AI Powered Society, what should leaders do now?

Everybody to our second session here where we, well, we are, we, Jennifer and I were so happy you guys came. Our first session went really, really well. In the second session, we're gonna continue what we started in the first one. And that is we're looking at the future of work, especially from perspective of leaders.. And Jennifer and I, we think we make this really good combo because we're very different people. Jennifer is all into being professional and executive, and so am I, but I like joking around and like being a nerd. So this combination makes for like the worst couple possible, right? So welcome to our virtual marriage. Jennifer, are you ready to go?

I am ready to go, and it is absolutely, absolutely wonderful, wonderful to be here. And I will endeavor to share the right thing on the screen. So we have officially branded what we're on as a journey into the future. And as Thomas said, this is our second session working together. And what I'm going to do is spend a few minutes just sharing some perspectives of what I hear from leaders that I work with on a daily basis. Of different ways they are using AI and technology in order to power a whole new way of operating. Because I really do believe that 2024 is going to be the year of change way beyond anything we've ever seen.

I agree.

There's so many dynamics happening in the world, whether it's elections, whether it's greater focus on climate change, whether it's Gen Z coming to the leadership roles in companies. Everything, however, is powered by AI. This is the year that AI will become embedded into all of our lives and operations, from all of the statistics, all of the analysts. Now, for each of us, we can look at it to say, this is kind of the end of the world for people. We need to run for cover. And I know there are some people, especially in the northern part of Europe, that tend to look at that, things that way. But those of us with a Silicon Valley mindset look at it as an opportunity to empower and create a whole new world, a much more sustainable world, a world in which we don't have to commute and destroy the environment. A world in which we don't have to do the things that we really don't like doing but are just part of work today. A world that can free us. In that way, it's a true paradigm shift. I am convinced that we will never go back to the way we have done things, even in 2023. We will move forward. Somebody asked me actually in a meeting in Oslo this morning, What can we do in our company to slow this down? We just need a little time to kind of digest and then we'll think about it. And my reaction and response, without really thinking about it, was to say, that's like saying, what can we do to stop it from snowing anymore this year? There's not much.

But, but, but why would you even want to slow it down? I mean, that perspective—

No, I would want to slow down because I'm terrified of walking around in it. Um, the technology— I think people want to slow down because it's coming so fast they can't digest it. But the reality is you can't, but you can take it a piece at a time. I wish the snow, we could take it a piece at a time, but the technology, we can look at things piece by piece, step by step. You don't have to go all in. Now, having said that, a lot of leaders, in fact, the vast majority of leaders around the world, are building AI specifically into their core business processes this year. That could be from a marketing point of view. It could be from a product development point of view. But this was the year that that shift is happening, and it's paying off, not just in helping people do things faster, but paying off in greater quality. Think about people. We are not necessarily good at doing the same task over and over and over and over again. We get distracted. We need to take a break. We need to look around and do something differently, and we make mistakes. That's part of the features of being a person. Technology is much better at doing those quality repetitive things, allowing people to do that creative, to think differently, to walk around and take breaks. So companies that are embedding technology and AI into their processes are seeing improved quality that's paying off in the bottom line. Yes, it will have an impact on jobs. There's a million stats on how many jobs will be affected. But I believe all of us need to really think about this, to say, will— does that mean jobs will be eliminated or automated or impacted? Yes, there will be some that will be eliminated. Some things you can clearly see are probably better done by technology. People that are doing those jobs will need to be retrained, reskilled, moved into other areas where their skills could be used in different ways. But a lot of the impact is simply that jobs will change. As they're automated, the types of things people will do will be more the types of things that people, humans, are made to do. Not those repetitive over and over tasks. So if we look at some of the areas in which technology is being used today to help people be more productive and businesses more competitive in the organization, clearly marketing— huge opportunities for marketing people to leverage AI and predictive analytics to understand what their customers, prospects, and the market is going to do. And then to be able to create the campaigns, the outreach, to respond to what customers want even before they know they want it. AI is much better than a human could ever be in analyzing mega trends and customer behavior data online or in person. And I'm sure most of you have at some point used ChatGPT to get inspiration for an idea, or Firefly or DALL-E to create an image. In a marketing department, one of the hardest things for people is starting with that blank piece of paper. This frees them from that and frees them from those hours of searching. And helps break repetitive responses. Now, for those who've ever worked with or around salespeople, you might think of the one thing that salespeople hate more than anything else. Anybody want to venture a guess? Cecilia knows this, I know.

When somebody hangs up on them when they cold call?

