Mustafa Suleyman: What the AI Boom Means for Your Job, Business, and Relationships | Artificial Intelligence | AI Vault

27:59So that's a profound shift in what it, that's not a tool anymore, right? That is really starting to capture something meaningful about what it means to be human because it's using the same language that we use to understand one another, right? All those subtle cues that take place in social bonding of human relationships, suddenly it's going to be present in that dynamic. And it's a really, it's a really big deal. And I I think even though we've had a couple of years of large language models being out there and people get to play with it in the open source, I still don't think people are quite grasping how big a deal this shift is about to be.

28:39So this question wasn't planned, but it's on my mind. You mentioned that you're an atheist now and you've been central to developing AI and AI is becoming more human-like. Like, do you feel like that has altered your perspective about religion a bit? You know, I think there are many amazing things about religion. Religion was a way that people made up stories, this is in my opinion, in order to make sense of a complex world that was confusing. And then science came along and showed that actually, we really can understand the world through empirical observation and a falsifiable process of coming up with a hypothesis, running some experiments, observing those results, subjecting them to peer review, and then iterating on the corpus of human knowledge.

29:36And that's how we've produced known facts that are very reliable, because they keep getting tested over and over again. And when something fundamental happens, we change our entire paradigm. And so I think that, you know, it's unclear to me what role religion plays anymore in understanding the physical world or even increasingly understanding the kind of social world. I think that, you know, if you look at the contributions in the last, say, century or even couple centuries from great poets and philosophers and musicians, storytellers, creators, inventors, most of them have nothing to do with religion.

30:21And yet they've taught us most about ourselves and our societies. Right. If you really want to understand who we are as a people, as humans, how our societies function, you don't turn to religion anymore, unfortunately. So, I mean, some people will obviously disagree with that and full respect to them for their opinion, but that's kind of where I land on it these days. Yeah, so interesting. Okay, so let's move on to Inflection AI. You co-founded it in 2022, and your vision was to develop AI that people could communicate with. more easily. Why did you feel like that needed to be developed? Well, we were at a time when I had sort of just left Google.

31:03I'd been working on Lambda, which was Google's conversational search AI that we ended up never launching. It then got launched as Bard and then it became Gemini. And I was sort of frustrated because I was like, these technologies are ready for prime time. They're ready for feedback from the real world. They're not perfect. They make a lot of mistakes. But, you know, we're technology creators. We've got to put things out there and see how it lands, iterate quickly, listen to what people have to say. And it was just frustrating that we just couldn't get things done at Google at that time. And so I realized it has to be done.

31:39It's time to start a company. Me and Reid Hoffman and my friend Karen Simonian started Inflection. And we created Pi, the personal intelligence. It was a super friendly, warm, high emotional intelligence conversational companion. At the time, it was, I think, the most fluent and the most kind of high EQ conversational companion. It had a bit of personality, had a bit of humor. And, you know, I think that it was an interesting time because we ended up getting decent number of users. We had like a million DAO, about six million monthly active users. But the main thing I realized is that some people really love these experiences.

32:26I mean, the average session length for Pi was 33 minutes, 4.5 times a week. So that ranks it right up there. I was under TikTok, but right up there. And there's not many experiences like that. And so I think it gave me a real glimmer into what's coming and how different the quality of the interaction is going to be if you really get the aesthetic and the UI and the tone of the personality right. I know that a lot of AI right now is used for work, right? We're using ChatGPT to help us with work. Right. What do you feel is the importance of emotional AI and having like emotional companionship with AI?

33:07Yeah, I mean, so far, you're right, ChatGPT is really a kind of work and productivity AI. And it's great, gives you access to knowledge and helps you rewrite things and so on. But in a way, that sort of addresses a small part of our, or one important part of our human needs, right? I mean, the other part of our needs are to make sense of the world, to receive emotional support, to kind of have understanding of our social complexity, right? I mean, we want to come at the end of the day and vent, right? I mean, a big part of what I think people are doing on social media is posting stuff so that they can be heard.

