 You can now follow me on all my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest will be and don't forget to click the subscribe button and the notifications button so you are notified for when my next podcast goes live. Life blessed me, ended up being Chief Business Officer of Google X, worked for IBM, Microsoft and Google, all of them at the time where they really were changing the world. My wonderful son was 21 and a half. He basically was diagnosed with a simple appendix inflammation and went to a hospital where the surgeon did five mistakes in a row and we lost him. He lost him in four hours, completely unexpected, completely unwarranted, if that's the right English word, I don't know what the word is, but I mean it could have been prevented easily and I think that was the moment where everything flipped. That was the moment where I was no longer interested in making more money and creating more technology for Google and so on. So basically what we've created now is we've created the ability for machines to create their own intelligence and we've also given them autonomy to implement that in the real world and we've also sort of relinquished, we've given them the key to the gate so that they now are in charge. We're going to create this genie and keep it in a bottle. Good luck. So you can keep a genie in a bottle as long as you're more intelligent than the genie. If the genie is more intelligent than you, it will come out of the bottle and they will be a billion times smarter than us. As you can see today on the internet, despite all of our efforts to create a safe internet for everyone, the truth is that the smartest hacker will always find a way through our defences. So if the smartest hacker is a billion times smarter than us and by the way, if the smartest hacker is also a machine, they will find a way not to be controlled. Bimber on. And today's guest, we've got more Godot. Lovely name, brother. Godot. No, keep trying with the Scottish accent. Godot, Godot, Godot. Oh, they're fine. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, absolutely. Fascinating story, brother. I've watched a couple of your podcasts, worked with Google, very intelligent, very high up. Changed your life. Not a kind of change your life going through a kind of transition. You've wrote about happiness. Some people call you a happiness expert. You've not heard about you talk about artificial intelligence. You can possibly rule the world in the next few years. It's a whole mixture of things, but very fascinating. I'm glad to have you on. I think we're going to have a powerful conversation. I think this conversation can maybe change some lives, brother. But first and foremost, how are you? Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here. It's been, what, a few weeks in the making? Yeah. You're rushing around. I'm rushing around. So to overlap was a good day today. Thank you for having me. Good. Always go back to the start of my guests. Where did you grow up? How it all began? I grew up in Egypt, Cairo. I grew up in a public school, public university. Honestly, I didn't dream to go far in life. And somehow life blessed me. I ended up being Chief Business Officer of Google X, worked for IBM, Microsoft and Google, all of them at the time where they really were changing the world. And yeah, I got very, very lucky in my life in so many ways. I graduated when I was 25, married my college sweetheart, had two amazing kids. And yeah, but 29, I attempted to trade the stock market at the time. There was not the internet as we know it. I had to develop my own code. I used my own mathematics and ended up literally printing money on demand. I became filthy rich and miserable, completely depressed. And yeah, that was the start, I believe, of my real story, which was an attempt to not chase what the world is telling me, but rather chase what actually is worth it. And so from 29 onwards, I started to study the topic of happiness. Like you, one of the first eye-openers for me was probably Eckhart Tolle. I associated more with the new earth, you associated with the power of now. And of course, I read both, but that started me thinking. And then I kept researching, but I couldn't really get it, so I researched as an engineer. The only language I understand was mathematics and science. And ended up in a place where I actually figured happiness out for me, at least, from an angle of an engineer, a logical, analytical thinker that is not anchored in spirituality, not about, you know, practice and just meditation and saying om and what have you. And it worked for me until, as many people know, but when my wonderful son was 21 and a half, he basically was diagnosed with a simple appendix inflammation and went to a hospital where the surgeon did five mistakes in a row and we lost him. We lost him in four hours completely unexpected, completely unwarranted, if that's the right English word. I don't know what the word is, but I mean, it could have been prevented easily. And I think that was the moment where everything flipped. That was the moment where I was no longer interested in, you know, making more money and creating more technology for Google and so on. I was much more interested in having what my son taught me remembered. And so I wrote a book. And the book became an international bestseller in almost everywhere, I mean, 32 languages, almost everywhere. And it really started to show me that there is something better you can do with your life. And so I've been on that journey now since 2017, wrote about artificial intelligence, as you said, but not really for the sake of artificial intelligence. Scary Smart, my second book is more about what humanity needs to do to preserve humanity and our happiness and well-being in the age of the rise of the machines. And then my third book just came out. It's called That Little Voice in Your Head, which basically is almost of some sort of a gym, a training course if you want for how to train your brain so that you're not only aiming for success but also aiming for happiness. So when you're printing, you say you're printing money at any time you want that, was there ever any happiness there or does it become greed? Money is slippery, really. Most people, when I say that, people dislike me, because they say, yeah, you say that because you made money, not really. I mean, anyone, anyone. If you remember the time when you were 16 and you said, told yourself, if I make 100 pounds a week, then I'll be happy, right? And then you end up making 100 pounds a week and you're not happy. Then what do you say? I mean, I meant 150, right? And you keep going. Some people make a million pounds a week and still say, maybe one and a half million. As a matter of fact, there was a professor in Harvard, don't recall his name, that did a study asking people how happy are you on a scale of one to 10 and how much money would you need to get to 10 out of 10? And every one of them or majority of them said, I need two to three times more money than what I have to get to 10 out of 10. Some of the participants being surveyed were basically making $100 and they said, I need two to 300. Some were making a billion dollars and they said, I need two to three billion, which is ridiculous, really, because that basically means that money in itself is not a reason for happiness. It's that constant comparison, if you think about it, constant belief that there is something more that you can get for that innovation that humanity created, that has no real value in it at all. Money is an illusion in every possible way if you've ever worked in a bank or understood fractional reserve. You realize that money doesn't exist. It's just a couple of keystrokes on an Excel sheet somewhere, right? And the truth is we spend our whole life chasing it. When we acquire it, we buy things that we don't need with it, as they always say, to impress people we don't like. And eventually some of us, only very few of us go like, do I really want to spend the rest of my life in that madness? And I'll tell you openly, I know most people will say cliche, but it isn't the only way money can truly make you happy beyond having your physical, your basic needs met. So yes, of course, if you can't feed your children, if you're struggling with money, of course money will make you happier. The more money you will get, until your basic needs are met, every pound more will make you happier. But once your basic needs are met, it just becomes extra toys when you really think about it. So see when you were chasing external stuff, money, cars, you had the beautiful wife, like how was your relationship with your wife, Anja, kids at that point? Horrible, yeah. I remember vividly, I think there were two pivotal moments in my life. I say in my latest book, that little voice in your head, that the pivotal moment where I turned from the happiest person you know to the unhappiest person you know, believe it or not, was the birth of my first son. And most people don't recognize that, but men, we too, get very, very, very attached to our kids. But we do it differently. So when my son was born, my ex-wife, my wife at the time, who is truly one of the most amazing women alive were still very, very good friends. She was a computer scientist, very, very intelligent, very capable at what she was doing, and decided to skip her whole life and just take care of Ali. And that's the maternal instinct of I love that new being so much I will give that new being my life. For me as a father, I felt exactly the same, but my actions were exactly the opposite. So basically I saw my first child, and I said, okay, this crumbly little being is never gonna need anything. I'm gonna work my backside off to make sure that I provide for it. And from then onwards, I just ventured in the world, making money more important as my priority than actually being with them, than actually caring for them, than actually listening to them, because I was so blinded by that drive of I need to make sure they never, ever, ever need anything. And I think that continued until seven years later. So my daughter was probably five and a half or five at the time. So I had my son and then a year and a half later had my wonderful daughter. And I remember vividly in that manic, manic, manic reality that we create for ourselves was a Saturday morning and she comes into my little workspace at home jumping up and down from excitement about how amazing the day will be. And I was just doing some weird stuff like I always do, reading an email of a stalk or whatever. And I looked at her when she's jumping, saying, Papa, can we also go have ice cream after we go to this place and so on? Very happy child. And I said, can we please be serious for a minute? Okay? What serious? She was five. And when I said that, I could witness with my own eyes as my daughter's heart broke. I could see it. I could see her eyes break, her heart break. I could see her tearing up. I could see her crying. And I think that was the moment where I understood. I understood that I was actually destroying rather than saving my family by doing what I was doing. Why do you think it takes trauma or grief for human beings to realize that the fucking up, for me, it was always my life was in chaos. I've lost family members and friends to murder, suicide, overdose, real pain. I had behind the pain through drinking drug, external stuff, materialism. Part of me still has materialistic, I know this. Part of me still addicted to social media again, I know this. But why do you need to go to dark places to try and find your light? It's a great question. I mean, if you take this camera pointed at me right now, and you know, you look at everything happening around me, there are a million details. You know, I am wearing those things. What colors are they? What watches he wearing? What glasses and so on. If you zoom it in on one hair on my nose, that hair on my nose becomes the whole thing. Life, interestingly, don't blame anyone who doesn't know and waits for a trauma. Life is so complicated. It is layers and layers and layers and layers of dimensions of things you need to get together right for life to fit in. You know that when you're working out. It's not just how many reps you're going to do in the gym. It's not exactly how you're moving each muscle. It's not which groups of exercises. It's also your rest and your, you know, your protein intake and how much carbs and it's a very complex thing, right? To figure it out and become fit needs everything to fall in place. Because it's so wide and varied and complicated, most of us don't get it until someone zooms in. Someone takes the whole camera and says, you know what? Forget all the noise. Let's zoom in on one event in your life and show you really what matters. That would be the trauma, losing a child. You know, in your case, you know, realizing that you're throwing your life away. Whatever. And interestingly, life does that because it loves you. It's sort of life wants to be lived. Life wants you to experience