The Future of AI and How It Will Shape Our World — with Mo Gawdat

0:00Rinse takes your laundry and hand delivers it to your door. expertly cleaned and folded. So you could take the time once spent folding and sorting and waiting to finally pursue a whole new version of you. Like tea time you. Mmm. Or this tea time you. Or even this tea time you. So did you hear about Dave? Or even tea time, tea time, tea time you. Mmm. So update on Dave. It's up to you. We'll take the laundry. Rinse. It's time to be great. Not all journalism is the same. Take The Guardian. Our coverage has something unique, fierce independence. Nobody owns us or tells us what we can and can't say, so we're free to report the whole picture.

0:43We connect what's happening in Washington to the rest of the globe, expose corruption wherever we find it, and give fresh perspective on everything, from wellness and soccer to culture, the climate, and more. Read, watch, and listen to The Guardian for free at theguardian.com. Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin? Or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app.

1:23Download today.

1:27episode 335 in 1935 the first canned beer was sold in richmond virginia and alcoholics anonymous was founded i really enjoy it's the only place where i can pee in an uber and then show up and tell other guys who peed in an uber that it gets better go go go

1:53Welcome to the 335th episode of The Prof G-Pod. In today's episode, we speak with Mo Gadot, the former chief business officer of Google X, best-selling author, founder of One Billion Happy, and host of Slow Mo, a podcast with Mo Gadot. We discuss with Mo how AI could shape our lives in the coming decades, the opportunities it brings, and the risks it poses to society, Ethics of Mental Health. We also get into his latest book, Unstressable, A Practical Guide to Stress-Free Living. Yeah, that's going to happen. Yeah, I'm going to read a book and all of a sudden, Mr. Stress is going to leave the neighborhood.

2:26Call me cynical. Color me a bit skeptical. What's going on with the dog? What's going on with the dog? So I am in New York after a stop in Orlando where I went for a speaking gig. I have absolutely no sense of Orlando other than Disney World, which is the seventh circle of hell for parents. Essentially, I do almost no parenting 364 days a year, and I compensate for all of it by agreeing to take my boys and their five or six closest friends to Walt Disney World, which is just, I mean, that is cruel and unusual punishment for a parent. But anyways, not doing it this time, just bombing in, speaking to a lovely group of people, then getting back on a plane and going up to New York while I spend four days with the team and do a bunch.

3:11I find New York, I get so much done in New York. There's something about, I don't know, everyone just seems to be on high, if you will. By the way, it's fascinating. All these members clubs are opening. In the last couple of years, there's been Zero Bond, my favorite, Costa Cipriani, downtown, weird location. They put a ton of money into it, has that Italian vibe. I get the sense it's trust fund kids from New Jersey, but that's just me. And then what else has opened up? San Vicente Bungalows is opening up from Los Angeles. So everyone assumes it's going to be cool. And I'm excited about that. The Crane Club, which is the guys from the Tao Group who are probably the most successful nightclub.

3:50Like pretty much a giant fucking red flag is when you find out that your daughter's dating a club promoter. But these guys made good and made so much dough and cabbage and really kind of professionalized the industry, if you will. And they're the folks or the power behind Crane club, so it should be interesting. And then I went to another one last week, and it's my favorite so far based on my snap impressions. Shea Marco. Ooh, hello. Hello, ladies. I don't know exactly how to describe it other than the thing that struck me was it was super cool, super crowded. And the thing I liked about it was it was intergenerational.

4:27What do I mean by that? There was a lot of young, hot people. It was a good thing. It was a good thing. New York, by the way, is run on hot women, hot young women, and rich men. That's it. For everyone else, it's a soul-crushing experience. Anyways, and then it had people my age, and then it had parents eating and dining. And I love that whole sort of like, we can be cool at any age, which is becoming increasingly important to me as I become 100 fucking years old. Anyways, I love being back in New York. New York's on fire. Still think it's the greatest city in the world and am excited to be here.

4:59I'm also going to talk to Mo about specifically, I think there's a paradigm shift going on in AI. A little bit of a teaser, a little bit of a teaser. I'm like those promos for all those YouTube videos that say, the secret to happiness is, and then they cut out. But we're going to talk to Mo about what I think is, I think I had a realization around what is how the whole AI economy might shift. Anyways, with that, here's our conversation with Mo Gadot.