33:46People want to feel like someone else is paying attention to them, that they want to feel like they're understood and that they're saying something that's meaningful, or maybe they just want to work through something. So in the new co-pilot that we've launched just a few weeks ago at Microsoft AI, we focused both on the IQ. So it's exceptionally accurate, minimizes those hallucinations we were talking about has access to real-time information, really fast and fluent. But we've also focused on the EQ because we want it to be a kind companion. We want it to be your hype man. We want it to back you up, right?

34:23We want it to be in your corner, on your team, looking out for you there when you need it. I think people underrate how important that kind of social privilege is. That is one of the things that gives middle-class kids a huge leg up to always have a parent there, to always have a stable family with a sibling or even a best friend available to you whenever you need it. And I think that we're going to just touch on a little bit of those experiences now and make that available via co-pilot. Yeah. It sounds like so amazing, like the future that AI can bring us. And to your point, people who are a little bit underprivileged.

35:03Maybe they have an immigrant parent or a parent who's not very educated. Now, suddenly, they have just as much potential as everybody else because they have the same AI companion. Could you tell us, how do you imagine us working with machines in the future? How do you imagine personal AI to be like in the future? Yeah, I think you're going to say, like, hey, co-pilot or whatever you call your personal AI, I'm stuck. What's the answer to this? How should I navigate that? You know, I need to go buy this thing. Can you take care of it for me? Will I be available in a week to do this thing? Or like, you know, you're going to basically use it as a way to kind of organize your life and spend less time, you know, sort of being distracted by administration and more time pursuing your curiosities, right?

35:57Especially in the voice mode. You know, I think you very quickly just forget that this is actually a piece of technology and it feels like you're just having a great conversation with a teacher that is patient, you know, non-judgmental, doesn't put you down, has infinite time available to you, and will wander off on the path that you choose to take through some complicated question. And it doesn't matter how many times you go back and say, can you explain that again? I didn't quite understand that. What do you mean? No problem. You just get to keep digging in a completely personalized way. That is going to be the greatest leveling up we have ever seen because it's expensive, you know, socially.

36:45it costs for me to turn around to one of my friends who knows a lot about something and pick up the phone and say, hey man, can you walk me through this thing? And obviously my friends will do it, but there's a barrier there, right? It's not instant. I'm really asking for something or it's a cost for me to unload on my friend at the end of the day when I'm frustrated and irritated. And I want to show up to my best friend in the best possible way and like have fun and be bright and energetic. And I'm still going to have those emotional moments with them. It's not that they're not going to be there.

37:14It's just that it now lowers the barrier to entry to get access to support and knowledge and information. And that is what is going to be the level up. Yeah. So with technology in the past, we've seen it actually make us become more lonely, right? Everybody says there's this loneliness epidemic, social media makes us more lonely. Do you feel like this new wave of AI and personalized AI in this manner is actually going to help us become less lonely and replace human connections, so to speak? Every new wave of technology leaves us with a cultural shift, right? It's not just static, right? It's going to have some impact.

37:57And it may be the case that social media has made us feel more lonely and isolated. And we have to unpack that. Why is that? What is that? people report feeling lonely. But another way of thinking about it that I think is that people feel judged by social media. They feel excluded. They feel not good enough. Why is that? Because I think Instagram really dominated in highlighting a certain visual aesthetic. I need to be big and have muscles, right? I need to get my fashion on point. Oh my God, look at how good a cook she is. She's making incredible food. Look at how she's taking care and he's taking care of their kids.

38:38You know, like I'm just looking at all these perfect caricatures and it's making me feel insecure. Right. So I think that's what's at the heart of it. And what sits beneath that is a UI, a UI that rewards a certain type of attention. Right. And I think you can create new UIs. You can create new reward mechanisms, new incentivizations to dampen that spirit and create more kind of breadth, actually, and more. And actually, I think in a way, TikTok is an evolution of that because you don't get as much of that on TikTok. It's kind of, you know, a lot of the comments even are like much more healthy.

39:18They're like full of jokes and support and, you know, kind of friendly banter. Whereas YouTube was just spiteful. I remember the YouTube comments back in the day seemed really like rough. Yeah. And obviously, like X, I mean, I don't know who uses X anymore, but like that's turned into a cesspit. So I just think you have to be conscious and deliberate. I'm sure that when we put out on UAI experiences, there are going to be some parts of society that get ruffled by it. And my job and my life's work is to be super attentive to those consequences and respond as fast as possible to trim the edges and reshape it and cast it.