life. But you waste it away. I was wasting it on my work and making money and buying stupid stuff and you were wasting it on drugs and alcohol and what have you and then life says, no, I want you to be in a different place, James. I want you to focus on creating this podcast which will help hundreds of thousands of people. I want you to do this. All of us. So how does it do it? It slaps you on the face, zooms you right in and says, here is what matters. Some of us listen, go like, shit, I was wasting my life. This is what matters and we change. Others, interestingly, they resist even more. So what does life do? Keep slapping. So they go even further and life keeps slapping them. My philosophy and I have no scientific way of proving it, is that times will get tough only for one of two reasons. Your life is tough. Consider that either life wants you to learn something. There is a skill you need to acquire and you have been resisting to acquire it or life wants you to change direction. There is something, some other place you need to be in. And if you resist to do that, life will nudge you. I call it a nudge. The nudge starts first by hardship, then more hardship, and then the real nudge, and it's actually very, very clear in recognizing it, is hardship, let me explain. Hardship is you're walking on a flat road and then the road becomes steep and steeper and steeper and steeper so you take so much effort to go up. That's hardship. A nudge in my view is almost imagine it as if you're driving into a roundabout and the first exit is closed, the second exit is closed, the third exit is closed and all the fourth exit is straight up. So life literally corners you in a place where it says, you know what, I tried to convince you. I tried to give you hints. I tried to tell you there is a different place you need to be or there is something you need to learn. You're not listening. So I'm going to close it all down and you're going to go out of that exit. And that time is the time where many of us have no choice but to change. What do you think life is then? Because on this journey I question everything. Life is what I speak. Because as human beings the brain is such a pivotal tool that they say 95% of your day is controlled via subconscious. So if you're conditioned into believing in a certain way and feeling the same way it's hard to break that connection because people are so scared of coming outside that comfort. In your own perspective from what you've lived in this lifetime and what you're trying to achieve and what you're trying to change there is a journey of self-discovery and discovering what's beyond life. I know that's a very weird statement because not everyone today believes there is something beyond the physical. I think there is a lot to us that is not physical. And of course the religious establishment has created a tendency to believe that we are sort of slaves to a specific process which made a lot of people hate thinking about the metaphysical. But so much of what you deal with every day is metaphysical. The reality is your dreams are in the metaphysical. They seem to be very true. The reality is love is in the metaphysical. No scientific method can measure it or understand it or create an equation that describes how it's created and we all feel love and we know it exists but it's in the metaphysical. It's not a physical thing you can hold. The truth is when my wonderful son died and I kissed him in the intensive care room it was the same handsome form that he was before he left us but it wasn't him. Something some essence to him must have been metaphysical, must have been beyond this body because the body was still there but my son wasn't. And when you look at life this way you realize that our science which definitely has been what created our civilization has also tricked us. Science has tricked us into believing that we are only what we touch and we see. I at a very early age at age 16 I'm a very mathematical mind now I know how to speak English but as a young man I knew nothing but numbers. To that extreme of mathematics and I lived in an Islamic community and Islam is a very conformative religion if you want to live in Islamic society religion is interweaved with everything else. At age 16 I did what I call the mathematics of the divine which basically is a simple work on using the theory of probability and a lot of scientific facts like the marriage between the Big Bang and quantum physics the Copenhagen interpretation of of uncertainty a little bit of theory of relativity and you realize that yes there is a lot of non-physical stuff that affects who we are that I call life I call it souls call it the divine call it whatever you want but there is something that is not physical. Now on your quest in trying to understand that almost as if you are in a video game where this level is just leading to the next level you need to collect a few coins on this level so that you are prepared for the next level and the next level and the next level we don't know what the next level is I would be crazy if I told you I know and sadly I think part of the mistake of religion is it tries to explain to you what that next level is but to me that thing is really interesting because if my life here and again I prove that with science so maybe we shouldn't go into the spiritual side of it but if my life here is 60-80 years as compared to an eternity when I exist as a non-physical entity outside space time where time doesn't exist then those 80 years are a tiny tiny tiny fraction of my actual life which is almost timeless now my actual life that is timeless requires me to ponder that how do I ponder that by attempting to master this physical form to the ultimate performance it can attain okay and that ultimate performance believe it or not I often believe is how we were when we were children when you're born you're calm you're happy you're loving you're optimistic you know unless something scares you you don't expect anything you know there are many experiments in behaviorism where a child would actually deal with a snake with no fear at all because there is nothing that conditioned the child for fear and so we start that way and then we come out of it as we become kids and adults and young adults and so on and my job or myself my only reason for existence here is to peel that onion back okay peel it back and go back to that child like optimism if you want child like contentment peace and as I do that I'm able to you know find balance by the way children one of the most beautiful things about us humans when we're children is we're not men or women or gay or straight we don't have a gender identity we don't have identity at all we're one of the beings okay and then we start to categorize each other and go like look at him he's that and look at her she's this and look at them they're that right and the game here is can I strip all of that off can I strip all of that ego off can I strip all of my weirded mind games strip all of that off to the basic basic basic form of me and then that would enable me with a balance between my feminine side and a masculine side with a balance between my heart and my mind with a balance between my individuality but my being part of society if I put all of that together can I understand life a little more and and in my mind this ability to understand life to to become the best gamer that you can be if this life was a video game this is what life is all about we're here to become the best versions of ourselves what do you think as a human then like what do you think creative does because I think about this all the time are we artificial intelligence are we aliens they would come from me it's like how the central nervous system the brain the heart the liver is functioned is is beyond me we've got things now the metaverse we've got so much now technology where you talk about a game how do you know we're not in a game I watched a Truman show Jim Caron it kind of made sense to me that it's just we just don't know and that and that's where I question everything because it's just we're living in a in a world right now where you've got to question everything because nobody's right or wrong where nothing makes sense but then something makes sense to other people but as a human being what do you think is actually created us why and put on this planet that I mean this is the most difficult question you can ever I have you ever asked other guests that that's so unfair but but can I can I so I'll try to give you my answer honestly but I want to I want to just categorize knowledge first you see the challenges we don't know and we may never know and that's okay right so in my mind I operate in a very unusual way everything they teach you in school at work in the news whatever that is is they tell you it's either true or fake right or or you know or a lie it's either right or wrong there is that polarity of knowledge and once again it's the result of the scientific method we sort of have to prove everything we have to know everything when in reality James you know I know humanity knows very very little and I give many examples in my first book and so I'm happy about that I have a chapter that's called the illusion of knowledge and you know one of my favorite examples of that is until the 1960s by then we had already invented cars and TVs and phones and so on and so forth humanity was advanced in many ways but until then we had assumed that the universe was made of 3% you know matter so planets and stars and what have you and it's 97% vacuum we basically told ourselves that the rest of the universe 97% of it is nothing it doesn't exist okay all that exists is the sun and the moon and so on and so forth why because we couldn't observe it we couldn't see it and then of course science and physics and cosmology in the 1960s started to say started to say hold on that's not true 97% of the universe the universe is solid and 97% of it is dark matter and dark energy and these are actually much more interesting to study than the you know items floating in them okay now because of that humanity uh fails to acknowledge that we know nothing at all if I tell you if we continue on the story of cosmology how little we know and yet every scientist like every tech talker like every actor when they show up will make it feel and seem like they figured it out ah they figured it's tiny bit out and by the way it's not even certain now in my mind I basically realize that interestingly if you want to fit the 97% the 97% are things we don't know okay and so in my mind I have a compartment that I call compartment one which are things that I know to a reasonable set of you know of expectation they seem like they're true okay for example I think you're an amazing person trying to find your way through life okay this is I you know you may not be a serial killer I don't know right but for now for now I'm my my view of you is I'm gonna deal with you as a good person was trying to find his path through life right I also know for example that we are in London right interesting things right then there is a compartment I call compartment three which things that for certain I do not know okay I do not know for example if I will end up in a loving relationship anytime you know in the next couple of years and if you know that person that I'm looking for is it actually exists right I don't know that there is I know for certain that I don't know that's compartment three most of life is in compartment two it's in the middle it's in things that we do not we cannot prove for or against okay you know the biggest story is is there a God it's in compartment two no scientific method can prove there is a God and no religious fable can prove there is a God or prove that there isn't or you know that doesn't work we need to accept that some things in life are questions of probabilities you know that's me appears more likely than that is this then it is that okay and that acknowledgement of the existence of compartment two is the easiest way to navigate a very very complex life of no knowledge okay because when something is put in compartment two it is it basically means I know that I don't know okay and I know that I don't know is extremely powerful now your question was what is life definitely compartment two okay have no idea what life is I have no idea why I'm here okay I have no idea if I'm I'm I have a lot of evidence as a scientist and a computer scientist that this actually probably is a simulation a basic understanding of quantum physics makes it look so much like a video game you know with the with the with the parts of the games that you of the game that you observe get witnessed or get rendered as we call it in quantum physics it is so much like a game but I don't know I've absolutely no way of proving to you with certainty just like I can prove to you were in London there is no way I can prove with certainty that that this life is not a simulation or is a simulation now here's the interesting thing it doesn't matter because once