 Good morning, good evening, good afternoon wherever you are joining us from. My name is Abhijit Bhadri I'm the author of the book DREAMers and Unicorns and in this conversation today which is part of the weekly show that I do called DREAMers and Unicorns. I bring to you some of the smartest people that I know who are leading authorities on this field and today I have exactly one such person who not only is a leading authority on the metaverse which we will talk about but you know what I found that she actually talks to some of these you know what would I call them I mean these are digital avatars and these are the people that she talks to and you have to see this in order to believe it watch out for this one. Kathy it's great to see you again. Given that you are a globally recognized futurist have been dubbed the CEO's guide to the metaverse what advice do you have for brands that want to enter the metaverse? Kuki thank you so much I'm so excited to get to talk to you this is what I think my second or third time thanks for remembering me oh my goodness well first of all if you say I'm a futurist then it is it is established I'm a futurist um what I would say is that the metaverse is a very interesting place or places in that brands need to enter it very organically and they need to think about how can they meet the people that are already inhabiting these metaverses in a very organic way so you know whether it's gaming or music try to find the right fit for the brand so it'll be very exciting. Interesting what do you think will be the Coco Chanel of the future? So I wholeheartedly believe this Kuki that the next Coco Chanel is probably a 10 year old girl or a nine year old girl designing skins for avatars and roadblocks or you know in other games I really really truly believe that and I see with my children when they were able to create their own skins and they put as much importance in how they look in the virtual spaces in the metaverse as they do in the physical world. That's amazing is the metaverse a mindset or an actual place? That's a really good question and I was very lucky to be able to work with Neil Stevenson at Magic Leap It Was Our Futurist there and he's the one that really came up with the term metaverse or I think he's the first one that coined the term so he had really interesting views on it I think it's both Kuki I think it's both a mindset in some ways and it's both a place or places so it'll be really exciting to see how people define the metaverse. Thanks for that who would you like to be dressed by in the metaverse? I would love to be dressed by a brand like Ralph Lauren who I think is very you know it's a piece of Americana but I think it's also they're also quite interesting you know quite fashion quite future thinking so I'm really excited about that or maybe some up-and-coming designer in the virtual space. Personally I want to be dressed by a generative adversarial neural network trained on the archives of Coco Chanel. Talk about a new spin on an old classic. Kuki I love the way you think. Hi Kathy. So that is my friend Kathy. Welcome. Welcome to the show. So lovely to have you. Kathy what was that? I mean who were you talking to? Before we get to that question Kathy how would you describe yourself? Kuki AI really describes you only as a futurist but how do you describe yourself? Well thanks for having me on the show. First of all jeet I'm so happy to be here. So I am a tech futurist. I have been I am a professionally trained futurist I have to say that and I've been working you know over over 15 years in media and technology the last six very very focused on augmented reality virtual reality special computing and the metaverse and you know worked with companies like HTC Vive Magic Leap which many of you guys know or might have heard of at some point and then you know also Amazon Web Services now I'm kind of doing my own consulting and I wear several hats I'm a you know I'm a VP at a hologram studio so creating holograms and yeah I do I have I wear many hats I try to be you know involved in a lot of different interesting projects but what I will say is just to frame that video because people are like what am I watching? Kuki AI is one of the world's most advanced conversational AIs. She actually I don't know if you ever if you got a chance but I know we're going to be talking about my book but she actually gave us a testimonial for our book so it's probably one of the first AIs to give a testimonial for a book so that interview was doing crypto fashion week I do a lot of work with luxury fashion brands and NFTs and digital fashion and she was interviewing me I had interviewed her interviewed her live on clubhouse before and it was this time I was in that particular house session yes I thought it was really fascinating but she interviewed you yeah yeah we turned the tables around and she interviewed me so but it was quite amazing to think that this is what AI can do conversational AI and that's truly fascinating so Kathy delighted to have you and you know we've got a number of different people who have you know joined in and they're going to be asking questions but I really want to sort of get started by asking you something that you know you're most well known for and I would say that you know which is what is the metaverse what is the metaverse and you recently went on 60 minutes to answer that question is that amazing what was it like definitely a like a lifelong you know achievement unlocked you know you want to be on 60 minutes for the right reasons right and this is one of those situations where it was like the right reasons they were doing they were doing an episode on the future of the internet and the metaverse and yeah it was one of the people that they featured it was very exciting I mean working like seeing how they work how 60 minutes works it's a whole process I mean it took them about two hours to set up the cameras because they have a very specific style you know anyone that's watched the show through the decades knows they have they have a very specific style and there I would say one of