← Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant
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This is an iHeart podcast.
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Guaranteed Human.
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You know I love a fresh start, and I'll be doing that with my own Shopify store, reviewing what worked this year and mapping out how I'm leveling up in 2026. Shopify is the best place to start and grow your business, which is exactly why I chose it for mine. Whether you're running a side hustle or building an empire selling locally or globally.
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It's like having your own personal assistant giving you direction, helping with reports, content, ideas, everything. Whether you're just wanting to test an idea out or you're getting serious about launching your own brand, it's never been easier to get started on shopify.com Ben it's time to see what you can do with Shopify by your side. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting. Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-IHeart. Welcome to Money and Wealth with John Hope Bryant, a production of the Black Effect podcast network and iHeartRadio. Hello, hello, hello. This is John Hope Bryant and this is the Money and Wealth podcast series on iHeartRadio and the Black Effect Network. I want to thank you for making this podcast top 40 for entrepreneurship on Apple in the United States. Top 40 top 50 number fluctuates, but top 50 is extraordinary. And top 150 for business on Apple in the United States, the biggest economy in the world, and top 250 in on every continent in the world. People are listening. People are paying attention. This is increasingly a global conversation. How do we have opportunity for all? How do we unpack complication and repack it with simplification understanding in mind? How do we repack the future with you in mind? One of the things we've been grappling with is the issue of artificial intelligence. And I've tried to be a bit of a translator for you. We've had folks like Van Jones on who it will be doing important work with me and us going forward. We'll talk about that in a minute. We talked about the AI Ethics Council and we'll get into that maybe a little bit in this conversation and my friend Sam Altman and how that came about. But we've never had this conversation. Whenever I have a guest, it's important. They are important. I've had Michael Milken on. I've had the largest private equity leader in the world on Joe Barata, Blackstone, $1.2 trillion. We've had heroes and Sheroes on as my guests, but never a minister of artificial intelligence. And this gentleman is not just any minister. His Excellency, I'm gonna give him full respect. We are new friends, but I'm giving full respect because he deserves it. His Excellency the Minister Omar Al Olama, the first minister of artificial intelligence from any government in the world in and from United Arab Emirates before I bring him on. And he looks, by the way, that if you're watching this versus listening to this, this will come out as a podcast, of course first. And you can listen to this while you're going about your life. If you now have a chance to watch this subsequent to it airing on one of the YouTube or other platforms, you'll see. He looks very young. That is not his assistant. That is not his aide. That is not his right arm. That is not his nephew. That's him. He. He has just achieved a lot in a very short period of time, which again underscores why he's the right person in the right time. He. Because he bridges the past, present and the future. But before we get into into him and ask him a question, I want you to understand the uae. It's a federation of seven of seven emirates. You would know most. My guess about the most visual, visible and public. One public facing one which is Dubai. You might know of friends who travel there often, like Steve Harvey and others. It's a very elegant place. It's a very sophisticated. I've traveled there. I've actually used to have offices in the UAE. Another conversation, another time, very impressed with it. Seven emirates, population about 10 million and growing. They are a strategic hub that links the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Europe. They are a structured government that includes a vice president and a vice president so we would understand the structure. The vice president is also prime minister, as I understand. There's a council of ministers, the cabinet. And my friend Minister would be Mr. Alama would be one of those members in that council. He'll tell, he'll correct me if I'm. If I'm wrong. There's a Federal National Council. There's a judiciary. It is one of the wealthiest states per capita in the world. And they are investing in AI and clean energy, biotech, space and advanced manufacturing. Now, you did not mention, hear me mention oil. It is obvious for anybody who knows the reason that they have been blessed with oil, but they are leaning into the future and reimagining what this foundation of opportunity can mean for them. And, and I think that is very, very smart. They have very close ties with the US and Europe at expanding partnerships in Asia, in India and in Africa. And they've even normalized relations with Israel via the Abraham Accords. It's a very progressive, very thoughtful country. They're a neutral, convening power. And one of the things they've done in that regard is something called the World Government Summit, which coincidentally I have spoken at a few years ago. I don't remember what year, but my guess is it's the first year that actually this man read it, which I believe was 2021 or 2022. He's also the leader of the World Government Summit. Let me now not delay this any more because you're tired of hearing me. You want to hear from him. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to my new friend and I'm proud to say we have formally announced at the Hope Global Forum 2025, where he spoke virtually in live with Ruth Porat, the president of Google, on this topic, our newest member of the AI Ethics Council, Minister Al Olama. Welcome, my friend.
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Thank you for having me. My friend. It's a great pleasure being with you. I hope that we are able to put on a good show for the folks that are hearing this and seeing this in the coming weeks.
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Just being yourself will do exactly that and more. You, you're authentic. And that is my number one criteria for anybody. I think as I was introducing you, I had to think about this. I wanted to think about this before I said it. I believe you're my first government official. I think, I mean, certainly that's an honor.
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Thank you for having me as your first government official. I, I hope that this will start a new trend of you having more government officials on your show.
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Well, if they're authentic like you, then the answer is yes. Let's get into. By the way, is there anything that I said in the introduction of you and the UAE that it was inaccurate, that we need to correct the record on?
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So one fact check that we need to correct the record on. I actually started running the World government summit in 2015, so. So a few years before you partook in it, you joined us in 2022.
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And you know, he knows when I spoke. So you were 12 in 2015. I mean.
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I was 25.
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You're timeless in people, by the way. People call me still call me young man is really funny. I love. It's a compliment. People think that I guess have youthful energy, so I'll take that. But people in elite, in business and leadership still call me all that young man. John o' Brien so it used to be that you want to look older when you're younger. You want to look older when you get older. You're very happy. Somebody thinks you're younger. And so it is a compliment to you that like many tech leaders like Sam and others who are young but who have wisdom of ages and who are leading in very important spaces. Is there anything else that I mentioned that you think needs additional clarity or.
