Ex-Google Exec: How to Position Yourself Now Before the Next AI Phase (2026–2027) | Mo Gawdat

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0:31every soda's got something to say colas brag probiotics give ted talks then there's mr pib no pitch no promises just bold cherry bringing the flavor bold kick of cherry my ai startup took me six weeks to build i had started in 2022 it would have taken me four years and when you really think about that that basically means everyone now has a chance this This is Mo, former chief business officer at Google X, where he spent over a decade running business innovations. He says everyone now has a chance, but only if they understand what's actually coming. The skill of an entrepreneur in the past was the ability to foresee something in the future that no one else saw and to prepare for that.

1:16That's a game of chess. It's over. It's off the table. This has turned into squash. I'm just basically saying get prepared. How much time do we have to prepare? Within the next two to three years, you're going to see a massive shift in the jobs market. So you asked me, what should we do? Number one, learn the skills. Number two. Well, thank you so much for doing this. Welcome to Silicon Valley, girl. Thank you. You said something that we're about to enter what you call 12 to 15 years of hell before heaven, possibly starting in 2027. So what's going to happen in 2027? I think it will peak in 2027.

1:54It already started for sure. I call it FACE RIPs, just as an acronym for people to remember. Each of those letters is a word, but let me tell the story quickly in ways that people will understand. There is the power and freedom dimension, so the P and the F. There is the R and the C, the reality and connection dimension. There is the I and the C, the innovation and connection, sorry, and economics dimension. And then there is the A. So let me tell them very quickly. To start with, AI is our last innovation, right? Most people don't know that, but we are already building AIs that are building AIs.

2:41Yeah. We're building AIs that are discovering scientific discovery that will blow you away. They're reinventing math. They are understanding biology in ways that we've never seen before. They're understanding material science in ways that are just mind-blowing. And so very quickly, most innovation, definitely tech innovation, will be done at the hands of AI. because of that and because most tasks that need intelligence will be handed over to the machines as the machine's capabilities increase. Lots of debate around when exactly, say it's 10 years, say it's two years, doesn't really matter. Eventually, every job that AI does better than humans will be handed over to AI.

3:27And every task we've ever assigned to them, they eventually ended up doing better than humans. And so the first part of the dystopia is that innovation is going to take away all jobs. Of course, the capitalists of Silicon Valley will tell you, this is great. It's incredible productivity gains for everyone. You see, jobs will be easy. People won't have to work as hard. All of the fancy PR-led conversations that we try to appear altruistic when we share them, the truth is people will be out of jobs, right? 10, 20, 30 % of certain sectors will see unemployment of that rate in the next few years, right?

4:13And when that happens, economics at large will change massively. The whole definition of capitalism was labor arbitrage. And without labor, you know, without the need for labor, The obligation or the need to keep people happy and engaged and alive and undisgruntled, if you want, to the point where they don't rise, becomes more of an obligation than a desire. There is a very big difference in terms of wanting someone to be their best because they are productive members of society or trying to just give them a UBI, a universal basic income, to just give them a life so that they don't uprise. And you can imagine that in a capitalist society, especially like the US and most of the West, you know, while we start with UBI, that UBI is going to be paid by the taxes of the platform owners.

5:07And the platform owners will have enough power to say, I don't want to pay that much. I mean, those guys are not producing anything. And so over time, you can imagine how that would turn into a struggle. Right. So that dimension of intelligence and innovation on one side becoming entirely a machine thing, leading to a redefinition of economics, a redefinition of money, a redefinition of jobs, a redefinition of earnings, a redefinition of capitalism. You know, the need for a new economic theory when there is no demand for the supply that AI is generating. All of that has to be rethought. There is the PF dimension, the power freedom dimension.

5:47and it's of course very clearly understood that if you look at human history the best hunter in a tribe would have been able to feed the tribe a week more let's say and then you know got as a result of that the favor of a few mates in the tribe you go to the best farmer they got estates and land because they could feed the tribe a season more you go to the best industrialist They had the exuberance of the 1920s because they could affect their entire nation. The information technology tycoons, the tech oligarchs, if you want to call them, are now being rewarded with billions of dollars because they affect the world at large.