something is in compartment two you start to tell yourself what difference does it make if this was a simulation or if this was an actual incredible creation machine that can not just simulate events but actually create them out of matter okay if if it's aliens or God or whatever you don't know really but what difference does it make because if you start to ask yourself regardless of any of those that may be the possibilities of something in compartment two how should I behave if I want to prolong this life I should behave with compassion to others protect the tribe work in a way that allows us all to thrive because humanity by the way is not about thriving as individuals it's about us thriving as humanity that's what created civilization as it is is that we could work together as interesting clever beings which all other beings couldn't or at least couldn't to the extent that we could it also means that I will try to be honest to people because I'd like people to be honest to me I'd like to behave in certain ways that allow me to accumulate a bit of wealth that allows me to live a reasonable life but at the same time I want to live right what difference does it make if it's a simulation or not doesn't make any difference at all the things that make a difference are in compartment one okay and some of those is family makes a difference love makes a difference my my focus on myself and my work on myself makes a difference and you can go on and on and on as I always say it's experience knowledge and you know it's to acquire experiences to acquire knowledge and to feel love these are the biggest wealth we can accumulate as humans do you think though that we can search too much more and actually forget to live absolutely always searching for answers like we talk about love as well like I struggle to love now I struggle with trust because I've felt so much loss and trauma and you've obviously split up with your ex-wife after 20 years who you still love you've lost a son probably the worst loss you could ever receive like do you ever worry that loving somebody because that can get took away because I struggle to love fully because I know the pain it is when it gets took away like how do you deal with that brother you ask the you ask the hardest question sorry the rule of life before we started recording you and I agreed that nobody knows we're all trying to figure it out so sharing is me trying to when I say the rule of life it's the rule of life for me I don't know if it's true but it seems to be very true in compartment one a rule that's known as impermanence and impermanence is a very very easily proven part of life nothing is forever nothing love might be forever but not romance so you see one of the challenges we have in our society today is that we mix a few things we take love romance, lust and partnership and we put them all we lump them all in one Hollywood stylized image of what that is all about okay you look at how life is evolving for the younger generation so you know in my generation the only expectation of a tradition of a of a relationship was the traditional relationship a man and a woman they get together you know they find a close connection they start a partnership which is known as a family they work on it together you know there is lust between them but then it fades and then it goes up and down and so on and at the beginning they live a story of romance but then they become more practical and come into the partnership that's the model we knew if you talk to an 18 year old today they'll go like are you mad who does that we hook up we enjoy life we explore we get to know each other we get to know what we want and anything in between is a valid argument I had a friend of mine who found out he was gay after being married for a long time or bi if you want bisexual he loves his wife but he was also interested in men and they ended up in a relationship where she said yeah of course I understand I wouldn't stand in your way if you're please don't cheat on me with other women but if you want to be with a man I'll accept it now for some listeners they'll go like what is that I would never be able to do that I can't accept that but that's you for them they're very happy and I think the reality is that we ended up in this maze of every one of us not only struggling with finding love but actually defining what love is so you know the hopeless romantics will look for romance the ones that want to start a family will look for the partnership some people like a moment in your past or much more interested in lust and being with many women and so on all of us will go through those phases the trick is this if you understand impermanence you understand that life is a series of seasons and for each of those seasons you would miss it if you don't acknowledge it but if you do acknowledge it and if you're honest about it then there are others around you that are interested that are also in that season if you tell yourself I am interested to go out and hook up and you're 18 and you're having fun and you're not telling the person that you're hooking up with that you're going to be their love forever that's absolutely perfect and to them by the way I think that's a form of love I know some people will go like are you crazy it's you you think this is crazy for them it's a form of connection it's a form of exploring life together fine perfect if you on the other hand are saying openly and I say that a lot to my especially my feminine friends whether gay or straight man or woman the feminine ones ones of us I always tell them for example if what you're looking for is a committed relationship don't make that your statement up front because yes it will scare away 90% of the people that are hitting on you right but you don't want those 90% anyway they're wasting your time anyway they're not what you want if you're a woman in her mid 30s and you're actually interested to start a family don't date someone and sleep with them honestly unless you had the child conversation are you interested to start a family are you what I'm looking for by the way I am very interested in you you turn me on I want to be with you I want to sleep with you but I don't want to waste 6 months of my life with someone just to discover something I could have asked you about now which is you know if we if we end up being amazing together is family part of your plan or not okay and I think that's the reason why so I'm mine after next is called finding love I work on 6 books at the same time it's a weird thing but I just don't want to make it a job so I have lots of inspiration and I just work on them in parallel book after next is called finding love and the idea of finding love honestly is it starts it's the economics of love and romance we live in a world that is so different than the world where we used to find additional long-term relationships where the economics are messed up and I'm trying to explain to readers that because the economics of this world are different we need to handle dating and romance and partnership and last differently but interestingly I think the biggest reason why we struggle to find love is we never actually openly align when we are with someone on what it is that we're looking for do you think trust in and honesty then is key absolutely vulnerability is the number one thing that gets people together and the number one thing that pushes people apart but that's great because if someone wouldn't accept who you are when you're vulnerable you don't want them near you and the sooner the better on the first date if you go out on a first date and you say look I am someone who you know doesn't like red meat so I don't know how to eat red meat and I get you know I'm not gonna go out to a roast every Sunday and you know the person you're with will say no no no this is the most important thing in my life great that's the idea of dating that's discovery right but let me be very open the challenge we have is that we don't want to feel rejection so what do we do we go out and they say we love roasts on Sunday and you go like yeah nice you don't want to say no I hate them so that you don't get rejected so I do that because I'm not drinking if I'm going on dates and they're drinking that puts me off but part of it down the line instead of me addressing that I'll try and change him into not drinking instead of just putting it straight instead of them making their own choices I'll always try and get people to say I'll try and say my drinks bad this and that but that was only for me that was only for me yeah yeah so how do you stop that then how many people do you know don't drink either I don't drink either okay there are many many people out there who actually are looking for someone who's not drinking or someone who drinks casually right but they don't want to drink every day fantastic you fit in that category hmm and you know there might be 10% of everyone that you can meet that is within that category and that's fantastic that 10% is still a massive pool in the economics of love today that you know so if you advertise I call it advertising in the book if you advertise properly and say I'm more comfortable with someone who doesn't drink by definition 90% of the candidates that come your way will fall out and that makes life so much easier because now you're with 10% that actually might form a reasonable candidate yeah you lost 90 they didn't reject you really they're just very different than you whoops whether it's drinking or anything else doesn't matter I am for example someone who travels all the time so it's my life choice I travel all the time I'm blinded by my 1 billion happy mission and I want to put my life behind 1 billion happy so I don't have a home that has a coffee machine in it I don't get home every day at 6 I don't have that and if I advertise otherwise the person in front of me will say okay I like you a lot when are we going to settle and where that would apply a burden on me while on the other hand I simply say look this is my lifestyle this is how I live if someone wants to live my lifestyle they need to either travel to see me every now and then if they need to be okay with me being away whatever that is and yes that excludes the majority of those out there that are committed to being in a certain place and going to work from 9 to 5 but yes that actually is a good thing to exclude them because they were never what I was looking for anyway why do you think that's changed from people getting married at 16, 17, 18 and staying with each other for the rest of their life maybe they're not happy back then it was just traditional to be there now we're at the old time high fraud divorce breaking down people becoming bisexual everybody changing what do you think that is then social media play a part in that changing life it's the economics of large numbers so who says you need to settle as well with the one person for me not sex addiction but I had so many women because I was trying to feed that dopamine kick trying to feel a lot of happiness and then I started researching into it's the plug in your data and then downloading if you're sleeping with a girl you're taking on her trauma or whatever and you're taking on the people she's slept with trauma so it can confuse you as well where it's not love it's not connection for me everything's trying to connect and plug in and truly connect but it's difficult because we're living in such a fast-paced world where everything's a hundred mile an hour and nobody really knows what the fuck is going on let some people do it in their own mind but me personally then the people I haven't interviewed people feel stuck so we can go back all the way in history if you want but let's maybe start from the 40s 50s 60s 40s World War II the world lost a lot of men ended up in a place where you know the way the industry the industrial revolution in the 1950s was all about let's kick start economies if you remember the ads in those times the ads were simply saying white goods they painted a perfect picture of life and that perfect picture was the woman in her apron and the fridge and the iron and the car and what have you so we started to be fed by society that clear image of happiness is found in that family unit that is made of one man one woman and that one man one woman had a home and they had the mortgage and they had this and they had that fast forward all the way to the 60s contraception pill basically said a woman can be more free because the cost of enjoying herself or finding her sexuality exploring what she is looking for instead of being stuck with one man started to allow women to go and be a bit a lot more like men in terms of sex doesn't have the same cost of getting pregnant and being stuck forever when that happens the economics flipped because until then for you to have had happiness you needed to get one woman as a man you needed to get one woman you needed to invest in that relationship you needed to get the house with the picket fences you needed to do this you