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I think that was very accurate.
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Tell me about. Tell the audience about your background. How does one grow up in the UAE as a young man? What's the. Let's, you know, the experience as a child growing up in that household with mom and dad, with the family structure, with the educational system. How does that feel? What is that? What is the flow and narrative of growing up in the Middle east, specifically in the uae?
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I think that's a very thoughtful question. Thank you for starting with that. Let me start off by explaining to you that no one actually can choose where they're born. There's a lottery. The lottery is, you know, you come into this world and where you land either is a place where you are bound to succeed or you're not. And sometimes even if you're not bound to succeed, you through that lottery are able to, you make do with the situation that you are born in and hopefully create something out of nothing, or if you're born into a good situation, maximize it to do even better in the world. So, you know, I don't choose where I was born, but I think I won the lottery in terms of where I was born. I was born in a startup nation. So when I was born in 1990, my country was, you know, a young country. So our country was formed in 1971. So it was a startup nation. The age of many entrepreneurs that might be hearing this. That's when my country was born, in 1971. And at that point of time, it was a nation that didn't have much to its name, but had ambitions, it had drive, it had leadership that believed that, you know, we can achieve the impossible. Another thing relating to the lottery is you can't choose who your parents are.
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Yes.
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So I think I won the lottery with having the best parents in the world, but parents that have the harshest background for or any combination of backgrounds for any child to be born into a household with people with those backgrounds. So my father used to work in the army, so he's very disciplined. You know, you couldn't really negotiate with him. And my mother was a high school principal. So these jobs are like the strictest jobs you can have. And you grow into a household where you, you know exactly what needs to be done, how it's expected to be done. There's a lot of order, there's a lot of discipline. But one thing that my parents insisted in us having is a world class education. So they spent all of their savings as a couple, not on investments they should have invested, but they spent all their investments in us as a set of siblings. So we are four siblings. I have an older brother and two younger sisters. And we really got the best education that you can get. The second thing that they believed was it's very important for us to always be exposed to technology. So any technology that came out from anywhere in the world, my father would go out of his way, even if it's, you know, to the extent where he had to take out a loan or he had to, you know, do something where, you know, he'd have to maybe cut back on things that he wants to get us the best technologies. So we got a computer and the Internet much earlier than our peers, our friends and, you know, our cousins as well. So that household was a household where we were seeing the world around us really, you know, being a lot more advanced in our country. I remember when we used to travel to the UK or when we used to travel to different places around the world, Egypt and other places, we always used to come back and I used to look at my parents and say, why do we need to come back? And my parents used to say, because it's home. And they said, if you work hard enough, and if we work hard enough and if we all dream big enough, our home is going to be better than this place. And they believed it. They genuinely believed it.
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Yeah.
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And you have to imagine, you know, I'm not that old. I'm 35 years old. I still believe I'm young the same way that you believe that you're young. I think that a person with a young mentality can learn, knowledge, thrive. But when I was a young child, I still remember to this day that my father used to call home before he drives home. And we need to go out as young kids out into the street in front of our house and pour buckets of water on the sand so his car doesn't sink in the soft sand. So the road weren't even built. You know, we were living in a house and around us there's sand. And today this nation is one of the most developed nations in the world. We have the tallest tower in the world. And it's not just that we celebrate that the whole world calls this place home. We have 200 nationalities, people from every single, you know, country in the world coming to the UAE and living here. And it's one of the most prosperous nations. It's not because of oil. So most people think that, you know, this is a result of oil. And, you know, my response is oil is both a blessing and a curse. Libya has far more oil than the uae. Venezuela has more oil than the uae. Iraq has more oil than the uae. And they at one point of time were richer countries than the uae. But the biggest blessing isn't the natural resources, it's leadership. There are countries like Singapore and the UAE, I think is a similar example that weren't blessed with world class infrastructure or weren't blessed with many educated people. You know, 1971, the number of high school graduates we had, I think university graduates was around 40 people. 40, 40. You're talking about a nation that's starting up and only has 40 graduates, I think of universities.
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Wow.
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So you know what the leadership did here? The first thing they did was they said, we want every single person that comes into this country as a born baby should be educated in school and should go to university. And they worked on programs, programs where people would get food. You know, there were certain people that were Bedouins that were living in the desert.
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Yes.
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Get food if they go to classes, they would get allowances. So they'll get money if they go to school. And the point was our leadership believed that education comes first. Beyond education, it was we need to enable people with the best infrastructure possible. And infrastructure isn't just roads, it's connectivity, it's electricity. It's every single bit of infrastructure that you need to wield any tool or any technology that's going to shape the future. And that's what brought us from where we were to where we are today.
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So yes, I was the managing director of that 2015 and I became minister when I was 27.
