FOF 154 | Jonathan Reichental. On Cities and Governments Using Technology To Serve People Better.

This is the Future of the Future show. I am your host, Matteo Berrebejicio. Today's episode is a special one. It's not often that you get to sit down with someone that has operated at the highest levels of public sector technology, advised global organizations of the future of innovation, and brought that experience into the classroom and onto the page as a professor and author. That's why it's truly an Honor to welcome Dr. Jonathan Reichental to the show. Jonathan served as a CIO for the city of Palo Alto, right in the heart of Silicon Valley, where he helped transform how a city can use technology to better serve its residents. From open data initiatives to digital services that made government more accessible, transparent and responsive. Since then, through his advisory work and founding Human Future, he's continued to help cities, governments and organizations think more boldly and more practically about emerging technologies that improve real lives. What makes Jonathan's perspective so powerful is the unique combination he hands on experience inside government, deep roots in the tech industry, and the reflective lens of a professor and author who studies leadership, innovation and the future of cities. He doesn't just talk about what's possible, he understands what's workable. In this conversation, we are exploring a critical question. How can cities and governments actually use technology to serve people better? Jonathan, thank you so much for being here.

Well, thank you, Mattea. What a beautiful introduction. I love that. Thank you.

You work both in corporate tech and as a CIO of the city of Palo Alto. What was the biggest mindset shift you experienced moving from private sector tech into local government?

Oh, my goodness gracious. It's a great question and it's come up many times. And it was one of the questions I also had as I moved from the private sector into the public service. You know, I, I, I didn't have any background in government. I had a curiosity which is so important. So in many ways, when I, you know, went into city hall in approximately 2011, sat down at my desk, it was day one and I had to figure it all out. I have to say, a lot of it was similar. You know, when you're, when you're the leader for technology, a city is another organization that needs technology to run. You have, you know, a server room with databases and you run email and you have to have cyber security. And I have to say, back in 2011, a lot of it was on premises, whereas today it's increasingly cloud. And I was one of the first US CIOs to sort of say we ought to be cloud first. You know, governments have Never been particularly good at building and managing complex data centers. Let's focus on what we're really good at in terms of technology. Not a massive amount of difference, but that's where it kind of ends. What ends is how you make decisions. The decisions are completely different, the level of transparency and inputs you need when you make a decision. And the truth is, even though that does create bureaucracy and layers of delay, I actually liked it. I liked having the collaboration not only with my colleagues across the city, but also with the community and with the vendor community so that we could make a better decision. Yeah, it took longer, but it probably often was, was a better decision. The other thing about working in a. In a city relative to private organization is while the private organizations often have, you know, they have one mission, they sell a particular product or service. If it's a little bit bigger, they have multiple products and services. When you work for a city, it's like you run many companies, right? Think about this. What's the similarity between running libraries in a city and the fire service or the police service? There's actually nothing as similar. They're completely different businesses. They run differently, they're staffed differently. Different talent, different technology. So. So even a small city has 10, 15 departments. A big city, you know, like San Francisco or New York City or Paris, has tens of, if not maybe 100 or more departments. So you're a CIO of a very complicated organization with many different businesses that's different. And maybe the final point I would make is there are a lot of distractions in a city and probably for good reason. You don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. You could be focusing today on a particular project and suddenly a policy changes, a new regulation comes in from the state or the federal level, or there's a crisis and the focus shifts very quickly. So you have to be very agile. You know, in the private sector, you got an IT strategy, you stick to it. Yeah, there's modifications and. And over time, it should change. But I think at the city level, you have to be ready to make big changes or to just pivot and work on something else for a little while before you pivot back. So, yeah, in those areas, quite a lot of differences.

Politics exist everywhere. Right. But how does it. Palo Alto is probably a different type of city as well. And you talk a lot about that when, you know, when the opportunity came about and you were asked about it. You wouldn't have said yes if it was a different city. Right. Palo Alto, Silicon Valley, it was a different game Right. Do you think there was less of it, less of the typical politics that you will see in another city? More or less the same. How did you navigate that?

