Futurists Gerd Leonhard & Anton Musgrave - The World By 2030 Episode 2 Incl. Q&A

Hi, I'm Gerd Leonhardt, futurist. I'm here in beautiful Cape Town, South Africa with my good friend and colleague Anton Musgrave, who runs Future World. We've done a few episodes on the world by 2030, it's getting more exciting and excited by the minute. We have a great topic today to talk about, artificial intelligence, the future of work and jobs. And it's not as dark as it sounds. I've said many times, I think quoting, I think an old Supreme Court judge who said one machine can replace 1,000 ordinary workers, but no machine can replace an extraordinary worker. And that was 150 years ago. So let's talk about AI and all these things that are currently cooking. Let's start with ChatGPT, artificial intelligence, generative AI. And just as a quick. I'll start with this and then we'll talk more about this. There's been a great moment in AI and this has been going on really for 20 or 30 years, where the transformer model was started by Google. Deep learning, machine learning is what everybody's working on. But all of a sudden OpenAI decides to release ChatGPT. I think it was 3.0, now it's going to be 4.0 very soon to the public, more or less, to basically create a Sputnik moment. And I think OpenAI was fully aware of this, that it wouldn't work in most cases or it wouldn't really produce long term results, but they decided to jump the gun to create the sort of race to the moon. You could say that basically openais like Sputnik and Google and Microsoft are kind of trying to land on the moon. That's how I look at it. But what's your take on ChatGPT generative AI?

Well, I think, Gerd, firstly it's amusement at the paranoia, at the panic, at the amazement, if you like. I mean, is it interesting? Exciting? Absolutely. But let's not forget what happened in 1990, 1991, when we started connecting computers through a dial up modem and the world was amazed and scared. And Here we are 25 or so years later of fundamental change and we're only reaching the start line of that change. And ChatGPT and all its forms, other names if you like, is exactly the same. It's the start of something that's not going to go away. Is it scary?

Absolutely.

Is it exciting? Profoundly so.

Well, I think, you know, unlike the Metaverse, which is this vision of mostly meta and Zuckerberg, that we're all going to live in this Wearing a helmet and taking refuge in his empire. AI, I think, is much more of a long term lasting concept. I always say now we have infotech, we have biotech, we have sustainable tech, energy tech, and then we have AI tech. It's of that magnitude. And I think what we're seeing with ChatGPT, to me is the pinnacle of that. I mean, basically just a tiny, the tip of the iceberg there, right? Because basically what it does, it regurgitates like an autocomplete, you could say, or some people say a fancy parrot. But it's also very much a dilettanti. So it has actually no idea what it's talking about. And I think this is the best word for it is a dilettanti. You know, somebody who looks like they know a lot and is very good at bringing it across, but ultimately has nothing underneath.

There's no nuance, there's no perspective and there's no understanding.

So I think this comes apart from the fact that this is a language model and LLM, a large language model. And a large language model uses language to find things. It doesn't use images, it doesn't use other things that are not data. It uses languages and it goes out to trillions of words and recombines them in different ways that make the most sense. And many times it's really amazing. So if you're having a problem connecting your camera to your computer and it will give you a whole tutorial and that's really powerful. As soon as you ask anything about opinion like should South Africa be dependent on coal or whatever, it will come up with something that sounds reasonable, but if you probe deeper, it will come up with complete conjecture. Because at some point somebody may have written somewhere around the world that South Africa is already out of coal, and they find that and they put it together. So to me, this is a very, very big question is that this engine that produces roughly 3% of reality, we're looking at it as if it was reality. And that's what we always do.

It's like Lego blocks, right? I mean, it's like, you know, billions and billions and billions of Lego blocks words and it suddenly just finds different ways of constructing a sentence that reads logically in English. But where's the review function, where's the insight function, where's the nuance? And where's the connecting this set of ideas to an unrelated set of ideas in another industry and then drawing the joint inference from it that doesn't exist? But hey, Gerd, it's only ChatGPT version 3.4 or version 4 soon. The point is, by 2030, it is going to be ubiquitous, it is going to be way more powerful, and it is going to take away many, many jobs. What we've got to figure out is how do we manage its impact and what impact we want it to have, firstly and secondly, how do we then train humans, develop humans to have skills that a competent language processor can't replace?

Well, we've both talked about this for a long time, about routine, how routine is being replaced by machines. But a lot of times when we look at routine, it's only pieces of what we do that is routine. For example, you can outsource your bookkeeping to zero, and you can outsource your scheduling to slack or routines. But driving a car, for example, people think it's routine, but actually turns out it's not. It's very difficult to have level five automated driving. And if we get level three or four, we consider ourselves lucky and it's a great help. But we're still driving and we still have truckers. So we have this common misunderstanding that we're much further along and the machines will actually replace all of this. I believe that it will give us a chance to outsource the routine work, the monkey work, the commodity work, the dirty, dull and dangerous. You know, like in mining. Right. So that can be painful if you do, you know, if you work like a robot, a robot takes your job. But very few people work entirely like a robot. So, for example, check out in the supermarket if you work in a giant Safeway in America, so you have 25 cash registered and you don't do anything but just type and enter. Yes, job's gone. But if you work in a supermarket here in Cape Town and you have local relationships, you wouldn't want to take that person because that's the connector and you don't need to use a machine. So I think a lot of that will mean routines are being outsourced and by 2030, the system will be very smart. But also we have to understand that in my view, logic alone is not enough. And these are logic machines.

I think that's it. I mean, the fourth Industrial Revolution GERD was about automation, robotization, you know, technological, everything. The fifth Industrial Revolution, I believe, needs to be about rehumanizing humanness and humans rehumanizing humans. So in other words, finding those features, those virtues, if you like, that are uniquely human, but that also add value to the customer experience in whatever industry you're in, those we need to enhance Elevate, monetize differently, and then let the machines do all the checkouts in a safe way in the US because you cannot tell me that that person is actually fulfilled as a human. You can't tell me they get goosebumps from what they do every single day. And very few of them make a real impact on the customer. So let the machine do that. But then we need to be courageous enough, curious enough, brave enough to say to humans, this is a way in which you can add relevance to society as a human, and then way to learn to monetize that differently. And so capitalism in a sense needs to shift, because we don't only measure profit on net profit, or EBITDA or market cap, et cetera.