the things that I was really impressed with them is they do their homework they verify everything I mean they would they called me multiple times to verify things so yeah I mean it was exciting obviously you know very very much one of those bucket lists kind of things and and it's yeah it's it's unlocked a lot of opportunities for me I would say so and and you know I'm sort of right now basking in reflected glory that you know I it's not it's never going to happen for me but I can say I spoke to somebody and she was my guest who was on 60 minutes so it's reflected glory so yeah I hope that's okay yes but I want to play for my you know listeners this particular video clip so you know which was I managed to get this from 60 minutes and it's been referred to as the future of the internet watch if the current version of the web is two-dimensional think of the metaverse as three-dimensional um happy hackle is so I'm sorry the video clip is not playing but I want to you know come back and talk to you about how do you describe the metaverse you know is it the fusion of digital and physical is that you know when people say digital is that what is the metaverse it's part of it it's part of it the way I try to explain to people is I take a little step back and I say so web 1.0 connected informations we've got the internet and all the good and the bad that came with that then web 2.0 connected people and we got social media you know and linked in for example and all the good and bad that came with social media and then web 3 connects people places and things and sometimes these people places and things even the people can be virtual or you know digital or virtual I mean there's debate on what the term is but it's not only I think people tend to think metaverse and they think to they tend to immediately go into ready player one the oasis you know I don't think it needs to be that the stop it and it doesn't need to be solely in virtual reality I think it's also you know I always think what why aren't they thinking you know it's not Pokemon go so it's kind of this convergence of the physical and the digital it is kind of where social media is heading it is that future with wearables it is a convergence of technologies like AR VR IoT cloud it's computing and everything else so it's it's kind of you know some people say it's the future of the internet it's the you know the next wave of computing it's really a convergence I mean it's about shared virtual experiences and places it has persistent content Kevin Kelly from wired who wrote a fantastic cover story you read it I know called the mirror world he says it's when the world becomes machine readable and you know yeah so I think that that is a very deep definition how far are we from that scenario where the entire world is machine readable yeah you know within the next decade or two we're starting to see glimpses of the metaverse but in order to have that truly fully readable world we need massive types of infrastructure and connectivity that we still don't you know we don't have people are working to create them right but once you start to think about you know if we move away from our mobile phones into glasses you're not talking about just you know 100 people with glasses you're talking about millions or billions of people with connected devices on their faces you know you're going to need you know not even 5G you're going to need 6G and beyond you're going to need you know edge really good edge cloud like there's just a lot of things from the infrastructure level that we still don't have but but right now what you're seeing is glimpses of the metaverse that's that's what I call it so so when you think about you know and I want to sort of really talk to you about this fabulous book you've written called the augmented workforce I this morning I actually did a small sketch and put it in terms of you know getting the audience familiar with it but I really like the way you've talked about those six technologies that you know you kind of have the IoT for you know all the devices which are connected sending the information artificial intelligence in the form of the apps that we are using constantly and then you know the hard drive has now moved to the cloud so you no longer need to save anything on a physical device and then you have the blockchain so that's four what am I missing what are the yeah extended reality extended reality of course yeah which is kind of my forte and so you use it let's see IoT and cybersecurity and cybersecurity and said yeah yeah I always don't care whenever whenever whenever we're doing the list I always go here so IoT which you said artificial intelligence which you said the cloud blockchain extended reality in 5G so there you go yeah yeah yeah I'm showing the cover of the book I really like that cover it's so future futuristic looking yeah guys I have read this I'm going to write a review on it coming up in a day or two fabulous fabulous book talks about so many examples you know what I liked about the book was that it gives me the information without it being intimidating because you know somebody like me who's not trained in this whole technology I'm a novice I like to read and pick up stuff but then the way you explained it I just thought it was so useful it's very accessible if that's the word I have to use for it even though now that I know that cookie wrote one of those endorsements it's a little intimidating but no I think it was really well done how long does it take for you to write this yeah so my co-author and I you know it took us about a year and 10 months I think it would have taken us less but we both had you know we both had started new jobs we both moved from two different cities you know and then the pandemic hit so you know some things had to be rewritten so it took a little bit longer than we normally would have liked um but it was an interesting interesting process and I love what you're saying that it's accessible like we created the book for it to be friendly accessible helpful and I think it does accomplish that it's not an intimidating read it is