Well, thank you, Matteo. You've clearly done your research. I love that because you're right. When I was headhunted because I was working for a tech company at the time, and I got a phone call from a headhunter, they said, would you like to work for a city? My immediate reaction in my head was, well, I don't think I like the sound of that. Right. It sounds bureaucratic, it sounds like political. And. And then the recruiter said, because I think very quickly, I asked what city you know, and they said the city of Palo Alto. And I knew it as the birthplace of Silicon Valley, sometimes called the heart of Silicon Valley, you know, the home of Steve Jobs when he was alive, the home of Stanford University. And Mark Zuckerberg lives there today, and many others, many other luminaries in the tech industry. And I thought, wow, if you're going to work for government, this is probably a really interesting place as a technologist, because I could. My thesis was not only would they be. Would the city be very encouraging to trying things out and being innovative, but my community could be partners and I could reach out to these executives, these other CIOs and CTOs and CEOs of tech companies, and wow, that would. Would be powerful. So there was a lot that I liked about it and coupled with the. The view from myself that as a curious person, a person with just abundant curiosity, I wanted to know how cities worked and I wanted to know how government worked. So, getting to the heart of your question, I didn't make the evaluation based on politics, to be frank with you. What I did learn is, and this may surprise you, is it was very political. Absolutely. And by the way, being a technology city with a technology community didn't make it easier. This is something I've had to fight a lot. A lot of my peers in different organizations, other CTOs and CIOs would say, well, you live in Palo Alto, of course, you've got Stanford, you've got all these incredible technology people. You've got a council that's made up of technologists as well. And I would say, well, you might think it would make it easier, but it's still hard work. And I still. The most common answer you get in politics from decision makers is no. And when you're an innovator getting beyond no is the hard work moving from no to maybe and from maybe to yes. Right? So, yeah, no, there was certainly an average amount of politics and in some areas, arguably a little bit more, given that we had a very engaged community. Right. People who actually wanted to have a voice. You see, it's worth mentioning because this topic is not that familiar to a lot of people. Local government is the closest you're going to get to government in any country in the world. Often the mayor, council members and others live in the community. You can meet them in the shopping center. Despite that. And people have a lot of complaints. And they have, of course, they, they're passionate about where they live. People should be. They love where they live. Generally, they don't participate in their democracy or in their community. Right. They, they have a lot to say and they, they don't necessarily take advantage of the opportunity to, to share their voice. And the way you do that is by being engaged, by going to the council meetings and by being part of committees, voluntary committees. And that's all to say in the city of Palo Alto, I think there was greater, I mean, I have the evidence there was greater community participation than the average community in the United States.

So in politics you get a lot of no's, and it's hard to get a yes. But you did get a lot of great yes. Tell me about those. Right. You led initiatives like open data portals, public Wi fi, digital services. What are some of the ones that make you proudest and you think had a direct impact on people daily lives?

