← The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
The Future of AI and How It Will Shape Our World — with Mo Gawdat
01:04:36
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- [00:01]
Scott Galloway
Support for Prop Tree comes from Viori. Oh my God. True story. I am wearing totally coincidentally, guess what? Viori shorts. Viori's high quality gym clothes are made to be versatile and stand the test of time. They sent me some to try out and here I am. For our listeners, vuori is offering 20% off your first purchase plus get free shipping on any US orders over $75 in free returns. Get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet. Vuori.com profg that's V-U-O-R-I.com profg exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions.
- [00:46]
Mo Gadot
Support for the show comes from Charles Schwab at Schwab. How you invest is your choice, not theirs. That's why when it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices. You can invest and trade on your own. Plus get advice and more comprehensive wealth solutions to help meet your unique needs. With award winning service, low costs and transparent advice, you can manage your wealth your way at Schwab. Visit schwab.com to learn more.
- [01:17]
Scott Galloway
It's time to review the highlights.
- [01:19]
Mo Gadot
I'm joined by my co anchor Snoop. Hey what up doe snoop? Number one has to be getting iPhone 16 with Apple Intelligence AT T Mobile. Yeah, you should hustle down AT T Mobile like a dog chasing a squirrel chasing a nut. Number two at T mobile families can switch and save 20% on plans plus streaming services versus the other big guys. What a deal. Y'all giving it away too fast. T Mobile slow down. Head to t mobile.com and get iPhone 16 on them. Yeah, you can save on wireless and streaming versus the other big guys@t mobile.com switch Apple Intelligence requires iOS 18.1 or later.
- [01:49]
Scott Galloway
Episode 335 In 1935, the first canned beer was sold in Richmond, Virginia and Alcoholics Anonymous was founded. I really enjoy AA. It's the only place where I can pee in an Uber and then show up and tell other guys who've peed in an Uber that it gets better. Go go go. Welcome to the 335th episode of the Prop G Pod. In today's episode we speak with mogadot, the former Chief Business Officer of Google X, bestselling author, founder of One Billion Happy and host of Slow Mo, a podcast with Mo Gadot. We discussed with Mo how AI could shape our lives in the coming decades, the opportunities it brings and the risks it poses to society, ethics and ment health. We also get into his latest book, Unstressable A Practical Guide to Stress free living. Yeah, that's gonna happen. Yeah. I'm gonna read a book and all of a sudden Mr. Stress is gonna leave the neighborhood. Call me, call me cynical. Color me a bit skeptical. What's going on with the dog? What's going on with the dog? So I am in New York after a stop in Orlando where I went for a speaking gig. I have absolutely no sense of Orlando other than Disney World, which is the seventh circle of hell, essentially. I do almost no parenting 364 days a year. And I compensate for all of it by agreeing to take my boys and their five or six closest friends to Walt Disney World, which is just. I mean, that is cruel and unusual punishment for a parent. But anyways, not doing it this time. Just bombing in, speaking to a lovely group of people, then getting back on a plane and going up to New York. While I spent four days with the team and do a bunch, I find New York. I get so much done in New York. There's something about, I don't know, everyone just seems to be on high, if you will. By the way, it's fascinating all these members clubs are opening. In the last couple years there's been zero Bond. My favorite, Casa Cipriani, downtown. Weird location. They put a ton of money into it. Has that Italian vibe. I get the sense it's trust fund kids from New Jersey, but that's just me. And then what else has opened up, Sam? Vicente Bungalows is opening up from Los Angeles. So everyone assumes it's going to be cool. And I'm excited about that. The Crane Club, which is the guys from the Tao Group who are probably the most successful nightclub, like pretty much a giant fucking red flag is when you find out that your, your daughter's dating a club promoter. But these guys made good and made so much dough and cabbage and really kind of professionalized the industry, if you will. And they're the folks or the power behind Crane Club. So it should be interesting. And then I went to another one last week and it's my favorite so far based on my snap impressions. Shay. Marco.
- [04:37]
Mo Gadot
Ooh. Hello.
- [04:39]
Scott Galloway
Hello, ladies. Uh, I don't know exactly how to describe it other than the thing that struck me was it was super cool, super crowded. And the thing I liked about it was it was intergenerational. What do I mean by that? There was a lot of young hot people. Oh, it was a good thing. It was a good thing. New York, by the way, is run on hot women, hot young women and rich men. That's it for Everyone else, it's a soul crushing experience anyways. And then it had people my age and then it had parents eating and dining and I love that whole sort of like we can be cool at any age. Which is becoming increasingly important to me as I become 100 fucking years old. Anyways. I love being back in New York. New York's on fire. Still think it's the greatest city in the world and am excited to be here. I'm also going to talk to Mo about specifically, I think there's a paradigm shift going on in AI. A little bit of a teaser. A little bit of a teaser. I'm like those promos for all those YouTube videos that say the secret to happiness is and then they cut out. But we're going to talk to Mo about what I think is, I think I had a realization around how the whole AI economy might shift. Anyways, with that, here's our conversation with Mo Gadot. Mo, where does this podcast find you?
- [05:53]
Mo Gadot
I'm in Dubai today. I am battling with the surprises of February so far and yeah, enjoying every bit of it.
- [06:05]
Scott Galloway
Well, let's start there. Surprises of February. What are surprises in February from an individual such as yourself in Dubai?
- [06:14]
Mo Gadot
Dubai is wonderful in February, but we occasionally remember last year we had this incredible flood that was really, really quite. And just a couple of days ago we had a bit of rain that sort of triggered the same fears. But of course the real surprises were deep seek and the respons in the market and how the world, you know, I feel overreacted a bit and then underreacted a bit and you know, life, life.
