How To Approach The Future — AI, Humanity, and Creative Thinking with Futurist Jamie Metzl

Jamie Metzl (0:00)

One of the most important things will be to have your own philosophy about what humans will do best in general, and in whatever field you're in, what will be the most essential role of humans in that, and to really double down on developing those skills.

Michael Gervais (0:32)

Okay, welcome back, or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training a high-performance psychologist. And I am humbled to welcome back to the podcast the incomparable Dr. Jamie Metzl for this week's conversation. Jamie is a leading geopolitical expert and technology futurist. What does that mean exactly? Well, I hope you're excited to find out. His accomplishments are nothing short of extraordinary. Jamie has served in the US. National Security Council, the State Department, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the World Health Organization Expert Advisory Committee on Human Genome Editing. He's also been called the original COVID-19 whistleblower as a leading advocate for the full investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. And if that wasn't enough, he wrote a bestselling book titled Hacking Darwin, Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity, a groundbreaking exploration of the future of our species. Jamie's profound and provocative inquiry suggests humankind is about to start evolving by new rules as genetic engineering begins to alter the core foundations of our lives, sex, love, war and death. In addition to his many impressive degrees, a PhD from Oxford, a law degree from Harvard, an undergraduate degree from Brown, Jamie is an Ironman triathlete and an ultra marathon runner. And he spent time living and working at refugee camps in Cambodia.

I mean, jeez.

I think it's clear.

This human has no shortage of insight when it comes to living a life of high performance. And I'm excited for you to experience his sharp mind as we get into strategies for learning AI, high performance living, the future of humanity, the future of leadership, and so much more. So with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with Jamie Metzl.

Jamie, welcome back to the Finding Mastery podcast. I can't believe it's been three years since you first came on the show.

Jamie Metzl (2:43)

It's just nuts. I mean, when you told me that is before we went live, I really couldn't believe it, but I did the math and it's true, but you don't look a day older.

Michael Gervais (2:53)

Yeah, ditto, my friend, and it's been fun watching you like influence so many people on your point of view about COVID and the future. And so I'm stoked to just kind of see where your head's at now. And maybe we just start with like what's scaring you and what's exciting you when you think about the future.

Jamie Metzl (3:13)

Well, I'll reverse it because I'm an optimist. As you know, Mike, I'm originally from Kansas City and I just can't help my optimism.

So I'm pretty excited about a lot of things. But one of the things that I'm most excited is it's not just technology. And for sure, we're going to talk about generative AI. And there's not just any one technology. What we're experiencing is a super convergence of lots of different technologies where every technology inspires and is inspired by every other technology. And so that's just the tools and capabilities and resources that we have is just amazing.

But what does that actually mean? I think a lot about on the human level. So about 100 years ago, there were 2 billion people on Earth and a 15% literacy rate. And so that meant about 300 million people able to share, to participate in the world of knowledge shared beyond their immediate communities. Now we have 6.5 billion people, 85% literacy rate. And we're going towards 10 billion. And I think literacy rates are likely to increase. And that's certainly a lot of people.

But with all of these people empowered with all of these new tools and literacy and the cultural heritage of just our common humanity, I'm just so excited about what we're going to come up with. All the new art and innovation and symphonies and creativity and connectivity and collaboration. It's just incredible story. The story isn't the technology. It's what the technology allows us to do individually and together. And the flip side of that is that these technologies give individuals and even some nefarious states or maybe sometimes well-intentioned states the opportunity to inflict a lot of harm.

And it's much easier in general to destroy things than to build things. And so the third piece of this is the challenge. The challenge that we have is to use all of these resources and opportunities to build a more resilient world. And that starts on the individual level, the family level, the community level, the national level and the global level.