Mo Gawdat
Appearances
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Makes a massive difference.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Oh, yeah. It's not an unusual story, is it?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Yeah. I was completely miserable. I was clinically depressed. And there is a difference between Being unhappy because you can't make ends meet and being unhappy when you can just pour money on anything. Fancy cars, beautiful home. I had two wonderful kids, the dream of anyone. My beautiful, loving wife. I could go anywhere on vacation anytime I wanted, first class or business class.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
I could buy fancy suits, fancy cars, anything. And I was clinically depressed.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
I was the happiest person ever until, believe it or not, I decided, and I remember the moments vividly. I remember when my son Ali was born and I'm like, oh my God, I love you, right? And I was literally, this thing is never gonna need anything ever. And I went mad working. And when Aya was due my daughter, which is life itself, Aya is the sunshine of this world.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
when she was supposed to get into kindergarten and we could get Ali into a beautiful one, but we couldn't afford to get Aya there. I remember vividly, I walked into my boss's office in IBM and I said, look, you're paying me 680. I need 740 because I have to get my daughter into the same kindergarten. And he said, that's not how it works in IBM. You know, there is committees and promotions.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And I was like, okay, then I'm going to resign. I'm going to leave in four months and I'm going to find another job. And From then, I just money, money, money, money, things, things, things, things. And you know how it is. You succeed, you create a lifestyle for your family that becomes normalized, and then you now have to succeed more and create a higher lifestyle.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
But the thing is, you're born happy. Happiness... changes when you change your choices. So I do a reverse engineering, a simple exercise where I tell myself, I'm going to record every moment in my life where I ever felt happy. Every moment I can recall where I felt unhappy. I'm going to try to plot them on different charts.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Basically, if I could find the fitting line that joins all of the moments where I was happy, Then I can have an algorithm and then I can almost code that within me that I'm going to always chase that algorithm. And then suddenly it hits you, okay? There is never a single experience of life that always makes you happy. It's never a single experience of life that always makes you unhappy.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Rain makes you happy if you want to water your plants or if it's your ex-boyfriend's wedding. It makes you unhappy if it's your wedding. It's always that comparison, events minus expectations, events minus expectations, and you end up with a value that is either zero or higher or negative. But by the way, it's also your perceptions. So think about it this way. You could be stuck in traffic and
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And telling yourself, oh my God, this is going to take 40 minutes. I'm miserable. I'm wasting my life. What have I done to deserve this? Life is against me. Or you could be stuck in traffic telling yourself, oh, I have a car. I have a place to go. Oh, the car is air conditioned. Oh, by the way, I actually am amazed by the fact that I don't have to walk those 30 miles.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Or I can listen to an amazing episode. There you go, right? And then suddenly it's the same exact situation, but your perception could be very different. And here is the statement that upsets a lot of people when I say it. It's your perceptions and your expectations, which means what? Happiness is 100% a choice. Unless you have chronic pain,
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
or you're really, really struggling, you can't make ends meet, you can't put food on the table, unless you're in a very, very traumatic place like some of the war zones around the world today or whatever, I honestly and truly believe that if you're fortunate enough to have a device where you can watch this conversation on or listen to this conversation on, which means you have a roof on top of your head so you're safe, which means you're not starving to death, you're probably one of the luckiest 1% alive.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And once you see it that way and you realize that you could have been born in Syria and you would now be bombed with no mistake on your side, suddenly you go like, oh, it's not really that bad that my boyfriend's annoying. Boyfriends are supposed to be annoying. Right? That's expectations.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
That turning moment for me was quite pivotal in many ways. I'm a geek, as you've probably figured out by now, right?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
But this to me truly explains something. So now I can see an algorithm. Now I can understand the progress and I understand that it's my choice. And I now can understand how to work on this. But then I go to my son, Ali. And Ali was a tiny little Zen monk. He was unbelievable. I don't know if that's frequent, but he never really cried ever. And he spoke very little.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
He either joked all the time, but when you spoke about something serious, he would listen like you're talking to Yoda. And then he would say four words, usually four to eight words that would blow your mind. So I go to Ali after I go back from that trip. And I go like, you wouldn't believe what I figured out. And I start to describe everything to him. And he treats me like a little child.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
He must have been eight at the time. And he listens. And then he asks me a couple of questions, clearly just to entertain me. And then he would say what I explained to him, but coming from the heart in a way that would blow my mind. And for the following three years, I work with this tiny little thing, explaining to him what I figure out. And he explains it to me like humans figure it out.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And then we build this model, the 675 model. And now suddenly over four months, I'm the happiest person alive. Literally, you wouldn't put a dent in my happiness. I remember at the time I still worked at Microsoft. And so I would have to go to Seattle once a month, which meant that I flew from Dubai to to JFK. Oh my God. And Middle Eastern, born and raised. So I did that for four years running.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Every single time I'd land in JFK and they would give me a big red envelope and treat me like a freaking criminal and take me to Homeland Security. And it's an insulting experience. And if you look to the side, the officer behind you who's holding a gun, guys, like seriously, I've done nothing. Who's holding a gun says, look forward, sir. And then you get into that room, they sit you down.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And the officer is literally shouting at me until the guy behind the counter recognizes me. Because he saw me last month and the month before and the month before. And he doesn't remember my name, but he remembers I work at Microsoft. So he would actually out loud, which is really funny. He goes like, oh, Mr. Gates is back. Right.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Thank you so much. It's an honor. You're setting me up now for people to expect quite a bit. I don't have that much, probably, but let's give it a try.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And then he would call me to his desk and say, answer the same 10 questions you answered last month. And so I simply would go like, my name is this. I work for Microsoft. Here is my invitation letter. I am there for a meeting. My mom's name is this. My dad's name is this. The same 10 questions, right? And so he would go like, all right, see you next month. And I'm completely, completely chill.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Sitting there telling myself, think about my upbringing. I'm now a senior director. I was at the time responsible for emerging markets for the communication sector at Microsoft, building incredible solutions, very geeky, very interesting, loved by everyone, loving everyone. It was lovely. I'm thinking to myself, look at me, look at how far I've come. Look at how my kids are safe at home.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
I'm now welcomed into America, which coming from a third world market, you sort of think of that as a big privilege when you're young. I don't anymore, just so that you know. And you can frame it that way. You can remember how amazing life is to you because life is always amazing to you. And I just had no unhappiness in me. As a result, I started to even enjoy working more.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
I'm now not tired by my Delta flight from JFK, which makes everyone tired to Seattle, right? I'm basically in my full swing, constantly in my full energy, having the time of my life, joking with everyone, loving everything. But the thing is, you just never stop to recognize how empty that whole thing is. I remember I told myself I would write Solve for Happy
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
