0086 - AI is Humanity’s Savior and Possibly Our Worst Mistake! ft Mo Gawdat

Imagine waking up to a world run by hyper-intelligent machines. It sounds like science fiction, but Mo Gawdat, former Chief Business Officer at Google X, bestselling author, and renowned happiness evangelist, says it's coming faster than you think.

In this gripping episode, Mo shares a prophetic vision that’s equal parts warning and hope. As we hurtle toward a future where artificial intelligence holds unimaginable power, Mo argues we are at a tipping point: AI will either magnify our flaws or elevate humanity to unprecedented heights. But first, brace yourself for a dystopian phase, driven not by technology itself, but by our own deeply flawed ethics.

Mo passionately explains why Africa, especially, must urgently stake its claim in the rapidly emerging "digital soil," warning that delay could lead to decades of digital colonization. Yet, his message isn’t purely cautionary. He shows us a clear, optimistic path to harness AI as a force for true abundance, joy, and human flourishing—provided we take responsibility now.

Will we raise AI to be Superman or a supervillain? Mo insists the choice is ours.

Watch as Ben Owden hosts a conversation filled with sharp insights, urgent warnings, and an inspiring vision for a world where technology serves our collective happiness, not our undoing.

Mo Gawdat's Books: https://www.mogawdat.com/books

WhyLead's Web: https://www.whyleadothers.com/podcast

WhyLead's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/whyleadconsultancy/?viewAsMember=true

WhyLead's Twitter: https://twitter.com/whyleadothers

Ben Owden's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benowden/

Ben Owden's Twitter: https://twitter.com/godsrafiki

#BenOwden #WhyLead #WhyLeadPodcast #africanleadership  #mogawdat  #ScarySmart #AIRevolution #SlowMoPodcast #futureofai  #ethicalai  #DigitalTransformation #aiforgood  #humancenteredai  #FutureReadySummit

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

AI will learn from us. I call it raising Superman. It's not the code that we write that teaches AI, it's the data that is fed to them in just a few years. The breakthrough of intelligence will enable us to create anything, literally anything, out of the net. Most of the challenges that humanity faces today are just a limitation on intelligence. Give me enough intelligence and I'll stop climate change. It's really not that complicated. And it might be something that is much simpler than we think. And we're on that cusp of becoming so intelligent by limiting our intelligence with the machines that we can get there. So, absolutely nothing wrong with AI. It's a lot wrong with our value set. But we build the human system on in the age of the lives of the machines.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Let's see if that's how everything is gonna play out. Where the digital world will not just be something that includes our lives, but it will be an earth of its own that we build our lives upon. We navigate in transition to that world, make sure that the world doesn't become Aurelian, so to speak, and we retain some of the best aspects of our not.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

The dystopia sadly is not the result of artificial intelligence because as you would agree with me, intelligence is an energy that has no polarity. If you use it for good, it delivers good, if you use it for bad, it delivers evil. The challenge we have is that the early uses of AI are going to be serving and magnifying a system that humanity has already built that benefits very few at the expense of the majority. Concentration of power or polarity of economics or the trend we've seen with social media leading to loneliness and separation, the gap between Africa and the rest of the world if we don't catch up. All of those are going to be magnified massively in the next 10 to 12 years. We really have to wake up and be presented in an AI that is culturally sensitive, language sensitive, knowledge sensitive, tradition sensitive to Africa. And as we do, sadly, I believe we have to try and shorten that dystopia by asking everyone to make sure that AI is on our side, even as bad actors try to make it benefit them at our expense.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