- [06:47]
Scott Galloway
There you go. I hear you. So let's bust right into it. The last time you were on, I think it was about a year ago and you're a little, you're sort of our go to this mix of spirituality and deep technical domain expertise. And we were talking as my guest, kind of our need to control the response to AI. What give us what you think the kind of current state of play is in AI given of the recent developments and how that may have influenced or did it influence your worldview or your predictions around or thoughts around the future of AI.
- [07:19]
Mo Gadot
You have to imagine that the short history of what I normally refer to as the third era of computing, you know, basically the two years between the time when ChatGPT came out and today, you know, that short history was a pace that humanity has never ever seen before. I think you've seen what I used to refer to as the, as the first inevitable where basically everyone is In a prisoner's dilemma don't want the other side to win. So everyone's competing, throwing everything on it, you know, at it. And basically you'd get releases of new technology that are sometimes separated by weeks, if not month at most. And I think what most people don't recognize is that at least within the areas where we invested, we have made massive stride on tech. So when it comes to the march to AGI, if you want, which I think humanity would continue to disagree about for a while because we don't really have a definition, an accurate definition of AGI, you know, is, is still steady and very, very fast. Right? So we're gonna get there. My prediction is we almost have already gotten there. And that, you know, when it comes to linguistic intelligence, they've won. They're winning in mathematics, they're winning in reasoning, you know, and everything we will pour resources on, they will get to become better than humans. So it's just a question of time really. The part that hasn't changed in my mind, Scott, which now I think is very, very firm and much more accurate if you want, is that the impact on humanity in the short term is going to be dystopian. And that has nothing to do with the existence existential risk that people speak about with AI. It has a lot to do with the value set of humanity at the age of the rise of the machines. Basically unelected, influential powers making decisions on humanity's behalf in ways that completely determines how things happen, leading to massive changes in the very fabric of society and basically paying to an agenda where I tend to believe we will end up with very few big platform players, completely in bed with governments, completely, you know, feeding on hunger for power, hunger for wealth, and sort of depriving the rest of us of the freedom to live the life we live. I can sort of. So I summarize this in an acronym that I made seven, seven changes to our way of life. I call them face rips. And we can go to them in details if you want. But basically I see this as inevitable. I see that the short term dystopia is going to be upon us very, very soon. Just because the massive superpower that is at the disposal of agendas is going to be in play very, very quickly.
- [10:28]
Scott Galloway
You said unelected officials that are reshaping society. Are you talking about Sam Altman, Elon Musk? Who are you referring to?
- [10:36]
Mo Gadot
100%. I mean, with all due respect, why is my life being determined by Sam Altman? We all had an accord, unwritten Rule if you want that we won't put AI out in the public sphere until we're, you know, until we feel that we've tackled safety or alignment or you know, ethics if you want all wonderful dreams to have. Sam Altman very soft spoken comes out every now and then and says this is the priority of what we believe in. But in reality it's a publicly traded company creating billionaires. Everyone's rushing very very quickly. Yeah it's all about the money and you know if you and I have lived in the tech world long enough to, to understand that what you know that all you need is a very clever PR manager to, to craft a message that it's almost exactly the opposite of what you focus on every day but you say it over and over until you yourself believe it. The truth is the world is, is not ready for what is about to hit us. Whether you things like the economics of the world and how they will change as a result of AI all the way to the change of the dynamics of power and the resulting deprivation of freedom all the way to how the economics of the world are going to change and how the jobs are going to change and how the human connection is going to change and how our understanding of reality is going to change. And these are decisions that are not made by us anymore. It think about it this way Spider Man's with great power comes great responsibility. We've disconnected power from responsibility. There is massive, massive power concentration concentrated in hands that do not answer to anyone.
- [12:22]
Scott Galloway
So I 100% agree with you the idea that everything from which buildings are these targeted bombs bomb first what our perception of our government election strategies all of these things are now being decided by algorithms program by a very small number of people that creates I think a lot of concern the Steelman argument is that if we don't iterate around the public's usage of these things that other entities will leap ahead of us and their intentions are even more malicious than ours. That while capitalism perverts things at its heart it's not malicious. It might be indifferent but it's not malicious. And the fear is that if we let other entities run unfettered with AI in the sense that it becomes the Wild west and the public provides feedback and these models leap out ahead of ours that ultimately the trade off between a capitalist motive is worth it relative to letting other societies get out ahead of AI respond to that argument.
