345 - Love, Wisdom, and AI: The Essential Ingredients for a Flourishing Future with Peak Capital Partners' Jeff Burningham

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started. Jeff Bruningham, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are one of the more interesting people I've run across lately. You're a serial entrepreneur, You have an MBA and BA from BYU. You live in Provo, Utah, and you just published your first book's coming out in 10 days, I think, something like that.

Yeah. So the last book written by a human, 8 days.

Yeah. There you go. Thanks so much. We'll come back. We'll swing around to that in a second. First of all, why don't you just introduce you to all of us by telling us a little bit about your backstory and your business and personal background.

Yeah, I'm a serial entrepreneur, like you said. My background is in technology, real estate, private equity, and venture capital. So, I could go into detail on any of those, but that's my background. Built several large companies, thousands of employees. Lost my mind in 2020. Really, my subconscious was luring me into deeper waters, which has led to the book. But I ran for governor in the state of Utah, a statewide campaign. The most critical months of the campaign were March, April, May, and June of 2020.

COVID, of course.

COVID. And I was running against two very well-known politicians, actually a former governor and presidential candidate, and Jon Huntsman Jr., and then lieutenant governor. So, lost that race into the summer of 2020. And for the first time in my adult life, Doug, I had time and space. And I often tell— I'm an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at BYU, have had thousands of students, and I often tell them, With time and space, anything can be created. And so I had time and space, and now I've become an author, which was never on the roadmap. It was not on the path. It was not what I planned, especially writing this cosmic book about humanity and AI. So there's a 1-minute background.

There you go. So, everybody has a motivation for writing a book. I've written 4. My 5th one's coming out next year, and I contributed chapters to a bunch of other books. A lot of it in my particular field of peacemaking and alternative dispute resolution. But I'm curious, what got the, what gave you the itch?

Yeah, I'll answer that. I'll give you two answers for that. Number one, the purpose of the book is impact, period. It's meant to be a conversation starter about the spiritual implications or the existential implications for us as humans. In the Age of AI, the thesis in one sentence is simply, as our machines continue to become more and more intelligent, we as humans must become more wise. And I think that is the message for our moment. I'm a father of 4, a grandfather of 1, actually have a 1-year-old grandson. Happens fast here in Utah, as you may know. And, and so I'm writing the book for them, for impact. I'm concerned. I'll be— I'm concerned about our future as eventually I'm a venture capitalist. Of course, I've invested in a dozen or two AI companies, but what caught my attention much more were like, again, the existential issues around AI. I don't think those are being spoken about enough. So that's the number one reason I wrote it. The second honest reason, Doug, and I'd be curious if you felt this or not, I don't know. I felt like I had to. I didn't want to. I fought with God or the universe, my higher self, whatever you want to say. I argued with that for several years until I just felt like this book, like I had to write this book. Again, it wasn't on my roadmap. It wasn't necessarily in my plan. And I don't even know if it was a choice. It felt like a mandate and something I really had to do. That's why I did it. As you know, at least for me, this book is very personal, very vulnerable. And so, it was a crucible for me to go through. And as an author, how hard it is to write a book. And so it's not necessarily a path I would have chosen unless I felt very compelled.

I was going to say, the word that came— comes to mind is you felt a compulsion to write the book.

Yes.

There was an idea or a concept there that just had to get out.

Yes.

And I know that feeling. When you have that feeling, you just can't do anything.

Yeah, I definitely felt that. I have felt that so strongly, and, and that led to the book.

What's really strange, we're both Simon Schuster authors. You turn your manuscript in 18 months ago and you go through a little bit of an editing process and then just nothing happens for months and months and months. And then finally, what, 3 or 4 months before the release, you gotta get, you really wanna get your pre-orders going. So you jump on all the podcasts like me. That's the process. But you're 10 days away from release date and that, yeah, it's exciting.

It's exciting time. I'm trying to remember that it's exciting. I'm trying to remember that I chose to do this. That's right. Oh yeah. That. That this is what, this is the path that I feel compelled to follow. But it, it's not easy. It's busy. And again, I feel very passionately about the message. And so it's out there, it's coming to life. So that's exciting.

Excellent.

Congratulations.