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So anybody listening to this in your 20s and think that you can just party throughout your 20s might be want to be inspired by this guy who is already fast at work doing responsible things in mid-20s. I started my first business when I was 10, homeless when I was 18, bought a business when I was 21, started operation when I was 26. So he and I started essentially the same age in our professions. Let's now pivot to your role. He doesn't talk about AI like a gadget, ladies and gentlemen. He talks about it like infrastructure, the way electricity and banking once reshaped the world. He and I believe that AI will reshape the world. I've said that this is like going from the horse and buggy 1850-1910, the United States to the automobile. Horse and buddy. The automobile took 60 years. I believe that the AI, the labor centric economies to technology centric economies is going to take six years between 2024 and 2030. So we're already in the middle of this right now. We call him a bit of a nation builder, not a tech minister. He is a trusted leader who happens to be young that's building on a rich old history leading us to the future. How do you. And two questions, one time. How do you take all this responsibility on your shoulders and carry it so lightly and still be a nice person? Because I find you to be a very authentic, kind, respectful human, not somebody who's impressed with themselves. You're impressive, but not impressed with themselves. Which is a very unique question. Why I asked about your background. Like where does that normalcy come from? Number two. So how do you continue this heavy work with a light touch? Number two, how do we explain a government that is progressive enough to lean? It's not trying to be a copy of the western democracy, although it respects western democracy. It is executing a results driven governance model that that sees technology as central to being able to move fast and efficiently and unlike governments, wants to be fast, efficient and productive. How does the audience put all these things together? Why did the UAE emerge as the first government in the world to lay its bucket down in artificial intelligence, appoint you to a minister, number two as part of that, or I guess number three is part of that. What have you learned already for those listening to this that are from the government as both opportunities and concerns about a government doing this?
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Okay, so let me ask, or let me try to answer before I ask you a follow up question on this, but let me try to answer first, the first portion of your question, which is, how do you not be so full of yourselves? I'll be very honest. I, I think a person is full of their themselves when they believe that they have done a good job and they know better than others. I believe that I haven't, no matter what I did, because I could take very little credit for what the UAE was able to achieve over the last eight years since I was appointed. And the reason why is because, you know, funnily enough, even though I'm a minister in the government and you know, I have maybe some authority and I have a team and so on so forth, my leadership works and puts in more hours than I do. And they are ambassadors for AI and they sit and plan with me in AI. And when you see a person who you know is your boss effectively, who puts in more hours than you do, who is humble, who you know, cares about your subject matter as much as you do, and you know, is able to invest time to understand it and to work on it, you can't help but be humbled. You say to yourself, you know, like, what rights do I have to act better than they do? The second thing is, you know, there's an interesting thing about leadership when you start by leading a small team or leading on one thing. So I have a number of responsibilities, you know, many more than I can count. But I still remember my very first responsibilities when I run the World Government Summit. I was 25. It's a mega event, as you mentioned, that there are, you know, numerous heads of state. So last year we had over 30 heads of state.
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One of the things in the world.
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Exactly, over a thousand CEOs, every international organization, like it's a really, really big deal. And the first thing that happened, I remember I felt very, very stressed. And I felt like, you know, there's no way I can do this right. So we did. The first year, the first year I was appointed a few months prior to the summit, so everything was already, you know, in place. And my job was really just to make sure that nothing gets messed up. And I learned a lot doing that the second year, three months before the summit, I got a call and I was told to host the world's largest drone race called the World Drone Pre. I knew nothing about drones. Drone racing was like a gimmick that, you know, certain people would do on certain farms or, like, on small patches of land. And leadership wanted this to be the largest event in the world.
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Three months before. Three months.
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Three months before the summit. And the event, the drone pre was going to be a month after the summit. So. So, you know, it was insane. And I came. I came back to leadership. I said, I don't know how I'm going to be able to do this thing. It's impossible. And the response I got was, it is possible. You'll figure it out. And to make things worse, so I delivered the summit, and I. I was, like, barely about to deliver the Drone Pre. It really was the most impressive drone race in the world. You can read about, was covered by every single athlete in the world. But the thing that happened was two days before the race, before the Drone Prix, we had a very bad thunderstorm that destroyed much of the infrastructure that.
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We put in place, really.
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I. I kid you not. And I came. I remember I came to leadership to tell them that we'll have to call up the race and we're going to disappoint the country and it's going to be really bad. And there were tears in my eyes. And I sat down in front of my boss and I said, I'm really sorry. We'll have to call off the event. And he looked at me and he said, amar, be a man. I was like, what does that have to do with anything? He said, no, figure it out. And my response was, but figure what out? You know, there is nothing to figure out. He said, there is a way to get it done.
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Yeah.
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Whether you can do it yourself or you need to consult with someone, bring the right people, figure out what needs to be done. But it can be done. So. So, you know, my job here isn't to tell you. Call it off. My job is to tell you there is a way. Figure it out.
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Yeah.
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So I left. I remember I was driving and it was still raining a little bit, and I. I held onto the steering wheel. I thought to myself, you know, my career is over. There is no way I can do this. And then I started thinking about, okay, who are the people that I can call for advice? Who are people posted something similar? Who are people who have done something as big? Who are people who have been in a similar situation. So I made phone calls and one person introduced me to another, and then this person drew me to someone else. And we called for a meeting. They came in the middle of the night. I remember because I told them, we don't have time. And we discussed every single way that we can, you know, take this forward. So what can be fixed and how to fix it, what can't be fixed and how to replace it and what should be just, you know, completely removed and ignored. Like, you don't have to deliver exactly what you had in mind, but you have to deliver something that is still as impressive as. Still as big.
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Sure.
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And that was an incredible learning opportunity because ever since that moment, every single time I'm given a new responsibility or every single time I'm, you know, faced with a challenge, the first thing I think about is, okay, it can be done. How do I do it and who do I talk to to get it done?
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Yeah.
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So that's to answer. Let's see, your first question, the second question on why the UAE has put or appointed a minister for AI. The question that you need to ask isn't why we appointed the minister for AI. And this is. This was going to be my question. You have to ask, okay, so why didn't the UAE appoint a minister for cryptocurrencies, or a minister for the Metaverse, or a minister for blockchain, or a minister for IoT? Like, there are so many technologies over the last two decades that were considered revolutionary. We have never appointed a minister mysterious position for any of those. Why didn't we put a minister for 5G or a minister for smartphones? And the answer is. So the way that the UAE operates is we have a long term plan as a country.
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Yeah.
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So we currently have a plan for 2071. It's not going to be exactly what we imagine.