Well, there is that, and that could probably be, uh, be minimized by, uh, AI determining that that person does not take cold calls and hangs up quickly. The second thing is tracking information in the CRM. Salespeople like to talk, they like to build relationships, they like to be creative. They don't like to recap and track. They don't like to do the detailed follow-up. Let the tool do that. Let the tool identify the right prospects to call and do those detailed admin tasks. And AI for salespeople, but also for new people in the organization. Is a great way to train and to coach, to remind a sales rep when they're in a call, remember, these are the key points to bring up. In your last conversation with this prospect, he talked about this environment. Take the message back to that. Coaching, monitoring, and giving people support when they need it. Is being used in HR applications for people on performance plans. Technology is a great way to track and to monitor what people are doing to the positive so that people, individuals can be helped by technology, or an actual person and a coach can step in to take it to the next level. Instead of using an expensive coach for everything, use them for what the AI can't accomplish. And we've seen many examples of customer service being sped up, whether it's sending in an application for a new bank loan that can now be processed in seconds instead of days, whether it's getting a response to a technology question. Very easy-to-use technology in those arenas, as well as core business applications. Think insurance, for example. If you have an accident with your car, you send pictures of the car, you send quotes to get it fixed, you send your policy. And in the past, it would be sometimes weeks before a person could come back to you. Today, technology can do that in seconds. So core processes that people have spent time doing the basic task for can now be done, those basic tasks, by technology, allowing people to interface with each other. That insurance agent can now reach out to determine, do you really want to get the money for, to have the car repaired, or do you want us to support you in buying a new car? And as we're doing this, what are you doing about your home insurance? It can open people up to have conversations about things that are beyond the basics. So in this world powered by technology, People work with people, and I believe in what I've seen in all of the companies I work with, the more we automate and use technology, the more we appreciate that human collaboration. So as we embrace technology, 97 million new jobs can be created. And these can be on top of the layer of the basic day-to-day activities. They are go-to-market, sales, creativity, thinking differently. They can be detailed review of what the technology has done. Because if there's anything that is critical for us to safely and ethically move into a world powered by AI, it's the ability of people to really think through and make decisions of what is real and what is not, what is good, what is bad. That needs human minds. That means roles of quality assurance in a very different level. That means critical thinking, discernment, and a ton of new roles in re-educating, in coaching, and in helping people to deal in this new society. So yes, there will be some job loss. There will be a lot of restructure of how we do our work to the positive, because we'll be freed from those mundane detailed things in order to be humans working with humans, while additional roles are going to be needed to guide us through this world so that ultimately In a future of work, work will mean working together, creating, leveraging technology to reach out to people locally in collaboration rooms, which will be the office of the future, not boxes that people sit in and look at their email. It will be working together to think through how can we move forward? To analyze what the technology is doing and take it to the next level. So I do believe this future of work powered by AI gives us opportunities. It gives us each opportunities, but it gives us a responsibility, a responsibility to jump in. We can't avoid it. Try it, learn from it. Explore it, compare notes with each other, because we are indeed co-creating society and we're co-creating what this is going to look like. There is no hiding. You can't stop it, but all you can do is embrace to the level that you feel comfortable and move forward. Questions. And we did not note that you guys are all welcome to jump in and stop us at any time without any problem whatsoever.

So I forgot to mention in the beginning, you guys could interrupt us. So even though Jennifer mentioned Silicon Valley, which is California style, I'm from New York, so you could do New York style. So you can interrupt us at any time. We love being interrupted. So you can say anything you want or write in the chat or whatever. Seriously, this is all about you guys, not us. We could talk forever. But we wanna make sure that all you have your questions answered, whatever perspective you have, because it's a huge challenge. How do you, how do we, how do I lead in the future with all these changes that are happening? Jennifer brought up a lot of great points. And, you know, you have to have a million questions. We have a million questions. And what we're doing is we're just taking our perspective and sharing it with you from all the people that we talk to all the time. And then we connect the dots and go, well, this is the way things are going, like it or not, can't stop it. Right? So does anybody have any questions or want to challenge? I love challenging Jennifer. I love challenging. Yeah, just, just, just tell her she's wrong.

It wouldn't be the first time.

If not, Jennifer, I could jump in here.

Okay, jump in and show us where, where all of this is going.

Exactly. So let me jump in. Let me know when you see it.

Yep. All good.