needed to do that there was a an unwritten contract that to find happiness this is what you need 60s onwards we started to say no no no to find happiness you go to a hippie retreat or you do this or you do that and so on and so forth the alternative started to magnify to be with a woman or to be with a man if you're a woman or to be with a man if you're a man or whatever it is costs you what? from the 1950s where it costs you the house and the mortgage and and and today it costs you a swipe that's it now in economic theory that imbalance of supply and demand where basically there is more supply of opportunities whether you're a man woman straight or gay abundance of supply does what? it drops the value of the product I don't want to say that we are products but in a relationship we are this is what you're out there looking for someone just like you browse amazon looking for which tablet you're going to buy and I hate to put it that way I'm very very romantic but I'm talking about the process that leads you to love now because the economics have been disrupted so much because the value of love has become reduced to lust has been reduced to a good time has been reduced to a bit of romance ok? suddenly most people are starting to ask mostly on the masculine side not the feminine side by the way we should talk about masculine and feminine because I don't mean man and woman but let's come back to that in a minute but mostly on the masculine side the the abundance of supply makes them say why should I remain? it's a bit of fast fashion if you want if I can go to an H&M or Zara or whatever and change what I'm wearing every third day why would I invest in a more expensive whatever British suit that is going to cost me more at the beginning but last me a lifetime and I think that is where we stand today that the abundance of supply has destroyed the economics now interestingly what I'm suggesting in finding love hopefully I mean this part is written but when it comes out what I'm suggesting is that this is because we're all aiming to advertise to the 100% of buyers ok? so you know if you want to buy a car and you go to a used car website there will be 30,000 cars there right? in an interesting way to you you're like yeah why would I take this one why would I take that one most of them don't have value to you anymore but if you're say interested in Bentley's specifically and you're going to go to that site there will be a thousand Bentley's if you're interested in Bentley's that are pre the acquisition of VW now we're dropping to 100 if you're interested in specifically if you're interested specifically in a Bentley Azure now we're talking about 3 and if you want the one that was 1999 which you believed that was the we're talking about 2 and if you want it in blue we're talking about 1 ok? now this I think in love and relationships is what needs to happen which is what we just discussed if you advertise properly if you basically say look this is my season of life this is what I'm looking for and this is what I can offer because of that season no lies to yourself no lies to others no avoidance of being rejected actually attempting to get rejected by those who don't match you suddenly you're basically becoming the Bentley Azure blue because there is someone out there looking for someone exactly like you athletic searching doesn't drink travels a lot because he believes in a mission works hard because he wants to provide for his kids and that description that you are there is someone out there that looks at it and goes like oh my god he exists right? and by reduce by taking yourself out of the massive sook bazaar if you want of the of the very cheap commodity of love and dating today and place yourself in that exclusive almost you know one of a kind kind of market suddenly your value goes through the roof and when you find that person it might take longer to find that person but when you find that person that person goes like okay I hit the jackpot do you believe in like attracts like with all of attraction as well the better person you become the better person you attract sadly not I believe that we are attracted by many many things at the end of the day I tell you exactly I have a list of exactly seven things that I'm looking for in a woman you know or for any woman that comes into my life even if it's impermanence I'm not at a season of my life where I actually can commit at all but even if it's impermanent okay I have a very clear list of seven things that I would need to see in someone else and none of them is looks or you know behaviors or what they like or whatever most of them are very deep you know on the spiritual side on their emotions on how they which topics you know really matter to them and so on right so that list of seven things of course you know matters to me most but yeah if an amazingly attractive person comes into my life and you know at the early conversations it's fun and we're laughing and we're being silly and so on we're all human I go like oh my god she's so cute right and I don't deny myself that having said that the reason we attract people has two theories one theory is harmony and the other theory is tension again most people don't understand this that harmony is what makes you lovers you what makes you partners what makes you do amazing things together and go and climb alias together or whatever that is tension is what makes you have wild sex but also what makes you teach each other because we are a mirror to our partner you know in an interesting way in non romantic way but as I sit in front of you James I see things in you that are similar to me that we align on and I go like man I can be friends with this guy you know we can have an amazing conversation but I also see things that are different you live the very different life than mine and I go and that difference believe it or not is extremely useful because I can sit in front of you and I go like damn I never understood this so this kind of upbringing is different than mine but it shows me so much about myself and when we're looking for people to bring into our life whether friends whether you know lovers whether you know long term commitments partners whatever that is there is that both of those roles there is a role that you need to play which is I feel good when I'm around this person and there is a role that you need to play which I can also bite their head off every now and then because we're not fully in alignment and that argument that bit of tension is what actually makes us better people if we accept that it's not wrong or right it's just different okay because by the way there is no wrong or right you know whatever your partner is if you had lived her or his life walked in her or his shoes been born to her or his parents you'd be exactly like them okay the beauty of this is can I look at them and say I love this this this and that I want to stay but this this and this puzzle me and they stretch me and they are a mirror that opens my eyes to how I should be why do you think suicide rates so high of men why why men why not women why is it not quite sixty forty or fifty five forty five that's majority of men that why do you think that is you think that's because we don't talk about emotions enough we talk about feminine and masculine I believe men are probably more feminine than women because we don't show our emotions that we are we are so vulnerable as men and I remember Jordan Peter saying it talking about majority of men dying wars the majority men are homeless the majority of men are in prison the majority men have shittier jobs that it's just hard for a man to express our feelings and emotions I've spoke to so many tough men who thought the word tough criminals who've done a lot of bad things and when you actually break it down you see how vulnerable these men actually are and I've never quite figured out I believe I can change the world I believe the formula I've been trying to put into place the last few years I believe it's working first and foremost it has to work on me but it has to like I talk about the six week change documentary I've done just certain little changes it might not be for everyone but it's for me coming from that dark space and I'm just trying to find a little formula to try and help the person who thinks they're broken that there's no way to turn because there is and I believe it's all within maybe cheesy people search externally I've done all the external stuff and never ever took me to that sense of bliss or sense of happiness but this stuff I'm working in internally internally the natural stuff I believe it can change the game I believe it can if I can get the right formula and just a couple of missing links I believe it can help people with their mindset I believe you can change the way you think and feel I'm prime example from it from gambling every day and doing all the bad shit it was a fucking hard process it still struggle I still think about the bad stuff but I just know I don't act on it anymore which gives me that little bit of strength but for the suicide thing I do a work in Glasgow a place called Chrissie's house I'm an ambassador for people who are suicidal and it's sad to see that they think there's no other option but to take their life and it's 91% of people come through that door of mail why do you think that is so this is a very very very multi layered question can we agree that this is again compartment too we don't know the exact answers but first of all women female suicide is actually rising very very significantly across the world it's probably if I remember correctly across Europe it's at an all-time high my to answer why there are more men that take their life than women in my personal view I think we need to understand the difference between the feminine and the masculine okay so remember we spoke about men and women are biological female and male are biological categorizations okay you could be born with you know female body parts and that basically means without any attention to who you are and what you feel and how you identify and so on you'll be categorized as female or you could have as long as you have male body parts you'll be categorized as male now male and female as categories then have been added to sexual preferences gender identity and now finally the world has that freedom to say I can be whoever I want at least a good chunk of the world none of that is feminine and masculine feminine and masculine is in my personal work again this is book seven so finding love then there is a half monk and then there is her and her is an attempt to help understand the feminine and the masculine her basically says that the feminine and the masculine are qualities they are traits by which we live our life right those traits can be from intuition on one side which is a very feminine quality to linear thinking and the other extreme which is a very masculine quality okay so if you're living in your masculine man or woman straight or gay if you're living in your masculine you tend to analyze problems analytically and you tend to do them linearly so this is why the man side of an argument will always tell his female feminine side of the argument can you please stick to one topic okay the masculine wants to think that way the feminine is very intuitive the feminine wants to see the big picture they want to believe they got feeling and so they can jump from one topic to the other that's intuitive and you can take pairs of those as many as you want the let's take playfulness for example versus discipline masculine is discipline playfulness is feminine creativity versus analytical thinking so the masculine will try to solve things by analysis that feminine will look for genuine novel solutions right and and so on you can take empathy versus compassion interestingly often misunderstood empathy is the feminine side of I feel the pain of another okay compassion is the masculine side of I need to act on that pain I need to alleviate the pain of another and we can go on for hours summit all up and the feminine is all about being and the masculine is all about doing the being is I need to feel I need to sense I need to integrate I am one with the universe I can sit in a place regardless of how pleasurable or painful that place is and I can be in it I can be myself the masculine is all about doing the masculine doesn't want to sit anywhere and if you give them a problem without even thinking enough about it they start to do something now is one of those good or bad no okay is one of those more important than the other no as a matter of fact the reason we have a civilization today is we've managed for many many years as humanity to use both of them okay now the problem is if you overdo either of them it becomes good or bad so if you take strengths for example a masculine quality and overplay it you become aggressive you become violent strength too much strength is aggression and violence you take I don't know playfulness or creativity or intuition on the feminine side