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Slow down. Did you say 2071?
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Yes.
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I love that. So, so basically your anniversary of your founding, looking forward. That's amazing.
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Looking 100 years. 100 years after our phone. How do you want the nation to be?
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That's fantastic. Some.
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Some naysayers might say, okay, that's, you know, just a crazy gimmick. How do you know what's going to happen 2071? And my answer is we don't. We don't know what technologies are going to be shaping 2071. We don't know how the world's going to be. But we do know a few things. We do know that at that point, we want the best education system for our people. We do know at that point we want people to not just have health care that is reactive, but have health care that is preventative. So we want to have a population that does not need to seek health care. They can and they will get world class health care if they are faced with a circumstance. But our health system needs to be so good that they get the best preventative healthcare. We want a nation that has infrastructure that doesn't just allow you to move from point to point, but allows you to get what you want without asking for it. And AI is a core component of that. We want to have the highest quality of living, we want to have the best quality of air, and so on, so forth. So these are not technology related, you know, visions or technology related targets. It's human related targets. And technology is an enabler with artificial intelligence. So as a nation, we've been investing in AI for at least, at least 20 years. So you might ask me how. So you're going to see that the UAE was one of the our sovereign funds or one of the core reasons why Global Foundries were founded in the us. So the UAE was actually one of the investors that made that happen. So we were investing in chips since 2008 at least. Maybe before that we had one of the world's fastest supercomputers in 2015. So even prior to the appointment of the Minister of AI, and what you're gonna see is every single time we looked at the horizon and so what technologies can affect the world that we're living in? The first answer that you know appeared in front of our leadership was, AI is going to change everything. It is changing many things. So if you think about in 2008, around nine years before my appointment, the most addictive thing in everyone's lives was social media. Social media is AI, right? At the end of the day, it's not just pictures that you're posting, it's the artificial intelligence algorithm that's making you addicted to going to this platform and posting more. So with that careful planning, there are a few reasons why our leadership decides to appoint a minister for AI. The first is we want to celebrate exporting the last barrel of oil. So as a nation, we don't want to weep at the sight of oil running out. We actually want to celebrate it because we believe that oil is a short term opportunity that we need to wield and leverage to improve the quality of life of everyone in the uae, not just the locals, the locals and the residents, and to diversify enough to celebrate exporting the last barrel. So that's number one. Number two, if you looked at the largest companies in the world in 2008, they were all oil and gas companies, they were all traditional businesses. I think some of them were in defense or in banking or things like that. If you fast forward 2016, it was all technology companies and many of them are AI. Yeah. So the trajectory was clear. AI is going to take everything. And then the third thing is if we're already addicted to it, why don't we start thinking about it more holistically? How do we regulate it? How do we protect our people from the bad ramifications of it? And I asked his Highness, I said to him, but your highness, why me? Why didn't you hire a veteran, someone who has 30 years of experience in AI to run this and why are you hiring a young man that's 27? And he said Omar, I think that this technology is going to need someone who can adapt, someone who can learn is going to evolve. So we need someone that will evolve with it. You, we don't need the experience of the person, we need the agility of the person. And he said you're young enough to be able to do that.
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Yep.
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That's the reason.
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I loved that answer for several reasons. I want to unpack it but we disagree on one thing only because I think you're being humble. We. You said that you're a nice person because. Or you're not have a big head essentially and, and obsess about yourself because of the lack of achievements. Not first of all not true. You enormously achieve achievement based people just hurt just a small fraction of that in the, in His Highness would not have made this appointment to you and he not had the confidence that you could do it. And, and my, our friend Ambassador Youssef from who is in the United States would, would never, Yusef Otable would never have introduced and recommended you as a lead leader that represents the entire country, that should represent the AI Ethics Council had he not had enormous confidence with you. He's also a very nice person by the way, very kind human being. I think it's a low, I think it's insecurity and low self esteem which you don't have which, which, which the ambassador does not have. Go ahead.
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So, so I think achievement is relative and let me tell you what I mean by that. Some people think it's relative to other people. So, so you know what you have achieved compared to someone else. And those are people who like to brag about what they achieved. They look at how They've achieved certain things compared to others. There are others who think that achievement is relative to what their expectations of themselves are. Someone like Elon Musk, for example, if he sold PayPal to eBay and said, I've achieved because he compares himself to others, I think he would have stopped there. But even if we ask him today, he's going to tell you there is so much more to achieve. I haven't achieved anything. So I think it's that. It's not the insecurity part, it's the fact that I understand. I think that the expectations from leadership on what they want me to do on this file are so large that we've just started, right? And I can't claim that we've done anything big because there's so much more to be done.
- [37:53]
A
So there you go again. Or you're so humble you won't even take the compliment about you not being insecure. You're not insecure and you're not self absorbed. You have confidence and you have enough self esteem to sit in comfort, reasonable comfort. What I say is you're reasonably comfortable in your own skin. And saying that about somebody in their 30s is really impressive. I didn't get there until I was in my 40s. You're reasonably comfortable in your own skin and that is a compliment to you, given the enormous position you have. You're still authentic, you're still thoughtful, caring. Please keep that quality about yourself is really important. And I love that we're arguing about you not being the thing I'm telling you that you are, which is humble and, and not self absorbed. That's a wonderful thing to disagree about. Let's now go to something you said in your presentation, which you walk right through, that I thought was absolutely mind blowing. You said that we've been dealing with AI already for a decade. It's called social media. And how do you think I'm paraphrasing? How do you think that the algorithms work? And how do you think that people are so addicted to social media, if not from something that is theoretically more intelligent than the average person in being able to drive their attention span on a definable growing basis? And I had not put those two together. I think a lot about these things. I had not put those things together. You're saying artificial intelligence has been around? Well, you've been investing in. You guys have been investing there for two decades, but it's been around and it's even embedded in the thing that we use every day, which is social media. That's Correct. Yes.