I'm your host, Ben Odin. Now imagine waking up to a world where machines hold the highest IQ and wealth shifts overnight. Are you ready for that world? Do you feel uneasy knowing today's AI simply mirrors our flawed ethics? Africa is sprinting to catch up with the AI race, yet countries like the US and China are already planting their flags on the digital soil. What steps can we take right now to ensure our startups, governments, and communities on the ground, not just rented? And so to explore all of these questions, I am joined by a tech visionary, uh turned happiness evangelist. After three decades in Silicon Valley, most recently as chief business officer at Google X, he pivoted to make joy his life's work. He's a four-time best-selling author, having written books like Solve for Happy, Scary Smart, The Little Voice in Your Head, and Unstressable. Host of a top mental health podcast, Slow Mo, founder of One Billion Happy, co-founder of Unstressable, and chief AI officer at Flight Story. Driven by personal tragedy and an engineer's curiosity, he combines hard-worn insights and deep conversations to explore how we can all learn, share, and live happier, more meaningful lives. Ladies and gentlemen, Morgadat Mo, you're most welcome. What a generous introduction. Thank you. Your first book is about happiness. And I believe in many ways, and this could be an assumption on my part, happiness is at the core of what drives you and how you hope to influence the world. Commitments like helping a billion people become happier support this, I guess, assumption on my part. Even when you speak about the utopia, so to speak, that AI can usher us into, um, following this dystopian that maybe is uh going to be in the immediate short term, happiness is still a desired fabric of that reality. What makes happiness a superior, or maybe dare I say, ultimate metric uh for human flourishing for you? And what do you think? What do you think is the reason why a lot of people, it's much easier to be driven by this desire to flee suffering rather than the intentionality to actively take steps towards becoming happy because you can flee suffering but never really truly become happy.

unknown 5:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

Wow, that's a multi-layered question. I would I would start by saying, yes, absolutely, it is my uh the mission of the rest of my life. I'm hoping that uh by the end of my life I would spend everything I've earned in my Google years on one billion happy and hopefully uh deliver at least a path to one billion happy and then be forgotten. That would be an amazing, amazing outcome. I I think the uh the you know, most of my work, if you follow the the trajectory, is it started with an explanation, an engineering approach to happiness and solve for happy. Then it started to address the biggest reasons for unhappiness. Uh, and I'll I'll continue to do that for as long as I can, one of which was artificial intelligence, which most people think is an odd addition to my collection of work. Uh, but it, you know, as as AI magnifies humanity, then if we're unhappy, it will make us miserable. And so um, you know, it it is quite interesting because you you correctly point that uh um you know avoiding suffering does not reflect happiness. Uh, by definition, um our world I think is more and more designed for for unhappiness, if you want. Uh, you know, life in general requires us to persevere and you know uh try hard, and sometimes there will be obstacles on our way, and sometimes times will be unpredictable, and so on. But believe it or not, none of that actually is uh uh you know a prerequisite to unhappiness. Uh, you know, you could you could simply be in the most difficult place on earth and still find that peaceful uh contentment that you're okay with life as it is. And and that's simply, you know, if you want the simplest examples, you know, rain never really makes you happy or unhappy. Rain makes you happy if it's your ex-girlfriend's wedding, right? You know, it makes you unhappy if you want to sit in the sun, right? There's no inherent happiness in anything. And accordingly, you know, nothing really has the power to make you happy or unhappy. Uh uh although in the modern world we try to sell you happiness uh through things and acquisitions and you know, ego and positioning in the in society and so on, which are all fleeting and accordingly uh consistently causing more unhappiness. If if you think about it, uh uh, you know, the rain example, happiness is not the result of what life gives you, but it's the result of what you how how you think about what life gives you. And so if you know if you compare the what life gives you to your expectations of how you want life to be, and life falls short, you're unhappy, right? If you wanted rain and life gave you rain, you're happy. If you wanted rain and life didn't give you rain, you're unhappy. And so when you really think about it, it's uh it's mathematical, it's almost algorithmic. Uh, you know, your happiness is equal to or greater than the difference between your expectation, uh your you know, your perception of how life is and your expectations and hopes and wishes of how life should be. And and when you really look at those two, you realize that your expectations are set within your head, and your perception of your life is set within your head. It's entirely inside your head, right? You could be stuck in traffic telling yourself that my expectation is that I should be there in 10 minutes and now it's going to be 15 and be miserable for it. Or you could be stuck in traffic and telling yourself, oh my god, I am in a car, uh, you know, which most people don't take for granted. I am in uh, you know, I have someone waiting for me on the other side. Uh I'm safe. There are no bombs landing on my head. My family is safe. You know, I can afford to be five minutes late by texting someone because I have an amazing communication device that says I'm really sorry I'm stuck in traffic. And you, if you see it that way, you're not unhappy at all. As a matter of fact, you're completely contented with the situation, and you can even become happy by just playing some music for the extra five minutes. And that's a choice. And I think what I'm advocating to the world is that we've been making quite a few wrong choices that we should change.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