Well, as an innovator, whether you're in public, private academia or government, you do face no a lot. And actually, I always say there's two people who you're always going to struggle with is the security people. And sometimes they're your colleague, cyber security or information security, and the lawyers, because they're both trying to protect the organization. And innovation is risky by definition if you're not taking a risk and pushing the envelope. I don't think you're innovating, really. You're not bringing a new idea that is challenging the status quo. So mostly as innovators and if you choose to be one in your organization, if the CTO and you're charged with, we need somebody to be very assertive around pushing innovation. You know what I'm talking about? And that was my mission. Now, I didn't come in and just make that up. The city manager and the council wanted that. Sometimes I would think maybe they had buyer's remorse, you know, because they got what they asked for. I was very pushy and I was very aggressive in my innovation agenda. Now, looking back, you know, many years later, I think people are very happy and I'm very pleased by, by what we did. So, yes, there's, there's a kind of a barrier you need to get through. And I can be persuasive, but I also know when to stop. But I knew it was the right thing to do. You mentioned a couple of the areas that I am proud of. You know, one day early in my tenure at the city, I, you know, I was doing a lot of thinking, I was doing a lot of observations, which you should do when you first join an organization. And I did notice that there was, it was, it was a world of constraints. I like to call it a world of constraints. Not enough time, too many projects, not enough money, not enough talent, just this constrained. And you kind of have to figure that out. Now, that exists in every type of business. I think in cities and in government, it's often more exaggerated because you, you, you know, you don't, you're not. Funds are not abundant, typically. Right. So I, But I did notice one thing. I noticed there was a lot of data. A lot. And, and that was one of our primary products as a team and as a city, you know, collecting, creating, storing, managing, securing, all the things you do with data. And I asked, you know, I happened to see my operations manager, and I said to her, after we collect data, what do we do with it? You know, I see there's so much of it. And her answer was nothing. We have one purpose to the data, whatever it is, maybe we're issuing permits, you know, and so you issue the permit. Now you have a lot of data related to that permit. So that got me thinking, are there other people who could find value in that? You know, could we share it with others so that they could maybe build what we call derivative value? Right. Something else, a secondary value to it. And this is where, working with my team and some external stakeholders, we created an approach to what's called open data, which is opening up your data sets to the world right Today, you know, 15 years later, this is not that novel. But I have to say, back in 2010, 2011, even to 2012, this was very new thinking. It coincided, by the way, strongly with efforts at the federal level. At the time, President Barack Obama was the US President, he sometimes called a tech president, and he had a lot of interest in technology innovation, a lot of interest in data personally. But he also, he surrounded himself with an amazing team of innovators who pushed the envelope on these things. And I was not only inspired by them. But I'm humbled to say they were also inspired by the work we were doing. And I got invited to the White House as a consequence of that. And we shared best practices. So I'm very pleased with the platform we put up, how we did collaborate with the community and others, how people could then use that content to develop applications. I'll share with you one specific manifestation of that which I think people will find interesting. So we implemented an app at the time, a 311 app in the U.S. 311 is a number you dial, just like 911 for police. But you do 311 when you want to report a issue around infrastructure. So, for example, graffiti or abandoned trash on the ground. And what's become popular over the years is to do that with an app. And you probably have it there in Uruguay. And I know it's in many, many cities all over the world. So we were very early, also in the US to deploy a 311 app. And it got me thinking. Here we are capturing all this incredible information that people are inputting into it, everything from, you know, again, infrastructure issues to abandoned bicycles to potholes and lots and lots of things that you find in cities. And I thought, again, what are we doing with the data on the back end there? We're solving the issue, but we're not using the data again. So I talked to my team. I said, what happens if we just publish that data in what's called near real time? So we don't do real time because we want to do a little bit of vetting, but near real time. So a few minutes after somebody creates a new ticket or has a new issue or it's resolved, we publish that, and we do it on a map, on a map of the city so you can see it happening in real time. It was experimental and innovative. We didn't know what would happen, but it changed the game. Suddenly anyone who wanted in our community, in our staff, in our council, or anywhere in the world could see at any point in time what was happening in the city of Palo Alto. And this is very interesting. This is visibility we never had before. And you could sort of see where are there clusters of similar issues, what maybe is the genesis of those issues so we can resolve them. Right. And by the way, as I stop here, this is all available today. So many, many years later, it still operates. You can find a lot of it@data.cityofpaloalto.org that is amazing.

And it brings me to that question about open data and governments, right? How do you think governments at the government level should balance transparency with privacy and security? And is there a risk if they get it wrong?

There is a risk if they get it wrong. And this was very much top of mind as we approached. How do you make sure you don't open up data that's sensitive or protected? And by the way, just like in Uruguay and across Europe and many countries, there is laws that protect data. Right here in the U.S. for example, medical information is highly sensitive and protected. In Europe, you've got the GDPR act, the General Data Protections act, which, you know, the penalties for not protecting information about people are severe. So, yeah, you got to be really, really careful. So how did we address it? We didn't publish all data on day one. That's a bad idea. Don't try to boil the ocean on day one. We sort of said, because we were all, this was a top concern, right? We all said, well, we've got to be careful. So you start with a totally not sensitive, totally public piece data set. And we put that online and we exercise the process. Here's how we identified, here's how we vetted, here's how we get it online. It worked well. In that vetting process, we would go through a series of, if you like, gates. One of the gates would be, is it, is this protected information by law? Can we make sure? And we would, we had an attorney at the city who would answer that question. Is it sensitive data? That could be risky. You know, that is maybe protected or recommended to be protected by the Department of Homeland Security for things like, you know, we want to avoid terrorism and making sensitive data available to bad people. And so we went through those gates and only at the end of that would we then, you know, hit the approve button and then move it into, into public availability. What I discovered here, though, that there's a, there's an interesting little twist to this is most data in government is not protected, right? So what I'm really saying here is it's a small slice, right? So I'm going to make up a number. This is not a real number, but I just want to give you an idea. Sort of, you're talking like 90% of all data sets, which is, you know, terabytes or, you know, even maybe petabytes of information in the government that you can freely make available. There's, it's, there's no sensitivity to it. So you're really sort of super focused on that small percentage. That's where all the effort goes. So to answer your question, in sort of one sentence. When governments make available their data for positive reasons, they have to be very careful in doing that.