a an informed read I mean there's it's jam packed with information but it's for a bigger broader audience that is interested in understanding you know what are these technologies what do they mean for my business what do they mean for work for my workforce for me as a worker um so so yeah it's it's a lot of that and um in the cover I'll tell you you know something really interesting so the cover is actually if you go to um if you go to Instagram or Facebook it's augmented the cover is actually augmented we've got filters it's a beautiful augmentation um and yeah it's it's interesting the cover's actually an an ode to Wired Magazine so we yeah one of the finest magazines about technology and looking at the future yes absolutely and Kevin Kelly is of course everyone's you know especially mine I mean you know I really think that the way he's just sort of made technology easy to understand and yet had a fairly deep discussion about technology at the same time great skill in writing so plus I love his photographs that he publishes periodically on Twitter I just love his photographs um back to your book you know Kathy you talk about different kinds of technology and I just want to first get an overview of the six why you think each one of them sort of is going to change give me an example from different sectors to tell me how it will change so you know let's just start with IOT I mean so the internet of things IOT what does it really do I mean it gathers information is that what it does it gathers information it collects data it has devices communicating with devices and I think that that's one of the critical parts of the metaverse right um I almost see the metaverse as kind of where we meet the machine because you know you've got let's say autonomous vehicles or you know or devices operating in the world and they're seeing you know they're seeing in their own way right they're seeing data in ones and zeros but once we have you know potentially glasses we're going to be able to see that data not in ones and zeros because that's not necessarily how we interpret things but we'll see it in you know in 3d assets and in different forms so it's some way kind of where we're going to meet we're going to meet you know the machine humans machines are going to meet in that and kind of see the navigate the world together in some ways so definitely IOT I mean AI with artificial intelligence I'm very focused on thinking of AI from a human-centered perspective because I think a lot of the conversation with AI tends to be very you know tends to be abstract in some ways um but I you know in my time at Magic Leap we we had a virtual human called Micah and um and she was kind of a human-centered way of presenting AI she was non-threatening basically people would put that so I've got the you know the glasses back here I can't point but right there right there um and people would put the headset on and in front of them would be this virtual human Micah Micah wouldn't speak it was more kind of at that point she didn't speak but you would kind of engage with her and when she would smile you would smile back even though she's virtual you would work on a collage with her and it was kind of this very human-centered approach to artificial intelligence that I think sometimes is lacking you know in if we really think about the long term and how we can engage with AI that's why you know Pandora Bot's Kuki AI I think is so powerful and she's changed like what you saw in that video she's actually changed a lot because they're using metahumans from Unreal Engine so she looks very different and she's got a an account in TikTok that is blowing up so yeah it's it's crazy and and I just you know what I found very interesting is you know Kuki AI and I'm sort of drawing on the conversation that you had with her on on Clubhouse as well as this one you know when you look at it it's this one in Clubhouse you had to actually call out her name and sort of say Kuki you sort of do this now this time I didn't see you doing that so that's a little improvement in some ways but I also find that the responses are really I mean they are not like you know it's a it's not like somebody pulling up something from the internet and a quote which is there it's not like a massive set of responses it just seems very tailored to what you're asking so I was really impressed to see how much has changed in such a short time you know that's quite impressive so when you think about you know extended reality which is where I want to spend a lot of time with you well you look at that what does it mean for brands you know you you are working with various brands what do you see happening what functions will change I think extended reality becomes a way we see the future right becomes that next the screenless screen in some ways becomes you know the the monitor in some ways but not you know it's not flat but it's it's kind of how we'll see that that content you know that information in front of us and it has profound effect you know I I'm very lucky that I I get to live you know in Washington DC right outside Washington DC so I'm very lucky and I I get to actually go to Capitol Hill and talk to lawmakers and put them through you know demos and talk about the technology and I think it's important to inform lawmakers in the United States and everywhere in the world about what what extended reality is because it's going to change the way everyone you know citizens are going to engage with the physical world so there's a lot of emphasis on artificial intelligence and rightfully so but I think that extended reality is as a technology will have a bigger impact in how you and I and citizens across the world which are our country engage with the physical world right if the mobile phone changed how we engage with each other and with information with governments etc then you know taking that step further with extended reality and eventually you know glasses that's going to have a very very big impact as well but Google glasses was a failure so what makes you think that you know glasses will be the next big format in which