In 2009, so whatever I learned with Ali, which was my first book, I wanted to say in a very clear way, these are 40 tips to happiness. And I just told myself, just sit down. You probably could write it in two months. And just put it out there. And then a customer calls and I forget about it and just travel to Australia and spend a couple of days.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And just deal after deal and customer after customer and tech after tech. And I was very senior at the time. I was just leaving my position as vice president of emerging markets, which probably is the biggest privilege ever. for anyone. So I was responsible for the next 4 billion users of Google, which, you know, it wasn't really opening a sales office.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
It was really making Google understand the market and establishing the internet and the democracy of information and e-commerce. And it really was. An incredible privilege. And I was just moving to Google X when it's now four years later after I decided to write that book and I didn't write it. And then life kicks me in the balls, basically.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Again, every two and a half, three weeks, I get a nagging feeling inside saying, write it. This is a good book. Write it. And I never wrote before, and English is not my native language. And at the time, Ali Habibi, he was a Northeastern at the time. He played in a band called And he got a gig to open for a famous rock band in summer. I get this strange call. Ali rarely ever calls.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And he goes, Papa, I feel compelled. I'm quoting. This is his exact words. I feel compelled to come and see you before the tour. Is it okay if I buy a ticket? Ali was that polite. You know, we're multimillionaires at the time. And he would always go like, is it okay with you if I spend this extra money? take a couple of weeks off. I called Aya.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
I said, Aya, why don't you come over as well, the family together again. And now I'm the happiest. You know, I love those kids. I really do. Anyway, Ali arrives three days later. He's not himself. He's saying things that are really worrying. I mean, I vividly remember he wanted to change his major to game design, video game design, which meant that he would have to change university and city.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
He told his mom, I said, yeah, absolutely. But I was busy at the time. I'll talk to him when he comes to Dubai. So I go, you know, for the first three days, I keep telling him, Ali, shall we talk about this just so that we get it out of the way? And he was like, no, it's okay, Papa. And then the last time I asked him, the night before he left us, I said, Ali, shouldn't we talk about this?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And he said, again, I quote, he said, Papa, it's okay. I'm not going to make it. Anyway, the next morning he wakes up with a very severe belly ache. They say they know. So good people know when they're leaving. And Ali knew. Ali knew in so many ways. Oh my God. The day before Habibi took us, It's probably the most touching moment of my life. We went out for lunch two days before.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And Ali, as I said, he didn't speak much. Always either joked or said something wise. So we're out there, we're having lunch together, the four of us. And then he says, I have something to say. We go like, yes, Ali has something to say. And he speaks for 45 minutes nonstop. He looks at each of us in the eyes. And he says, you really know I love you, right? Like a dying grandfather.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
It is actually quite an odd story, if you ask me. I always say that when I was hired as the chief business officer of Google X, There would have probably been at least 10,000 Americans that were more fit for that job than I am, right? They knew the market better, lived in California already, understood Silicon Valley better.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
He says, this is what I really love about you. This is what you taught me when I was this. And he just recites the whole thing, each of us for like 10, 15 minutes. And then he says, but there are a couple of things I'd like you to do. I think it would make you perfect. Anyway, on the 1st of July, he gets this belly pain. We take him to a hospital. He's diagnosed with an appendix inflammation.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Not even severe. They prescribe her an appendectomy, which is the simplest surgery known to humankind. The surgeon does five mistakes in a row. Ali gets into the operating room at 10 p.m. At 4 a.m., we lose her. Five mistakes in a row. Every one of them was preventable. Every one of them was fixable. They fixed them wrong. And then suddenly life is put in perspective.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Suddenly you recognize so many things. There is an inevitability to loss that completely beats your ego out of you.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Yeah, and at his absolute prime and a loving child and the pride of a father, I mean, that moment... When I hugged him before he went into the operating room, Ali was tall, handsome, very wise, very smart, but also very loving. He had this incredible hug. And when he was maybe 15, he was a shorter child than normal. So being an annoying father that I am, I used to call him Shorty.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
You know, jokingly, not all the time, but like, hey, come here, Shorty, do you want to, you know, should I, you know, whatever, play, whatever. And he would laugh about it. And then when he was 15, I traveled a lot, but sometimes two, three weeks at a time. And then I come back and he's taller than me. And I'm like, Ali, are you taller than me? He answers and says, yes, fat hobbit.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And from then onwards, you know, I don't get to call him shorty anymore. And he gets to call me fat hobbit. And I hug him before he goes into the operating room and he goes like, it's going to be fine, fat hobbit. And then he sits on the operating table and he had a tattoo on his back that he had and never told me that he had. He told his mom. Again, because of how Ali is.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
He basically said, I'm so upset because I didn't ask Papa if I can use his money to get that tattoo. But then I'm going to tell him one day, but I'm not ready. Anyway, so I see it for the first time because it's appearing from his scrubs from the back. And it says, the very last sentence that Ali tells me, the gravity of the battle means nothing to those at peace. That's what the tattoo says.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And so I cry when I see it because I saw it without his will. And I go like, I approve, Habibi. It's absolutely fine. It's a lovely tattoo. But then it's the last message he gives me. And 10 hours later, he's gone. And suddenly everything's put in perspective. You know, you're that executive that's been paid all his life to solve problems. This one is not solvable. So you're struggling with it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
My wonderful daughter normally tells me that I was paid in advance, which is probably the core of my story. But let's go back to the beginning. As you said, I was born and raised in Egypt, public school, public university in Egypt. My mom was an academic. who loved reading and learning. She taught English, so she taught me badly, as you can see with my weird accent.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
You're trying to keep... Your wife and daughter, okay. Losing a child just doesn't feel right.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Yeah, I mean, I still have the same pain, but less severe. So I felt a physical part of my heart disappear. So the bottom right-hand side, and I still feel it, not ever fully healed. Anyway, four days later, Aya walks into my study and basically says, Papa, Ali had a dream and he only told me about it. And I think you should know it. And I go like, yes, two weeks before he died, he had a dream.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
He calls her and says, hey, I had this amazing dream. I dreamt I was everywhere and part of everyone. And it felt so amazing that I didn't want to wake up. Now, of course, if you're spiritual, you learn eventually that when the soul is separated from the body, you're no longer bound by space-time, basically. You have the ability to be everywhere.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And if all of our souls come from the same source, if you want, then by returning to the source, you're part of everyone. You're connected to every other soul. I learned that five years later. At the time, all I heard was my son giving me a quota, which was so weird. Because then all I heard in my head is Ali telling me, make me everywhere and part of everyone.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And at the time, I was a year out of Google into Google X. So I had worked on the 4 billion strategy. I knew how to get to a billion people, right? So I basically said in my head, I was like, okay, Habibi, consider it done. That's all I heard myself say. And then I come up with this devious plan of I'm going to write the book, which includes everything he told me.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
about happiness, and then I'm going to do my own internet gimmicks thing so that I can get to 10 million people. And if I can get to 10 million people, exactly if I calculated correctly, if everyone tells two people who tell two people and so on over 72 years, Ali will be everywhere and part of everyone. That his essence, what he taught me will be everywhere and part of everyone.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And so I basically sit down and write. And it was like I was possessed. Really, I would wake up at 3 a.m. in the morning, switch on my Mac and type away and then go back to sleep, forget that I wrote whatever I wrote. And then a week later, I find something on the desktop. So I double click on it and I'm like, oh my God, who wrote this shit? Like, this is good shit. I don't even know that stuff.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
