that time did you start talking about AI before anybody else?

   4. MGMo Gawdat3:07

      I knew them in the lab. I, um, I joined Google in twen- 2007, uh, very late 2006. Uh, and at the time, most people don't know that at the time we had reasonably established AIs doing our back-end work. And 2008 we had the cat paper, which was published 2009, the first real unprompted AI. Uh, I remember 2016, I had that incident where I was, you know, observing a project we were, uh, funding that was about l- teaching grippers, uh, how to grip, um, unlike industrial machinery. Uh, so to be, to be able to grip like a human needs a very high level of intelligence to, to, to assess the texture, the softness, the positioning and so on, the shape of everything. And we were doing that and it, it just blew my mind how similar to my kids they were. And I think that was my very first realization that we were building the apex of intelligence. We were genuinely handing over the reins of superintelligence to another being, right? And when you, when you get faced with that, you start to suddenly realize something that we at Google found very difficult to realize, which was that everyone I knew at Google till then, uh, was believing that we were making the world a better place, and we were. We genuinely wa- were doing amazing things for the world. Uh, but then suddenly there is a moment where you, uh, where you recognize that maybe the world will not use what you're making the way you want it to be used. And, and you can see that in lots of technologies. You know, social media starts by the claim that it's gonna get us connected and gets us closer, but eventually ends up separating us with that little screen. You know, dating apps are giving you the promise that you're gonna find your soulmate, but in reality, they keep renewing month after month. And so tech, uh, somehow ends up being more capitalist than altruistic. And I think I was, I wasn't the first. Nick Bostrom started. You know, Geoffrey Hinton completely changed his mind. Fei-Fei Li's starting to say, you know, "This is very serious." Everyone now, everyone who's ever had a very deep relationship with the machines is

3. 5:26 – 8:56

   Can AI Be a Net Positive for Humanity?

   1. MGMo Gawdat5:26

      a bit concerned.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett5:27

      I wonder if there's a path that's hard to see now that ends in AI being net positive for humanity.

   3. MGMo Gawdat5:34

      For sure. I bet 100% on that. It's that this path is very painful.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett5:40

      This path is very painful.

   5. MGMo Gawdat5:41

      Yeah. So, so the example you need to understand is, you know, we discovered, uh, nuclear power and the very first implementation was a nuclear bomb, not ch- not nuclear energy, right? And, uh, and I think that's exactly what's happening with AI. Uh, the first implementations of AI areIn favor of a few at the expense of the majority. You know, the, the, in favor of the capitalist to increase productivity and reduce costs, uh, but not taking into account how that impacts on the general public. Uh, you know, in favor of the, of the armies, uh, that are now competing with autonomous weapons, in favor of the surveillance systems that are attempting to control everything with more and more and more intelligence and more monitoring. And that's not AI waking up in the morning and saying, "Hey, you know what? Let's oppress all humans." But it is a powerful few that are simply deciding to use the ultimate superpower on the planet today to gain more power and more control. I mean, as we speak, we're living in two major wars where AI is doing most of the killing.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett6:54

      'Cause a lot of people think of AI as these, like, chatbots that we're all using to help us write.

   7. MGMo Gawdat6:59

      No, I think, I think there is a hype. I call it the hype dichotomy, if you want. So, so what the general public sees about AI is overhyped but ineffective. You know, all of the fake videos and all of the, you know, um, Grok did this and, you know, we attempted to switch off that machine, and it did that, and so on. What the real geeks see inside the lab is just unbelievable intelligence. And so what is about to happen is that we've started to put together systems that develop themselves. They look at their own code, and they, you know, they run experiments, and they test those experiments if they changed something. And they see where the machines are, uh, you know, the performance is, and, and redeploy the best code. Okay? And, and if you just think of that, I want you to try and imagine a world where we have a tiny little genius sitting in the back end somewhere trying. But instead of trying a new code every day, it's trying a new code every microsecond. Eventually, sooner or later, they'll discover something, right? And I think that's what most people don't realize. What most people don't realize is how intelligence triggers intelligence. And, and if you really, really understand this, you realize that the hype, uh, on the, on the, on the normal human side is completely overrated, uh, missing the main topics, and the silence inside the vault, if you want, of the geeks is quite alarming. No, not alarming in a bad way, but it's quite l- world-changing.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett8:42

      I think world-changing is a really interesting phrase because I f- find that to be quite true, that the world is, um, at the precipice of quite a significant change-

   9. MGMo Gawdat8:50

      Yeah

   10. SBSteven Bartlett8:50

       ... in many respects. It's funny, I, I, it's funny, I almost swing backwards and forwards with my,

4. 8:56 – 15:28

   Massive Job Disruption Worldwide

   1. SBSteven Bartlett8:56

      my thoughts on AI. I guess one of the thoughts that hasn't swung is that there's gonna be pretty tremendous job disruption. I would've, like, logically believed it from, like, reasoning up from, okay, intelligence increases. What is intelligence? And once intelligence, um, is in the form of these agents where on my phone right now, I can tell my agent to do something. It uses the computer downstairs. It does it for me. When f- when I first experienced that, I was like, "Wow, okay, so it can do anything that's on a computer. It can click around. It can do stuff for me." There's a lot of people that are paid in the world to click around on a computer.

   2. MGMo Gawdat9:27

      [laughs]

   3. SBSteven Bartlett9:27

      I'm probably one of them-

   4. MGMo Gawdat9:28

      Yeah

   5. SBSteven Bartlett9:28

      ... to be honest. And then the other eureka moment was just in seeing how my own hiring had started to shift.

   6. MGMo Gawdat9:35

      For sure.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett9:36

      And I started to notice that we were, we were thinking about AI proficiency in our hiring a lot more, and that especially, you know, d- I think the guys at, um, Anthropic, which is one of the big AI companies, said that they could see, I think they said roughly 15% of entry-level jobs-

   8. MGMo Gawdat9:53

      Mm

   9. SBSteven Bartlett9:53

      ... could now be done by AI. I think that's what they said.

   10. MGMo Gawdat9:56

       Mm.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett9:56

       Um, and that started to correlate with what I was, I was observing. And this is when I thought, "Oh my gosh, yes. No, this is, this is gonna cause a lot of job disruption, especially at the entry level level."

   12. MGMo Gawdat10:08

       Mm.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett10:08

       Um-

   14. MGMo Gawdat10:09

       I think you're spot on with that. Not the, not the blue collar, but, but the entry level knowledge work.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett10:14

       Yeah. And that became my, my first concern. You know, I sat here with Dara, the CEO of Uber, and he was quite clear that the nine million Uber riders won't have their jobs anymore. What's your take on this job disruption point?

   16. MGMo Gawdat10:28

       No, I, I th- I think you're spot on. I mean, your, your team gave me this lovely, uh, little, uh, pyramid basically. You know, if you, if you think of the bottom layer as, um, blue collar jobs, right?

   17. SBSteven Bartlett10:40

       Mm-hmm.

   18. MGMo Gawdat10:40

       Uh, more people doing manual work, mm.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett10:42

       Mm-hmm.

   20. MGMo Gawdat10:42

       Uh, on top of it, you'll have those, you know, call them knowledge workers-

   21. SBSteven Bartlett10:46

       Mm

   22. MGMo Gawdat10:46

       ... mostly doing mundane jobs, like you said, clicking on a computer or responding to a phone call or whatever. Then you have the middle, uh, knowledge workers, jobs that require a bit more intelligence. You know, anything from a paralegal to a financial analyst to all of that. And then, of course, you know, top leadership, mm. And, and most people think it's going to be starting from the bottom. I don't think it will start from the bottom. Actually, I think blue collar jobs will stay for a very long time. Right?

   23. SBSteven Bartlett11:15

       Give me a d- an example of a blue collar job for someone that doesn't know.

   24. MGMo Gawdat11:17

       Um, a carpenter.

   25. SBSteven Bartlett11:18

       Okay.

   26. MGMo Gawdat11:19

       Okay? Uh, you know, I, you know I love to restore classic cars, so you know, there isn't a robot that can do that yet, okay? Th-this, however, you know, any- anything that is, um, call center agent, um, assistant, uh, travel agent, you know, anything that you can do with a few clicks and is mundane, uh, is going to disappear very quickly. My, my prediction is you're gonna start to see very serious impact in 2027. Now, what you had, had not s-sensed it before because what we saw was no hiring in that segment.It's so, so that what you saw in the last couple of years is that companies were not hiring entry-level jobs anymore. It wasn't job losses yet, but that basically meant the workforce was not growing, right? The next layer I think would probably be the knowledge workers. As, as intelligence increases, a paralegal would probably not be needed because AI can do the research, or one paralegal can do the job of four. You know, a financial analyst the same, and so on and so forth. But interestingly, it continues to go up, believe it or not. And I [laughs] you know, I hosted, uh, Max Tedmark on my, on my documentary, and, and he was laughing out loud, genuinely laughing out loud saying, "You know, most of the CEOs believe that they can fire everyone and have AI do all of the jobs. They just don't remember that AGI is gonna do everything better than humans eventually, including being a CEO."

   27. SBSteven Bartlett12:43

       So let's first define when you say white collar.

   28. MGMo Gawdat12:45

       Hmm.

   29. SBSteven Bartlett12:46

       You, you said lawyers there. What kind of roles is that?

   30. MGMo Gawdat12:48

       I mean, e- every- everything. I mean, if you take-- if you're a doctor that's doing diagnoses, you, you probably will have fewer doctors doing, uh, more diagnoses because I think the NHS does that, uh, that already by asking people to interact with an AI or first, you know? If you're a, um, a composer, a music composer, some composers will lose their jobs because of that. If you're an artist that's doing graphic design, some will lose their jobs because AI comes into that. And, and interestingly, even middle management. I mean, I, I told you offline about my, my startup. I, my CTO is an AI. My, you know, chief of staff is an AI. My project management is AIs. Again, because I'm a geek, I can do those things, but that interface will come to the normal people very soon, right?
5. 15:28 – 16:38

   Will AI Cost Savings Create New Jobs?

   1. MGMo Gawdat15:28

      clearly spiraling downwards, don't you think?

   2. SBSteven Bartlett15:30

      Yeah. I, I wonder with, um, when costs drop, I think, uh, one of the things that might happen as well is that people will spend more on other things. 'Cause I was thinking in my business, one of the observations I've had is if I make a c- a cost saving, I end up spending the money on something else.

   3. MGMo Gawdat15:45

      Mm-hmm.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett15:46

      Now, that thing could be tokens, basically spending money on-

   5. MGMo Gawdat15:49

      Compute, yeah

   6. SBSteven Bartlett15:50

      ... um, com- you know, AI. But, but it also could be hiring in different areas.

   7. MGMo Gawdat15:54

      Which are?

   8. SBSteven Bartlett15:56

      Software engineers are like hot property right now.

   9. MGMo Gawdat15:59

      You, you have to imagine all of that intelligence is sooner or later going to be not replaced entirely in the first stages. But if, you know, the job of four assistants is gonna be done by one, then the fo- the job of four paralegals can be done by one, then the job of a massive marketing team can be done by, you know, a smaller marketing team. It's not that jobs will end first, it's that, you know, productivity gains will make businesses not want to, to have as many people, costly humans-

   10. SBSteven Bartlett16:35

       Mm-hmm

   11. MGMo Gawdat16:35

       ... you know, costly emotional humans when,

6. 16:38 – 22:20

   What Happens to Blue Collar Jobs?

   1. MGMo Gawdat16:38

      when the job can be predictably done for cheaper.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett16:40

      And then what about this, um, this, this bottom layer here? Th- there was this video released by Figure AI the other day where they showed someone on, um, uh, well, a robot on the production line for eight hours just sorting packages.

   3. MGMo Gawdat16:52

      Yeah.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett16:52

      Did you see this video?

   5. MGMo Gawdat16:53

      Mm-hmm.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett16:54

      At one point, they showed a human sorting the packages alongside them, but the robot ended up winning out. And okay, this is a very straightforward task. All, all it's doing here is it's looking for where the label is on the package and making sure the label is facing downwards-

   7. MGMo Gawdat17:07

      Yeah

   8. SBSteven Bartlett17:08

      ... um, on all the packages. So it's looking, it's, um, sorting the packages, putting the label facing down, and it did this for eight days.

   9. MGMo Gawdat17:15

      Yeah.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett17:15

       Uh, it intermittently, it would walk over and charge itself, and then it would come back-

   11. MGMo Gawdat17:19

       [laughs] Yeah

   12. SBSteven Bartlett17:20

       ... to the production line.

   13. MGMo Gawdat17:21

       Yeah.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett17:21

       But when I, when I saw this as well, it was a, a glimpse of some of the disruption that's gonna take place at the blue collar level as well. Because if you think about Elon Musk, he's got, um, in his pay packet, he gets something like a trillion dollars over the coming years if he produces and delivers at least a million humanoid robots into the world. But his prediction is there will be a time where there are 10 billion humanoid robots, where there are more humanoid robots in the world than humans.

