Tech Whistleblower: You Only Have 3 Years Left Before This Hits! - Mo Gawdat

**Steven Bartlett** (0:00)
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**Mo Gawdat** (1:15)
We have video evidence of people abusing children and not a single person got arrested. How can you call that a democracy? So humanity is at a crossroads, where for the first time ever we need to wake up and realize that we're ruled by maniacs. And what we believe is democracy is not democracy, and what we know is not the truth. Like companies and governments will blame the geopolitical and economic challenges we have on AI, but the truth is AI is not the enemy. Like I'm not worried about AI turning against us. I'm worried about humans telling AI to turn against us. Like when I worked at Google, we were building amazing things, believing that we were making the world a better place, and we were. But then suddenly there is a moment where you recognize that maybe the world will not use what you're making the way you want it to be used.
And sadly, this is upon us.

**Steven Bartlett** (2:06)
So I have lots of questions.

**Mo Gawdat** (2:08)
Okay, that's good.

**Steven Bartlett** (2:09)
So what's your take on this job disruption point? What is the risk of these very intelligent models that the creators of these models don't actually understand themselves? Do you think Sam Altman's pro-humanity? How do we get to a point of ethical AI when the incentive structures are so highly competitive? And then I wonder if there's a path that ends in AI being net positive for humanity?

**Mo Gawdat** (2:27)
Somehow we've been pre-programmed to believe that this is upon us and we cannot change it. And I refuse that. So we will talk about the solutions.

**Steven Bartlett** (2:35)
But are you optimistic?

**Mo Gawdat** (2:36)
I'm very optimistic about the future. I'm not optimistic about the next year.

**Steven Bartlett** (2:40)
Why the next year?

**Mo Gawdat** (2:40)
Come on, Steven, you don't want me to say it. Oh, so.

**Steven Bartlett** (2:47)
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Mo Gawdat, I spoke to you, I think, about four years ago when you wrote a book about happiness. And I remember you came in and you'd written this book about AI. But I particularly wanted to speak about the subject of happiness because I was fascinated by it. What I find astonishing is the fact that you were talking about AI before anybody was really talking about AI. No guest that had ever come on my podcast had ever mentioned the subject of AI. It just wasn't interesting to the world. And then this thing called ChatGBT came out and suddenly, everybody got to feel it for themselves and became fascinated by it.
My first question, and this might be a question for people that don't know you, is why at that time did you start talking about AI before anybody else?