Thank you. What's it, when you think about, I, I go all over the place on AI. I use it every day. It's an incredible tool. I just did some stuff with ChatGPT over the weekend, the new version 5 that just blew my mind. And I learned how to code in college back in 1969 on a mainframe computer. Wow. That's cool. Basic all-purpose symbolic instruction code. And I was trained by the guy who invented that language, John Kohn. Wow. At Dartmouth. And, but I'm not, I've never been a prof— I'm very comfortable with technology because of that experience. Yeah. Anyways, I was just blown away by what ChatGPT— I told it what I wanted and it developed a Google spreadsheet with all the JavaScripting that I needed to pull this data off of websites and 'cause I wanted to compile data about the stock market and my jaw dropped and not, yeah, not only how thorough it was, but how fast it was. Yes. This is a project that would've taken probably somebody experienced with Google Sheets and JavaScripting would've taken a month to do this. And I, it was a 6-hour project.

Yeah. That creates amazing opportunities and challenges.

That's right. So my curio— I think if AI were stopped where it is right now, it would still be— it'd be very— it'd be a phenomenal tool. But a lot of people are talking about it moving to the next level, which is general artificial intelligence and the ability to think and be like a human being. I personally have my doubts that the technology can go there. What do you think?

Yeah, it's a great question. Here's what I'll say, because no one knows. I could hypothesize and How conscious— some people will say AI is conscious now. Some— I bet a significant part of the population, I'm saying 10% or more, would argue that now. No one knows. Will it become more conscious? I think so, obviously. What we hear— so who knows? Here's what— and I have my own opinions, but I don't know if those even really matter. Here's what we know, and here's what's unique about AI versus every other tool that humans have created, because we've created tools our whole existence.

All the way back to rocks.

All the way back. AI has an agentic quality to it, meaning that it wants to be an agent unto itself and/or can or will grow into that. And that's the interesting challenge here. With every other tool that we've created, it doesn't really work unless we work on it. AI has agency and/or can develop this agency and will likely grow this agency more and more as it becomes AGI, etc. And so it's really important to think about how we seed it. The argument I make in the book, and I think, and the kind of metaphor that came to me several years ago after the governor's race, was AI is a cosmic mirror to humans, to us. All it does right now generally is take all of the data from known existence and then how we interact with it on a daily basis, and it reflects back to us. And so the power— there's always power in reflection. Oftentimes we don't love what we see in the mirror, and it gives us an opportunity to, I would say, go inside of ourselves. This is the opportunity that I think AI is providing us with now to go inside ourselves to, to understand more of what we've become and decide if we like this path. Do we want to double and triple down on what I call in the book the old game that humans have been playing forever? Or is this helping us raise to a new game, a higher game, one of unity, love, and togetherness versus kind of division, greed, and hate? And so That is the call of AI. And let me just say one other point to what you were saying. What happens to us when AI is better at doing most of the tasks, like you just explained this weekend, than humans are? When it can do it faster, better, then we're left, Doug, I would argue, with our being. We are human beings. And so, in that reflection, we have the opportunity, like I said, to go inside ourselves and to, I hope, bring more being or presence awareness to all of our doing. And I think that is critical in our day and age at the hyper pace of evolution and innovation that's happening. I feel like, at least I tell the story in the book, how I, growing all these big companies and blah, blah, blah, lost touch with my being. To me, AI will call us back to our being in powerful ways.

It's either that or—

but let's not talk about the alternative.

The reality is that no matter— I think that where we're going to see the mass in the next 5 years, the massive transformational change is going to be the intersection of robotics and AI. Yes. And they're gonna be whole industries completely collapsed. New, new industries are gonna be created. It's gonna, it's gonna be like the automobile age, only exponentially larger. They're gonna be a lot of people that are not gonna, that are gonna have to find meaning in their lives beyond work because work—

and beyond, beyond doing.

And beyond doing. Exactly. And we are not, we are, we do not have cultures right now or communities that support that. You know, we did 200 years ago. Amen. But we don't today. Yeah.

That's a dangerous territory.

And so if we humans don't figure that out, or at least a significant, a significant number, a critical mass, then we're gonna have a lot of people that are gonna be really unhappy.

And amen to that.

A lot. We're gonna see a lot of mental health problems, but we're gonna see one of two things. We're either gonna see people who are, really suffering because they can't find meaning in their life because they don't have a— they haven't developed a broad set of identities to help define who they are and what their— what the role is in life. Or we're gonna have people who are just the opposite, who said, wait, I've got time and space now, I can do whatever I want.

Yeah. Amen.

And they start to create and they create really beautiful things.