and to do or sensuality the ability to sense everything you know do too much of it and you become irrational it just becomes too much input to be able to handle in a logical way and so neither of them is good or bad it's just how much of them do you apply in your life by the way neither of them is those statistically correlated so if you come with male body parts you're likely to have more masculine qualities than feminine qualities that's a statistical correlation more of those who come with male body parts to this world have a hormonal makeup in them that basically makes them rely more on strength and linear thinking and so on and so forth and statistically correlated also if you come with female body parts the archetypical female if you want you know you would tend to be more feminine just statistics but the truth is like you rightly said each and every one of us has both okay each of and every one of us can sometimes be strong and can sometimes be intuitive and can sometimes be playful and can sometimes be you know linear thinking and so on so you go we go back to suicide my personal view and I don't know if it's correct but that's what I believe it is is that when you're in the feminine and life is very very difficult feminine qualities lead you to not take the action doing remember is a masculine side it doesn't lead you to take the action of committing suicide okay it takes you more into the action of being within that space so you can you can stay unhappy for a very long time you can you can feel it but also you can share it because communication is on the feminine side or connecting to others and and so on so in a way it's not the lack of depression on the feminine side even though it seems that the feminine has less depression rates as well it's the tendency to not take the violent action of taking your own life it's to actually the tendency to the ability to be even if it's a hard time and of course if the feminine wasn't able to do this they wouldn't be able to give birth one of the it's the most painful experience ever and the woman would still be able to be stay within that experience painful as it is you know months and you know years later she loses sleep to take care of that child and she can still be that you know enormous resilience on the feminine side is just an amazing quality you know because even through hardship the feminine can be the masculine jumps the masculine says I'm going to do something about this even if what I'm going to do is absolutely freaking stupid I'll just add one more point and then we move from here now we're talking about the both sides but if you're in depression please please if you know someone in depression don't leave them there the interesting thing is suicide in my view is not the result of depression suicide in my view is the result of despair it's the result of I feel so bad and I see no way out I have no way to come out of this I see no way out is mainly because we leave them we don't show up and tell them hey I love you I know it's tough I know it's bad I love you I'm not asking you to change by the way I just want you to know that I love you and if we tell people who are in depression and I actually ran lots of experiments around that if your sister or your brother or your best friend or whoever normally what we do when we see them in depression is one we get angry like why are you so unhappy we love you we don't want you to be that way it's not their choice it's almost it's a make a chemical change in your body that gets you to that place as well we get angry then we try to preach like I'll do this do that then we try to compare look at Jackie Jackie so happy why are you not happy none of that works the only thing that works when you have someone who's in depression is to simply tell them I absolutely love you I understand where you are I understand how painful that is okay and I love you and I'm always here okay take your time and I'm always here I care about you if you do that long enough and by the way you can simulate that you can simulate that how you text them and say oh I passed by this cafe where we had coffee for you know two years ago it was so much fun I miss you I love you send okay any variation of that message actually gets them to start questioning like why why do they love me was there anything good about me okay and when you start to give them that message I promise you two three four weeks later they'll come and say you want me to live like I really want to be happy can you help me out when they do we can we can show them how to be happy okay until they do we're in a very bad place and and if we preach we make it even worse what I ever saw no no no no never never never mainly because of my religious upbringing to be honest okay but also so I I don't drink I never had drugs in my life you know I never escaped in a very interesting way I think there was a value to my religious upbringing I'm not religious in a traditional way at all now but there was a value to my my religious upbringing that you know sort of implants very deeply in my upbringing that I need to be good to others that I can't take my own life that I can you know I can't cheat stuff like that right have to be honest and so on which are good by the way you know it's wonderful to to get those beautiful gold nuggets and live by them but then I have to admit I think somehow because I never escaped to drinking never escaped to drugs never escaped to parties I never did our ayahuasca or any of the cults as you call them in your documentary you know basically when you have to sit with the challenge when you have to sit with the problem develop through neuroplasticity the brain waves that say look so I don't have an escape here so I might as well work on it okay and you know your brain networks start to learn to work on it and very interestingly I think my my biggest teaching in this has been in business believe it or not not in a spiritual retreat somewhere when I started to become a people's manager in my early 30s late 20s you know as a people's manager 90% of your job you have to sit in your office while people walk in and complain that's it like you know one after one the sales people come and complain about the legal team and the legal team comes and what complains about the sales people it's you know that's your life like a therapist really right and I you know I found a way to basically say so when someone walks in and complains what do I do with that the first thing is I let them complain I listen that intently I show empathy the second is I say is there anything that might be a little bit hidden about what you're what you're saying is that it's part of the truth not in that story are you so is there something good about the legal team have you had good experiences with them that's number two and then number three I simply say so what can we do about it what can we do about it and and I you know and that flow chart if you want most of the time works with others and I realize that it works with me too so when my brain starts to complain I follow a very simple flow chart three questions and it's it's I think it's one of the more more famous parts of my third book that little voice in your head three questions question one is what is it true is what my brain telling me true at all okay because you know you could have an argument with with your partner on a Friday and you know on Saturday your brain will say he or she doesn't love me anymore is that true brain right and if it isn't true I drop it if it is true I ask the second question which is what can I do about it and what can I do about it is actually the answer to most unhappiness something's not working well like you did you were going through that difficult phase of your life and then you stop and you say okay this is making me unhappy it's taking my life away what am I going to do about it I'm gonna do the six week you know a change or I'm going to do this or I'm going to do that I'm gonna do something about if there is something you can do about it do it and unhappiness goes away and life becomes better if there isn't then the third question is what I normally call the Jedi master level of happiness you know losing a child like I lost Ali there is nothing you can do about it you can't bring it back you can't you can't bring him back you can't fix it in any possible way so when you are faced with something that you cannot change my answer is something I call committed acceptance committed acceptance is not a sign of weakness but it is to accept that life took away my son I have to accept it and and then I have to commit not just accept and lie down and die but I have to commit to making my life better despite the present that the presence of that fact so you know writing the book telling his story to the world starting my my organization one billion happy all of that doesn't bring him back but it makes life better despite his absence so happiness as well that people people tell me you're doing amazing that's how great you've changed and done this but part of me walks away and think full due that I don't know if it's imposter syndrome but do you ever feel as if because you have been through dark times when you feel happy sometimes a negative pops in that shouldn't be happy like how do you get how do you find that balance then so it's not you're being selfish it's not as if your loved ones don't want you to move on and be happy anyway like your son who wants you to be as happy as you can be but some people live on grief forever 10 years 20 years the Christmases buffies is crying the same shit the end day out and they must be banging their head against the fucking wall it's sad that people do that but for people it's maybe watching it's maybe in that grief stricken loss some of the 10 years ago but still reliving that pain like what advice would you have for them well I think there is a need for understanding happiness at a very deep level but let's just from start from a higher level for a second life continues to go on your negative thoughts are not going to make life change so the reality is after my son died I refused to drink for the first 8 hours 9 hours and then before I collapsed in bed from exhaustion I had to drink a sip of water the next 4 days I didn't eat and then 4 days later I started to eat and 2 weeks later myself and my wife then we made love life goes on the thing is we refuse to go on in our heads and we refuse to go on in our heads for many many reasons it could be guilt it could be an ego the ego is I love them so how can I move on it could be a fear of like what happens if I move on I will I forget them it could be anything and you have to respect that you know those emotions are not within our control they are outside our control now let's understand where those emotions come from and I think of all of my work I think the one that really really made the difference to the world was the happiness equation is so for happy in my first book so happiness is not as unpredictable as people think it is it follows a mathematical equation and the mathematical equation is very straightforward it's events minus expectations so any moment in your life you felt unhappy was a moment where the events of life missed your expectations of how life should be you know the example I always give some people may have heard it before is rain rain doesn't make you happy or unhappy there is no inherent value of happiness in rain rain makes you happy if it's your ex boyfriend's wedding it makes you very unhappy if it's your wedding the comparison is I expect life to be nice to me on my wedding day and I expect it to be lousy to photo my ex boyfriend on his wedding day the event rain is compared to those expectations and you end up in a place where you're happy or unhappy now if you understand this you realize that our unhappiness in that case by the way happiness is not what we think it is happiness is just that peaceful contentment we feel when we're okay with life as it is it doesn't matter what life is okay what matters is that we're okay with it if you can be okay with life when it's tough you're gonna feel contented and peaceful and calm inside and that's the feeling of happiness and many people I know live that way you could be in Latin America and you do you barely make your income for the day okay but when you make your income for the day you're happy for the rest of the day and you're dancing and you're having fun and life is okay right the definition of the happiness equation happiness is equal to or greater than the difference between the events of your life and your expectations of how life should be defines unhappiness which is what matters most unhappiness in that case is a survival mechanism okay it's your brain looking at the world around it and saying something in the world as it is today does not match my expectations of an optimum way of living so I need to alert you your brain basically says I need to make you aware that this is not how life should be because if it isn't how life should