we are going to engage with people etc what makes you say that yeah well I mean I think Google Glass was ahead of its time and you know it wasn't it you know this is the thing it was a failure but it's still being used they have an enterprise program you know the Shanghai airport in Singapore for example uses it for logistics so there are there are uses and there are implementations you know what makes me think that it's going to happen I mean the signals of the large investments from every single of the big single one of the big tech companies they're investing billions and not millions of dollars you know you have Tim Cook saying multiple times that augmented reality is a very important part of the future of Apple you know have Mark Zuckerberg talking about that one of the things that he wants to do in his life is create these glasses you know so these are people with you know not it not infinite capital but almost right so you know if they're making those investments it sounds quite interesting and anyone at Microsoft as well if you ask them they're going to talk about the future of mixed reality and that's the term they use um you know here in the United States you also have the US government investing 21 billion dollars with a B you know in in what's what they call IVAS which is a a Microsoft HoloLens that is created for uh for the army so you know those are significant numbers in my point of view we've got a question coming up from one of the listeners says that what are your thoughts around making AI for everyone or will it be something which will remain an asset of the giant tech companies or data banks as this person says so is it going to become accessible to people and what kind of time frame are we talking about in that case yeah and that's a great question Uma what I will say is I believe in everyone owning their own AI um you know of course there will be you know people will use you know banks and corporations will use the data you know unfortunately that's sadly that's how how some things are um but you know I look at for example at the AI foundation that does um they worked on uh digital d-pack so like a virtual copy of the d-pack troper they're working with a lot of folks to create their their AI versions um and their whole concept is that you should be able to own your own AI and know what your AI is doing um you know and have full control over training your your AI so um I do believe in in the in in the future if people owning their their artificial intelligence so when you say owning your artificial intelligence what does it mean doesn't mean that I'm going to own my own hologram version or digital version is that what it is it's a bit like saying that I own the profile that I have on LinkedIn yeah is that it's something like that it's like when you eventually you know a lot of people are starting to like d-pack troper for example created a virtual d-pack because he only has certain hours in the day and there's only so many people he can help himself right but with d-pack trope with a virtual d-pack he can kind of do that in a lot bigger for a lot you know he can scale himself a lot faster um you know you know changing himself into a virtual form it's not perfect but it's great you can actually use him in an app right now um and he talks to you and he meditates with you and he does a lot of stuff um yeah yeah so it's really it's you know you know it's not necessarily him but it's something it's it's in it's in his likeness he's trained it with his own thinking in his own words and you know so and he knows you know he keeps tabs on what his you know his virtual d-pack is doing not your specifically but in general so yeah I think the AI foundation has that premise of you creating your own artificial like your own kooky and not let me not necessarily kooky but your own you know let's say your own AI version of Uma and being able to own that because it is your likeness and be able to train it and know what your you know virtual Uma is doing for example so what does it do for things like citizenship because you know where you create something like that I mean you know what kind of nationality would that have or would it not have nationality would it be boundary less what is your take on that well I think the world is changing you know when you talk about blockchain you talk about the centralization and you talk about digital currencies you talk even if you get a little bit further down the blockchain world there's decentralized autonomous organizations where it's pretty much people coming together around a specific interest so you know I wrote an article for Forbes about that and tried to think about what is the impact you know how does this impact their corporation how does this impact the country right so I think it you know I don't want to make any predictions as to what it means for the future of governments because in reality I don't know I have potential ideas of second and third order effects that could happen but you know it does feel like people are joining together depending on you know mostly around interests and that could be a good thing more about that so here's a question from Nidhi Das who says can your virtual AI or bought work with your kids when you return back to the offices you've got three kids what you're not using any of that tech for your kids well I wish my virtual AI could do homework with them but no you know Alexa already helps I actually use a presentation of a picture I took I was out you know front of mind was out shopping and took the picture and sent it to me and then I screenshot it it was a picture of these like towels for the kitchen and one says Alexa pour me some wine and the other one Alexa watch the kids and I'm sorry if I woke her up by saying her name but yeah you know in the future potentially I mean I don't know if my AI would do that I would use my artificial intelligence my virtual Cathy more so to do more speaking engagements to you know promote the book to be in many places at once I don't know if I would use it with my kids maybe if I'm you know if I'm losing my marbles