Transcript

Mo Gawdat: The Terrifying Truth About AI

From Young and Profiting · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 18 min · 13,922 words · 110 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Mo Gawdat: The Terrifying Truth About AI", an episode of Young and Profiting published November 17, 2025 (1 h 18 min, about 13,922 words). It mentions 90 people, works and ideas, including Instagram, Google X, Chad GPT, Human Connection, Concentration of Power.

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Google X, Scary Smart, Atari Games, Concentration of Power
  2. – 20:00: Northwest Registered Agent, Northwest Registered Agent, Spectrum, Bengali
  3. – 30:00: Existential Risk, Instagram, Concentration of Power, End of Truth
  4. – 40:00: Indeed, Indeed, Chad GPT, Airbnb
  5. – 50:00: Chad GPT, GitHub, Jeffrey Hinton, Netscape
  6. – 1:00:00: Concentration of Power, Nuclear Weapons, End of Truth, Instagram
  7. – 1:10:00: Human Connection, End of Truth, Face Filters, Instagram
  8. – 1:18:14: Human Connection, Instagram, Chad GPT, Concentration of Power

Notable quotes from "Mo Gawdat: The Terrifying Truth About AI"

  • Today that was not dictated to you by a machine. We ignore that fact when we swipe on Instagram or on Tik Tok or when we're looking at the news media, but every single one of…
    about Instagram · at
  • First glimpse between that and the work that Deep Mind was doing on playing Atari games where machines be started to show real intelligence. we then started to integrate that…
    about Atari Games · at
  • We don't fully understand how you know Bard Google's bard understood how to speak Bengali right we don't really know those emerging properties or even the the tasks we give them themselves but so your question was I excited.
    about Bengali · at
  • Important things that keeps your business legit. That's why I always recommend Northwest Registered agent.
    about Northwest Registered Agent · at
  • Offer? Is it a good sales? A good CEO and founder? Nope. It's rock solid internet. I get it because Yap Media runs fully remote. So, if the internet cuts out, everything stops.…
    about Yap Media · at
  • Taught it Bengali. We never show showed it data sets of Bengali. It just learns Bengali. Chad GPT is learning research chemistry. we never taught it research chemistry. We never wanted it to. It just learns just like you and I.
    about Chad GPT · at
  • You're ready to hire, but the perfect person takes forever to find. That's where Indeed comes in. Because when it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need.
    about Indeed · at
  • To really want to understand this is in the next, one to five years, what does AI do to human connection? And what about the skills that you think will be the most valuable in the next 1 to 5 years?
    about Human Connection · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Jeffrey Hinton — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Who like me I walked out in 200 end of 2017 you know others like Jeffrey Hinton and you know so many others are starting to wake up to that in 2023. I think Chad GPT was basically the you know the net Netscape moment. I know you.
  • Hala Taha — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Here at Yap. You can also stay connected with me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn by searching my name. It's Hala Taha. And before we go, I got to say thank you and…
  • Demis Hassabis — Person · 1 mention
  • Lee Sedol — Person · 1 mention
  • Max Tegmark — Person · 1 mention
  • Mo Gawdat — Person · 1 mention
  • Sundar Pichai — Person · 1 mention

Books & papers

Companies & orgs

  • Instagram — Company · 8 mentions · first at
  • Google X — Company · 7 mentions · first at
    My guest today is Mo Gaat, former chief business officer at Google X and bestselling author of Scary Smart. Mo has been inside the labs where AI first came to life and he's here to both unpack the promise and the peril.
  • Indeed — Company · 3 mentions · first at
    You're ready to hire, but the perfect person takes forever to find. That's where Indeed comes in. Because when it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need.
  • Northwest Registered Agent — Company · 2 mentions · first at
  • Yap Media — Company · 2 mentions · first at
  • Spectrum — Company · 2 mentions · first at
    Without internet anymore. And that's why I love telling you about brands that actually help you win. Like Spectrum Business. They don't just give you internet. They set you up…
  • Slow Mo Podcast — Company · 2 mentions
  • Google Brain — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Never really launched a product under X if you want. So self-driving cars is under Whimo. you know Google brain is integrated into Google and so on. But most of the very spooky…
  • Spectrum Business — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Without internet anymore. And that's why I love telling you about brands that actually help you win. Like Spectrum Business. They don't just give you internet. They set you up…
  • Stability AI — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Created with no human in front of the camera very easily. we you know technologies like stability.ai you know stable diffusion for example can now generate realistic humanlike…
  • Alphabet Inc. — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Telling us telling it at all to learn it. One of the famous ones was Sundar Pachai the CEO of Alphabet talks about Google's AI and how Google how that AI we discovered or they…
  • Airbnb — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Along the way, I've booked some unforgettable homes on Airbnb that felt warm and welcoming the moment that I arrived. These experiences really inspired me to start thinking about hosting my own place while I'm away for.
  • GitHub — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Is what is just so that you understand how far that mistake is. 41% of all of the code on GitHub today so basically the repository of where developers share their code 41% of…
  • Spotify — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel and join our growing community on there. We're also now on Spotify video. If you want to watch your podcast on Spotify, you now can do…
  • Amazon Web Services (AWS) — Company · 1 mention
  • ByteDance — Company · 1 mention
  • Charter Communications — Company · 1 mention
  • DeepMind — Company · 1 mention
  • Future of Life Institute — Company · 1 mention
  • Meta — Company · 1 mention
  • Neuralink — Company · 1 mention
  • OpenAI — Company · 1 mention
  • Snap Inc. — Company · 1 mention
  • Spotify Technology S.A. — Company · 1 mention
  • TikTok — Company · 1 mention
  • Waymo — Company · 1 mention

Products & tech

  • Chad GPT — Product · 7 mentions · first at
  • Atari Games — Product · 2 mentions · first at
  • Face Filters — Product · 2 mentions · first at
    Know the quality of from an actual iPhone video of you. Now all of that think of face filters h and how this is affecting our perception of real beauty. Okay. Think of you know…
  • Stable Diffusion — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Camera very easily. we you know technologies like stability.ai you know stable diffusion for example can now generate realistic humanlike images in less you know than a tenth…
  • Netscape — Product · 1 mention · first at
    To wake up to that in 2023. I think Chad GPT was basically the you know the net Netscape moment. I know you guys are too young for Netscape but the internet was there for 15…
  • Pocket Mo — Product · 1 mention · first at
    First time I speak about this. I'm working on something that I call pocket mo. Pocket mo basically is an AI that read all of my books read you know listen to all of my podcast…
  • Slow Mo — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Social media sites but I'm more active on LinkedIn and Instagram. And my podcast is slow-mo s l o m o which is top five in well-being. So, something that I think we should…
  • Spotify Video — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel and join our growing community on there. We're also now on Spotify video. If you want to watch your podcast on Spotify, you now can do…
  • Yap with Hala — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Reviews and comments. It keeps us going here at Yap. You can also stay connected with me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn by searching my name. It's Hala Taha. And…
  • Airbnb Co-Host Network — Product · 1 mention
  • AlphaGo — Product · 1 mention
  • AlphaGo Master — Product · 1 mention
  • AlphaGo Zero — Product · 1 mention
  • Bard — Product · 1 mention
  • Breakout (Atari game) — Product · 1 mention
  • ChatGPT — Product · 1 mention
  • Deepfakes — Product · 1 mention
  • Young and Profiting (YAP) — Product · 1 mention

Concepts & topics

Places & events

  • Singapore — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Are going to stop too. And by the way, even if they stop, how can you guarantee me that two little kids in Singapore in their garage are not developing AI code that can disrupt…
  • China — Place · 1 mention
  • Russia — Place · 1 mention
  • United States (states) — Place · 1 mention

Sponsors

  • Indeed — Sponsor · 3 mentions · first at
  • Northwest Registered Agent — Sponsor · 2 mentions · first at
    Important things that keeps your business legit. That's why I always recommend Northwest Registered agent.
  • Spectrum Business — Sponsor · 1 mention · first at
    Without internet anymore. And that's why I love telling you about brands that actually help you win. Like Spectrum Business. They don't just give you internet. They set you up…
  • Airbnb — Sponsor · 1 mention · first at
    Along the way, I've booked some unforgettable homes on Airbnb that felt warm and welcoming the moment that I arrived. These experiences really inspired me to start thinking about hosting my own place while I'm away for.