A lot of cities talk about being smart, right. But few move from strategy to meaningful action. What are the core principles you believe every city should adapt to? Effectively use technology as a service to people?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think we should start by saying that every organization today is a technology business or a technology organization. Right. I often say to my students, can you think of any organization in the world today, any type of business that, where technology isn't the central driver of how it operates and delivers to the market? And as of today, nobody has been able to give me an answer to that. That there is every type of business, from agriculture to entertainment to retail to pharmaceutical and beyond, essentially functions now with technology at the center. And as we move more to cloud and more automation and more adoption of AI, every business is looking more and more like it is a technology business. Back in 2010, 2011, the old days of technology, all of 16 years ago, this was not the case. Technology at that time was still back office, was often secondary, didn't get the care and attention it needed. And it was often just for administrative. It wasn't for outward facing delivery of services or improvements in the community. Sure there's outliers and there's exceptions to that, but generally it was more for the administrative back office function. Well, that's changed completely. You know, whether it's, you know, whether it's better traffic management, more optimized energy, better waste management. In all these areas, technology is playing a central role. And it's not just software, but software plus hardware that is, that is making it, making it happen. For example, a one company, what they do is a type of technology business. I don't necessarily want to, you know, say company names here today, but, but there are businesses that will put cameras on fleets of vehicles. And those fleets of vehicles might belong, let's say, to the transportation service or to public works. And they are, you know, driving around the city all day long. We put the cameras on that. And those cameras, what they do is they detect certain things. So for example, they might look for enforcement issues. A car parked in a, in a, in a lane, that's for a bus, you know, or a, a tree that has fallen over and could be a danger. So any number, you identify what these things are, the camera collects it sends it back to city hall to prioritize, and then a team is sent out. So you've, you're kind of automating the collection of infrastructure needs just in the day to day business of having vehicles drive around. So it plays this phenomenal role today. If a mayor or city manager or whoever is leading the city has not sort of come to terms with this, that they're probably at a disadvantage. The leaders who realize that using technology smartly can change the quality of service, the relationship between the community and city hall and so many other things, recognizing that technology can help with that and then deploying it in a way that, you know, meets or exceeds needs is a game changer. It can be very positive. What are we trying to do in cities? I used to say, you know, it's kind of like the happiness business. We're trying to make people happy. You know, we're trying to make sure that it's a good quality of life. There's sort of three things we try to do specific to the smart city movement. One is improve livability. Right. And that's lots of things from, you know, just more efficiencies. Whether it's paying a parking ticket or, you know, requesting a permit or your birth certificate. Right. And having, you know, a nice, the place looks beautiful and it operates well. The second one is workability. That the economics are good. Right. That the community is attractive to employers, that there's good infrastructure for that, like high speed Internet. And the third is sustainability. And sustainability, which is quite a broad term today, certainly it's about, you know, resilience. If there's going to be an earthquake or a flood or a fire, how quickly can you respond? To what degree are you using carbon energy versus non carbon energy? So big and complicated. But that's one of the ways to think about it. And when we think about how can we improve livability, workability and sustainability, what tools do we have at our disposal? Well, we have our brains, we have, you know, we have motivation, you know, bring smart people together who are determined to do good work. And we have technology. And today we have incredible tools, as you know, and so many of your viewers and listeners know. And it's only getting better. We may get to artificial intelligence here, maybe in the conversation, but we're entering now yet another revolution, a cognitive industrial revolution where AI, automation and robotics is again changing the capabilities that are available to everybody and cities to make things better.