- [39:48]
B
So it's been around for at least 70 years. AI 7 0. Yeah. So its abilities changed. Like when, when the term artificial intelligence was coined. And when they worked on the first AI algorithms, they were very mediocre and, you know, they started evolving. So, you know, at one point of time, a artificial intelligence algorithm was able to beat the world champion in chess and people thought that that was the end of the world. And then it really fizzled out. Then it beat the world champion in jeopardy, which required a different set of intelligence. It's not just being able to work out certain set moves on a board, but actually answer questions about different things, like, for example, cultural questions and historic questions and social related questions. And so, so it has been evolving. One thing you need to know is, you know, it's not just that Social media is AI. Social media is AI. Yes, that is correct. Search Google is AI. YouTube is AI. Everything that you use, like your devices today, and they have been for a number of years, have been powered by a form of AI called recommendation engines. And what the recommendation engines were, were if you go on, for example, sometimes you'd go on Facebook or on Instagram and suddenly you see a picture of someone and you'd be like, I've been meaning to talk to this person. That's the recommendation engine at work. It sees your trends, it sees what you search for, it sees what you're interested in, and then tries to give you things that will keep you on the platform for longer. So it has one sole purpose. Its sole purpose is how do I maximize the amount of time that you spend on the platform. Yeah. And it has achieved its target. Then there are companies that used the same algorithm, but change the target from how do I maximize the amount of time that you have on this platform to how do I maximize the money spent from your pocket on the items that are marketed on my platform? So John Hope Brian likes, for example, books. How do I, while he's scrolling, doom scrolling through Instagram or doom scrolling through Facebook or TikTok or whatever platform you use. How do I keep positioning contents related to books in such a way that John spends the most amount of money?
- [42:21]
A
Yep.
- [42:22]
B
These algorithms know which day you're in the best of moods. These algorithms know when your salary is deposited in your bank account based on your spending patterns. These algorithms know you know, when, if you see something, you're more likely to click on it. So that's, let's say, the form of AI that we were dealing with since.
- [42:42]
A
2008, or even taking a Pause right there on that point. You can take a ChatGPT as example, could take a photo of my background or your. If you want to think about what, what a birthday gift or holiday gift was for John o', Brien, you can take a photo, your assistant take a photo during this podcast episode of my background, of this episode of my including my background, and say, what books would John Hope Bryant most likely like to read? I'd like to buy a book for him. It can take a photo of this and look at the books in the background and recommend a book for John Bryan to read, which I found just, I find just. I mean, that's a very rudimentary basic example of its power, its recommendation engine. That's a really, as you say, that's really a basic form of AI.
- [43:35]
B
So can I, can I make it even maybe scarier or, you know, more exciting for your audience? You don't need to do that anymore. I can actually go to. Because ChatGPT and Grok and these platforms are not recommendation engines. They're large language models.
- [43:52]
A
Right.
- [43:52]
B
I can actually go to Grok and tell it, analyze every single tweet that John Hope Brian has written, tell me what books he's most likely to be interested in. And I don't need to see your background. So even if you have someone who has never posted anything of his background or their homes, based on the content that they publish the text, you can actually do the same, by the way, for their Instagram. Like you can go and say, you know, go, go through all his pictures, tell me what are things that he would like. So you can do it with text, you can do it with voice, you can do with images, and you can also reach to a point where you can psychologically deconstruct that person. So I can, you know, start understanding how you think, what you like, how I can start a conversation with you. And this is the scary part of AI, the fact that it is today your psychiatrist, it's your psychologist, it's your lover, it's your friend, it's your second secretary. It's all of these things combined.
- [44:59]
A
Yeah.
- [44:59]
B
And it's a tool. And this tool, if wielded by the right people, they're going to make your lives better.
- [45:06]
A
By the right people.
- [45:07]
B
By the right people. And if we did by the wrong people, it's going to make you miserable. You're going to go in debt by buying things that you don't want to buy. And they will convince you that these are the things that you need to buy. They're going to make you depressed or miserable, or they're going to make you happy. And, you know, to the extent where certain people fall in love with these algorithms. So, you know, there are circumstances that have been public on the media. You can see them of certain people that got married to ChatGPT. So they created an agent that, you know, they were so wooed by that they felt like their partner in life. Now, these are extreme examples, but this is just the beginning.
- [45:46]
A
Yes.
- [45:47]
B
Imagine when we evolve into a world where, you know, you make a phone call. Actually, I need to tell you about a thing that happened a year ago. So a year or two years ago, a group of hackers created a bot that was so effective for restaurant owners that it created havoc in certain parts of the US So what they did was they created the algorithm that goes on. Dating websites can act like a woman or a man and make you, you know, chat with them and you want to get to know them, then tell you. We would meet you at a certain restaurant. They would let you go to the restaurant, make a phone call and tell you, I'm running late. Can you order the lobster or the steak for me or whatever until I come and completely disappear. And what they did with that was they actually started convincing restaurant owners, if you use this, you're gonna have certain people come to you and order the expensive dishes.
- [46:50]
A
Wow.
- [46:51]
B
And it's an increased traffic. So they would go on platforms like, you know, the dating platforms and, and so on so forth, to. To start to scam people into going and ordering two steaks or two lobsters. That was a silly example. That was possible two years ago. Imagine what's going to happen next five years.