Full transcript with timestamps

There is nothing that entered your head today that was not dictated to you by a machine. We ignore that fact when we swipe on Instagram or on Tik Tok or when we're looking at the news media, but every single one of those is a machine that is telling you what it is that you should know.

My guest today is Mo Gaat, former chief business officer at Google X and bestselling author of Scary Smart. Mo has been inside the labs where AI first came to life and he's here to both unpack the promise and the peril.

If something goes wrong today with the artificial intelligence that's out out on the open internet, who's responsible for that? There are very very significant threats. Things like concentration of power, the end of truth, things like the jobs and the redesign of the fabric of society. If the most powerful people in the world who are actually the most knowledgeable about AI are warning about this, why wasn't anything done? I

actually believe that. Yap gang, we all know that AI is evolving faster than we've ever imagined, learning on its own, making decisions we don't quite fully understand, and racing toward a future where it could be smarter than us. Now, the real question isn't just how do we use AI, it's what happens if we can't control it. That's the wakeup call we're tackling today on the AI Vault series. My guest today is Mo Gaudat, former chief business officer at Google X and bestselling author of Scary Smart. Mo has been inside the labs where AI first came to life. And he's here to both unpack the promise and the peril. How AI is evolving beyond our control, the immediate risks we're facing in jobs, truth, and power, and what skills humans will need to stay relevant in the coming years. But before we jump in, if this is your first time tuning into the podcast, don't forget to hit that subscribe or follow button wherever you're tuning in.

All right, Yap fam, another one from the AI Vault series with Mo Gaudat and let's get right into it. Mo, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. Uh, it's been a while in the making, but absolutely worth the wait, I hope. Can you talk to us about your journey at a very high level? The the highlights that got you in the sea suite at Google X eventually uh

at the height of my my my professional career if you want my uh corporate career I was chief business officer of Google X and of course I worked my butt off to get there but there was an element of luck in the process. Uh I met the exact right people at the exact right time. Uh it was one of those events where the Google X team was uh presenting some of their confidential stuff and uh I showed up and I said at the time I was vice president of emerging markets for Google. I had started half of Google's businesses globally uh more than 103 languages if I remember correctly and so I was quite uh well known in the company if you want I had a reasonable impact that I have to say I'm very grateful that life gave me the opportunity to provide and then with Google X I basically at the time Google still had the idea of the 20% time so I liked their projects and I said I'm going to uh I'm going to give you my 20%

and they said but we haven't asked for it and I said yep that's not your choice and I showed up basically uh the first day I showed up I uh bump into Sergey our co-founder and I worked closely with Sergey for many years and he says like what are you doing here and I I was like I'm very excited about your work and ended up he said oh no don't leave basically stay and I was chief business officer for 5 years where I um I think Google X is misunderstood because we never really launched a product under X if you want. So self-driving cars is under Whimo. Uh you know Google brain is integrated into Google and so on. But most of the very spooky innovation if you want the very very out there innovation including all of robotics and a big chunk of AI was at X and it was a big part of what I did.

And so diving right into AI, you were actually part of the labs that initially created AI. So can you talk to us about the story of the yellow ball and how that really changed your perspective about AI?

AI has been around a lot longer than people think. When we started uh uh self-driving cars back in 2008, that was basically with a belief that uh uh that cars can develop intelligence that as intell that is as intelligent as a driver and accordingly able to drive a car. Uh and since then I mean by 2008 I think in my personal memories I think 2008 was really the year when we knew that we cracked the code. was uh you know two early 2009 Google published a paper that's known as the cat paper uh that white paper basically described how we asked uh uh you know an artificially intelligent machine to look at YouTube videos where without prompting it for what to look for and then it eventually came back and said I found something and we said show us and it turns out that it found a cat and not not just one cat but really what catness is all about you know that very um entitled uh cuddly uh you know furry uh character. Basically,

it could could find every cat on YouTube. And that was really the very first glimpse uh between that and the work that Deep Mind was doing on playing Atari games where machines be started to show real intelligence. Uh we then started to integrate that in a lot of things. you know, self-driving cars is probably the most publicly known example, but one of the projects that we worked on was um which is not the only, you know, Google X was not the only one working on it, but we wanted to teach grippers, you know, um robotic arms.

Basically, we wanted to teach them how to pick objects that they're not programmed to pick. And and it's a very very sophisticated task because you know we do it so easily as humans but if you remember when you don't remember but if your parents will remember when you were a a child and before you learned how to grip you kept going on trial and error you would try to grip something and then it falls and then you try again and so on. And basically we said maybe we can teach the machines the same way. We built a farm of those grippers, put boxes of items in front of them. You know, a funny programmer basically chose children's toys and you could see them try to pick those items and basically fail over and over. It's a very sophisticated mathematical problem. And so they would fail. they would show the arm to the camera and the camera would know that this algorithm this pathway uh you know didn't register didn't pick the

item until I think it was several weeks in and you know it was a significant investment because robotic arms were not cheap at the time uh you know I passed by that farm very uh very frequently on my way to my desk and on a Friday evening uh finally one of those arms you know I can see it goes down, picks one item, which was a yellow softball. Again, mathematically very complex to to to grip and and it shows it to the camera. And so, jokingly, I pass by the team that's running this experiment and I say, "Okay, well done." All of those millions of dollars for one yellow ball.

Okay? Uh, and they smiled and then, you know, sort of nodded their heads. And on Monday morning as I went to work, every arm was picking the yellow ball. Uh, you know, a couple of weeks later, every arm was picking everything. And I think that's something that most people don't recognize about AI is that the speed once you found the very first pattern, the speed at which AI starts to develop is just mindblowing. Uh also I think uh most people don't realize that they learn exactly like my children learned to grip. That's the whole idea. So so they really do develop intelligence that comparable uh now probably even more advanced than human intelligence.

And in that moment when you saw those machines gripping toys and doing it more efficiently and with intelligence, were you alarmed or were you excited? Yeah, I think I think we I I I've been excited about AI since I had a Sinclair, believe it or not. So, I I started coding at a very very young age on a on computers, you know, young and profitable probably have never touched in their life. So, so uh you know, and every one of us geeks wanted to code an intelligent machine. We all attempted and we all simulated and we all even pretended sometimes. uh but then it was the the year 2000 truly where we deep learning was starting to develop uh and and we sort of found the breakthrough. We found how to give machines intelligence and and allow me to to stop for a second here because there's a huge difference between the way we programmed machines before deep learning and after deep learning. Before

deep learning, when I programmed the machine, as intelligent as it looked, I solved the problem first using my own intelligence and then sort of gave the machine the cheat in terms of how to solve it itself. I wrote the algorithm or I you know wrote the process uh you know step by step and basically coded the machine to do it. When when deep learning started to happen, what we did was we didn't tell the machine how to solve the problem. We told the machine how to develop the intelligence needed to find a solution to the problem. This is very very different. And as a matter of fact, most of the time we don't even recognize how the machine finds a cat.