This is one of our key challenges, clearly, because if we take a purely capitalist means, then you make more profit when you have a machine, because the machine doesn't have a union, it works forever, you make more profit. But there is a societal component. So when we're moving into a larger view of what we want, people, planet, purpose, prosperity, not just prosperity, then this becomes a situation where you say, okay, so we have all these machines doing commodity work. We have more productivity. What we have now is more productivity, but declining wages and declining jobs. And that's because of our policy, it's not because of technology.

Absolutely correct.

So we need to fix that problem and say if we have inclining productivity, we have more money, then some of that money needs to go into a pool to redo work for the other. For example, I think we should have more healthcare workers, more social work, more people that get paid to have children, which is important. I think, in a free society and all of these things, it has to be more equal. And that is the true problem behind AI, because AI will show us that routine work can be outsourced. Thus I only work two hours a day, and my boss will say two hours a day. I can get somebody to be four times two hours and I fire three people.

Yes. But I think what will also start shifting in the world is what we deem valuable. So an automated process will attract less and less of a premium as it becomes ultimately commoditized. So what then becomes valuable? It's those things that are scarce in the world today, filled with smart machines. What becomes more scarce is empathy, insight, curiosity, innovation, critical thinking, etc. But the question is, how do we then monetize those differently? And I think the consequence will be that there are going to be millions of people that simply can't climb that ladder, perhaps. And So a global universal minimum wage, whether it's that we tax the robots or whatever it is. But I think we're going to have to face up to that. Having said that, though, and we scared about the millions of jobs that AI is going to take away, but we haven't yet had the debate and explored how many more millions will be created in the industries you've spoken about, the care industries, for example, the career advisory industries and so forth, the personal strategy industries. And so brand new industries that will exist that will fill a huge part of that gap, but not all of that gap.

Well, if the end of routine, as I call it, if that's not the end of work, then we have to shift our education and our planning into the things that are not routine. And that includes everything that's human. So negotiation, caretaking, complicated manual jobs, complicated intellectual jobs, but things with a judgment and on and on. And what we currently are doing is, for example, in India, we're producing 1.2 million engineers per year. And a lot of those engineers will end up doing the jobs that machines can do, which is how to figure out how to print a 3D house or, or how to lay a bridge across a river. And they make $300 a month and the machines will take their job. And so we're barking up the wrong tree by competing with machines.

There's no question about that.

For commodity work.

Absolutely correct. I think that's an absolute given. And I think that when you look at all of these jobs and what graduates are we producing for those jobs today in 2023, by 2030, we must have changed the entire global education system away from subject matter in grades. And every grade progresses at the speed of the slowest person in the grade. Those days are over. So the impact of AI in education, for example, as we merge education with AI, individual pupils will learn at their own natural rate, whether that's fast or slow. And you won't be one of 25 in a class that's graded simultaneously. But we also then have to give these new kids new skills. So the skills to think, for example, of a system, systems theory, critical thinking skills. How do you identify fake news, fake GPT output, or stupid GPT output from real?

Well, yeah, that's the other thing that's happening here. The question is, what is real and what is valuable? For example, you could say you like Dall? E, so you buy a perfect replica that could be done by a fake Dall? E artist, or just print it. And you're perfectly happy with that because it Looks great, but you know, it's not real. And the person that shells out $100 million for the real dolly knows the difference, but it looks the same.

And let that be the case. If someone wants to pay part of the money, part of the money.

And I think that is something that we have to also maintain by saying, okay, the real journalist is going to be more expensive because that work is real, it's not a copy.

Right?

And therein lies a very big difference. I think this is going to become apparent when we have a lot more AI writing books and stuff. They are like fast food. And some people are fine with fast food and some of it tastes okay, but you still know that it's probably not the best food you can eat and people have it and it's a choice, right? But really what we want is real food. And I think this is where we're going to learn that the machines aren't capable of producing that because they're not capable of foresight. They don't have any emotions. They have no human humanity. Right? They have no consciousness, they have no spirituality. And basically the machine is as opposed to humans, which are all sensing, as people say. So when we speak, I hear, I see you, I smell you, you know everything. And this is what humans are. The machine is only like one sense, and that is computing. They're binary. So I think we don't have to necessarily worry about the impact on that level, but also impact on media and democracy by those machines fabricating synthetic truth. Like saying, look, when Britain joins the eu, all the Turkish people are coming because they're going to come to Europe and they're going to end up in London, which was completely fabricated, absolutely fabricated. Brexit. Reason behind the Brexit. Right.

I think another feature of AI is going to be that it removes lots of friction from the current global system. And if you look at the business models of many businesses, it's based on friction. Banking is a classic example. So it started with the Internet, that started accelerating speed and removing some friction. But there's still a black box in much of banking, asset management, currency trading, commodity trading, etc. But AI coupled with connectivity, coupled with speed of processing will start eliminating the friction. And of course, the moment you remove friction, the business model changes. And so companies are going to have to reimagine again what is valuable in the eyes of a customer.

Well, take a call center, perfect example, classic example. So if you have a snowstorm in New York, airport is closed, 50,000 people have to be rescheduled. Most of them are not freaking top level flyers and stuff. So you have an AI, you call, you put in your PIN number or you put in your travel code, booking code, and it will rebook you depending on what's. The AI can do all of that.

Correct.

But if you happen to be making an unusual request or a change that's based on courtesy, the AI wouldn't know whether that's important or not. So I think what's going to happen to call centers is clearly 90% of that can be done by machines sooner or later. And so we're talking about roughly, I think the latest number is 18 million people. So that is definitely a job we do not want to take. But then there will be new call centers where you say we use the machine to get your data and. And then we have more fancy.