- [13:28]
Mo Gadot
I find that this is a very valid argument if you think of the short term. If you think of the long term it's could lead to a very dystopian place. So allow me to explain. A competitive arms race that basically says if I don't build a nuclear bomb first, someone else will build it does not necessarily lead to a world where you are the only one that owns a nuclear bomb. As a matter of fact, it leads to a world that has more than one owner of nuclear bombs. And I think what you saw from Deep Seq, for example, is a very interesting result that comes out of, okay, we're going to consider this a war. We're going to compete against the other people, we're going to apply sanctions, we're going to try to limit their ability to progress, and what do they do as a result? Necessity is the mother of all needs. And so basically, they find ways to do things differently. Now, when you really look at the idea of testing things in public, which is an argument that's used very frequently by OpenAI, I think the analogy almost sounds like, let's, you know, test the Trinity in Manhattan, not in New Mexico, just to see how it impacts humanity. Right? That's not how you do things. The way you do things is when you are uncertain of the outcome. You know, you normally can test it in ways that are much more contained, but that's, you know, that's. This genie is out of the bottle long ago because the truth of the matter is that everyone is racing already the other outcome. Believe it or, and I say that with a ton of respect, you know, is that, yes, the US might lead, you know, the arms race or China, you'll never really know. You know, it might be OpenAI or it might be Alphabet. You'll never really know. But the problem with that is that a, you know, a more polar world where such concentrated power is not a fair world either. It's not a fair world, not to the world, but it's also not a fair world to most Americans. And I think that's what most people don't recognize, is that you eventually, sooner or later, as more and more power is concentrated in the hands of very, very few, which is the only way the US can beat China if you want. In this technology, those very few eventually will turn on the American citizen and say, you know what? You're not really bringing any productivity. We care about maximizing the same. Been chasing so far more power, more wealth, and you're standing in the way. And I think you can see that in the American society very, very clearly today. Before AI takes over. The only answer, in my view, believe it or not, which I know Sounds really idealistic if you want is a mutually assured destruction conviction is that we both understand by both I mean every two arch enemies on both sides that we are shifting the mindset and the existence of humanity from a world of scarcity where for me to feel safe I have to be stronger than the other person. Where for me to gain economically I have to compete with the other person to a world of total abundance. I mean we spoke about this last time we met, Scott. And my definition of the current age of AI is what I call the intelligence augmented. So we're now augmenting human intelligence with machine intelligence in ways where if I can lend you 250 IQ points more, imagine what you can invent, right? And I say that publicly all the time. I dare the world, I say give me 400 IQ points more and I will harness energy out of thin air. So why are we competing if that's the possibility ahead of us when the competition, you know, drives us to a point of absolute mutually assured destruction.
- [17:39]
Scott Galloway
So it strikes me when we talk about mutually assured destruction, it strikes me that the two entities that would have to come to some sort of agreement around regulation or a pause or it would be the US and China. And I'm sure there's other entities, but those are the, those are the lead dogs, right? Do you think it's realistic that the Chinese would be sympathetic to this argument and that there's enough mutual trust to say, look, we gotta, I don't wanna say slow down, but put some of this behind wraps, share with each other. I mean this was sort of Oppenheimer's, was it Oppenheimer's initial vision that we share this technology and say, okay, when one gets too far out ahead of the other, that's a problem. We need to control it together and realize that if one gets too far out in front of the other, the temptation to destroy the other is too great. At which point that person will destroy. We'll make sure they can strike back in some limited fashion. Do you think it's realistic? And maybe realistic or not, it's something we've got to do that we try and strike some sort of treaty with the CCP on China.
- [18:41]
Mo Gadot
It's not realistic in the current political environment, unfortunately, the current geopolitics of the world is heating up more and more. But it wasn't realistic in the case of Russia and nuclear weapons either. By the way, I am not for slowing down at all. I'm actually for speeding up all the way. But speeding up in the direction that is not competitive, but rather for the prosperity of the whole world. I mean, at the end of the day, Scott, Again, give me 400 IQ points more and I'll solve every problem known to humankind. And this is quite straightforward really. You and I have both worked with incredibly smart people and you understand what the difference of 100 IQ points means. Give me better reasoning, better mathematics, better understanding of physics and I can do things that humanity never dreamt of. And this is a promised utopia that is at our fingers tips. So I'm not saying slow down. I'm simply saying there is no point to compete. The issue that is facing our world is not a problem of technology that's moving too fast. Technology has always been good for us, right? It's a problem of trust that if the other guy gets the technology before me, I'm in trouble. And that trust is not established in the lab, it's not established in the data center. It's basically established with a realization that we can create a world of absolute total abundance. Total abundance. I could know every piece of knowledge that ever existed. I know you well, Scott. I know how big of a dream this is for people like you and I who love to learn, right? And I can use that knowledge in ways that will make me richer. But how many Ferraris does anyone need? I think this is the challenge we have. The challenge is, you know, the founders, by the way, I don't believe this is a question of money for the founders of AI startups. I think this is a question of ego rather than greed. I'm the one that figured it out first. I'm the one that provided this amazing breakthrough to humanity. But if you look back just 150 years at the King or queen of England, they had a much worse life than what anyone today has. Anyone in any reasonable city in the US today has air conditioning, has transportation, has clean water, has hot water, has sanitation. So we're getting to the point where more doesn't actually make any difference anymore. It is a morality question of can we just shift the mindset to abundance instead of scarcity?
- [21:26]
Scott Galloway
We'll be right back. Stay with us. Support for prop tea comes from 1-800-Flowers. Valentine's Day is coming up and you can let that someone in your life know just how special they are with the help of 1-800-FLowers.com. they offer beautiful, high quality bouquets. And this year you can get double the roses for free. When you buy one dozen from 1-800-flowers, they'll double your bouquet to two dozen roses. Of course, Roses are a classic sweet way to say I love you, and 1-800-FLowers lets you share that message without breaking the bank. All of their roses are picked at their peak, cared for every step of the way, and shipped fresh to ensure lasting beauty. Our producer Claire ordered from 1-800-Flowers, and she thought they were just wonderful. Her partner was just so delighted. So delighted. Strengthen the relationship. Their bouquets are selling fast, and you can lock in your order today. Win their heart this Valentine's Day at 1800-flowers.com to claim your double your roses offer, go to 1-800-flowers.com profg that's 1-800flowers.com profg Support for today's show comes from HubSpot. It takes a lot to grow your business. You've got to attract audiences, score leads, manage all the channels. It's a lot of long days and late nights, but with Breeze HubSpot's new AI tools, it's never been easier to be a marketer and crush your goals fast. Which means pretty soon your company will have a lot to celebrate, like 110% more leads in just 12 months. Visit HubSpot.com marketers to learn more. Okay, business leaders, are you playing defense or are you on the offense? Are you just.
