Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!

16 May 2025 · 23 min

Ask about this episode

Ask anything about it. ChatGPT or Claude reads this page and answers with the times it was said.

Connect VO and ask about every podcast you hear, including the moments you saved. Add to ChatGPT · Add to Claude

In short

Podcast Summary: The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Episode Title

Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!

Host

Steven Bartlett

Guest

Mo Gawdat

  • Former CBO of Google X
  • Author and entrepreneur focused on AI and its implications.

Episode Overview In this episode, Mo Gawdat shares his insights on the rapid advancements of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its potential impacts on humanity. He discusses the implications of AI on creativity, job displacement, and the irreplaceable value of human connection in a tech-driven future.

---

Key Concepts and Discussions

  1. The Inevitability of AI Advancement
  2. Unstoppable Progress: Gawdat emphasizes that AI development cannot be halted.
  3. Intelligence Projection: He predicts AI will become significantly smarter than humans, with a projection of it being a billion times smarter by 2045.
  1. Understanding AI's Capabilities
  2. Current State of AI: Gawdat clarifies that AI, like ChatGPT, is not capable of true intelligence but instead predicts and synthesizes information.
  3. Example: ChatGPT's ability to replicate the styles of famous writers but lacks genuine creativity.
  1. The Nature of Creativity
  2. Human vs. AI Creativity: Gawdat discusses the essence of creativity as combining known concepts in new ways, a task AI can also perform.
  3. Algorithmic Creativity: Both humans and AI can produce creative outputs by merging existing ideas, blurring the lines between human and machine creativity.
  1. The Future of Employment
  2. Job Displacement: Gawdat warns that while AI may not take jobs immediately, workers using AI effectively will outperform those who do not adapt.
  3. Call for Action: He proposes that governments tax AI-driven companies heavily to support those displaced by technology.
  1. Human Connection in an AI-driven World
  2. Irreplaceable Aspects of Humanity: Gawdat argues that genuine human connection and emotional experiences are what will remain valuable amidst increasing AI capabilities.
  3. Cultural Impact: He highlights the potential of AI-generated content (e.g., music) to evoke emotions similar to human-created works, raising questions about authenticity and value.
  1. Ethical Considerations of AI
  2. Responsibility vs. Power: Gawdat discusses the disconnect between those developing AI and the potential consequences of their technology.
  3. Moral Implications: Warnings about the societal impact of AI and the urgency to prepare for its ramifications are central themes in the dialogue.

---

Key Takeaways

  • Prepare for Change: The discussion serves as a wake-up call for individuals and governments to understand and prepare for the imminent changes AI will bring.
  • Value of Human Experience: Despite the rise of AI, there will always be a place for human experiences and connections.
  • Integrate AI Responsibly: Society must address the ethical implications of AI and ensure that those benefiting from AI technology also bear the responsibility for its consequences.

---

Conclusion This episode serves as a critical reflection on the intersection of humanity and technology, emphasizing the need for proactive measures in adapting to an AI-driven future while preserving the essence of human connection. Gawdat’s insights challenge listeners to consider their role in this evolving landscape.

For a deeper dive, listeners can access the full episode on [Spotify](https://g2ul0.app.link/ocYmHrkuoTb) or [Apple Podcasts](https://g2ul0.app.link/EBSoMmQuoTb).

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Hear the part that matters, and keep it.Open this episode in VO. Double tap your headphones to save a moment as you listen.
Get VO free

Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:01The Diro of the CEO has brought you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive .com after this episode to see if you could save. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary, not available in all states. If you're an IT leader or a CIO or someone who makes big decisions in tech, there's an event happening this year that I want to be on your radar.

0:36Gartner, the sponsor of today's moments episode is hosting their annual IT Symposium Expo. This conference is the fastest way to get up to speed with everything that's happening in tech. The whole idea is to give executives frameworks to lead confidently in 2025 in a world that's evolving so incredibly fast. And Gartner's global reach means there's an event near you, including the US, Europe, Asia and Australia. You can expect conversations on AI, cyber security, leadership in a digital age, as well as an industry -specific deep dive. Secure your spot by registering at Gartner .com slash Symposium.

1:09That's Gartner .com slash Symposium. And enjoy this moment with Mogord at former CBO of Google X, talking about the possibility of AI replacing humans in the workforce. So the first inevitable just to clarify is what is what we start. AI will not be stopped. OK, so the second inevitable is... Is there'll be significantly smarter? As much in the book, I predict a billion times smarter than us by 2045. I mean, they're already what? Smart than 99 .99 % of the population. 100%. The chat GTP4 knows more than any human on planet Earth. No more information. Absolutely. 1 ,000 times more. 1 ,000 times more.