Well, I mean already there is, there's a young South African startup operating now across the world that use AI in call centers to map real time for regulatory compliance and emotional sentiment of the core already in 2023. Now imagine this in 2030. But then again, there's a bank that I've had experience with that only employ graduates in call centers. They've used the technology to merge all their internal databases and knowledge systems. But the smart human can actually solve a problem across multiple departments. And for that bank you pay a premium and you're happy to do that.

Well, this is a question of general intelligence. You know, which humans are considered generally intelligent also because we have eight or 10, according to research, different kinds of intelligence, emotional, social, cultural, kinesthetic, you know, we have all of those intelligence. Machine only has one intelligence and that is computing. So they're binary. And this is why having a machine that becomes generally intelligent in my view is probably not something that we should pursue as a top business goal. Because A, it does replace us when it gets to that point, having an IQ of a trillion, say, right, Computing iq, and B, it would be almost impossible to control. So I always say we should probably be careful about how we use AI or what I call IA intelligent assistance now because of the automation and those things. And also make sure that we have a flag that says that it is from an AI. But we definitely are going to need a moratorium, a global collaboration agreement on general intelligence, because, you know, we're not there yet at all because we don't have the computing power. But if we're going to have a machine that's generally intelligent like us, it will very likely be going through the steps of evolution very quickly.

Elon Musk thinks we're living in a simulation already.

Right?

Right. This is a very big issue. So we need to think about if we can collaborate across the world. And I think this is primarily Europe, US and China, of course, to figure out if we can control a general intelligence in such a way that it becomes a force for good.

Well, put it this way. I think if humans don't find a way of making the virtues of being human valuable, then we have a 20, maybe 30 year window, GERD. And then I think it's over for humanity. I mean, let's be honest, humans haven't covered ourselves in glory. Here we are tonight in 2023 and 3 billion people go to bed hungry. The system is not giving 9 or 10 billion people a fair hope that tomorrow will be better than today. And when we can't solve for that, and AI is one of those big issues. And of course the next question is, who do we trust to solve for these things? I wouldn't trust the un. I'm not sure I would trust the World Bank. You know, who do we trust with these big decisions? And how do we remove the vested interests. The Zuckerberg meta tie of influence over this conversation.

Yeah, and this is a very big question. I think that with technology like this, exponential technology, we need to always keep the human in the loop for the time being, even if it's slower or more cumbersome. So I think Microsoft has done the right thing with Bing by sort of castrating a little bit of its functionality and making that more manageable. Or it just says, no, I can't go any further.

But that's because of Satya Nadella and his humanness, probably. Look how he turned that organization around. And it was based on culture and humanness and servant leadership. And so he has this, this benevolent patriarchal view over the power of the AI. But what if it's not him?

Remains to be seen if that keeps intact when there's trillions of dollars waiting on the other side of the inhuman behavior. But I do trust that they will find a way forward. But generally, I think keeping the human in the loop to me is the ultimate for now, but also in the long run, because the question of control is not right now. Control means, for example, that you can distinguish truth or non truth. And that needs to be regulated clearly in social media. I mean, imagine if you have an AI in social media that can Twitter every four seconds about the next president of South Africa and pollute the entire network of fake things and videos and.

Stories, all good things. I mean, let's not always see the.

Negative side of it.

Right?

Yeah, but of course it doesn't sell. So the bad things go like six to eight times as fast. So that's why we have them. So having a story like the Brexit Turkey EU story goes fast because it's fear. And I think generally speaking, we have way too much fear about the future. When it's about AI, we should have caution and precaution to make sure that we can use it in the right way. But when we have fear about any of these possibilities, then we tend to demonize it or the reverse anthropomorphize. So we think, oh, chatgpt is my friend, like replica this app, or. Or this is my artificial friend. Or the AI should know better. When it's about criminal justice.

Well, it's like the movie having a romance with its operating system.

Right, right. The movie Her.

Right.

And all these things. And we're a little bit polluted by what we see on television when it's about AI because the robots are coming, they take our work, and then they harvest our bodies for energy and they take over. And we have to let go of that kind of idea and say, okay, we can use that for many, many things, but we're going to need a framework. For example, I'm a strong proponent of saying we should have a flag. Every time you produce content that's done by the machine, you have to have.

A flag or have a human endorsement. And I think on that point, for me, often in these very complex and important conversations, gerd, we lose perspective on the essence of business. It's that moment. It's a moment when someone with a need meet someone with the ability to supply and they agree on terms and price. That moment is business. And what we need to say to ourselves is, how do we utilize all the technologies, including AI, to facilitate that? But how do we then close out that transaction with a moment of human magic? And only humans can do that. Even if it's all the processing power up to that moment, whether it's the handshake, the pat on the shoulder, the smile, or the human insight, the comment that really leaves a person with a sense of, I'm dealing with something, someone that I can relate to, identify with, and that can excite me about the transaction. That's the magic of business. Everything else is just part of the process.

I'm a little bit worried about this AI thing becoming like social media. Where initially we were very excited about it, it was very magical connecting with others. Publishing your own stories, putting up your own images. And it became magic that we could do that and blog and. And then it became regurgitation of other things. And then it became a game that we played, like, I'm the biggest Instagram, whatever, makeup girl, influencer, whatever. And then it became a toxic thing to where you would read all the wrong things and people would kill themselves as to what they see on the screen.

I mean, I think Instagram and other of these platforms have a lot to answer for in terms of the social ills amongst young people.

But, you know, it went from, I always say, magic to manic to toxic. And the same could with AI. And that would be the end of life as we know it if we move from the magic part of this technology to manic, which means that we can't get out of bed without it. And then toxic would be polluting who we are and changing who we are. And this is a real issue also with democracy. How am I going to find the opinion when I ask my chatbot who to vote for? It would say, well, I know everything about you, and it would basically do the voting for me even without asking me. And I think that is removing our human authority of decision making.