- [23:12]
Mo Gadot
Excuse me, me.
- [23:13]
Scott Galloway
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- [23:35]
Mo Gadot
Working from the same numbers with no.
- [23:37]
Scott Galloway
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- [23:57]
Mo Gadot
Get the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com Vox get this free guide at netsuite.com Vox okay, guys.
- [24:10]
Scott Galloway
Do you think sequestering China from our most advanced chip technology was a mistake?
- [24:16]
Mo Gadot
100%. It's the biggest mistake ever. I mean, since when did we, you know, I mean, strategically, as I said, of course, you know, the two big sanctions that America did in the last few years were backfired massively against America the move against Russia basically got a lot of people to try and de dollarize a little bit. And the move against China drove China to become more inventive. It's as simple as that. But it is also a massive statement of, you know what? I'm gonna try everything I can to beat you. And I don't know how to say that in a, a polite way, but I've gone the first time to America in the 70s and it blew me away. It was a world apart from anywhere else in the world. I get that feeling today when I land in Shanghai. It's, you know, it's not an easy fight. It's not a determined fight. Let's say 70s, 80s, 90s, definitely. You know, post Berlin, the US could do whatever, whatever the F they wanted in the world. I don't think it's as easy a slam dunk as it has been in the past anymore. I think America needs to recognize that when you win, it's going to be through strategies like what Trump is talking about by increasing defense spending even further than where it was loading the American debt clock even further than it is loaded. And I had a very good boss of mine that used to say when we're under pressure, we tend to do more of what we know how to do best. But what we know how to do best is what got us under pressure in the first place. And I truly and honestly think that. Imagine a world where there is an agreement that America adheres to, by the way, that basically says let's just deliver that world that everyone's dreaming of. Deliver a world where there is no need for you to attack me.
- [26:32]
Scott Galloway
I think of a little bit of this. How I would couch some of your comments is you think we're entering into what I'll call an age of equivalence. I don't know how to. My semantics might be up, but I think of America was able to develop and sustain certain competitive advantages. Manufacturing mostly because the German industrial Japanese infrastructure had been leveled than services infrastructure and then a technology. You know, whether it was because of IP risk taking multiculturalism and we were able to maintain one, two, three decade leads and find the next thing and establish more prosperity and create and consume a disproportionate amount of the world's spoils. And tell me if I'm saying this correctly, you now believe that that are at competitive advantage around these things is shrinking from 30 years to 30 days. So it sort of should bring on this incredible age of cooperation and we should stop deluding ourselves that we're going to be able to get out ahead and win. Is that an accurate summary of what you're saying?
- [27:38]
Mo Gadot
That is a very accurate summary that it's still possible for the US to win. I think the most important competitive advantage that, that you may have not mentioned here is that money has always been free for the U.S. right? You had the ability to print money to create amazing wealth that got reinvested wisely and sometimes unwisely. Unfortunately. I think we're in a time where $500 billion on Stargate sounds unwise. Right. But at that point in time, it was a no issue. You know, it's like, okay, if this is what it takes to build the infrastructure, we'll do it. What I'm attempting to say here is it's not that the US has lost the capability to crush other nations on whatever, you know, full spectrum dominance that the US has been attempting to achieve for years. It's that other nations have grown an ability to resist. Right. And that the more the US Is becoming, you know, again, I worked my entire life in corporate America, so don't take that as an attack to the American approach at all. I'm basically saying that the more America will bully the world, the more you'll get responses like deep seek across the world, you know, where people are simply going to say, you know what, we don't like this anymore. I will openly say I don't like the fact that there is a small chunk of whatever money I made anywhere in the world that was somehow handed to America because of the US dollar dominance. Right. You know, I don't feel, as a wealthy man, I don't feel that this tax, if you want, on all the money made everywhere in the world, that this export of inflation to everywhere in the world is a just setup for all of us to succeed. And so you can see across the world, you know, actions from Japan, from China, from Russia, for sure, that is basically attacking the US where it becomes painful, which is the US dollar dominance. It's not gonna go away anytime soon, but it makes things a little painful. And it is, you know, in a typical environment, in a typical environment, the US Would say, you know what, I'm gonna crush you. I'm strong enough and you are strong enough. You know, I'm gonna apply tariffs, as Trump would say, and make sure that nobody has access to my wonderful market. It makes sense. It does make sense, but it also causes pain on the U.S. side, right. And it comes from a mindset of we're still competing for limited resources, where the world was made up of metals and mirrors and power was acquired by weapons. I think we are on the cusp of a world where everything is possible. Just understand that from a difference of manufacturing point of view. Right? With enough understanding of nanophysics and an understanding of a level of intelligence that helps us bridge the remaining bits of nanophysics, we could manufacture things out of thin air. Just reorganizing molecules of air instead of competing for minerals and resources. This is on at our fingertips. It's years away. There is a need for a mindset change.