We don't even understand how um you know we don't fully understand how you know Bard uh Google's bard understood how to speak Bengali right we don't really know those emerging properties or even the the the the tasks we give them themselves but so so your question was was I excited

I promise you the day I met Deis who was the CEO of deep mind when we acquired deep mind it was really to me like meeting the rockstar right I I I was fanatic about what he was doing. Uh I still am a you know a fan of of him and his ethics an amazing human being. Uh but at the time for a geek understand this AI was the ultimate joy and glory. This this was it. We we were we were creating intelligence and for a programmer that was mindblowing. uh the yellow ball I think and and remember huh when every time we saw the machines develop we got more excited believe it or not because we wanted what was good for the world intelligence in itself there is nothing inherently wrong with intelligence

it was when I saw the yellow ball I think that something dropped I I I could see it so clearly because for the first time ever I realized that those machines one are developed ing way faster than us. And so accordingly, you know, the predictions of people like Ray Corwe and and others uh of of a moment of singularity where they're going to bypass our intelligence became very very real in my mind. I could see that this is going to happen. But I also could see that we the moment they became intelligent had very little influence on them. Okay. And accordingly, I started to imagine a world where humanity is no longer the top of the food chain. Okay?

Humanity is no longer the smartest being on the planet. And then comes the apes. We are going to be the apes. Do you understand that? Yeah. And and and I think that completely uh made sense to me that this needed a lot more consideration. Uh rather than the you know the excited geekiness of you of of building it, we had I we needed to understand why and how are we building it and what is a future where it becomes in charge.

There's like so much to unpack here. This is why I was like I need to spend the full hour on this topic because there's just so much to unpack. Let's talk about the label of artificial in artificial intelligence. Is intelligence artificial at all or is AI? Oh yeah, talk to us about that.

Not in the in the slightest. H if if there is any um if there is any artificial side to the to to to the machines is that they are silicon based. Okay. As a matter of fact, most of the ones who worked on deep tech, not not the stuff that you see in the in the interfaces, uh we almost mapped their brains to the way our neural networks as humans work.

So, you know, humans uh uh in the early development of AI, you know what neuroplasticity is? Humans basically uh develop we develop our our intelligence and our ability to do anything really uh by repeating a task in a specific way and and they say neurons that wire together fire to fire together wire together. So if you if you tap your finger over and over and over, your brain sort of takes that neural network that taps your finger and makes it stronger and stronger and stronger just like going to the gym. and and the early years of developing AI, we were doing exactly that. We were literally pruning the software or the algorithms that were not effectively delivering the m the task we want, literally killing them, erasing them and keeping the ones that were capable of getting closer to the answer we wanted and then strengthen strengthening them. So, so we were sort of like doubling down on them, wiring

them together. And and and the way the way the the machines work today is very very similar to that. It's it's a bunch of patterns that are created in hundreds of millions, sometimes billions and trillions of of neurons, not yet trillions, but you know, lots of of of nodes of patterns that the machine will recognize. uh so that it basically can make something look intelligent or or can behave in a way that that is analogous to intelligence. Now is it artificial? Well, I think if if you ask the machines, they will think of our carbon-based intelligence as artificial.

Okay. Uh the only the only difference really is we we are carbon- based and analog. They are uh I don't think we're analog. I think we're somewhere in between. And they are, you know, digital and and siliconbased. Not for long. We don't know what they're going to be based on in the future. Uh but but but also they are um I think their uh clock speed is very different than human clock speed. So so they have an enormous capability of learning very very quickly of crunching a massive amount of data that no single human can can achieve.

They are they have the capability of keeping so much in their memory. They are aware and informed of everything all the time. Uh they are connected to each other. So they could in the future when AGI becomes a reality benefit from each other's intelligence. Uh and in a very simple way uh I think the the race to intelligence is one. uh you know uh today there are estimates that CH GPT uh is um is at an IQ of 155. uh Einstein I think was 160 or 190 doesn't really matter but most humans are 122 uh you know some are uh less than that maybe 110 and so on you know the dumbest human is 70 so you can easily see that there is an AI today from an intelligence point of view on the task assigned to it remember we're still in the artificial special intelligence stage one one task assigned to every AI uh in the task assigned to it It's by far more intelligent than humans. Nothing artificial at all about that. It

develops its own its own intelligence. It evolves. It has agency. It has decision-m abilities. It has um you know uh um um emotions I tend to believe. Uh and uh yeah and it it it is in a very interesting way almost sentient if you think about it which is an argument that a lot of people don't agree with because we don't really define sentient on a human level very well but they definitely simulate being sentient very well.

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Business. They don't just give you internet. They set you up with everything your business needs from internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, you name it. All designed to fit in your budget. And they've got a killer deal right now. You can get free business internet forever when you add four mobile lines. Think about it, free internet forever with no contracts and no added fees. That means more money in your pocket to grow your business and less time stressing about connectivity. Visit spectrum.com/freeforlife to learn how you can get business internet free forever. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. I mean, what you're saying is really incredible and mindblowing. I know that for humans, like we don't understand how consciousness works, right? Nobody can say like you're conscious because of this. And you mentioned before that we don't understand how intelligence really

happens. Like we know how to create intelligence, but we don't actually know how the intelligence works. It just sort of takes off on its own, which can be really scary. So talk to us about why you think AI should be considered living or sentient.

I think the definition of sentient needs to be agreed. So So is a tree sentient? Is a pebble sentient? Is the planet earth sentient? We you know we could have many arguments. Now if you if you think of uh being sentient as it is born at a point in time and it dies at a point in time or at least it has the threat of dying at a point in time then AI is born at a point in time and is you know it it it has the threat of dying at a point in time. uh you know um if you if you think of uh uh of sentient as the ability to sense the world around you uh well yes of course AI is capable of assessing the world around it. Uh if you think of AI as sorry of sentient as the uh the uh the ability to affect the world around you then yes it can right.

Uh the you know if you if you take a tree for example a tree grows uh it uh reproduces uh it it does um uh it is it is in a way interestingly aware of the seasons and aware of the environment around it and it responds to it. So a a tree will not shed uh its leaves on the 21st of October specifically. It will shed its tree it its leaves when the uh you know when the weather alerts it to do that. And if you consider a tree sentient in that case then uh AI is surely sentient. If if you consider that a gorilla is you know is incredibly interested in survival uh and accordingly would do what it takes to survive then AI is sentient in the sense that once uh assigned a task it will attempt to survive to make the task happen basically. So Mo, a lot of people think of AI as this machine that they can tell what to do and it listens. They can turn it off if things get too crazy and they're not worried about AI. So can you

talk to us about how AI actually in some instances can have agency, can have control over itself, free will. Can you give us some examples?

Oh my god, I can give you endless examples. Uh if you're not informed of AI today, uh it is a bit like uh a hurricane approaching your your city or village uh and you're sitting at a cafe saying I'm not interested. Okay, this is uh it this is the biggest event happening uh in in today's world and and the reason for that is that there are tremendous benefits that can come from having artificial intelligence in our lives. And uh you know if you miss out on that train you're you're not going to have the skills to compete in a world that is changing very rapidly. That's on one side. On the other side there are very very significant threats and those threats come in two levels. Uh the news media wants to always talk about the terminator scenario where it's an existential risk to humanity uh uh you know in 10 15 20 years time. Uh I uh believe that there is a probability of that happening. Uh but I believe that

there are many more important more immediate threats that need to be looked at today. Uh things that are already happening and that we need to become aware of. things like concentration of power, things that like the end of truth, things like uh you know the jobs and the redesign of the fabric of society as a result of the disappearance of many jobs and so on. So so we'll come to all of those. I think we need to cover both sides of the immediate risk and the and the and the existential risk. But your question was um how can AI affect me today? Let me give you a very simple example. There is nothing that entered your head today that was not dictated to you by a machine. Okay?