You, you talk a little bit about creating sort of a startup like energy inside government. What practical steps do you think local leaders can take to build that innovation culture within the government structure?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, this is a good story. I'm, I'm very proud of this. So when I joined the city of Palo Alto, and it's okay saying this now because it's, it's 16 years later and I'm not there anymore. So I can say all the things I couldn't say when I was there. I walked into City hall, went into it, and it was like you could probably imagine. It was, it was very messy, dark. It didn't look like a modern, you know, technology team and technology department. It hadn't got any. I would think about it like this. It wasn't getting the love it required. My job was to come in and give it, you know, give it some love and change the game. And, well, you know, you can change the surroundings, but it doesn't change people hugely. You have to work to help people see the world differently. And so one of the things that I brought to the table, I was like, we are in the heart. We have the center of Silicon Valley, the technology innovation center of the world. We're surrounded by the most incredible companies and startups. I want to take my team out, I want to show them what's possible. So every month I would take the entire team to a technology company somewhere in the Valley, and we would meet with them. I mean, it was an education opportunity, it was training. We would meet with their cto, they would talk about their security software or their cloud solution or their hardware, and you know, they would, they. We would get to walk through, get a little tour, and we'd go into their, you know, their, their conference room or their training center, and it would be as you imagine A, a 21st century tech company looks. And then we would have a great time, you know, turn around and head back to our office. And we'd walk into City hall and it was like, well, they don't connect, right? They're not in alignment. So that got me thinking, okay, we're getting all the advantages of what we're seeing and people are feeling more excited about the possibilities, but it doesn't match the environment. So we tore the entire IT area apart and we completely gutted it. And I mean that, I mean, you can see the photographs. I mean, like a building site was the second floor of City hall. And what do we build? We built a startup at City hall. And it wasn't just the physical surroundings. So yeah, it became open plan. It was bright and we had, we put screens on the wall and we had walls that you could write on. You know, we had these, I can't remember the name of them, but, you know, the ones I'm Talking about. And we introduced then sort of the physical world completely changed and then we changed processes how we accepted. And we had a walk in center where people could. Much like the. When you walk into an Apple Store today, I actually modeled it on the Apple Store. There's a table, it's not a window, but you sit at the table and a professional comes over to you and they work with you. It's very human centric. And then we started to act like a startup. It looked like a Silicon Valley startup. And that changed attitudes. It changed not only the attitude of the team. Every team member became, you know, excited to come to work for the most part. Not everybody, but for the most part. And then when we had visitors, so the most interesting thing is I had a little reception area again it looked like a startup and I would have a vendor or a partner come to, to meet with me and they would, to get the elevator and come to the second floor and then they would go up to our, our greeter, our receptionist. And um, she did a lot more than just that, but that was one of her jobs. And the person would say, I'm here. Oh, the first thing they would say is, is this City Hall? And then they'd say. And she'd say yes. And they'd say I'd like to meet Jonathan Reichental. And the reason they would always share the story with me is it didn't look like everybody expected city halls to look like they thought they were in a building where city hall was, but this was a startup. And I said that is music to my ears. So we transformed every aspect of it. I mean through this work we were able to deliver higher quality work projects on time, on budget, in scope. My team was happier. You want people to have joy in their work and to come to work and to be proud of it. I'll just finish on this one story. I've kind of said it, but I'm going to summarize it more briefly. There was one gentleman in my team who'd been at the city for maybe 40 years actually. He was definitely close to retirement and so he'd seen several CIOs come and go and, and now he's getting to work with me. And I think everyone acknowledges I'm not your typical government cio. So it was a little surprising to be hired and to work there for lot, lots of people and, and they thought I wouldn't work out. But it worked out well. And so we build this started up at City hall and you know, he, he became, you know, after 40 years, a little burnt out and, you know, been there, done that, and, you know, not particularly motivated. He was doing a decent job and, and he knew that, you know, in a few years he was going to leave, so he wasn't going to. You know, this wasn't a time of growth and anything new for him. So anyway, he's coming in and out for the first few days and finally comes into my office and he says, jonathan, I want to talk to you about the new, the new environment, what you've built, what we've built together. I said, I was actually worried that he was going to say something bad. He said, I absolutely love it here. I'm so proud to come to work every day. And I just said, that means the world. I mean, that makes it all worthwhile, you know, so that kind of sums up what we achieved and of course, ultimately delivering great services to the community.

