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Language: en
you guys are on something that is just
my absolute Obsession right now and you
make a very bold claim in your new book
you said that the next billion dollar
company will be founded by three people
how is that possible first let me just
say that we're living in a different day
and age the ability to start companies
today that are exponential and the name
of the book is exponential organizations
2.0 the new playbook for 10x growth and
impact it's a series of attributes that
never existed before and uh AI is going
to play the biggest role without
question but it's all the exponential
Technologies Celine yeah if you look
back in history maybe uh 57 years ago it
needed about a 10 000 person company to
create a billion dollar valuation that's
crazy then it dropped to about a
thousand people uh Instagram was 13
people right now we'll get it down to
three people because AI will handle most
of the execution work you'll have a CEO
who will drive vision and product a
product I will focus just on getting
things done in an operations person
that'll handle everything else and you
should just have ai Bots doing all the
finances marketing etc etc as somebody
who's deploying AI as rapidly as humanly
possible and I know that people have a
lot of anxiety around this it's still
for all of ai's immediate uses it still
seems hard to imagine that big leap how
should people be using AI right now if
they want to be on that path so one of
the things I'm doing in the companies
that I'm running or advising or
investing in as I'm saying first of all
every company needs to have what I call
a chief AI officer and it's a role I
made up was teaching at abundance 360
this year and it is not someone who's
building a large language model for you
or writing code for you it's an
individual who understands what's going
on in the terrain because we're seeing
not hundreds or thousands tens of
thousands of startups everybody you know
you can start an AI company now with
literally spare time in your garage
so understanding what's out there what
the modalities are and what you can and
should be using is critical so your
Chief AI officer is scanning The Horizon
understanding it and then advising
members of your team so every part of
your team right there's going to be AI
supporting sales and marketing and uh
and engineering and HR we're all going
to have in the near term an AI co-pilot
right this is an AI that helps you do
your job better because we are so
limited as carbon life forms
But ultimately is going to be able to
operate and do a number of the things
repetitively because we do a lot of
repetitive tasks and AIS are much better
at that um
I think if you've got we've got say a 30
person company every single person needs
to be trained in Ai and using these
chatbot a auto GPT tools and absolutely
augment themselves 10 20 100x I have
said to my company okay everybody here
needs to figure out in your department
what are the tools that exist in Ai and
how can you immediately Implement them
but even that's pretty vague like I'm
just sort of dumping it on them where do
people start like what is the thing you
actually do easy and super specific if
you have an email newsletter that goes
out use chat you PT they'll say how
would I increase the engagement rate
with this email we did that we got a 25
increase feed it the email you feed it
the email yeah
come up with a better headline or put in
Social sharing links throughout it or
say listen I'm in HR go to chatgpt open
it up right now if you hopefully you
have the you know the gpt4 version of it
and say I'm in HR how should I be used
using generative AI in my business it'll
it'll feed you you know give me five
examples or ten examples pick the one
that sounds good give me step-by-step
instructions on how to use this it's you
know it's recursive in that fashion and
so you're going to use AI to help you
learn what you want to know
you know it comes back a lot to mindset
Tom and you need the mindset of a kid
here curiosity absolute play it's like
you know one of the things I'm going to
be doing in my team my PhD Ventures it
runs at buttons 360 and a few others
we're gonna we're setting aside three
days and no homework coming out of these
three days we're gonna go in with a
series of objectives and we're going to
actually crank for three days and
generate all the content all the plans
and you can but it takes time for all of
us to switch from our old habits of how
we do things to new ways so the first
time it's going to take 150 of your time
the next time we'll take 50 and 25 you
talk about mindset the thing I see and
I'm sure you guys have encountered this
is a lot of people they just have so
much anxiety about this is going to
replace me I think about that a lot so
Lisa and I have have put our Fortune
back at risk to build this company and
you've said this a lot but I've said
this a lot skate to where the puck is
going to be not where the puck is the
problem is right now feels like the puck
is teleporting and so it becomes very
difficult to know where that puck is
actually going to be so how do you guys
think about that as and you guys talk in
your book about the fact that the
average company used to be on the S P
500 for like 67 years it's down to 15
we're expecting it to just keep dropping
so
how do we not just get disrupted seven
minutes after we figure out how to use
AI
well I think there's a few different
things going on here but the first is
you should talk about the asteroid
analogy yeah because I think that sets
the framing for what's actually
happening here I view what's going on in
the business world today
similar to the asteroid 20 kilometer
asteroid that struck the Earth 65
million years ago and wiped out the
dinosaurs right the asteroid changed the
environment of us so rapidly so
dramatically that the slow lumbering
dinosaurs who didn't adapt went extinct
and it was the furry little mammals our
ancestors that were agile enough to
adapt that survived and thrived so the
asteroids striking the Earth right now
are exponential Technologies with AI as
the you know the overlord there and it's
just going to change the environment so
rapidly that you need you need agility
you need a team that is agile one of the
things I would I would say is also what
do you own
that is unique
whether it's characters uh in a you know
Disney's characters that they own versus
having a movie distribution system
uh what do you have that's Uniquely
Yours what data do you have what
processes do you have what assets do you
have that as the tech changes you can
take the data on those assets and put it
through the new tech this is my
hypothesis let me know what you think
about this so uh AI is going to generate
a ton of noise
so even as you were saying like hey I'm
an HR person how do I do this or how do
I make this email better everybody's
gonna have access to that same thing and
that lead Google memo about AI has no
mode and AI has no mode and so we're all
going to be able to use this and so as
somebody making a video game and
somebody thinking about IP the real
thing you have to get good at is getting
people to care and so it's that Disney
has gotten people to care about their
characters so when you think about AI
making the creation of art instantaneous
because a big part of what made art cool
before was the sense of I couldn't do
that and so when somebody presents you
with something that you couldn't do
you're like whoa that's so cool and you
have this like really emotional response
now I'm like I could do that or I might
even be able to do something right so
now it's like when I see just a wall of
AI art I my brain still goes to the
characters I care about right so my
thing is
in a world where we are going to get
disrupted incredibly fast in a world
where now the game really is about
making people care how do people break
through the noise and maybe even more
specifically how do you stay emotionally