39:53It's like a sculpture and you have to just be paying full attention and taking responsibility for the real-time consequences of it. So now you are CEO of Microsoft AI and you guys launched Copilot about a year ago. Can you walk us through how Copilot transformed work for Microsoft users over the past year and then we'll get into what's new? So we launched Copilot about a year ago very much as an experiment to see how people like to interact with conversational LLMs. In the work setting, it's pretty incredible to see how Copilot is now embedded in Microsoft 365. So on Windows, on Word, on Excel, there's so many tools and features that enable you to just ask your Copilot whilst you're in the context of your document to summarize something or create a table or to create a schedule or to compare two complex ideas.

40:47And so I think it's had a massive impact there, actually. And it sort of doesn't get talked about so much because it's been so kind of embedded. And, you know, now it's become like second nature. It's like part of people's everyday workflow. Yeah, it's so cool. Like I've used Copilot before. And to your point, like it just feels so natural. Like I feel like we're all just so ready to have an AI companion. So talk to us about the future of what Copilot is going to bring. Well, the next wave for co-pilots is the sort of flavor of much more personable, much more fluent, much more natural interactions.

41:22So it's fast, it's sleek, it's very elegant in the UI. We've done a lot of work to pare back the complexity. I think that people want calming, you know, cleaner interfaces. interfaces. I feel like when I look at my computer sometimes, I see like colors of every type, shapes, different kinds of information, architectures, and it's just like this blur. And I just need like serenity and simplicity. So we're really designing Copilot to go out and fetch the perfect nuggets of information for you and bring them into your kind of clean feed and really create a UI where you can focus on conversation. So the answers are designed to be pithy, short, you know, humorous, the little bit of like, you know, spice, a bit of energy.

42:11And, you know, it's fun to chat to as well as learn from at the same time. And so that kind of interactive back and forth was a big part of the motivation for how we designed it. Are you bringing some of the emotional piece that we were talking about before into this? Yeah, it's really designed to have a bit more of that connection. You know, it'll ask you questions or if you're in the voice mode, for example, it will actively listen. So, you know, it will go, you know, it will kind of go, uh-huh or no way or right whilst you're speaking to let it know, to let you know that like it's listening, it's paying attention, it's keeping the conversation moving.

42:49And so just little subtle touches like that, as well as like the intonation in the voice and the energy that it brings, those kinds of things are, I think, really quite different to what we've seen before. Are there any other advancements that you're working on at Microsoft related to AI? Yeah, there's a lot coming. I mean, like you're going to see a different kind of hardware platform, I think, over time. You're going to see a lot of different features in terms of personalization. So I think increasingly people are going to want to give their co-pilots their own name. And who knows, one day in the future, you know, might have an avatar or visual representation.

43:26So we're thinking about a lot of different angles. How far off do you think we are from co-pilot being more than a tool and more like a co-worker? I think that it's naturally going to evolve to be more of a co-worker because you want it to be able to fill in your gaps, right? You know, you think you have certain strengths and weaknesses. Some of us are more analytical. Some of us are more creative. Some of us are more structured. You can think of each one of us as this unique kind of, you know, key that fits like a perfect lock with our strengths and weaknesses. And I think that each co-pilot is going to adapt to the grooves of your unique constellation of skills.

44:13And so if it fits to you, it kind of means like you and your co-pilot are going to be like a pair. You're going to be like a powerhouse. I mean, who knows one day you might even go and do job interviews together because it's going to be like, you're hiring me and my co-pilot. We're a pair. It could well be your co-founder. I'm expecting anytime soon people to declare that it's like them and their AI starting this new company. Oh my God. That's like mind blowing to think. I can't even imagine a world like that. But do you have any concern, like when GPS came out, for example, I was just, you know, it was around the time when I was younger and driving.