Let's shift gears and talk a little bit about Human Future. How do you see the role of Human Future and companies like Human Future in bridging gaps between emerging technology and real world civic impact?

Well, when I left the city finally, after almost seven years to the day that I joined, I wanted to do more of what I was doing, but I wanted to do it on a bigger scale. When I was with the city of Palo Alto as their, as their CTO and Chief Innovation Officer, I, I was being invited to, to help and, and to talk with other cities because they were, of course, our work was getting a lot of attention. We had the media in and out a lot. We had TV coming in, we had radio, podcasts. You know, lots of people were writing about our work. And you can find all that online today. And so when you work for a city, when you work in government in the United States, there's limitations. You're not really supposed to have another job. You know, your attention should be really on what you're doing. Part of it is, you know, the spirit of it. But also there's rules, right? I mean, there's rules you have to follow. So I was doing as much as I could without, you know, without, you know, exceeding what was, what was appropriate. Speaking at conferences, you know, I, I got to be invited to the Department of Finance in Paris one time, and I went for a day, you know, from San Francisco to Paris and back. I never do that again. That the event itself was amazing and I was proud. But don't do that trip in one day. And, and so anyway, I did that a few times and, and after a while, I was like want to do more of that. I want to do the great work we're doing here at the city, but do it at a broader scale. And I couldn't do it while I was at the city. So I had to make the tough decision, you know, based on a lot of things. I decided to wrap up my work and, and move on. And I was like, how will I do this, man? I could, I could join a, you know, big consulting firm. I could do it as a professor maybe, but I decided to do it myself. I'd said, I'm in Silicon Valley, I'm at the right age, you know, not too young, I have experience, not too old. I still have energy. Let's go for this and build this thing called human future. First of all, I want to just stress the word human, right? Even though I'm a technologist and I'm deeply engaged in technology, you know, software, you know, hardware and everything that comes with that, I still believe in the human role here. And I want the human to be the dominant role as best we can. So I call the human future. So we want technology to make life better for humans and work with technology. So through human future, I've been able to work with cities and governments all over the world, many Prime Minister offices in many in the Middle east and in Asia, and many mayors and leaders around the United States and even South America and Central America. I've done quite a lot of work as far as Australia and New Zealand. So there's very few places I haven't been or delivered my work. And so there's a hunger, there's an appetite for good ideas, there's a hunger for how can we do things differently, not only technology, but processes. And how do you innovate differently? What does innovation really mean, what you struggle with? Why is this hard? Why are even leaders so interested is because inherent to innovation is risk. And governments are risk averse. They really are. They are highly visible and making a mistake. There's not a lot of appetite for that. Political leaders who want to get reelected and want to get a, you know, to do the right thing, you know, and many of them do, you know, investing in risky projects and if they fail often enough, they're not going to get another chance and that they won't have a political career. It's similar, by the way, on the civil side, on the, on the civil servant side, where, you know, if you're a CIO pushing the envelope and you're, you're taking risks and you're having a lot of Failures, you getting the next job or growth is going to be hard, right? So we, we, we tend to be as governments much more risk averse than the private sector. The private sector, you have to take risks. Otherwise you know, you could go obsolete, the company could go out of business. Cities don't go out of business. They, they can run out of money, but they don't go out of business and they have to function. And so risk is, is much lower. So that, that's at the heart of it. How can you innovate more? How can you use technology but also have balanced risk? Now part of the answer, by the way, is you have to take more risk, right? It seems like a contradiction, but you do have to push the envelope more. You do have to experiment. And governments don't really experiment with technology now. They do, but historically there's no track record of experimenting. When you look at AI today, and I'm getting asked a lot by city leaders, what do we do with AI? Well, you have to learn and get and train to learn the tools. That's very important. You got to have policies, right? Don't operate in a vacuum like, because that's risky. And you got to do something you probably haven't done before, which is, which is experiment, try things and try them knowing that you might fail. So, so I think that's some of the principles. It's part of what, what I'm doing and part of what, I mean, asked to do, where the demand's coming from. I would just recommend that local governments, you know, ensure that they're committed to a future of automation and AI and all aspects of emerging technology and that they're ready to innovate, they're ready to experiment, build an innovation lab, you know, to do that. Hire the right people with the right mindset where they are ready to experiment and take risks. Yeah, those are some basics. There's a lot more to this, of course, but I think those are some basics that are useful. I think relative to your question, what