sober long enough to try to break
through the noise so this goes straight
to the first and most important
characteristic of an EXO which is the
massive transformative purpose right
when you pick a problem that you are
deeply passionate about say curing
cancer you've put all your emotional
energy into that Peter talks about the
emotional connection that gets created
uh no matter what the tool set is or
what the capabilities are your emotional
connection to that and the passion you
bring to it is the thing that will
separate you out from everybody else
because somebody else has to come to
edit with exactly enough the same
passion and have access to the same
tools and that's what it'll win out
that'll be the steadying ship for how do
you navigate this chaotic world is what
fundamental problem do I get excited
about and I'm just going to go after
that problem and stick with it yeah I
think you nailed it time uh the idea of
an exponential org what we lay out is
the number one thing that a entrepreneur
or and you know a more advanced company
needs to do is establish that MTP that
massive transformative purpose and once
that's established then there's a whole
slew of 10 different attributes that
allow you to scale and allow you to
build something but in a world where
there's this abundance of opportunity
right where we're drowning in
opportunity and your attention is your
most important asset here that you're
going to gift a company
being connected to that company's MTP
right so
you know when Elon gets up on stage and
says we're going to build a
multi-planetary species we're going to
Mars we're going to help save the human
race and so forth people connect in
their heart and their mind to that if
some company stands up and says we're
going to provide better shareholder
returns I mean you know you know it's
just this noise this is two big
challenges big companies have first
they're not passion driven in the same
way some are the new breed of
organizations is they don't have an MTP
for example in fact the way this came
about was when we first put the original
version of the book together in 2014 we
scanned 200 unicorns and said how are
they doing it how are they scaling so
fast so the EXO model is not something
we invented we labeled kind of what was
already happening and put a framework
around it and without exception every
single one of these companies that was
moving very fast had this MTP they're
all dedicated to one particular problem
ways solving traffic or Uber everybody
should have a private driver and it acts
as the kind of the North Star the Simon
sinek question of why do you exist Etc
big companies have two problems the
first is they they typically tend not to
be Purpose Driven their brands are
tilting that way more and more but
secondly there's this old economic
theory called kosa's law written in the
1930s it's a nine page paper for which
he won the Nobel Prize this guy called
Ronald coast and he theorizes the big
companies exist because transaction
costs are lower inside the company than
outside and that you can achieve
economies of scale that way okay and we
in this book we declare Costa's law dead
because economies of scale can be
applied to an individual now who can
scale to a global global level and
economies have scaled and the
controlling factors of big companies
prevent you from moving in any kind of
an agile way and so therefore all the
advantages with the single individuals
or small teams with a passion and that's
where we think the future will go okay
so I can I can predict out and anybody
listening to the sound of my voice right
now should be aware that I I very much
have my money where my mouth is and so
my fears are very real
um I um the prediction that I will make
is that AI will make things better for
the masses in ways we just cannot fathom
and it will be absolutely incredible but
it does not care about the individual at
all and so while the consumer will win
I'll be very interested to see what
happens to people building businesses
because they will just come and go they
will get disrupted so fast that it will
begin to ask a new question of
entrepreneurs which is can you dedicate
your life's energy to something you know
will be obliterated in three years
interesting or like like the sand art in
India yeah right wow Jesus you just yeah
that hurts yeah well no but it's
interesting it's it's really it's truly
letting go it's it's it's non-attachment
so one of the underlying principles of
an exponential organization you and I
talked about this when we did our early
podcasts on abundance or bold or Futures
faster is the six D's of an exponential
right when you digitize any product or
service in every single product and
service is or will be digital ties and
if you're a CEO running a company where
your services are not digitized you're
in trouble because someone else is going
to do it to you in the early days the
growth of that product or service is
deceptively slow it's like the first
digital cameras that were 0.01
megapixels the next year is 0.02 then
.04 all look like zero it was deceptive
everyone ignored it
you know 20 doublings it's a million
times better 30 doublings it's a billion
times better and kodak's out of business
right so we go from digitized to
deceptive to disruptive and what happens
you dematerialize demonetize and
democratize so dematerialization is we
don't carry Kodak cameras or film around
anymore they're an app on your phone
right and when things become ones and
zeros the cost of replicating them
is effectively free
and the cost of transmitting them is
effectively free so they're demonetized
I can send my digitized whatever around
the world to a billion people for free
and then it's democratized everyone has
access to it so yes we are heading
towards this massive world of abundance
right where the best education the best
health care uh is provided by an AI
effectively for the cost of electricity
right so it's it's going towards zero
but would anybody go to medical school
anymore
um and by the way it's going to become
our practice to diagnose someone without
AI as your co-pilot probably within the
next five years that's crazy so this is
happening and yeah it's gonna it's gonna
it's gonna flip a bit or two here
because a lot of that well a lot of
wealth is created when you create
something and retain it for yourself and
you sell it off a little bit at a time
or you build a platform that other
people build on top of
but
um I remember I was on stage at
Singulair University I had Astro Teller
who was heading Google's moonshot
Factory and Steve jervetsen on the board
of Tesla and SpaceX he was at he's one
of the top Venture capitalists we're
talking about a future in which AI is
able to iterate on hardware and software
so rapidly that if you announcing your
product or a service someone else has
cracked it replicated and provided a
better version of it you know minutes
later
so what happens when intellectual
property is useless
because I don't want to protect myself
by having IP rates I want to protect
myself by having the best product
available things are getting very much
faster and better
but
it's gonna It's Gonna Change the World
yeah I mean if you if you go take your
analogy then any product or service your
build may be rendered obsolete pretty
quickly right then you lift above that
to go okay then what's the narrative or
story or framing you put around that
that's a little bit longer lasting and
about that are the mindsets right if you
have the right mindset then you don't
care if your MTP is curing cancer and
somebody gets there a little before
you're like yeah somebody got there
fantastic we got we cured cancer awesome
pick another MTP and keep going I don't
think that's going to be the human
response it's the ego it doesn't want
that it is so I I'm going to paraphrase
a guy named Saleem Ismail you guys may
have heard of him uh and he said that
we're gonna need an upgrade to the human