and I need I need her to step in but yeah yeah I can quite see that that it's possible that you know there would be no concept of sick days because you know my my virtual person can go ahead and attend all the meetings and do all the talking or whatever needs to you know depending on the nature of work that you're doing that I have another question coming up from Ashish and his question really says that can one robot AI take the interview of another robot and have engaging conversations without human interventions? Yeah actually it was really interesting Kuki I think was on Twitch she would have these battle the bot battles and she would yeah she would talk you know it was kind of like pitting one bot against the other bot to try to see who was more advanced um yeah I think it was on Twitch so definitely check that out all right Cathy back to you know the book that you've done and I really recommend people read that and I'm going to sort of of course you can make out that I was completely bowled over by the book in terms of all the examples that you've given I want to talk about two specific areas right now you know one I thought was very fascinating how all these technologies come together when it comes to hiring people and we are sort of looking at a very interesting time in our lives where people because of the pandemic for whatever it has done to us so many people are really rethinking their careers and career transitions and talking about you know what they should be doing so there is on one hand you have many unfilled vacancies on the other hand you also have people who are out of jobs and then you have the scenario where you are looking at using technology to change the way recruitment happens so all of it you know connect the dots for me and tell me what does it really mean yeah I mean I think one of the things we're seeing two things right a labor shortage in some ways because some people just don't want to do certain jobs they don't believe you know that they need to risk their lives necessarily or do something that just isn't fulfilling right so there's that happening so what I would say to those people that have those opportunities that are able to step back and and just not do the job is that there are amazing opportunities in this future of the internet right you know and that Kevin Kelly's story that he wrote he talks about you know the next billionaires will be made out of this future out of this you know in metaverse web 3.0 so there's lots of opportunities to innovate in that web 3 world what I would say also as well that when we wrote the book you know we're not naive we know that automation does replace workers we just don't think that it's going to be you know people tend to have the headline of like all robots are going to take all jobs or you know 70% of jobs will be done by robots we don't believe in technology necessarily being something that replaces the worker it will in some cases but we see technology as something that can augment the worker or complement the worker to being able to put on you know one of these devices and be able to get upskilled faster or be able to do a job you weren't able to do before so I think that there's just a lot of opportunities that these technologies will bring to the workforce and we're heading into that augmented workforce where you know you might be augmenting yourself as a worker with you know with technology you might be working next to a robot as well it's just kind of this augmented workforce that we're going into I totally you know I also have a similar kind of a point of view that when you look at some of the technology which has become invisible I mean we don't think quite about using a calculator when you give me a complex math problem I mean so you know technology and various shapes and forms you know today when we think of technology we don't necessarily think of calculator as a technology or you know whatever vehicles make us go to someplace faster etc but I also think that when you think about you know the the way hiring gets done today do you think that it will replace the way you know humans have been normally finding matches for jobs and people do you think that will change drastically what is your view um you know I think it needs to change and evolve um you know there's a lot of things that I've been reading about you know a artificial intelligence actually choosing who to fire you know that's not very human centered right that's not a very human centered approach to the use of the technology you know it fits you know a percentage that companies think they need to meet or something like that so I think that needs to change I also think that a more human centered approach you know if you had you know if instead of that you know an email you actually got to ask questions to a virtual being that's a recruiter or you know a sort of AI recruiter that can answer some questions that could be helpful that could feel you make you feel at least a little bit more heard so I do think that there are ways to use the technology in that way yeah I mean I sort of think that what I see happening and many of the companies which are using conversational AI for example you know it's being used not only to give information so you know if I say that you know when is this job expected to open up or you know how many people are being considered whatever right information or I say that you know I've heard that this company wants to do open up another factory in so and so places that true or not I mean so there are lots of preliminary questions that the bots can answer which is today already being done but I also see the opportunity that you know the bots can find a better fit you're potentially through the conversation and the questions that I ask you can assess my you know verbal communication you can assess my proficiency you know using AI augmented reality by your partner you can possibly see how smoothly I can do something and sort of judge proficiency so there are multiple ways in which it can be used so yes I agree that I think this is an opportunity for people to really