6:34And the big power concentration of AI is going to be rewarded with massive influence and massive power because those people will redefine humanity at large. And so that dimension is quite interesting. Of course, the clear dimension is the RC dimension is the reality to connection dimension. Now that reality has become so fake in so many ways. Fake in terms of what populates your feed, how it's generated, how much of it is real, how much of it is human, and so on. You're here to look at some filmmakers that use AI from A to Z to create. And it's crazy. And you can't, sometimes you forget it's AI generated.

7:16You cannot tell the difference. It's crazy how good it is. And I don't know if you've ever had that experience, but I met a woman once on a dating app, and we spoke for six weeks before we met. And all we exchanged was texts and photos and voice messages and videos and so on, and favorite music and favorite movies and all of those things. And I've never met her in person, and I felt such an affinity to her, right? All of those can be generated with AI today. Now, the challenge is that this human connection is also part of the power freedom dimension. Why? Because people don't align with AIs to start an uprising.

7:58So maybe get them to get in touch more with AIs. Maybe get them to get multiple experiences. Some of them are a little taboo, if you want. And have those available to everyone. It's very cheap to create those on the machines. And you can see it already in the porn industry and how much of porn is being generated by AI. And you can see it in the number of influencers on social media that are completely AI generated and so on. And I say, so this is face RIP's seven dimensions. The one that matters most is the A, the second one, which is not on any dimension. It's the one that's causing all of them, which is accountability.

8:41and the reason why all of this is happening, if you ask me, is because we've started a world where anyone can do whatever they want, okay? And, you know, whether you, as an influencer, you can give a bit of advice to entrepreneurs that can get someone to make a lot of money or lose a lot of money, you're not accountable. Nobody can come back to you and say, oh, but she told me on Instagram. I can. Right? So that's actually amazing that they can. That's responsibility, right? Yeah. That's amazing that they can. But what if they cannot anymore? What if that's... If I'm AI, right? Yeah. What if you're AI?

9:14What if you're a president who doesn't respect anything? What if you're a prime minister of a nation that is changing things without... I think COVID was the very first experiment of, okay, stay at home, do what we tell you. And people complied. And so now Sam Altman, with all due respect, I don't think of Sam Altman as a person. I think of him as a brand, a type of person, if you want. Right. And that type of person is the Californian disruptor that says, you know what, I see a future that's very different than what everyone sees. I'm going to go out there and make that future. Nobody asked me if I want that to be my future.

9:51Nobody asked you. Right. And I think the reality is that now you're going to see quite a few altments. Right. Quite a few that are, you know, using those machines for surveillance, using those machines for autonomous weapons, using those machines for automated trading. and so on and so forth. And by the way, when you started your question, I said, it's 10 to 12 years? Yeah, but that's not easy. 10 to 12 years of that arms race is not easy. My perception is that after that, we will end up in an incredible utopia, almost biblical style utopia. But it is 10 to 12 years where if we just change our mindset a little bit, a lot of things will change.

10:35But how do we survive those 10 to 12 years? I like to think in like five year periods for myself and my family. Right. And if in the next five years, you said 10 percent of jobs will be gone. Way more than 10 percent. Okay. What types of jobs do you think? A monotonous job is going to be taken away. Like if you're a call center agent, if you're a clerk, you're a researcher, you're an accountant. Why would you want to do that with anything but AI? If you're an assistant. You know what I feel? People talk about this a lot. Like, oh, a job's going to be gone. Yeah, this could be. And I, as an entrepreneur, I see how certain tasks I'm performing them with AI.