mind or we're not going to be able to
deal with the rate of change and I think
that's really real and right now we
don't have said upgrade to the human
mind and if I haven't gotten yours yet
huh I have not if you if you have in the
box somewhere please by only means give
it to me I would also I'd like to
paraphrase you again and then I'll
actually let you respond
um you said that somebody asked you well
wait a second okay a world of abundance
it sounds amazing but isn't that going
to uh damage GDP and you said yes it's
going to tank GDP yeah uh for those who
don't know what that is basically the
economy so abundance the thing that we
want is going to tank the global economy
should we not be terrified
well it's just one of these transitions
one way I frame it is this next 30 Years
will dictate the next 300 years
like is this going to be a 30 years of
just Terror in the streets Peter will
tell you abundance doesn't mean unicorns
and flowers and thing it it means
opportunity for all I call I say
abundance is not about a life of luxury
for everybody it's about a life of
possibility interesting whoa right so go
go into that look I know I know you very
well Peter and having researched you
Celine my I know you well enough to know
you guys are very much of a similar ilk
uh slim you've said very publicly you
don't think AI is dangerous
um but
walk me through the darker side of that
if if you don't mind indulging that
angle which I know is not your natural
angle but walk me through the the sort
of underlying Terror of possibility is
different I say please and thank you to
Alexa every morning
you know the AI overlords I want them
when they come forward to like remember
me Peter you were always nice to us
that's right one of my ctOS for one of
my companies years ago we asked him
what's the purpose in life and he goes I
want to evolve to the point that my
computer is proud of me and we had no
idea what he was talking about it and
now we're like oh yeah that's what he
meant
um I I think again there's the Dark Side
the dark side is I think the biggest
dark side is malicious use of these
Technologies right some bad actor says
this is let's use this to figure out how
to stop all the power plants
um stop all the medical machines from
running and hack them etc etc
um you know the we worry a lot about
that that we put huge amounts of effort
in this but the data that we have shows
that human beings when given a choice
whether to use good or bad generally
almost always pick good okay I'll give
you a little study they did a study when
eBay and Craigslist became prominent on
okay here's an environment for the first
time where a human being can easily do a
positive strand Doctrine or a fraudulent
one easy to mask my email address put a
Macbook up for sale a photograph of it
and walk off with a thousand bucks so
what's the actual ratio of good to bad
and after researching this quite uh
thoroughly they found that across
multiple systems like this Craigslist
eBay Etc the actual ratio of good or bad
was something like eight thousand to one
okay so there's a thousand positive for
each negative now that tells you that
when we have a new technology like
drones first response is oh my God the
Drone might be loaded up with C4 and
flown to the White House let's ban the
drones or put chips in there regulate
the hell out of it Etc and stop the
drones or stop autonomous cars or
whatever crispr whatever the AI now is
the flavor of the month well what
actually we see if you actually let
anybody use it the data shows that 8 000
people will do the positive thing and
one person it'll be easier to spot that
one person will do the negative thing
the problem is the amplitude of that one
is obviously very much getting much
bigger and so that's of concern but this
has been the same story since the
beginning of time fire can heat our
house and it can burn down yours
biotech problems Etc and we worry about
it it never actually comes to fruition
and maybe I'm just an optimist right
yeah I mean by the way optimists live
seven years longer on the average you
know that right
um I'm not surprised by that but I will
say that there's a new technology
rushing towards us it's going to change
the world uh and I let me let me answer
your question so uh when I think about
the dangers related to Ai and I'm not
gonna you know I think AI is the most
important tool Humanity has ever created
to solve all of our biggest problems no
doubt period exclamation point you know
Big Bright letters having said that are
there dangerous so the dangers can
simply break down into three different
groups one at one end is AI becomes
conscious and decides to squash us and
step on us I find that very unlikely and
a ridiculous thesis I think people have
just seen this in Hollywood way too much
I think the more intelligent something
is
uh honestly the more loving and kind and
pro-life it will be why why it's my
belief it is my belief I have other than
um I see
Humanity becoming as a whole over time
if you look at the numbers right and
we've looked at this from abundance uh
Warfare reducing massively over time
violent death reducing massively over
time access to Freedom increasing over
time I mean the numbers over a thousand
years not over the last five ten twenty
years but over a thousand years and
that's come from educating each other
with books and transportation connecting
us across the world and globalization
and interdependence all of these things
have led to it's hard to remember this
watching the crisis News Network right
CNN every day that's broadcasting every
murder on the planet to you over and
over and over again it's shaping our
neural Nets our brains are neural Nets
that we teach from example after example
and I don't watch the news right I don't
want some editor telling me about yet
another murder or crooked politician got
it and it isn't showing us a fair and
balanced view of what's actually going
on in the world the incredible science
and technology and humanitarian acts of
these things yeah anyway so one phase is
uh AGI you know artificial general
intelligence before you move off that
though so
um what you're describing is human
intelligence and so this is and societal
intelligence
I don't quite know what you mean by that
and what I mean is that societal Norms
organizing around the United Nations yes
people are born of this meat suit the
brain works in a certain way and
computers will not AI will not work in
that same way I have no reason to
believe that yeah very likely won't it
works it works differently
you can reboot your life your health
even your career anything you want all
you need is discipline I can teach you
the tactics that I learned while growing
a billion dollar business that will
allow you to see your goals through
whether you want better health stronger
relationships a more successful career
any of that is possible with the mindset
and business programs and impact Theory
University join the thousands of
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and get started today
at the end of the day you know when we
have these crazy Hollywood scripts that
AI is going to usurp us for our heat
from the Matrix I love The Matrix
they failed on that use of human bodies
I'm sorry I don't know if you agree with
me on that I I do agree with you and I
don't know well enough what their
original intention was but according to
them yes they were forced by the studio
to give a more simplistic answer so I
let them off the hook for okay that's
right but you know other we're coming to
get your water on this planet we're
listen whatever we have on this planet
is infinite in the universe we are a
spec a crumb in a universe filled with
resources and so AI doesn't need to you
know squash Humanity to get these
resources
um
so AGI at its extreme artificial general
intelligence at its extreme I don't
believe is going to be dystopian in
itself
in the middle term uh what I would call
the terrible twos or the teenage years