And I think that is probably where we should wrap up the conversation, because it's that human authority. And I think from a business perspective, in the boardroom, leaders need to have enough knowledge to have a sensible conversation. It's 2030. AI hasn't died. I think we on ChatGPT20 now, if I remember correctly. So the issue is, how do we equip ourselves with the knowledge to harness it, to use it, to manage it, to deliver the outcomes we want for our human customers, clients and colleagues? How do we allocate capital in the boardroom between technology, infrastructure? I mean, in 2023, there's still banks that spend money maintaining COBOL mainframes. I mean, it's an insanity.

Well, I always say, you know, we should invest as much money in humanity as we invest in technology, because that is the key to having a good future that we can make together. And the other one is, in terms of technology, too much of a good thing can be a very bad thing. And that's about food, water, drinking, eating, smoking, whatever, but also about technology. We can have too much technology, removing our authority over ourselves and getting lazy and abdicating.

Absolutely correct.

And this is the biggest danger by 2030. The danger is not that machines will take over, but that we become too much like them.

But maybe one of the success criteria in your annual performance review in your company will be A, your ability to harness and deploy AI to make your own job more meaningful, and B, how have you shown your human impact in what you do as a worker? So you'll have two criteria. One is how do you leverage the tech? But then how have you shown yourself to be more valuable than the team?

In other words, how have you moved beyond the routine.

Exactly.

And created new values on top? I mean, I think, for example, what's happening in the medical field is a great example. Doctors will use AI and virtual reality and stuff to be faster, to be more informed, to instantly pull up information, to look at your melanoma and decide what it is. But in the end, the doctor can use the free time to see more patients or to become a better doctor or to talk to you instead of rushing from one to the other.

I think if you look at the NHS at the moment, most people are going to see their doctors because, yes, they have an ailment, they have a sniff or a headache, but the actual precipitator for that was a family tension for some other reason. The good doctor will understand that, counsel you and guide you around that, solve that, and then the machine will give you a pull for the headache.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I think a person with an AI will replace the person without an AI, but probably will not have an AI replace a person as a job, because all the other pieces are missing. A good doctor, I've met a few in my lifetime, they can look at you at 14 seconds and they've got an idea what goes on and how does that work? And so a bad doctor will just go and get you a pill because you have a headache or something, you know, So I think this is really what's going on. And we have to figure out also how to protect humanity in this context and how to evolve our education.

But what you just said is there. The human with an ability to bring those human attributes to the fore in an engagement will always stay relevant and valuable. And let's not get too scared about that.

Yeah, and the other thing is, of course, to wrap up the conversation, I think by 2030 is going to dawn on us that the future of life is not just all about work, like we had been discussing for, what, 30 years, that technology will result in us working less, as never worked out, but by 2030, I think we're going to have technology to that point where we can actually spend less time working on the commodity work.

Well, what's an enable look at what's happening today. There are these research projects all around the world where workers are working four days a week, getting paid for five days a week. And they found productivity impact, output increase, and they've as a consequence, been able to harness the technologies of today to create that space of freedom. And companies are now valuing the ability or the impact of having humans having more time to do what they want. The old work life balance debate. But productivity goes up, you see, it's not either or. It's not the old world of binary, black or white. We can have two outcomes in today's world. And that's the beauty of what the technology is.

Yeah, I mean, 2030, 2040, we may well live in a world where work is no longer the central thing, but it's everything that we do in life and just work maybe one hour a day for one person, and for the other it could still be 15. But it's also much more about occupation and calling. And especially I think, you know, looking at the people who do menial work and less sort of intellectual work, a lot of that work will be generated by all the things that are being freed up.

There's a lovely story in Europe where government is actually funding the education for young people on condition they live in a facility of old people and spend an hour a day with the old people. And you see, here's the economic model. The reduced cost on the state of health care for the old people when they engage with young people is greater than the education cost of the young people. So it still boils down to euros and cents, but it's a different way of thinking about the economic model. And suddenly the value of being just a human with an old person reading them a story is now translated into euros. So there's an economic model that works, but it's different. And I think we're going to explore by 2030 many new of these economic models.

That's a great way to wrap up the session. Anton. Thanks very much for tuning in. This is Anton Musgrave and Gerd Leonhardt in Cape Town, South Africa, with our show on the world by 2030. Thanks for tuning in. Hello, everybody.

It's a great pleasure to be with you here. We're actually live in real time. I'm in Zurich, Switzerland, and Anton is in India, in the Himalayas. Tell us where you are. Anton, can you hear us? Yes. You have to unmute yourself.

Things get a bit confusing when you're.

Up in the Himalayas.

Good. The air is thin up here. You know, I forgot to Unmute.

Well, it's really great to be with you again. And you know, we recorded this in Cape Town and since then there have been a bunch of interesting developments on this whole discussion about work and jobs. But before we go there, I just want to show you who's actually audience, who's actually there. You know, it's, it's the. These guys are kind of taken over from Anton and Gert and we use an app called Runway Machine Learning that does these beautiful animations. About one of my favorite is this one. Really it's very subtle and fuzzy, kind of like us in a way, you know, you would say. And then we have more interesting ones like the space one. So anyway, this is what AI can do. I just wanted to show you how well we actually can use that for ourselves. I don't know if that looks better than real life, but it looks different. So let's get some questions and comments. I think people out there, millions of people, are queuing up for audience and questions. I just published a Twitter poll while we were talking, asking people to tell me if ChatGPT and generative AI will finally cause technological unemployment. And this Twitter poll, I think 10 people have replied so far. 33% said no, it's still too dumb. And 22 have said yes, I'm worried. And 45% of 10, you know, that's four and a half people says absolutely, we're here now as, as in technological unemployment. So what's your take on that, Anton? Do you have a reply on that?