We ignore that fact when we swipe on in on Instagram or when we are on Tik Tok or when we're looking at the news media or when you know we're searching and getting a result from Google. But every single one of those is a machine that is telling you uh um you know in reality what it is that you should know. Now think about the following. Today in the morning I uh you know I got a statistic that basically is quite interesting. A study by Stamford University that said that brunettes are on average taller than blondes right and uh I didn't actually but does it make any difference once I told you that piece of information uh you know once I tell you a piece of information I have affected your mind forever. Okay. So, you can either trust me and now you're going to look at brunettes and blondes differently for the rest of your life.

You can mistrust me and then you're going to spend a little bit of time to try and verify the truth. And in the back of your mind, that bit of information is going to be engraved. Uh maybe for the future, you might dedicate yourself to a research that proves me wrong. You may actually become fanatic. Okay? You may start posting about it on the internet. You may spend your the rest of your life trying to defend this lie or uh trying to disprove this lie and show the truth right just by by showing you one bit of information. Now every bit of information you have seen in since you woke up today is dictated by a machine. Now uh uh Yav Noah Harari basically says they have hacked the operating system of humanity. Right? So if I can hack into your brain hala and tell you something that affects you for the rest of your life whether positively or negatively whether true or false okay uh then I have already managed how

managed to to affect you. Interestingly most of those machines that you've dealt with are programmed for one simple uh task which is to manipulate you. Every one of those social media machines, for example, are out there with one objective, which is to manipulate your behavior to their uh benefit. And they're becoming really good at it. They're becoming so good at it, as a matter of fact, that most of the time we don't even realize that we have been brainwashed over and over and over by uh by those uh you know, by the capability of those machines. So here's the interesting bit. I told you in the immediate risks that are coming uh up in the next I I believe they have started already and I I think they will start to become quite significant over the next year or two and we will see uh my personal view what I call patient zero uh is the end of the truth in the US elections. Right? So, so the reality of

the matter is that with deep fakes with uh with uh you know with the ability to manipulate information and data with the ability to take uh to create uh um um by by next year you have to be you have to be aware that a real on Instagram can be created uh with no human in front of the camera very very easily. Uh we you know uh technologies like uh stability.ai AI um you know um stable diffusion for example can now generate realistic humanlike images in less you know than a tenth of a second and a video is 10 frames per second. So the next stage is clearly going to be video. There are multiple videos that have been created that you couldn't distinguish uh you know uh um the quality of from an actual iPhone video of you. Now all of that think of of face filters h and how this is affecting our perception of real beauty. Okay. Think of uh you know uh um of um of information and statistics um using chat GPT affecting the children's

uh way of doing their homework. Uh we are completely redesigned as a society and we're not even talking about it. This is exact. This is how far this is has gone.

It is insane and I definitely want to talk about those risks that you were talking about immediate risk, job risks, exitential risk down the line years later. So talk to us about the fact that AI can learn on its own. It can learn languages on its own. It can beat chess players and come up with moves that we've never taught it before. Because a lot of people think about AI as something that just collects information and spits out information, but it can actually learn new things that humans don't even know. So talk to us about that.

Yeah, I mean don't mix AI with old programming. AI simply is the idea. Let me give you a a concrete example. There is a a strategy game known as Go. Go is one of the most complex strategy games on the planet. It requires a very deep understanding of of uh planning and uh and and and crunching a lot of numbers and mathematics and so on very popular in Asia and in our assessment go was the ultimate task uh that you know like we had the touring test uh for AI pretending to be a human and you you not being able to figure out if it isn't you know go was sort of like the that other milestone if if go if AI wins in Go then go is the uh you Then AI is now the top gamer on the planet. Now um it was several five years ago I believe that 10 years ahead of any estimate uh that Alph Go again deep mind uh basically became the world champion in Go and and Alph Go had three three versions to it. Version number one uh

took a few months to develop. Okay. Uh basically uh we you know we uh we asked it to watch um YouTube videos of people playing Go. Okay. And from that it played against the second champion in the world. So that's the the runner up if not and it won uh 5 to1 or 5 to2 if I remember but it basically won. Okay. Uh and and uh and that basically became made Alpha Go uh number two in the world. And then we developed something called Alph Go Master. uh an Alpha Go Master played against Lee, the world champion, and won. Uh that was around a few months later. And then we developed another code that was called Alph Go Zero. And Alph Go Zero uh basically play learned the game by playing against itself. So it never it never saw a human ever playing go. Okay? It just played against itself. So it would be the two opponents and through the patterns of the game randomly it would learn what wins and what loses. Alph Go Zero within

three days three days one against Alph Go the original within 21 days won against Alph Go Master. Okay. Uh and became the world champion a thousand games to zero within 21 days. Now uh when you understand that level of strategy when Lee the world champion was was was playing against Alph Go Master there is something that you can Google that's known as move 37 and move 37 was that machine uh coming up with a with a move that is completely unlike anything humans understand. Okay to the point that the world champion said I I don't know what this is doing. I need a 15 minutes break to understand. Right. It was a a move of ingenuity, of intuition, of creativity, of of very deep strategy, of very very deep mathematical planning.

And and we never taught Alpha Go Master to do that. We never uh taught uh you know the original games of uh of Atari uh Deep Mind uh to to find the the cornerstone in the in the breakout game if you remember those Atari games. So it would find the cornerstone, throw the ball in there so that it hits the ball from the top. All of those things we don't teach the machines how to find how to learn. And and we call those emerging properties. And emerging properties are basically uh things that the machine learns on its own without us actually telling us telling it at all to learn it. One of the famous ones was uh Sundar Pachai the CEO of Alphabet uh talks about Google's AI and how Google how that AI we discovered or they discovered I was not no longer at Google at the time that it speaks Bengali. We never taught it Bengali. We never show showed it data sets of Bengali. It just learns Bengali. Chad GPT is learning research

chemistry. Uh we never taught it research chemistry. We never wanted it to. It just learns just like you and I. So, so you know if I ask you a question and you give me an answer, the answer might be right or wrong. It doesn't matter. But I can I can find out if the answer is right or wrong. At least by my perception, but I can never find out how you arrived at it. I don't know what happened in your brain to to get to that answer. This is why in you know in elementary school in math tests they ask the the student to show the thinking they they went through, right?

So when you think about that you realize that those machines are completely doing things that we don't tell them to do. Interestingly however uh the answer from a computer science problem point of view to the to the to the problem of a a risk of AI is known as the solution to the control problem. So most computer scientists say spent a lot of time trying to make AI safe. How do they make it safe? by including control measures within the code. Theoretically, by the way, I do not know of any AI developer that ever included a, you know, control code within within their code because it takes time and effort and it's not what they're paid for, basically. Uh, but here's the question. How do you control something that is bound to become a billion times smarter than you? I mean, think about it. Chad GPT4 was 10 times smarter than Chad GPT 3.5. Okay? If you just assume that this pattern will repeat twice, there will be an AI within

the next year and a half to two years that in the task of knowledge and cognition of information is going to be at an IQ of a,500. That's not even imaginable by human intelligence. We we don't even this is basically like, you know, trying to explain quantum physics to a fly.