- [47:10]
A
Yes, yes. And. And so let's. For the audience, let's back up a little bit. We covered a lot of ground here. We talked about social media. We talk about this is 70. It's been around 70 years. Governments use this. 70 years ago. This has been used to do, you know, early, you know, sort of psychology on steroids, if you will, psychological analysis. Let's go. Then it was sort of commercialized. And we've had recommendation engines which we use in our everyday life. And people use it like, you know, eating a banana or, you know, having lunch or dinner. I think it's completely normal to recommendation engines. And. And people often say, I was just thinking about that person. How did that pop up? Or how they know, I want to buy that thing? Here, here you go. Here's your answer. And why are people now so addicted to social media? We talked about that covered that, Graham. And we talked about generative AI a little bit and, and now, you know, we're about to go into more fascinating and more scary forms of artificial intelligence. And it really depends on who's in whose hands these sit. And I don't want to get too far afield. I think a funny, I'm gonna take a funny detour, but an interesting detour. I think that AI is going to be very helpful for a relationship in the sense that you'll be able to maybe understand maybe what your mate is thinking and try to bridge through communication to her or him versus making assumptions. But it'll also, I think, create problems for relationships because when you combine AI with robotics and this partner does not argue with you anymore, that's a whole nother conversation. Another day I was in the airport in Amsterdam and a wheelchair came up past me and said, excuse me. And I turned around looking for a human. And it was, it was robotics. It was a very low AI driven model. But this, this, this wheelchair used to be pushed by a human, was automated and was going to take somebody, was it just post dropped somebody off at a gate at the airport and was on their way back to its docking station and passed by me and said please excuse me, I'm sorry, and docked itself. And those jobs that used to be tied to somebody pushing that wheelchair, those jobs are gone. So the customer service jobs, the low entry jobs, the, the, the, the anything that can be sort of automated, I think that a lot of friction in them, those jobs increasingly are going to be gone. I do believe it's going to be new jobs on the other end of this was going to be a bridge period of two to three years. But I do believe there'll be really more interesting jobs that have not even been created yet. But your job's going to be, not going to be destroyed by AI. Your job's going to be destroyed by somebody who can use AI and you need to be the person using it. And I think it's an opportunity for the underserved. I just talked about a lot right there, but I want to come back to generative AI is what people are using right now. Sam Altman and I have talked about this way, cure cancer in 10 years. It also, there's a 2% chance that it, it might end the world. I mean, not literally, hopefully, but I mean, in other words, it can be used for very destructive means by bad people. We need to make sure that folks like you and people like you that you and I know continue to be on the cutting edge of this technology and using it as a force for good. You take that in any direction you want to head with the conversation. But I want to make sure that people know that, that this is a transformational moment. They've already been in it, as you've already said, we cannot wait. This is.
- [51:09]
B
This is.
- [51:09]
A
We are in this historic moment and we've got to be part of the future because the future is here, whether we like it or not. So.
- [51:18]
B
So let me unpack this. I've been taking a few notes just to try to make sure that I cover as much ground as I can on what you said. So let me start off by saying this. It is extremely exciting. It's both exciting and scary, but I think it's more exciting. Agree that we agree that we are today the first generation of something.
- [51:41]
A
Yeah.
- [51:41]
B
So we are the first generation of. Of humanity. So, you know, there was at one point of time, the first generation that has ever flown, the first generation that has experienced electricity, the first generation that has experienced fire and so on, so forth. Oil or oil. Yes. So it's incredible that we are the first generation that have already experienced intelligence beyond human.
- [52:08]
A
Yes.
- [52:08]
B
And what that will unpack is. It's going to unpack a lot of things. But the exciting part is we are the ones that are going to go through this journey, and I think we are going to set the rules for those who come after us. So what we do, if we do it well, is going to reshape humanity and future generations in a positive way. If we take shortcuts and if we ignore the burden that's on our shoulders, unfortunately, it is going to be a chapter that people are going to look back at and say, these people haven't done a good job and they were lazy or they were negligent or so on. And so for. Yes, the second thing I want to say, I. I don't think it's a conversation of, you know, you won't lose your job to AI. You lose your job to someone who's using AI. That is true. But there's another thing as well that's even more broad here and more important. Throughout history, your advantage was years lived. So the more experience that you have, the more of an advantage that you have for the first time in history. Your advantage is speed of learning. Regardless of your. So the speed in which you're able to learn how to utilize this technology or learn how to react to it, or learn to find the opportunities that are created because of it or with it, the Faster, the more opportunities that you will have, the greater your possibilities. Up until this point, at any point of time, the advantage that you had was years lived. So a person with more experience and years lived with that experience, not. Sorry, so years lived without experience, not years lived in total. Like, you know, someone who was pushing wheelchairs, for example, for 10 years had an advantage to someone who was pushing wheelchairs, let's say for a day.
- [54:13]
A
Yeah.
- [54:13]
B
Today, with speed of learning, you're able to understand what AI has not been applied to, that you can apply AI to. You're able to learn what AI is going to take in terms of jobs and, you know, maybe react to that and so on, so forth.
- [54:29]
A
Yes.
- [54:30]
B
The final thing I'm gonna say, I don't think again, this is a statement that you made and you know, these are differing points of view. I don't know who's going to be right, whether it's going to be me or you. But a very, very important point is. I actually don't think the entry jobs are going to be lost first. So it's not going to be the waiter in the restaurant, it's not going to be the customer service representative that's sitting on front of the, the front desk at the reception. I actually think that the consultants, the people in business suits are going to lose their jobs first.
- [55:10]
A
The middle income jobs, well, those are going, those are the ones that are going at scale in the US right.
- [55:14]
B
Now, actually, even high income jobs. So. So I don't think any job is particularly safe. What the equation I would use for you to, to see whether a job is going to be lost or not is the economics of replacing that job. So if I'm paying someone $5 an hour and the air costs me $15 an hour to run because of the electricity, the infrastructure, the chips, the models and so on, so forth, the subscription fee that I need to pay for it, I don't think I'm going to replace that job. But a lawyer that charges me $1,000 an hour, if I can replace that with AI that costs me know, $20 an hour, I would do that. And you know, whoever does that as a solution is going to be someone who makes a huge amount of money. The consultant, the lawyer, the architect, the, you know, the people thinking jobs.