Look, I think in the immediate term lots of people are experimenting with it, lots of people are doing some really bad work using it, and some are doing some good work using it. So in the short term I think there will be technological displacement, but I think it's in a period of adjustment as humans begin to understand what it can do effectively and efficiently. And then what we need to do, overlaying that, that creates the real deep value. So I think it's temporary. I think some of the research that I've been reading suggests that the use of AI, GPT, etc. Can augment global economic performance, increase it by a factor of 7%, which means in the US maybe 1 1/2% added to the annual GDP, if that's still a good measure. But that's another debate. So I don't think on a medium to longer term view, the news is as scary as it is right now. It's caught us off guard. We ill prepared for it. And the sudden rush of commentary and panic is Entirely natural, I believe.

Well, I mean, if we looked at promises in the past like the self driving car, you know, Elon's promise of the actual level 5 self driving car, we don't have that. We have a kind of Waymo and Palo Alto, San Francisco, but by and large you don't see that anywhere. You see a lot of assisted driving, but level four or five has been unreached, at least on a sort of larger level. If it's going to be the same here, then I would say basically what we're going to see is a lot of routines will change because for example, call centers. I think if you are really doing the sort of commodity work of call centers. 30 million people work in a call center business around the world, many of those jobs will change forever. That is a certainty in my view. For example, in India or in Eastern Europe, where basically commoditized calls are being handled. When that is changing, then I think we'll be able to take the next step and figure out what exactly are we going to do with the benefits of this. For example, language recognition is still a major problem in call centers. So if you speak slowly and as clearly as possible, I think it will work with the machine. But many times the machine does not know the difference between say four the number and four the oven, and four other versions of four. So it's still very early. Kind of like the self driving car is my view. We're going to see a lot of initial replacement of tasks, but not of actual jobs, I don't think. Not for some time. Yeah. Shall we jump to one of the questions? Yeah.

Yeah, I think there was.

Thank you, Chris.

That's a really good question. I think, in fact, you and I and many of our friends and others like us around the world are going to be the force that actually starts stimulating that shift towards ethical capitalism. I mean, we've read a lot lately about activist shareholders in board meetings, etc. We've read about the shift in Patagonia, who donated the shares of the company to Planet Earth, if you like. But I think that's driven to a very large extent by us as customers. It's who we're going to do business with, it's who we're going to spend our dollar with and make our voice heard. So the debate will happen in boardrooms, the activist shareholders will have their say, but the real power comes from mobilization of people. And I think governments and business leaders will start listening more and more to consumers when they vote with their dollar.

Yes, I kind of, you Know, sometimes I say it's a little bit like 1968 where all of a sudden there was a tidal wave that changed the world. You know, the music revolution, the sexual revolution, the political revolution. We talked about that before Summer of.

Humans, and I think it's a little.

Bit like that now. Yeah, yeah, it's a summer of humans, right? You could say maybe. So I think there's going to be a lot of pushback. And I kind of see a human renaissance, you know, coming back to human values as an antidote to all the social media and then the AI on top of the social media. And I see a lot of people asking really tough questions about this. And when I look at people roughly between 25 and 45 millennials, Gen Y, you know, they are asking the question, they don't want to work for a company that turns out to be more or less dehumanizing or doing bad things to the planet. I read in a law firm report that, for example, a lot of people who are coming off law school now, they will not work for a company whose primary customers and clients are oil companies or gas companies. And now there's about 50 colleges around the world who don't allow oil companies and gas companies and some other companies to do any recruiting at the college. These are all things that are happening everywhere now. The state of Norway just announced three months ago that in the very near future you can't enter the fjords of Norway with a cruise ship unless you have a second engine that is not running on oil and gas, not running on fossil fuel. And these rules, they're coming in everywhere. And I'm convinced that as soon as the Russia Ukraine conflict dies down just a little bit and we can calm down with that worry about what they may do there, we're going to see an explosion of activities like a carbon tax on flying. I have volunteered. I mean, I pay a carbon tax anyway. But this is going to be absolutely everywhere. And I really think it's driven not necessarily by our generation, the Gen X or the people in our age, but the people roughly between 25, maybe even 20 to 45, 50 who are coming into power now also because they're inheriting money from our generation and they're moving into decision making points. And they really are fed up, fed up with the way that the world has worked out now. And I think that's going to mean very dramatic change. I'm very happy to be part of this as much as I can.

But I think also good, it's interesting, the world Sort of economic growth levels for the next while are probably going to be subdued. And as organizations focus on maintaining ever narrowing margins, I think this rush to make the top dollar all the time in every transaction, the inability to do that is going to make leaders in organizations sit back and say, well, how much is enough? How much do we need to make? How better can we do the job? And how better can we engage with our customers? And customers are saying, at the same time, you know, in the lower economy, lower real earning rates, if you like, where am I going to spend the dollar? And if there's a reason to spend it with company A because of how they do business, then that's what I'm going to do. There was a fascinating book written by Rashi Sadia called Firms of Endearment. It was an interesting exercise. Seven or eight years ago, he explored whether companies that did very little marketing could still be successful. In other words, promote product that people don't need. And what he discovered was a vast array of firms around the world across industries that despite spending a fraction of the typical marketing dollar, they still made higher profit. They paid their staff better salaries. They paid their suppliers on way better terms. I mean, it's unconscionable that in 2023, some of the multinationals are taking 120 days to pay suppliers. It's crazy, right? So what Raj's book proves is that you can do better business by doing good business.

I totally agree with you on this one. I think what's happening now is that there's sort of a groundswell of these conversations, and they've been around for 10 years, but now they're being amplified after Covid because of the war. The whole discussion about globalization, de globalization, all these things and more justice. You know, people plan a purpose concept that's popping up left and right. And I think this is going to become the new normal in so many ways. And the unfortunate thing that we still have to deal with every day is that the stock market doesn't really look beyond only one dimension in these four dimensions. And that's something that needs to change. People are pulling out their money. I've pulled out all of my money from investments that had anything to do with oil and gas. And I think we're going to see a very similar discussion about AI because if you're looking at what's happening right now, it's a total gold rush. It's like Google wants to be there, Microsoft and Baidu wants to be. Everybody wants to be there. Not because necessarily it's good for people, which I think they're also concerned with, but primarily because it's a trillion dollar thing, it's a reinvention of search. And so it's like you could safely say, if this works, it's a new kind of Internet, really. And so if I can speak to my, my, you know, if I'm in India and I could speak to my mobile phone and say, hey, you know, the best place here close by that has the best curry or whatever, and then I just get an answer, you know, spoken to me in the voice of say, you know, a famous astronaut or something, you know. And I think this is really interesting, but it's also very scary that we're going with this gold rush mentality without having a lot of regards for the side effects, really.