1:44By the way, the code of a transformer, the T in a GPD is 2 ,000 lines long. It's not very complex. It's actually not a very intelligent machine. It's simply predicting the next word. And a lot of people don't understand that. Chat GPD as it is today, those kids that... If you're in America and you teach your child all of the names of the states and the US presidents and the child would stand and repeat them and you would go like, oh my god, that's a prodigy. Not really. It's your parents really trying to make you look like a prodigy. By telling you to memorize some crap really. But then when you think about it, that's what Chat GPD is doing.

2:29It's the only difference is instead of reading all of the names of the states and all of the names of the presidents, thread trillions and trillions and trillions of pages. And so it sort of repeats what the best of all humans said. And then it adds an incredible bit of intelligence where it can repeat it the same way Shakespeare would have said it. Those incredible abilities of predicting the exact nuances of the style of Shakespeare so that they can repeated that way and so on. But still, when I write, for example, I'm not saying I'm intelligent, but when I write something like the happiness equation in my first book, this was something that's never been written before.

3:21Right? Chat GPD is not there yet. All of the transformers are not there yet. They will not come up with something that hasn't been there before. They will come up with the best of everything. And generatively will build a little bit on top of that. But very soon, they'll come up with things we've never found out. We've never known. But even on that, I wonder if we are a little bit delusioned about what creativity actually is. Creativity as far as I'm concerned is like taking a few things that I know and combining them in new and interesting ways. And chat GPD is perfectly capable of like taking two concepts, merging them together.

3:57One of the things I said to chat GTP was I said, tell me something that's not been said before. That's paradoxical but true. And it comes up with these wonderful expressions like as soon as you call off the search, you'll find the thing you're looking for. Like these kind of paradoxical truths. And I go and I then take them and I search them online to see if they've ever been quoted before. And I can't find them. Interesting. So as far as creativity goes, I'm like that is crazy. That's the algorithm of creativity. I've been screaming that in the world of AI for a very long time because you always get those people who really just want to be proven right.

4:34Okay. And so they'll say, oh no, but hold on, human ingenuity. They'll never, they'll never match that. Like, man, please, please, you know, human ingenuity is algorithmic. It's look at all of the possible solutions you can find to a problem. Take out the ones that have been tried before and keep the ones that haven't been tried before and those are creative solutions. It's an algorithmic way of describing creative is good solution that's never been tried before. You can do that with chat GPT with a prompt. It's like and mid journey. We're creating imagery. You could say, I want to see Elon Musk in 1944, New York driving a cab of the time, shot on a Polaroid, expressing various emotions and you'll get this perfect image of Elon's out in New York in 1944, shot on a Polaroid.

5:20And it's done what an artist would do. It's taken a bunch of references that the artist has in their mind and can merge them together and created this piece of quote, quote art. And for the first time, we now finally have a glimpse of intelligence that is actually not ours. Yeah. And so we'll kind of, I think the initial reaction is to say, that doesn't count. You're hearing it with like, no, but it is. Like Drake, they released two Drake records where they've taken Drake's voice, used sort of AI to synthesize his voice and made these two records, which are bangers, if they are great fucking tracks.

5:57Like, I was playing them to my god. I was like, and I kept playing it. I went to the shark, I kept playing it. I know it's not Drake, but it's as good as fucking Drake. The only thing, and people are like, rubbishing it because it wasn't Drake. I'm like, well, well, now, is it making me feel a certain emotion? Is my foot bumping? Had you taught, did I not know it wasn't Drake, what I thought, have thought this was an amazing track, 100 % and we're just at the start of this exponential curve. Let me show you something. Jack, can you pass me my phone? I was playing around with artificial intelligence and I was thinking about how, because of the ability to synthesize voices, how we could synthesize famous peoples voices and all famous peoples voices.

6:40So what I made is I made a WhatsApp chat called ZenChat, where you can go to it and type in pretty much anyone's, any famous person's name. And the WhatsApp chat will give you a meditation, a sleep story, a breath work session, synthesized as that famous person's voice. So I actually sent Gary Vaynerchuk his voice. So basically, you say, okay, I've got five minutes and I need to go to sleep. I want Gary Vaynerchuk to send me to sleep. And then it was responded with a voice note. This is the one that responded with for Gary Vaynerchuk. This is not Gary Vaynerchuk, he did not record this, but it's kind of accurate.