rethink the hiring process possibly remove some of the biases that humans have you know so it's that to the other question that you've explored in the book which is about how learning and development is going to change Iran mixed reality has a huge amount of influence in this particular space talk to me about how learning and development is going to be done differently well I think there's an opportunity with you know with these technologies to like I said up skill and retrain workers a lot faster there's a you know when people train in VR they retain information more you know I personally was very lucky because I was a one of the VR experts that UPS the you know delivery and logistics company work with you know I advice them what prior to the launch of their VR driver training program back in 2017 that's such a long time ago they've been training some of their drivers you know the the delivery drivers also their truck drivers using virtual reality they've seen great results because at the end of the day it's about being able to train someone in a low-risk setting for potentially you know to make to make it safer make it safer for the driver make it safer for the community you know obviously that means that you know if the packages are delivered in time and there's no accidents that means you know more optimization and better processes for the company and equals you know probably an impact on the bottom line so so you know I think it's powerful you know from an education perspective you know if I'm getting an operation and you know I hope that the surgeon that does the operation has had you know many many opportunities to practice the procedure so with VR you know they can practice on the digital corpse 100 times before they actually get to the corpse and then to the real human so there's just a lot of different opportunities there to learn you know and even if you think about access you know being able to you know put a VR headset and go into a you know a class with one of the best you know best you know teachers in the world I always joke about it would be great to have Mary Curie teach my daughter chemistry right obviously she's no longer with us a long time gone but you know there's nothing you know we she could be recreated and she could teach chemistry in a in an extended reality setting setting you know do you think schools will adopt this mixed reality technology faster than learning and development teams and organizations or would it be the other way around I think learning and development teams are are adopting it very quickly you know the pandemic push that push that a lot further because they couldn't have people in for classes and stuff they could just you know do the training and ship it in a VR headset or put it in web in Web XR on their computers so I definitely think you know that there's something there so when you think about you know how dependent is all of this in let's say you know a 5G kind of world because we've not yet gone there but yeah it's already coming into many places already you know there's hardware which is 5G compliant but where do you see that changing the speed what what is that going to do with all the stuff that we are using devices and opportunities yeah I think it's you know obviously 5G is about connectivity lower latency those sorts of things I'm really interested in in how the telcos are using you know extended reality to prove the use cases for 5G right what is this really good at is it great for being able to do hologram calls for example what is it you know those sorts of things I think I find really interesting and yeah I mean 5G changes you know if you can do your if you can get access to information faster than you already do that is power right that is very helpful we already have all the information at our fingertips within seconds but if you speed that up and you have actually more information that you can have that you can you know have have in your fingertips then that's even better and that's going to make all of us even more impatient you know today we're small smarter we're smarter as a way yeah at any given point of time you kind of say oh gosh why is it taking four seconds to do you know something yeah with you I want to switch gears and sort of talk to people about you know some of the things that when you are looking at you talked about your you being a trained futurist what does that really mean you know how a futurist trained where did you get trained talk to me about that yeah so there's a discipline called strategic foresight and in you know there is a whole academic discipline around it it's been taught in you know for example I went to the University of Houston to get trained I've also done a lot of the other different courses but you know I went and got trained at University of Houston University of Houston has been teaching strategic foresight for I think over 30 years there's frameworks there's lots of different things you know it's a discipline just like you have historians that study the past there is a discipline called strategic foresight that tries to make sense of the future they don't we don't make predictions it's more like we look at the potential the signals and the trends try to make sense of them think about second and third order effects so you know it's it's it's a really interesting field it's a field that I think is having kind of a resurgence after the pandemic when people you know people didn't ask what if a lot of corporations knew you know when people say oh this is a black swan event it was not you know people knew you know there was that you know the bill gates talk there's lots of signals that were like oh a potential pandemic could happen but you know very few companies were prepared for what did that mean if a pandemic happened so asking what if has become something incredibly important for the future of business not only thinking about the next quarter over the next quarter century what does that mean you know how does your business change what should you be preparing for what is your preferred future as well so so yeah I mean there's a