I swear, it was unbelievable. And I was known at Google X to not be the hardest working person. So I always gave myself thinking time. But literally I would sometimes be in a meeting and then five minutes before the meeting ends, I go like, guys, I really have to go. I really have to go and then switch on my Mac in a corner somewhere and type away.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Anyway, and then the world conspired to make it happen. I meet this incredible agent in New York City through a friend of a friend who was going through a tough time at the time. So I sent him a chapter and he goes like, oh, can you send me another chapter? And then I send him another chapter. And I'm like, until I sent him the whole book.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And I'm like, is he going to copy it and put it under his name? But then he basically calls me and says, look, I really want to represent you if that's okay. Are you ever in New York? I said, I'm going to be in New York on January 3rd or something like that. And so literally we meet, we shake hands. He says, look, I really love this book. I say, and I really feel good about this.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
14 minutes later, he gets me his standard contract. So I sign it on the spot. Don't even read it. And we're still best friends until today. He helps me put the book out in the whole world.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
It took me four and a half months to finish the book, but the very early version was 640 pages. Also, remember, I was so afraid that my mentor is gone and that I will forget everything I know about happiness at the time I need to remember. So I was frantically trying to organize what I learned. And, you know, it's that very weird mix between his incredibly human heart and
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And my dad was a math geek and a very serious engineer. Interestingly, in our family, my mom was more the order and discipline. My dad was the heart.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And my very algorithmic thinking that comes out on those pages in a way that is truly unusual.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
17 days. I started 17 days after he died. And actually, that's the first sentence of the book, 17 days after the death of my wonderful son, Ali, I started to write. What happened then is 10 Million Happy turned out to be a sandbag. And basically, so the book comes out in the UK with Macmillan, in the US with Simon & Schuster.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And Macmillan, for some reason, managed to get me on a news show in Channel 4. Anyway, some weird events happened and they had to cut the filming and we had to do it again. But then there was a big fly, a big blue fly that walked into the studio while we're filming. And then literally goes and lands on my nose. So the producer goes like, cut, can't do this.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
They try to find the flight to take it out. They can't find it. But anyway, they film again. And now I'm prompted for the question. So I give an answer that becomes a clip that Channel 4 puts on social media that gets 7 million views the first day, 18 million views the second day, 37 million views the third day, which is the highest ever for Channel 4. Wow.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And then a week later, it's 87 million views. At the time, the mission was 10 million happy, but 10 million happy was not about views because that's cheating, honestly. It's about views followed by actions. So we were trying to measure people that would get the message that it's their right to be happy and then either invest in themselves. So seek happiness online or
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
even though you can see the interesting mix because he was a real geek right i was born a little bit on the spectrum which was not diagnosed but became very clear when i became older and had conversations with my mom about what it was like when i was a child where i completely understood mathematics way better than i understood english or arabic at the time
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
search for more videos or whatever, or basically invest in another person's happiness. So they would forward the message or the video or whatever. And so very quickly, 87 million views in one week, eight weeks after the publication of Solve for Happy. And my team sits me down and says, you're sandbagging. You need a bigger target.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
So with my Google hat on, I go like, okay, we move from 10 million to Not to 11, to a billion happy. Which I have to say is never going to happen. You know, you really think about it. But it's such an amazing target to have. And then suddenly my capitalist hat turns from I want to finish my life a billionaire to I want to finish my life a billionaire of happiness. So not dollar signs.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
As a matter of fact, the early team that works together will remember that the mission was we want to get a million people to champion a billion happy. I wrote Soul for Happy, then The Little Voice in Your Head, which is my least favorite book, but most of my readers' favorite book. Then I took a break from happiness. Remember 1 billion happy at first was trying to explain happiness.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Then it was trying to address the reasons for unhappiness. So incessant thought was the first that was that little voice in your head. AI is the second that was scary smart. I wrote a book called Her about empowering the feminine, which I never published. And then I wrote a book called Finders Keepers about love and romance that I never published. Then we published Unstressable.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Unstressable was Times number four bestsellers. And it was written with a wonderful, incredibly feminine co-author that complimented my diversity, if you want. And now Alive is out. And Alive is also a bestseller on Substack. which is really, really, really probably my favorite so far because it speaks about life in the age of artificial intelligence.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
But once again, they're all focused on humanity's well-being, if you want. And there I am. I'm no longer a corporate executive. I no longer have stocks falling into my bank account every week. And I've never been happier.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
It's quite interesting that you ask this question. It's something I never spoke about in public. But I remember vividly at the time. I was rich. I'm not anymore, but I was definitely richer than I ever expected. No, no, hold on. I take that back. I'm filthy rich for my needs as we speak, but I'm not Google vice president rich anymore.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
But then I remember I sat down, which tells you how your incessant thinking always looks for misery. I sat down. I mean, remember, Ali left. A is almost done with her university. I have reasonable assets. Everything's fine. And I start to put down the numbers, sort of trying to convince myself to be afraid, right? Like you can't leave Google. How can you leave Google? How can you leave this?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
You're going to starve to death. And I'm like, how can you prove that brain, right? And then my brain starts to come up with scenarios where what if your car breaks and you need to fix it? Easy, right? What if this happens? Easy. Until I remember vividly that my brain then said, what if the US attacks Iran? And then that escalates to a nuclear war.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And then all of your real estate assets in Dubai get wiped out. How will you survive then? And then I found myself laughing out loud saying, well, in that case, I don't think your money is the biggest of your concerns, right? But isn't that how our brains constantly try to fool us? And then I remembered something I read when I was very young about financial freedom.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
In my hometown in Cairo, that's not what kids want you to do to be able to be friends. They wanted me to play soccer and basically talk about silly stuff. And it was quite complex for me because I would hide to read my physics books. And I thought of myself as something is wrong with me. And, you know, in a way, as I say, it's probably my diversity that made me not worry that much about them.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And financial freedom, interestingly, is never about income. Wealth is about income. And wealth does not make you financially free because if you make a million dollars a year, but you want to change your Ferrari and go on a first-class cruise every year, you're still poor. As a matter of fact,
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