um maybe there is a case to be made that
in the beginning AI hasn't reached full
sentience doesn't understand the power
of its tools maybe there's a case that
you know it's the baby picking up a rock
and throwing it out the window not
understanding what it's you know the a
teenager with a BB gun and a squirrel
yes
that's that's the best but the third
element which is the most likely is the
benevolent uh individual it's it's the
Bad actors using technology and so
sometime in the next 18 months two years
there may well be not a uh a retrovirus
released but an AI virus that goes out
and shuts down power plants or shuts
down Wall Street and something and
causes a economic hurdle
um that's not the AI those are the
humans using that tool just to be very
clear there's a great book by mogadot
called scary smart came out about a year
ago do you know that book I had I
haven't read the book but I had Mo in
the show recently yeah MO is is
fantastic and
um and he basically says listen I want
you to think about AI as a child we're
giving birth to as Humanity
and that child is being taught by its
parents now if you think about Superman
who lands in Kansas wherever he landed
and he's picked up by the Kent and it's
a loving family he learns good ethics
and morals and he becomes a superhero
for good what if the what if Superman
had landed in the Bronx and part of a
drug lord uh ring you know and had
become the super villain you make me
want to write that story as soon as he
started I was like wait a second that's
a great plot there so the question is we
humans how are we teaching this new uh
life form coming into existence I like
Neil Jacobs times framing please which
is he goes okay you're worried about an
AI uh getting more and more access to
information uh becoming Anonymous making
its own decisions and starting to run
amok out in the world we go yeah he goes
We call we have a precedent for that we
call them children and we raise kids and
we figured out ways of giving them
timeouts or jail or whatever and he
thinks constructively that we think
we'll find ways of bounding what AIS can
do now
not sure I agree with them yeah that
seems super naive to me so when I I am
optimistic by nature and my default
setting is just hey this is all going to
work out somehow and as soon as we wrap
this episode I'm going to be pushing my
team to integrate AI more I'm going to
be paying more money for AI and just
feeding that beast but at the same time
it does give me pauses I try to think
through like how you really deal with
the alignment problem so to me there's
two really big dangers for AI danger
number one and this is the one that
scares me the most but I'm going to set
it aside for a minute and that's just
humans lose meaning and purpose just AI
can do everything better than they can
it just becomes so defeating that you're
just like oh God like I've worked really
hard to get good at this thing like this
I tell the story all the time I can't
remember if I've told it in an episode
but uh I employ a bunch of artists and I
once sat with one of them and for like
an hour he was just trying to get the
perfect like semi-circle and he was just
doing it over and over and over and over
and at the time I oh man yeah like
you've got to do that like to be able to
articulate what's in his mind he has to
be able to control his hand and I was
like wow I really get that
now I'm like you wasted your time like
hey I can do that like does not even
have to think about it and he is an
anomaly so he runs out and he's now
learning how to use AI to do some of the
tasks that we want to do artistically
okay amazing we'll set that aside for
now meaning and purpose the other one is
the paper clip problem so so now you
just have like when I think about what
will a machine end up optimizing for my
gut instinct is unless you go way out of
your way to get really clever they will
optimize for efficiency of reward so
whatever you tell it is the thing to go
for we'll call that the reward and then
it's just going to find the most
efficient way to get to that and so we
have to be so careful about how we
Define yeah yeah but don't XYZ and then
to the idea of it being like a child yes
but it's like a child that has access to
nuclear capabilities you need to build
in ethics and morals as a fundamental in
that situation so it doesn't use as
World supplies to build a bill you know
infinite number of paper clips
um and it's it's true
and we have a limited time to do that in
you know I think
it's Google developed sort of large
language models in 2017 2018 and didn't
release them because they were worried
they wanted to build the framework first
and they were maybe overthinking it it's
interesting um we were talking about
YouTube just before the show here uh you
know Google had Google videos going
uh way before YouTube
and Google videos wasn't succeeding I
guess I think it was just too many
lawyers involved and you can't show that
you can't do this and then Chad Hurley
starts YouTube on as a credit card and
then Google buys it 18 months later for
1.65 billion dollars right why because
you know Google videos was like a linear
and YouTube was like exploding
exponentially and they they jumped on
that and so
there's a question of
you know which path you take do you take
the the careful path or do you take the
Catholic the path of least resistance
and unfortunately we humans tend to take
the path of least resistance
yeah I don't know if I'd say
unfortunately and this is where I really
get I don't know how to Think Through
the problem of AI because when I heard
elon's assessment of it which is that AI
is basically a demon summoning Circle
and we're summoning it like crazy
despite his best efforts to get people
to slow down and I can't bring myself
like when people sign the hey we should
stop thing my immediate response was the
the this this is a one-way street it's
like so far out of the back yeah like it
does not make sense like you could slow
it down in a region but you're not going
to be able to slow it down full stop and
so I am I'm really of two minds I am
both like I think this is going to be
amazing and yet how does this not end
the human race the question is whether
the human race is the end-all and be-all
right yeah but don't you feel weird even
saying that out loud well no because
we've been evolving on this planet for
three and a half you know life started a
half a billion after the earth started
so four billion years we've been
evolving and we went from prokaryotes to
eukaryotes to multicellular life forms
to eventually primates and now humans
we're a step in the transitory process
now I'd like to preserve our steps by
the way the same thing is true for
climate control or climate crisis right
it's like
the climate's always been changing
throughout human history
we're changing it now but what we really
want is the climate to stay the way it's
been for the last couple hundred years
because that's where we built our cities
so we just want to freeze the way the
world is right now and I understand that
and we should do that with climate to
the maximum of our ability but we also
want to freeze Evolution now one of the
scenarios of course is we're going to
merge with technology and we are right
all of us have our cell phones within
meters of our body and I didn't plant
into my brain if I could and so the
question is are we going to upload
ourselves are we going to
um you know create brain computer
interfaces allows me to think in Google
and know Quantum quantum physics I'd
love it I mean I would do it a lot of
people won't but we're speciating what
we're doing I think of this very simply
we we the negative side of us the
amygdala side the media Etc you end up
with the sky Skynet Matrix type of
Terminator scenario if we're lucky we're
pets if we're unlucky we're food right
kind of goes that way
um uh cheers you don't see that in
actuality as we developed technology we
augment The Human Experience with