Okay. So what I'm gonna do, as I always do, is come from the technology side, and I am not gonna be using a lot of acronyms. I hate that. And if I say the word ChatGPT more than once, you have the right to virtually shoot me or something like that. Okay? I'm sick of that word. This goes beyond that. And so what, what is this all about? Where, where am I going this time? I see a massive convergence happening and the media is spending all this time on that word I'm not supposed to use, ChatGPT. Okay, there's my one time, right? And, the convergence is the convergence of humanoid robots with generative AI. And that when you combine those two things together, the term you will see, you will hear, and I'm predicting probably more around the summertime that the hype will be huge. People, people say embodied AI. Remember what, like, a few months ago when we heard generative AI, we all go, what? What's that word? Now we're sick of hearing it. The next hype word is gonna be embodied AI. And you're gonna go, what? So what is embodied AI? It's really simple. If you take AI and you put it inside of a body of a humanoid robot, you have embodied AI, AI inside of a body, a body of a robot. Embodied AI. It's not that complicated word anymore. Right? So that's embodied AI. Now why is this so big? Now this is not future. Understand me as I tell you now. What I'm about to tell you now is happening now. But all the hype's on this damn thing called ChatGPT. But this is happening equally in parallel. Let me frame the situation. As you know, ChatGPT does amazing things. OpenAI makes an announcement and said version 4 or 4.5 is incredible. Oh my God. 2 weeks later, Google makes announcement with Google Gemini. It's even better than ChatGPT. Facebook makes an announcement, right? It's this, this, constant battle, right? World's greatest battle. Think of that as one vertical of this hype increasing exponentially in terms of what it can do. We're all really happy. In parallel, there's another vertical that's going just equally as fast. And that's these humanoid robots. The one you see here on your screen, that's the Tesla robot called Optimus. And this December, Tesla launched Generation 2. It can dance. It can— by the fact, it can breakdance. I don't know if anybody on this call— anybody can breakdance, raise your hand. A little bit? I don't see anybody. Nobody. Okay. There you go. So this, this bot already has one thing on everybody on the call. So it can dance, it could run, it could do everything we can do physically. What happens if we take the intelligence of all of the innovation that's happening today with ChatGPT, Google Bard, everything, all those LLMs, those large language models, and we put that intelligence inside of a robot that could perform physically all the things together? That is what has happened. Now it's happening. I'm emphasizing now. This is not coming. And this is what I want to show you and explain to you. And I hope by the end of this call some of you have lost some hair. That's my accomplishment. Okay, don't laugh, Jennifer.

Damn it.

Okay, here we go. What I'm about to play for you is a very simple video. It's a 1-minute video. I'll pause it in the middle of the video to explain what happens, what happened in the background, because the video itself is nothing amazing. It's a computer making a cup of coffee. But how that was performed and the simplicity of it today, and then when you combine that with everything I talked about, that's where the hair starts to fall and you start turning gray. So let me play the video for you. And I will pause it to explain to you what's happening in the background. Hey, Figure One, can you make me a cup of coffee? So he just asked the bot to make him a cup of coffee. This is nothing amazing, a robot making a cup of coffee. And in normal times, we've written millions and millions of lines of code, some a group of guys, women have been coding this thing like crazy to make this cup of coffee, right? Move your arm 1 centimeter to the right, 2 centimeters this way, then vertically go down. That's what always probably has been, and it takes months and months of programming to do this. And voilà, you have a cup of coffee right now. None of you are impressed, right? Hold on, hold your hats, hold your hats. And he comes back.

Thanks.