are some of the projects that excite you the most in 2026 that are coming to you starting or will start in the near future?

I mean, we're entering the cognitive industrial revolution. I mean, this is a, this is a period of humanity that there's no precedent for. We're not prepared for it. You might be under the impression that there's more hype than reality today. You might be under the impression it'll be business as usual. This is sort of a side topic. If you have any of those, you know, if that, if that's the position you're taking and look, this is my opinion, I think you're, I think you're wrong. What's coming in the next 24 months and beyond will radically change. Capabilities will be a force of disruption that we've never seen before in every industry, including government. So I'm excited because I'm an optimist. I see technology as an enabler. I'm for example, very excited about the possibilities for medicine and disease management that's coming with whole new technologies. The combination of artificial intelligence, quantum computing, for example, big data and other variations of automation and AI. I'm very interested in the world of autonomous devices, particularly autonomous driving. I'm here just south of San Francisco and the roads are getting more and more populated with self driving cars. And even though I'm somebody who has been a researcher and very close to the self driving vehicle business for over a decade, it's still magical to me. I have to say, sitting in the back of a Waymo and there's no driver and the steering wheel is moving and the car is beautifully navigating the most complex streets of San Francisco. I'm, I'm still, I know how the technology works, but I don't know how it works. You know what I mean? So it's, it's, it's wondrous. So I think self driving vehicles are, are get me excited about the possibilities. And why do you say that? Well, two, two, two things immediately. One is less accidents, right? 1.4 million people die every year in car accidents. Die. Right. Millions more get injured as self driving vehicles roll out. We're going to see that number drop significantly that, that, those are real numbers. Those are brothers, s fathers, children, you know, friends that are either passing away or getting injured. The second thing is better, better traffic management we anticipate. And so it'll flow faster and you know, where there are big traffic jams and congestion, hopefully that's a bigger deal. And I think the third, although I said two, I have one more which is the cost of transportation. So if, if it costs less to hail a cab, hail, you know, driving a car with your, with your, with your smartphone than to own a car. Why would you own a car? Right? And I think that's where we're headed now. People will fight this and they'll argue with me. That's fair. I'm a complete freedom of speech person. So I, I'm happy, happy to have that, that dialogue and to respect other people's opinions. But the data suggests to me that we won't own cars, transportation will be electric and cheaper and it'll flow better and we won't have to have major parking lots and there'll be all sorts of things we can do as a result of that. In terms of my own project, I'll do one more because that was in your question. Right now I'm working on an AI driven digital library for a community and this is really exciting. This is very interesting. So think of a digital library like a physical library, but everything's digital so you can download books and videos and more. What happens though, when you can start to have conversations with books? You know, you're reading the Harry Potter series and you want to have a discussion either with AI or with another person or with the text itself, you know, engage in it. We can start to do that now. It's a whole new day. And as a convener of people and ideas, this digital library now is going to be fairly game changing and first of a kind. So I'm excited about that project.

That is amazing. It opens up a whole new topic that could be even another podcast, right? And the effect of AI in education. Want to respect your time? I won't get there just yet, but maybe sometime we do another episode. But I want to leave the audience with one last question to you. You know, someone is listening, right? And they all like, I, I, I think the same thing. I hear what Dr. Jonathan is saying about AI and I feel great, change is coming. How do they get ready? What will be your advice for them? Like what do they do?