Yeah. I think there's art within each one of us. I viewed this this book as a little piece of art, Doug. It was my offering to the divine. I think that's what art ultimately is in all of its forms. And we will have more time. I think there's a book in everyone, or there's art in everyone, and people will have time to explore that. And like you said, the hope is obviously that we lean into our higher natures and that we create art that is beautiful and focused on human flourishing and not human destruction, which is the other side of the coin. Like you said.

And as we've looked at how social media has destroyed the social fabric of the world, certainly it's destroyed the social fabric of our country. And I don't think that's too bold a statement. I'm— it's perilous is what we're looking at.

It is perilous. I think luckily in this instance, Doug, as is often the case, the obstacle becomes the way. So we— I talk about AI in the book as a crucible that humanity must pass through together, and we come out the other side transformed. And I would even say evolved. We evolve or continue evolution. Or like you said, it's not so pretty. It leads to more divisiveness, more greed. I talk about social media being what I call baby AI. It's our first example of the almighty algorithm having an impact through a general use technology, meaning a technology that most people are using. And what effect has that really had? Do we like the effects, especially, I would say, on our young people? We know that it has been devastating to our young people, not even mentioning like our political process and system. We have a challenge on our hands here. This is why the book is happening now. I think that the message is meeting the moment, and I don't want to be too presumptuous, but I hope that your listeners will grab a copy and then share it, because this is a message that not just from my voice, but of several voices, needs to get out there. We need to permeate this in the culture and start grappling with the hard existential questions and work that we must face as humans together.

Are the technologists talking about this stuff at all?

I think they absolutely— oh, sorry.

I just want— you talk— you— there's so much going on in AI right now. It's such a broad— it's a definition that encompasses a lot of stuff, anywhere from power generation to data centers to chips to implementation. It's just everywhere. But I'm wondering if you— you've invested in a lot of technology. My impression from the outside looking in is that they aren't?

I think they are, but not enough.

Okay.

Like this book is meant to be a— I hope that this book is discussed in boardrooms and religious leadership amongst, and political halls, but also around the dinner table in families. Because again, this needs to be a wave in my opinion, in culture so that it is spoken about more. I think there is some talk about it. That's been my experience, but not nearly enough. Unfortunately, is often the case when a new technology comes around, the discussion is too much around how do we make money, how— control, power, greed. We need to pivot that conversation because again, this is a technology that unlike others, or in a different way than others that we've created before, it can get away from us fairly quickly here. And what I say in the book is that if there are a couple of large corporations in control of this technology, there won't be just some winners and losers. We all lose. Humanity loses if we don't get ahead of this and/or on top of this. And again, focus AI on human flourishing. That's the goal of the book. What I think our work is at a high level here in the decades to come. And it's an exciting challenge. It's not an easy one.

What gives you optimism that we as a species can achieve this?

Yeah, I don't want to get too woo-woo with you. I'm not totally familiar.

You can't get too woo-woo with me. Okay.

Here's the thing that gives me the most opt— I think here's my bet, Doug. My bet in the next decade is on a renaissance in human consciousness. I think you can feel that in the air. I can, in the circles, again, both religious, political, and business that I'm in. There is, I believe, I talk about this in the book, that the universe is a highly intelligent system that is by design. We are affected by the system as humans in it more than we maybe understand, both individually and collectively. And so what gives me hope and optimism is that we were built for this and our universe, the system that we exist within, I think was built for this. And so I feel a rising tide in human consciousness. I feel that this is where our hearts are taking us. So if we will lean into that courageously, if we will lean into it with as much ease love and grace as possible, and I see signs of that all around me, then I'm optimistic. If we don't, I'm not optimistic. But certainly the book is the bull case for AI. And I'll say that it is, meaning the bullish case, like the good case for AI. And it is that way because I don't really think we have another option. It's not like we can stop AI. It's not like it's not going to happen. We can't bury our heads in the sand and pretend it isn't there. It's here and it's happening. So the question of the book is, how do we harness this? How do we become more wise as our machine, as humans, as our machines become more intelligent?

And that raises, I, that raises so many questions in my head because one of the things that I see is that we've got dominant, we've got political ideologies that are competing in the world. Yes, the Western democratic ideal, which is— although we're going through some problems right now with that, but I think that it will eventually sort itself out, I think, positively. But then we've got China, for example, radically different political ideology, the idea that the government should control the people. Yeah, we're there to serve the government. And then you've got autocrats like Putin and some of his ilk in Europe and also in Africa, and They self-aggrandize. And so AI is not going to be used for the betterment of the people in those kinds of differing political ideologies. It's gonna be used to aggregate and control power. And I don't know if there's a way around that.