44:59And I, you know, can't for my life get anywhere without GPS now. I'm so dependent on it. I only know how to do things that I did when I first started driving and didn't really have GPS like embedded in my car, right? And I can't memorize phone numbers anymore the way that I used to. And I just am worried that AI is going to make us maybe more lazy, maybe less creative. Are you worried that it's going to impact human intelligence in a negative way? I mean, people said that about the calculator, right? That it was going to lead to kids cheating in tests and so on and so forth. And it didn't. Like, it just made us smarter, enabled us as humans to do more complex computations.

45:40And so I don't see any evidence that it's making us dumber in any way. I mean, we have overwhelming access to information. And I think that on one level, that has actually made us all way more tolerant and respectful and kind. People tend to fixate on the polarization politically in our society. But actually, think about it from the other perspective. 20 years ago, take your pick. Abortions, religion, sexuality, gender, trans, I mean, take your pick. All of those were decades and decades behind where they are now. It is amazing how bright and beautiful and colorful our world is now and how respectful and kind we are on the whole.

46:27Now, there are still pockets of fear and hatred and, you know, there's plenty of that. But there's also massive, massive progress. And I think that progress is a function of us having access to knowledge about one another, living together, growing together, hearing from one another. And I think that's going to continue.

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51:54Yeah, there's still more work to do, right? I'm painting a rosy picture of the future. It's going to be a while for these things to actually work perfectly. So you've always got to double check it, you know, do not rely on these things just yet. At the same time, you know, you would be a fool not to use them because it really is a complete revolution in access to information and support and so on. So the good news is that if you're starting a new business or if you're trying to figure out your next move in life in general, everything is available open source. You can try any model on any API. You can get access to the source code quite often and really get a really good understanding of the cutting edge.

52:42You can't get that absolute cutting edge in open source, but you can get very, very close. And I think that will give anybody a good instinct for how these things can be useful to your business or to your startup or, you know, to your next step in life. So let's move on to some future predictions. I know that Microsoft is working on some AI projects related to sustainability. Can you talk to us about what you guys are working on? Yeah, sure. So we're actually one of the largest buyers of renewable energy on the planet. And that's a longtime commitment by the company to be net zero by 2026 and carbon negative.

53:26So giving back, taking carbon out of the supply chain by 2030. So in order to do that, we've also been massively investing in new technologies and new science. You know, for example, massive investments in battery storage and nuclear fusion projects, in carbon sequestration, so taking carbon out of the atmosphere. So, you know, across the board, we've been making this a priority for quite a long time. Well, thank goodness, because climate change is so important. So let's go back to this containment problem that we talked about right in the beginning of the podcast. Can you compare and contrast what the world would look like 10, 20 years from now if AI is contained and we use it in a really positive way versus AI not being contained and it sort of getting out of control?

54:15You know, I think that one way of thinking about it is that cars have been contained. So cars have been around for 80 years and we have layers and layers and layers of regulations, seatbelts, emissions, you know, windscreen tensile strength, street lighting, disposal of the materials after a car's life is over, driver training. Now, there's an entire ecosystem of containment built up to prevent, you know, a 13-year-old from driving through a field and, you know, crashing into a cow or whatever. Yeah. You know, it's a whole infrastructure for containment that takes time to evolve. And we've actually done it pretty well.

55:06And cars are now incredibly safe, just like airplanes, just like drones. You know, drones haven't just suddenly exploded into our world. that, you know, they've had containment. There are rules. You can't just go fly a drone in Times Square, right? You have to get a permit. You need to get a drone license. You know, there are certain places that you can't fly them at all, like near airports. You know, so this isn't actually that complicated. It's quite likely that we will succeed in putting the boundaries around these things so that they're a net benefit to everybody. That actually makes me feel a lot better.

55:43It really does, because, you know, AI is a scary thing to think about, like all these changes happening. But it's so good to hear from you, somebody who's been so central to it all, to really believe like, hey, I think it's going to be OK. I think we're going to be able to contain this and things will overall be positive. But how about the fact that, you know, power is sort of decentralized now with AI, right? A lot of people can kind of just use it and run with it. And there's some bad apples out there. So what do you have to say about that? Yeah, that's a tough question. I mean, there are definitely bad apples and there are definitely people who will misuse it.