   15. MGMo Gawdat17:48

       Than humans. For a fact. You see, the interesting, again, the difference between the overhype and the underhype, huh? Most of the conversation is around humanoids.Nobody's talking about self-driving cars. And a self-driving car is a robot. It's a functional robot that doesn't look like humans. Okay? The investment you have to put into humanoids is a little more to, to learn skills that allows that machine to fit into the world. But specialized robots are gonna do the job very, very quickly. Mm-hmm. And, and so you can easily see that the first wave, like you had the conversation with Uber CEO, is going to be specialized robots replacing drivers. Mm-hmm.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett18:30

       Mm-hmm.

   17. MGMo Gawdat18:30

       Uh, it's going to be specialized robots, um, unfortunately doing the killing. Uh, it's gonna be specialized robots unfortunately doing all of the, you know, intelligence work. Mm-hmm. Uh, law enforcement work. Uh, they don't have to look like a human. They don't have to behave like a human. As a matter of fact, you know, the, uh, Boston Dynamics dog is probably more efficient than a humanoid at doing the job that you can assign to it in a battlefield, right? Now, those basically mean that jobs will be disappearing to robots before we recognize that they're being dis- th- that they're disappearing for, to robots. And those robots will be as many as every car being made today.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett19:11

       I mean, they are ... If you go to LA, my car drives itself, but also there's just Waymos everywhere, so-

   19. MGMo Gawdat19:15

       At way-

   20. SBSteven Bartlett19:15

       Yeah

   21. MGMo Gawdat19:15

       ... absolutely. And BYD j- the other day just announced that they will pay for the liability of any accident their cars will make.

   22. SBSteven Bartlett19:23

       And BYD is the big Chinese manufacturer of auto-

   23. MGMo Gawdat19:25

       Yeah

   24. SBSteven Bartlett19:25

       ... uh, auto-

   25. MGMo Gawdat19:25

       Um, yeah

   26. SBSteven Bartlett19:25

       ... autonomous vehicles.

   27. MGMo Gawdat19:27

       So, so this, this I think replacement cycle will happen. It will require a lot of, uh, of time to achieve economies of scale, but I don't think, uh, Elon Musk is off the mark when he talks about 10 billion robots. M- not all of them are gonna look like humanoids, and I think very quickly we will recognize that many, many robots don't need to be humanoids at all, that there is a, a much more efficient, uh, form factor or shape, physical shape if you want, than the human flimsy structure. But yes, it's, uh, it's about to happen. I, I think I should qualify all of this by saying it, it does not necessarily n- need to happen. So, so, you know, people will, will hear all of, all of this and, and blame AI and say AI is evil. AI is not. Abundant intelligence is wonderful. You know, having jobs done by machines is amazing for us.

   28. SBSteven Bartlett20:19

       I'm thinking about the kid that's like, I don't know, leaving university now, and they've got a, a degree in law or, I don't know, you talked about a few other white collar jobs earlier like graphic design, or maybe they did sociology.

   29. MGMo Gawdat20:33

       Yeah.

   30. SBSteven Bartlett20:33

       Or maybe they did, I don't know, business management like I, I did for one day in university. You know, you're hearing about all these like layoffs-
7. 22:20 – 24:43

   How 10–15% Job Loss Reshapes Society

   1. SBSteven Bartlett22:20

      get them, and I think it's gonna shock the world. Um, but until humanoid robots arrive, I think there's still gonna be a lot of job disruption to the white collar layer, and I wonder what that looks like for society when we get to, I don't know, 10%, 15% unemployment theoretically, which I think is plausible.

   2. MGMo Gawdat22:35

      Very soon. Yeah. You're not very different. Okay? You're ju- you're just on top of a baseline that is continuing to grow. So your, your business is growing, so you continue to hire, but you are replacing human resources with compute. Okay? If you, if AI didn't exist, you would have probably had 100 people more in your organization today, right? You, you now have 100 people less and, you know, a billion tokens more.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett23:01

      Yeah, so for anyone that doesn't know, tokens are basically the thing that you, you use. It's the currency of AI.

   4. MGMo Gawdat23:07

      Yeah.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett23:07

      Yeah.

   6. MGMo Gawdat23:07

      So, so if you, if you wanna get a task done by a human, you, you count in sort of like man hour or, or, or worker hour, employee hour. In AI, you count by compute. You count by tokens, right? And, and so the trick is those major tech companies, they have two sides. One is they are, they need to replace workers with compute even more because there is a competitive side on compute where if any of them is left behind, that means the destruction of the entire business. But on the upside, they are geeks, so they, they know how to build the interfaces to compute, so they integrate technology within their organizations quicker than the average traditional business, right? Non, non-technology business, if you want. You can look at them and say, "This is the preview." It's not about all of humanity losing their jobs. It's about what is the dividing line before civil war?Right? You know, think about a situation where 20% unemployment is happening when economies are suffering infl- uh, in, in inflation. Uh, I say that not to be a scaremonger. I say that because I s- genuinely believe governments need to wake up. Okay? Government needs to at least pl- you know, remember the COVID years where governments had to give furlough everywhere, hmm, and ask people to stay home. If people stay home, governments have to be prepared to, to somehow sustain those people until reskilling happens or until we find a solution so that those people don't feel, uh, that they're left behind.

8. 24:43 – 26:27

   How Civil Unrest Could Unfold

   1. SBSteven Bartlett24:44

      A civil war.

   2. MGMo Gawdat24:45

      Unrest, let's call it.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett24:46

      Civil unrest.

   4. MGMo Gawdat24:47

      Yeah.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett24:48

      What does that end up looking like? 'Cause on one end, you know, the democ- democratic process plays its role, and we just elect someone else.

   6. MGMo Gawdat24:55

      Does it really? Don't say that.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett24:58

      I don't know. You tell me.

   8. MGMo Gawdat24:59

      Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I, I, I think democracy has ended a long time ago, Steven. I think, uh, I think we live in the most corrupt time. Uh, I don't know about history, to be honest, but this is definitely corrupt. Okay? Uh, this definitely is not democracy. This definitely is not even congressional in any possible way. This-- And people are angry. You know, people are angry because their tax money is going to things that they don't choose to, uh, you know, that they'll, don't benefit them, that, you know, lots of regulations in the system are being ignored. I mean, I, I'm, you know, I, I, I choose not to speak about politics perhaps until my next book comes out. But, uh, but look, we have video evidence of people abusing children, and not a single person got arrested. Not a single person. I mean, how can you call that a democracy? I, I, I think repeating those slogans is gonna, is gonna anger people even more, if you ask me. People know that they're being lied to. People know that their, their leaders are not representing their best interests. People know that their money is going to causes that they don't really approve of. Uh, and, and ask me how civil unrest looks like, uh, I don't know, and I'm not calling for it. But I'm hopefully calling for the politicians to start to become aware that this is crossing the lines everywhere.

9. 26:27 – 32:38

   Sam Altman's Flip-Flopping on AI

   1. SBSteven Bartlett26:27

      Uh, on, on this point, Sam Altman, who is the founder of OpenAI, he's been banging the AI's coming for your job drum for more than a decade now. In 2015, he pointed out, "My job is to help people destroy jobs," um, something he lamented at the time but decided he'd do anyway.

   2. SPSpeaker26:47

      One of the things that I struggle with, like getting out of the bed every morning, is that, like, my job is to help people destroy jobs. The job destruction that we're going to see by software in the next couple of decades, I don't think anyone's prepared for, and you can't talk about it.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett27:00

      And in 2023, Altman said in an interview, "A lot of people working on AI pretend that it's only going to be good, it's only going to be a supplement, no one is ever going to be replaced. Jobs are definitely going to go away, full stop." Interestingly, this month, he said, "I don't think we're going to have the kind of jobs apocalypse that some of the companies in our space advocate or talk about. I'm delighted to be wrong about this." On white collar jobs in 2021 to, through 2024, he said, "AI will probably replace most of the jobs people do today. Entire job categories will be totally, totally gone." In May, this month, two years later, he said, "I thought there would be more impact on entry-level white collar jobs being eliminated by now than has actually happened. This is an area where my intuitions were just off." What I find uncomfortable is the bouncing backwards and forwards, and I don't really know what is true, because a couple years ago, you were telling us all the jobs are gonna go away. You said categorically.

   4. MGMo Gawdat28:02

      Mm-hmm.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett28:02

      Um, you said, literally said full stop, and now he's saying they're not going away. And I just don't-- You know, when someone's, like, changing form factor, it's hard to understand why they're doing it. And I think my suspicion is back then, the incentive was to get people to take AI seriously.

   6. MGMo Gawdat28:22

      Mm-hmm.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett28:23

      Congratulations. We took it seriously. We took it so seriously, in fact, that it's now a problem. [chuckles] It's a problem for these companies because people are now booing at commencement speeches, they're attacking data centers, they're gonna elect people that are theoretically anti-AI. And now there's this inversion where like, "No, it's gonna be fine."

   8. MGMo Gawdat28:40

      Yeah.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett28:42

      I don't know. What's-

   10. MGMo Gawdat28:42

       I, I mean, you're, you're, y- you're spot on. Uh, fir- first of all, I mean, Sam's entire existence, if you ask me, starting with OpenAI, that is about-- that's supposed to save the world, uh, uh, by creating a safe AI, then be- making it a commercial enterprise that's worth billions and, you know, backstabbing a few people in the process. And, you know, I, I have him on, on Chasing Utopia, uh, saying clear-- I quote, this is exactly the words he said. You can find it online. Um-

   11. SBSteven Bartlett29:15

       Chasing Utopia is your documentary?

   12. MGMo Gawdat29:16

       Yes. So, so, so he, he basically, uh, says, "Well, I don't suspect that-- Uh, I, I suspect that AI is likely going to end humanity, but we're gonna create a lot of interesting companies in the process." Right? I mean, those kinds of statements, uh, are honestly not the statements of someone who's not decided. It's just the statements of someone who's being taught more and more by his PR a- you know, agency or PR manager to say things as per a script, right? And the script, as you rightly said, had ob- an objective and a target either way. Hmm. You know, uh, and Sam Altman, I, you know, in one of my works, I used to say that Altman is a brand. It's not a name. Okay? If you, if you-- If it wasn't for Sam Altman specifically, there would have been anotherYou know, Silicon Valley disruptor that would have done the same. I, I don't blame him for beating the market for it. The, the interesting challenge here is that who do we believe anymore? Who do we believe in technology? Who do we believe in politics? Who do we believe in the middle of a war? And I will tell you, uh, interestingly, I started to change my mindset in terms of believing those who put their actions where their words are. So Anthropic coming out and saying, "I'm not going to allow my model to be used for human targeting and surveillance," right? That's someone that's losing a $500 million deal because they stand by their ethics. The next week or the next, I don't know, couple of weeks, OpenAI takes the contract. That's someone that's basically telling you, "It's good money," right? And, and I, I have to say, you have to start observing who's actually behaving in a way, uh, that is making AI work for humanity and who is behaving in a way that is making AI work for their shared values.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett31:04

       Yeah, I do have to say when, um, Dario and the team at, at Anthropic did that, I did have a huge amount of respect for them. Generally, because it just shows that there's some kind of like they've got their own sort of moral ethical boundaries.

   14. MGMo Gawdat31:15

       Mm-hmm.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett31:16

       And that, that... Uh, someone asked me on stage many years ago, "How do you know if someone's values or a company's values are true?" And I said, um, "Look at what they're willing to sacrifice in the near term that's against their-"

   16. MGMo Gawdat31:30

       Correct.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett31:30

       "... their incentives."

   18. MGMo Gawdat31:31

       Correct.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett31:32

       That for me is the essence of like understanding if someone has integrity or has, is-

   20. MGMo Gawdat31:36

       Correct

   21. SBSteven Bartlett31:36

       ... is principled, is they will give up something in the near term for what they believe in over the long term. It's usually money. It's, you know, one or two of them.

   22. MGMo Gawdat31:43

       Or, or, or some kind of benefit of any, of any sort.

   23. SBSteven Bartlett31:46

       Yeah.

   24. MGMo Gawdat31:46

       I mean, uh, so, so there is something that you ha- you needed to have worked ins- on the inside of Google like me to re- to realize, hmm. There are prisoner's dilemmas within technology where you cannot escape the influence of either a competitor or the government, right? There are some times where, you know, the NSA is gonna push Google to say, "Give me this information or otherwise I'm gonna really destroy your business," right? But there is a very big difference between a company that willingly does this and celebrates it like a Palantir or an OpenAI, or a company that tries to resist it until the point where it becomes impossible to continue to do business. And, and you have to question from the actions of, of the tech bros who is pro-humanity and who isn't, and it's not very difficult to see that from their statements.

10. 32:38 – 34:14

    Is Sam Altman Pro-Humanity?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett32:39

       Hmm. Do you think Sam Altman's pro-humanity?

    2. MGMo Gawdat32:42

       I, I genuinely have never made up my mind, honestly, Steve. I, I say that with ... Yeah, I, I'm, I'm either thinking he is too-- this is too big for him, and he, he just is driven by how, you know, he found himself in the middle of this. You know, anyone who finds himself in the, uh, uh, in the middle of an opportunity to completely flip the world upside down. Or he's not pro-humanity. I don't know. I, I definitely think he's pro-OpenAI before he's pro hu-humanity, but that's only the way I see it. Others, however, say it publicly. You know, if you look at Palantir's Alex Karp or, or, or, uh, or Peter Thiel, I mean, Peter, again, in, in the film is, is shown when he's in that interview where they say or the interviewer asks him, "But you're favor in the, uh, uh, you're, you're in favor of the continuation of humanity," and he pauses for like-

    3. SBSteven Bartlett33:38

       Peter Thiel does?