I agree with you and I maybe am not as— like, I think the— I think we can change. I think that AI is— I think AI is going to cause, and by the way, I'm not saying happily or in a good— like through pain, which is unfortunately in the human condition, what we as embodied souls on earth, what we often need to change is pain. So I think that there is massive pain ahead, but I think that pain can lead to transformation, even for the countries that you spoke about. At least that's the hope and goal. If not, we're in a very precarious place. And I, I, yeah, I think that's where we're headed. I think that there is a chance. I think that we write our own future. I think that we have a say in that. I say at the very beginning of the book here, lay some things out, and I say, what comes next? Our destiny. Our destiny as humanity, like, is at hand. We either come together and create something more beautiful together, or if we double and triple down, quadruple down on what we've been doing, I think we can see already the early cracks, the writing on the wall, that our future will not be as bright as it could or should be.

Wow, that's a narrow rail we're walking over.

This is a— this book is ambitious. It is. But what's the alternative, Doug? Give me a better alternative. I, I don't know. We again We can turn the other way, pretend it's not happening. That's not good. We can go screw it. We're going all in on power, control, and money. That's not good. This is, this is a narrow path to, to get a little— this is a narrow path, but it is the path. It is our path. And like I said, I think you have to ask yourself, or I've asked myself a lot the last several years, why— and I'm speaking generally for humanity— why are we so attracted to AI and also so fearful of it. Again, it's because it's going to show us a reflection that isn't so pretty and cause us to go inside and do the hard work that we need to do at both as individuals and as communities in all the forms that we've spoken about in order to become something more. This is the process of transformation and then ultimately evolution. So this is the tool to help us down that path. I'm not saying it's going to be easy, and I'm not saying that if I were a betting person that I would bet that we make it, but I think this is the non-trivial game or experience that we're having right now, and it's the path that we must try to go down. Some things— I often say this— some things are worth our best efforts no matter the outcomes, Doug. And I think that this is one of those things. No matter the outcomes, no matter the odds that we might not make it or whatever, this is worth our best efforts. Your best effort, Doug Noll, my best effort as Jeff, and millions of people around the world. It's worth our best efforts.

So what's your prescription for the future? What should we be doing? How should we be— obviously talking about it is awareness is the first step, but even once we get past awareness and we watch this technology evolve around us? What are practices should we be engaging in to move in the direction that you would like to see us move in?

Yeah, if you don't mind, I think— oh, go ahead.

Which, your vision is beautiful, and I hope I'm around to see it come to pass.

Yeah, me too. If you don't mind, I think the best way to answer that would just to give a little— let's— so the book is laid out in 4 sections that answer your question. And by the way, I think that this is the 4— these are the This is the technology growth cycle. As an investor in hundreds of tech startups in my career, I've seen this repeatedly. What's interesting is it also mirrors our own heroic journey as individuals and humanity. That starts with disruption. So, we're in the middle of that now. That's a call to adventure. We know that change is the only constant and that— and change is hard for humans. But so, we're being disrupted. And we're also having it— so the set— and the second section is called reflection. This is where we often refuse the call. We say it's impossible, we can't do it. I think we're in the midst of those things right now. What ultimately then happens is the hero accepts the call, enters the unknown, which is our opportunity now. This is our collective heroic journey. And if we lean into that with equanimity, or as I like to say say ease, love, and grace, that's where transformation begins. So the third section of the book is transformation. It talks about the old game versus the new game. It talks about anomalies that break the pattern and help humanity move forward. And then the fourth and final section is evolution. This is when we return with wisdom and we evolve both ourselves and what I call for at the end of the book is an evolution of our institutions. So I talk about relationships in the age of AI. I talk about education reform. I talk about reforming religion, conscious capitalism, and this idea also of a new— I call it the human political movement. It's a new political movement that I think can be started focused all around humanity. So that, that might have not been a great answer to your question, but so there's the framework. That is the journey that I think we're on. It's hard for— within all the chapters, there are a lot of specific things, steps that we can take. In fact, each chapter ends with prompts, like an AI prompt. They're mainly questions, some statements that I put in the end to help readers go through this process. Their own heroic journey as they flow through the book.

Wow. Okay. It sounds really interesting. I will definitely be buying the book when we get off the call today.

Good. I hope so.