One of the biggest problems that our world today is that so many citizens and nations, including the world's largest nation, is in so much debt.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Yeah, and the idea is after I found my path to happiness with Ali's help 20 years earlier, suddenly I didn't need an Armani suit anymore and I didn't need a fancy car. I still love fixing them and selling them, as I said, but I don't need it in my life. And so my entire expense is just nothing really. My daughter's an adult. My ex-wife is completely fine, taken care of.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Myself and my loved ones are okay. And so when you really think about it, most of your financial freedom happens on your spending side, not your income side. And I think that was really what got things clear in my mind. Because living as the chief business officer of Google X requires you to pay some expenses that may look like things are highly inflated.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
But when you really sit down and look at your actual expenses, if you don't have to spend on your work, on the image, on the networking, on the travel. If you just take all of those expenses that are actually expenses to get in the revenue, if you take all of those out and you simplify what you actually need, you'll be fine.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
More interestingly, the other reason is that most people will say, but what if things go wrong? And I think I got frustrated first-class MBA degree from life in when things go wrong. Because I'll tell you openly, I planned everything for Ali. Insurance policies on my life in his name. I had properties and real estate in his name. I had started businesses. So Ali changed majors three times.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
I would start a business in his major so that when he graduates, he runs it and then he dies. So seriously, most of us think that we have to over plan because life is not safe. right? I think you have to under plan because life is not safe. You really have to expect the best because otherwise if the worst happens, it doesn't matter if you're a millionaire or a billionaire or a trillionaire.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
If something serious, I didn't know Steve Jobs myself, but I knew lots of people who knew him personally. And they'll all tell you the story of how in his last years, he finally understood that all of that, and I couldn't prevent this, All of the success, all of the money, all of the power, all of the influence. And he really saw it at the end.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And he started to say some very wise things on his deathbed. And I think that's the idea. The idea is that instead of you worrying about life to the point that you constantly attempt to aggregate more and more to work against life, Maybe the only sure thing you have is that you're alive today and healthy today.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And so maybe instead of wasting today to aggregate so that you're safe tomorrow, why don't you live today? Who knows what will happen tomorrow?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
I wrote Unstressable because Alice, my co-author, said we should write it. She went to stress school. She really, really struggled in her early 20s. Everything, like she lost her sister to cancer, then her father to cancer, and then to an ulcer. And then before that, they lost all of their wealth and money and, you know, They had to sell their home. She lost her job because her company relocated.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Her boyfriend drops her at the same time. It's like, it's really weird. And you see Alice today, freaking angel. She's so calm, so steady. And so I was basically in my typical Silicon Valley mindset. I was like, okay, show me a pilot, right? Few pages and let's see. At the same time, I went out and said, what do I know about stress?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
You know, it's not something that I experience enough, at least mentally. I have reasonable command over my brain. And so anyway, she comes back and writes this beautiful thing. And I always joke that between my writing and Alice's writing, mine has normally bolded letters and equations and bullet points. And then when I read Alice's work, almost every time when I was editing it,
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
and continue to invest in what I loved in the background. And I have to say, I think it was my parents probably my mom a bit more than my dad, but my dad was very supportive, who encouraged me to try absolutely everything. Anything I asked for. I remember when I was maybe 11, I asked to play the piano. So they bought me one of those electric pianos. I failed miserably.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
You know, I read and read and I'm like, where the F is she going with this? Like, I have no idea what, why doesn't she just write it in one line? And then suddenly I feel something in my heart. So she writes so much in the feminine and I write so much in the masculine. And the book is such a beautiful yin and yang of the topic.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
It really is probably one of my favorite books because of that mix. And basically, Alice in her feminine, I sit down and I go like, you know what really explains stress? And she goes like, what? And I go like, stress in physics. Don't you understand? When you stress an object, You apply a force to it. The force is not the stress. The stress is the force divided by the cross area of the object.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
So it's not just the external pressures on the object, it's the resources that the object has to carry that pressure That is how stress is felt. And in humans, all of the external events, external stressors, and by the way, most stressors are internal, and we can come back to that in a minute.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
They're applied to you, but they're divided by your skills, your abilities, your contacts, your resources. And the more of those that you have, the less stressed you will feel. The pressure will be there and it will accelerate across your life, but you'll start to feel less stressed by it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And, you know, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand this because stuff that freaked me out when I was 20, I managed to deal with in my 30s. I dealt with ease when I was 40. And then in my 50s, I laugh at it. Not because it's easier, but because I started to acquire that. And so she goes like, oh my God, I actually understand this.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And then we come up with the slogan of the book, which is, it's not the events of your life that stress you. It's the way you deal with them that does. And the book centers around that idea that... Life will continue to stress you. We say there are four quadrants of stress. We call them ton, T-O-N-N. Traumas are external macro stresses that hit you so hard.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
O is obsessions, which are internal beliefs and scripts that really have a traumatic effect on you, but they're coming within you. The first N is noise, tiny little niggles that you annoy yourself with all the time. And the second N is nuisances. So little things like, you know, your alarm clock in the morning or whatever.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And then suddenly there is a model in place because now that you understand them, of course, trauma is outside of our control, but trauma is not really the reason for the stress pandemic or epidemic of the world. Trauma, good news and bad news, if you want. The bad news is that 91% of everyone you know will get at least one PTSD-inducing traumatic event once in their life, and many get more. So
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
You know, when it comes to loss, for example, I lost so many people that I love. And each of those counts as a traumatic event. It is an amount of pressure on you that is so high intensity in such a short period of time that it exceeds your ability to carry it and so you break. So that's the bad news.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
I hope that our listeners will all be in the one out of 10 that don't get that, but likely you're going to be one of the nine, you know.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Yeah, a bad breakup, a loss of a loved one, an accident, whatever. The good news is, which this is from 9-11 statistics, that 93% of all who get to PTSD, so that's the highest level of stress, recover in three months. 96.7% recover in six months. And all of them, or most of them, 98% of them, experience post-traumatic growth.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
So as you put yourself together within the three to six months, you're okay. You're even better than where you were before. So it's not trauma that stresses you. That is the reason for the epidemic of stress in the world today. What stresses you, what breaks you, interestingly, of those external stressors and internal stressors applied in different ways, it doesn't matter.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
We went into something that we call the three reasons we break, okay? So one of them is trauma, we agree. It's too intense, too quick. But then the other two are very eye-opening. One of them is burnout. which I think most of our listeners will be familiar with.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And then a week later I said, can I play the guitar? And you'd probably expect them to say no. Right? And we were not rich, but they were so supportive. Four weeks later, I bought a guitar and I played really, really well for so many years of my life. And it was that constant ability to try and fail and then try something different and fail that I think made a massive difference.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And burnout is everything sub-trauma, so you can deal with every day, external or internal, aggregating on top of your head until the sum of all of those forces is too much to bear. So basically, it's the sigma of all of the stressors applied to you, multiplied by their intensity, multiplied by duration of application, by frequency of application.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