5:29Mo, where does this podcast find you? I'm in Dubai today. I am battling with the surprises of February so far and enjoying every bit of it. Well, let's start there. Surprises of February. What are surprises in February from an individual such as yourself in Dubai? Dubai is wonderful in February, but it, you know, we occasionally remember last year we had this incredible flood that was really, really quite, you know, and just a couple of days ago, we had a bit of rain that sort of like triggered the same fears. but of course, you know, the real surprises were deep seek and the responses in the market and how the world, you know I feel overreacted a bit and then underreacted a bit and, you know, life.

6:24Life, there you go, I hear you. So let's bust right into it. The last time you were on, I think it was about a year ago and you're sort of our go-to with this mix of spirituality and deep technical domain expertise and we were talking, as you might guess kind of our need to control the response to AI. Give us what you think the kind of current state of play is in AI, given some of the recent developments and how that may have influenced or did it influence your worldview or your predictions around or thoughts around the future of AI. You have to imagine that the short history of what I normally refer to as the third era of computing, you know, basically the two years between the time when ChatGPT came out and today.

7:07you know that short history was a pace that humanity has never ever seen before i think you've seen what i used to refer to as the as the first inevitable where basically everyone is in a prisoner's dilemma don't want the other side to win so everyone's competing throwing everything on it uh you know at it and basically you'd get releases of new technology that are sometimes separated by weeks, if not months at most. And I think what most people don't recognize is that at least within the areas where we invested, we have made massive stride on tech. So when it comes to the march to AGI, if you want, which I think humanity would continue to disagree about for a while because we don't really have a definition, an accurate definition of AGI, is still steady and very, very fast.

8:07So we're going to get there. My prediction is we almost have already gotten there. And that when it comes to linguistic intelligence, they've won, they're winning in mathematics, they're winning in reasoning, and everything we will pour resources on, they will get to become better than humans. So it's just a question of time, really. the part that hasn't changed in my mind scott which now i think is very very firm and much more accurate if you want is that the impact uh on humanity uh in the short term is going to be dystopian and that's that has nothing to do with the existential risk that people speak about with ai it has a lot to do with the value set of humanity uh at the age of the rise of the machines basically unelected influential powers making decisions on humanity's behalf in ways that completely determines how things happen leading to massive changes in the very fabric of society and basically paying to an agenda where i tend to believe we will end up with very few big platform players completely in bed with governments completely you know feeding on hunger for power hunger for wealth and sort of depriving the rest of us of the freedom to live the life we live I can I can sort of so I summarize this in an acronym that I made seven seven changes to our way of life I call them face our IPs and we can go into them in details if you want.

9:47But basically, I see this as inevitable. I see that the short-term dystopia is going to be upon us very, very soon, just because the massive superpower that is at the disposal of agendas is going to be in play very, very quickly. You said unelected officials that are reshaping society. Are you talking about Sam Altman, Elon Musk? Who are you referring to? 100%. I mean, with all due respect, why is my life being determined by Sam Altman? We all had an accord, unwritten rule, if you want, that we won't put AI out in the public sphere until we feel that we've tackled safety or alignment or ethics, if you want, all wonderful dreams to have.

10:36Sam Altman, very soft-spoken, comes out every now and then and says, this is the priority of what we believe in. But in reality, it's a publicly traded company creating billionaires. Everyone's rushing very, very quickly. Yeah, it's all about the money. And, you know, if you and I have lived in the tech world long enough to understand that what, you know, that all you need is a very clever PR manager to craft a message that is almost exactly the opposite of what you focus on every day. But you say it over and over until you yourself believe it. the truth is the world is not ready for what is about to hit us.

11:15Whether you take the simple things like the economics of the world and how they will change as a result of AI, all the way to the change of the dynamics of power and the resulting deprivation of freedom, all the way to how the economics of the world are going to change and how the jobs are going to change and how the human connection is going to change and our understanding of reality is going to change and these are decisions that are not made by us anymore i'm you know think about it this way spider-mans with great power comes great responsibility we've disconnected power from responsibility there is massive massive power concentration concentrated in hands that do not answer to anyone so i 100 agree with you the the idea that everything from which buildings, are these targeted bombs, bomb first, what our perception of our government, election strategies, all of these things are now being decided by algorithms programmed by a very small number of people.

12:17That creates, I think, a lot of concern. The steel man argument is that if we don't iterate around the public's usage of these things, that other entities will leap ahead of us and their intentions are even more malicious than ours. That while capitalism perverts things, at its heart, it's not malicious. It might be indifferent, but it's not malicious. And the fear is that if we let other entities run unfettered with AI in the sense that it becomes the Wild West and the public provides feedback and these models leap out ahead of ours, that ultimately the trade-off between a capitalist motive is worth it relative to letting other societies get out ahead of AI?