7:18Hey, Steven, it's great to have you here. Are you having trouble sleeping? Well, I've got a quick meditation technique that might help you out. First lie, find a comfortable position to sit or lie down in. Now, take a deep breath in through your nose and slowly breathe out through your mouth. It is really shocking. The idea of you and I inevitably are going to be somewhere in the middle of nowhere, in 10 years' time. I used to say 2055, I'm thinking 2037 is a very pivotal moment now. And we will not know if we're there hiding from the machines. We don't know that yet. There is a likelihood that we'll be hiding from the machines.

8:05And there is a likelihood, it will be there because they don't need podcasters anymore. Excuse me. Oh, absolutely true. Steve, that's where I drove a line. No, no, no, no, that's where I drove a line. There's this absolutely no doubt. Thank you for coming there. It's going to be a part three, and thank you for being here. Stay here and take your propaganda. Let's talk about reality. Next week on the day I will see a way out. Elon Musk. OK. So who here wants to make a bet? No, no. Stephen Bartlett will be interviewing an AI within the next two years. Oh, well, actually, to be fair, I actually did go to ChatGtP because I thought having you here, I thought, at least give it its chance to respond.

8:45Yeah. So I asked him a couple of questions about me. Oh, man. I am actually going to be replaced by ChatGtP because I thought, you know, you're going to talk about it. So we need a fair and balanced bet. OK. So I want to ask that a couple of questions. He's bald. So I'll ask you a couple of questions that ChatGtP has for you. Incredible. So let's follow that thread. It's already been replaced. Let's follow that thread for a second, yeah? OK. Because you're one of the smartest people I know. That's not true. It is. But I'll take it. I'll please not. It is true. I mean, I say that publicly all the time.

9:15Your book is one of my favorite books of all time. You're very, very, very, very intelligent. OK. Depth, breads, intellectual horsepower, and speed. All of them. There's a bug coming. The reality is it's not a bug. But so it is highly expected that you're ahead of this curve. And then you don't have the choice, Stephen. This is the thing. The thing is if so I'm in that existential question in my head. Because one thing I could do is I could literally take, I normally do a 40 days silent retreat in summer. OK. I could take that retreat and write two books, me and ChatGtP. Right. I have the ideas in mind.

9:58You know, I wanted to write a book about digital detoxing. Right. I have most of the ideas in mind. But writing takes time. I could simply give the 50 tips that I wrote about digital detoxing to ChatGtP. And say, right, two pages about each of them. Edit the pages and have a book out. OK. Many of us will follow that path. OK. The only reason why I may not follow that path is because, you know what? I'm not interested. I'm not interested to continue to compete in this capitalist world if you want. I'm not. I mean, as a human, I've made up my mind a long time ago that I will want less and less and less in my life.

10:41Right. But many of us will follow. I mean, I would worry if you didn't include, you know, the smartest AI. If we get an AI out there that is extremely intelligent and able to teach us something and Stephen Bartlett didn't include her on his podcast, I would worry. Like you have a duty almost to include her on your podcast. It's an inevitable that we will engage them in our life more and more. This is one side of this. The other side, of course, is if you do that, then what will remain? Because a lot of people ask me that question, what will happen to jobs? What will happen to us? Will we have any value, any relevance whatsoever?

11:24OK. The truth of the matter is the only thing that will remain in the medium term is human connection. The only thing that will not be replaced is Drake on stage. Is, you know, is me in a... Do you think? A hologram? I think of that two -pack gig they did at Coachella where they used the hologram of two -pack. I actually played it the other day to my girlfriend when I was making a point and I was like, that was... Circus act. It was amazing. Amazing. You see what's going on with Abba in London? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And Circus O 'lay had Michael Jackson in one for a very long time, yeah. I mean...

11:59So this Abba show in London, from what I understand, that's all holograms on stage. Correct. And it's going to run in a purposeful arena for 10 years and it is incredible. It really is. So you go, why do you need Drake? Great. If that hologram is indistinguishable from Drake and it can perform even better than Drake and it's got more energy than Drake and it's... I go, why do you need Drake? To even be there. I can go to a Drake show without Drake, cheaper. I might not even need to leave my house. I can just put a headset on. Correct. Can you have this? What's the value of this? To the... Oh, come on.

12:35You're hurting me. I get it to us. I get it to us, but I'm saying, what's the value of this to the listener? Like the value of this to the listener's information. No, 100%. I mean, think of the automobile industry.