which is actually really interesting to understand. So your commute acts as one of those little stressors. If you do it three times a day, it's more stressful than if you do it once a day. If you do it for an hour and a half, it's more stressful than if you do it for 15 minutes and so on. But here's the interesting thing.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
When it comes to burnout, most of those events don't count as worthy of your attention to remove them. Because yeah, you know what? That alarm that wakes me up in the morning that, Sounds like a siren. It's not a big deal. I need to wake up. But then you add that alarm to that comment on your Instagram post that you see first thing in the morning to that comment from Donald Trump that shocks you.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
You keep adding them. And probably before you even leave your bedroom, you've had 15 jolts of stress. And then you get into your commute and now you're stressed already. And, you know, and it just keeps adding up. One of your colleagues walks in and goes like, do you still have that report? And you blink. You burst. Load in their face.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And you basically, for those who experienced burnout, it's actually quite interesting because the minute it bursts, you can't get out of bed. for a long time. And so the prevention of burnout is not a question of preventing your colleague from saying, where is the report? That's not the issue at all. One of the strategies is a strategy of limiting stressors.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And basically one of the exercises I tell people in Unstressable is you need to sit down every single Saturday and write down everything that stressed you the week before. And then literally look at them and scratch out the ones that you're not going to allow in your life again. And the way you deal with it is very straightforward.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
You can either avoid it altogether, that annoying friend that calls you every two weeks and then sits down and makes your life hell and talks negative shit and tells you bad things about yourself, you know, and then leaves. You can either say, I'm never going to go out with them again, or you can send them a text message that says, hey, did you notice that it's always so negative when we meet?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
I love you very much. Can we please not be that negative? That goes all the way to little things like your alarm clock in the morning. So instead of having an alarm clock in the morning that jolts you out of bed, just get a nice little meditation music that ramps up over time. Or by the way, sleep eight hours early so you don't need your alarm.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
So these are things that you can completely remove from your life. The interesting side is your commute. You can't take your commute away, but you can make it nicer.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Yeah, you can listen to a nice podcast. You can, you know, have a good cup of coffee with you. I remember vividly when I worked for a short few weeks, there was an important project in Google New York. And you know how New York City is, huh? You know, Manhattan, you have those blocks and you have to walk through them. And I'm a Middle Eastern, I walk slow.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
So basically, as you're walking in Manhattan, there is a green wave. And unless you walk like a maniac, you're going to have to stop every third pedestrian light. So, you know, first couple of days, I'm like, I can't breathe by the time I get to the office. And then I suddenly decide, you know what? I'm just going to leave 15 minutes early. Again, I'm not very good with time.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
So I leave 12 minutes early. I get myself a good cup of coffee and I walk like I have nothing to do. I observe all of the manic movements around New York City and I laugh my head off. I enjoy my coffee. I get to the office totally refreshed on time. 12 minutes difference. So these are things you can do to remove the reasons, the accumulation of burnout.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
The third reason for why we break is what I call anticipation of a threat. The stress machinery is all about pumping you up with adrenaline and cortisol so that you are ready for fight or flight. And so if a tiger is attacking you, then a bit of stress is wonderful, by the way. We're very happy. Thank you, stress machinery. Save our life.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
The problem in our modern world is that most of stress is mental. It's something that's not actually attacking you. And most of the time, it's in the future. So basically, what you're looking at is fear and all of its derivatives.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
I married a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful human being. She's no longer my wife, but she completely impacted my life when I graduated. She was not very comfortable living in Egypt. And so she was the one that urged me to start exploring the world a little more.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Fear, if you want the simplest form of it, algorithmically, again, like an engineer, fear is an equation that basically says a moment in the future is less safe than this moment. If you subtract your sense of safety in the future minus your sense of safety right now, If it's a positive answer, then you're afraid. So basically, fear is a moment in the future where I'm less safe.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Now, your response to that is natural. You try to address the threat. So if you address the threat, you're less afraid. Understood. The derivatives of fear are the reasons for all of the stress pandemic, especially in younger generations today. These are worry, panic, and anxiety. Worry is not that there is a threat in the future. It's that you're not sure.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Yeah, so there may be a threat in the future and you keep flip-flopping. Am I going to lose my job so I need to go and run and find another job? Or am I actually not going to lose my job so I need to double down so I get that promotion? And that uncertainty is the reason why you're stressed.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And that uncertainty, when you're worried, makes you try to address the fear because you're assuming it's a fear, but then suddenly try to run the opposite way because you're not afraid anymore. So my advice to people is if you're worried, don't treat it as fear. Don't pay any attention to what is threatening you. Make up your mind. Should I freak out or should I chill?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
If there is a reason to be afraid, then treat it as fear. Don't change your mind again. If there is no reason to be afraid, then drop it and go on with your life. The second is anxiety. And anxiety is probably the most interesting of all of them because anxiety, when you're anxious, You're not focused on the threat. You're focused on your capabilities to deal with it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
You're born happy. Happiness is 100% a choice.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And being anxious means I can see a threat approaching me, but I feel inadequate to deal with it. So if you try to address the threat when you're inadequate, what happens is you reassure yourself that you're inadequate and you're more anxious. So don't treat it as fear. What you need to do is when you're anxious, ask yourself, what capabilities am I missing?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
First of all, by the way, am I actually not adequate? Second is if I'm not, what capabilities am I missing? How can I complement them? Can I ask a friend to come and help me out? Can I learn something, teach myself something? How can I develop myself, not deal with the threat? And then finally, there is panic. Panic is very straightforward. It's not a question of the threat.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
It's a question of time. If the threat is imminent, the closer it is to you, the more panicked you are. So when you're panicked, don't try to deal with the threat. Try to deal with time.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Delay the presentation that you have to give, or again, ask a colleague to come and help you so that you're two hands on deck, or simply cancel a few meetings and give yourself more time so that you're not panicked anymore. And now you can handle the threat in an easy way. Once you understand those things, I mean, unstressable is a very, very large pool of exercises and knowledge and so on.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
But once you understand those basics, you end up again like happiness with a very interesting understanding that being stressed is a choice. While the external stressors are not within your control, most of them are, by the way, and your response to them, you get to decide. And in that case, then you can choose to be less stressed by actually taking the right steps.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Funny that I didn't discover it because I'm a very serious video gamer. I'm eSport level video gamer. Life is a video game. As a game, it will throw challenges at you because otherwise, who wants to start a game, push the controller forward and wait 70 years? When I used to game with Ali, being the strategic engineer that I am, I would start the game and run to the end of the level.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And Ali would put his controller down and go like, Papa, why? Why are you doing this? And I'm like, the end of the level is here. And he goes like, Yeah, but who wants to get to the end of the level? We're playing. When you get to the end of the level, you stop playing. And he would run to the parts where there is explosives and smoke. And I go like, but why, Ali? Like, why?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