56:22And that's kind of the conundrum, I think, is that we have a two-pronged challenge. One is figuring out how nation states and democracies get into a place where they can regulate the powerful, big companies like me. They can hold us accountable and they can make the public feel like they're competent and they're on the case. centralized, so regulating centralized power. And then the second is like, how do we cope with the fact that everybody's going to have access to this in, you know, seconds? And we want them to, like, it's not like we don't want people to have access. We want people to have access in open source.

57:00You know, and I think the important thing to remember is that so far we haven't seen any catastrophic harms arising from open source or in the large scale models, right? So all of this is speculation. Everyone could be totally wrong. It could be that we're actually not going to progress as fast as we thought. It could be that we come up with really reliable ways of instilling safety into this code. Certainly could be the case. And there's no reason for us to start slowing down open source right now, none at all. It needs to continue because people get enormous benefit out of it. At the same time, if something were to go wrong, it's just software.

57:42So someone can copy it and repost it and post it again, and it's going to spread super fast. So I just think it's a new type of challenge that we haven't yet faced yet. I think people often forget the internet is quite regulated. It's just not like this is the internet is this kind of free-for-all chaotic open domain, right? There's a whole bunch of things that you can't find on the web or you have to really work hard to get on the dark web and find pretty ugly stuff. And it's illegal. And if you get caught doing it, you're in deep trouble and stuff like that. So it's not like, you know, it's just going to be a total free for all.

58:17And in general, I think most people do want to do the right thing. So this isn't about worrying about your average user. This is about a tiny number of really bad apples, as you say. Yeah. To me, it sounds like you're saying like, we're well prepared. We've seen these new technologies before. Humans have been dealing with these new technologies over the last 200 years or so. And it sounds like you're saying you feel like we're well prepared for the AI revolution. I think that we are more prepared than the scaremongers make us think. That does not mean everything is going to be dandy. And there's a lot of work to do.

58:59And each new technology is new to us, right? It's like, by definition, it's something we haven't seen before. When I was writing my book, I read about this amazing story of the first passenger railway train that took a trip in Liverpool. And this is 1830. So the first time anybody has ever seen a moving carriage, essentially. It was a single carriage on rails. And the prime minister came down to celebrate. There was tons of people there, the mayor, and there was the local MP. They were so excited by what was coming that they actually stood on the tracks and they didn't get out of the way when the train came.

59:44And it killed a bunch of people, including the local MP. Oh my God. So it was that alien and that strange, just a regular moving carriage that they couldn't figure out that they needed to get out of the way. So that obviously, I'm sure, never happened again. But it gives you an indication sometimes of how kind of surprising and strange it can be and how we can be unprepared. And now, obviously, we're not living in the 1830s. We have the benefit of hundreds of millions of inventions since then. And so we understand a lot more about, you know, the process of inventing, creating technology, seeing it proliferate.

1:00:25We understand a lot more even about digital technologies in the last couple of decades, right? We see the consequences in social media, right? We see how, you know, unencrypted phones, you know, cause security chaos. We see how, you know, hackers try all sorts of different tricks of the trade to kind of undermine, you know, our security and privacy and so on. So there's an accumulation of knowledge that, on the one hand, should make us feel optimistic that we are prepared. On the other hand, we also know that these are unprecedented times, and these are very new and fundamentally different experiences.

1:01:01And so I don't think we should – we shouldn't be complacent. This is going to be different. How do you envision the future of work? Like, do you feel like people will have the traditional sort of nine to five job that they have right now? Or do you feel like humans are going to be able to be more creative and enjoy their life more? Like, how do you imagine that? Yeah, I think that work is going to change. I mean, it's already changing, right? I mean, we're already remote. We're on our devices. You know, I do honestly half of my work on my phone because I travel a lot. And I'm like always making phone calls, sending text messages and, you know, using messaging and teams and so on.

1:01:39So, you know, it is going to be very, very different. And I think in an AI world, you know, you're going to have your companion with you remembering your tasks, helping you get things done on time, you know, helping you stay organized and on top of all the chaos. I think that should make you feel lighter and more prepared, you know, mentally more ready to be creative. And that's what's going to be required of us because routine work is going to go away. Like a lot of the kind of drudgery of, you know, sort of elementary, you know, digital life is going to get a lot smoother and a lot easier. And so that's going to free us up to, you know, be creative as entrepreneurs.