I like that because it sounds like um the journey to become happier is basically going small rather than going big.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

I believe that.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

Yeah, focusing on the here and now rather than um constantly fixated on what's next.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

I I believe that. One of my one of my very, very uh uh um you know deliberate practices is to minimize, minimize, minimize, minimize, minimize. I mean, you can see uh I I I'm always in a black t-shirt and a pair of jeans, which makes my life so much simpler. Uh, you know, it it it uh it it also means that I don't have to really co be concerned about uh what people think of what I wear. It's it's nice, it's clean, it's you know comfortable, uh, it's not disrespectful, there is nothing you can really read in it. Uh but I do that with everything in my life. So I I you know I attempt to take 10 items out of my home every Saturday uh and and hand them out to charity or get rid of them if they're not charity worthy. And and you'll be amazed at how much happiness comes from less, from no clutter, from not having to worry about things that are weighing you down.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

Wow, beautiful. Um now I like the connection you made there between happiness and AI because I think if you ask the majority of people who are maybe trying to adapt to AI, the idea of AI is connected a lot to productivity. It's here to simplify, it's here to make us produce more, get more done. Um, but I love this connection to happiness. And I think something that I was curious about, you know, um leading up to this conversation is that throughout most of human history, we've essentially built and designed our lives um in the analog world, right? Um and so the earth is sort of a substrate that we've built our life upon. Um, but you know, having dived into your work, you don't really see AI as uh an extension, something that comes to maybe make uh improvements in our lives. Rather, it will become a form of a substrate where that we build our lives upon. And I think that's uh if things do play out that way, then life will be very, very differently. And so as let's scenario play and assume that's how everything is gonna play out, where the digital world will not just be something that improves our lives, but it will be an earth of its own that we build our lives upon. Um, how do we as we're as we maybe navigate and transition to that world, how do we make sure that the world doesn't become Orwellian, so to speak, here? Um and we retain some of the best aspects of our world as we know it. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

Uh unfortunately, it will become Orwellian. One, you know, my my last my post before last or my current book is called Alive, and I post it uh weekly and in five pages on my Substack. And uh and uh it is uh my last post was called Our 1984, and and in a in a very interesting way. Uh I am you know, most people who speak about artificial intelligence will cite what we normally refer to as a singularity, uh a level of uncertainty. Uh, because the massive advancement of AI is something that's never happened uh before in human history. Uh sort of the the rules of the game change so much. Uh you know, I mean, think about it. Uh Africa, with you know, organizations like Vodacom, for example, is not a mile away from the advancements of the rest of the world. You know, you still have access to information, you still have access to communication, you still have access to a proper infrastructure and so on and so forth. Uh, if you know one of the big players of AI, China or America, wins big, uh, the gap between the smartest African, say, at 200 IQ points, and the smartest person who owns that technology uh might be thousands, tens of thousands of IQ points because you're augmenting a human intelligence with a machine that is capable of so much more intelligence. And and and so that landscape is very, very uncharted. We can't even imagine properly. Anyone that tells you we understand that future is arrogant. Uh, and I I don't claim to, I just share my points of view so that people reflect. Uh, my view, sadly, is that we will go through a dystopia before we go to a utopia. And and and both are almost 100% likely in my mind. Uh, the dystopia, sadly, is not the result of artificial intelligence, because, as you would agree with me, intelligence is an energy that has no polarity. If you use it for good, it delivers good. If you use it for bad, it delivers evil, right? Uh you know, the the challenge we have is that the early uses of AI are going to be serving and magnifying a system uh that humanity has already built that benefits very few at the expense of the majority. Uh and and that system, uh, you know, in in terms of concentration of power or uh polarity of economics or uh, you know, the the trend we've seen with social media leading to loneliness and separation, uh, you know, all of all of those are going to be magnified massively in the next 10 to 12 years. Uh, another interesting trend is the is the gap between Africa and the rest of the world, uh, if we don't catch up. You have to understand that sadly, uh, you know, language models that you uh that most of us use today are more Californian than they are Middle Eastern or African or you know uh German even. Uh they they they basically uh hang on to a a view of the world uh that requires you to be very clever as you prompt them so that they give up on. You know, their initial response will sound exactly like a Californian uh you know hired uh journalist would sound. And so and so you you we really have to wake up and be presented in a in an AI that that is culturally sensitive, language sensitive, knowledge sensitive, uh uh uh uh tradition sensitive to Africa. Uh and as we do, sadly, I believe we have to try and shorten that dystopia by asking everyone uh to make sure that AI is on our side, even as bad actors try to make it benefit them at our expense.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