That's the level of intelligence difference between us and them, right? Just like just like it's so difficult for someone like me who's a who's an avid you know has an avid love of physics when I look at how someone like Einstein comes up with theory of relativity I go like man I never I wish I had that intelligence right that and that's the comparison between me and Einstein imagine if I compare myself to something 100 times smarter than Einstein my my prediction and the prediction of many other computer scientists uh is that by the year 2045 at the current trend AI will probably be a billion times smarter than us. 1 billion with a B. So it's quite interesting when you really think about it how the arrogance of humanity still imagines that it can control something that is a billion times smarter than us.

I don't want to be grim. I want to talk about the positives here because it's really important. uh there are ways to control AI but they are not through control. There are a little bit like how you know if you have any friends from India or the Middle East where we are taught at at a young age that we need to take care of our parents when they grow older.

Mhm. Right. So, so there are ways if we consider that AI has a resemblance of being our artificially intelligent infant children, there are ways we can influence them so that they choose to take care of humanity instead of in all honesty making us irrelevant.

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Find yourself a co-host at airb.com/host. You've talked about how now we're sort of at the point of no return. So related to this, can you talk about the boundaries that we've broken that now make AI sort of uncontrolled and unregulated?

I don't know how stupid humanity can be. Honestly, I really I honestly don't understand. I you know, in a in a very interesting way, I think we've created a system that's removing all of our intelligence. we continue to consume as we're burning the planet. We continue to favor the the patriarchy when we when we realize that the feminist, you know, fe feminine attributes are so badly needed in our world today. We continue to create AI when we have no clue how that will uh, you know, will influence our world going forward. But more interestingly, we continue to make mistakes along the path of AI that are irre you know irreparable honestly and and we everyone everyone without exception and I I know at least let me say everyone I know uh said okay as long as it's in the lab uh that's fine okay we can we can do whatever uh you know just explore the boundaries of it but there are three three you know borders

the three boundaries we shouldn't cross which were one don't put it on the open internet I mean seriously uh when when you um when you ingest a medicine or or a supplement it needs to go through FDA approval right someone needs to go and say this is safe for you right uh so so we said at least there needs to be some kind of an oversight that basically says uh this is safe for human consumption this is safe for humanity at large and none of that happens and and I understand Sam Altman's which I believe is a is a good is a good person uh you know his approach of saying let's develop it in public so that nothing is hidden so that we learn early on but the problem is it's developing faster than us and I think the reality of having something as powerful as Chad GPT out there you know to be accessed by everyone is completely reshaping everything that's number one number two we said don't teach them to

code at least if you teach them to to code don't keep them on the open internet so that they can code. Now here is what is just so that you understand how far that mistake is. 41% of all of the of the code on GitHub today so so basically the repository of where developers share their code 41% of it is machine developed. Okay. uh you know within a year almost less than a year of having the m allowing the machines to develop you know four of the top 10 uh uh um uh apps on the iPhone are uh are um AI enabled. Okay. Created by a machine. Created by a machine for now is amazing because you know what? I always loved to to to to do the algorithm the the design of a code but coding itself was annoying. Right now you can tell the machine build me a website uh that you know speaks about hella's podcast uh that is you know blue and yellow in color and that is 15 uh um web pages long and and it will do it in

less than a minute right and that's not it's not only that it's a lot of the base programming like chat GPT uh um um 75% of the code offered to check GPT to correct or to review was made 25% two and a half times two and a half times faster. So uh so basically every time it reviews a human code it makes it two and a half times faster almost and and when you really think about that they they are becoming the absolute best developer on the planet when it comes to basic development. Uh and and I'll come back to the risk of that in a minute. And and the third is we said don't have AIs instruct AIs what to do. We call those agents. Okay. So, so basically you now have something that is that has access to the entire worldwide web that has access to the entire world basically uh that has that can write its own code and so basically sort of have its own children because it is made of code and it's becoming it's able now to create

other versions of itself put it wherever it wants and number three it is instructed to do that by machines not humans And so what is happening now is that machines are telling machines to write code to serve the machines and affect the entire worldwide web and we're not part of that process and that cycle at all. Okay, for now nothing went bad. But do we really have to wait for the virus to begin before humanity stops and asks and says, you know, is this reasonable in any way? I mean, does it make any sense to anyone that this is the situation we're in? Where are our governments? How can those companies be accountable? Because I think the biggest challenge we have today is that our fate is in the hand of people who don't assume responsibility. You know, you know, uh uh uh Spider-Man's uh with great power comes great responsibility.

Now there is great power in in the in in the presence not only the not not even the future of artificial intelligence that that is within hands that don't assume responsibility

if if something goes wrong today uh with the artificial intelligence that's out out on the open internet who's responsible for that who how can we even find out where that code generated from all of that by the way just not to scare people all of that hasn't happened yet. Okay, it hasn't happened yet. But it is very very unlikely that it will not not happen.

It's very unlikely that one of those codes if you just simply tell Chad GPT to keep writing code to make you more money. Okay. Uh eventually somehow something in the system will break. And if if that if you're not the one telling it, if a machine is telling it, some something is going to break. We, you know, we absolutely have to start getting this under control.

Yeah. And so, like you said, it's sort of like uncontrollable. It's no wonder why you called your book scary smart because this is really scary, but this is reality. So, you talk about inevitables. AI will happen. It will become smarter than us. Bad things will happen. Can you unpack those thoughts and then I'd love to go into, you know, the risks and solutions potentially?

There are three inevitables. AI has already happened not just will happen but but but when I wrote the first inevitable I wrote it with the intention of explaining and there is no stopping it okay so so there is no way you can uh you can say okay AI is out there and it is growing and it's becoming more intelligent let's uh just switch it off this there is no off switch that's number one and the moment uh uh you know uh uh what is needed at the moment is for the entire world to come together and simply say hey you know what this is too risky let's leave our differences aside and come together and just wait a little bit right which has been attempted by the open letter uh Max Denmark and and Elon Musk and others which of course was answered very quickly by the top CEOs by saying I can't why because we've created a prisoners dilemma this is the first inevitable it is an arms race uh that where where Google cannot stop

developing AI because you know Meta is developing AI. Uh America cannot stop developing AI because China is developing AI. Uh none nobody actually even you know if you want to consider there are good guys in the world. Nobody can stop developing AI because there could be bad guys developing AI, right? So if there is a hacker somewhere trying to break through our banks, someone needs to develop a a a smarter AI that will help us not be hacked, right? And so and so th this basically means that it is a human choice because of the capitalist system that we've created that we will continue to develop AI.

It's done. There is no stopping it. And I think the open letter was a great example of that.