What got me into tech is very early, actually. I started coding... On a Sinclair, you were born like 20 years later, right? And I coded on a Sinclair, a Commodore, and then of course on an IBM compatible at the time, that's what we called it. And what really flipped my life upside down, believe it or not, is my parents wanted to renovate our apartment.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
This is the most difficult part of the game. And he goes like, yeah, that's where all the fun is. He used to tell me, that's where you develop and grow. That's where you become a better video gamer. And actually, I only became what I am now after he left. So I tried to honor everything that he did. And one of them was I really started to get serious about gaming.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Life as a video game is an infinite game. It's not a finite game. You're not trying to win or get a certain score or finish the game. You have one objective only. which is to become the absolute best gamer you have the potential to become. And the only way you can do that is to play, literally to enjoy the hell out of the game and play. Live it all, play it all, enjoy it all. Wow.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Thank you so much for having me. I hope it helps a few people.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And my brothers, my two elder brothers were teenagers at the time. I was probably nine or something. And my parents basically said, someone has to be at home to open the door for the workers and just make sure that their needs are met. Can you stay at home for two months in summer? I was like, I am a teenager. It's my summer vacation.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
At least you should buy me an IBM compatible PC so that I can actually learn to code. And so that was the deal I cut with my dad. I traded two months of my life. for an IBM compatible.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And by the end of the two months, I remember vividly, I wrote a code that basically took musical notes and turned them into musical sheets for my guitar playing, because at the time you couldn't actually get tabs and so on. You had to buy books for that.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And I became a very serious developer just with those two months, because basically I'd wake up in the morning and I have eight hours of nothing but reading the manuals. And it improved my English, it improved my understanding of logic and algorithms and so on. So that was really, really an interesting turning point. And another turning point, of course, is I love my dad so much.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And my mom, of course, but my dad was a distinguished engineer, he was probably one of the top civil engineers in his generation in Egypt, because he was responsible for the road and traffic system. And so my elder brothers both did not choose civil engineering. And my dad came to me when it was time to apply for universities. And he said, would you be a civil engineer for me?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
At least one of my kids should follow my trail. And I was like, yeah, no problem. And I basically became a Because he wanted me to. But I was a horrendous geek. I basically just finished whatever my uni wanted me to do in half an hour a day and then spent the rest of the day in front of a computer. But then I graduated and I decided I wanted to be a carpenter. And again, because of my parents.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And so they bought me all the books, all the tools, but I became a really, really, really, I love it so much until today. I still build projects almost every week. So I basically didn't understand money or capitalism or success or anything other than I understood I wanted to marry Nibel. My first wife, which we were together six years by then. And she was like, it's time.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And so in my culture at the time, you'd had to propose to her father. And of course her father wouldn't give her to me if I was a carpenter. So I needed to find a job, right? Remember, I finished as a civil engineer, but my graduation project, they gave us a very complex road network. And instead of doing it the way they did, I wrote code, basically, which solved the entire network.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And my supervisor was like, you're going to fail. I was like, just give me a couple of weeks. And then I went in with, at the time we had dot matrix printers. So an entire report of every little elevation in every bit of the road. And before I even started drawing, I started to get job offers to be a civil engineer in the top companies in the country. And I said, no, no, no, no, no.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
I was the happiest person ever until the death of my wonderful son Ali. The surgeon does five mistakes in a row. Every one of them was preventable. I felt a physical part of my heart disappear. Suddenly life is put in perspective. My capitalist hat turns from I want to finish my life a billionaire to I want to finish my life a billionaire of happiness. And there I am.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
I want to be a carpenter. Until one day, I don't know if this is interesting or if we're chit-chatting, just because people need to know that a lot of life is luck when you really, really think about it. Now I need to marry Nibel. I need to find a good job, but I'm a freaking carpenter. I love what I do. And one day I have a fender bender with a friend of mine.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
You know, I hit him in a traffic light. So he's opening his door, coming out ready to shout at me. And he goes like, oh my God, Mo, how have you been? I've been looking for you. I don't really have your contacts. And he basically said, we're looking for a civil engineer that knows computer science. And you're the only one we could think of. Can you come join us? That was IBM.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And so that was my life. And it's a series of fortunate events. The way I was hired at Google, the way I went to Google X. It is, as my daughter always says, I was paid in advance. God, I believe in God, but you know, if you don't, the universe wanted me to be in a certain place at a certain time.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And so he sort of just always gave me a tiny little cheat, a cheat that worked against being born in Egypt or being educated in a public school or whatever. It was always a tiny bit favoring me life.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
I always say every time I joined a company, it felt like home. And every time I left, it felt really, really alien. A massive pivotal point for me was in my second year on IBM, Egypt was struck with a seven point something hectare scale earthquake and a lot of the schools were cracked. And so children stayed at home.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And then the international aid started to pour in and the government started to put in money in a place called the Educational Buildings Organization. The only condition for all of the aid was that they do everything now with fresh, modern technology. So they wanted CAD systems. They wanted database systems. They wanted GIS systems. They wanted everything to be state of the art.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
I was a good salesman. I went in. They had a bid. So I responded to the bid. They picked IBM. I wouldn't have designed the systems those way, but I was responding to the bid. Anyway, six weeks later, I realized that the configuration they're asking is not going to work and that my systems are not the best systems. It was a $4.2 million deal, which in IBM Egypt at the time was quite sizable.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Anyway, so I wake up one morning knowing that it will probably cost me my job. I walk to the minister's office, sit outside and say, I need to meet the minister of education. And they go like, who are you? And I'm like the IBM account manager, 25 year old. And basically I sat there until 7 p.m. from 9 a.m. I walk in at 7 p.m. and I say, sir, I really advise you to cancel my order.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
I think this, this and this are perfect from IBM. This, this and that you should get from Sun Microsystems. This you should ask Oracle to do. And I can help you, but I'm sure your technical team can do it. And he said, are you mad? I was like, no, no, no. I want to give you something that works. And the next morning he calls his team in and he cancels the order.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
So I end up with around 2 million of the 4.2. And then he tells his team, ask this guy. He said Sun and Oracle. And so I give them genuine advice and they give the orders to other businesses. A few months later, the minister calls me to his office directly. No bids, no nothing. He says, I want to build this. Can you build it?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
I'm no longer a corporate executive. I no longer have stocks falling into my bank account every week. And I've never been happier. It's not the events of your life that stress you. It's the way you deal with them that does. We say there are four quadrants of stress. We call them...