- [31:09]
Scott Galloway
I always like to pause and double click on, or at least cement and highlight what I think is real striking insight in the notion of an inability to sustain an advantage. And all it does is create fear and weaken relationships and make one side more likely to strike while they're ahead and create workarounds because they're, you know, nothing creates innovation like war and the threat of survival. Right. And what also really resonated was, and I've been saying this, I think Sam Altman is Sheryl Sandberg with hush tones. Sheryl Sandberg was weaponized. Her femininity, her charm, her maternal instincts, gender, the important conversation on gender to basically take what was a company that was creating rage, making our discourse more coarse, depressing our teens, and make it seem more palatable to basically rub Vaseline over the lens of pretty mendacious behavior. And I feel like Sam and his hush tones and his. That's a real concern. You know, Senator, I'm worried too. Meanwhile, I'm about to raise $40 billion at a $350 billion market cap. I mean, it's just. I have been to this fucking movie before and we are falling for it again and again. And so I want to propose something and have you respond to it. And this is literally. You just inspired this thought. Similar to the way we have the UN or NATO. We have a new organization and the two founding members are China and the US and it's total open. There's offices in dc, Silicon Valley, Shanghai and Beijing. Every room, every team has a mix of US and Chinese scientists, regulators, such that it's almost impossible to hide anything. We're all working on the same damn thing. And we're trying to solve the world's most difficult problems. Food distribution, health, poverty. We're working together, but we're also making sure there's a very, very thick layer of supervision and enforcement such that, that we are constantly testing how would you make bioweapons? And then we're sending our crawlers out to see is anyone working on this, that we don't want working on this. And we together try and create, you know, like what Interpol was doing, where we had multilateral cooperation around the drug trade and arms shipments. But we have this multilateral organization that says total transparency. And our job is to dole it out where we see the most opportunity to increase stakeholder value. And the stakeholders are all seven and a half billion people on the planet. And we're there to ensure that there's trust and transparency and ensure that the bad guys don't get this and start doing. And we're going to cooperate around either sequestering this or ensuring that the development of it to make weapons or create a new super virus, that we are hip to these things before anybody else and act against them with that type of organization. Do you think that's possible? And in your mind, do you think that that has merit?
- [34:13]
Mo Gadot
That would be a dream. I mean, let me just double click on a very important comment that you said there at the end. What both parties are unable to recognize while they are putting their heads down and competing with each other is how many bad guys are putting their heads down in silence and working against both parties. Them. The thing about AI is a massive democracy, a massive set of open source, once again, because of the speed of this thing, you know, it took Linux tens of years to actually be, I mean, at least around 10 years to be established. It took massive open source models weeks to be established. Right? And so there is access. You know, anyone today can download a deep sea, you know, model to their computer in the jungles of Colombia and do something malicious without ever being detected. Now the dream here is that we work together to say, look again, mutually assured destruction. If we are not both together against the bad guys, there is harm that can come to all of us. And I think it's a beautiful dream. But believe it or not, there is a bit of that dream that's already happening. I mean, I don't know if you know the statistic, but 38% of all AI top AI researchers in America are Chinese. You know, it's quite staggering when you really think about it. And if you count the Indians and if you count, you know, some of some that have Russian origin and so.
- [35:48]
Scott Galloway
On, what percentage of that 38% are spies?
- [35:51]
Mo Gadot
Great question.
- [35:54]
Scott Galloway
In all honesty in the world you're defining it, those spies are assets to humanity.
- [35:59]
Mo Gadot
And it's quite interesting that if you do not have a reason to spy, then they become more of an asset to humanity. I think the truth here Is there is no winning. There's truly no winning. And of course I don't want to be grumpy, but a massive advantage in AI is not going to trump the card of nuclear holocaust. So we're competing in the wrong arena if you think about it. Because in a world where we have so many superpowers, of which almost four or five can completely wipe out our planet in less than two hours, right, the quest for more power, for a dream that I can crush someone else, is a very dangerous quest. Nobody in this world today can crush anybody. I think this message needs to become really, really clear. What are we competing on? On what are we competing on? And so of course what you recommended, by the way, can be done by governments, which I think is an impossible dream. But believe it or not, if just a few billionaires got together and built those things, the creation of the world of abundance will basically nullify the need to compete. You see, the challenge we have in our minds is we're not in that world of abundance yet, right? And so we're still living in our capitalist way of every one of us has to play to aggregate more wealth which delivers more power. And then I take that wealth and power and protect my wealth and power and make more of it. This is a world that's about to end. It is literally about to end for 6 billion of us as soon as jobs go out way. And nobody's talking about this, so you.
- [37:56]
Scott Galloway
And I both know you probably more so, but I would say I know personally or somewhat well, I don't know a dozen or two dozen billionaires. And what I have found is that the majority of them have what I call their very expensive go bag and that is they have a plan, whether it's anti Semitism or nuclear war or some sort of AI catastrophe or revolution. And they have their Gulfstream 650 ready on a moment's notice and pilots and their bunker in New Zealand. And what I've said when I've talked to a few people about this is like, let me get this, if things really get that bad, you don't think your pilots are going to get you to your destination and then kill you. You think they're going to sacrifice themselves to save your family? You don't think that everybody else is going to figure out where the billionaire bunkers are and come and take care. I mean, it's just, it's such a ridiculous. I feel like it's not only a stupid thesis, it's an unhealthy one because they're under the impression that their money can buy them a ripcord, a way out and they can't. And so shouldn't you be focusing all this energy on making sure that we just don't get to that point? I don't. Colonizing Mars. Well, here's an idea. Take your immense talent and capital to make this place a little bit more fucking habitable because you're not going to want to live on Mars. Mars is an awful place. You don't want to be there. That's worse than death. That's not space exploration, it's space execution. Isn't this. I mean, don't we have a real virus? It's almost like capitalism collapsing on itself where we get so caught up in our self worth and our masculinity and our power around the number and we see this way to a billion, 10 billion, a trillion dollars which will increase in the current age, my worth as a human. Doesn't this require an entirely different zeitgeist?