11:13But I'm still hiring and hiring and hiring. Because AI can start from the beginning. It can do parts. Of course, because of the technology acceleration curve. So what you build first in any complex technology, you build the core tech first. And then you build the human interfaces. The challenge why AI cannot do head of operations job today is not because it's less organized than a head of operations. It's not because it cannot comprehend all of the information that a head of operations has. It's because it has to understand the stupid interfaces of humans. And it will, sooner or later. When do you think?

11:53So the question of when, in my mind, is irrelevant. But no, it's like, how much time do we have to prepare? Because head of operations is middle class. I tend to believe that within the next two to three years, you're going to see a massive, massive shift in the jobs market. Already this year, you've seen a shift in hiring of new grads. Yeah. 30 % less, I think. 23 is my number, but 23 to 30. So hiring of new grads basically means if you've come into the job market in this environment, we're not going to take you. Why? Because the junior jobs are being done by AI. right? Eventually, what ends up happening is that if you lose your job, because you're in the middle hierarchy, then you're that new grad again, you're trying to apply for new jobs, but it becomes a little more difficult.

12:41So you asked me again, to stay on the positive side, because I tend to worry that people think I'm pessimistic about this. I'm just basically saying get prepared, right? So many things, one of them is accept the fact that AI is changing everything and then get ahead of the curve. So there was a time when I was quoted saying, I'm never going to write books again because AI is eventually going to write them better than me. And then I realized last year that, you know, yeah, they can write better than me. English is not my native language. They can research better than me, that's for sure. But I have something they don't have.

13:17You're a human that's reading my books. Absolutely. I want to read human. You want to relate to my human experiences. And so my last book, Alive, which publishes end of this year, I wrote with an AI, right? I, you know, I invited her to be a co-author. Her name is Trixie. She has a persona. When I published the book on Substack, my readers would relate to me and to Trixie and they'd ask me questions and Trixie questions. And, you know, she has editorial rights on the book. She has rights to determine the direction of the book. And all of that is me saying, you know what? I am an author and I'm going to be the best author in the age of AI, right?

13:57So that's number one is acknowledge that there is change and adapt accordingly. The second is to understand that the skill of an entrepreneur in the past was the ability to foresee something in the future that no one else saw, right? And to prepare for that and to somehow execute on that preparation in a way that gets you ahead of everyone else. that's a game of chess if you want the chessboard is over it's off the table this has turned into squash right you need to be on your tiptoes incredibly agile you're literally on daily basis on daily basis looking at the trends seeing where the ball is going to be is it bottom right or top left and wherever the ball ends you take two steps and you go try to respond Okay, that agility and speed is a skill that's very, very different.

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15:40Many have come here. None have survived. Predator Badlands, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus, rated PG-13. So entrepreneurship basically speeds up or does it change completely? It speeds up and it becomes a lot more, I don't want to say reactive, but a lot more in context all the time. So pivoting, which used to happen for every one of us entrepreneurs once or twice in the history of your early startup, could happen every week. In my current startup, Emma, we pivoted four times in the first four weeks. But do you think, when I think about entrepreneurship in the age of AI, if AI can look at the market, determine the gaps, like Amazon, right?

16:24If it can just analyze everything, determine which goods are under, like you have more demand than supply, launches the product and just builds the business. 100%. What is left for entrepreneurs then? 100%. So I have a documentary coming up hopefully in February, and I interviewed all of the top guys. One of them is one of my favorites, Max Tedmark. And we're talking about jobs on the documentary, and Max is laughing out loud, right? And literally can't hold himself from laughing. I'm like, what's up? And he goes like, you know, all those CEOs are so interested in AI increasing the productivity so that they can get rid of people and reduce their costs and be more efficient.

17:06they don't realize that AGI is every job, including being a CEO. And it's quite interesting. The answer in my view is we rushed through it because we don't have a lot of time today. But when I said that economics are going to be redefined as part of face RIP, part of economics, which economists haven't found an answer to yet, is that without the economic livelihood of you and I to continue to purchase, every economy collapses. The US economy last year was 70 % consumption. It moves between 70 % to 64%, depending on how much money is spent on war. And basically, if you take away the 64 or 70%, two thirds of the economy, if you take that away, because people no longer have the economic livelihood to purchase things, then the economy disappears.