I think that what's quite alarming about the gold rush, Gert, is that it's dominated, as you've said, by a few very large technology companies and, and the momentum, if you like the opportunity has been seized by them and taken away from academic institutions and governments. Now in the past, many of the major technological breakthroughs were initially funded by academic institutions and government research agencies. This has suddenly changed. And of course one of the reasons is the vast number of dollars you need to invest in these technologies, in these newest technologies to get through the sort of level of commercial acceptability, if you like. But that's a worrying feature, is that purely profit driven organizations are leading us down a path that we rushing to understand. And some of the global institutions that are charged with looking after the interests of humanity are left behind, grappling, left in the dust almost. And will they catch up is the big question. And if they catch up, do we trust him to give us the guidelines?

Yeah, you know, we had the Future of Life Institute come up with an open letter that I think I signed that maybe 4,000 people have signed it by now. I think to say that we should take a break on just rushing forward and we should think about a moratorium on general intelligence, which I think is a real story here. And a lot of people have given it very serious pushback by saying, no, this is against the market, it can't be done and it's stupid. And on and on and on. A huge debate on this. And I think we're going to see a lot of governments looking at this and saying, you know, are we still in control of what kind of story goes out there and what we look like? For example, if we can change our video like I just showed you, make it look like, you know, I'm Steve Jobs speaking. No problem. You know, I can do that very quickly now. Except that he was a lot smarter than me. Rest in peace. But, you know, all these things are happening now in real time. And so a lot of governments are looking at this and getting quite worried. And so I think we're looking definitely at a major point when we talk about work and jobs and all these things coming together, as to how we can actually control this technology. This is one of the key questions that is in my mind. How do we control, for example, the narrative, the societal narrative? If a machine writes everything, if they make the pictures, if they make the videos and the films, you know, then in the end we become a machine. So I don't know that that's kind of scary.

It's an exciting bifurcation point where all of these forces, the, the technological speed, the connectivity, the, the gold rush, if you like, it's all happening at the same time, forcing big debates, of course. We've got the climate debate happening at the same time, we've got a global peace debate, we've got this east versus west conversation. And what does that mean? What is the future of democracy, capitalism and so forth. And suddenly it feels to me as though they're all coming to a point where we're going to have to solve for the big picture. And that's going to demand that thought leaders around the world, in industry, in politics, in institutions, NGOs etc, need to come together for almost a Marshall Plan for the next 10 or 20 years of human development. It's an epoch that's busy, that's just started and I think it's going to be wildly exciting, of course, in any moment of furious new change. It's scary, really scary. But I believe that humans have done some incredible things. We've solved some amazing problems. This is an exciting problem for us to grapple with because it also offers, on the other hand, the solution to many of the world's big problems right now. If we harness this thing, if we guide humanity carefully through the next 10 years.

Yeah, I think the biggest challenge, and we should take a new question in a minute. But the biggest challenge to me is the too much of a good thing challenge, which says that basically we can use a very good thing, but too much of a good thing can be a very bad thing. And I think this is so true about this technology. When we use it too much, then it becomes toxic. When we use it a little, maybe it's just a little bit of a push but we need some guidelines here and some roadmaps and some conversations about what is cool and what's not, what's just a toy and what's going to fundamentally change our lives. For example, now we have the first broadcasters who are saying we're not going to have a news anchor, we're going to have a bot that speaks whatever we type in, which is just. I'm like, okay, yeah, you can do that. And it sounds kind of interesting, like Las Vegas kind of, let's see, show effect, like, like Sophia the robot or something. But, you know, how, how much value will we get from this? Let's take the next question, please. Bring it in there. So, Chris Perry, thanks for coming over again, Chris. Valuable? Yeah, please.

Yeah. To me, the answer is, is, is both humans are valuable because of the kind of things we can do, the emotions we can unlock, the feelings we can express, the goosebumps we can create. But we're also valuable because of the data we set free into this connected world of ours. And that, of course, raises the question of privacy. And, you know, I'm tempted to say that we've lost privacy. I think it's gone forever. And I'm not sure that's entirely a bad thing, provided, of course, we can trust the users of the data to utilize it for my benefit, not for their benefit. And if we can create that understanding in commerce, if you like, in relationship between the nation state and citizens, then I think the loss of privacy would be a good thing. The reason we scared is that the, the users of that data are used, utilizing it for own benefit at our cost. And therein lies the problem. So humans incredibly valuable as a species because of what makes us uniquely human. But the data we create, of course, is immensely valuable, both for companies, if you like businesses, but also for us. I would love my body information to be streamed live to my trusted medical providers who can warn me and preempt me about an imminent heart attack. I would really value that. I would love a world with a sensor in my shirt, is talking to the sensor in my Apple Watch into the sensor in my sole of my shoes and can calculate the risk of an imminent thrombosis and notify the paramedics before it's too late. I pay a fortune for that. But don't try and sell me some medication, some tablet that I don't really need, just because my data suggests through a lesser number of data points, that you could sell it to me. And therein is the problem.