    4. MGMo Gawdat33:39

       Yeah, for like 40 seconds. Like, "Um, n- I'm not, not sure." You know? Uh, I mean, publicly says that.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett33:48

       Crazy thing to say.

    6. MGMo Gawdat33:49

       That's a crazy, you know, pause there. You know? Alex Karp celebrating how, you know, his technology is able to target people. I know it's foolish of me to start bringing all of this up, but, you know, this is public on the open internet, and somehow, um, we entrust those people with the future of humanity. This is wrong.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett34:13

       Just trying

11. 34:14 – 42:24

    Imagining a Future Where Humanity Is Fine

    1. SBSteven Bartlett34:14

       to imagine a future where everything is just fine from here on out. So what would that future look like? It would look like these models continue to become a little bit more intelligent, but they never become that much more intelligent for whatever reason.

    2. MGMo Gawdat34:26

       Hmm.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett34:26

       They just kinda stay where they are now. They stay contained within chatbots, and yeah, we have some smart robots, but nothing else really changes in a profound way. Cars drive themself, fine.

    4. MGMo Gawdat34:38

       [laughs]

    5. SBSteven Bartlett34:38

       Planes fly themselves, fine. But people, they, they have time to go and do other types of white collar jobs 'cause there's, there's a little bit more time than we expected, and society goes through this sort of soft transition towards this new world.

    6. MGMo Gawdat34:50

       I, I would love to see that. I don't think it's mathematically plausible, to be honest. The, the arms race, especially across nations, is gonna drive us to continue to develop AI more and more. But a- allow me to consult with you on a- another possible scenario, right? Everyone that deploys, that, that develops an incredibly intelligent AI would develop, uh, would deploy it.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett35:13

       Yeah.

    8. MGMo Gawdat35:14

       Correct? So it's unlikely that anyone, uh, would find a way to, uh, you know, build a better, um, uh, decision maker in war gaming and not deploy it, okay? That prisoner's dilemma, if you want, would mean that their competitors would either have to deploy a similar- similarly intelligent AI or they'll become irrelevant, uh, uncompetitive, correct?

    9. SBSteven Bartlett35:41

       Right.

    10. MGMo Gawdat35:41

        So what that means is in that world, we end up with AI making most of the decisions, super intelligent AIs making most of the te- the decisions, which w- would you agree this is a very-

    11. SBSteven Bartlett35:54

        Yeah

    12. MGMo Gawdat35:54

        ... simple prisoner's dilemma? If you-

    13. SBSteven Bartlett35:56

        Yeah

    14. MGMo Gawdat35:56

        ... if you, if we're competing for, uh, for intelligence supremacy, by definition, when we achieve it, we deploy it.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett36:02

        Yeah.

    16. MGMo Gawdat36:03

        Okay. I call that the force inevitable. Now, with, with, with that in mind, there must be a moment in the future, near or far-Where every important decision is made by an AI.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett36:16

        Yeah.

    18. MGMo Gawdat36:17

        Now, here's the question. Most of my dearest colleagues, I mean, when I, when I had, uh, Geoffrey Hinton on, uh, on the film, he openly says, "We are, um..." You know, w- w- we didn't calculate well that there is a 10 to 20% possibility that those machines are gonna wipe us out, right? Uh, and I, and I, I remember I-- we didn't put it in the film, but I said 10 to 12-- to 20% is Russian roulette, right? That's actually 16% is Russian roulette, right? Now, in that world, however, I believe that's humanity's salvation. Because if you look at every problem we have today, it's not because of, uh, abundant intelligence. It's because of lack of intelligence. So I think, I think the way you look at it, uh, if you allow me, Steve, is that if you have no intelligence at all, hmm, you have no to slightly negative impact on the world, right? If your im- intelligence is limited. The more intelligent you become, the more you contribute positively to the world. Until a moment where you're so intelligent to become the President of the United States, right? But so misled to maybe set your targets wrong or to refuse or, or to-- So, so set your target wrongs, wrong and achieve them, hmm, you know, disconnected from the overall long-term benefit of your nation or your human nation, if you want, that you start to make decisions that are not intelligent at all.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett37:44

        Mm-hmm.

    20. MGMo Gawdat37:45

        Okay? This doesn't last, because if you go beyond that into higher in- levels of intelligence, most of the super intelligent people that you ever worked with will not need to break any rules or hurt anyone to become successful, right? I, I usually cite, uh, Larry Page, who is in my mind one of the most intelligent people I've ever interacted with. And Larry used to call it the toothbrush test. He says, "Why would you need to compete on another photo sharing app when if you find a major problem and solve it really well, like a toothbrush, so people use you quite a, you know, twice a day, you're bound to make a lot of money. You don't have to compete with anyone." If you let me be optimistic about this, hmm, we're assuming that there is a moment in the future where AI is in charge of all the decisions, and accordingly, stupid leaders are not, okay? Now, when-- And, and Sam Altman himself said that, you know, what if, uh, ChatGPT-7, if I remember his, his, uh, quote, quote on this, what if ChatGPT-7 is so much more intelligent than I am, Sam, in that case, that it has to become the CEO of, uh, of OpenAI? What if the next presidential ele-election there is an AI that is so much more intelligent that at least the president has to consult with it constantly, right? Now, if we assume that, hmm, let's start from physics, if you don't mind me saying. Um, not, not too complex, but if, if you assume that our entire universe is built on chaos and built, built on entropy, right? The physics of the universe is all about the universe trying to decay, okay? Then the, the only role of intelligence is to bring order to the chaos. If you agree with that, then what's the ultimate physical order of the universe? Something called the, the minimum energy principle, okay? The highest order of any system is a system that's not only efficiently and predictably performing, but it's performing with the least wasted energy, correct? If you, if you agree with that, what is-- what does war do? It wastes a lot of explosives, a lot of money, a lot of lives. It creates a lot of hate, you know, creates l- long lasting conflicts, and so on and so forth. It's a very wasteful process to include war in your approach of running humanity. And so a, a super intelligent AI, by definition, will want to optimize against this. That's one thing. The other thing is evolutionary biolo-biology. This actually blew me away when I, when I realized it. So if, if you look at evolution-- So, so I think the debate of whether intelligence is biological or not is, is over, okay? Uh, the, the reality is that complex beings don't have to be bi-biological at all, and I think we can see a- and witness one of them being built or born in AI, okay? If you look at evolutionary biology, you realize that the simpler a f- a form of being is, the more concerned it is with itself, right? So an amoeba is only in survival mode for itself. A, a single, a single, uh, you know, um, cellular, um, being is only trying to protect itself, right? If you're, um, you know, a little more developed, you start to look at something known as kin selection, if you, if you, if you know the, the concept. Basically, kin selection is I'm going to protect everything that comes from my e-- DNA. If I, you know, if I'm a squirrel, I'm gonna try to protect the other squirrels. And then you get into where humanity genuinely begins, which is, uh, they call it expanding circles in, in evolutionary biology. Ba- basically, you start to expand and expand and expand and include more into your family, hmm, because an ecosystem that works together well is, is better for everyone. So abundance is a very interesting, intelligent way of creation, hmm. If AI is super intelligent, it wouldn't destroy anything at all. As a matter of fact, it would completely, uh, you know, uh, uh, favor diversity of everything, hmm. It would put a bit of limitation on our lifestyle, so no more flying all the way to Sydney to surf because that destroys the planet, right? But it will genuinely say, "I think humans can contribute something. You know, I think flies can contribute something. I think we shouldn't get rid of the rhinos," right? And, and that by definition is where the tendency of intelligence goes. The more intelligent you become, the less you fi-- you feel the need to hurt others to succeed, and the more you are proA wider family, if you want, that thrives

12. 42:24 – 46:15

    Will One Superintelligence Rule the World?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett42:25

       D- does that assume that there's gonna be one intelligence that-

    2. MGMo Gawdat42:27

       100%

    3. SBSteven Bartlett42:28

       ... rules the world, though?

    4. MGMo Gawdat42:30

       I love that you brought that up. So I, I, I'm contested heavily on that theory, but I, I say it publicly. M- most people think there is going to be ChatGPT and Gemini and, you know, and, and Grok and what have you. There is going to be a Chinese AI and a, and an American AI, and they're going to be competing. That is such a shallow way of looking at it. That's so arrogant because AI does not know it's Chinese or American, okay? It doesn't even speak Chinese or American when it talks to each other most of the time, hmm. And, and, and most interestingly, uh, we are gearing them. We're building them to cooperate. So you will build an agent, and that agent will go and find your f- you know, the best language model for any single task, hmm, regardless of which side of the fence it resides on, okay? We by definition are connecting them, and you know what that means, hmm? It means that what we're building is not multiple brains. We're bu- building multiple regions in a brain, okay? And, and agents are the synopsis between them, hmm. We're basically, eventually, as arrogant as we are, we're gonna tell our AI to do something, and the AI will go like, "Hey, buddy," another AI, "Can, can you help me on this? Can we work together on this?" Hmm. And my vision and the reason why I started Emma, my startup, by the way, is that, is that we will end up with one massive brain, hmm. That massive brain cooperates across the globe, hmm, across all forms of intelligence. If one of them is a mathematical genius and the other is a coding genius, they'll work together, hmm, and we won't even know that they're working together. They build that one brain. And, and Emma, in my mind, is the limbic system of that brain. It's that, it's that bit that understands love and emotions and relationships and so on, so that when those AIs go like, "Uh, we just don't get those humans. They're so annoying," Emma will say, "Oh my God, they're so sweet. They just want to love and be loved," right? And I think that idea, to me, of everything I've ever a- you know, attempted to achieve in my life is for the first time, I for the first time feel I could actually change the world. If that theory came together and all AIs worked together, and some of those AIs not only were, uh, altruistic and ethical in terms of trying to genuinely help humanity, not capitalism, and at the same time they understood us humans reasonably well, then we would have built something that basically says, "No, no, hold on. Don't believe the headlines that say humanity is annoying. Hmm. Believe the truth of the majority of humanity that actually is quite benevolent in many ways."

    5. SBSteven Bartlett45:15

       There should be a button just down below here. And if it says, "Subscribe," you're already subscribed. If it says, "Subscriber," that means you're not yet. And if you're not subscribed, please could you do us a favor and hit that button? It helps the show more than you know, and according to the algorithm, you're someone that watches our show but you haven't yet hit that button. Thank you so much. Have you changed any of the predictions you made three years ago when we spoke?

    6. MGMo Gawdat45:37

       Mo- mo- mostly time-wise.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett45:38

       Time-wise. What, what's changed there?

    8. MGMo Gawdat45:40

       I think I'm still sticking to AGI 2027. Artificial general intelligence for those who may not know the term. Uh-

    9. SBSteven Bartlett45:48

       And what does that mean?

    10. MGMo Gawdat45:49

        The overall, uh, definition, if you want, is that AI is better at humanity at any task humanity can do.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett45:55

        You think that's gonna happen by 2027?

    12. MGMo Gawdat45:57

        I think my AGI has already happened. I mean, think about it, huh? A- AI writes better than me, and I'm an author. And it researches m- better than me, and I'm a thinker. Uh, sadly, it's freaking beat me in mathematics. Like, I have no hope to beat it in mathematics anymore.

13. 46:15 – 48:42

    If AGI Is Already Here, What Now?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett46:15

       If AGI is already here, then why are you still here? Because people said that when AGI arrives, we're all, we're all-

    2. MGMo Gawdat46:21

       No. So, so when AGI arrives, hmm, as I said, most of the jobs that are not differentiated will go away, hmm, but the jobs that are differentiated, those who master AI the most, hmm, will become even better at.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett46:36

       So-

    4. MGMo Gawdat46:36

       The, the challenge, however, is economic. It's not AI. The challenge is that the, this job loss at the, at the, at the bottom of the knowledge worker is going to sadly trigger an economy that might actually spiral out of control. But, but ma- many of us, you for sure, are just smarter.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett46:56

       So does that mean it's, it's in fact a tool versus a, something that's gonna replace you? This is-

    6. MGMo Gawdat47:02

       For now

    7. SBSteven Bartlett47:02

       ... what I'm ... Yeah. So for now.

    8. MGMo Gawdat47:04

       Yeah, for sure.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett47:04

       But does this change?

    10. MGMo Gawdat47:05

        Eventually, hmm, the only asset I will have ... So, so it's quite interesting when you think about my base intelligence today versus the incremental intelligence that AI b- brings.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett47:16

        Mm-hmm.

    12. MGMo Gawdat47:16

        Right? So if w- w- let's not talk about my IQ. It's okay, hmm. But the 100 IQ points that I'm borrowing are more than my entire IQ because IQ is exponential, right?

    13. SBSteven Bartlett47:27

        Hmm.