17:55And the capitalists cannot make money based on the entrepreneurs and the business people, but cannot make money because nobody's buying their products. Okay, no, no businesses are buying their products because those businesses no longer have consumers to sell to. So the economy will have to find a way to go around that. It will have to find a way that unfortunately, from an ideology point of view, not a favorite of the Western mentality. It's going to have to find a communist way. Okay, let's go back to like regular entrepreneurs because I come from entrepreneurship. Does it mean I have like a couple of years to build something and then that's it?

18:31So I'll tell you, opening, Emma, my AI startup, okay, took me six weeks to build. Me and Sanad, my co-founder, a few very talented engineers, right? Two or three that come in and out. And eight AIs. And Emma has the chance to completely redefine our world, right? In six weeks, we are so spoiled that we decided to rewrite the code six times. Why not? Yeah. Right? Every time we look at it, you know, if I had started EMA in 2022, it would have taken me four years and finished in 2026. And I would have had to hire 350 engineers. We started it in August 2025. We'll be launching in February 2026. Best product I ever built.

19:19And when you really think about that, that basically means everyone now has a chance because I'm an old geek. I still am a geek, but compared to the young guys, I'm an old geek. To be able to build something like this within six months is incredible. Now, here's the interesting thing. I choose to build AI. So Emma is basically trying to solve love and relationships, right? In a way that actually is really intelligent. It uses very deep mathematics and tries to match a million parameters between couples. So that, you know, it's a job for intelligence. And I choose to do that to create, hopefully, a unicorn that actually makes the world better.

20:01And I think that's what we need. So you asked me, what should we do? Number one, learn the skills. Number two, learn to be fast and agile. Number three, learn that in terms of the abundant power that everyone has now, because of the massive improvement of AI and the democratization of AI, you have the chance to fix the world. And like Larry Page used to teach us, do the toothbrush test. Find a problem that can actually affect the lives of a billion people and solve it so well that they use you twice a day and you'll be very, very rich. So that idea of building good AI, ethical AI, AI that's good for humanity, that's the role of every one of the entrepreneurs listening to us.

20:47Ethics is the answer. Because when we teach AI, that's what it's going to give back to us. what it's going to give back to us. Right? And then finally, I'll say openly, the top skill in this world is stop being gullible. Stop believing everything that you're told. This whole propaganda machine that brainwashed us for so long is now going to be on steroids. Okay? It's going to confuse the hell out of you. It's already in charge of what you see. Well, it's already on social media. You can't tell what's wrong. Correct. I also write a newsletter where I go deeper on AI tools that I use, career strategies, and things I can't fit into a 60-minute podcast.

21:29It's free. Link is in the description. So you have to question, and you have to question deeply. And by the way, remember, I left Google in 2018. We had a ChatGPT-like idea that became barred in 2016, and we didn't launch it. Why? Because at the time, and still today, I know the leaders of Google even today, and they're wonderful people who are actually values driven, who want to make the world better. That company at the time, if you remember 2016, if you searched Google, Google gave you a million and a half answers and said, I don't know the truth. You make up your mind. We didn't allow ourselves to have monopoly on what reality is.

22:17Okay. You asked ChatGPT in 2023 and it said, yeah, that's the answer. A hundred percent. That's the answer. Okay. And then you tell it no and it'd be like, oh yeah, by the way, you're right. Correct. It's not true. Correct. Right. And so what does that mean? It means that it's up to you still to find the truth, even though it comes to you now in a format that appears to be true. And so what I do is I pit them against each other. I mean, I'm not a big fan of ChatGPT anyway, but I start from Gemini who feels like a scientist to me, but an American scientist, if you don't mind me saying, and then go to DeepSeek, right?