You know, there have been a lot of Theories around this, including Yuval Harari's idea of organisms are algorithms. Right? And that, that we are essentially algorithms, you know, that we are data, but very complicated data. And I think, you know, if. I don't know if that's true or not, I think if it is, that we're still very far away from understanding that data. However, I think the, the difference is that what we call data today is binary. In computers, that's zeros at once. And that's what computers do today. I think in 20 years, when we have quantum computing and nuclear fusion, computers are able to kind of think of the things in between the zeros and ones, which is really what fusion is about in the end or as well. And then maybe we can start to comprehend what we are going beyond the binary aspect. You know, right now we have essentially large information struck together like an autocomplete with ChatGPT. That does make sense sometimes, but sometimes it doesn't at all. Like the. The real understanding of life involves all of our senses, and that's currently not just data. So it's been said by many therapists and psychoanalysts. You know, humans don't think with the brain. We think with everything that we have. And we don't have a left brain and a right brain and switch back and forth like a machine. And when you think of your wife, you don't go back to your brain and pick a jpeg. You know, it's holistic and it's plastic and constantly changing. And this is very, very difficult, if not impossible for humans. This is what we call, I mean, for machines, this is what we call human agency and consciousness, where we are in a space that goes beyond the computing. And if that can be called computing in 30 years, maybe that is a possibility. But I think at this point, the data that we create is in any case just kind of an exhaust in so many ways that we put out there. And it's valuable, but our real value, of course, lies somewhere else. And I think this is an interesting discussion. When we talk about AI with the AI is conscious or not. And the real issue, I watched a bunch of stuff from Judkowski, you know, the scientist, the AI scientist on YouTube, on Lex Friedman's show. And he basically said, which I agree with, is that we don't really know what goes on inside of this generative AI with, with a trillion data feeds. We have no idea what actually goes on inside of this mechanism. And that is, I think, the most dangerous thing because we may ultimately find that there's Something that has already happened that we are not aware of. And if it's out in public, whatever it will choose to do that, we don't have any understanding what actually is inside. I think that is a major concern I have.

It's, it's a little bit good, like the, the social school that, that China ascribes to its citizens. Right. Conceptually, the notion of gaining fine good citizenship, I think is not a bad one. You know, if you reward humans, if you monetize good human behavior, it may be a way of ameliorating some of the negative impacts of rampant Wall street capitalism. But the problem with the social score concept is, of course, in China it's a black box and there's no right of appeal. So we don't understand how you get the good school or how you earn the bad school.

And so, yeah, I mean, this is, you know, this is kind of, I think many things that Marx and, and Engel and have said about communism or Marxism were in principle positive ideas and thinking, but the reality behind it was the conversion didn't quite happen. Right. And if you look at some of those principles of sustainable capitalism, they're actually very close to this. And this is why we said in the last show we really should get rid of these words, communism, socialism, capitalism. What we need is a future, fit way of thinking. And that will require a lot of economic reform. And that reform says it's not just the benefit of economic growth that counts. And I think this is the real problem behind AI right now. It's all about economic growth. And everybody's saying whoever will be first in AI will rule the world. We've heard that before with nuclear weapons. And AI is a lot easier. So to me, this is a major stepping stone to where we have to say, okay, if it's basic stuff, routine work and stuff, then we can probably do our own thing. But if it's a larger story, it's a global agenda. And that really needs to look, be looked at right now and be, you know, put in the right context.

Yeah.

Okay.

One of the biggest problems we're facing is, is that we're all having this conversation, even this evening, with our old minds, with old memories of words and context and fears. And what we need to do is hit the control, alt, delete keys, reset our own minds. How do we develop a new future? As you said, future proof, future fit language. What are the biases that we're carrying forward into this debate around AI and the fear of jobs and all the things we're Raising this evening. And I think if we, if we start modifying our definition of words and concepts to make them future fit, we can probably have a quite a different conversation in six months time because we constrained by the old memory of life and safety and computing, etc. Etc.

This is of course a real challenge. We all have our assumptions about things. And I find myself every time I review my assumptions, something good can happen. Like I'm assuming this person will not do the right thing and then bad things happen. But when I let go of the assumption, then I can say, okay, I'm ready for something positive to happen. I think this is incredibly difficult to do in a business context where when you have so many overlaying things and also in a context of global politics, we all have our assumptions about what people are like in China and Russia and wherever we are and then we have to question our assumptions. And I think this is why we travel, this is why we look at things and this is so important. I think if we have the assumption that there's only two things we can be on the socialist agenda or we can be on the capitalist agenda, then we're in deep trouble because the future doesn't hold to any of those things anymore. Like it's not going to be just oil and gas or just solar or just nuclear. It's going to be all of these things together in a future fit model. And we have to define that. And I think about AI, we're very much at the exact same point. It's not all good, it's not all bad. But it requires judgment and balance, you know, to make it, to make it work out in the best possible way. Take another question. Absolutely no comment.

Yeah, Doug, that's a, that's a really good question. I mean, you know, can we undo the damage done by politicians? Well, I'm not sure about that. The problem is that we undo the damage now and in four years later.

Or five years later, we've got more.

Damage done to you by different politicians. So it's maybe the entire system of how we elect leaders to lead countries, to lead society that needs to be reviewed. I mean, the concept that more money is spent in lobbying Congress in America than the operating cost of the entire Congress, that tells me that something's wrong with the system that we entrust with, you know, designing our future, if you like. So until I think we change the entire system, the structure, the institution, if you like, of governance of countries, I fear, Doug, that we'll never get ahead of this one. That's my View.

Yeah, maybe if the politicians look like this, you know, then we can, I don't know. They like the AI politician, You know, they have. Many people have said that if an AI was in politics it would do much better. I think, of course that's not the case, frankly. I think we've already made quite big leaps in politics in terms of who is there and who is pushing forward and who is the future. Yes, it will get worse before it gets better in some places. But generally speaking, there have been some very hopeful developments. I mean, what Jacinda Ardern has done in New Zealand is a beacon of hope for every politician around the world. What's happening in Germany also, that's a very, very big shift to a new agenda. And we have of course great developments in Scandinavia, in Switzerland, we keep setting good examples for that. So generally speaking, yes, that is true for some countries, of course, like Venezuela or of course Russia and many other countries that we're worried about. But it doesn't strike me as a general trend that democracy is losing. It just strikes me as a trend to question it and to go behind it and poke around with it and stuff. But I'm not that generally negative on politics. I think we're going to see a huge shift in the next, by the end of this decade with younger people, more women, more future looking forward looking people, more countries that will get to a new agenda. And of course all of South America is now looking to a new agenda. We see how that plays out. And then we have pivoting countries like America that didn't get anything together. All of a sudden it's like, yeah, 400 billion to green energy and, and so we should never give up hope that humans are capable of finding good ways forward. And I think it's very frustrating when in countries like South Africa that has been tried so many times and it just hasn't really happened and the same in Brazil, but that doesn't mean it won't happen. There has to be a trigger moment. So I don't know what that trigger moment would be. It's hard to say. But it does strike me like we're going to be one trigger moment after the other.