12:49There has... You know, hand made and hand crafted and luxurious and so on and so forth. And then, you know, Japan went into the scene, completely disrupted the market. Cars were made in mass quantities at a much cheaper price. And yes, 90 % of the cars in the world today or me may be a lot more. I don't know the number. Are no longer, you know, emotional items. They're functional items. There is still, however, every now and then, someone that will buy a car that has been handcrafted. Right? There is a place for that. There is a place for, you know, if you walk around hotels, the walls are blasted with sort of mass -produced art.

13:33Okay? But there is still a place for an artist expression or something amazing. Okay? My feeling is that there will continue to be a tiny space as I said in the beginning. Maybe in five years' time, someone will one or two people will buy my next book and say, hey, it's written by a human. Look at that. Wonderful. Oh, look at that. There is a typo in here. Okay? I don't know. There might be a very, very big place for me in the next few years where I can sort of show up and talk to humans like, hey, let's get together in a small event. And then, you know, I can express emotions and my personal experiences.

14:11And you sort of know that this is a human talking. You'll miss that a little bit. Eventually, the majority of the market is going to be like cars. It's going to be mass produced, very cheap, very efficient. It works, right? Because I think sometimes we underestimate what human beings actually want in an experience. I remember the story of a friend of mine that came to mouth as many years ago and he tells the story of the CEO of a record store standing above the floor and saying, people will always come to my store because people love music. Now, on the surface of it, his hypothesis seems to be true because people do love music.

14:46It's conceivable to believe that people will always love music. But they don't love traveling an hour in the rain and getting in a car to get a plastic disc. Correct. What they wanted was music. What they didn't want is like a evidently plastic discs that they had to travel for miles for. And I think about that when we think about like public speaking and the Drake show and one of these things. Like people, what people actually are coming for, even with this podcast is probably like information. But do they really need us anymore for that information? When there's going to be a sentient being that's significantly smarter than at least me and a little bit smarter than you.

15:21So. So. So you're your spot on. You are spot on. And actually, this is the reason why I, I, you know, I'm so grateful that you're hosting this because the truth is the genius out of the bottle. Okay. So, you know, people tell me is AI game over for our way of life it is. Okay. For everything we've known, this is a very disruptive moment where maybe not tomorrow, but in the near future, our way of life will differ. What will happen, what I'm asking people to do is to start considering what that means to your life. What I'm asking governments to do by. I like I'm screaming is don't wait until the first patient, you know, start doing something about where about to see mass job losses were about to see, you know, replacements of of categories of jobs at large.

16:19Okay. It may take a year, it may take seven. It doesn't matter how long it takes, but it's about to happen. Are you ready? And I, and I have a very, very clear call to action for governments. I'm saying tax AI powered businesses at 98%. Right. So suddenly you do what the open letter was trying to do slow them down a little bit. And at the same time, get enough money to pay for all of those people that will be disrupted by the technology. When you talk about the immediate impacts on jobs, I'm trying to figure out in that equation, who are the people that stand to lose the most? Is it the the everyday people in foreign countries that don't have access to the internet and won't benefit?

17:00You talk in your book about how this the sort of wealth disparity will only increase. Yeah, massively. The immediate impact on jobs is that it's really interesting. Again, we're stuck in the same prisoners dilemma. The immediate impact is that AI will not take your job. A person using AI will take your job. Right. So you will see within the next few years, maybe next couple of years, you'll see a lot of people skilling up, upskilling themselves in AI to the point where they will do the job of 10 others who are not. You're saying tax tax those companies 98 % give the money to the humans that are going to be displaced?

17:38Yeah, or give the comment that the money to other humans that can build control code that can figure out how we can stay safe. This sounds like an emergency. It how do I say this? Do you remember when you played Tetris? Yeah. Okay. When you were playing Tetris, there was always always one block that you play strong. And once you placed that block wrong, the game was no longer easier. You know, it started, you started together a few mistakes afterwards and it starts to become quicker and quicker and quicker and quicker. When you place that block wrong, you sort of told yourself, okay, it's a matter of minutes now.

18:17Right. There were still minutes to go and play and have fun before the game ended, but you knew it was about to end. Okay. This is the moment. We've placed the wrong. And I really don't know how to say this any other way. It even makes me emotional. We fucked up. We always said, don't put them on the open Internet. Don't teach them to code and don't have agents working with them until we know what we're putting out in the world, until we find a way to make certain that they have our best interest in mind. Why doesn't it make him emotional? Because humanity's stupidity is affecting people who have not done anything wrong.