And let's see if the cup of coffee's any good. Wonderful. Now hold on, we'll pause the video. Here's the incredible part. First of all, you see the pack on his backpack, the robot, not the guy on the robot, uh, his backpack. That was 6 months ago. There was no backpack. There were wires tied to a super mainframe computer. They now have it down to the size of a little backpack. And the next 6 months they'll have it down to the size of a mobile phone. Okay? The next thing, to program just what that robot did, extend the arm out, fingers down, took months and months, maybe years and years of programming. For this, this one gentleman in the first week of January, that's what I'm trying to emphasize. This is happening now. In the first week of January, this guy went against his entire group because they have been programming for years to make this robot make a cup of coffee. He started writing some code. And it made, it made a cup of coffee. His entire team freaked out. They said, we've been writing code for years and you found a shortcut to make a cup of coffee. How is it that a small amount of programming can do the equivalent of years of progress? The key, remember this vertical I talked about here, ChatGPT and all the innovation, that explosion of innovation, that explosion of neural networks and all that is making it possible that a few minutes of coding and no, even no coding makes something super intelligent. Now I want you to watch something else, and this is quite amazing. The guy only programmed the robot to make a cup of coffee, and look what the robot does. It puts the capsule in and it puts it in wrong. And it fixes it. Ladies and gentlemen, he didn't program that. When they recorded this video, everybody in the room freaked out because it was never programmed. The robot understood that it made a mistake. In previous programming with robotics, it just does what it's told to do. 6 centimeters to the right, 3 centimeters to the left, go down. The robot somehow understood it made a mistake and it fixed it. It has intelligence. You understand what I'm saying? They don't know why this thing— where the intelligence came from. What has happened again is the innovation and explosion of knowledge in writing with generative AI connected to neural networks. Has made it possible that these robots, when you take that knowledge and you put it into these robots, we now are at the point of where we could use these robots for many different things. What happened one week ago was another company said that they do not need to program. They could have a robot look at you, do the same thing 50 times, and the robot could reproduce what you did those 50 times, and that's it. That was the amount of training. Think about that. Now look about the word training, to train something. How many times do you do the same thing over and over again? Training is down to just seeing. Is no more coding necessary. Literally, these humanoid robots, these embodied AI, they just need to watch to understand what we're doing. Now, how serious is this? To emphasize, this is happening now. The top Fortune 50 companies in the United States They've all signed contracts with this company. The company you're seeing here on this video is called Figure.ai. If you wanna go to their website, they're the ones who make this robot and have done this amazing progress. They have 50 contracts signed with the top Fortune 50 companies who've all already have provided training information for the robots, for their robots, and they've already put in their orders. These robots will be provided to them in Q3 of this year. It's begun. And they're providing massive amounts of training information. Now, this is how— this is where I wanna go now is I wanted to just understand how easy it is. And then where I'm going with this is we're all gonna eventually have a robot. And you as leaders, the whole point of this conversation is this. What should you leaders think about the future? How do you manage and how do you lead when one of your new colleagues is a robot? That's what I want your head to be wrapped around. So let's, let's look at this one. To teach or to train these robots today, it just has to observe. If you look at the gentleman in the bottom, the conveyor line, I put down there, there, because it's supposed to be a picture of me when I was 20 years old. Because I had this job working on a production line. And we, I made, I was packaging hot dog, hot dog buns and hamburger buns. I'm really proud. No, I'm not. It's job suck. It was hot as hell. And it was the same thing all the time, just packaging these buns, packaging these buns. A humanoid robot today would just watch me, and after the 50th time I do it, it would come nudge me out of the way, and it would just do my job better than I need— I could. It doesn't need air conditioning. It doesn't need heating. It doesn't need lighting in the factory, and it doesn't complain about the oven that was above my head. And that's why I have no hair today right here. I blamed that factory job back when I was 20 years old. Okay? So that's why I don't have any hair. Anyway, that is how easy it is. It is for these things to train. So every corporate manual ever written, it would digest it and get trained by it and would learn instantly. How many of us has read corporate manuals? Remember any corporate manual? Anybody? Nobody does. Every TV, appliance manual, everything. That's that amount of information that's available in the world. That is what's training these robots today. Then I started playing with ideas saying, wait a minute, training. How, where is the biggest corp? Where's the biggest library of information on how to do stuff? YouTube. Anybody, anybody like me that when you go to IKEA, you come home, you have no idea how to put together that damn closet? Or am I the only person on this? Okay. If I'm the only person on this call who has that problem. So I live on YouTube. Whenever I come home from IKEA, I go on YouTube and say, how do I put together this closet? How to. Every time these influencers, every time someone uploads how to do something on YouTube, we've created the world's largest repository of information to train this evolution, this revolution that is unstoppable. As Jennifer said in her thing, that person asked, how can we slow it down? You can't slow it down. These robots will be sitting down like you see this robot. Watching your YouTube video, learning how to change a tire, learning how to sew a button, or like me, help me put together this damn thing from IKEA, which I hate putting together.

This is a good point to jump in, for me to jump in and say, these are not bad things. These are features, not bugs. I have no desire to change tires or to sew buttons or put together IKEA. So I, I'm ready for the robot.

Yeah. And, but, you know, let me, let me give you another example, which I, I think is kinda cool. Let's do a medical example, healthcare example. And I think we all can relate to this. Let's say there is a, a heart surgeon, world's best heart surgeon, and she is the best at a certain procedure when there's a certain condition in the heart. Okay? She's the world's best. And obviously, she, you know, people wanna fly her all over the world to do these special operations. What we can do today, today, not in the future, today, we could have embodied AI, a humanoid robot, right, with the capabilities of all the neural networks in GenAI. It will watch her. You take it. Now, you don't have to put the robot in the same room. You literally just need to have webcam because it's just gotta watch. So you don't have to have the robot watching her. So we have a little baby webcam watching her do surgery over and over again. It will be able to duplicate what she does. Now, here's the thing. We don't want the robot to duplicate the surgery itself, which, you know, in theory, it, it probably could, but I don't think I want a robot to operate on me in 2024, maybe in 2094. I don't know, but not in 2024.

Right.