1:02:23earth. So I think that's some amazing things are going to be invented as a result of that extra time that we're going to have. So you don't feel any worry like humans are not going to have purpose anymore? I think that work was invented, you know, because we had limited resources and we had to organize ourselves in efficient ways to reduce suffering. So what happens when we don't have as much of that burden. And actually, there is going to be resource available for millions of people. And the greatest challenge we have is figuring out how to distribute it and how to make sure that everybody gets access.

1:03:05So I don't think there is something inherent about the human connection and need for purpose with work. I think many people find their purpose and passion in a gazillion other things that we all do, right? Many people also find it in work too. And, you know, that is going to be a big shift because if you find passion in that kind of drudgenous work that I described, then now you're going to be there, you know, in 20 years' time. So you're going to have to think hard about that. But I think it's pretty exciting. People are going to be able to find many, many new purposes and many, many new things to do with their lives.

1:03:43Do you feel like we're going to live longer because of AI? Yeah, I think so. I don't know how long. I'm not one of these kind of like, you know, live forever type people. But we're already living longer because we have a much better awareness of, you know, health conditions. I'm just thinking about how many people died because everyone thought smoking was okay, right? And how many lives were cut short. And now so few people smoke, right? And people are aware about the consequences of alcohol or unhealthy food or sitting on the couch. Like just that alone, again, access to information, scientific evidence, proving that these things actually do lead to longevity.

1:04:25That's all table stakes now. And so for sure, there's this kind of bump that we're going to get in 60 years time when a bunch of people who've grown up just, you know, since their teens thinking that, you know, living a healthy life is the normal thing to do instead of like how I grew up, which is like cigarettes and alcohol and da-da-da-da-da. Like, you know, so obviously there's still room for all that kind of stuff, but is a different thing now. And then on top of that, like, we're going to have AI tools that help us to really make sense of the literature for us in a personalized way. We can really see what kind of nutrition we might need given our gut biome.

1:05:03You know, that whole sort of movement is only just starting to kind of have effect. And I think it's going to be pretty impactful. Yeah. So let's move on to entrepreneurship. ship. For all the entrepreneurs out there, how should they prepare? Well, it's already happening. What should they be doing now to take advantage of AI? I mean, all the tools are already at our fingertips. I mean, in some ways, that's kind of like an overwhelming thing, you know, because it's like, it's just there. There's like nothing holding you back. I mean, there's no secret source. Like my team has some, you know, little bits and pieces here and there that might not be available.

1:05:46But, you know, most of it, the knowledge, the know-how, you know, the cloud services, the open source stuff, the YouTube videos, it's all there. And so it is an electric time. You know, I'm seeing someone came up to me at a book signing that I did the other day. she's 15 years old and she was showing me this unbelievable project that she had been working on made a bunch of money you know strung together from all like available public tools with two of her pals thinking about dropping out of school it blew my mind and you know i think that is just like there if you're hungry and you know if you're ready to take risk this is the thing i say to people is take risk when you're young.

1:06:32Take risk. I took a lot of risks, you know, drop out, change your degree, switch your subject, give up work, maximize your side hustle, partner with a friend that you're not sure about partnering with, go ask a question, you know, just like people want to help. Just ping them an email, you know, doorstep them. People don't doorstep each other anymore. You know, back in the day, people would like wait outside. I don't even know what that means. It means like after a show or outside a theater. Oh, like wait for somebody. Yeah. That used to be a big thing. That used to be how people did networking, right?

1:07:11They would like go to an event because they knew that someone was going to be there and then try to like build the connection. Physical connection is huge. Like find that moment to like shake someone's hand, show a quick demo, drop them a note. You know, that it's just, it's hustle. It's just hustle culture. That's what you got to be on if you really want to do it. And everyone's in the game. So, you know, what an amazing time to be creative, like take that risk. It's so exciting. And I hear the passion in your voice. And I feel like anybody listening right now probably feels like so pumped to just explore, see what's out there related to their industry and just, you know, get their hands dirty.