Two more questions and I'll let you go. One, what is it in your life, what is it about you, Jeff, that has made you so successful? When you look at yourself and you're really honest with yourself and taking away the false modesty and all that BS, what is it about yourself? That you think has made you really successful?

That's interesting because the first thing I wanted to say, whether it's false or not, I don't— but is a lot of, a lot of luck and fortunate circumstances, a lot of blessing. But so if we— so I want to acknowledge that first.

A lot of— important, and I'm glad you did because that is— counts a lot for success.

Yeah, I think a lot of privilege and luck. And but if I had to say I would say 3 things come to mind if I could. Number 1, I'm a visionary guy. Like, I, I'm a futurist. I have shown in my career— I stepped into technology during the dot-com bubble and bursting. I stepped into real estate in '06, '07 during the real estate collapse. I'm now— I now am stepping into this book as a futurist and seeing the way. So I think that I have vision beyond— I hesitate to call it like supernatural, but beyond like just a normal human ability. So vision is one, I would say. The second thing I would say is just a work ethic and/or persistence that is hard to match or beat. I— when it's something I believe in, like this book launch or whatever, I don't give up. I just go as hard as I can in wisdom with presence and being, like I've said. The third thing I'd say, and this is soft, but it's come to me through— I built billion-dollar companies. I'm a father, I'm a grandfather, I've been a leader, a Mormon bishop, and other many other leadership callings in my church. I've traveled to 60 countries. My appointments— I've run for a political statewide office. But my point is, I have a vast and varied experience, generally speaking. And my belief is that love is almost always the answer, and that love is the fundamental— actually, despite all the hate and greed and bad things that we see in this world, I think that love is the essence of this existence. And so frankly, I haven't been afraid to lean into love. I've let— and I haven't done that perfectly, but I've followed my heart. I've been courageous in that, and then I've done it in the most loving way that I possibly can, and no matter what I've done. And so I would think that— I think that's a secret to my success, is bringing my heart and soul, my pure intentions, to whatever faces me. So there's 3 ideas. I, it's a great question. I try not, I don't, yeah.

I wanna, I just wanna, I wanna just reflect on the last part, the love. I believe that love is anything but soft. Yeah. It is one of the hardest skills out there. One of the, and it's, it is the, it drives all. And we, people, we could have a whole conversation around emotions and love and what all this is and why is it that our Western culture issues, concepts like that. We don't like to talk about it. There are a lot of reasons for that, and they're all wrong. So good for you, and it was quite refreshing.

Yeah, and let me just say, just real quick, it's hard-fought, right? Like, you only get love, you only become love, you only get love through hard-fought work, like you said, like internal work.

Yes, as my wife teaches, you can only receive love to the degree that you love yourself. Yeah. Amen. There's a lot of work.

Sounds like you have a wise wife. I do. So do I.

One more question, Jeff. This is kind of a fun one. What's one thing about yourself that we would never know about unless you revealed it to us?

Gosh, I reveal all those things in the book. So read the book. There's so many. Speaking of love, I talk about tantric camp in Switzerland with my wife.

That had to be interesting.

Yes. I gave my last wedding invitation to the Michael Jordan. I've been on this— I'm trying to just think of weird, funny things. I've been on this spiritual journey, I would say, Doug, that I'm very open about. And it's really nice to come into this world with a nice tidy box with all the answers prescribed and ticked and tied. That's been my experience. That was my experience. And that box is beautiful and glorious for a time. It's a great foundation. But let me just say, it's a great foundation until it's not. And once you understand that the world is a lot of gray— it's not black and white, it's a lot of gray— and once you've had enough experience to realize that your heart knows the way, the— your own heroic journey is already inside of you. It's not outside of you. We look so much for external validation. We look for people or things or success to tell us we're right, we're okay. It's not about that. It's about this internal journey that we are all on. And I'm very vulnerable and open about that in the book. So I unwind that in the book, and those are my most vulnerable kind of things. And whereas I once was a very devout Mormon, observant, let's say, like an Orthodox Jew, but in Mormonism I have softened a lot in that. I've gained a lot of wisdom through that, a lot of blessing from it, but I think there's a lot more going on here. There's an underlying unity, divine unity in this existence that we take for granted and that we overlook. It is time for us to return to that in a bigger way. In this age of AI. That's what we need to do if we want to be successful here.

I completely agree. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day. This was not the conversation I expected, but it's a conversation that I loved. So thanks for sharing it with all of you, and amen for everything that you do.

Yeah, I love being with you, Doug. It's been great to talk.

Thanks, Jeff. Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.