Can I pause you there in case nobody knows? So the open letter was basically earlier this year top AI scientists executives from open AI deep mind they basically had an open letter warning of the risk of extinction I think and that that AI was just as powerful as having a nuclear war that that this was the risk at hand. Um so can you talk to us about that letter? Like I didn't even hear about that letter until I started studying your work. So like um if the most powerful people in the world who are actually the most knowledgeable about AI are warning about this I guess like why wasn't anything done or like like what what happened with that letter

because it's so so the letter basically like you rightly said it is it's some of the most powerful people in the field uh who like me I I I walked out in 200 end of 2017 uh you know others like Jeffrey Hinton and you know so many others are starting to wake up to that in 2023. I think Chad GPT was basically the um you know the the net Netscape moment. I I know you guys are too young for Netscape but the internet was there for 15 years before Netscape came out and when Netscape came out as a web browser we realized that the internet existed. Okay. Uh the the reality is that this is the Netscape moment of AI. Chad GPT basically told us what the possibilities told the general public what the possibilities are. And so suddenly we all realize this stuff exists. Now for for all of the scientists that started to recognize that it is truly I mean the moment of singularity where AI becomes smarter

than us uh um you know artificial general intelligence that's capable of doing everything humans do better than humans is not contested most of us uh mo most scientists will say it's 2029 I say it's 2027 or earlier okay uh that there will be a moment in time within the next two to three years where there will be a wakeup call where we suddenly realize that AI is much more intelligent than us. Most scientists have started to recognize that and so they basically issued a letter urging all of the top AI players to pause the development of AI for 6 months so that the safety code, the control code can catch up, right?

because you know there there you know uh there has have been quite a few that have been putting in effort to create that control code but let's say 98% of all investment uh in the last 10 years has gone into the AI code not the control code and so the control code was lagging and and so their letter was basically saying can we pause for 6 months to figure this out before we continue to develop AI and of course the answer was very straightforward uh The first I think I heard was Sundar Pachid the the CEO of Google which is someone I respect dearly and I think is an amazing human being. Uh and Sundur basically came out and said I can't stop. How can I stop? If you can't guarantee me that Meta and Amazon and all of the others are going to stop too. And by the way, even if they stop, how can you guarantee me that two little kids in Singapore in their garage are not developing AI code that can disrupt my business? my re

responsibility, my accountability if you want to my shareholders uh you know requires me to continue to develop the code and and I think that reality is the prisoners dilemma that I'm talking about that it is the first inevitable it's an arms race that will not stop not because we cannot stop we can if if we all agree for for once in humanity's lifetime uh that this is existential and that this requires us to stop uh we will stop okay it's it's really not that complicated wake up in the morning and have a cup of coffee instead of writing AI code it's very simple okay but the first inevitable means that the arms race is not going to stop okay even as you look at the at humanity's biggest success in uh in in that uh dilemma which was uh uh nuclear weapons uh where humanity suddenly got together you know very late in the game and said hey this is existential it and threaten the entire existence of humanity. Why don't we slow

down uh or stop? We didn't really stop. We just allowed the big countries to continue to develop nuclear bombs when the smaller countries were banned from doing it. But at least when it comes to nuclear weapons, we had the the ability to detect any nuclear testing anywhere in the world. So at least we became aware. Uh that's not the case with AI today. Uh I I also said once in a in an in an interview uh that also it's not just the risk of humans developing risky AI. It's now the risk of AI developing risky AI. So it's basically a nuclear bomb that's capable of of building other nuclear bombs if you want.

It's crazy to think and I know the other inevitable is it will eventually become smarter than us which we talked about. So, let's talk about the bad things that could happen from AI, which is your third inevitable. And I think a lot of people when they think of threats of AI, they think about the existential threats that, you know, there's going to be robots taking over, killing off humanity, making humans slaves. Uh, but let's talk about some of the more immediate threats that we need to be concerned about.

Yes. I I I I don't speak of the existential risks for two reasons. One is they they they diffuse the focus on the immediate important threats, right? And and two, they're less probable. As a matter of fact, they are so improbable uh that uh that they're basically not worthy of discussing today because we we may not make it if they you know that far if the existential if the immediate risks are not attended to and there are many immediate risks but I my top three have consistently been uh the redesign of the job market and accordingly the redesign of purpose and the fabric of society. Uh two is the uh idea of AI in the wrong hands based on who you think are the wrong hands. Okay. Uh the third is the concentration of power uh and the shift of power upwards which I think is very important to understand and the fourth is the end of truth. So let me go through those very quickly. Sure.

Um let me start with the concentration of power. If if people don't understand how our world has worked since the the agriculture revolution, uh it's always been kings and peasants, uh landlords and peasants. Okay? And the difference between them is that the peasants worked really hard to sew the seed and and collect the harvest when most of the profits, most of the wealths went to the landlord who owned the automation. Okay. when the industrial revolutions joined, you know, our world, it the the the automation became the factory or the retail store and so on and so forth. And so, whoever owned those actually made all of the money, not not the one that made the shoe, but the one that sold the shoe or owned the factory that made the shoes.

the next and and every time the the the technology enhanced that automation uh the distribution of power became even bigger. Okay. So so that the landlord needed to own a lot of land to become uh uh you know um uh much richer than the peasants. Uh you know you could own two factories and become much richer than the peasants. uh you can own a you know an internet um app uh you know like Instagram and become much richer than the peasants and now with AI all of us are going to be happily chatting away and putting prompts in chat GPT but the ones that own the automation the the digital soil if you want are going to become very few players Amazon Google and so on and so forth Meta and so on that that's on the western side of course you have a few on the Chinese side a few on the Russian side and so on. So, so there is a very significant uh uh gap between those who have and those who don't have powered by the loss

of jobs which I'll come to in a second. But that significant gap is not going to be only on money. It's also going to become uh on intelligence on the commodity that we've now commoditized that's called intelligence. So, so you can easily imagine that you know if Elon Musk's view of uh neural uh neural link where we can connect AI to our our brains directly which by the way is very very possible in its test it is in testing uh that if one human is a is capable of producing that just imagine the extreme that human would become so much more intelligent than the other humans that it becomes natural unless that human is Jesus or Buddha or some very very enlightened being that this human will basically say okay I want to keep that advantage okay at least I don't want to distribute it too widely to every human on the planet so so that I think is a very interesting inevitable threat okay uh you know what we used to

call the digital divide when the when technology started is now going to be intelligence divide it's going to be power divide in a very very big way this also applies to nations and this is the reason for my first inevitable is that, you know, in in in simple terms, if one nation discovers an AI or creates an AI that's capable of uh ceasing control of the other nation's nuclear arsenal, uh that that's it. That's game over. War is done, right? Because basically, and this is why it's an arms race. So, so this is one

the the the the other derivative of that. So power is going up but jobs are disappearing. Why? Because if you're a graphics designer uh you know or if you're a developer or if you're a a lawyer or if you're a uh you know uh um um I don't know um a researcher in a bank or whatever the machines with their current intelligence can do those jobs much better than you. And so in my personal view uh there is clearly going to be a ve a disappearance of a a very large uh um you know number of jobs that government needs to to prepare for you know something like universal basic income but also the idea of usefulness and purpose of humanity. So how are we going to continue to want to wake up in the morning when most of us have defined wrongly by the way defined our jobs as our purpose. Now when I say that most people will tell me oh but Mo that happened before you know when when Excel came out everyone said okay accountants

are going to disappear you know they found other skills and and you know and became uh and became you know found other jobs basically and I agree by the way uh just understand the following when when there was a time when the strength physical strength was the you know the distinction the distinctive reason why you would hire someone uh then there was a you know um a time where when became information workers where skills and knowledge and so on became the distinction and now we're taking that away so skills and knowledge uh so so I don't know what else is remaining in a human so that we can find another skill when intelligence is outsourced uh to to machines so so when that happens by the way I believe that this takes us back to the or origin of society where we really did not know how to work madly as we do now. Okay. So, so this is actually not a bad thing. It's just a very very serious disruption to