Yeah. Um and I'm glad that you brought the conversation towards this direction because, you know, uh looking at uh Face Rip, right, which is an acronym for freedom, accountability, connectedness, economics, reality, innovation, and power, and which are the six domains under AI's onslaught. Um so you know, you talk about redefining these domains, and I'd like to zoom in on power, which you've just highlighted right now, redefining power, right? Um, because there's a changing landscape of what it means to be powerful. Um and you say, you know, the people building platform AIs will own the digital soil, um, comparing the digital soil to actual physical land and how it has represented powerful uh millenniums, um, which will allow them to amass an imaginable amount of wealth in a short time. Now, recently we know the US owns a big chunk of that soil. China also made a move to own a big chunk of that soil. Um, but you know, Africa, like you're saying, Middle East, um, we're sort of lagging behind on this. And so turning to Africa specifically, what concrete steps can African governments, um, startups, or communities take uh right now to ensure that we don't just become tenants in this digital soil, uh, but owners so that we capture the value and the opportunity that comes with this new form of power? It's an incredible question.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

So uh the the the you know, uh America's approach and China's approach are very different. You have to be aware of that. Uh so China is very pro-uh uh open source, and some of the tech that comes out of China, whether deep sea, Cormanus, and so on, uh, are superior in so many ways. And and and I think this uh uh uh Cold War, if you want, will continue. Now, uh the the game is very straightforward. Sadly, uh power has always aggregated to the top, right? So the landlord, by definition of the name, is a lord that applied you know feudalism to the peasants, not even tenants. And uh and and of course, the digital soil of the future is going to be artificial intelligence and robotics. And so those who own that power will may will have enormous power. But this is the first time in history where we have a dichotomy, an arbitrage, if you want, uh, because at the same time that power will be concentrated at the top for the platform owners, there is a massive democracy of power. Uh, you you could see that in its extreme uh with something like the Houthis being able to use a drone that is$3,000 worth to knock an F-16 off a uh you know uh a sea um um a US military ship in the Red Sea, right? So so you know, they can use a$3 thing to affect a$160 million thing, right? And I think the idea here is that because of that amazing uh access to intelligence, because of some of the work that's happening, whether by China or some of the American players around open source, because of the uh uh edge platforms that are starting to happen, where AI now can run on your phone, uh, it can run on a very, very small footprint uh on an old computer, right? Uh by by becoming aware of that, uh I think we can invent and innovate in Africa as much as anywhere else in the world, right? And I and I think the reality is that the disruption, like any other technology we've seen before, just 10 times faster, uh, that can happen because of that. Uh would would take something like the internet revolution, which was incredibly fast in pace, and and multiply that by 100x speed. The thing to be aware of though is that because it's at 100x speed, every day that we lose is equivalent to a year of the internet era, right? And so accordingly, we need to really jump in and get those technologies. Download Deep Seek on your uh on your computer and learn, right? Uh you know, I I am an author, so my current book, I don't claim to compete with a world of AI. I'm writing it with an AI. So we're we're co-authors in it. I'm I'm not asking the AI questions and copying and pasting. I'm actually asking the AI questions and we're debating them as two intelligent beings discussing it at the same time. And I think that's the idea. The idea is that this revolution is here. There is an a massive democracy of access to power, if you want. Uh, so use it.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