1:07:47Yeah, because I did that as well, right? I mean, I dropped out of my degree, like I switched up my careers a bunch of times, you know, like, I wasn't afraid to ask people for help. And it was really the people that, like, the reason that I've been successful is because a few people gave me unbelievable opportunities at the right moment when I was really young, like help me get into a great school. You know, I ended up going to Oxford, like help me get a great early job, you know, help me when I started my telephone counseling service when I was 19. You know, so just, it's really other people that end up lifting you up and you have to form those relationships, give so much thanks and praise to those who do do that and then keep giving it to other people too.

1:08:30I mean, you know, one thing is I reply to a lot of my LinkedIn's. I won't say I reply to all of them because that would be a lie, but I do reply to a lot. I certainly reply to all my emails and people cold email me all the time. And, you know, I might not be able to help them, but I'll reply and I'll point them in the right direction or something because that's really what matters. And when you see someone who's taken that extra step to try and hustle it, like I really rate that. And I think it's the way forward. And my listeners know that I interview like such powerful people. I find that the more powerful the person, the more helpful they are.

1:09:04And the more that they actually care about giving back and giving feedback and being personal. Because what ends up happening is that they probably have more time because they're already successful and made it. And it means a lot to them to actually give back. Yeah. And I just got super lucky as well. Like I've obviously done some things right. I mean, luck is a huge part of it. And, you know, you kind of make your own luck by asking people for favors and help and advice and feedback. Like I've just learned everything along the way by assuming that I know nothing. But that's the key thing is that I'm not embarrassed to look, even to this day in front of my team, I'll often ask the stupid question.

1:09:44And quite often I end up looking like an idiot like probably one out of five times maybe even one out of four like i will say something and i'm like oh that was a clanger like oops um but then you know a bunch of other times it will be like oh that was the thing that everyone was thinking and then my my team seeing me trip and just look like a doofus that encourages them to then go and ask the stupid question yeah and then we're all just less judgmental there's none of this professional nonsense like you have to be all formal and straight. You just break down those barriers, be human to one another, collaborate deeply, like set aside shame.

1:10:22Do you know what I mean? Like shame is one of the most useless emotions. I'm so sorry that we evolved to carry this thing. Frankly, I think it comes from religion, but that's another story. But I just think, why are we carrying around this baggage of shame? There's no need to be ashamed. You know, just recognize when you tripped up, make a correction, take the next step. So you've, you're talking about leading your team. You've had so many teams at DeepMind, Google, now Microsoft. What are some of your key leadership principles that you live by? And maybe talk about like, what is like, you know, one of the biggest challenges that you've had so far as a leader?

1:10:58Yeah. So my style tends to be very open and collaborative. I like to hear lots and lots of disagreeing voices. Strong opinions are healthy, provided they're grounded in wisdom and humility. They need to be evidenced, right? They need to reference some sort of historical example or some data or some empirical case, or they need to be explicitly named as a guesstimate. I don't mind that either. Like one thing I often say to people is deliver your message with metadata. Such a basic thing. Say to the person, I'm really sure about this because I've looked up this fact. I'm really not sure about this.

1:11:49Or I'm looking for feedback on this one or you know this is just an FYI right so letting each other know like what the status of our exchange is helps to kind of often I see conflicts arise from a mis-expectation about what two people are expecting in an exchange so that's one thing is like clear communication there's evidence-based there's a lot of humility very collaborative and open but I'm also very decisive. Like fundamentally, my job is to sift through all the complexity and make a call because there's really, you know, nothing worse than not having clarity for the team. Even if we end up going in the wrong direction, that's totally fine because we'll calibrate and we have a process, you know, for feedback and iteration and retrospective, and that will really, really help.

1:12:42One thing that I've struggled with is in larger organizations, naturally, because there's like tens or hundreds of thousands of people, there's different people with different motivations. In a startup, you know that everyone is do or die, you know, and maybe there's one or two that aren't and they get rotated out, but they're like there for it. And in a bigger organization, it's not always true. Like some people are just, you know, kind of happy in the rhythm that they're in. And so one of my learnings is, you know, to kind of learn to energize those people and find a, you know, sort of practical flow to kind of get them in and get them being useful.