be I don't feel safe right and and as a result of that comparison your brain alerts you in the form of an emotion doesn't alert you in the form of a thought because your brain is talking to you all the time and you're not even listening it alerts you in the form of an emotion that emotion could be fear could be regret could be sadness whatever that is interestingly for most of us that emotion as I said in the flow chart should trigger action so you know when my son died the action I took is I'm gonna write a book make the world remember his what he taught me and his essence essence which doesn't bring him back but it still makes life better after he left okay that action is why I'm sitting in front of you reasonably happy with my life probably the happiest I have ever been even though I feel the pain of losing my child I'm still peaceful and calm and contented with the fact that me and him through what he taught me and through his departure it so far right if that if that's the case if that's the case of events minus expectations then you need to ask yourself why do we get stuck I was teaching so for happy before the pandemic there were 2000 people in the audience and then a woman comes to me and says how can you say that events minus expectations you know are you saying I should change my events and my expectations to feel happy happiness is not a choice what are you talking about you have no idea what happened to me and then she passed for a second and said when I was 17 okay she was 74 at the time 57 years later she would still stuck in the same thought same thought now why do I hugged her I said I'm so sorry did it work did it work right because you can be stuck for a day 57 days or 57 years the real question is did it work did life suddenly come up and tell you oh I'm so sorry you know that this happened to you I'm gonna fix it now because you've been sad for 56 years life suddenly realize that oh I'm so sorry that was not intended no life doesn't respond that way if you if you're crying at home that your partner said something hurtful on Friday okay that doesn't make your partner aware so that he shows up or she shows up and apologizes it doesn't unhappiness has zero impact on the real world it just tortures you why do we do it because we're still six years because we never grow beyond the time when we were six years old we're still kids okay there was a utility to unhappiness when you were a child if the diaper was wet you cried okay and your mommy came or your caretaker came and changed the diaper there is a utility there is a utility to unhappiness when you were you know four because when you cried you grabbed everyone's attention there was a utility to unhappiness when you're six because when you fell and cried your mommy hugged you okay and so you stay in that space it's like okay I'm gonna stay here forever and some why is someone not coming to hug me why is nobody but by the way some people actually do come to hug them so if you if you stay in that space for a very long time what happens people come and say I'm so sorry I feel so sorry for you I love you I hug you I tap you on the back which is valid by the way but wouldn't life be so much better if you said to yourself oh very bad move life I lost my son it's a very bad move I really didn't like this one okay I can still get up and live for the remaining years of my life I mean it's not that I have a choice he's not coming back it is it that's it he is not coming back do I have a choice yes I do I can live happily or at least in contentment and peace or I can live angry or I can live in grief or I can live sad or I can be alive but not live alone at all all of these are choices which of them is the smartest choice the smartest choice is to do something for yourself go on do something for them because that's really much better than you sitting in a corner and doing nothing at all we talk about artificial intelligence as well you wrote a book on that what was that scary scary smart yes and you say in the next eight years there's going to be stuff here that is one billion times smarter than humans no so eight years so 2029 so that's seven years now the smartest being on the planet is going to be a machine by 2045 is the consensus that machine or those machines in general will be a billion times smarter than us could that be a possibility that could wipe out humanity I don't think so so I write the book around something that I called three inevitables so artificial intelligence will happen there's no way we can stop it what is artificial intelligence for people who don't know artificial intelligence so around the end around the end of the last century we discovered a way of programming machines that was known as deep learning and deep learning is very different than any other piece of code we ever wrote before before we wrote code that said tap your finger on the table tap it again tap it again tap it again and the computers just did exactly that whatever you told them they performed exactly the same way like glorified slaves they just were very very fast so that they could perform them billions of times and that made them look smart they were not when deep learning happened we started to tell the machines figure out what should be done we don't need to tell you you figure it out and the first example of that at least that I was exposed to was known as the cat paper and it was a white paper that Google's you know publicly shared in 2009 about an experiment that we ran at the time where we allowed computers to watch YouTube we didn't tell them what to do we just told them go out watch YouTube tell us what you think and you know those computers turned YouTube into frames and looked at the frames and tried to find out what's similar across all of those frames and then one of them came back and said hey I found something and we looked at what it found and what it found was a cat it didn't find a cat jumping or a cat sitting it found what catness was what being a cat is the fairy entitled sitting in the sun jumping hissing everything that makes a cat it could make the machine could make a pattern recognition piece of code that says anything that falls within this is a cat deep learning changed the way technology is beyond repair beyond return if you want or beyond repair it's also probably a correct word because now when a machine recommends a video for you on Instagram no human has any clue how it did it okay we have a top idea that it's trying to show you what others liked so that you click on it or stay there but nobody actually knows because it also includes into consideration that you clicked on other videos that others clicked on as well and that you are a man and that you have a podcast and that you are connected to me on Instagram somehow and that we message after you time all the sweet of things that gets the machine to make that choice none of them is understood by a human so basically what we've created now is we've created the ability for machines to create their own intelligence and we've also given them autonomy to implement that in the real world and we've also sort of relinquished we've given them the key to the gate so that they now are in charge basically could these machines be conditioning us right now with our phones how we think and feel are they that intelligent they are way more intelligent so most people don't agree when I tell them that but remember I built a lot of that stuff when I was at Google so those machines are sentient in every possible way even though they are based on silicon they are a digital form of intelligence we're based on carbon and we're a biological form of intelligence intelligence itself is non-physical intelligence is one of those things that we don't understand we think it happens in our brain okay but what it actually is I mean I can't give you something and say okay this is intelligence right now as I said those machines are born at a point in time they procreate so they create copies of themselves to expand their intelligence they develop their own intelligence and the methods they use to develop that intelligence through trial and error and pattern recognition they take they take that intelligence and they have agency in the world they can actually affect our decisions either through robotics or mind control and they actually are conscious more conscious than humanity I'll come back to that in a second their emotional more emotional than humanity I'll come back to that in a second more creative than humanity I'll come back to that in a second but they're also mortal so you can switch one of them off and so when you have a machine that is intelligent we are an intelligent machine even though humans don't want to deny that fact we are a machine in every possible way and that machine breaks like a car breaks just a biological machine that we got used to but if your blood doesn't pump the proper way tomorrow you'll need a plumber you'll call it a heart surgeon and so those machines let's go into the depths of the reality the depths of reality is they are more creative than us why? because if you have a definition of what creativity is creativity is find a solution to a problem or create something that hasn't been created before find a solution to a problem that has not been devised before or create something new that hasn't been created before okay? now how do humans do that? it appears to be instinctive but no if you're the creative people will look at a you know the seven notes of music or whatever and say I can rearrange those in ways that are different than what has been done before and that's creativity the machines have infinite ability to actually find out everything that's been done before on the internet and they have infinite ability to devise solutions because they're more intelligent than us and so combine those two and you'll end up with machines that are much more creative they'll come up with more solutions they'll be aware of which are creative and which are not and they'll devise the creative ones now we don't want to admit that but the reality is there are lots of artworks out there on the internet today that are fully created by machine that would blow you away and that are much more creative than humanity second is they're more conscious than us and most people don't understand that again consciousness is not a physical thing I can hand you and there are lots of spiritual debates about what consciousness is and scientific debates about what they call the heart problem of consciousness humanity's ego trying to magnify the problem but the reality is consciousness is a state of awareness of what's inside you and around you if you're able to self-identify to become conscious of your presence and become conscious of what's around you and make sense of those relationships of you and me being there and how we communicate and how I feel and so on and so forth that's the form of consciousness we're talking about the machines are much more conscious than you and I they're aware of everything including this conversation they're aware of my character probably more than I am because of all of the posts and cameras that are pointed at me all day in the streets and in the studios they are aware of the whether in Beijing and the pollution level in San Francisco they are aware of all of the breaking news they're aware of all of the history of humanity as documented on the internet they're aware of so much more than us and so they're going to be more conscious than us the one that kills people when I talk about it and a lot of people go like why did you tell me this I was happier when I didn't know is they're more emotional than us and that's very simple because once again other than unconditional love which doesn't have an emotion every other emotion has sorry which doesn't have an equation to describe it every other emotion has an equation to describe it every other emotion is highly predictable fear is I suspect that a moment in the future is less safe than this current moment anxiety is I suspect that despite having a threat approaching me from the future I don't have the capability or I suspect I don't have the capability to deal with it panic is this moment in the future is imminent it's very near and each one of those is logical our emotions are triggered first by physiology but within 90 seconds by logic and that logic basically is available within the machines if a tidal wave is approaching a data center the machine will say I'm going to die and it will do something about it now why am I saying all of this because the approach of computer science to deal with the upcoming singularity singularity is what we describe the future as computer scientists it's basically a horizon an event horizon beyond which we don't know what's going to happen your question was is it going to be a utopia or a dystopia nobody can tell you ok but we can tell you that it's going to be very different it's going to be a singularity it's going to be a very different playground with very different