- [40:01]
Mo Gadot
Endlessly. You see, both directions of this dilemma are quite interesting. One of them is, remember last time, I don't remember when we were, we had a drink after the event, we spoke about the idea of what you can do with money. You know, there is a specific, you know, range of wealth where money makes a difference. You know, if you've never driven a sports car before and you manage to get yourself a sports car, you go like, ah, I made it. But then if you drive a real sports car and you know how annoying and broken they are and you know how they, you just eventually go like, I don't need any more of this. The problem is it the game of billionaire or multi, multi, multi millionaire is wonderful. Okay, it's a, it's a nice game, but it has no significant impact on gains that you can achieve as a human. You'll still sleep in one bed and you can make it as fancy as you can, but it's still one bed. You can still drive only one car. There could be 600 hundred other cars, 600,000 other cars in the garage, but you're still driving only one. And by the way, when you're a billionaire, you're not really driving it comfortably anyway because you're targeted all the time. The other way of this crazy dilemma is even more, you know, worthy of discussion because we remember the times when if you had an mba, you were like a highly educated post grad and you know, now everyone has an MBA and then if you had a, a PhD, you know, you became the special one and now everyone has a Ph.D. and you know, many have many. And, and the idea here is there is an inflation to the value of something that you acquire, right? And, and what is happening with wealth today with artificial intelligence is if you just look at the current trajectory, we're going to see our first trillionaire within years for sure. And, and that not only makes that person acquire more wealth, that is not necessary, but it makes the price of every Rolls Royce higher, and then that makes the price of every Mercedes higher and that makes the price of every Toyota higher and so on and so forth. Which basically means that as more of those exist just in the single digits, more of the millionaires become poor. And then a few years later, more of the hundred million millionaires become poor because they can no longer compete with of wealth to which everyone is now appealing. And so if you take that cycle and continue to repeat it over and over, eventually you'll end up with a very few like way less than 0.01 of 1%. You know, of all humans that have so much wealth, but then the great equalizer is that the rest of us have no wealth at all. So once again, from an economics point of view, we are getting to a point where money will have very little value value as compared to a world where money has no value because everything is becoming a lot cheaper, which is a world we can create with AI.
- [43:06]
Scott Galloway
So I buy it, theoretically. But what I've registered is that over the last 50 years, money becomes an even greater arbiter of the life you can lead. When I was a kid, the difference between my dad's house and his boss's house. Little bit nicer car, a little bit bigger house, but we were in the same neighborhood, golfed at the same country club club. The market. In a capitalist society, FIG always figures out a way for you to offer you more with more money. There's coach, there's premium economy, there's business class, there's first class, there's chartering, there's fractional jet ownership, there's ownership, there's a challenger, there's a Bombardier Global Express and there's a Gulfstream 650. Then there's going into space. My sense is life has actually gone the other way the last 50 years. That the life that the 0.1% leads is an entirely different life. It's like the delta between being middle class and rich has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. And so the incentives are actually the other way. That there really is a reason when you're the richest man in the world, you can show up and turn off foreign aid without being elected.
- [44:12]
Mo Gadot
Correct. I think we're saying the same thing. What that means, however, is that the majority of us, even the ones that are now millionaires, are going to become poor. That what you're saying is exactly true. It's that the range in which we are now talking about, the difference between what you can do with a lot of money and what you cannot do if you don't have that money, makes everyone almost equal at the bottom. Everyone gets a reasonable car, but not a massively fancy car. Everyone becomes equally as compared to those incredibly wealthy, if you know what I mean.
- [44:51]
Scott Galloway
We'll be right back. Stay with us.
- [44:58]
Mo Gadot
This episode is brought to you by Meundies Underwear drawers are like the Wild West.
- [45:02]
Scott Galloway
You never know what you're going to.
- [45:03]
Mo Gadot
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- [45:45]
Scott Galloway
Second.
- [45:45]
Mo Gadot
If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Don't let identity thieves take you for a ride. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast terms apply health and Human Services Secretary nominee Robert Flouride Kennedy Jr. Went before the Senate today in fiery confirmation hearings.
- [46:07]
Scott Galloway
Did you say Lyme disease is a highly likely, militarily engineered bioweapon? I probably did say that.
- [46:15]
Mo Gadot
Kennedy makes two big arguments about our health, and the first is deeply divisive. He is skeptical of vaccines.
- [46:23]
Scott Galloway
Well, I do believe that autism does come from vaccines.
- [46:28]
Mo Gadot
Science disagrees. The second argument is something that a lot of Americans, regardless of their politics, have concluded. He says our food system is serving us garbage and that garbage is making us sick. Coming up on Today, explained a confidant of Kennedy's. In fact, the man who helped facilitate his introduction to Donald Trump on what the Make America Healthy Again movement wants today. Explain Weekdays wherever you get your podcasts.