19:01Our greed is affecting the innocent ones. The reality of the matter, Steven, is that this is an arms race. Has no interest in what the average human gets out of it. It is all about every line of code being written in AI today is to beat the other guy. It's not to improve the life of the third party. People will tell you this is all for you. And you look at the reactions of humans to AI. I mean, we're either ignorant people who will tell you, oh, no, no, this is not happening. AI will never be creative. They will never compose music. Like, where are you living? Okay. Then you have the kids I call them.

19:45You know, all over social media. It's like, oh my God, it's squeaks. Look at it. It's orange and color. Amazing. I can't believe that AI can do this. We have snake oil salesman, okay, which are simply saying, copy this, put it in chat GPT, then go to YouTube, nick that thing. Don't respect a, you know, copyright of anyone or intellectual property of anyone. Place it in a video and now you're going to make $100 a day. Snake oil salesman, okay. Of course, we have this topian evangelist, basically, people saying this is it. The world is going to end, which I don't think is reality. It's a singularity.

20:20You have, you know, a utopian evangelist that are telling everyone, oh, you don't understand, we're going to cure cancer. We're going to do that again, not a reality. Okay. And you have very few people that are actually saying, what are we going to do about it? And the biggest challenge, if you ask me, what went wrong in the 20th century? Interestingly, is that we have given too much power to people that didn't assume the responsibility. So, you know, I don't remember who originally said it, but of course, Spider -Man made it very famous, with great power comes greater responsibility. We have disconnected power and responsibility.

21:01So today, a 15 year old, emotional was out of fully developed prefrontal cortex to make the right decisions, yet this is science. We developed our prefrontal cortex fully at age 25 or so. With all of that limbic system, emotion and passion would buy a CRISPR kit and, you know, modify a rabbit to become a little more muscular and let it loose in the white, or an influencer who doesn't really know how far the impact of what they're posting online can hurt and cause depression or cause people to feel bad. Okay. And putting that online, there is a disconnect between the power and the responsibility.

21:47And the problem we have today is that there is a disconnect between those who are writing the code of AI and the responsibility of what's going about to happen because of that code. Okay. And I feel compassion for the rest of the world. I feel that this is wrong. I feel that, you know, for someone's life to be affected by the actions of others without having a say in how those actions should be. It's the ultimate, the top level of stupidity from humanity. If this conversation resonates with you and you want to ensure you're staying at the forefront of innovation, AI and more, register to secure your spot at one of the Gartner IT Symposium Expos.

22:29There are hundreds of sessions taking place based on thousands of hours of research and conversations within the IT community and all led by Gartner experts. Connect with visionaries, network and dive into the big trend shaping tech so you don't get left behind. Spaces are limited. So register yourself by visiting gartner .com slash symposium. That's gartner .com slash symposium.

22:56It is a really interesting time to be running a business. Tire of and trade policies are in flux. The pace of innovation is relentless and staying relevant means constantly reinventing how you operate. If your business can't adapt in real time, it risks falling behind, which means leaders need complete clarity across every part of their operation all times. This is what our Sponson Net Suite by Oracle already delivers to 41 ,000 companies. Net Suite is an AI powered business management suite that brings accounting financial management, HR and project planning into one platform. And because you've got this one source of truth, you can make fast decisions based on real -time data.

23:30Or if you're looking ahead, Net Suite's forecasting tools give you a clear view of what's coming next and how to prepare for it. Net Suite helps you spot bottlenecks, manage your margins, and stay agile. So if your business is generating seven figures or more, download the free ebook, which is called Navigating Global Trade, three insights for leaders at netsweep .com slash Bartlett. That's netsweep .com slash Bartlett.

From the publisher

As AI rapidly advances, Mo Gawdat shares a candid and thoughtful exploration of what the future holds for humanity. From AI’s growing intelligence and its impact on creativity to the looming disruption of jobs and society, this top moment challenges us to rethink our role in a world where machines might outsmart us. Mo also reflects on the irreplaceable value of human connection and the need to prepare for a future shaped by technology. Whether you’re excited or worried about AI, this conversation offers a crucial perspective on how we adapt, survive, and find meaning in the age of artificial intelligence.

Register yourself by visiting: ⁠Gartner.com/Symposium⁠

Listen to the full episode here -

Spotify - ⁠https://g2ul0.app.link/ocYmHrkuoTb⁠

Apple - ⁠https://g2ul0.app.link/EBSoMmQuoTb⁠

Watch the Episodes On YouTube - ⁠https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos⁠

Mo Gawdat - https://www.mogawdat.com/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More from The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

All 629 episodes
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now! The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett · 23 min
Listen in VO