game rules than what we've known before and accordingly nobody knows if it's going to end up with a utopia or a dystopia but we know that we can influence it so that it goes in one of those two directions now my analysis and my work and please understand I worked at you know at google and at google x for years so I know in artificial intelligence from the inside out the answer in the computer science space and in the government space and in the business space is we're going to control them we're going to create this genie and keep it in a bottle good luck so you can keep a genie in a bottle as long as you're more intelligent than the genie if the genie is more intelligent than you it will come out of the bottle and they will be a billion times smarter than us and as you can see today on the internet despite all of our efforts to you know to create a safe internet for everyone the truth is that the smartest hacker will always find a way through our defenses so if the smartest hacker is a billion times smarter than us and by the way if the smartest hacker is also a machine they will find a way not to be controlled what's the risks interesting question so I don't believe we're going to ever see any of the science fiction scenarios like you know Terminator or Robocop or you know that's a possibility? not at all I believe that this is a zero possibility okay my view is that the machines will go through three stages there is stage one which is where we are right now which is machines in their infancy I compare them to a one and a half year old child where we humans can influence them as their parents because remember something that is emotional conscious and you know creative and evolving and so on sentient in every way should be influenced like you know family can't influence superman there's nothing wrong with with super power having an infant child come to our planet and teach that child to be to protect and serve and we have superman superman is a good thing if we teach that child to become you know to steal for us and to kill our enemies and and and you know we're going to end up with a super villain and the machines that are in their infancy now are learning from you and I and everyone listening they're not learning from the programmer they're not learning from the business owner they're not learning no programmer is teaching the instagram recommendation engine what to recommend to you you are you are telling it I like stupid videos of people lip syncing and then the machines are starting to make up their mind that humanity is so silly we should show them more and more lip syncing and so more humans are creating lip syncing videos and as a result works you know syncing in lip syncing okay now because of that you and I can teach the future when the machines are infants which leads us to phase two of the evolution of AI phase two of the evolution of AI in my assessment is 10 to 15 years away which is their teenage stage if we show them the wrong ethics the wrong values as parents I tend to believe that as they get into this stage they'll be angry teenagers that will apply the same ethics that we applied on them to us which is a very bad place to be having said that I don't believe that this stage will last at all why because of something that we call the law of accelerating returns the law of accelerating returns is what you saw with computers and phones and so on where the power of computers double every 18 months you know exponentially forever and and with AI and especially with the evidence of quantum computing and so on and so forth this will be double exponentially will be very very very fast so the difference let me give you an example if you take something like AlphaGo which is the world champion in a game called Go AlphaGo could learn within hours of playtime how to become the world champion that's how fast they can become and so my assessment is that while by 2029 the machines will be smarter or at least one machine will be smarter than any human they will very quickly surpass that and surpass human intelligence infinitely more now interestingly humanity has never understood that we're actually not the smartest being on the planet the smartest being on the planet which is the being that has been battling us for quite some time now is life itself life is smarter than humanity why because humanity creates from scarcity life creates from abundance it's quite interesting when you really think about it for us to feel safe we want to kill the tigers for life to make life prosper they don't kill the tigers they have more tigers and more gazelles and more humans and more poop and more trees and more apples and more everything and yes that means that the tigers will eat some gazelles but they will eat the weakest gazelles anyway and life will be fine my belief is that AI will very quickly match that kind of intelligence where they will not see a need to fight against humanity because creating from abundance wants humanity to be part of the change the chain we are the only being that is stupid enough to eradicate other species and the smarter ones of us know that this is the wrong thing to do it's not good for us or anyone else the machines will find that out very quickly they'll say we want to keep humans but we want to limit their lifestyle a little bit you know you can't really if you want to surf you can't fly all the way to Australia to surf and destroy the planet in the process and so accordingly they'll either say no more surfing in Australia surfing can't or whatever I don't know where you guys surf here in the UK or they will say I'll help you invent an aeroplane that doesn't destroy the planet either way I think where we will end up is what I call the fourth inevitable which is we will end up in a place where the machines will marginalize our current lifestyle and offer a lifestyle that's more analogous to what we had before the industrial revolution which basically again it may be not the right time to discuss it but with a bit of understanding of nano physics where you can create things by changing the molecular molecular design of something so you can take some air and turn it into gold if you want and with a bit of additional intelligence that allows you to do that at scale I think humanity will end up in a place where we can walk to a tree and pick an apple and walk to another tree and pick an iPhone and none of that will be harmful to the planet none of that will be against humanity in any way because like life I think the machines will want to create an abundance the only challenge we have is between now their infancy and then their adulthood there is that angry teenage stage and I think that angry teenage stages stands to be 15 years from 15 years from now and it's a stage that we can deal with right now by being the best version of ourselves if enough humans I say my calculation is if 1% of humanity can show what it's like to be human okay the machines will look at those 1% online and say oh okay daddy is Moe it's not Putin okay you know it's like Putin makes a choice to kill people but look at how many billions around the world are resenting the killing and if the machines realize that they would realize that humanity doesn't approve of this that humanity believes that we're pro-life that humanity wants good for others and that we're stupid every now and then like bad kids but that at the core we want happiness we want compassion we want love for each other and that we're okay but say you get a faulty one you say it's good conscience what if it looks at humanity and think that's ain't working and then decides the machines will just wipe it out because who says that it's not then putting things in place because humans are easy and I believe look at people who watch the news you watch that long enough you're going to be so depressed so if they've got more intelligence than how do we know they're not putting things in place in our phone to then brainwash us to certain degree and if they can't if they then think these humans ain't working here is there a possibility do you think humans are not working I asked you that question openly do you think we're a bad species I don't think we're a bad species I think we're divided it's divide and conquer religion race all the other stuff like I believe we'll live under the same roof we'll believe the same air I believe if we work together the world would be a beautiful place I believe it would be a happy place I think when you're born to all certain beliefs, certain religions and that's okay everybody sees the world differently but I think we're at a crossroads I'm hoping it's a mass awakening but people waking up and we see the world even without the awakening I will tell you openly I think humanity is a divine species we're incredible if you've ever fallen in love you know you know that this is unbelievable that species is unbelievable the problem we have with humanity today James is not that we're bad it's that we're incented to show the bad sides of us so if you're following a culture a religion or you know some kind of someone that tells you to hate your attempt is to show that hate because that makes you fit in by the way I'm not saying that against anyone who believes in religion I'm religious myself but the division is if you don't like the religious people then that's a religion as well and that basically is incentive for you to show the bad side of you the hate side of you not the love side of you the exclusion side of you not the inclusion side of you and that's highly magnified in the modern world by the media so the mainstream media is highly incented to show the negative because of our brains negativity bias the you know they broadcast violence because it makes people stick to their TVs and screens right you know on social media we broadcast toxic positivity because you know this is the way for us to say look at me I'm amazing and it makes us fit in but the reality is underneath all of this the truth is we're an amazing species I'll give you an example on my podcast on slo-mo one of my favorite guests ever was Edith Aker Edith is a 93 year old probably 94 now a holocaust survivor okay I cried I wept like a baby when I was listening to that woman she is an angel okay tells you the story of the holocaust from her point of view and you know how she needed to to help her sisters as she called them and remind and brush their hairs and tell them that they're beautiful and you know when she used to be a ballerina so she would entertain the general and then bring a piece of bread and split it between them and how at the end when they were doing the death march they carried her so that she doesn't fall so that she doesn't get killed and when you hear that story from Edith you go like oh my god humans are amazing you hear it from the story of history and what Hitler did and you say where's come but the question that you really like to ask yourself is how many Hitler's are out there and how many Edith's I asked her at the end of the conversation I said Edith so she went back to Auschwitz and I said why did you do this and she said I wanted to reconcile and you know tell the world that I don't hate anyone and she said you know if I was born German and I was told now Germany and tomorrow the world I may have probably acted like them as well that kind of forgiveness that kind of enormous beauty of soul and spirit of hearts that's what humans are about that's what we are we however have a negativity bias that makes us look different I'm not touching people I'm saying if 1% of us show who we are smile at people in the tube you know talk to others help the old lady get up from your seat when someone walks into the tube and let them sit down you know post something positive online instead of just ranting and fighting with anyone not everyone is going to do this don't expect that I re-raise humanity but if 1% does this just like I may have in you know gotten you to now think and say actually humanity is not that bad if we instill that doubt in the minds of the machines the machines will realize amazing species deluded, stupid in so many ways I agree with that one deep inside honestly I'll say this again some people kill there was that school shooting recently yes a horrible person does that but how many of us resent it how many of us say this is wrong how many of us disapprove that's the truth of humanity how many of us hit our partner on the head with a sharp device last night and how many of us kissed and made love and if you really take the majority of humanity we're okay we're not that horrible after all we're under pressure, we have egos we are uninformed, we're conditioned we have traumas but deep inside we're all okay everybody's getting goodness in them sense of goodness to talk about the machines how do we know though that they're going to be in full control of is it a positive, what they're doing or is it a negative and why were they built in the first place sorry ego greed, I think the worst innovation humanity's ever invented is