1:13:25Well, I want to be respectful of your time because we're running out of time here. So one of my last questions to you is what is the legacy that you hope to leave behind related to AI and the world in general? Oh, man, I don't think about legacy. I think about the future. But you're totally right. I mean, let me think about that. That's a hard one for me. I mean, I hope that I'm able to kind of live my values authentically and let people know what I'm trying to do, give people an opportunity to disagree with it, but fundamentally move at pace to experiment with this new approach of AI companions and emotionally intelligent.

1:14:08AIs. And, you know, I really want to try and help steward this new moment in the, you know, with kindness and compassion. That's what means a lot to me. Well, I really enjoyed this conversation. I've had probably 10 conversations about AI. This is by far my favorite one. I feel like you made me feel not scared about AI and I feel like I know so much more about it. So the last two questions that I ask all my guests, you don't have to make it based on AI. It could just come from your heart. What is one actionable thing our young and profiters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? I think the most important thing has got to be to be critical of yourself.

1:14:49You know, retrospectives are key. Ask for feedback from your friends, your family, and especially ask for feedback from people who you think, you know, are going to give you something a little bit barbed. You don't have to take it, but just at least be aware of the landscape and get in the habit of not having a thin skin. That will make you tougher and stronger for everything that you've got to encounter next. I think I needed to hear that. And what would you say is your secret to profiting in life? Learning and humility. I have made so many mistakes and I still make mistakes all the time. And I've upset people.

1:15:29I've hurt people. I've pissed people off. And I don't like doing it. I hate it. It grinds at me. But it's my fuel, because that's the signal I need to get better every day. And I know that the one thing I can do is I have this process of getting better step by step. And I've been doing it since day. And I just I love it. That's what I live for, learning. Amazing. And where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do? Well, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm not on Instagram or TikTok, unfortunately. But obviously, I'm also a huge believer in our co-pilot AI. So you can download that in iOS, Android, or copilot.microsoft.com.

1:16:13Good news for you. A lot of our YAP listeners are on LinkedIn. We talk about LinkedIn all the time. Nice. So I'll put your link in the show notes. And thank you so much, Mustafa for all of your time. This has been awesome. Thanks so much. Yeah, fam, it was such a privilege to sit down with Mustafa Suleiman, somebody who's truly at the forefront of the AI revolution that's already reshaping our lives in real time. Mustafa had a unique take on the future of AI. He's both helpful and cautious. On one side, he sees AI as potentially the biggest productivity leap in human history, which is really exciting.

1:16:44But on the flip side, he doesn't shy away from all the hard truths. AI is going to be disruptive. It could rattle our societies, our politics, our jobs, and our day-to-day realities. It even might deepen the loneliness we already feel in our hyper-digital world. But then again, maybe it won't. Maybe AI will be the biggest cheerleader and parent that we never had. To Mustafa, AI is a force multiplier. It's like having a genius-level sidekick always by our side, ready to help us create, solve, and build. Maybe it joins you in your job interviews. Maybe it becomes your co-founder. Tools like Microsoft's Copilot could be your biggest business cheerleader, empowering a new generation of entrepreneurs to break through.

1:17:24Regardless of how you feel about AI, whether you're excited or uneasy, if one thing is clear, AI is here to stay. So you better lean into it and start experimenting. Download an app, learn something new, train your own AI buddy, because you never know, that could be your next co-founder. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Young and Profiting Podcast. If you got something out of this conversation, please do us a solid and share it with somebody who's curious about AI. Maybe someday your AI personal assistant will help you do this. But until then, we need your support to help people discover the show.

1:17:56If you prefer to watch our podcast as videos, you can find all of our episodes on YouTube, including this episode with Mustafa. And be sure to subscribe to our channel while you're there. We're also now on Spotify Video. So if you guys watch this on Spotify video via our Yap live series, make sure you follow us on Spotify. Make sure you drop a comment, leave us a review. We really try to grow our platform on Spotify video. You can also connect with me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn by searching my name. It's Hala Taha. And before we wrap, of course, I've got to give a heartfelt shout out to my Young and Profiting community.

1:18:29It's been seven years of Young and Profiting podcast. I'm so thankful for all your listens, all your support. This is your host, Hala Taha, a.k.a. the Podcast Princess, signing off.