13:04Respond to that argument. I find that this is a very valid argument if you think of the short term, if you think of the long term, it could lead to a very dystopian place. So allow me to explain. A competitive race, arms race, that basically says, if I don't build a nuclear bomb first, someone else will build it, does not necessarily lead to a world where you're the only one that owns a nuclear bomb. As a matter of fact, it leads to a world that has more than one owner of nuclear bombs. And I think what you saw from Deep Seek, for example, is a very interesting result that comes out of, okay, we're going to consider this a war.

13:46We're going to compete against the other people. We're going to apply sanctions. We're going to try to limit their ability to progress. And what do they do as a result? Necessity is the mother of all needs. And so basically, they find ways to do things differently. Now, when you really look at the idea of testing things in public, which is an argument that's used very frequently but by open ai i think the analogy almost sounds like let's you know test the the trinity in manhattan not in new mexico just to see how it impacts humanity right that's not how you do things the way you do things is when you are uncertain of the outcome you know you you normally can test it in ways that are much more contained but that's You know, that's this genius out of the bottle long ago, because the truth of the matter is that everyone is racing already.

14:40The other outcome, believe it or not, and I say that with a ton of respect, you know, is that, yes, the U.S. might lead, you know, the arms race or China. You never really know. You know, it might be open AI or it might be alphabet. bit, you'll never really know. But the problem with that is that a more polar world where such concentrated power is not a fair world either. It's not a fair world to the world, but it's also not a fair world to most Americans. And I think that's what most people don't recognize is that you eventually, sooner or later, as more and more power is concentrated in the hands of very, very few, which is the only way the U.S.

15:26can beat China, if you want, in this technology, those very few eventually will turn on the American citizen and say, you know what, you're not really bringing any productivity. We care about maximizing the same target we've been chasing so far, more power, more wealth, and you're standing in the way. And I think you can see that in the American society very very clearly today before ai takes over the only answer in my view believe it or not which i know sounds really idealistic idealistic if you want is a mutually assured destruction conviction is that we both understand uh you know both by by both i mean every two arch enemies on both sides, that we are shifting the mindset and the existence of humanity from a world of scarcity, where for me to feel safe, I have to be stronger than the other person, where for me to gain economically, I have to compete with the other person, to a world of total abundance.

16:32I mean, we spoke about this last time we met, Scott, and my definition of the current age of AI is what I call the intelligence augmentation. So we're now augmenting human intelligence with machine intelligence in ways where if I can lend you 250 IQ points more, imagine what you can invent, right? And I say that publicly all the time. I dare the world. I say, give me 400 IQ points more and I will harness energy out of thin air. So why are we competing if that's the possibility ahead of us, when the competition drives us to a point of absolute mutually assured destruction. So it strikes me when we talk about mutually assured destruction, it strikes me that the two entities that would have to come to some sort of agreement around regulation or a pause, or it would be the U.S.

17:28and China. And I'm sure there's other entities, but those are the lead dogs, right? Do you think it's realistic that the Chinese would be sympathetic to this argument and that there's enough mutual trust to say, look, we got to, I don't want to say slow down, but put some of this behind wraps, share with each other. I mean, this was sort of Oppenheimer's, was it Oppenheimer's initial vision that we share this technology and say, okay, when one gets too far out ahead of the other, that's a problem. problem we need we need to control it together and realize that if one gets too far out in front of the other the temptation to destroy the other is too great at which point that person will destroy it will will make sure they can strike back in some limited fashion do you think it's realistic uh and maybe realistic or not it's something we've got to do that we try and strike some sort of treaty with the ccpo and china it's not realistic in the current political environment unfortunately you know the current geopolitics of the world is is heating up more and more but it wasn't realistic in the case of russia and nuclear weapons either by the way i am not for slowing down at all i'm actually for speeding up all the way but speeding up in the direction that is not competitive but rather for the prosperity of the whole world i mean and at the end of the day scott again you know give me 400 iq points more and i'll solve every you know problem known to humankind and this is quite you know straightforward really you and i have both worked with incredibly smart people and you understand what the difference of 100 iq points means right give me better reasoning better mathematics better understanding of physics and i can do things that humanity never dreamt of and and this is a promised utopia that is at our fingers that dips so i'm not saying slow down i'm simply saying there is no point to compete the issue that is facing our world is not a problem of technology that's moving too fast technology has always been good for us right it's a problem of trust that if the other guy gets the technology before me i'm in trouble and and that trust is not established in the lab it's not established in the data center it's basically established to the realization that we can create a world of absolute total abundance total abundance i could know every piece of knowledge that ever existed i i know you i know you well scott i know how big of a dream this is for people like you and i all have to learn right and i can use that knowledge in ways that will make me richer but but how many ferraris does anyone need i think this is the challenge we have.