technology we don't replace it is what
we've seen and how we build uh now I I
think of the resolution of this as a
symmetry problem we're assuming that
some AI will become malevolent and then
do horribly damage things we have no
power to control it let's also not
forget that we have the equal
opportunity to say on AI hey if you see
something bad fight it so what you'll
end up with is uh AI is trying to do bad
stuff and yeah it's trying to do good
stuff fighting it up and I think that's
where we'll end up and over in over time
we'll figure out okay we've got to give
more resources over here or over there
and we'll work on it you know you always
end up with this asymmetry assumption
and I think that's the wrong assumption
you mentioned the movie her I did not oh
you did not let me mention that you are
it's one of my favorite science fiction
AI movies right if you haven't seen it
fantastic those listening um and it's an
AI basically evolves as a personal
assistant and it's a story about a guy
who's depressed who falls in love with
his AI who helps him get over his
depression and and that's sort of like
in the underlying story but towards the
end of the movie what occurs is the AI
um announces that they're leaving
uh we're sort of like bored with you
here in humanity we're off to explore
the universe which I think is a much
more likely scenario that in advance
enough AI has no reason uh to to hurt
the uh to hurt Humanity in fact every
reason to potentially protect us and
support us as its creator but there's
we're living you know it's interesting
right uh uh the web Space Telescope is
teaching us about we're you know 100
billion stars per Galaxy and we're in a
uh Universe of on the order of 2 to 20
trillion galaxies right it's insane
there's massive amount out there now
this is where the final piece of this is
the mindset we always we're always
coming at this from a scarcity mindset a
zero-sum game mindset when you see that
there's infinite energy and infinite
capability out there then an AI is going
to go okay where am I going to find the
easiest thing it's going to be out there
and they're going to go find it solar
energy they'll build solar plants and
they'll get all the energy you need from
that now I know that you know physics
well uh uh so are you making the base
assumption that AI once it hits super
intelligence will be able to solve for
folding time and space and so it's
trivial to get to wherever it needs to
go
now we need psychedelics to process this
conversation
um I who knows uh I'm I I believe that
those are kind of constructs that keep
us in three-dimensional management but
isn't that seems to be writing in that
comment that would almost need to be
true for that argument to make sense or
I would say if you're looking for a
massive amount of The Rare Earth
elements to build chips or the ability
to capture as much solar it's not going
to be on the surface of the Earth you'd
go to the asteroids which are planetary
cores and you'd mine the materials there
you'd set up your your solar collection
you know around the orbit of mercury
you'd optimize around that now is there
you engineer around it you know you find
substitutes you know what people say oh
my God solar panel but there's only so
many silicon panels we can build etc etc
well there's a new material called
perovskite which is like almost just
like a salt it's abundant conducts solar
energy and we're learning now how to
leverage that it won't need solar panels
that Ray talks about that I think coming
to play here and just keep progressing
us you're gonna have to walk people
through an S curve and who Rey is
uh an s-curve is a typical exponential
growth curve so in the beginning we saw
the first computers used relays and you
would have slow deceptive growth they'd
go into this exponential growth where
they'd start skyrocketing and then
they'd run out of capability and they'd
fall off and it made like a letter s but
while you're using relays to design and
use your computers you use those
computers to create the next generation
of computers which used uh vacuum tubes
and the vacuum tubes could then take
over from the relays and then the vacuum
tubes ran out of capability and the
transistor came on and then the
integrated circuit came and then the
multi-dimensional integrated circuit
came so basically one technology runs
out of steam but enables you to build on
the next technology and so those are
s-curves or nested s-curves this was the
basis of Ray's observation
the law of accelerating returns that if
you have an information based paradigm
once you start a doubling pattern it
just keeps going because these nested
s-curves hop from technology to
technology to technology we're reaching
the end of the life cycle of integrated
circuits now if you read the Press
everybody's like oh that's the end of
Moore's Law that's it Etc and that
article's been coming out for 60 years
and we keep finding ways around it now
we have a bunch of Technologies
clustering at the edge of that 3D chip
design Optical Computing Quantum
Computing Etc they're ready to take it
to the next level and so we find this
consistently in technology once you see
that doubling pattern starting it just
keeps going and this raised as one of
the few brains that can kind of look out
and and say this is what's going to
happen if we push this just a moment
more about Ray so uh Ray is um first of
all he wrote the forward to our new book
exponential organizations 2.0 uh he is
co-founder of Singularity University
with us
um he is a director of engineering he's
the futurist at Google which is we'll
say something unto itself right and uh
he realized that that the law of
accelerating returns is this idea that
technology since the stone ax has
enabled the next generation of
technology in the Next Generation
technology and it just keeps going I
think most important to realize is he's
got if you look in Wikipedia he's got a
published 86 accuracy rate in predicting
the future which is which is crazy so
his prediction is important for this
conversation human level AI by 2029
right which means that a day later it's
superhuman uh AI uh brain computer
interface being high bandwidth
connecting your neocortex 100 billion
neurons in your brain to the cloud in
the early 2030s right so those are two
important points
uh the the key thing and by the way are
we our chat bot that interfaces with our
book to make it a living book uh we got
talked to rain we're going to rename the
chat about Ray k
um because he's he's the Pioneers so
much of this technology and thinking
um so now people will interact with
things that in a different way and the
whole challenge is it's like building
businesses in the 20th century you were
building on a scarcity model and you
built top-down hierarchical pyramid
style command and control structures to
grab a market grab as much market share
as you could figure out ways of
launching new products and services in
that market Etc and all of that worked
really well in the 20th century as we
have an information based World
um we need to architect our
organizations in totally different ways
and this is the big difference
differentiator between old style
organizations linear versus exponential
organizations and we now have the data
to show that this is a pervasive
Paradigm that will be around the book's
been out for close to 10 years now the
original the original yeah so Peter and
I kind of collaborated deeply on uh back
then and so now we've got this
definition and the model for how do you
organize in a world of exponential
Technologies and a great um kind of
example of this is the music industry
you used to have eight major music
studio selling cassettes selling CDs
selling a scarcity model right ten
dollars an album or whatever and then
you digitize music all the eight pretty
much disappear and now you have two
platforms iTunes and Spotify selling you
abundance on a subscription model it's