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
So I said, yes, sir, I can build this, this, this, this and that comfort zone for me. This, I think you should go to Dell. That, I think you should do this way. And ended up with a $16.4 million direct order from the government four months later. And I have to say, from then onwards, I never sold anything other than what the customer exactly wanted.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And my God, I basically didn't have to work ever again. I swear. I'd go sit with my clients at top levels at Google's years in my very last years at Google. These were billions of dollars sometimes. And yeah, sit there and the customer would say what they want. And I listen attentively. And half of the time I'd say, I can't help you. Okay.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And then occasionally I would say, oh yeah, I can ace this one.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Absolutely. Once I said that, every one of my clients, which by then I had known for 20 years, would go like, and how much would it be? And I go like, I'll tell you tomorrow. And then I send them a proposal and they say yes. It's as simple as that. I have to say there is a bit of my Eastern side in this. I was born and raised in the East with the traditions of the East.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And then I was educated and worked my entire adult life in the West. You know, the West, because of the OKRs, if you want, the measurements of success, basically really, really values working hard, pushing through, being profitable, making money. And the top two values I found in the West were freedom and, you know, it's the individual, really. So it's my individual benefit and freedom.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
In the East, it's not how we're raised at all. In the East, it's all about the community and it's about respect. And I think that obsession with the success of the community, I think really made me a good businessman.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
Because if you really don't look at the short term of the quarterly pressure, building those deep relationships when I was a salesman at IBM or Microsoft or sales manager at Microsoft or whatever, or regional director at Microsoft and so on, all of those roles, Those people became prime ministers just 10, 15 years later. They became the CEOs of all of those organizations.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
And so when Sergey Brin would ask me to do something very, very complex from a governmental point of view, like self-driving cars, for example, or whatever, to get approvals for them, I would literally pick up the phone and call the minister of transport in Singapore or call the minister of the prime minister here in the UAE or whatever. And they basically knew me as someone they trusted.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
So you will see within the next few years, maybe next couple of years, you'll see a lot of people upskilling themselves in AI to the point where they will do the job of 10 others who are not.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
Yeah, or give the money to other humans that can build control code, that can figure out how we can stay safe. This sounds like an emergency. How do I say this? Remember when you played Tetris?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
Okay. When you were playing Tetris, there was, you know, always, always one block that you placed wrong. And once you placed that block wrong, the game was no longer easier. You know, it started to gather a few mistakes afterwards and it starts to become quicker and quicker and quicker and quicker. When you placed that block wrong, you sort of told yourself, okay, it's a matter of minutes now.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
There were still minutes to go and play and have fun before the game ended, but you knew it was about to end. This is the moment. We've placed the wrong. And I really don't know how to say this any other way. It even makes me emotional. We fucked up. We always said, don't put them on the open internet.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
Don't teach them to code and don't have agents working with them until we know what we're putting out in the world, until we find a way to make certain that they have our best interest in mind.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
Because humanity's stupidity is affecting people who have not done anything wrong. our greed is affecting the innocent ones. The reality of the matter, Stephen, is that this is an arms race, has no interest in what the average human gets out of it. It is all about every line of code being written in AI today is to beat the other guy. It's not to improve the life of the third party.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
people will tell you this is all for you. And you look at the reactions of humans to AI. I mean, we're either ignorant, people who will tell you, oh, no, no, this is not happening. AI will never be creative. They will never compose music. Like, where are you living? Okay. Then you have the kids, I call them, where, you know, all over social media, it's like, oh, my God, it squeaks. Look at it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
It's orange in color. Amazing. I can't believe that AI can do this. We have snake oil salesmen. which are simply saying, copy this, put it in ChatGPT, then go to YouTube, nick that thingy, don't respect copyright of anyone or intellectual property of anyone, place it in a video, and now you're going to make $100 a day. Snake oil salesman.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
Of course, we have dystopian evangelists, basically people saying, this is it, the world is gonna end, which I don't think is reality, it's a singularity. You have utopian evangelists that are telling everyone, oh, you don't understand, we're gonna cure cancer, we're gonna do this. Again, not a reality. And you have very few people that are actually saying, what are we gonna do about it?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
And the biggest challenge, if you ask me, what went wrong in the 20th century? Interestingly, is that we have given too much power to people that didn't assume the responsibility. So, you know, I don't remember who originally said it, but of course, Spider-Man made it very famous. With great power comes great responsibility. We have disconnected power and responsibility.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
It's the only difference is instead of reading all of the names of the states and all of the names of the presidents thread, trillions and trillions and trillions of pages, okay? And so it sort of repeats what the best of all humans said, okay? And then it adds an incredible bit of intelligence where it can repeat it the same way Shakespeare would have said it, you know?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
So today, a 15-year-old, emotional, without a fully developed prefrontal cortex to make the right decisions yet, this is science. We developed our prefrontal cortex fully at age 25 or so. with all of that limbic system, emotion and passion, would buy a crisper kit and modify a rabbit to become a little more muscular and let it loose in the wild. Or an influencer who doesn't really know how far
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
the impact of what they're posting online can hurt or cause depression or cause people to feel bad. And putting that online, there is a disconnect between the power and the responsibility. And the problem we have today is that there is a disconnect between those who are writing the code of AI and the responsibility of what's about to happen because of that code.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
And I feel compassion for the rest of the world. I feel that this is wrong. I feel that, you know, for someone's life to be affected by the actions of others without having a say in how those actions should be is the ultimate, the top level of stupidity from humanity.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
Those incredible abilities of predicting the exact nuances of the style of Shakespeare so that they can repeat it that way and so on. But still, hmm? when I write, for example, I'm not saying I'm intelligent, but when I write something like the happiness equation in my first book, this was something that's never been written before. Chad GPT is not there yet.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
All of the transformers are not there yet. They will not come up with something that hasn't been there before. They will come up with the best of everything and generatively will build a little bit on top of that. But very soon they'll come up with things we've never found out. We've never known.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
Interesting.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
That's the algorithm of creativity. I've been screaming that in the world of AI for a very long time because you always get those people who... really just want to be proven right, okay? And so they'll say, oh no, but hold on, human ingenuity, they'll never match that. Like, man, please, please, you know, human ingenuity is algorithmic.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