- [56:10]
A
Yeah.
- [56:11]
B
Now you're going to tell me what are these people going to do? And my answer is human taste is going to evolve. Human, even our laws are going to keep evolving and improving. But what is going to happen is throughout history, as we grew as a Civilization as a humanity. The jobs that were required were increased because the number of users so scaling up was increased right over time. Now what's going to happen is AI is going to do the scale, the niche. So the frontier, those the John Hope, Brian's of the world that require legal counsel that is able to think of something that's on the cutting edge are going to require less lawyers that are more highly paid, that are able to just research the frontier. And that is what governments need to maneuver. A government like the UAE by the way, is at an advantage in this world because we don't have a billion people, we have a young population and we are already planning for that point of time. So one thing that we've done, I don't know if any other government has done this already, but I can share this in confidence with you. I think it's going to come out by the time your show airs. So we've mapped out every single job in the government that is going to be lost because of AI. And we brought each job in a criteria. Whether it's going to disappear, whether it's going to be augmented or whether it's going to be unaffected. And then we mapped out the age group of every single person that's in every single job that is at every, every single one of those positions. One thing that you need to keep in mind, someone who's, you know, in their 60s or end of their 50s, that is nearing retirement, whose job is going to be augmented, needs to be given a choice. Do you want to be reskilled and continue to work in this job or to work in a job or do you want to have an early retirement? It's cheaper for you to offer an early retirement and let them enjoy life. Someone who's young, who's just come into the workforce, if they have one year of experience and their job is going to be completely displaced because of AI. You need to invest whatever amount of money to take them into a position that is going to be created because of this AI revolution. So that's what I think is going to happen.
- [58:25]
A
We actually don't disagree. Two things can be true at the same time and I was intentionally provocative so that get that beautiful brain of yours moving in several directions at the same time. I do believe it's going to have, we're going to have disruption, but that doesn't not necessarily mean destruction. I think there's going to be also construction and reimagination. There was a time that we all used long form math. We wrote it out Then you had a long form calculator. Then you had a simple calculator. Then you just had something on the computer where you, you know, you did some. Then you. Now you ask, you ask a computer or AI, what is this add up to? You're in the best form of that world you're using. You're freeing your brain to do more complicated, more interesting things in the worst form of that you're becoming dumber if you don't make sure you understand simple math. So we need to make sure that people are excited about their future, that they are passionate about learning as you and I are. That they. That the glass is either half full or half empty. It's the same glass, depends how you're looking at it. We are optimists. You and I are optimists. We believe in the future. I believe AI is going to be transformationally beautiful. I really do. When I first heard about it, it scared the bejeebers out of me. And I'm not as scared of anything. I just, I didn't understand. I could not put my hand around this thing that just showed up in my life as a present reality. And the more I learn about it, the more comfortable I get. I use it as a co creator with me as an agent, if you will, every day. But I'm in charge. And I think this is where I want to sort of again maybe wrap a conversation up is as we go forward, give people some hope. We've launched something called Hope AI here at the. In the US we, we want to have Hope AI Global, by the way. So we'll be talking with you about that. I do believe that the real GDP untapped opportunity in the world. I think there's about 2 to 3% of untapped annual GDP in the US from the underserved populations. I believe that number is double or triple in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, India, parts of Europe. That is not, in other words the, the suburban, the suburbs where poor people live who are not been utilized. I think that everything. You mentioned something earlier Minister, you said in his last round of conversation, you said AI. Everything I'm paraphrasing, I believe everything's going to be retouched. So AI and literally AI and computer screens, how do you manufacture those? How do you think about those? How do you process AI and book manufacturing? AI and book marketing. AI AI and. And you know, energy drinks and AI AI and in computer stands AI and furniture. AI and everything. AI and websites. If you had a website five years ago as a small business owner you spent five hundred on it. Sorry, sorry. You spent five thousand or twenty five thousand dollars on it. You can do that for five hundred today with somebody who is an AI innovator and they. It might cost him fifty bucks. It has made a profit of four hundred and fifty bucks. And you can redo everybody's website in that small town or that village area and become a millionaire because they, the last time they did a website, it cost them 25,000 or 5,000 and it did not have AI and automation in it. So that's one example that we want to up. We want to upskill people to, to AI futures, train them in as this thing evolves. I think that's an enormous opportunity to help people become the best forms of themselves and stabilize communities and give people agency in their own life. So I am optimistic of the future. I want to throw this back to you as we wrap this up. How do you see? You just heard my vision of the future. People can focus on the fear and be immobilized by it and all that you can't control, or you can focus on, have faith and focus on the future. My middle name's Hope and focus on the future. We've society has managed in 5 billion years of this world and 4 billion years of organismal life and few hundred million years of human life and 200,000 years of modern human and 6,000 years of enlightenment, we've managed to fall forward, we managed to meet our challenges and to evolve. I believe we'll meet this one as well. And I do believe I agree with you. This moment is historic. And what leaders like, like you and I do more you than me, matters to future generations, not just this one. We gotta get it right. What are some of the opportunities that you see for this audience to think about that they might think about as they're wrapping this conversation? We're wrapping this conversation up. What do they hold on to as this is evolving and being created in real time? And maybe we continue this conversation with a future podcast. And I'm coming to the UAE, by the way, in early 2026 for your world, your world government summit. What are some things that you'd like them, the audience to think about, to dream about, to move on that might give them opportunities for themselves in the future? I believe humans will have a wonderful place to play in the future of AI, by the way.