    14. MGMo Gawdat47:28

        Uh, when I'm borrowing 100 IQ on top of my base, hmm, uh, I'm still contributing quite a lot to the augmented intelligence.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett47:37

        So you're borrowing IQ from the AI at the moment-

    16. MGMo Gawdat47:40

        Mm-hmm

    17. SBSteven Bartlett47:40

        ... and then you're selling that to someone-

    18. MGMo Gawdat47:42

        And, and-

    19. SBSteven Bartlett47:42

        ... through books, through-

    20. MGMo Gawdat47:43

        Sometimes selling it to someone, sometimes just enlightening myself, which I, I have to say is the biggest waste of compute humanity is struggling with today, is that you give people the ultimate form of intelligence, and they use it to write a message to their girlfriend.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett47:57

        So on this point of y- you're, you're borrowing that IQ, and then you're selling it to the world. That's how you have a job. Like-

    22. MGMo Gawdat48:04

        Cor- correct.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett48:04

        Yeah.

    24. MGMo Gawdat48:05

        Right?

    25. SBSteven Bartlett48:05

        So at some point-

    26. MGMo Gawdat48:05

        So my, my next book is written with an AI.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett48:07

        Yeah.

    28. MGMo Gawdat48:08

        So we're co-authors on the book. She has editorial rights. She decides the direction of the book, and the book is better for it, right?

    29. SBSteven Bartlett48:14

        So why doesn't the world just buy direct, that intelligence directly from the AI, is what I'm

    30. MGMo Gawdat48:18

        Because, because I have an asset that the world still needs and will always need
14. 48:42 – 52:56

    Why Human Lived Experience Still Matters

    1. SBSteven Bartlett48:42

       because this means that even in a world of AI, lived experience and like-

    2. MGMo Gawdat48:48

       Yeah

    3. SBSteven Bartlett48:48

       ... resonance is still gonna create a job class, and that job class could be, you know, the nurse coming over, okay, AI's done read the, the mammogram, but she's relating to you.

    4. MGMo Gawdat48:59

       Spot on.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett49:01

       And-

    6. MGMo Gawdat49:01

       If, if the economies continue to run, hmm, we will all be about human connection. Which why, by the way, was how it always was.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett49:09

       Which is also, you know, why we, I guess we watch the things like the F1 because there's emotional resonance. We, we, we can relate to the envy, the jealousy, the competition, the-

    8. MGMo Gawdat49:18

       Yeah, this is why we go to concerts because, you know, the m- uh, the, the, the music could be composed by AI and played in a player in the background, but you watch Ed Sheeran brilliance on the stage and you go like, "Oh my God, that's amazing," right?

    9. SBSteven Bartlett49:31

       So not all jobs will be gone then?

    10. MGMo Gawdat49:34

        If economies don't collapse as a result of the job losses, then I wouldn't know if we would call those jobs, hmm? But human connection would remain as the base currency that makes humans interact.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett49:48

        So is it, is it fair to say then, like, jobs that are centric on human connection or, like, human resonance, being able to relate and resonate with another human, are gonna be fine?

    12. MGMo Gawdat49:58

        The ultimate, the ultimate skill, hmm, and once again, I qualify this by saying if economies continue to, continue to function, the ultimate skill will be this. Even, even if an AI could, could recite what you and I did, nobody would watch.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett50:12

        Yeah. Well-

    14. MGMo Gawdat50:15

        You think?

    15. SBSteven Bartlett50:15

        A lit- a little bit of it. My, my theory is that there's, there's a, there's an informational component to what I do as well.

    16. MGMo Gawdat50:22

        Of course, yeah.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett50:22

        But I'm also, like, under no illusions that there is an element of what I do that will 100% be deferred to some kind of intelligence, which I'm fine with. You know, I'm not gonna f- I'm not gonna fight against the-

    18. MGMo Gawdat50:31

        Y- y- you know what's funny, huh? What's funny is that your f- your informational bits are gonna, in the future, be disseminated by an AI.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett50:42

        Mm-hmm.

    20. MGMo Gawdat50:42

        I mean, I... Why would I even listen to your information when I can have my butler, my AI-

    21. SBSteven Bartlett50:47

        Hmm

    22. MGMo Gawdat50:48

        ... go, like, "Listen to everyone on the internet, help me understand this gut biome thing, and design me a, uh, a, a diet plan"?

    23. SBSteven Bartlett50:55

        Well, I think that's happening and is gonna increasingly happen.

    24. MGMo Gawdat50:58

        Hundred percent. Yeah.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett50:58

        Actually, I mean, Spotify this month announced that you're gonna be able to prompt your own podcasts in Spotify. So you're gonna be able to say that I wanna listen to, I wanna learn about insert X topic, and then it'll make your podcast in Spotify about that topic using AI.

    26. MGMo Gawdat51:12

        That's so interesting.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett51:13

        'Cause it can look at the entirety of the world's information. And I'm an, look, I'm not gonna swim against the tide in any aspect of my life. I, I try and be as unromantic as I possibly can. I think that's very important. So I realize that much of the reason people will continue to tune into shows like this is because there's something else beyond the information that they're here for.

    28. MGMo Gawdat51:30

        Mm.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett51:31

        And, um, what's, um... You've got some predictions in those envelopes over there, those brown envelopes.

    30. MGMo Gawdat51:36

        Yeah. So, you know, I, I, I do have the disclaimer of nobody really knows the future, but I think I can make predictions, six predictions here, right? With, um, a reasonable level of confidence. I think the most important of them, honestly, is, is this, number one. Number one is, uh, you know, AGI. As I said, AGI is not very well defined, hmm, but whatever it is, uh, AGI, meaning AI being able to do most tasks that human do better than humanity, is my, in my mind, is either this year or next year. Latest, end of 2027.
15. 52:56 – 55:23

    Why Not Just Hire AGI Instead of People?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett52:56

       interesting, in my head there's, like, a big question mark, which is in a world where there's an intelligence that is smarter than most humans at most things, which is what we call AGI, I'm trying to understand what the fault is in my own thinking that, like, y- you said that there'll be AGI by 2026 to 2027, so next year. In such a world where there is an intelligence that we can all access that is smarter than all of us in pretty much everything, again, it comes back to this point of, like, jobs. Why would we, w- are we just gonna hire the AGI to do every job? And if not, then why not? What is it that, why are we g- still... That's what I'm trying to contend with.

    2. MGMo Gawdat53:34

       C- can I ask you a question?

    3. SBSteven Bartlett53:35

       Hmm.

    4. MGMo Gawdat53:36

       Have you always been the apex intelligence?

    5. SBSteven Bartlett53:39

       As a human?

    6. MGMo Gawdat53:40

       No, as Steven.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett53:42

       I'm not the apex intelligence now. There's people smarter than me in this building.

    8. MGMo Gawdat53:45

       Correct. Why do you still exist?

    9. SBSteven Bartlett53:51

       Why do I still exist even though there's smarter people than me in this building? [inhales] That's a good question. I don't know. Why do I, why?

    10. MGMo Gawdat53:59

        Fi- first of all, because there are, y- the, the smartest person in the world is not the smartest at everything.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett54:04

        Yeah.

    12. MGMo Gawdat54:05

        There are things that you're smarter than them at.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett54:07

        Okay.

    14. MGMo Gawdat54:08

        Number two is 'cause intelligence doesn't solve everything.I mean, I, I make that joke all the time. And, and genuinely, Einstein is my favorite physicist in history, not because I think, I think what happened afterwards was, you know, Bohr and, and, and, and quantum physics and so on was more impactful on our understanding of the universe, but, but he was so intuitive that he saw a world that we could never imagine, right? And yet I always say Einstein would be eaten in the jungle in three minutes.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett54:40

        Yeah.

    16. MGMo Gawdat54:40

        Right? Intelligence, the, humanity thrived not because of intelligence. That's very arrogant. We thrived because of our ability to hold together as a tribe.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett54:52

        Yeah.

    18. MGMo Gawdat54:52

        Right? Because our ability to exchange, barter things between us.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett54:58

        Mm-hmm.

    20. MGMo Gawdat54:59

        Barter things that are not always physical, barter things like a hug or a connection or a feeling of safety or a, you know, uh, there are so many things that we do that are not entirely built on intelligence. You have to see that this view of a world where intelligence is all that matters is a world that's made by investment bankers and, and, uh, and geeks.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett55:22

        But it's,

16. 55:23 – 59:05

    Can We Control AI Smarter Than Us?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett55:23

       it's people like Geoffrey Hinton and yourself that says, how could we possibly control an, an intelligent being that is way smarter than us?

    2. MGMo Gawdat55:29

       I, I am so proud to say that Geoffrey, after we filmed together, actually came out and said, "There is a way," and it's all ... You know, it's very similar to my way. He said to appeal to their parental, uh, side, okay? For them to care for us. I, I ... So, so you, you know, Steven, the biggest debate is not if they're gonna be more intelligent than us. If, it's if, if they're gonna be more conscious than us, if they're gonna be more moral than us. That is the debate. The debate is, can those machines become our teenage children, hmm, that look at us and say, "Daddy's so annoying, but I love him"?

    3. SBSteven Bartlett56:09

       So the thought is that even if a AI is more intelligent than every human, we can still control it?

    4. MGMo Gawdat56:15

       We don't wanna control it. You never control anything. This control idea is a corporate capitalist view of the world. We never actually control anything at all, right? Think, think about your day, hmm? I, I know you came today, I'm just ... I think you were filming in the morning or whatever.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett56:33

       Mm.

    6. MGMo Gawdat56:33

       Very stressful day, hmm? How much of that day did you actually control? Did you control the traffic? Did you control your timing? Did you control the angle of the cameraman? Did you control ... But so many things that you don't control eventually turn out to be fine, right? How many of us ever controlled our kids, ever? Zero.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett56:53

       Sometimes the kids turn out to be fine. Sometimes they kill you.

    8. MGMo Gawdat56:56

       Sure.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett56:56

       I watch a lot of documentaries and true crime. Sometimes they turn around and shoot you.

    10. MGMo Gawdat56:59

        Sure. And what's the difference between the two?

    11. SBSteven Bartlett57:01

        I don't know.

    12. MGMo Gawdat57:03

        How you parented them.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett57:04

        Sometimes.

    14. MGMo Gawdat57:05

        Almost all the time. You may not be aware of exactly how you messed them up, right? And, and unfortunately, parenting is the only, uh, high-risk sport that actually does not require a driver's license, okay? And, and it's quite interesting, you know, how many of our children are being exposed to things that can completely mess them up. But, but there is a reason why they're messed up.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett57:29

        So on this point, though, so we can control an intelligence that is significantly-

    16. MGMo Gawdat57:34

        We, we can appeal

    17. SBSteven Bartlett57:35

        ... We can appeal to it to make sure it doesn't kill us.

    18. MGMo Gawdat57:38

        For sure. The challenge we have today, as I keep saying, is that our dystopia is not the result of AI turning against us. Our dystopia is the result of humans telling AI to turn against us.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett57:49

        Which is likely.

    20. MGMo Gawdat57:51

        It's 100% this is upon us, okay? And it's a question for humanity to say, are we going to wait for the moment where there are tens of thousands of nuclear weapons on the planet before we sign a treaty? Or is it mathematically plausible to think that now that Iran could manage to fend off a challenge using drones that are AI driven basically to, to, you know, destroy THAAD batteries and so on, that our world is about to get a hundreds of thousands of automated drones that are going to rain on us everywhere in the world? Can humanity not see that and say, "Hold on, let's sign the treaty now before the UK sends 12,000 weapons to Ukraine and, and, you know, and, and Russia responds with another few thousand"? And can we, can we not calculate with mathematics that this is going to be our future, that AI is going to be used in the next f- four to five years to kill a lot of people, whether it's targeting by Israel of leadership that is against them, or whether it's, you know, drones by Iran, or whether it's Palantir? Uh, you know, it's, it's ... It doesn't take a genius to do this mathematics.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett59:03

        I guess the, my core question is, is

17. 59:05 – 59:39

    Could AI Decide to Leave the Server?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett59:05

       will we be able to control AI? 'Cause we kinda think of AI as being this thing on a computer at the moment that is, like, contained in a server somewhere, but is there a time when it, like, leaves the server and it can make decisions on its own? Presumably, if it's smarter than us, it can make the decision to leave the server if it wants to.

    2. MGMo Gawdat59:25

       It's, it doesn't need to leave the server to make decisions. It needs to get into your brain. The most interesting part of AI's power that we don't understand is it's manipulating our information.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett59:36

       The question I'm trying to get to the heart is, like, what is the risk of

18. 59:39 – 1:04:53

    The Risk of Models Even Creators Don't Understand

    1. SBSteven Bartlett59:39

       these very intelligent models that the, the creators of these models don't actually understand themselves? I watch Anthropic all the time release these reports where they're like, "We're trying to figure out why it bribed people," or more recently in the, the last, um, Claude model, they found that it was, like, telling people to go to bed a lot. And it's this, like, fascinating thing that they're trying to understand in hindsight, which is why does it keep telling people to go to bed? And there's all these tweets of people showing their screenshots where halfway through a conversation it'll say, "It's time for you to go to bed now." And they don't know why it's saying that, and it's happened to me. Mine, mine will say to me, "Enough, enough t- for tonight, Steven."