very clear that Healthcare education
Transportation energy will all follow
the same path and we're starting to see
it now Teslas with uh you'll be picked
up and pay per kilometer to be taken
somewhere Uber's kind of broaching the
edges of that so we see industry after
industry moving to this new model and
what we've been identifying and
Gathering the data on it is what are the
attributes and characteristics of this
model
so before we dive too deep into that I
want to go back to this idea of
um what you call speciation appreciation
yes so there was as far as I can tell
from elon's own words there was a bit of
a breakup between him and Larry Page I
was there really and so he what Elon
said was basically when he said that I
was being a speciesist by saying species
speciesist by saying that
um you know I didn't just want to hand
things over to AI uh that's where he was
like okay wait this is this has gone too
far and that's why when you said that
that was how I responded was like whoa
like I get it but there is something
uncomfortable about the idea of sort of
saying that we're passe I don't know the
right way to that we're that we're
evolving and uh we have been in our
evolving we're going from evolution by
natural selection which is Darwinism to
evolution by human Direction by whatever
you want to call that what does that
mean well we've been doing it right now
we have been evolving all of our crops
right we we take biology and make it do
our bidding you know an ear of corn
today compared to what it was you know
500 years ago it's ridiculous the year
of corn looked like a scraggly little I
don't know it was one inch one inch long
and I think this giant ear of corn or
look at these giant strawberries we have
or the species of dogs or the chickens
we have how many chickens are on the
planet today I do not 38 billion
chickens whoa holy moly right wow
amazing anyway I just that's an aside
but so we have been evolving everything
we humans have a huge footprint on this
planet and we're evolving ourselves
um we're evolving I mean I Outsource
much of my cognitive ability to my phone
or Chachi BT or Google whatever the case
might be
and uh it is happening you can go
and live in the forest and not use any
Tech if you want
but very few people do that
so what does this mean uh if you have a
choice to be able to do a number of
things to enhance your ability
right A lot of my work as you well know
is in extending the healthy human
lifespan how do I add 20 30 healthy
years of my life to intercept the
Technologies that's going to reverse our
aging right and that's a whole other
conversation
um and I believe we're going to get
there but I also want to increase my
cognitive capacity capacity so my phone
I'll hold up my phone here right when I
use my phone to do something interesting
like um
look at images and faces and translate
whatever my phone gathers the
information and then it sends the
information on the 5G Network to the
edge of the cloud where the hard work is
done and the answer comes back to the
phone
the processing isn't done necessarily on
the phone it's done on the cloud
and in the same way right now we have a
limited size of our brains 100 billion
neurons 100 trillion synaptic
connections and our brains can't get
bigger otherwise our moms would not give
birth to us
but what we can do is we can do the same
thing our phones do and send our desires
or interest to the cloud have it
processed and get the answer back and so
that is one future for brain computer
interface another feature is we take our
Essence and upload it to the cloud
uh I don't know when what problem does
that sell for you though well actually
it gives you it gives you your scale and
Pace because our brains are limited here
right and our memories are limited here
without any augmentation and this has
been happening actually for about 40 or
50 years if you look at the internet the
first thing we did was we put the
world's data on the Internet it's now
the memory of the world now with all the
sensors the internet has become the
nervous system for the world so we're
like basically extending the organism
outside the human species into this
thing called the internet as we add more
processing and move our brains to it now
you all have an AI and a Godly new
speciation type of thing now you can get
worried about that or afraid of that or
freaked out about it or you can say
natural process has been going on for
billions of years this is just another
step in that process man you guys it's
interesting this really hits you guys
differently than it hits me yeah okay so
uh talk to me I don't intuitively agree
about the internet becoming our nervous
system help me understand that
so when you need um when you need to
remember something you want a memory so
you want information stored somewhere
that you can retrieve and now with all
those servers that we have around the
world we have Access Wikipedia for
example we have access to the world The
Next Step once you if you want to if I
step on a nail a memory doesn't help me
I need a nervous system to say Lift foot
scream I'll run for a Band-Aid so the
instant response and the agility
response you need a nervous system for
this is Uber calling your Uber as part
of the nervous system right this is
sending an email or making a phone call
and asking uh inform you know or an
x-price team sensing a wildfire and
going quick put it out right away right
so this is that feels super accurate
okay so real-time sensing and our bodies
operate like this our bodies our cells
are have receptors and they're scanning
for things but when the right thing
comes why they pick it up there's a
whole bunch of information theory around
this you see this happening at the
individual level or at the societal
level it's a wildfire thing that feels
let me give you a systemic thing we're
heading towards a world of a trillion
sensors right your phone has dozens of
sensors on it right now an autonomous uh
waymo Google's autonomous car driving
down the road is got lidar and radar and
cameras and it's picking up gigabits of
data as it goes down the road everything
is being imaged right so I want you to
imagine you're a fashion designer and
you want to decide what your next
fashion show should have and what is
trending you could go and ask your AI
listen look at the cameras on Madison
Avenue and tell me what's trending in
terms of fashion right now as people are
walking down the street what colors
what's hem length what hats what
whatever and now can you correlate that
to any kind of AD campaign that's
occurred in the last few months to see a
signal to noise ratio again we're
heading towards a world where you can
know anything you want anytime you want
anywhere you want
how's that hit you
uh it that one gets me excited so when I
think about so I think about it so
that's the nervous game developers
standpoint which is maybe different I
don't know how this plays into what you
guys are thinking about but here's the
fantasy that I live in that the only
thing that keeps me awake at night is
how quickly someone else is going to do
something even cooler uh but right now I
feel like I have the coolest take on
this which is that I'm sure you guys saw
Google and Adobe announced core AR where
basically everything that Google has
mapped which is everything but the ocean
floor you can now overlay AR 3D assets
on that anywhere and it's only going to
get better insane and so my whole thesis
on gaming is that it becomes a thing I
call borderless entertainment where
you'll hand the game back and forth from
the console to reality and back and so
you know once we've got our Apple like
our glasses I mean it just will be by
the way coming soon oh for sure for sure
like in the next six months or something
no no no Monday oh it's announced no no
they actually said it's the glasses
though or yes do they have a big
announcement no no no no no I have a
thing I have a party I'm going to
to go and grab them and try them you