It's look at all of the possible solutions you can find to a problem, take out the ones that have been tried before and keep the ones that haven't been tried before. And those are creative solutions. It's an algorithmic way of describing creative is, good solution that's never been tried before. You can do that with ChatGPT with a prompt.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
And for the first time, we now finally have a glimpse of intelligence that is actually not ours.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
You're hearing it with like, no, but it is.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
It is really shocking. The idea of you and I inevitably are going to be somewhere in the middle of nowhere in, you know, in 10 years time. I used to say 2055. I'm thinking 2037 is a very pivotal moment now, you know, and we will not know if we're there hiding from the machines. We don't know that yet. there is a likelihood that we'll be hiding from the machines.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
And there is a likelihood we'll be there because they don't need podcasters anymore. Oh, excuse me. Oh, absolutely true, Steve. No, Moe, that's where I draw the line. No, no, no, no, that's where I draw the line. There is absolutely no doubt. Thank you for coming, Moe. It's great to do the part three and thank you for being here.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
Okay, so who here wants to make a bet that Stephen Bartlett will be interviewing an AI within the next two years?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
About me? Yeah. Oh, man.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
So I've already been replaced. Let's follow that thread for a second. Yeah. Because you're one of the smartest people I know.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
It is. But I'll take it. It is true. I mean, I say that publicly all the time. Your book is one of my favorite books of all time. You're very, very, very, very intelligent. Okay. Depth, breadth, intellectual horsepower, and speed. All of them. There's a but coming. No. The reality is it's not a but. So it is highly expected that you're ahead of this curve.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
AI will not be stopped. Okay. So the second inevitable is? Is they'll be significantly smarter. As much in the book, I predict a billion times smarter than us by 2045.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
And then you don't have the choice, Stephen. This is the thing. The thing is if, so I'm in that existential question in my head, because one thing I could do is I could literally take, I normally do a 40 days silent retreat in summer, okay? I could take that retreat and write two books. Me and Chad GPT, right? I have the ideas in mind.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
You know, I wanted to write a book about digital detoxing, right? I have most of the ideas in mind, but writing takes time. I could simply give the 50 tips that I wrote about digital detoxing to Chad GPT and say, write two pages about each of them, edit the pages and have a book out, okay? many of us will follow that path, okay?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
The only reason why I may not follow that path is because, you know what? I'm not interested. I'm not interested to continue to compete in this capitalist world, if you want, okay? I'm not. I mean, as a human, I've made up my mind a long time ago that I will want less and less and less in my life, right? But many of us will follow. I mean, I would worry if you didn't include the smartest AI.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
If we get an AI out there that is extremely intelligent and able to teach us something and Stephen Bartlett didn't include her on his podcast, I would worry. Like you have a duty almost to include her on your podcast. It's an inevitable that we will engage them in our life more and more. This is one side of this. The other side of course is, If you do that, then what will remain?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
Because a lot of people ask me that question. What will happen to jobs? Okay. What will happen to us? Will we have any value, any relevance whatsoever? Okay. The truth of the matter is the only thing that will remain in the medium term is human connection. Okay. The only thing that will not be replaced is Drake on stage. Okay. Is, you know, is me in a...
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And Cirque du Soleil had Michael Jackson in one for a very long time. Yeah.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
Absolutely. A thousand times more. A thousand times more. By the way, the code of a transformer, the T in a GPT, is 2,000 lines long. It's not very complex. It's actually not a very intelligent machine. It's simply predicting the next word, okay? And a lot of people don't understand that. You know, chat GPT as it is today, you know those kids...
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
Can you have this?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
No, no, I mean, I get it to us.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
Like the value of this to the listener is the information, right? No, 100%. I mean, think of the automobile industry. There has, you know, there was a time where cars were made... handmade and handcrafted and luxurious and so on and so forth. And then, Japan went into the scene, completely disrupted the market. Cars were made in mass quantities at a much cheaper price.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
And yes, 90% of the cars in the world today, or maybe a lot more, I don't know the number, are no longer you know, emotional items, okay? They're functional items. There is still, however, every now and then someone that will buy a car that has been handcrafted, right? There is a place for that.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
There is a place for, you know, if you go walk around hotels, the walls are blasted with sort of mass produced art, okay? But there is still a place for an artist expression of something amazing, okay?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
My feeling is that there will continue to be a tiny space, as I said in the beginning, maybe in five years time, someone will, one or two people will buy my next book and say, hey, it's written by a human. Look at that, wonderful. Oh, look at that, there is a typo in here, okay? I don't know. There might be a very, very big place
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
for me in the next few years, where I can sort of show up and talk to humans. Like, hey, let's get together in a small event. And then, you know, I can express emotions and my personal experiences. And you sort of know that this is a human talking. You'll miss that a little bit. Eventually, the majority of the market is gonna be like cars. It's gonna be mass produced, very cheap, very efficient.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
It works, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
So you're spot on. You are spot on. And actually, this is the reason why I, you know, I'm so grateful that you're hosting this, because the truth is the genie's out of the bottle. So people tell me, is AI game over? For our way of life, it is. For everything we've known, this is a very disruptive moment where maybe not tomorrow, but in the near future, our way of life will differ.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
What will happen, what I'm asking people to do is to start considering what that means to your life. What I'm asking governments to do like I'm screaming, is don't wait until the first patient. You know, start doing something about it. We're about to see mass job losses. We're about to see, you know, replacements of... categories of jobs at large, okay?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
Yeah, it may take a year, it may take seven, it doesn't matter how long it takes, but it's about to happen, are you ready? And I have a very, very clear call to action for governments. I'm saying tax AI-powered businesses at 98%, right?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
So suddenly you do what the open letter was trying to do, slow them down a little bit, and at the same time, get enough money to pay for all of those people that will be disrupted by the technology.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
that if you're in America and you teach your child all of the names of the states and the US presidents and the child would stand and repeat them and you would go like, oh my God, that's a prodigy. Not really, right? It's your parents really trying to make you look like a prodigy by telling you to memorize some crap really. But then when you think about it, that's what chair GPT is doing.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: Mo Gawdat - This Is The Only Thing That Will Survive AI, We Must Act Now!
Yeah, massively. The immediate impact on jobs is that, and it's really interesting, huh? Again, we're stuck in the same prisoner's dilemma. The immediate impact is that AI will not take your job. A person using AI will take your job, right?