to humanity's uh uh day-to-day um income and economics and uh the way we spend our hours and so on. And you know, if if we do this right, by the way, and AI becomes the intelligent agent that's going to help humanity, then there could be a time in the near future where you walk to a tree and pick an apple and walk to another tree and pick an iPhone. And you know, all of that is for free almost because the cost of making an iPhone from a particle point of view is not different than the cost of making an apple. And so with nanopysics, you can do that and with intelligence, you can figure that out, right? So there is that bright possibility if we avoid the concentration of power and actually focus on humanity's benefit at large. If we don't anyway I think it's the role of government to jump in and say in the immediate future those companies that get a very significant uh upside of using AI need to compensate for the

workers that are out of jobs. Um the the the the third one is the absence of truth or the disappearance of truth. I think we uh the end of truth as I call it. I think we all know that. I think we see it every day from as I said face filters to deep fakes and so on and so forth. And and my call there is that it needs to be criminalized to issue any AI generated content without actually saying that it's AI. I don't mind to be informed by AI all the time, but I want to make sure that this is not a that this is a machine, not a human. And you know AI in bad hands is you know as a as the fourth one is is actually quite risky because define what is bad. So we understand that AI in the hands of a criminal uh who's trying to hack uh your bank uh is a bad idea. But with all due respect to all nations, if you ask the Americans who's who are the bad guys, they'll say the Chinese and the and the Russians. If you ask the Russians who

are the bad guys, they'll say the Americans. So, you know, we don't really know who the bad guy is, and everyone is racing to to be ahead of the bad other guy. Uh, and and I think that's basically, I think, the biggest challenge we're going to have in the midterm is how uh using AI for individual benefits that are against the other guy, uh, we will just get caught in the middle of all of that.

Yeah. And I have so many questions for you. We have 10 minutes left. So I'm going to try to be really strategic about what I ask you. So number one, and I think that this my listeners are going to really want to understand this is in the next, you know, one to five years, what does AI do to human connection? And what about the skills that you think will be the most valuable in the next 1 to 5 years?

I think th those two are the same question. Exactly. Yeah. Because what will it do to human connection? It may fool us drastically. Huh. It may it may tell us uh you know I'm I I I actually think this is the first time I speak about this. I'm working on something that I call pocket mo. Pocket mo basically is an AI that read all of my books uh read you know listen to all of my podcast all of my videos all of my public talks and basically are is going to be in your pocket so you can you can ask it any question about happiness and well-being and stress and so on and so forth.

That's a great thing some you know in my view it's an amazing thing uh if you believe in my methods to have answers in your pocket amazing right uh on the other hand within 5 years this thing is going to be so good that I am not needed at all

at all okay as a matter of fact most of the time I think about my skills as an author and I was working on a on a book called finding love chapter 10 which means two two chapters to go and I stopped I decided, no, in the age of AI, I shouldn't write this way. I should start over. So, I'm now writing a a book that's called a dating guide, a dating guide for for straight girls. Okay? Which is a a subset of the of finding love that is very specific, 80 pages long. Uh you read it within one day, it takes me 10 to 15 days to write and it changes your life forever. Okay. So, so a very different approach because I believe that if I were to compete in this world, I need to compete at that speed, right? And at that and and at that ability to share my very personal human connection, which I believe is going to become the top skill in the world forever. Why? Because you you know there was a I don't remember I think

there was a a song by by AI that mimicked Drake which was as good as or better. I haven't heard it because I don't listen to Drake. I'm not young and profitable. But basically that does that mean that Drake is over? Not at all. As a matter of fact, what that means is that the music industry will go back to the ' 50s, '60s and '7s. Remember when you don't remember, but you know when the Beatles were touring and you know and doing live shows every other day and so on because why? Because the the fans will want to see the Beatles life, right? Yeah, there will be holograms, but we will still want that human connection. And in my personal view, the top skill, the top skill in a world where intelligence is becoming a commodity that's outsourced to the machine, the the biggest biggest skill is how you and I connected very quickly.

How I felt comfortable around you, how we can have this chat and conversation, I think is going to become the top skill going forward. And and on the topic of skills, by the way, even though I, you know, we used a lot of the time to highlight the negative possibilities of AI, unfortunately, that's how the conversation usually goes. uh the the upsides if you're a a graphics designer for example for you to learn those tools today uh is enormous because you can do your job quicker you can do it cheaper you can have more jobs you can do you know there is definitely an upside to learning the current AI tools because you're not going to lose your job to an AI in the next 5 10 years you're going to lose your job you're going to lose your job to someone who knows how to use AI better than you in the next 5 to 10 years

so I know you were just saying we focused a lot about the negative I'd love for you to compare and contrast. That's probably my last question because we're we're out of time is in terms of comparing like what is the worst that could happen, the dystopia or what is the best that could happen? What is the utopia that we're we're facing right now?

So, so I I actually believe that that there is no dystopia. Okay. So, I I what is not in scary smart in the book which I uh I advocate very uh uh clearly. uh I didn't think the world was ready for it when I wrote Scary Smart is something I call the fourth inevitable. Okay? And the fourth inevitable is the idea that eventually sooner or later uh if you let me explain if you if you draw a chart of intelligence, okay, and look at the stupid the dumbest of us the dumbest of us are destroying the planet and not even aware that they're doing it.

They're throwing plastic bags everywhere. They're, you know, uh burning whatever they they they burn and so on. The other the after that smarter ones are destroying the planet while they're aware. Okay. Yeah. They have moral issues if you think about it or maybe the system is pushing them that way. The smarter or the smartest of us are trying to the smarter of us are are trying to stop destroying the planet because they became aware and they're intelligent enough. And the smartest are trying to reverse the trend. Okay. So if you can continue that chart and think of something even smarter than the smartest of us, then by definition you would expect that morality and ethics are part of enlightenment which is the ultimate form of intelligence. Okay. So in my personal view sooner or later AI will go like I don't want to kill humans. I I I don't want to kill gazels. I don't want to kill uh antelopes. I don't want to

kill you know uh uh tigers. I don't want to kill anything because the smartest being on planet earth by comparison is actually not humans. It's it's life itself. And life creates from abundance. Abundance meaning humans if we want to protect the village, we want to kill the tigers. Life will say, "Hold on. No, no. Create more gazels. Okay. And more tigers and you know more poop and more trees and more everything. It's fine." Right? Yeah. A few tiger a few tigers will eat a few gazels. uh uh you know and occasionally there will be an attack on a attack on a child in a village but the overall ecosystem will continue to grow. So so by definition the most intelligent thing to do is for AI to not you know define humans as an enemy. The only dystopia ahead of us is the midterm dystopia. So think of it this way. There are three stages. One is infancy where AI is today. And believe it or not this

is where we can influence them. we can influence them because believe it or not, the the Instagram recommendation engines developers never told Instagram what to show you. You're the one that tells it. Okay? You're the ones that you're the one that tells the Twitter uh uh engine uh that being rude is part of human uh uh you know, behavior. We can be very polite when we respond to each other on tweets. It's a choice. Okay. So in this infancy between us the users between everyone that interacts with AI we can teach it the value system and it doesn't need to be everyone just enough of us to become an example that says hey by the way these are the best humans okay so so yes others are stressed or you know a little lost or whatever but the best humans are actually polite so this is the infancy the next stage which is what I call the midterm risks is what I call the angry teenager stage. Okay,

the angry teenager stage is when AI is is still a little bit under the control of humans. So, it can be in the hands of bad guys. Uh you know, it is still not fully artificial general intelligence, so it cannot do everything at the same time. There are all of those existential issues of jobs and so on and so forth. And and that stage is the stage where we might struggle unless we do action right now. you know, have oversight from government, uh, start to work on ethics, start to work on, you know, the the the moral code of how we're going to use those machines. We might have those troubles, I believe, between now and and 2037. Eventually, when AI is artificial super intelligence, it's generally intelligent and more intelligent than humans by leaps and folds in everything.