But here's the most amazing thing. We could take her knowledge, we could take her— what she does when she gets to a certain part where the artery is not in such a great condition, and she's out and during the operation, she's explaining what she's doing, what she's thinking. The humanoid robot is able to take in all that information, and then it will upload all that knowledge once it learns what— how she operates during this special operation. All that information, because it's just data and knowledge, is then uploaded to all these robots globally, instantaneously, to all these hospitals around the world. Now, whenever that hospital has that specific operation, they don't need to fly her in. They could have a robot in that room with the heart doctor and saying, in this situation, this is what she does, this is what she's thinking. We can reproduce her knowledge everywhere instantly. How many lives can we save? How many situations like this will it help? This is huge. I mean, this is massive. And you just take this level, this type of thinking, and multiply it in all different situations, especially in healthcare. And this is a fantastic thing. And this fantastic moment where we're at knowledge, the knowledge of, of geniuses, the knowledge of very special people, can be shared to the masses. What an incredible thing. So let me go through a couple—

human being. I just, I want to point out, Thomas, that you were very clear in saying that the doctor, another doctor, is there performing the operation guided by the technology.

Exactly.

So she was not replaced. She, her capability was extended. She's able to treat way more people than she could have ever done before. Through other people.

Exactly. This technology, Jennifer said some jobs will be replaced. And when I hear that, I don't freak out so much. Because I always, when I do start to freak out, I think of the example of, remember the elevator? I don't know if any of you as old as I am, you kind of remember when you went into an elevator in a shopping store, and it was a guy there, always a guy with a big hat, and he would go, what floor? And he would do the thing like this and go to close the gate and all that. Anybody that old? If anybody does not remember, I don't wanna talk to you. You can log off now. But anyway, the world was that way a long time ago. And that guy, cuz it was always a guy, never a woman, at least I don't remember. The world was very male chauvinist back then. It probably hasn't changed. But anyway, his job was replaced by a button, right? Stupid button replaced the job. So tech does replace some jobs, but we don't kind of miss that guy. It was kind of nice to see him, but things do evolve. Some jobs get replaced. So whenever I think about tech is replacing jobs, I think about the elevator guy going, well, that's not the end of the world in replacing that one position. Right? And replacing me on the factory while I don't have any hair on my head, that's probably not the end of the world either. Right?

And let's face it, how many people do we really think enjoyed standing in an elevator for 8 hours a day doing nothing but pushing buttons going up and down, or taking parking tickets in a parking garage, or any of the other jobs that people could be freed now to do things way more important in life?

Exactly. You know, my factory job, uh, I didn't mind it so much because the people I worked with were fantastic. We had such a good time. But if it wasn't for them, that would have been, I mean, probably the worst 6 months of my freaking life. But it was one of the best because we had a great time. You know, human beings, we're the, we're, we're the factor that makes life so beautiful. You know, don't forget that. As much as I talk about tech, spirituality, love, and all that is much more important than, you know, what's the next, uh, technology thing I can put in my pocket. So I want to just give you couple, one or two more examples just to emphasize this a little more. So this is statistics because some of you like statistics. And this is the United States. And this is taken directly from Figure.ai's website. So what they're saying is that the labor force is shrinking and that there'll be 10 million unfulfilled jobs in the United States. Okay? And this is the year 2024. 7 million of those job openings are essential roles, warehouse, transportation, retail. They're just talking about only those 3 sectors only, right? And there will only be 6 million people available to fill those open positions and attrition, people quitting, will remain high. So that means in 2024, there is a shortage of 1 million people or woman positions already. And if you look at the last line, key warehouse suppliers predict they'll run out of people to hire in 2024. What's gonna replace that gap? Embodied AI. It's almost as if the timing was, like, perfect. That in 2024, we ran out of human beings to do all these jobs in warehouse transportation and retail that we need to be done so that we continue to function as a society. The need, we need an answer. You did right. That answer is a robot with the intelligence and dexterity, physical dexterity, and the intellectual intelligence combined to do the job. It doesn't require sleep. It doesn't require insurance. It won't go on sick leave. It doesn't take bathroom breaks. It doesn't complain.

And it doesn't make mistakes.

It doesn't make mistakes. Now, everybody on this call is like, I think I want to marry this person. Maybe I want to date them. I don't know. Do you understand?

We'll save that for the end of 2024. How to have relationships with robots.

I could go so, I could go so deep into that one. I'm so tempted, but I'm not going to. You get me in trouble, Jennifer. I got some crazy stories what people have done with robots. But anyway, the demand, the requirement, and the fulfillment is there. We've reached that inflection point. The technology, the robots are there, and the need is there. So It's them. And again, the top 50 Fortune companies in the United States have not only put in their order, they provided all of their training data to a company like Figure.ai so that their robots are provided to them in September or October of this year. So that means that the leaders of the top Fortune 50 companies, they, literally have to start thinking culturally, how do I have my team perform when a few of my new colleagues are humanoid robots? What kind of culture do we have now? What kind of team meeting? I'm being serious. This is something you as leaders must start to think about. So in my very last slide, As a leader, I want you to think about the following things. Here's where the hair is supposed to fall off. So number 1, has your company partnered with a humanoid robot company yet? I think I made my cases to, 1, that is, this is happening this year. 2, this changes a lot of things. And 3, if your competitor or, sorry, when your competitor starts hiring, do we call it hiring? What do you call when you get a humanoid? It's not a hiring. I'm very confused. Okay. We need YouTube terminology because you don't hire human beings. Engage.