Yeah, it's, it's a question I get probably every day from my students in some capacity, in some, in some class, and not only students, but from businesses and executives and staff. The first thing to say is there's a lot we don't know. And you know, I could sit here and look like the expert and tell you a whole lot of things. The truth is, if I'm being honest, and we all should be, we don't really know to prepare. And the reason we don't know how to prepare is we don't know what's going to happen. We can make some good guesses. You know, certainly jobs will go away, but new jobs will be created. We saw that in all the industrial revolutions, right? Every time. Even when we went into the third Industrial revolution, the, the information age. You go back to the, you know, 80s and 70s and 80s and into the 90s a little bit. And the, and the notion was we would have tons of free time because of computers. And we'd have less to do and. Well, no, not only are we busier than ever, we're doing more work, but there's more openings and more opportunity than ever as a consequence of the technology, the information age. Okay, but let's recognize AI is different. It really is. It is different. I'm not as confident in that. It's going to create significantly more work and more jobs for humans like the previous ones did. But there is going to be. There are. Excuse me, there are going to be new jobs and new opportunities, even jobs and opportunities, many that we can't even conceive of right now. You don't know what they are because we don't know what the needs are going to be. So the honest answer to a large degree is we don't know what we should do and how we should prepare, but we can just sort of say we can't do nothing. And I would be recommending, of course, to become familiar with the tools to become very good at, you know, the basics, more than the basics of your conversational bot like OpenAI ChatGPT, you know, Gemini Perplexity, Claude Grok and others. You know, be good at those. Know what they can do, know what their capabilities are. Start getting some experience and playing with agentic AI to the extent you can have curiosity. You know, I almost like to drop this in every podcast is we don't have enough curiosity in our young people. And I want to say ask more questions, be more curious, figure out how to find that curiosity, because that'll lead you in interesting directions. It'll lead you to get into the weeds a bit more and to, you know, build out your, your knowledge and your, Your understanding of the context of change. Even though we may not know what to specifically do, having a kind of a contextual grounding, I think can be extremely valuable. So learning, you know, get some training in the other thing. I think that maybe I'll just leave it on on this point because I believe this to be a very long. A big question that needs a long answer. But it just, in the, in the interest of time is to realize, to recognize that you may have multiple careers. There's going to be a few maybe where you're kind of in the same place. Like I think, I think nurses, you know, probably a lot of people in the, in medical practitioners, people who, like, work with patients. Yeah, you could have a life doing that. I don't think that's going away anytime soon. It'll change as, as your companions are going to be Humanoids for sure and cobots and other, you know, automation that, that works with you. But in a lot of information based jobs, I think you're going to probably have multiple careers and the way to prepare for that is to first of all know, be, be competent and good at what you do right now, but be thinking about the next thing like where could you shift to where, where is momentum headed right now in your field? So if you're, if you're in the accounting business, you know, if you're in an accounting firm or you're an accounting professional, it's going to change. We'll need people, but they're going to do different things. So kind of keep your eye on the, where the ball is headed to rather than where it is and be learning, be a lifelong learner that is able to, then when the playing field changes, you can pivot and go to where the opportunity is. That flexibility, I think in you as a provider is going to be very, is going to be very helpful. And maybe one more, one more, right? Don't believe that the only opportunity you are, you have to, and this is a lot to students who are studying already, are graduating soon. Don't believe that the only option you have available to you is to join a company, is to have a good resume. Get that resume out there and go for a job, create opportunity, build your own business, right? That'll give you a lot of freedom, a lot of control and you're no longer behoven to the existing marketplace. You can create a market for something, you know, assuming there's a demand for it, people are prepared to pay for it. But create your own business. I mean, I think that's the ultimate way to create freedom and control in your life.

Jonathan, thank you so very much. This has been an amazing conversation. I could honestly, I could do a five hour podcast with you. You are a fountain of knowledge and, and answers for everything. So I appreciate it. This was a great conversation. I look forward to staying in touch. And once you make it to Argentina, let me know if you want to take that ferry make it to Uruguay. We'll love to host you here.

Oh, Matteo, I am coming. I'm saying to you right now, we are going to have some good coffee and some good conversation there in Uruguay very, very soon.