- [47:03]
Scott Galloway
We'Re back with more from Mogadoc Mo. I want to propose a thesis and I'm going to do what we're supposed to do and that is talk about your book. I was sort of blown away by this guy, Robert Armstrong. He proposed or he talked about certain industries where the innovation has resulted in stakeholder value, not shareholder value. So we have fallen under the notion that if I can come up with a better search engine, I'm going to capture or trillions of dollars in shareholder value for me and my investors and my employees. Same way around social media. Same way around E commerce. I came to Orlando last night for a speaking gig. I skirt along the surface of the atmosphere at 8:10 the speed of sound. I don't have to, you know, eat my niece going over the Rockies with scurvy. I don't get seasick for 14 days as my parents did. Coming on a steamship. It has changed humanity. Jet trap level, the PC changed humanity for better. I mean it's just a supercomputer that used to cost $10 billion on inflation adjusted I can get for 300 bucks, put it on my desk and increase the productivity of everything. I was on the board of Gateway Computer. We were the second largest computer manufacturer in the world. When I bought 17% of the company, it was worth $130 million. If you added up all the profits of the airline industry, it's negative. They've lost more money than they've made. There are certain industries in technology where because of a lack of competitive moats, the gains, the value seep to humanity and to stakeholders. They're not able to be captured by a small number of shareholders. And when Deep Seek came along it sort of dawned on me maybe and I think this is an optimistic vision. Maybe AI is more like the PC or the airline industry and that is many of the benefits will accrete to stakeholders and citizens. But no one small set of company or people are going to be able to capture all of the value. Do you think there's, do you think that's an optimistic view of where AI might be headed? In other words, do not participate in the softbank round. At $350 billion in OpenAI, there is.
- [49:12]
Mo Gadot
Certainty in my mind that there is going to be a democratization of power, more access for everyone to more things. Right. You know, unfortunately, if you take a, a power hungry scenario in the recent wars of 2024 in, you know, in, in the world you got the ultra powerful, you got a concentration of power, some of it using AI by the way, in terms of weapons that have massive impacts. But you also got access to drones that can be flown from a very far away distance and for $3000 cause a lot of harm. Right. And, and I think that dichotomy, if you want that arbitrage between a massive concentration of power at a democratization of power at the bottom is going to drive a very, very high need for control. Once again, I love the hypothesis or the ambition for AI to become that net positive to the world because it's not really driving only profits to the top, which it will. But I think that the opposite direction of that is that when you have massive power at the top, top, and you sense that the bottom has a democracy of power and that that can threaten you at any point in time, you're going to have to oppress them. And so that will take away the benefits that you know, that the majority can get. And, and I give a very stark and maybe a bit graphic example. Think about a world, Scott, where a bullet could kill, but if you're a, a leader of a nation, you can have protection around you and can have everything to. We've seen examples in the 2024 wars where a specific person is targeted anywhere in the world and killed. You know, a tiny little drone carries that bullet, seeks you with AI, finds where you are, stands in front of your forehead and then shoots. And these technologies are unfortunately under development. Now think about what that does to democracy. Think about, about those who own that weapon, by the way. They don't necessarily have to be governments and how they can influence the distribution of power, how they can ensure that whatever is created is directed in a way that's different than what would benefit the majority.
- [51:40]
Scott Galloway
Yeah. In every war there's a new weapon that kind of changes the game. And I think people don't talk about this enough, but I think drones are the new, new weapon that's going to, I mean, I think about millions of self healing assassin drones and AI and the AI, under the direction of some individual, puts together a list of people who are not in the way of my wealth or my power. And those drones can be released at one of a, you know, thousand different. I mean you can, you can really get very dark very, very fast here. So I'm going to try and segue out of this into something a little bit more positive.
- [52:14]
Mo Gadot
Is this the very first conversation where I am grumpier than, than you?
- [52:18]
Scott Galloway
Yeah, we're about there's, this is a, there's. Yeah, it's definitely grumpy old men. It's Grumpy. It's grumpy. Grumpier and grumpiest. But I do find, I do. Whenever I speak to you, I, you like, manage to distill something down to something understandable and actionable for me. I love the idea of this multilateral agency. I was thinking in a zero sum game philosophy that we need to get out ahead. We need to develop AI. We shouldn't be shipping Nvidia chips to China. I was part of that crowd. True. And what you have taught me is, okay, what if we cooperated around not only releasing it for the betterment of humanity, but also quite frankly, policing the bad stuff together and being 100% transparent with each other and just saying not only are there no secrets, but it would be impossible to have secrets amongst each other because we're, we've just decided we're in the same office space. I really love that idea. And I think that as I think about candidates that I want to support in 2028, I do. Or 2026, I do have access, mostly because I have money. But I think this is a really interesting view. Anyways, thank you for that. Your latest book, A Practical Guide for Stress Free Living, addresses the pervasive issues of chronic stress in modern life. In an interview on the Diary of a CEO with by the way, Stephen Bartlett, who I believe is going to be the next Joe Rogan. You described stre an addiction and a badge of honor. Say more. Why are we so addicted to stress?
- [53:49]
Mo Gadot
Part of the, of the fakeness that leads us to success is I'm busy, I'm busy, I'm busy. Which I have to say I found almost always quite shocking because, you know, if you, if you go across the range of intelligence, if you want, I think most of us know that, that a good 80 to 90% of all of the efficiency that you bring to any job that you do is done within 20% of the time. But yet, you know, part of your ego is I'm going to fill the other 20, you know, the, you know, the other 80% of the time with 20% work. That's taking a lot of toll on me because it basically means I'm driven. It basically means, you know, that I am maximizing my performance, maximizing my deliveries. Between waking up in the morning at 5am to an ironman and then going in the evening to attend I don't know what, and flying all over the world and so on and so forth. The truth of the matter is this is a self perception, a form of ego that says I am Doing amazing. Okay, but it isn't. And I think the biggest challenge we have is that we believe that the world stresses us. The world does not stress us. I mean, when I wrote Unstressable, I started from physics. I basically said, look, the easiest way to understand physics in here, to understand stress in humans, is to look at stress in objects. And the stress in object is the force applied to the object, but that is divided by the cross section of the, of the object, how much resources the object has to carry that force. Right. And so typical reality of our life, especially the lives of busy executives who live in busy cities and so on and so forth, is that there will be multiple challenges and forces applied to you every day, but that the cross section of you, your capabilities, your skills, your connections, your abilities and so on, the more you have those and apply them properly, the less stressed you feel there might be more force applied to you, might be carrying more challenges, but you don't feel stressed. Just like an object doesn't break when it has a bigger cross section. And the reality of the matter is that part of the badge of honor is not that I'm carrying a lot of things. It's that I'm busy and I'm angry and I'm stressed and I'm this and I'm that and, and I find that honestly, yeah, and I worked with many people who are very successful, who are, who appear to be that way and become a lot very obnoxious and unloved by their people. And I worked with a few that were totally chill. You know, I, I used to be the one that used to tell my sales team, I really think this pipeline is too wide. I, I really think you should focus on 30% of it and close it. You know, rather than waste your time on things that you will not serve well. And, and you know, in a way, you make more money that way, you become more successful that way. You get more, you know, customer satisfaction that way. And the rest of the pipeline, you hand over to a different channel that does it in a way that's suited for it so that it doesn't stress anyone.