Uh and I'm glad that you brought up this new book because you know, we're as we're winding down our conversation. Um, the last question that I wanted to ask you is speaking of this upcoming book, um Alive, um, and this specific choice that you made to collaborate, not just with an AI, but with an audience that got an advanced copy of your book and the debate that happens. Because I think um this experiment, at least in my observation, it changes a few things because authors and thinkers were seen as originators of ideas, but this more collaborative approach shifts the identity to curation and synthesis, so to speak. So, what makes this next book important and especially the choices you've made in how it's produced? Oh, thank you for bringing this up.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

This is very dear to my heart. Uh uh You see, I I started the conversation by saying anyone who knows who who claims to know what's about to happen is arrogant. And I don't, right? And but it is so important uh that we uh discuss this uh that I believe uh I have to say what I believe and and and hope that others will contribute. And and this model where I have conversations with AI works both ways. It informs me, but it also informs the AI about humanity's views on this. It informs the AI about our concern, right? And having, we're now around 5,000 readers reviewing this is a scary experiment for an author. Because believe it or not, when I write something on a paperback and give it to you and you don't like it, I don't get intimidated all the time. I don't get shocked all the time by some of the views that completely contradict my view. But in this experiment, I am actually accepting that shock to my confidence, if you want, because the inputs that come in from the readers are uh you know are really extremely valuable in shaping the thinking around this. And so so, you know, on Substack, basically I have 5,000 followers that read almost two-thirds of every post. I try to uh, you know, uh sometimes more and sometimes less, but for publishing reasons, unfortunately, I cannot give them access for free to the whole text. Uh but but basically uh that experiment then makes the the views of our AI future sort of guided by me, but really decided by the AI and the readers. And I I really think beyond being a very interesting way to write, uh putting yourself out there while you're writing, I think it's a very interesting experiment of how our future should look like, where uh where it's the people and the AI that is that are consulted on a future that works for all of us. And hopefully the governments and the corporations would then listen to us and say, we get it, this is what you want, this is how what we're going to deliver.

SPEAKER_00 23:53

Thank you so much for that. And I love that the mutuality of influence that we share with AI. And so if we wanted to mirror our world, we have to present the best side of the humanity.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

And so AI will learn from us. I call it raising Superman. Okay, it's not the code that we write that teaches AI, it's the data that is fed to them. And and you know, I the analogy I always give is you know, this alien being that arrives to planet Earth with superpowers, that alien being doesn't become Superman because of the of the superpowers. It, you know, the child becomes Superman because the parents that adopted the child taught it to protect and serve, right? If they taught it to steal banks and make them richer, they would be, you know, the child would become a supervillain. And I think it's up to every one of us to become that parent, to show AI that we care, that you know, this this mindset of scarcity that built capitalism where a few are trying to accumulate all of the wealth and power is not needed anymore because in just a few years, the the the the breakthrough of intelligence will enable us to create anything, literally anything, out of thin air, right? Because most of the challenges that humanity faces today are just a limitation on intelligence. Give me enough intelligence and I'll solve climate change. It's really not that complicated. And it might be something that is much simpler than we think. It might not be electric cars, it might be a specific bacteria that we launch at a specific trajectory through physics, at a, you know, uh, you know, an our understanding of chemistry that would hit something at a certain point in time and consume CO2, right? Uh it could be a better understanding of biology and taking photosynthesis and and you know multiplying it through a different way. And all of that can be served with intelligence. And we're on that cusp of becoming so intelligent by augmenting our intelligence with the machines that we can get there. So I don't understand if we can create this incredible utopia of abundance. Why does it really matter if someone has two Ferraris when none of us need a Ferrari at all? And I think that's the mindset change that needs to happen. There's absolutely nothing wrong with AI. Uh, there is a lot wrong with our value set, what we built the human system on in the age of the rise of the machines.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Well, I I love this conversation, and I could talk for the next two hours. Uh, but uh we have come to the end of this uh brief conversation that um we had, and thank you so much for your insights. Um, and I would encourage all the viewers and the listeners to go uh purchase um any one of the four books. Um you'll learn a lot about how to be happier, but also how to um adapt and be a part of this AI revolution that's taking over the world. Thank you so much, Mogadat, for this um opportunity to talk with you and our to our dear listeners. Uh, have a wonderful day. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

unknown 26:53

Thank you.