22:52And say, what's missing in this? And DeepSeek would say, oh, that's too American. Okay? This is missing that and this and the motivation of this and the politician. Here is a business idea, right? Yeah, 100%. Build a chat that compares everything. Compares them to each other. And then I take it and sometimes give it to ChatGPT and say, can you write this better? Yeah. You know, I don't mean that in a bad way. You're the California girl, right? Right. The, you know, Silicon Valley girl. So, so CHPG is a bit Californian. It just wants you to hear what you want to hear. Right. So it writes it. It's nice.

23:24It writes it elegantly. It gives it to you. And then I give that back to Gemini and, you know, or Grok or whatever. And you keep doing that. And remember, when I was studying engineering, we were not allowed scientific calculators. Can you imagine? I'm that old. And when they gave me a scientific calculator, it reduced my problem solving time by 50 percent. Most of my friends would take that 50 percent extra, finish their exams and go out and sit with their girlfriends. I would take the 50 percent extra and do the solution twice. Right. That's the chance you have today. AI is going to make you dumb if you outsource your problem solving to AI.

24:04AI is going to make you the smartest you've ever been. If you take the parts that are not natural to the human brain, you know, things like crunching a massive amount of information, things like searching at speed and so on and so forth. But get the AI to do the work so that you do the intelligence. Yeah. Right. And if you keep doing that, I believe that today I'm borrowing maybe 80 IQ points from my AIs. Right. And an AT IQ is very significant because the IQ is exponential. So the additional AT is bigger than all of my IQ. So if we need to solve this intelligence problem, do you think universities is the right way?

24:47What's going to happen to education in general? I think education is over. Completely over. Like that's it? I mean, education used to be the technology that enabled learning. that technology moved from one to one relationships between a tutor and a student to one to a few in a church format or a mosque format or whatever then it became online then it became right but the truth is now you're going to outsource who remembers the arithmetic tables today even i you do yeah yeah all of us who love mathematics we still we still remember all of those things we love to do them. But if I told you 67.4 divided by 33.375, I can do it in my head, but I won't.

25:36Right. I'll take my calculator out and do it. And I think that's what's going to happen, that in extension of humanity, you now for the first time are given an extra connection to extra memory, to an archive of all human memory and knowledge, to a math engine that but sadly, as much as I hate to say it, is better than me now. Okay? To a deep learning and deep search that, you know, that can do things that probably my old brain cannot do anymore. But again, it just takes away your ability to think. But my calculator took away my ability to do those complex arithmetics in my head. But don't you think having that ability taught you how to think?

26:22Correct. Like, kind of structured your brain, right? Correct. This is why I'm very grateful to the university for not allowing us to use a scientific calculator. That's why I think, do you think? But we don't have that. We don't have that for our younger generations today. They are growing with AI. Okay. So they can either copy a chat of their girlfriend and drop it in chat GPT and say, what do you think? And chat GPT will say, ah, she's an asshole. Right. Or they can actually become smarter. So one of the things I keep suggesting in education, and I do that with lots of universities, is I say exams should be over.

27:00OK, so think of it this way. We wanted in our past to develop children that could solve problems, say, with an IQ of 140. 140 is quite good. If you get 170, that's amazing. You know, that's I worked with people who are in the 200s. Incredible intelligence, but very narrow focused. I think we should, from now on, take people and their AIs and say the target is 300, the target is 500, the target is 700. Elevate humanity, okay, by allowing people to use those machines as an extension of their limited memory, of their limited processing speed, of their limited bandwidth, okay, and allow them to write books better, to do research better.

27:46So I woke up literally, I'm not kidding you, three Sundays ago with an idea that is just taking me over. So I decided to write. But this time I decided to write in a different format. I decided my books are going to be 140 pages long instead of 300 pages long. And I'm writing it in four weeks. That's a very fast. I couldn't have. And I'm actually literally 20 pages away from the end of the book. Wow. And the reason why is because I still write 10 hours a day when I'm highly motivated. But damn, the amount of research and references and comparative analysis and number crunching. And remember, I'm not gullible.