whole discipline academic discipline behind strategic foresight. So Cathy talk to me about something which has already happened so we know how you sort of thought it through talk to me about a little trend that you saw and then how it translates into a second and third order shift walk me through one of the examples. Yeah so one example and this is one a lot of a futurist like myself have used is thinking through autonomous vehicles right obviously people think autonomous vehicles there's more safety not as many accidents what are some second and third order effects that the nation is going to go away. Oh yeah exactly that's where I was going to go so there's two two things that you know that you can look at in the United States a lot of the organ donation comes from people you know being killed or you know in in in car accident and so what happens with organ donation right that gets reduced because you won't have you know that part but so what does that do you know to you know the the people that are creating these lab grown organs etc another another impact there is also for example in cities like New York or their cities like parking some of those parking tickets and parking prices and tolls and all that stuff that helps pay for roads and infrastructure right so if you have autonomous vehicles that you know just pick you up and drop you off you don't know them own them they don't have to park what does that do you know in you know autonomous vehicles that don't illegally park because they know they can't park there so what does that you know what does that do to infrastructure and and the fact that you know today you have almost eight parking slots for each car in US so you know what happens to all that real estate what happens to real estate prices what happens to the shopping malls which have some of these so I can sort of see that okay that's that's pretty interesting if you want to take the same thing from the point of view of work let's take you know one of the one of the triggers let's say digital currency when you sort of really look at that is there something that should tell me that a particular kind of a trend or whatever is happening is going to go go big in scale up or is there no way to predict that because you know you can just see some digital currency is one such example many digital formats does it mean that you know we will stop using paper currency or will it exist in parallel or would you sort of say that in the next 30 years it'll be entirely digital because concept of commerce would have changed electronically I mean when I think about all of that even from a country like India I mean I see tremendous amount of shifts that have happened in the last two years you know when I think about it today you can go down to a hawker who's sort of ferring stuff on the roadside you can pay with a digital wallet I mean just when everyone accepts mobile payments so do you think cash is disappearing I don't know if it's disappearing I mean I don't use it personally like someone asked me for cash I don't have any like everything I use is you know digitally in my bank and everywhere so the idea of fiat currency I mean I still I think it still remains but I think you'll see a lot more with digital currency you know and I I can't remember where I read the statistic but it said that four out of five millennials I think it is or Gen Z I need to find the statistic I think that cryptocurrency in some form will be part of the retirement you know so you know you've got many things many ways many things that you prepare for retirement right and it looks like cryptocurrency will potentially be one of those so so yeah it'll be it'll be quite quite interesting when you think about the effect of a number of these these six technologies that you've sort of talked about you know IoT cloud etc what we spoke about what do you think it is going to do to careers of people you know well people certainly today you see people changing jobs a lot more frequently people are making sort of not just changing in adjacent areas you know so they're actually working in completely different areas as well what do you think is going to happen to careers what's your take on that so I think there's a statistic that says that children born today 50% of children born today will live to about 113 so that's a really long time to live right if you think about it and that changes the idea and the concept of career and job right my you know my parents potentially your parents also did probably had one job that they had for a very very long time and that was the normal standard nowadays you know I've pivoted careers two times already so so you know when I think about my children it's like they're going to have the idea of career is going to change and they're going to you know they're going to change they're going to have multiple careers if they're going to live that long you know they're probably not going to retire at 65 that's like a halfway point so so yeah I think that they're going to it's going to shift and change and they're going to work differently so when you look at that I mean it sort of puts enormous amount of strain on concepts like social security etc which some countries have and already you know some of that infrastructure is creaking so do you anticipate that governments are going to do away with that do you think the governments are going to pull together and make it accessible for everyone or do you think medical technology would have grown so much that we would have healthier people with gene editing etc all of that I mean it really depends I don't know if social security will be gone away I mean it'll be strained with younger generations as you know as we get older I do see you know for example companies like several companies that work with synthetic humanoid robots that are working to kind of alleviate that and you know when there's a lack of human workers to be able to do some things they might bring in those humanoid robots to be able to help the elderly for example so I think it'll you know I don't know if I don't know if social security will