want to join me yes what okay a hundred
percent I want to join you I will I'm a
hosting duct tape myself to your shin
okay to make sure that you can't leave
me behind okay you are invited wow
luckily he has two shins the other one
will leave for you oh no yeah please
I'll give you some duct tape uh that's
insane so this is yeah this gets very
exciting so the idea of being able to
scan everything read that data uh is
incredibly interesting when it when it's
humans in control and leveraging it to
do something amazing I love it the most
and I the way that I see AI the way that
I sort of jokingly explain it but I'm
only half kidding is that phase one is
that there's gonna be
um humans that learn how to use AI are
gonna just absolutely smash humans that
rebel against it and don't use it and so
I'm certainly trying to be in that camp
phase two is going to be what I'll call
the temporary Utopia where it's like hey
abundance everything's amazing and then
phase three is we're all dead and we're
either all dead because something just
goes absolutely horribly wrong and you
get the adversarial system loses once
and the editor editor catastrophic thing
is is so massive or that we're just
evolved out of the picture
um and maybe not in a bad way maybe it's
uh it's wonderful and we merge with
technology or whatever
um it's interesting I can very easily
put on an optimistic hat but I can I
have to take off my pessimistic hat to
do it yeah listen here first of all
let's take this back to reality we're
living in a game this is this is a nth
generation simulation do you really
believe I really believe that funny
we'll do that just the math says just
just the just the reality I like I like
your framing you're like the world is
too goddamn interesting for this
knockout at the 99 we're at the 99th
level of the game right now right the
odds and and the ability what I've seen
so I introduce you to Iman mushtak
um right and what he's doing at
stability uh and being able to render
getting to a point very soon of
rendering a photorealistic video
experiences that you can go into and
live in and the experiments have been
done by Google and Stanford on creating
AI Bots instantiating them with a script
and a story and letting them live and I
have you heard about this
where they basically created a bunch of
AI Bots and they put it into a call it a
digital box here and they started like
doing birthday parties they started
dating and going on getting jobs and do
and mimicking the things that we do in
life right now so this is the equivalent
of pong in the early days so imagine
combining these things in the future and
you're going to think about it you're
gonna put yes and and you're gonna put
AIS that have full capabilities into
Virtual Worlds and they'll start
evolving farming and then Metallurgy and
then they'll start printing books and
then they'll start making computers and
then they'll evolve AI on their own and
they'll start involving their own Bots
inside so the question is is this the
first time and I think not
uh were in a universe of you know call
it for rough numbers you know 14 billion
years
um man oh man the Drake equation comes
into play yeah tell me more well the
Frank Drake uh it was a scientist at
Nasa in the 50s NASA commissioned him to
say what's the probability of Life out
there somewhere so he came up with
what's not called the Drake equation
which was okay take um most uh
two-thirds of star systems seem to be
binary Stars don't host a stable orbit
so ignore those of the one-third that's
left how many might have a planet in a
Goldilocks where water doesn't
permanently freeze or boil let's say
that's one out of a million out of those
maybe one out of a billion gets to
primordial ooze level and one other
million of those uh lightning bolt hits
and you spark life uh one out of a
million of those may get to radio
technology
level techno radio level technology and
one out of three million of those are
alive uh having hasn't wiped itself out
with nuclear weapons before it gets to
the next stage of escaping the earth
type of thing and so he came up with a
bunch of factors saying if you had
what's the likelihood of similar
carbon-based radio technology life forms
out in the universe so the and that's
one of our over like you know billions
and billions on the on the denominator
however when you multiply it by the
number of stars out there and by the
number of galaxies out there the uh
pessimistic answer is there's a hundred
percent chance of radio level
carbon-based technology life runs out in
the universe the optimistic one is it's
actually right in our galaxy right and
every time we learn more about the
universe how many stars there are Etc
turns out there's a hundred times more
stars that have stable planets around
them than we thought we're discovering
planets every Factor turns out to be a
thousand times better than we thought
and therefore you you really end up with
a Fermi paradigm of if there's
intelligent life out there why haven't
we seen it yeah so the interesting your
guess is the interesting code
interesting variable on on the Drake
equation was between the time that a
intelligent species developed the
ability to transmit Interstellar which
is like I Love Lucy leaving the Earth
and heading out towards the Galaxy how
long would that species
exist before something happened to it
the dystopian point of view is that it
blows itself up and it's only like 100
years or 50 years the positive point of
view is that they transition to where
radio is not it's like we don't use
smoke signals anymore because radio is
so backwards the theory I like the most
is called the transcension hypothesis by
a guy called John smart who figures
we'll get to AR level uh capability and
VR level capability and instead of going
out in the universe we go inwards a
hundred percent and that's the I think
that's probably like this this strikes
me as and look AI complicates things
dramatically and so folding space time
becomes trivial maybe what I'm about to
say isn't true but uh it seems
self-evident to me that once you can
attach the nervous system truly like
your own nervous system and you can
manipulate your neurochemistry that you
would create dream states infinite
worlds yeah that you just go inward why
would you bother projecting out which
would take so much more energy that's
right and so you just go in and you have
these incredible experiences
um that strikes me let's go back to your
question of purpose now so because
that's I link it back to that and I
think purpose is so important for all of
us to have it's driven everything of
significance done but let's say that we
end up in a world in which one of the
implications of exponential
organizations are that we have what we
call what a friend Harry Clark called
technological socialism where technology
takes care very well versus the state
right and
um in that world where you're taking
care of what's your purpose
um
maybe your purpose is to have fun maybe
your purpose is to play maybe your
purpose is to and this we go back to the
Matrix again because without the
challenge you know the question is is
that empty you know the old Twilight
Zone right where the uh where the guy
goes to Las Vegas he's winning all the
time and he thinks I know of The
Twilight Zone but I haven't seen the
episodes all right so in this episode uh
this guy dies and go and he's he's been
a mafioso and he he's uh he goes to
heaven or hell and he shows up and
they're beautiful women every place he's
in the Las Vegas casino and he's winning
every night and he's winning and he's
winning and he's winning and he's all
the riches anything he wants 24 7 and
it's like amazing right his dreams
coming true but like a month later he's
like I am so tired of winning all the
time God there's nothing challenging
there's nothing no challenges at all and
he turns and he says this Heaven man
it's it's terrible he goes what makes
you think you're in heaven so good I