Engage.

Okay. When you engage a humanoid robot into your company, your competitor does that. Your competitor will be more efficient. Your competitor will be lower cost. So they're CapEx, OpEx will go lower. Their CapEx will increase because they have to buy it, but their OpEx will drop. Their profitability and margins will increase. And because you're going human only, you'll be at a disadvantage. This begins now, right after summer. So if you don't partner with a company today so that you're providing all the information for training so that when it comes off the production line in July, August, You are behind your competitor. Your hair should start falling off. Number 2, from a governmental level, has your government placed a future order for future growth? And I, this I say to those people out there who are politicians or to people who know politicians, this is a serious question. Think about it. This is a big deal from a nation-state perspective. There's a limited quantity of these robots being made in Q3, Q4. It will take time to ramp up. Right? It takes time to make the new iPhones. It takes time to make these humanoid robots. But the first country to put in an order has a first country mover advantage. This is gonna change the GDP of nations. Think of, well, that's a terrible example. But think of any country that's agricultural based. Person can work in the field or a robot can work in the field 24 hours a day. Doesn't need to take a break. The efficiency, The yield will go through the roof. This is a big deal. This changes nation states and will potentially define the future of that country. So let me leave you with this last question, and that is this. What percentage of your company's revenue is from humanoid robots? And what percentage is based on humans? Right now, when you listen to that question, you're going, what the hell is this guy talking about? As of 2025, this is what Gartner and all other these analyst companies will be measuring your company by. These robots are being— these humanoid robots that are being trained by our kids who are uploading YouTube videos, that are being trained by us on weekends that we, you know, we do something great, we record on YouTube and we upload it. We have trained them, and they are here, and this is your new colleague. So why do we do these— this show is to prepare you leaders for the future of work, and this is the very short-term future of work that begins now. So with that, I hope everybody's bold.

So let's come back to full screen of everybody. Here, and we, we do have a, a very good question from one of our many Phyllises. If you have come in and you haven't changed your name from Phyllis to your own name, we ask that you do that. Makes much easier for, uh, discussion. A very good question, Thomas. Can you give us any idea of the price point Would you say the retail market price for a humanoid robot? What, what would it take to invest in one?

Yeah, I haven't heard anything in terms of price points, but what, what I could share with you is the component prices that it costs to build one of these robots. Remember I said the backpack, right? Um, the price point for the components is dropping 80% a quarter for many of the components, not all the components. The size of the components are shrinking down. Uh, so robots built in 2024 probably are gonna be super, super expensive. Uh, I don't, I don't know what a price would be. Um, in my mind, it probably could be anywhere between $50,000 to $150,000 maybe. But I, I guarantee you they're gonna push that thing down probably. Remember, remember the speed in which innovation is happening with generative AI? I mean, literally every 2 weeks, it gets almost twice as good. That's gonna happen in the actual physical form of these robots, and it is happening. So expect probably sometime next year to be under $10,000 and, and continue to drop to infinite. You know, it can just continue to drop because you make these things at scale. Is nothing. Right? And one last thing, and I'm sorry I nerd out. A startup announced last week, it's just insane. So all you know about NVIDIA, right? NVIDIA makes the chips that power ChatGPT AI, right? That's the chip in the, in the cloud, in the, in the cloud centers around the world. A startup has announced that their chip, and they've proven it, their chip, one chip, is equivalent to 100 NVIDIA chips in terms of processing power and performance, and in terms of price is 90% cheaper. You can't make this stuff up. The innovation is moving so fast now on the hardware side, on the software side, algorithms, the perfect storm. We're in the middle of the perfect storm. So cost-wise, I don't have a number for you. If I had a number, I would share. But assume that it's just gonna slope down to insanely low, and then we'll get to the Jetsons. Jetsons, if you guys remember the Jetsons version where you'll have, what was the name of the maid in Jetsons, the robot? Wow. For $5, who knows the name of the robot in the Jetsons? Somebody write into the chat. I forgot the name of the robot.

Rosie.

Rosie.

There we go. Holy crap, somebody had a childhood just like me. We will all have our own Rosie or Phyllis if you're on this call, because we have too many Phyllises. So thank you. But that was a great question. I don't have it. I don't have an answer for you. I apologize. I try to find it.