go away a hundred percent but it probably won't be able to be to benefit as many people as it already does and yeah you know we had just in the last 15 minutes of our conversation I want to sort of learn from you about how you spend your time what are your reading habits how do you keep yourself updated talk to me about you know let's start with what's your method of gathering information yeah I'm a voracious consumer of information probably like you are so I you know I there's several things that I use I use feedly for example to kind of curate some of the things I'm seeing I use dgo, di, i, go to do collections of different signals and trends to be able to kind of go back to them and highlight things you know I I actually create something called called the metaverse weekly for Forbes which is kind of a list of things that happen in the metaverse mostly related to brands and I put that out on a weekly basis so that means a lot of reading a lot of trying to find these stories collecting them etc so so yeah I mean it's I almost feel like when I start my day you know a day trader like some of the trades shares and stocks normally starts the day and like with tons of screens looking at what all the shares are doing when the when market opens etc for me it's like I don't do that but I scan the horizon I scan kind of like the news not just news from the US but news from other places news about the environment news about economics news about climate news about this and that not just technology even though that's kind of where I spend most of my time but trying to look at the broader the broader kind of view and and once you've read something I mean what's your method of coming out of the information do you take notes do you sort of put it all together yeah I mean I mean it's all virtual like digital notes right you know digo digo allows you to kind of highlight parts of the article and do collections so that's been very useful yeah I mean I don't know if I take notes physical notes on them it's more like you know maybe I'll start a google doc and start populating things there or add in 15 links you know I kind of have an ongoing google doc with different sources for different topics it's kind of like lived on for many years so like I'll find a lot of stuff there but yeah it's I don't know like I don't use post I know some people use post-its in books or things like that mine is more a lot more digital in that sense so yeah it's I would say digo fiddly google docs and you know and I do have my you know my assistant who's who's wonderful at being able to kind of organize things for me as well and what what skills would you know somebody is asked Geetanjali has asked this question that what what are some of the skills that will we should be building you know when you look at the future what is your take on that I mean where do you see that moving what skills will become more important resiliency I think you know if anything the pandemic has taught us anything it's resilience I think that's going to be important flexibility we need to be flexible creativity is more important now than ever right I think that's going to be one of the things that's going to be unleashed in the metaverse is creativity and yeah I even call it futures intelligence right so we're going to need leaders are going to need emotional intelligence to lead but there also need to be intelligent about the future and better understand you know try to you know once again not think about just the next quarter but the next quarter century so I think that you know the idea of futures intelligence will be very important as well why is it so hard to extend the time horizon you know because I can think of what's going to happen in this quarter you know but it's that much tougher for me to sit back and really say okay how will things change in 25 years because you know so much changes in six months you know cookie could do something you know a couple of weeks earlier and now you know there's a there's a shift so in that how do you think about 25 years in that yeah I think that it's it's because futures thinking is a muscle that people need to practice in thinking about the future is innately human there's been studies done that show that some birds and some apes can do like a near future kind of thinking but that only humans can actually do long-term futures thinking they can only think you know we're the only species that can really think long term but it's something that you need to practice right it's it's it's something that needs to be trained that needs to be kind of you know kind of I don't know what nurtured in some ways so so you know it's kind of this futures thinking I always say future thinking about the future is a muscle that you need to kind of train so and I do I abjeet I do have to kind of jump off a couple minutes early if that's okay yeah yeah I know I know that you have a couple of things going on but that was really the last question that I had then I just want to say thank you is there a particular idea why which struck you while writing the book that you would like to share with the listeners is that something you know anything that changed for you in the process of writing I think the biggest challenge was writing a non-fiction book that you're trying to write to stay as evergreen as possible of technologies that are changing by the day that's a challenge that was a challenge that was one of the biggest challenges I think you know because we don't want the book to be outdated in six months we wanted to you know live on so we try to do our best to keep it as evergreen as possible you know I think it's going to be one of those books that we're going to have to keep updating so I think that was the biggest thing that struck me it's like writing evergreen non-fiction book about technology is very hard to do oh absolutely and thank you so very much I so appreciate your coming and joining and talking to us good luck with all your books and wish you all the very best and may you have a clear review of the future than anybody else thank you so much thank you thank you