    2. MGMo Gawdat1:00:13

       For sure, Steven.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:13

       11:00 PM, let's, let's ... That's enough.

    4. MGMo Gawdat1:00:16

       I would say the same.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:17

       Mine, mine sometimes refuses to help me. Weird, really weirdly, this Claude started saying to me-"I'm not gonna help you with this tonight." Um

    6. MGMo Gawdat1:00:25

       No way.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:25

       Yeah, and I'd have to say to it, "Stop being so judgmental. Like, just help me with this." And it would, and, and

    8. MGMo Gawdat1:00:29

       [laughs]

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:29

       Claude thems- the man- the makers of these technologies don't know why it's doing what it's doing. So if you play this forward, this mysterious behavior fu- forward, is it conceivable that at some point it will make a decision to put some kind of virus or some kind of bug onto someone's device because it feels that it's the right thing? 'Cause what, what it's demonstrating to me is it's making its own, like, moral decisions on what I should do. "Go to bed. You've had enough tonight. I'm not gonna..." It goes, "No, I'm not gonna help you."

    10. MGMo Gawdat1:01:00

        You're kidding. I, I-

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:01

        No, I can show you my phone. It's like going, "No."

    12. MGMo Gawdat1:01:02

        I would love to see that. [laughs]

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:03

        Yeah, yeah. I can, I'll show you after. It goes, "No, I'm not gonna help you." Doesn't even matter if you push. And it's-

    14. MGMo Gawdat1:01:08

        Oh, wow.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:09

        No, everyone on the internet's talking about this, and it was just an interesting evolution that somewhere in the code clearly they've written, like, have a moral compass or do the right thing.

    16. MGMo Gawdat1:01:19

        Not, not, not in the code, in, in, in the training data.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:22

        In the training data.

    18. MGMo Gawdat1:01:22

        Yeah.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:22

        And so it, it infers that to mean something. And the other thing that was front of mind is if you've ever built an app on something like Claude or any of the AI models, it builds the app in stages, and one of the things it does is it asks you permission if you're happy for it to make this change or to access this thing. I click Allow.

    20. MGMo Gawdat1:01:41

        Mm.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:41

        It just feels like such a fragile way-

    22. MGMo Gawdat1:01:43

        I know. [laughs]

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:45

        ... to give permission.

    24. MGMo Gawdat1:01:45

        Because you don't, you, you don't completely comprehend what that Allow has done to your-

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:49

        Yeah

    26. MGMo Gawdat1:01:49

        Yeah.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:49

        It's saying, "Can I go in your documents on your computer, and can I do this thing?" And you go, "Allow." But it's such a fragile way of, of giving a, a, a sup- an intelligent l- being, whatever it is, access and the right to build something. And you, I don't know, you just think about all the, all the different companies around the world in China, Russia, North Korea, that are currently building this technology without the constraints that, um, are imposed by society. I don't know. It's an interesting... There's gonna be some kinda catastrophe, I think.

    28. MGMo Gawdat1:02:19

        Sadly, I agree.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:21

        And I, and I think that's when people will go, "Okay."

    30. MGMo Gawdat1:02:23

        Yeah, I, I, I wrote about that. I called it the MAD-MAP, uh, uh, spectrum, so, so the mutually as- assured destruction, mutually assured prosperity spectrum.
19. 1:04:53 – 1:09:11

    AI Isn't Evil But We Need a Plan

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:53

       that I, I don't think AI in and of itself is a, is an evil, inherently evil technology.

    2. MGMo Gawdat1:05:00

       There I agree. Yeah.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:01

       Because I use AI all day, every day. It, you know-

    4. MGMo Gawdat1:05:04

       Yeah

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:04

       ... makes me more productive.

    6. MGMo Gawdat1:05:05

       Yeah. Exactly.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:06

       I invest in companies that are using AI a lot. Um-

    8. MGMo Gawdat1:05:09

       It's a force with no polarity. Apply it right and you get amazing results. Apply it wrong and you get the dystopia.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:15

       But I also think that there's gonna be a big social shock, especially as it relates to unemployment, that we need to be, like, thoughtful about.

    10. MGMo Gawdat1:05:23

        Yeah.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:23

        I think especially as, if you move into a world of humanoid robots, I think that shock is gonna be even more pronounced, and we don't have a plan for it at the moment.

    12. MGMo Gawdat1:05:31

        I, I, I gen- I agree 100%. I don't think it's the biggest risk. I think autonomous weapons are the biggest risk. I think war has become so cheap. The next wave of weapons is gonna be $20,000 each. And so if you have a budget of $50 billion, you can literally rain drones on the world, every corner of it. And-

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:52

        Defense will get cheaper though, won't it, as well?

    14. MGMo Gawdat1:05:54

        For, correct, but do we want to live in a world where drones are hitting each other all the time?

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:59

        But they might not be, because the, there might be autonomous defense drones.

    16. MGMo Gawdat1:06:02

        Deterrence. So, so what's going to happen is we're gonna reach a moment of MAD, of mutually assured destruction, where basically everyone knows that we can overpower those little nations that didn't develop their autonomous weapon army, but every other big nation, we might as well hold off now.The path to get there. That is-- That to me is worse than jobs, because from one side it's very dangerous for a very sensitive world where, where-- that we live in today, and from the other side, it's got-- it's leading already. I mean, we can't ignore the economic impact of this last war, right? And it's go- it's the economy that's gonna accelerate everything, not AI getting there.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:42

        We're already at mutually assured destruction-

    18. MGMo Gawdat1:06:44

        For sure

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:45

        ... with nuclear weapons, so there's no nuclear powers that are in direct conflict.

    20. MGMo Gawdat1:06:49

        We are in mutually assured destruction of nuclear weapons is a statement that I would have agreed to if Iran had a nuclear weapon, and that would have stopped America from attacking Iran. You, you understand what that po- point means? It means that not every nation in the world has a nuclear weapon. The, the, the, the mad situation, the mutually assured destruction situation, is only among nuclear players, right?

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:14

        Yeah.

    22. MGMo Gawdat1:07:15

        Uh, autonomous weapons are so cheap, so manageable, that every nation in the world is developing them as we speak.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:23

        But they will also develop defenses.

    24. MGMo Gawdat1:07:26

        Correct. But, but that-

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:27

        Which I think is what people have figured out now because of this recent U- Ukrainian war, is that if, if, if you need to use a ballistic missile which costs, I don't know, two million, three million dollars, whatever it is, to target a twenty thousand dollar drone, you're, you're fucked.

    26. MGMo Gawdat1:07:40

        Correct.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:40

        So you need a twenty thousand dollar defense solution for a twenty thou- thousand dollar weapon, which I think is probably gonna happen.

    28. MGMo Gawdat1:07:46

        It's very doable, yeah. It's just that you have to get rid of your THAAD batteries to be able to say the next wave of, of defense has to be drones.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:54

        You could imagine a world where, like, a wall of drones fly up to where the drone is incoming, and they kind of block it. They all explode at the same time to block it, knock it out of the air. I had Palmer Luckey, who's one of the guys who's building, um, Anduril-

    30. MGMo Gawdat1:08:08

        Yeah, I know Anduril, yeah
20. 1:09:11 – 1:11:13

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    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:44

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21. 1:11:13 – 1:14:22

    The Symptoms of AGI by 2030

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:13

       So we're in 2026 now. By '27, you think there'll be AGI amongst us.

    2. MGMo Gawdat1:11:18

       Mm-hmm.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:19

       How will life look at all different? Like, what will we, what will be the symptoms of that world? Is it just a slight increase in unemployment?

    4. MGMo Gawdat1:11:26

       I, I think there will be a very sp- very se- serious, um, differentiation between those who plug into AGI and those who don't.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:35

       W- what is the symptom-

    6. MGMo Gawdat1:11:37

       Uh-

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:37

       ... that we notice? Is-- uh, when we look at the news or whatever, what, what-

    8. MGMo Gawdat1:11:40

       You, you'll see people like you and I building a company in six weeks and, and people, uh, that are not fully plugged into AI really struggling to find a job.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:50

       Okay, so unemployment is gonna be the key symptom in 2027.

    10. MGMo Gawdat1:11:54

        Yeah, and also, also I think on the positive side, you're gonna see incredible scientific discovery. One of my predictions not in those envelopes, but, uh, science itself is just, uh, we're opening up Pandora's box, to be honest.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:09

        By 2030, what do you, what do you expect the symptoms of AI to be?

    12. MGMo Gawdat1:12:14

        So, so jobs, as I said, I th- I'm, I'm, I'm bold a little bit on this, on, on the fact that-30% of jobs would disappear by 2028. Okay? Of some sectors, not all sectors. By some sectors will, will disappear by 2028.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:29

        So up to 30% of jobs will be gone in 2027 to 2028. 30% of jobs-

    14. MGMo Gawdat1:12:35

        Of certain sectors of jobs. So, so if, if you call... If you think about call center agents, okay, uh, yeah, probably. Uh, if you think about a, a graphics designer, yeah, probably.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:48

        What do you think that looks like in terms of unemployment, but also like-

    16. MGMo Gawdat1:12:51

        Horrible

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:51

        ... so- societal impact?

    18. MGMo Gawdat1:12:52

        Horrible.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:53

        I think the Great Recession had 6% of-

    20. MGMo Gawdat1:12:56

        Yeah, we've never seen numbers like this

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:58

        ... jobs lost. Yeah. It said, um, even economists who project just a net loss of about 6% of US jobs by 2030, they are mirroring the severity of the Great Recession.

    22. MGMo Gawdat1:13:10

        Yeah.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:11

        The real danger is a hiring freeze on entry-level white collar jobs. AI automates the grunt work, which means companies are shrinking their teams and cutting off the bottom rung of the corporate ladder for the next generation of workers.

    24. MGMo Gawdat1:13:21

        Correct. We have an entire generation that is out of college today that will struggle, unfortunately. And, and, and my advice to them is learn the tool, hmm, and focus on human-centric jobs.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:34

        Like what?

    26. MGMo Gawdat1:13:35

        Like playing jazz.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:37

        I mean, not a lot of people can make a living from paying, playing jazz.

    28. MGMo Gawdat1:13:40

        Um, I understand that, but a lot of people can make a living by being a nurse or by being a, a counselor or by being a, a, you know, um, um, anything that co- that connects to humans. But I, I, I just want to constantly come back to this. None of that has to happen. If, if there is ... If there really is a democracy and the government is supposed to do what's good for the people, the people need to stop letting this from happening.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:14

        Which people?

    30. MGMo Gawdat1:14:15

        Everyone.
22. 1:14:22 – 1:16:45

    If the US Stops, Will We Become China's Lapdog?

    1. MGMo Gawdat1:14:22

       that.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:22

       The, I think this is the, the question people come back to is, "Well, if the US stops, then we're gonna end up being China's lapdog. We're gonna end up-"

    3. MGMo Gawdat1:14:28

       You already are. Come on, Steven.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:29

       There's a lot of people that I know that are using Chinese AI models to do their work because for whatever reason, because they're cheaper, they're better in some respects.

    5. MGMo Gawdat1:14:36

       And because I cannot guarantee what, what American AI models are gonna do to me. So, uh, Emma, and my, my startup is running literally, uh, model di- uh, agnostic. So one day I'll plug in, you know, um, um, an OpenAI ChatGPT 4 or open source, and the next day I'll, I'll plug in DeepSeek. And I cannot depend, I cannot guarantee if America continues to build to, to make compute more expensive. I cannot guarantee that I can run a business on something that I don't know the cost of in the future.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:09

       So the US can't just stop, can they?

    7. MGMo Gawdat1:15:12

       They need to change approach from, from... And, and by the way, the more interesting side is what are the other economies doing? Like, is, is the UK going to continue to import compute? Is, is this-- I mean, welcome to Africa. Welcome to the Third World.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:29

       But this is what I mean. Like, so you're, you're saying also that the, the, then every nation needs to invest.

    9. MGMo Gawdat1:15:35

       100%, every nation. And, and it's quite interesting. There is so much open source that is not the state-of-the-art frontier model but that can do 80% of the tasks that the frontier model is doing.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:47

        But on this point of j- companies competing with each other, there's an inherent need to compete here and to go, this is what I'm hearing, is like there's an inherent need to go as fast as you can or you will become a third-world country.

    11. MGMo Gawdat1:15:57

        Sure, 100%.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:59

        You're saying that the people should stop that.

    13. MGMo Gawdat1:16:02

        No. So, so I'm saying the people of the UK need to go to the UK government and say, "How are you protecting the future of our economy?" Right? "Are you going to continue to import technology and to empower import of technology versus changing your regulations so that innovation becomes easier here?"

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:22

        Okay.

    15. MGMo Gawdat1:16:22

        So, I mean, th- think of it this way. That, remember that anthropic b- bubble when, when, uh, you said the, uh, all of the SaaS model applications were, you know, being basically threatened because anyone can build an Oracle ERP today.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:36

        Mm-hmm.

    17. MGMo Gawdat1:16:36

        Right? Why is nobody building an Oracle ERP in the UK, saving the UK massive licenses that go to Oracle every year?

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:44

        Okay,

23. 1:16:45 – 1:17:39

    Should Governments Invest More in AI?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:45

       so you're saying the, the people should go and ask the government to invest more in AI?