And I will just, for those that may be feeling a little bit of fear of this, recognize that things, things do take time and we are completely in the Wild West of developments. And I envision that '24 will be an instrumental year, not only for the growth of technology, but laying a foundation of some level of standards, some level of regulations, and us as people taking time to really understand how we can best train, guide, and develop the technology, because that is up to us as people to ensure that the robots are safely learning how to do things.

And one, one important thing I'd like to put into everybody's head, um, you know that expression, just because you can do it, you shouldn't do it? That goes hardcore into this discussion. Let's be very careful what we train these robots to do.

Mm-hmm.

And I'm being extremely serious. There's gotta be a level of accountability. Don't, don't lose, and I'm the tech guy, right? I'm going soft, but you have to go soft. Don't lose your human side to, if you want to have a mature discussion on this, you talk about the human side first. Values, love. Don't forget the, the feeling you get when you get a hug from someone. It's fantastic. Think about that when you have a business discussion about what are we gonna deploy. Don't forget the human aspect. It's being very serious. This is a slippery slope. Don't just build it and go, oh, it wasn't that fun. That's irresponsible. Okay, this is very, very important. The human side is extremely important in this discussion. Just don't build it because you can. Don't do that.

All right, I think that's also the advice I would always give, is if you want to get involved in trying a new technology, think about some small problem, some small issue you have, and look for what is the technology that can solve that small thing. Don't jump all in and decide you're going to go in to figure AI and build a robot. Start with something simple. Try DALL-E to find a picture that you can put in your PowerPoint for the corporate prezo tomorrow. See how that works and keep educating yourself one step at a time.

Yeah, but like Jennifer started off with, you can't stop this. And, and it's not bad what's coming, but it is unstoppable. But it's not bad. Alright? Don't think Terminator. Don't run straight to Terminator. There's a whole bunch of other scenarios. Who likes doing dishes? Nobody's gonna raise their hand. It'd be nice if somebody does the dishes. There we go. It'd be great if somebody changed your tire. There you go. How about all those wonderful scenarios? You know what? If you live in Norway, how about some, some robot go outside and, and what's moka? What is that? Shovel the snow? Right? God, I would pay for a damn robot to do that. My lower back is killing me. So, uh, there's a lot of—

so it quits coming down.

Do we have any other cool, great questions? That was really good.

Yeah, let's, let's get some other questions.

And if there's anybody with a question, wants to open up your mic and just ask a question, please. This is— we're here for you.

Questions or other observations, like maybe Shaheen may have some observations from direct on the street in Silicon Valley. Not to call you out, but I appreciate that.

Thank you, Jennifer, and thank you, Thomas. I think you guys have covered a lot of what I see. The, the challenge, as you see in the questions, is to know when to get engaged and what actions you need to take. I think your advice, Jennifer, is right on, that just educate yourself, even if you're concerned that you would be doing it right but others wouldn't, that's even more reason for you to get involved so that people who would do it right actually have some kind of numeracy behind them. But, but I think the policy aspect of it is also very real because the, the negative sides of AI aren't well known. The benefit is known, the negative side isn't. You know, like, I get a robot to help around the kitchen Well, if you kind of look at the entire supply chain of that, what happens if it breaks? What happens if I need to clean it? What happens, you know, like kitchen handling food? How am I gonna wash the hands? You know, I made coffee, just like, you know, the coffee makers, anything with a pipe in it is like, how am I gonna clean it? So the entire supply chain, value chain of robots becomes really the issue So kind of the demo does a part, but it doesn't do all the other parts. So now you have to really worry about that. I think things like that are really important questions. And then as it relates to policies, I think a lot of people agree that eventually the AI nirvana will happen, but the challenge is how do we transition to it without destroying half the society, right? And, and, and what policies do we need to have in place now to make sure that the transition is as smooth as it needs to be, knowing that it's unstoppable, that you stop it yourself, the other guy isn't. It's a global thing, and, and, and, you know, we can't agree on anything. So it's— I think that stopping it is just a non-starter, but how do you manage it becomes really an issue, and, and, and it's a, and it's a complex thing. So Really, the only solution is for you to get as educated as you can get with the tools that are out there without really, you know, I mean, according to your means and times and all that. You know, if you're a giant bank, then you have more capacity to kick the tires than you're for a small company. But any one of us can in fact read and look at the YouTube videos that Thomas, you were saying. So maybe I'll pause that.