- [63:56]
B
So the first point I'm going to say, and look, I don't like to disagree with you and I don't think we disagree on anything. We agree on nearly everything, which is great. But one thing I will tell you is I am not optimistic about artificial intelligence and I am not pessimistic about artificial intelligence. In my position, a person that is running this from a government mandate perspective, my job is to sit in the middle. My job is not to be over blinded by the glitter and, you know, the fancy things about AI. And my job isn't to be a pessimist that thinks it's going to be doom and gloom. I think, you know, government division needs to be balanced. However, if I were looking at this for, from a individual perspective, a person that is looking at how this will relate to them. So if I were in your shoes, I would absolutely agree with you and think the way that you're thinking. Because this is a once, not just in a lifetime. I think this is a once in a millennia opportunity. We have the opportunity to do things that, you know, being the first generation to deal with something that is intelligence that's beyond human is a very interesting perspective and a very interesting prospect. Now, does it mean that it's going to be good or bad? What would determine whether it's good or bad? And I'll tell you why you need to be excited, is if enough good people are excited about AI and what potential it brings with it and they go and they build this technology will be built in their image, it will be built in their value system. It's going to be built with their ethos and that's going to be a good technology. If the good people are all scared of it and say, you know, I don't want to touch this because, you know, I worry that this is going to end the world and the bad people are the ones that build it. It's going to be deep fakes, it's going to be autonomous weapons, it's going to be a destructive technology that destroys the world.
- [65:59]
A
Yes.
- [65:59]
B
Now, one thing that I will tell anyone that's listening to this and anyone that I meet on this, there were equations that have shaped every boom and every gold rush and every development, a hockey stick leap in terms of human development throughout history. And that equation changed from time to time. The last 150 years, the equation was energy plus x. So if you look at every single person that has created a product or a company over the last 150 years that have changed the world, it was energy plus something. And energy was actually electricity or a form of energy. So the person who built the car or the automobile, it was energy which is in the form of combustion and fuel. Plus winds. You completely change the world. You mean people be able to travel longer, to travel better, and to really reshape cities and the world as we know it. Energy plus a bulb created light. So we were able to turn darkness into light. Energy plus, you know, letters or connectivity created the Internet and created a way for us to communicate, you know, through continents. This conversation that we're having right now, 150 years ago, it was, you know, a form of magic. No one could believe that you could see someone and talk to people instantaneously across thousands of miles. Now, the equation for the next not even 150 years, I think the next 50 years or even less is going to be intelligence plus X. Someone is going to why not be you? Intelligence plus X. There is going to be intelligence plus everything around us. I'll give you a very rudimentary example and something very silly, but you understand the impact. Energy plus carpet. So a carpet with electricity is a treadmill. Treadmills are a hundred million plus or a few billion plus dollar business globally. Right. So someone thought of it's I just take a carpet and add a motor that keeps moving it that will create something that changes people's lives today. Someone needs to think about intelligence plus that. Intelligence plus everything. Intelligence plus your bed 8 sleep is a good example of that. Like a bed that heats and cools and ensures that you have the optimal sleep. That's intelligence plus bed. Right? Or bed sheets.
- [68:37]
A
Yes.
- [68:38]
B
There is going to be a huge gold rush. And it's not going to create billionaires. It's going to create trillionaires. The last gold rush created millionaires, then billionaires. This gold rush is going to create trillionaires. I think that there is someone that may be listening to this or might be told about this by someone around them that is going to embrace that idea and change the world. That's what me.
- [69:07]
A
You know, this has been fabulous. And we have to let you get back to helping to run part of the this government, which is one of the most innovative and thoughtful in the world. So when I let you get go back to your job. But I want to thank you. There were two ways we could have done this interview. The traditional way, and you ask them they're pretty boring questions and you get pretty boring standard answers and the audience is left no better. The second way is because we're, because we're new friends. You trust me and I trust you. And like every good relationship, there's constructive friction and because of that you go deeper. And I want to thank you for trusting me and for giving a very rich set of answers to this audience that I think is going to transform their lives. I really do believe that this was an hour that if someone listen to this and re listens to this, they can. They can replace their fear and place it and replace it with faith. They can replace their concern and replace it with hope. They can replace their questions and replace it with a business plan for their lives. And that is possible because you took the time and you also had the courage to dig deeper and talk about your family and talk about your own personal failings and successes by falling forward so that people can relate to that. I want to thank you so much for not the position you hold or the intelligence that you clearly have, but Omar, for the humanity that you are. Thank you very much for being a good person and sharing that humanity and that intelligence with the audience and with the future of dreamers yet unborn and unrealized. AI plus the future. Intelligence plus the future. Thank you very much.
- [71:05]
B
Thank you, John. I'm just going to conclude by saying birds of a common feather flock together. It takes one to know one. And I hope that I live up to your expectations and I hope to continue this conversation in person in 2026 and hopefully maybe do a follow up to this conversation sometime in the future.
- [71:24]
A
Would be honored. And by the way, you exceeded my expectations, just so you know.
- [71:29]
B
Thank you.
- [71:30]
A
My question. Thank you all. This has been Money and wealth on iHeartRadio and the black Effect Network. This is Money wealth podcast series season 2. One of the most important interviews I have ever done. This is with the first minister of AI in the world. For any government Minister Omar Al Olama. His Excellency has empowered him to provide the framework hopes for other governments to provide a positive platform for future responsible growth, a free enterprise and opportunity agency in the world. And I'm honored to be associated with you through the AI Ethics Council and all the work we're going to do for humanity going forward. Everybody, God bless and go make a great day. Money and wealth with John o' Brien is a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the Black Effect Podcast network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.