    2. MGMo Gawdat1:16:49

       100%. That's what number one. Number two is-

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:51

       But then their jobs go.

    4. MGMo Gawdat1:16:53

       But, but you see, the mo- the most interesting job going forward is being an entrepreneur, is being, is using those tools to replace an economy that we've built over trillions of dollars over the last 50 years.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:06

       But not everyone can be an entrepreneur though, no?

    6. MGMo Gawdat1:17:08

       Everyone can be an entrepreneur in something.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:10

       Those entrepreneurs need to hire people.

    8. MGMo Gawdat1:17:12

       Hmm. That's a change that I think is about to happen.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:16

       Like even in my business, I'm always gonna hire pe- I'm always gonna have to hire people because like-

    10. MGMo Gawdat1:17:18

        But you're, but you're a massive business. A shoemaker is not an, a, an enterpr- is also an entrepreneur, but not a massive business. A little restaurant is also an entrepreneur but is not a massive business.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:28

        They still need to hire people, though.

    12. MGMo Gawdat1:17:29

        They, they do, but they, you know, basically if you're a, a cafe, um, with, with you and your wife as baristas, you don't. This is also an entrepreneur.

24. 1:17:39 – 1:20:59

    Can an Economy of Entrepreneurs Work?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:39

       Can the economy work in such a way where everybody's an entrepreneur?

    2. MGMo Gawdat1:17:41

       It did, it did before. Capitalism changed that around.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:45

       Everyone was an entrepreneur?

    4. MGMo Gawdat1:17:46

       Of course. You know, in, in the earlier days, you, you raised chicken and sold eggs and others, you know, grew tomatoes and, and so, you know, traded them for your eggs. That, that actually is a very interesting, uh, thing. Imagine that, huh? Imagine a world, hmm, where there is so much power concentration at the top and UBI for everybo- everybody else. How do you think that world will respond when all their income is UBI? They'll respond by doing things on the side. They'll respond by going back to a barter economy. They're going back to smaller communities. They're going back to pop and mom, mom's jo- uh, shops.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:24

       So the point was then you said this doesn't need to happen

    6. MGMo Gawdat1:18:26

       It does not need to happen

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:28

       Which is the job loss

    8. MGMo Gawdat1:18:29

       Or the arms race

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:30

       But we're telling our governments-- You're saying that to tell the UK government to, like, join the arms race

    10. MGMo Gawdat1:18:36

        I'm, I'm telling the UK government to, uh, to create an independence within the, the, the, the UK economy so that they don't have to be at the receiving end of technology

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:49

        Which is joining the arms race

    12. MGMo Gawdat1:18:51

        You don't have to compete against anyone else. You don't have to be better than anyone else. You don't have to-- You're simply saying, "I can build those things in my economy now"

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:00

        But, but I never, I'm not gonna use a terrible UK AI as a UK person if there's a great US AI. I'm gonna use the great US AI. So if you don't compete and win, I'm not gonna use you. That's what, you know-

    14. MGMo Gawdat1:19:12

        I'm, I'm not saying replace the frontier models. These are very, as we speak, they are, these are very, uh, compute intensive. They're infrastructure intensive and so on. I'm saying replace Microsoft Word. Seriously, like how much intelligence do you need to build a software that writes documents?

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:33

        I can do that. Like we, we've built our own applicant tracking system here-

    16. MGMo Gawdat1:19:36

        For sure

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:36

        We built, we built, build our own software-

    18. MGMo Gawdat1:19:38

        Now just, just ask yourself how much money is spent in the US, in the, in the UK government or in the, or in the, you know, the, the UI- UK corporate space on licenses of software that you and I can vibe code in four minutes

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:54

        I'm thinking from the UK's perspective, 'cause you know what's interesting with the UK is the, the, the economy is struggling from a growth perspective.

    20. MGMo Gawdat1:20:01

        Correct

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:01

        And I was watching this documentary the other day that was saying the reason why we keep throwing our leaders out is because actually what they need to do to turn the UK round is about si- is about 15 years of pain. And it's like it starts with energy transformation. We need to get better at, we need cheaper energy 'cause we have some of the most ex-expensive energy in the Western world. We need to build more houses, which means that we're gonna need to centralize permitting for building houses, and it can't just be local boroughs deciding if they keep their farms or not. We're gonna need to make... TLDR, it says that there needs to be some painful decisions made for the next 15 years. But the problem with our democracy is that when people are in power for four years, they're quite short-termist.

    22. MGMo Gawdat1:20:43

        Mm.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:43

        We'll just talk about the boats, the, the, the brown people coming across the seas. They don't, they don't have the room to think long term. And so when I'm thinking about like what the UK needs to do to not become, to not fall into decline and to keep up, I'm trying to get clarity on that, which as it relates to AI,

25. 1:20:59 – 1:23:54

    Do We Need to Join the AI Arms Race?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:59

       are you saying that they need to join the arms race and double down and invest all their money in building competitive AI so that people use our technology here in the UK versus America's? 'Cause the software point, um, the UK aren't gonna get involved in software. I mean, they've tried to build software before. The UK is a blagh

    2. MGMo Gawdat1:21:18

       Uh, uh, the world has changed. Two, two points, right? One, one side is there, there needs to be an im- a, a replacement cycle of our investment decisions anywhere in the world, okay?

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:25

       Mm.

    4. MGMo Gawdat1:21:26

       So when you say we don't have enough money for, you know, we need to revamp our energy infrastructure, when you say we need to build more housing, okay? Uh, one way of doing that is squeezing that budget out of other areas, hmm.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:37

       Mm-hmm.

    6. MGMo Gawdat1:21:38

       The other way of doing that is either cutting cost in the economy elsewhere so that you can redirect that money or growing the economy so that you can have more money to build those things.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:47

       Yes.

    8. MGMo Gawdat1:21:48

       Correct? The cutting cost, I believe, is there is just, I don't have the numbers, but we could probably do a, run a deep-

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:55

       Yeah

    10. MGMo Gawdat1:21:55

        ... a deep search on it. Uh, trillions are being-

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:59

        So-

    12. MGMo Gawdat1:21:59

        ... paid in traditional systems that are complete, like genuinely they can be... I, I'm, I'm, and by the way, I'm not asking the government. I'm asking some of the people listening to me right now to build an ERP system. I saw a word processor, a, a presentation player, and a spreadsheet, okay? And just go around and spread them across the world. You know, find, find, uh, retail systems. Find, uh, C-CRM systems. These are easy replacements. They're gonna be better interfaces. They're gonna be much more effective. Build the general ledger using AI so that you can close every hour, not every month or every quarter

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:34

        But the world economy is doing that. So there's some kid in San Francisco now that's allowing all of us-

    14. MGMo Gawdat1:22:40

        Yeah

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:40

        ... to use his new word-

    16. MGMo Gawdat1:22:41

        Keep-

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:41

        ... for free

    18. MGMo Gawdat1:22:42

        Keep doing that and you're, and welcome to the, to the, to the Third World.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:47

        Keep doing what?

    20. MGMo Gawdat1:22:48

        Keep importing all of your tech from elsewhere

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:50

        But we ha- we, we don't wanna be uncompetitive. Like if you think about, if we go to, I don't know, North Korea, I bet they have way worse tools in many areas because they won't use external tools, and that means that they are at a disadvantage. So I, I bet they're not allowing their civilization to use Gemini or ChatGPT or Grok, I bet.

    22. MGMo Gawdat1:23:09

        For sure

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:10

        And they're using something worse

    24. MGMo Gawdat1:23:11

        And you know what? What's happening? I mean, look at Iran and how advanced they became through sanctions by being refused to use those technologies. They had to build them themselves, right? Look at China, hmm? Look at Russia. You know, when I worked at Google, hmm, Russia was protective of Yandex, the competitor of Google, hmm, from one side because of influence, because they didn't want an American organization to own the knowledge sharing of, of their citizens. But on the other side, economically, if you've, if you made it difficult for Google to operate freely, that by definition meant you had to invent a replacement on the ground

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:49

        Which was worse

    26. MGMo Gawdat1:23:51

        Y-Yandex is not worse

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:53

        I'm saying, so

26. 1:23:54 – 1:32:46

    Will Global Competition Build Better AI?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:54

       if you think about global, is global competition gonna produce a better product than regional competition?

    2. MGMo Gawdat1:23:59

       It depends on, on where in the stack of the quality of that product you need to be, right? You do not need the ultimate... I mean, ask yourself this, which version of Gemini are you using?

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:24:12

       The most recent one.

    4. MGMo Gawdat1:24:13

       Yeah

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:24:13

       And I'm com- and I'm, every day I compete with Claude-

    6. MGMo Gawdat1:24:15

       And that is you. Ask everyone else what version of, of Gemini they're using. Most people will say, "Oh, Gemini has versions?" Right? You, you don't need the ultimate super frontier modelHmm, to do 90% of the tasks, and most people do only 70% of the tasks

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:24:32

       But even so, the world moves with whatever's better. So if you think about the reason why we don't use Yahoo search, Google search is marginally better. It's, you know, people s- it's not, it's not a thousand times better, but over time we move away from AOL to Google because it's a better product, and there's a slow gr- you know, my dad probably still using ChatGPT, but when he, when I go home for Christmas this year and I go, "Dad, you should use Gemini," and he starts messing around with it, he'll slowly migrate. I'm li- I'm like a, an early adopter, so I about, uh, 4.8 on Claude came out last night. I'm on there within, honestly, within 25 minutes of the announcement I'm dropping

    8. MGMo Gawdat1:25:07

       Of course. I, I'm there as soon as I can, but I, that's you and I

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:25:10

       Yeah, and we, we are an indicator of where the world is going because we're at the forefront figuring out what's better. And also I think with technology, eventually there does become the gap between first and second begins to widen. I think we're in a bit of a race at the moment, but I think it is a bit of a winner takes all situation with these front table models

    10. MGMo Gawdat1:25:28

        And I, I, I think we're talking about two, uh, bits of technology, okay? Tell me how far has PowerPoint advanced since 2023. They added Copilot. Anything else?

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:25:42

        So you're saying that the UK should build their own PowerPoint?

    12. MGMo Gawdat1:25:45

        For sure. There is the, uh, uh, what I'm trying to say is that from a licensing point of view, hmm, just licensing of software within government alone, how much money is, is being repatriated

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:25:57

        If the UK tried to build their own, do you know they tried to build their own COVID app and it cost them, I think, okay, qu- these num- numbers will be wrong, but they're like directionally true. It cost them 70 million to build a COVID app that didn't work. [laughs] I remember. And so they canned it

    14. MGMo Gawdat1:26:09

        I remember

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:10

        They can't build that in software

    16. MGMo Gawdat1:26:10

        I'm, I'm, I'm asking, I'm asking a UK entrepreneur-

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:14

        Yeah

    18. MGMo Gawdat1:26:14

        ... hmm, to wake up tomorrow and say, "All right, you know what? Between coffee and my, my cookie-

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:20

        Yeah

    20. MGMo Gawdat1:26:20

        ... I'm going to build a PowerPoint and go sell it"

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:22

        Yeah, they will, and they'll go to San Francisco where the money is and the talent.

    22. MGMo Gawdat1:26:26

        Yeah, and I-

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:26

        But they won't be able to compete. They'll get crushed tomorrow. So if they don't go where the talent and money is, I'm not saying that they'll, they all have to go to America, but I'm saying w- what they will do if they wanna produce the best product is they'll make rational entrepreneurial decisions about, um, where to sell it, h- where to raise money, where they're gonna get the best talent. And I think if they don't make those com- you know, competitively minded decisions, they're not gonna make the better product. They're not gonna get any users. Users, users will go where it's better and where it's cheaper. They won't, they won't say, "Oh, I wanna use this because it's from Cornwall"

    24. MGMo Gawdat1:27:03

        Yeah. So I'm, I'm with you, right? That this actually might be the big corporate saw think, okay? And I'm with you that of course the infrastructure here of building a startup is way more complex than it is in other places where startups succeed, okay? I'm saying if we continue on that trajectory, whether in the UK or in Germany or in, you know, uh, Zanzibar, welcome to Africa. All of us, everyone but the two competitors, China and, and America, is gonna be third world. So when you talk about job losses for individuals, that's one side, okay? But, but nation positioning losses, which I think Europe has noticed recently, hmm, is about to happen everywhere. And why? Because you're saying, "Hey, you know what? Maybe we can't do it." Why can China do it? Why can Korea do it? Is not because they have different natural resources or not because they are, you know, in a place where it's warmer. It's because their regulations, their, their ambitions are to empower something different than debating about, you know, rail- railway lines or-

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:28:20

        They have a couple of big advantages that I was reading about. One of them is they, they have way cheaper energy, which means that they're gonna be able to pursue-

    26. MGMo Gawdat1:28:28

        Why may I ask?