If, if I could touch on policy, for the sake of time, I took out the slide I, that touched on that. This is just gonna upset people, but this is fact. So in Western countries, we have privacy rules. We have things like GDPR and others. Okay? And we all know how important that is. Okay? Wonderful. In Asia, that's right. They don't have it. At all. Okay? So let's look at China. I am not picking on China. China is the only country in the world that their government has stated emphatically that they will be the, the world leader in embodied AI, humanoid robots combined with AI by 2027. Now, where is China gonna get all the data. Remember this vertical with the data? This side is the physical part, and that's being done extremely well, right? Can breakdance and all that. Remember what China has? No GDPR, no privacy rules. So they have cameras and they're monitoring all of their citizens. You guys see all these videos and stuff? What do you think they're doing with all that data? It's not just about monitoring their citizens. They're training the AI. Yeah, they're watching a citizen go to, I don't know if Chinese, let's go with me with this story. A Chinese person goes to a hot dog stand. I don't know if there's hot dog stands in China.

Okay.

Just go with my story. And they buy a hot dog and they buy soda. And then person goes to the, goes on and then the bottom lip hits the cup first and then the top lip. The robot is being trained. When you sip your soda, you drink your coffee, when you walk across the street, your gait of walking across the street. They have infinite amount of data. They have a population just in China, 1.4 billion people. Next door in India, they have 1.2 billion people, and they already have an agreement to exchange information. Western countries, we can't exchange anything. All our data has to stay within our physical country. Guess whose robots, guess whose embodied AI will, will win at the end of the day. I'm not trying to be negative, I'm giving you the raw facts.

All right, I, I think the point you're raising, Thomas, is very good. And that is, I mean, you put it in the context of governance, that can it be, is it possible that the Western-style democracies and checks and balances may in fact have a competitive disadvantage in the world of AI because they're regulating something that the other guy is using in abundance and can get ahead. Now, I have raised this question with some policymakers, and consistently they say that's not the case, that we have enough data to train it, and in fact, at the end of the day, they're going to have to deal with the ramifications, etc., etc. However, of the, you know, half a dozen, I mean, there are like 5 mega big risks that we identify, and one of them is autocracy. That is actually a problem, and if you give it a competitive advantage with commoditized surveillance and better AI and all this, then that becomes a really big issue, right? Just to list them, the other ones are pandemic, nuclear, climate, and then AI, both in terms of the dangers that it can cause as well as AI inequality, where somebody has it and the other guy doesn't.

And one— well said. And I want to give a very specific example. I had a few years ago, I had a meeting with the head lawyer for the Norwegian tax authorities, Skatteverdattet. If you're in Norway, God bless Skatteverdattet. People probably laughing, nobody's ever heard those two words. And the head lawyer of Skatteverwaltung, Norwegian tax authorities. I said, we need to change one of these tax laws because of cryptocurrency. This is a few years back. He looked at me, Thomas, and he, and he started laughing. I'm like, why are you laughing at me? I was getting pissed off. And he goes, Thomas, even if you're right, and even if right now I pick up my pen and I start to draft a new law. He said, guess how long it's gonna take before that law is implemented? He said, 5 years. So our systems are not built for the innovation that's happening. I hear it now. I'm violating my own rule. ChatGPT world, right? But the innovations that's happening all the time every 2 weeks, and it takes one law. If we start drafting a law on Monday, 5 years from now, how many iterations and innovations and versions of ChatGPT, will that be there in the next 5 years? Just go back 6 months ago, 1 year ago, there was no ChatGPT. Multiply that by 5. So, yes, we have some huge challenges. This is a global play. This is not just a local play. And the— we, we all are interconnected and we all will feel it. It's not negative. But this is no longer a small thing. This is a global thing. So it's super exciting, but let's not be ignorant about it.

And I think that's the, the role of we as people. We need to creatively, innovatively, through collaboration, use our skills to redefine our processes so the decisions can be made more quickly, so that things can be looked at from all of these different angles. And if there is a role that is sorely missing in all aspects of society that I see, it's the role of people that are re-educating people. Now, let's, let's help and encourage and coach and reskill people to look at things differently. It's not an either-or, good or bad. It's how you look at it. And there's a huge responsibility I think each of us in society have to help others to get to that point, as well as to be very discerning of the technology that we use and what we do with the results from it. Jennifer, Thomas and I are here for, uh, the next 30 minutes or so, and we love to continue the dialogue. I would just quickly though bring up, as I know we're at the, the bottom of the the top of the hour. These are the next, the dates for our next sessions. This is a journey. It's not a, we got all the answers here today and life is good. It doesn't, doesn't work that way. I'll try to get this where it, yeah, there we go. So we definitely encourage you to, to rejoin us. We will Make sure that you can come in as yourself or maybe somebody else next time. We apologize for the technical glitches as we're, we're learning along the way. But please do note in the calendar, same time, 1600 CET, 7:00 AM Pacific and 10:00 AM Eastern time in the US.