20:11The challenge is, you know, the founders, by the way, I don't believe this is a question of money for the founders of AI startups. I think this is a question of ego rather than greed. I'm the one that figured it out first. I'm the one that, you know, provided this amazing breakthrough to humanity. But if you look back just 150 years at the, you know, king or queen of England, they had a much worse life than what anyone today has. You know, anyone in any reasonable city in the U.S. today has air conditioning, has transportation, has clean water, has hot water, has sanitation. So we're getting to the point where more doesn't actually make any difference anymore.

20:54It is a morality question of can we just shift the mindset to abundance instead of scarcity.

21:04We'll be right back. Stay with us.

21:29And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com. Lowe's knows how to help make your home holiday ready for less. Get Select Style Selections Vinyl Flooring for just$1.99 per square foot and have it installed before the festivities begin. Our team can help you every step of the way. See a Lowe's Red Vest Associate or visit lowes.com slash holiday install to get started. Lowe's. We help you save. Basic install only. Date restrictions apply. Subject to availability. Install by independent contractors.

22:06See associate for details. Contiguous U.S. only. Hey, business owners. We know you know the importance of maximizing every dollar. With the Delta SkyMiles Reserve Business American Express card, you can make your expenses work just as hard as you. From afternoon coffee runs to stocking office supplies and even team dinners, you can earn miles on all your business expenses. Plus, you can earn 125 ,000 bonus miles for a limited time through October 29th. The Delta SkyMiles Reserve Business Card. If you travel, you know. Minimum spending requirements and terms apply. Offer ends October 29th, 2025.

22:42Do you think sequestering China from our most advanced chip technology was a mistake? 100%. That's the biggest mistake ever. I mean, since when did we, you know, I mean, strategically, as I said, of course, you know, the two big sanctions that America did in the last few years were, you know, backfired massively against America. The move against Russia, you know, basically got a lot of people to try and de-dollarize a little bit. And the move against China drove China to become more inventive. It's as simple as that. but it is also a massive statement of you know what i'm gonna try everything i can to beat you and i don't know how to say that in a in a polite way but i've gone the first time to america in the 70s and it blew me away it was a world apart from anywhere else in the world i get that feeling today when I land in Shanghai.

23:48It's, you know, it's not an easy fight. It's not a determined fight. Let's say 70s, 80s, 90s, definitely, you know, post Berlin, the US could do whatever the F they wanted in the world. I don't think it's as easy a slam dunk as it has been in the past anymore. I think America needs to recognize that when you win, it's going to be through strategies like what Trump is talking about by increasing defense, you know, spending even further than where it was, you know, loading the American debt clock even further than it is loaded. And, you know, I had a very good boss of mine that used to say when we're under pressure, we tend to do more of what we know how to do best.

24:41But what we know how to do best is what got us under pressure in the first place. And I truly and honestly think that imagine a world where there is an agreement that America adheres to, by the way, that basically says, let's just deliver that world that everyone's dreaming of. Deliver a world where there is no need for you to attack me. I think of a little bit of this, how I would couch some of your comments is you think we're entering into what I'll call an age of equivalence. I don't know how to, my semantics might be off, but I think of America was able to develop and sustain certain competitive advantages.

25:23Manufacturing, mostly because the German and Japanese infrastructure had been leveled, then services infrastructure, and then a technology, whether it was because of IP, risk-taking, multiculturalism. And we were able to maintain one, two, three decade leads and find the next thing and establish more prosperity and create and consume a disproportionate amount of the world's spoils. And tell me if I'm saying this correctly, you now believe that our competitive advantage around these things is shrinking from 30 years to 30 days. So it sort of should bring on this incredible age of cooperation and we should stop deluding ourselves that we're going to be able to get out ahead and win.