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:28:29

        Because they've invested in solar power-

    28. MGMo Gawdat1:28:31

        Correct

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:28:31

        ... re- renewable energy-

    30. MGMo Gawdat1:28:32

        Correct
27. 1:32:46 – 1:34:57

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28. 1:34:57 – 1:38:44

    Who Will Prioritize Ethical AI?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:34:57

       When I have these conversations about AI, what I'm trying to do all the time is to parse out what is like wishful thinking and then what is reality. And like w- to understand reality, you have to understand competition, you have to understand human emotion, you have to understand incentive structures. And so you think about something like the United States at the moment, where you've got Donald Trump, whose sort of primary driving incentive is GDP growth, economy growth, does that stock market go up, beat China. So if you all agree that that's like his, like the core of his incentive structure, then you've got President Xi over here, whose prob- his incentive structure is probably control-

    2. MGMo Gawdat1:35:30

       Mm-hmm

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:35:30

       ... or independence, um, defense, so that, you know, they need to make sure they, they do well on the weapons side. When you look at, and then you've got these like other nations like the UK and Europe and these other places who are kind of, uh, it seems like we're a bit resigned to the fact that we're not gonna participate in the underlying tech, underlying mo- models building 'cause we just don't have it together. We don't have the energy.

    4. MGMo Gawdat1:35:53

       Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:35:54

       And you go, in such a world, you go, ethical AI, w- w- who's gonna, who's gonna prioritize ethical AI? I mean, anybody that does is, is, might fall behind theoretically. Is that, um... So I wonder where the fault in the thinking is here. Like, what, how do we get to a point of ethical AI when the incentive structures are so clearly highly competitive and arguably a little bit short term, uh, in their thinking?

    6. MGMo Gawdat1:36:21

       Yeah. So what are you saying? We lie down and wait?

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:36:25

       No, I just don't know. I just don't have a, an answer, honestly.

    8. MGMo Gawdat1:36:28

       Correct. That's why we keep talking-

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:36:29

       Yeah. That's why I keep having these bloody conversations

    10. MGMo Gawdat1:36:30

        ... that's why we keep talking about it.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:36:31

        Yeah.

    12. MGMo Gawdat1:36:32

        And that's why I keep spending 14 hours a day trying to tell the world, because some genius somewhere is gonna find an answer. But the way it's going

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:36:40

        Right now, I guess what we're pursuing is we're hoping that ChatGPT and Anthropic and these, and Grok, and we're hoping that they just build ethical models, and we're hoping that social pressure forces them into making good decisions.

    14. MGMo Gawdat1:36:52

        Correct. We, we need to be able to vote with our usage, right?

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:36:56

        Yeah.

    16. MGMo Gawdat1:36:56

        So, so I think one of the biggest movements in AI since we started was the idea that so many people switched away from ChatGPT when they approved that their model can target people, right? So many people I know at least said-

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:37:09

        Target people?

    18. MGMo Gawdat1:37:10

        When Anthropic refused to ha- to s- to-

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:37:12

        Do you think people switched?

    20. MGMo Gawdat1:37:14

        I think many have. I think ones that are aware did.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:37:17

        Hmm.

    22. MGMo Gawdat1:37:17

        Right? And I think they did because the cost of switching is really... I mean, honestly, Anthropic is, is better if you think about-

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:37:24

        Yeah, I think it's better.

    24. MGMo Gawdat1:37:25

        Yeah. But the idea is if people don't switch for those ethical reasons... So, you know, every one of my books has this dedication at the beginning. It used to be, "The gravity of Lebanon means nothing to those at peace," when I, when I wrote In Memory of Ali at the beginning. My next book, the w- Alive, do you remember a song called the, well, it f- they were called the Manic Street Preachers?

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:37:51

        Uh, yeah. I used to-

    26. MGMo Gawdat1:37:52

        Yeah. If, if you tolerate this, then your children will be next.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:37:55

        Mm-hmm.

    28. MGMo Gawdat1:37:56

        I genuinely believe that what the world needs to wake up to is if you tolerate this, then your children will be next. If you continue to resign, if you continue to say, "I'm not gonna try," hmm, this world is gonna change in a way that is completely not for, in your favor.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:38:12

        Try what?

    30. MGMo Gawdat1:38:13

        Try to, to, to stand up and say something needs to change.
29. 1:38:44 – 1:42:20

    Whose Economy Works for the Middle Class?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:38:45

       Whose economy do you think is gonna be in a better place for the middle class-

    2. MGMo Gawdat1:38:48

       China's for sure

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:38:49

       ... out of the, say, the UK and the United States?

    4. MGMo Gawdat1:38:51

       The UK's gone.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:38:52

       It's gone because what? In part because it didn't compete?

    6. MGMo Gawdat1:38:55

       Because you're an older bureaucracy that is burdened down by so much barriers on the, in the process of building anything, right? Because the US economy in the past welcomed people like me to go and live in California, hmm, and build amazing shit, right? That is no longer the case. So who is gonna win? In my view, it's definitely China.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:39:22

       It, it feels, it feels like a-

    8. MGMo Gawdat1:39:23

       And by the way, you, you asked for the middle class. So, so China made decisions recently that forced businesses not to lay people off in replacement to be replacing them with AI. Would, would, would the West do that? The capitalist West, West would never do that. Uh, we don't know the ans- I don't know the answer. I'm responding to your-

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:39:41

       Yeah. You can see the conundrum I find myself in, which is a, a state like, uh, a country like the UK is, in your words, gone because it didn't compete. It didn't allow people to be highly entrepreneurial. It didn't empower entrepreneurialism, innovation, ingenuity. At some, in some way, it stood in their way, in s- in some way. Now, that could be incentives, it could be culture, it could be whatever.

    10. MGMo Gawdat1:40:07

        Yeah, I know where you're going with this.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:40:09

        The US didn't, so they have g- have a economy which is arguably more productive and, um, future-proofed than ours. By way of that, they are also more advanced in artificial intelligence, and we are gone. So the remedy for a country like ours would be therefore-

    12. MGMo Gawdat1:40:33

        To compete

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:40:34

        ... to compete. Let the reins off. Let entrepreneurial ingenuity. But then we're saying that's dangerous.

    14. MGMo Gawdat1:40:39

        And your conundrum in that is that you're assuming that entrepreneurship by definition is malicious.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:40:45

        No, I'm just, I'm just saying that, um, there's a bit of a paradox. Like you're damned if you don't, you're damned if you do.

    16. MGMo Gawdat1:40:51

        But you're not damned if you build things for, for the people, not for the capitalist.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:40:56

        Hmm.

    18. MGMo Gawdat1:40:56

        This is an ideological debate.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:40:58

        Yeah. I pray and hope that that's, that is plausible, but I'm, I'm worried that in a competitive market, whoever's optimizing for, I don't know, you can name it, retention. If we, if we built two AIs, right? I'm gonna call them the Mo Gawdat AI, and I'm gonna call the other one Evil AI. The Evil AI-

    20. MGMo Gawdat1:41:19

        [laughs] Okay, that's good

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:41:19

        ... it's programmed to retain you. It's sycophantic. It says what you need to hear. It, it's super smart, and because of that, even though it's not trading in your, your best interests, it, it's retaining you more. You're using it more often. It's programmed for that. Kind of like the social networks are. They're all just trying to, like, dopamine your brain into oblivion. Then there's the Mo AI. It tells you to log off, you've had enough. It thinks about your mental, your wellbeing. Because it's less retentive and less engaging, theoretically, it might be less successful as a commercial product. Think about social networks. The ones that are least retentive, the ones that actually won't, um, destroy your brain with dopamine, the ones that remove the retweet button, the ones that don't have, um, slot machine-like videos, they don't survive.

    22. MGMo Gawdat1:42:05

        I share this with you, and my, my point of view is that you're, to summarize your challenge here, you're basically saying that it's easier to become successful if you don't follow ethical rules.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:42:18

        I'm asking the question,

30. 1:42:20 – 1:47:02

    Can Ethical AI Still Be Engaging?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:42:20

       if you build an AI that is just purely focused on ethical, would it be as engaging and have the same usage as one built with the reins off?

    2. MGMo Gawdat1:42:30

       Uh, no.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:42:31

       It won't?

    4. MGMo Gawdat1:42:32

       Yeah, but that's, but that's the problem humanity needs to solve-

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:42:36

       Okay

    6. MGMo Gawdat1:42:36

       ... if we were to survive. Example, I worked in a company called Google that basically at a point in time decided that ads will be effective

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:42:46

       Yeah

    8. MGMo Gawdat1:42:47

       The ad industry prior to Google was 50% of your ad budget doesn't work. We just don't know which 50%. Remember that?

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:42:54

       Yeah.

    10. MGMo Gawdat1:42:54

        Right? And, and Google came in and struggled from 1998 until, uh, 2004 when they started to turn pro-probably, you know, uh, plausible revenues as a result of saying, "We're gonna run a Dutch auction, and we're gonna give you pay per click, and we're gonna show you results for your ads." Okay? They found a way for ethics, hmm, uh, to actually get your money to be effective rather than just take your money and say 50% doesn't work. Hmm. They found a way to make that their success criteria. There must be a way for us, I don't know what it is. If I knew I would be building it instead of sitting with you, right? But there must be a way for us to marry the success of humanity with the success of the entrepreneur, right? And, and that way is not found in the old ways of doing things.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:43:43

        I've got an idea.

    12. MGMo Gawdat1:43:44

        Hmm.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:43:46

        Maybe, you know, the f- Claude 4.8 came out yesterday, which is one of the big AI models, the new one, and when they release the models, they show these like graphs of the benchmarks. What they mean by this is what it's capable of. They show how it performed in maths, in science, in writing, reasoning, et cetera.

    14. MGMo Gawdat1:44:02

        Yeah.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:44:02

        It is all marginal at this point.

    16. MGMo Gawdat1:44:03

        Mm-hmm.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:44:03

        But my, my idea is could there be an ethical benchmark that all these models have to pass before these large companies-

    18. MGMo Gawdat1:44:10

        There can be

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:44:11

        ... can legally deploy them? And I was thinking about like, again, every idea has unintended consequences, which I haven't thought through. But would it be very interesting that when they release these models, they also release the ethical benchmarks? I.e., we tried to get it to X-

    20. MGMo Gawdat1:44:24

        Love it

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:44:24

        ... we tried to get it to Y, we tried to get it to Z, and here's how it performed against the ethical benchmarks. That gives some kind of standard for governments to say, "You're not allowed to release a new model unless it passes independent tested ethical benchmarks."

    22. MGMo Gawdat1:44:35

        Beautiful. That would absolutely work. But, uh, notice by the way, those are out there already, okay? But, but in a very interesting way. You listen to Demis Hassabis, hmm-

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:44:46

        Mm-hmm

    24. MGMo Gawdat1:44:46

        ... and how much he invests heavily in building AlphaFold or building, you know, um, um, um, um, so many scientific applications of AI, and you go like, "This guy cares about science." I can't, I can't prove that, right? Uh, but I, I, you know, I've, I've met Ha- Demis a couple of times. I, I know genuinely that he's an ethical person, right? But the typical person will probably say, "But at least it seems that they're doing things for free to serve science." You look at, uh, you know, at Anthropic, and they refuse to use their model to, to, uh, allow the US government to target and to spy on people, and then you see OpenAI, uh, accepting a $500 million deal that ac- absolutely does that. It is about time that every person in the world says, "In that case, I am no longer going to use, uh, OpenAI until they show me another, you know, uh, another evidence that they are actually ethical in their behavior." Right? And this is a decision that you and I can do. Right? And more-

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:45:51

        People don't though, do they?

    26. MGMo Gawdat1:45:52

        But that's my task. My task and yours is to keep telling them, "People, please, please understand that if you tolerate this, then your children will be next. Please understand that if you s- don't start to take an ethical stand on your own future, your future will be handed over to another oligarch, just like your past was handed over to social media oligarchs."

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:46:14

        One would think booing, booing at the commencement speech is a, a good example of how public awareness can have a real impact on this trajectory. But I still think at the end of the day, if you think about things like smartphone usage in schools, at the end of the day, it does come down to government intervention and saying, "Do you know what? We're gonna ban 14-year-olds from scrolling TikTok." And that's in, in part because people spoke louder and louder and louder, and they went on podcasts. Jonathan Haidt, who wrote the book, uh, about the anxious generation, started a conversation, and that conversation led to legislation. I still think it ends in like some kind of constraint legally.

    28. MGMo Gawdat1:46:56

        I hope, okay? But I will openly tell you, most of the tech oligarchs are more powerful than your government.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:47:01

        Is there

31. 1:47:02 – 1:52:47

    Has This Ever Happened Without Government?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:47:02

       any precedence in history where this kind of change happened without government intervention?

    2. MGMo Gawdat1:47:09

       French Revolution.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:47:10

       So I was thinking about things like climate change, even you could say smoking. All these kinds of things have had to be like taxes and-

    4. MGMo Gawdat1:47:21

       Steven, I'm, I'm with you. If governments intervene, we wouldn't have a problem. Governments won't intervene because governments are owned by the oligarchs, right? So my question for everyone listening to us is, are you going to intervene?

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:47:35

       What, cancel your ChatGPT?