Yeah, I think there is that shift. And if you think about the role of independence in the political system, that seems to be increasing in many countries. The role of women in the political system is increasing in many, many countries. Put all of those together and I think there is a shift taking place. Will it gain momentum? I certainly hope so. I tend to be the eternal optimist with you on that, but there's some testing conversations still to be had. I think it's not a done deal yet, and I think it's because there's certainly best interests.

I think we're going to see a lot of moments like extinction rebellion type moments in the UK for climate change, of course, many more of those legal and illegal and violent and nonviolent, all different shades. And we're going to see the same thing about AI And I think we need to be prepared for this, that people are revolting against all these things that seem to get worse and worse and worse. And so that's our fate, I think, for the rest of the decade. It's perpetual vuca perma change that also brings new opportunities and that we're willing to discard what's no longer working and also willing to face the music. I mean, eventually we're going to have to pay progressive flick and fly attacks for flying more like we do. And I think that's fine. And, and all these things, as example, they will just come to a header now, you know, so it's. Yeah, I think it's a trigger moment.

It's a great many ways, I think, very exciting to be part of the decade ahead. And you know, some people have said to me, anton, you know, it's time to maybe go sailing in your life. You've worked hard for many years. And I said, not a chance. It's too exciting out there right now. So I'll be around to happens and as you know, to come as well. So.

Yeah, and, and, and the interesting part, of course, this will not actually be led by politicians, it will be followed by politicians. So when you have this tidal wave of people pushing and pushing and pushing for new things like now has been happening with AI and the whole conversation, the thousands of AI people, experts, have signed this petition. This brings it forward onto the public agenda. And I think this is what we're trying to do here. We're trying to cause change also positive change and future fit change by implanting ideas into how people can take action, hopefully legal action, but still fruitful action, to actually create what we call the good future. And I think this is a really important part. In many ways, all of these things can actually make a good future. But like Buckminster Fuller said, we invent all the right things, we end up using it for the wrong reasons. And, and this is something we really need to question. Okay, do we have. Yeah, please.

I've always said that we need to let the future be a matter of choice and not chance. And it's our choice. No one else's choice. We have the choice.

Yeah, yeah, Backminster Fuller, right? We are. We are to be architects of the future, not victims. And I think this conversation is really about AI and ChatGPT and all of these things that we're seeing now. We are to be architects of that and how that can create value for us, not the victim of somebody else's decision to roll out XYZ product. And I think this is a really important moment. How do those companies become good architects of our future, generally speaking, rather than their future as providing the service? And social media is such a great example for what went wrong. The rollout of that has become so big that all of a sudden, it's like a political instrument, and it's creating all these things that are fake and creating bad narratives. We don't want that to happen to AI. It could be a hundred x as bad as what happened to social media. So we need to have a good look and debate and decide together what the standards are. So another question here, please.

So Jeanez says, you know, what can you say about the exponential capabilities that are unfolding? I think, Janice, that's what we've been grappling with for a while on the show so far is exactly that. And I think the scariest thing is, you know, sort of fake movie coupled with fake news becomes lethal, I think, in the wrong hands for the wrong reasons at the wrong time. There's so much geopolitical tension in the world right now that it's not going to be too difficult for something to unfold unintentionally. And I think that's something we should be really, really concerned and watchful about. But the debate is on, and the volume is at max. So that's a good thing.

Well, I would say to this, you know, we should never judge.

Confuse a clear view with a short.

Distance in machines that smell. I think in principle, of course, that should be possible. Just like a machine can. Can make a face, you know, Sophia or Amica or. They can make faces, of course, because they're simulating us, but it doesn't mean that they know what the face stands for. This is a. It's a kind of autocomplete for the face, you know, so, yeah, I think. Interesting, but it's not the same because, you know, when we smell things, we see. We see stuff, we. We feel it.

We.

This is a complete experience. It's what's called in psychology, all sensing. You know, we are all sensing. And it all comes together and it's not like I have a nose that's a, that's a computer somewhere else, you know, so I think, I think that's going to be interesting. And also, for example, to create smells remotely. And you know, it's an interesting thing, but it's, it's not going to be anywhere close to our kind of level of experience of. And I don't really know if we should pursue that as an idea because I'm with Stuart Russell, you know, who writes all the books about AI when he says that machines should have competence, not consciousness. And competence would be enough if the machines finally would have some sort of competence, like a really good map, a really good translator, a really good job finder, a really good dating app, or what, you know, finally get real intelligence. That would be a great thing that would help all of us and that's really what we should be striving for in my view, competence. I don't want machines to have consciousness. What's the point? I mean, that would be creating our own competition in a large way. All right, do we have another comment or question?

No, I think that's it for tonight. I think we've addressed them all and looking forward to meeting again in a short while time to explore another theme.

Yeah, we seem to have given all the answers as is our job, our mission as to not to be know it alls, but to, to ask it all, I suppose. So it's great to be here with you and good luck in the, in the rest of your time up there in the Himalayas. And thanks for joining us and our website, of course is the world by2030.com we're going to have a lot more interesting discussions in the next couple episodes. We'll talk about sustainability, the future of green energy more and education. We'll talk a lot more about other topics like technology and how we can make it net positive to the world and so on. Thanks very much for tuning in and we'll see you for the next episode. Thanks. Namaste. Thanks everyone.

Have a safe evening.

Sat.