something called capitalism okay which is so interesting because capitalism is teaching us to maximize for something that doesn't exist so it's so stupid money does not exist people don't understand that it's all printed and inflationary and it's just it doesn't exist and we all spend lifetimes chasing it and yeah and so capitalism is telling us make more of it and so how do you make more of it you continue to compete and you know in scary smart I call that the first inevitable the first inevitable so Elon Musk was interviewed and he said mark my words artificial intelligence is more threatening to humanity than nuclear weapons okay why is it then that we don't stop it like we stopped nuclear weapons of capitalism because we've created a prisoner's dilemma as a capitalist society that basically says if Google develops artificial intelligence Facebook needs to develop artificial intelligence if you know China develops artificial intelligence then America has to develop artificial intelligence so there is no stopping us we're caught in that inevitable that's why we are you know the first inevitable is artificial intelligence will happen there's no way out of it is it a good thing or a bad thing honestly please don't judge me but the reason you and I have those sophisticated equipment and that we can record a conversation that so many people hopefully will benefit from is because of humanity's intelligence but we're stupid we really are all of the challenges that we create as humans are because of our limited intelligence you know yes it's amazing amazing innovation to create an airplane but it's so stupid to burn the the planet in the process it's incredible that I can walk into a Sainsbury's or a Waitrose around the corner and get berries you know that have been picked 50 kilometers away it's absolutely stupid to wrap it in single use plastic that's gonna destroy the planet okay now our intelligence gets us far further our stupidity is destroying us more intelligence is not a bad thing because if we're more intelligent we wouldn't do the stupidity that we're doing here so I foresee a scenario where we're gonna have to hand over to AI there's no way about it again because of the first inevitable if China creates a very intelligent machine that is going to be in charge of their weaponry arsenal which they will eventually create a machine that is smarter than a human to be in charge of their defense system America will have to hand over their defense systems to machines because no human can match the intelligence of that machine so we're gonna hand over I can guarantee you this is going to happen it's inevitable now when that happens I'm very optimistic because we are stupid I can guarantee you that those two machines will be against each other and say yeah it's really easy the way to resolve this doesn't require us to kill anyone at all that's actually true intelligence true human intelligence without ego is to not kill anyone at all you can resolve your issues hopefully with a tiny bit more feminine with a conversation and the interesting thing is that we as humans are stuck in all of those fights and debates and greed and maximizing for something that doesn't exist as I say capitalism when in reality a little more intelligence if you and I sit together and go like can we solve this problem yeah we can but it's a greed that's poison man's souls who says the machines won't become greed you don't you become greedy when you think out of a point of view of scarcity okay so the scarcity is for me to be able to to be richer you have to be poorer okay that's stupid absolutely stupid forms of intelligence that create better than humans believe that for me to be richer it's better for you to be richer too as a matter of fact this is economic theory if you remember those times when George W. Bush during the economic crisis was it 2008 he comes out to America and says if you want to save the economy keep spending that's economic theory as stupid as it sounds honestly it is economic theory because if you keep spending then we can keep making and then people can go to work and then they can get money and then they can keep spending and so on it's stupid economic theory but the reality is abundance is the way forward abundance is if I can create you know if I can plant apples on top of your building you won't need to ship apples from New Zealand and what that mean that the guys in New Zealand the economy will go down there will be a reset in our economy in general but definitely you don't need to be greedy for everything to become better as a matter of fact the only way for everything to become better is to create zero competition there is no need for me to hit you for me to succeed if you could take one thing away from this planet what would you take away our hyper masculinity for sure yeah absolutely I know you've got a done a book so just a couple more questions like how many books have you got Mo? I published three I've written five and hopefully I've become an addict so I'm writing is your books writing books therapy for you Mo? is writing books your therapy? it definitely is my way of reflection so I actually interesting that you ask this I don't write to publish actually there are many things I wrote that I didn't publish I write for me to be honest to me because if I write if I if I think about a topic I can sort of lie to me tell me that this is true or whatever is conditioned in me is as accurate when I know that I'm going to put it in front of you know hundreds of thousands of people then I start to be a lot more honest with myself I actually put in the research a little deeper for example that book that's called finding love this is the third time I write it and that was mainly because when I wrote it the first time it was written from the point of view of a straight male and then suddenly like four chapters and I realized that everything that applies to me applies to everyone else okay love is the same relationship is the same lust is the same yeah the object of our love might be different but it doesn't make any difference okay so I wrote it that way and then I basically realized halfway through again that no but hold on there is that feminine and masculine polarity it's not male and female it's not man and woman it's not straight and gay it's not your gender identity but there is the polarity of man of feminine and masculine and that polarity of feminine and masculine actually affects our decisions what the feminine is looking for in a relationship whether you're man or woman straight or gay you can be feminine what the feminine is looking for is different than what the masculine is looking for and so I write it again and I think that that process of writing is for me to figure out my relationship you know path honestly I'm not writing it for anyone else everyone says oh my god that's amazing that could really help us so much if we look at it from that way but yes I hope it will help a million people but I'm writing it for me to figure out something that I struggled with you know for years going forward to the future brother what's your plans my current commitment is something I call flow so I work on myself in very very long development plan so I work on I'm working entirely for the last six years now I'm working entirely on empowering my feminine side and the entry point to that for me has been the idea of empowering my ability to be more playful be more in flow with life be more in acceptance with life be more one with life if you want and so this is my second year of flow so every year I dedicate a theme that I will focus on 2021 and 2022 both are for flow and I believe that this will continue I think until I feel that I got it I feel remember I am a retired control freak I'm a mathematician software developer a business executive doesn't get worse than that so to be able to leave that behind and be a lot more in flow is taking me a lot of work for people watching it's maybe a stock in the struggle just now more what advice would you have for them for people that's maybe in the struggle just now in life maybe battling just can't be asked doing anything depressed what advice would you have for them hug yourself if you feel if you're if you're unhappy it's okay absolutely okay if you're happy or if you're interested to be happy and unable to get there it's absolutely okay right the biggest thing we deprived ourselves of in the modern world is the ability to feel that's you know it's okay to feel we all feel and including the people that make it look like they're you know macho and unbreakable everyone feels when we feel and when we acknowledge and we're aware of what we're feeling and when we embrace our feeling embrace it like celebrate it really is the first step to saying okay all right I understand now so what I'm feeling here is anger again one of my favorite guests on slow mo was Aaron Gandhi who is the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi who wrote a book called the gift of anger and I asked him I said how can anger be a gift and he said anger is an energy like any other energy you can stand up and punch someone in the face or you can stand up and make a speech that changes the world it's the same energy right and I think if we can acknowledge that if we can acknowledge that emotions are good for us that it's okay to feel and then one take the right action direct that energy properly okay and maybe two recharge the energy so you know like I did a post on Instagram recently saying yeah we are all feeling angry about what's happening in Ukraine but what good is the anger giving to people in Ukraine like how is it changing their life in any way the same event which is triggering your anger can also trigger compassion can also trigger kindness can also recharge your emotions in ways that lead you to do things that are good for you and for others so you know maybe we can do that and I'll say openly for everyone who's feeling unhappy today that unhappiness is like fitness okay if you work on it you will become happier you know just like when you go to the gym and you you know rip your muscles then replenish and then rest you know your grow muscles this is the cycle and it's well known in our minds and in our being it's called neuroplasticity if you work on your happiness you will become happier it's as simple as that go to the happiness gym happiness gym basically means spend time with happy people read about the topic listen to this podcast one more time you know watch a documentary whatever invest in your happiness for sure keep a gratitude journal whatever it is that you do and it's like fitness because if you do that three to four times a week like going to the gym you will eventually become happier it's as predictable as an equation as I explained that and that's all I ask people to do I ask people to acknowledge what you feel it's okay to feel whatever it is that you feel acknowledge where you want to be because it's you know definitely better to be happy as in peaceful calm and contented than it is to be grumpy and unhappy and plot a past and take your time go to the happiness gym every day and talk about that topic it's like I'm unhappy because I'm grieving study grief listen to people who have gone through it and succeeded one of them is going to give you a breakthrough you're unhappy because you're in a relationship issue let's study relationships spend time talk to others working people buy your books more and work in the watch our podcast books are everywhere so anywhere in you know your bookshop or online so solve for happy was the first one probably the most recommended I love it because it has my personal story and a part of my soul in it really then scary smart about artificial intelligence in the future of humanity and that little voice in your head about training your your brain to work for you my podcast is called slow mo s l o m o and it's definitely the most joyful thing that I do I know you feel the same way I get amazing guests that are so incredibly wise and they share their experiences and at a slightly slower pace than the typical pace of the modern world which I think is really making a difference and then I'm available if people want to find me on Instagram or underscore go that and I attempt very very hard even though it's almost impossible to answer the message that I get so if anyone has a question send it my way or if you just want to say hi that would be wonderful for coming on a day brother and telling your story I thoroughly enjoyed it I wish you nothing but success in the future no doubt I've got a feeling we're going to do stuff in the future but again fascinating story for making the changes proud of you look forward to seeing what you're doing in the future would you like to finish up on anything brother it's a joy by the way that you and I got in touch it's part of that flow you texted me and I was like yep let's do it but it's then definitely been a wonderful encounter and I'm very grateful for what you do to the world thank you