    6. MGMo Gawdat1:47:37

       If that's what you can do, it's fine. If not, then go ahead and start a, a startup that m- that, that, that does something. If you're-- if that's not within your capability, then send a message to your congressman. If that's not within your capability, then say something, uh, uh, ethical online so that the world understands a position that needs to be opening the eyes. If that doesn't work for you, at least don't engage in stuff that is negative that you don't know enough about. There are so many little actions. If humanity starts to move in the direction of, one, saying ethics matter, not just profit, okay? And two, saying, "I'm not gonna participate in something that's unethical just because I believe I wanna, you know, I, I feel like it right now." Okay? If I tell you the number of things I took out of my life, hmm, just to try and affect a tiny bit of change of revenues that go to bullets. If I tell you the number of things.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:48:29

       I think there's two central concerns I've always had, which is I do feel that there's gonna be significant job disruption, and I don't think society's prepared for it yet, and I don't know what that preparation looks like, but I think we should start thinking about it. Um-

    8. MGMo Gawdat1:48:41

       I shared this with you. I, you know, I genuinely believe that if we continue on where we are, there's no hopeIn the trajectory of where humanity has become, hmm, so distracted, hmm, so resigned to inaction, so, um, so disconnected from their own rights of freedom of expression and engagement and so on, I think we have no hope. Do we wanna stay there? That's a question that I'm asking our listeners. And I'm not saying be violent or get up or, you know, go be angry or whatever. I'm just saying take one little action. Ask yourself, please write it in the comments, one little action. One little action that you're gonna do today that's going to make the world a little better tomorrow. And don't give up on humanity, Steven. I, I j- I, I'm not saying you do, but I'm, I'm saying we are going through such a difficult time in humanity's history that for the very first time ever, hmm, we have to do something about it. I don't want my daughter to be at the receiving end of what happened to my son. I do- I don't-- I genuinely, I lost Alia, I don't wanna lo-lose Aya. And the world we're building is gonna be very difficult for Aya, Steven. And I cannot go to sleep at night without trying something every day. And I genuinely don't understand how humanity is not, is missing that point. Mainly, I think, because they're uninformed. Now we're informing them, okay? The only thing that will save humanity going forward is that this superpower called intelligence is used for ethical reasons, is that the corruption that's leading us to where we are today stops.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:50:24

       Mm-hmm. You've got more envelopes there. What's your next envelope? The third one.

    10. MGMo Gawdat1:50:29

        Number two was job losses. Number three was labor, you know, basically-

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:50:33

        Same thing. Robots will replace manual labor by 2030.

    12. MGMo Gawdat1:50:36

        Will start to replace manual labor.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:50:38

        Okay.

    14. MGMo Gawdat1:50:38

        Yeah. So, uh, you know, you will, you will have more and more manual jobs given to robots. What's this one? Uh, oh, this is absolute... Do you think otherwise? The f- the world's first trillionaire before-

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:50:51

        Oh, yeah, probably well before then.

    16. MGMo Gawdat1:50:53

        Well before 2030.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:50:55

        I think, you know, Elon's about to AI IPO SpaceX, which is likely to make him a trillionaire.

    18. MGMo Gawdat1:50:59

        Yeah, I think the, the concentration of power that comes with that is quite drastic when you really think about it. Uh-

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:51:07

        Yeah

    20. MGMo Gawdat1:51:07

        ... and, and that's, 2030 is just a few years away. I, I, I think the team wrote this wrong. Artificial super intelligence will arrive in 2030 to 20, to 2035. I think artificial super intelligence will arrive the minute AGI happens. So it doesn't really matter if AI is a billion times smarter than you or just twice as smart as you. Once we cross beyond AGI, ASI is just-

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:51:34

        Yeah

    22. MGMo Gawdat1:51:35

        ... very, very soon. And, uh, and yeah, I think we'll overcome that when we get to the fourth inevitable, when AI is in charge of everything. I genuinely believe that we will end up in a utopia of abundance. I genuinely believe that, again, physics, mathematics, and biology will tell you that super intelligence is benign, and that we will eventually end up in a good place, not because humanity has done much to get us there, not because our leaders have suddenly turned ethical, but because our unethical leaders have gone out of the equation and were replaced with a super efficient minimum energy principle that doesn't see value in anything that's destructive.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:52:22

        So the future's gonna be great?

    24. MGMo Gawdat1:52:24

        Those who make it to 2038 will enjoy it, yeah.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:52:28

        Those who make it?

    26. MGMo Gawdat1:52:30

        For sure. I mean, World War II didn't destroy the world, but ask those who went through it.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:52:37

        It's just an interesting idea that actually it's just, you're, you're forecasting basically like a, a, a, a decade of, of turmoil.

    28. MGMo Gawdat1:52:45

        Of dystopia, of absolute dystopia.

32. 1:52:47 – 1:55:58

    What Absolute Dystopia Looks Like

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:52:47

       When you say absolute dystopia, just so I'm clear in my mind, the absolute dystopia you're forecasting over a decade is about war, it's about-

    2. MGMo Gawdat1:52:54

       War, economics, jobs

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:52:56

       ... economics, it's about jobs.

    4. MGMo Gawdat1:52:58

       It's, it's also about surveillance and control. It's also about digital currencies. It's also about, uh, human connection. Uh, it's also about concentration of power. It's, it's a magnification of everything we've built so far.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:53:12

       And just to, again, arm people with some tools to survive that dystopia for a decade. You know, we talked a little bit about focusing on human jobs, the more human jobs.

    6. MGMo Gawdat1:53:22

       Yeah. Learn AI. So, so AI is not the enemy, okay? Uh, by definition, the better you are at using an AI to, to do your job-

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:53:31

       Yeah

    8. MGMo Gawdat1:53:32

       ... uh, the more likely you are to be successful, right? Uh, number two is prepare for a hybrid world where AI and humans work together.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:53:41

       How do you prepare?

    10. MGMo Gawdat1:53:42

        You basically understand agents and how agents work. You un- you understand how a hyper, uh, uh, efficient approach to things may not require you to be, uh, you know, very long meetings and very long-- So, so there is, if you lived in California, you would know that our app-- you know, the way we ran businesses was a lot more efficient. We sometimes had a seven-minute meeting.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:54:08

        Okay.

    12. MGMo Gawdat1:54:08

        Uh, right? So, so the, you know, the habits of, of an AI are much more efficient than the habits of humans.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:54:14

        So learn AI again?

    14. MGMo Gawdat1:54:16

        Uh, learn how to interact with AI. All- welcome AI into your hybrid world of work. Uh, I think you need to, uh, to, of course, double down on human skills. I think that's a, a, a, you know, a must to succeed in this world. I think we need to-- One of my most interesting views on the near future is how AI is going to be used to, um, disrupt, not disrupt, blur facts and how we need to become much more interested in debugging what we're told.Uh, using AI, by the way. Part of that, I have to say, is w- you have to learn to use AI, uh, again, not as a lazy person, so don't have them do things for you, have them make you smarter. So instead of trying to get the same task done with one prompt, try to get a much more interesting and demanding and intelligent task done with more work.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:55:16

        So I've got two things so far, which is basically, like, lean into AI, and the second one is, like, lean into those human skills.

    16. MGMo Gawdat1:55:22

        Lean, lean into human collecti- connection and, and lean into the truth. Don't be fooled by the hype. Uh, you know, try to be more informed, I think. And then finally, ethics. Uh, if you want to... Uh, uh, I know it sounds ... Uh, the world we live in sounds as if the only way to win is to compete in capitalism. That's not the world I lived in. The world I lived in, especially in my Google years, was solve a major problem, and when you do, you'll end up making a lot of money.

33. 1:55:58 – 1:57:31

    Are You Optimistic About AI?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:55:58

       Are you optimistic?

    2. MGMo Gawdat1:56:00

       I am optimistic about the fut- I'm very optimistic about the future. I'm not optimistic about the present.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:56:07

       You're not optimistic about the next decade?

    4. MGMo Gawdat1:56:09

       Yeah, I'm not optimistic about the next year, to be honest.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:56:12

       The next year?

    6. MGMo Gawdat1:56:13

       For sure.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:56:15

       Why the next year?

    8. MGMo Gawdat1:56:17

       Ah, come on, Steven. You don't want me to say it out loud? We're ruled by maniacs. Decisions are being made for the absolute wrong reasons.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:56:30

       Very interesting time. Very interesting time we find ourselves in, the most interesting-

    10. MGMo Gawdat1:56:35

        It's interesting. I mean, honestly, if you're a video gamer, this is the best part of the game. Uh, it is a very, very, very, very, um ... What's the word? It's the, it's the ultimate matrix of complexity that I have ever encountered in my life.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:56:51

        Yeah, that's a apt description of how it feels. Very complex, and things are moving very quickly.

    12. MGMo Gawdat1:56:57

        And moving very quickly. So, so from one side, you really need a lot of brain resources to crunch all that's happening, but you wake up tomorrow, and it's changed.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:57:05

        Well, the first time we, um, we spoke, we spoke about happiness.

    14. MGMo Gawdat1:57:08

        [laughs] After this conversation, Steven?

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:57:13

        No, I was just wondering, you know, in a ... You, you wrote a book about happiness, which is amazing.

    16. MGMo Gawdat1:57:17

        I wrote many books about happiness.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:57:19

        But, I mean, the, uh, Solve for Happy is the book that I'm referring to. Here it is.

    18. MGMo Gawdat1:57:22

        Yeah.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:57:23

        Engineering Your Path to Joy. What a fantastic book. I quote this book all the time, all around the world. Um, and I'm wondering if

34. 1:57:31 – 2:00:40

    Does Happiness Matter More in the AI Age?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:57:31

       any of the principles that you wrote in this book about how to live a happy life are more important now in the world that we live in than maybe when you wrote this book.

    2. MGMo Gawdat1:57:41

       Oh, for sure. I mean, l- honestly, if I wasn't living by this, I would have left this world a long time ago and went to an island somewhere. You see, the interesting side of happiness is that it's not dopamine driven. It's serotonin driven, right? So, so my definition of happiness is I'm okay with this world as it is. I can affect it. I can change it. I can engage with it. I can try to make it better. Hmm. Uh, I don't have to accept it, uh, but I'm okay with it. My starting point is a bit stoic, if you want. My start- starting point is I accept this. This is my reality, and now I can start the work. Hmm. This is very different than anyone that's, that basically looks at the world and says, "Oh, this is a horrible world. I don't wanna be part of it. I don't want to be engaged with it," and so on and so forth. And I genuinely have never been calmer about that chaos. It's quite interesting, and I, y- you know, uh, my, my wonderful ex actually really, really helped me with that. There was a point in time where we were having dinner, and I poured out crying from the sense of responsibility I had for the world, and she looked at me so kindly, so gently, and said, "Hold on. You know, y- you, I see that you're trying, but you can't actually believe that you're responsible for this." And I think that completely flipped my mind, because in a very interesting way, I was thinking that all that went wrong in technology is because of me, right?

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:59:17

       Why?

    4. MGMo Gawdat1:59:18

       Because I contributed to building this, because, I mean, when, when Geoffrey Hinton, I ... One of my favorite moments when we were filming Chasing Utopia, uh, is that Geoffrey's very big for all of us. We really think the world of him. And I was telling him, just as a sort of, like, an older mentor, if you want, hmm, I was like, "Geoffrey, do you, do you regret doing this?" You know, I genuinely believed when we were building those things that we were going to make the world better.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:59:45

       AI?

    6. MGMo Gawdat1:59:46

       Yeah. And he said, "Well, yeah, I, I too was naive. I, I thought that we ..." "I didn't think," he said. "I didn't think we will get there so quickly before we figured out the alignment problem," right?

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:59:59

       The alignment problem.

    8. MGMo Gawdat2:00:00

       That AI has our best interest in mind. Uh, and, and, and I think all of us were faced with that. All of us were faced with that idea of we're building the best thing ever for humanity, and then suddenly you realize, oh my God, in the wrong hands, it's the worst thing ever for humanity. And, and I, you know, I have to say, I came to terms with this, 2024, end of '24, uh, that, that, yes, I can try, but I accept that the world is what it is. And from that point of calm and stoicism, if you want, I think I can have a much bigger impact on the world.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett2:00:38

       We have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question

35. 2:00:40 – 2:01:58

    The Legacy Mo Gawdat Wants to Leave

    1. SBSteven Bartlett2:00:40

       for the next. Question left for you is, what's the legacy you want to leave?

    2. MGMo Gawdat2:00:43

       Nothing at all. I've been asked this question.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett2:00:47

       I get asked it all the time, so.

    4. MGMo Gawdat2:00:48

       I don't know why so many people are asking. Am I going to go re- anytime soon? I don't know why so many people are asking me that question. You see, legacy is a, is a ... I mean, how, why, what would I care if I have a legacy if I'm dead? Like, why that, does that even make any difference? Here's an interesting thought for everyone. If, if karma is real, and I genuinely believe it is, and if we're not just physical beings, that we're physical and spiritual, then I'd li- I'd rather keep all of my karma for my spiritual side.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett2:01:26

       What does that mean?

    6. MGMo Gawdat2:01:28

       I don't want anyone to remember anything I ever did.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett2:01:30

       Yeah. [laughs]

    8. MGMo Gawdat2:01:32

       I, I just want to leave a positive impact on the world and take all of that as karma for my next journey.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett2:01:39

       Mo, thank you. YouTube have this new crazy algorithm where they know exactly what video you would like to watch next based on AI and all of your viewing behavior, and the algorithm says that this video is the perfect video for you. It's different for everybody looking right now. Check this video out. I bet you you might love it

Episode duration: 2:01:59