- [56:57]
Scott Galloway
How do we deal with stress in a more sustainable way? And as we wrap up here, are there any quick fixes?
- [57:02]
Mo Gadot
I feel that what we don't, what we want to deal with is not stress. What we want to deal with is a break points. So we want to avoid breakpoints. And I think there are three breakpoints that happen to us in our world today. One is, of course, burnout. Okay. And burnout Algorithmically is the sigma of all of the stressors that you're under, multiplied by their duration, multiplied by their intensity. And basically most of the time when you burn out, you burn out not because one big stressor is in your life, but it's because of the aggregation of all the little things. The loud alarm in the morning, the commute, the this and that. And then one little thing shows up, up on top of it and you break down. And so burnout to me is a question of a weekly review. Literally every Saturday you sit with yourself, you write on a piece of paper everything that stressed you last week, and you scratch out the ones that you commit that you will not allow in your time in your life anymore. You can either remove them from your life or make them more enjoyable. So if you have to be stuck in a commute or a long flight, take some good music with you, be healthy, and so on and so forth. Force. The other breakpoint, unfortunately is trauma, right? So basically massive stress that happens in a very short period of time that exceeds your ability to deal with it. The loss of a loved one, an accident, you know, being stuck in a, in war or whatever and so on. And this unfortunately is not within our hands. But believe it or not, it actually is not the reason for the stress pandemic of the world. So 91% of all of us, us would get at least one PTSD inducing, like the highest of all trauma PTSD inducing event once in their life. But 93% of those will recover in three months and 96.7% of those will recover in six months. And all of those will enjoy post traumatic growth. So there is no worry about trauma. If you want, it's not within your control to prevent, but, but if you work on it, you'll recover. The third and the most interesting reason for stress, especially in younger generations today, is what I call an anticipation of a threat, right? And the challenge with it is that looking forward with fear, worry, anxiety and panic are probably the biggest stressors for the younger generations. And the funny bit is that fear is not a bad emotion. Fear is actually alerting you to something that you need to pay attention to. So that's okay, right? Worry, anxiety and panic are actually of a very different fabric. So worry is not about, I know there is a threat coming. Worry is, I can't make up my mind if there is a threat coming or not. And so you keep flip flopping and you don't take the action and you keep feeling the fear but not doing anything about it. When you're worried, you need to actually tell yourself openly, look, I'm going to decide if I should chill or panic, right? Chill or freak out. If it's freak out, then it's fear. Deal with it. If it's chill, then stop thinking about it. Anxiety is not about the threat. Anxiety is actually about your capability. And most people, if they really visit themselves when they feel anxious. When you're anxious, there is a threat approaching you, but you constantly think that you're not capable of dealing with it. So the more you attempt to deal with the threat, the more you feel incapable. So the more anxious you become. When you're anxious, work on your capabilities, not on the threat. And then panic is a question of, of time, right? And panic really is the stress. You know, the threat is imminent, it's approaching me too quickly. And so accordingly, when you feel panicked, don't work on solving the problem, don't work on addressing the threat. Work on giving yourself more time. You know, find someone to help you or delay the, you know, the presentation time or you know, or cancel a few meetings so that you have more time for the, for whatever it is that you need to focus on. And what I mean by all of this, this is a very, very quick summary of, you know, of a lot of stuff that we discussing unstressable. But, but, but what I mean by this is that it's all, it all goes back to your cross, section, all goes back to skills and choices that we make so that the external stressors that come to us from, from the world. Don't, don't kill us.
- [61:18]
Scott Galloway
My One of my favorite Steven Spielberg movies is this movie called Bridge of Spies. And this Russian spy who's been unmasked by the US government is in court. He's being tried for, you know, treason or spying and he's potentially facing life in prison. And his lawyer, I think Tom Hanks says, aren't you nervous? Aren't you stressed? And he looks at him and says, would it help? Exactly. Anyways, Mo Gadot is the former Chief Business Officer for Google X, the founder of One Billion Happy foundation and co founder of Unstressable. He's also a best selling author of books including Solve for Happy, Scary Smart and that little voice in your head. Mo, I mean this sincerely. You bring my stress down because I find you inspiring and relaxing and you distill things into kind of actionable solutions. Really always enjoy speaking with you. I think you're really a profound thinker. Thanks for your good work. This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez Our intern is Dan Shalon. Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the propag pod from the Vox Media Podcast network. We will catch you on Saturday for no mercy, no malice as read by George Hahn. And please follow our prophet G Markets pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday and Thursday.