26:07Is that an accurate summary of what you're stating? That is a very accurate summary that it is, it's, it's still possible for the U.S. to, and I think the most important competitive advantage that, you know, you may have not mentioned here is that money has always been free for the U.S., right? You had the ability to print money to create amazing wealth that was, that got reinvested wisely and, you know, and sometimes unwisely. Unfortunately, I think we're in a, in a time where$500 billion on Stargate is, you know, sounds unwise, right? uh but uh you know at a point in time it was a no issue you know it's like okay if this is what it takes to build the infrastructure we'll do it what i'm attempting to say here is it's not that the us has lost the capability to crush other nations on whatever um you know full spectrum dominance that the us has been attempting to uh to achieve for years it's that other nations have grown an ability to resist right and that the more the u.s is becoming uh you know i i again i i worked my entire life in corporate america so don't don't take that as an attack to to to the american approach at all i'm basically saying that the more america will bully the world the more you'll get responses like deep seek across the world uh you know where people are simply going to say you know what we don't like this anymore i i you know i i will openly say i don't like the fact that there is a small chunk of my of whatever money i made anywhere in the world that was somehow handed to america because of the u.s dollar dominance right uh you know i i don't i don't feel as a wealthy man i don't feel that this tax if you want on all the money made everywhere in the world that this export of inflation to everywhere in the world is a just setup for all of us to succeed.

28:06And so you can see across the world, you know, actions from Japan, from China, from Russia for sure, that is basically attacking the U.S. where it becomes painful, which is the U.S. dollar dominance. It's not going to go away anytime soon, but it makes things a little painful. And it is, you know in a typical environment in a typical environment the u.s would say you know what i'm going to crush you i'm strong enough and you are strong enough you know i'm going to apply tariffs as as trump would say and make sure that nobody has access to my wonderful market yeah makes sense it does make sense but it also causes pain on the u.s side right and it comes from a mindset of we're still competing for limited resources where the world was made up of metals and mirrorless, you know, and power was acquired by weapons.

28:59I think we are on the cusp of a world where everything is possible. Just understand that from a difference of manufacturing point of view, right, with enough understanding of nanophysics and an understanding of, you know, a level of intelligence that helps us bridge the remaining bits of nanophysics, we could manufacture things out of thin air, just reorganizing molecules of air, right? Instead of competing for minerals and resources, and this is at our fingertips. It's years away. There is a need for a mindset change. I always like to pause and double-click on, or at least cement and highlight what I think is real striking insight in the notion of an inability to sustain an advantage.

29:53And all it does is create fear and weaken relationships and make one side more likely to strike while they're ahead and create workarounds because nothing creates innovation like war and the threat of survival. And what also really resonated was, and I've been saying this, I think Sam Altman is Sheryl Sandberg with hushed tones. Sheryl Sandberg was weaponized for femininity, her charm, her maternal instincts, gender, the important conversation around gender, to basically take what was a company that was creating rage, making our discourse more coarse, depressing our teens, and make it seem more palatable, to basically rub Vaseline over the lens of pretty mendacious behavior.

30:36And I feel like Sam and his hushed tones and his, that's a real concern. You know, senator, I'm worried too. Meanwhile, I'm about to raise$40 billion at a$350 billion market cap. I mean, it's just, I have been to this fucking movie before and we are falling for it again and again. And so I want to, I want to propose something and have you respond to it. And this is literally, you just inspired this thought. Similar to the way we have the UN or NATO, we have a new organization and the two founding members are China and the US. and it's total open. There's offices in D.C., Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing.

31:18Every room, every team has a mix of U.S. and Chinese scientists, regulators, such that it's almost impossible to hide anything. We're all working on the same damn thing. And we're trying to solve the world's most difficult problems, food distribution, health, poverty. We're working together, but we're also making sure there's a very, very thick layer of supervision and enforcement such that we are constantly testing, how would you make bioweapons? And then we're sending our crawlers out to see, is anyone working on this that we don't want working on this? And we together try and create, you know, like what Interpol was doing, where we had multilateral cooperation around the drug trade and arms shipments.

32:00But we have this multilateral organization that says They're total transparency. And our job is to dole it out where we see the most opportunity to increase stakeholder value. And the stakeholders are all seven and a half billion people on the planet. And we're there to ensure that there's trust and transparency and ensure that the bad guys don't get this and start doing. and we're going to cooperate around either sequestering this or ensuring that the development of it to make weapons or create a new super virus, that we are hip to these things before anybody else and act against them. With that type of organization, do you think that's possible?