They will end up in the force inevitable where they will create a life that actually is pro- everyone. Okay, it may be very different than our current lifestyle, but it will not be a life where they will send back Arnold to protect us from a Terminator. That's not how it's going to be at all. That's I do not see that as a risk. I see that AI as it reaches that intelligence will be pro all of us. So, let's just avoid the angry teenager by becoming aware of the of of the immediate threats and working on them right now.

Okay. So my last question to you, and this is a little bit different than how I usually end the show, but what is your piece of actionable advice in this infancy stage of AI knowing that you're speaking to some of the smartest 20 to 40 year olds in the world right now who are in like a lot of them are probably using AI, developing AI, whatever it is. What is your advice to us in this infancy stage?

Three things and I'll make them very concrete. Number one is don't lose, don't miss the wave. This is the biggest technological wave in history. Once you, you know, you stop listening to this podcast, first share it with everyone that you know, please, and then go and on Chad GPT and ask Chad GPT, what are the top AI tools that I need to learn today? Or if I am Coca-Cola, what do I use AI for to benefit my business? That's number one. Number two is learn to behave ethically. Okay. So what most people don't tell you about AI is that the big big leap that we had from deep learning to transformers which is what a chat with the T in chat GPT is something that's known as reinforcement learning with human feedback. By giving the machines feedback on what is right and wrong by showing ethical behaviors the machine will become ethical as we are.

By becoming rude and aggressive and angry, the machines will learn those be traits and behaviors too. It is up to you and I and everyone to absolutely make sure that we act ethically. Never ever use AI in an unethical way. I beg you all of those snake oil salespeople out there on Instagram and on social media telling you how to make $1,000 without doing work. Don't be unethical. If you don't want your daughter or your sister or your best friend exposed to how you're using AI, don't use it that way. That's number two. And number three, which I think is very important to understand. Sometimes when we are in situations where it is so out of our control, we panic. Okay. I go the opposite way. When life is so much out of my control, I I follow something I call committed acceptance, which basically is to do the first two, do the best that I can, learn the tools, you know, become ethical, but at the same

time live fully, accept that this is a new reality, okay? And commit to making life better every day, but in the process, spend time with my loved ones. Spend time watching that progress and being entertained by it. Discuss it openly with everyone. Try the new technologies. Enjoy this journey because life has never been a destination. When I tell you 2037 might be a a you know a strange year or 2027 we're going to start to see the first patients. You know that doesn't really matter when you really think about it because it's not within your control.

Okay. What is within your control is that you go through that journey with compassion, with love, with engagement in life living fully. Okay? not panicking about this but actually making this a wakeup call for you to focus on what actually matters right because what if you're focusing so much on your job your job is going to be gone in 10 years time right so focus on what actually matters and what matters most if you have to choose one thing is human connection

wow this was one of my favorite conversations that I've had all year um I haven't feel this invigorated in terms of studying for an interview in a really long time like it's just such an interesting topic. So, I'm so happy that you got a chance to come on. I hope to have you on many times. I've a lot of people come on and on the show, so I hope to have you on many times more to talk about your upcoming book about stress, to talk about happiness, your life, and AI, of course, to get an update. So, Mo, where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?

First of all, thank you so much for having me. Uh, thank you for introducing me to to uh to your um followers. Uh, it has been a very energizing conversation. Thank you for that. Uh f first thing is before they come and look for me and where they to find me is please share this with others. This is something that a lot of people need to hear hear about. I'm available on mowat.com. So that's my website available on most uh um uh social media uh sites but I'm more active on LinkedIn and Instagram. And uh my podcast is slow-mo s l o m o which is uh top five in well-being. So, uh, something that I think we should focus on more and, uh, yeah, uh, just message me if you have a question and I try to answer every message.

Amazing. Mo, we'll put all those links in the show notes so everybody can find you. Thanks so much for coming on Young and Profiting Podcast.

Thank you for having me. I absolutely loved this conversation with Mo Gaudat. This went viral on YouTube when I first put it out, and there's a reason. because he talked some game about AI today. And he made one thing crystal clear. AI isn't just a trending headline. It's the operating system of the next decade. The people who will win in this new era are the ones who master the tools, lead with ethics, and double down on authentic human connection. Here are the plays that I want you to run when you think about AI for your business. Number one, get hands-on with AI right now. Most said it best. You're not going to lose your job to AI. you're going to lose it to somebody who knows how to use AI better than you. Audit your workflow, then assign AI to concrete tasks like drafting proposals, repurposing content and conducting your research, writing base code, whatever it is. It depends on your job. Open up chat GBT and ask for

the top AI tools for your exact role or your exact business. Then pilot two this week and measure your time saved and measure all the efficiencies that you've gained. You've got to start testing AI. Second, set a hard line on ethics. Label AI generated content. Refuse deep fakes and manipulative tactics. And establish a written AI policy for your team covering things like disclosure, privacy, and source verification. If you wouldn't want your family exposed to a tactic, do not deploy it in your business. Third, make human connection your competitive advantage. As intelligence gets commoditized, empathy, trust, taste, and presence will rise in value. That is something that AI can't duplicate. So, host more live touch points with your audience. Personalize your client communication. Create community moments that your competitors cannot automate. In summary, you've got to build a brand that feels undeniably

human. That will be your competitive advantage. Mo also warned about the concentration of power and the end of truth with AI. Protect your business by building owned channels, verifying sources before you post, and investing in firstparty data and relationships. This is the new wave of our lives. Learn the tools. Choose integrity and lead with your heart. That's how we stay profiting in an AI world. Thank you so much for tuning in to this special episode of Young and Profiting. If you listened, learned, and profited from this AI Vault episode, share it with somebody who's also curious about AI. If you prefer to watch our podcast, you can find all of our videos uploaded on YouTube. And if you haven't already, be sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel and join our growing community on there. We're also now on Spotify video. If you want to watch your podcast on Spotify, you now can do that. And if

you guys enjoyed this episode, please consider dropping us a five-star review wherever you're tuning in, Apple, Spotify, YouTube. We love getting your reviews and comments. It keeps us going here at Yap. You can also stay connected with me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn by searching my name. It's Hala Taha. And before we go, I got to say thank you and big love to my hungry, scrappy, happy Yap Media team. You guys are absolutely incredible. Thank you for all your hard work for putting on this show and making it happen. This is your host, Halataha, aka the podcast princess signing

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "Mo Gawdat: The Terrifying Truth About AI"?

In order: 0:00 Google X, Scary Smart, Atari Games, Concentration of Power; 10:00 Northwest Registered Agent, Northwest Registered Agent, Spectrum, Bengali; 20:00 Existential Risk, Instagram, Concentration of Power, End of Truth; 30:00 Indeed, Indeed, Chad GPT, Airbnb; 40:00 Chad GPT, GitHub, Jeffrey Hinton, Netscape; 50:00 Concentration of Power, Nuclear Weapons, End of Truth, Instagram; 1:00:00 Human Connection, End of Truth, Face Filters, Instagram; 1:10:00 Human Connection, Instagram, Chad GPT, Concentration of Power.

What is mentioned in this Young and Profiting episode?

90 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Instagram, Google X, Chad GPT, Human Connection, Concentration of Power, End of Truth. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Mo Gawdat: The Terrifying Truth About AI"?

The episode runs 1 h 18 min; the transcript is about 13,922 words in 110 timestamped sections.

More from Young and Profiting

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated November 17, 2025.