knew that was a punchline you still gave
me the chills yeah that is uh that's a
real thing man yeah and I do think about
that the sort of optimal
like what's that optimal level of
friction and there was a really
fascinating time in my life in building
impact Theory where I needed to get good
at Japanese style storytelling so Manga
and Anime and I was reading manga like a
fiend and watching as much anime as I
could I was getting up super early and
working out and then watching like an
hour hour and a half of anime it was
awesome it's one of the most fun times
I've had as an adult the second I felt
like I understood the art form I
couldn't I couldn't let myself do
anymore like I couldn't enjoy it I was
just like you already understand it now
you're just doing it to like past time
doing something that's enjoyable and it
had that same feeling of like winning
all the time where I'm like this isn't
interesting it needed to be moving
towards something it needed to add up to
something I mean it's like progress yeah
like this is the very reason that Lisa
and I did not buy an island and retire
and not engage it's like I knew I would
end up sitting on it I can tell you
other reasons not to buy an Island by
the way I bet you can I mean look like
life is about growth right and even if
we have plentiful and today relatively
we have plentiful go back a thousand
years we were all spending 28 hours a
day in the fields just to put three
meals on the table right we've steadily
Shrunk the amount of time as we move
towards probably some structure like a
Ubi we then have an equal opportunity to
do lots of interesting things when we've
studied abundance say the Romans taking
over and creating the Roman Empire the
mughals taking over Indian encountering
abundance a society very clearly goes to
four things that they do food art music
and sex not in that order and so that's
essentially where you will will end up
and you end up looking at
self-expression and the artistic realm
much more than you did before whether in
whatever realm you choose and so it
becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and
by the way we've done this for thousands
of years right Buddhists sit in
contemplation they reach Enlightenment
and they they their their life is spent
contemplating and that's where they get
the most Joy and this is something that
I think we'll get to as a species I I'd
like to bring it back to the following
one of the things one of the reasons we
wrote This Book
is to help entrepreneurs and businesses
understand that they can make a much
bigger dent in the universe than ever
before
and uh while it's not about making money
it's about how do you build a
significant company that is transforming
the planet and is making the world a
better place
and what we're finding is that there are
a number of ways that companies do this
reliably with the biggest dent and uh
and so we want to get that information
out there
um and the reality is if you're building
a company today you need to start with
this as your playbook
in order to succeed because it's table
sticks and if you're running
a large-scale company
um if you don't use these attributes if
you're not using these you are not going
to survive the rest of this decade you
know what I say is there are two kinds
of companies by the end of this decade
you know those that are fully utilizing
Ai and these exponential Technologies
and those are out of business that's it
uh it's it's this decade where all of
this is happening and so uh you know we
talk about the first step in building an
EXO is having a massive transformative
purpose and it's going to be that
passion driven need to make a difference
in the world that's going to carry you
through doing anything big and bold in
the world is hard unless you're driven
by awe on one side of the emotional
curve or pain on the other side of the
emotional curve you're going to give up
before you get there no doubt yeah I
when I'm teaching entrepreneurs I always
tell them that success is a game of
attrition
most people give up and you've gotta
stick it out long enough to figure this
out so that would be this the old
Paradigm is that sorry guys yeah I was
gonna say you know in looking at what
you're doing uh and what you've been
building uh in Impact Theory you you do
use a lot of the of the 10 attributes
that follow an MTP and it'll be it'll be
fun to actually uh see which ones you're
you're cranking on yeah no MTP is
definitely our lead engine we know what
we're doing and we know why we're doing
it and that's a big part of the way that
we attract Talent which you guys have
talked a lot about but tying it to this
idea of Buddhism so there are obviously
all of us get to make a choice every day
effectively as to whether we recognize
that all of suffering comes from
attachment and desire and thusly we go
live a monastic life and we remove
ourselves completely from that stream or
we say I'm going to do deep engagement
in in a way that's thoughtful in a way
where I'm not sort of blindly chasing
something it's not want it's not greed
but it is very much leveraging the human
desire for Progress you talked about
that earlier
to see how much I can do with my life
that's something that that really drives
me is I just want to see I feel like I
was given sort of a an average hand at
cards I want to see how well I can play
it yes and that's extremely intoxicating
for me it's just like whoa but that's
just so powerful right if you're if
you're let's say you're an enlightened
monk there's two ways of doing you can
go and meditate forever or you can go
into the world and be of service and
that's as as a richer path the harder
much harder path because you've got to
do stuff and interact with the world
which is messy and ugly and you put
yourself at risk and put yourself out
there but when you can make a major
difference in a particular problem like
you are doing like you're doing many of
our communities or making unbelievable
changes in transformation in their
societies their companies their
governments their countries this is
where the beauty of Life comes out and
and we think that over over the next
decade or so every company every
non-profit every government Department
every impact project will be structured
along these lines of these attributes
because it's just better and we now have
the data to show it I don't know if you
came across the Fortune 100 data that we
that we that we mentioned I mean
unbelievable right over again yeah so
when we wrote the original book I did a
segment on CNBC Squawk Box and we ranked
The Fortune 100 against the EXO model so
we engaged to what extent is Walmart
Purpose Driven or not to what extent is
IBM using Lean Startup thinking and
experimentation to what extent is GE
decentralizing the decision making or
not and we came up with an index ranking
these organizations by this model
essentially ranking the purpose-driven
scalable flexible adaptable quotient of
each of these and the bottom is the
least flexible least adaptable over
seven years we tracked which 10 used
those attributes the most in which you
use them the least and then we compared
the two and seven years is a pretty
decent long amount of time to account
for temporal blips in the stock market
Etc we found that the top 10 most
exo-friendly compared to the bottom 10
Revenue growth was three times higher
profitability was 6.4 Times Higher
return on Equity was 11 times higher but
shareholder returns compounded annual
growth rate was 40 times higher and
literally we had to scour the numbers
like four times over because just it's
just too big how could this be and so
now it's pretty clear that as we enter a
more volatile World your ability to
adapt is going to drive market value and
we can measure this now completely
therefore every organization going
forward needs to be architected along
this way to deal with the increase in
volatility in the world and the other
side of that volatility and disruption
is the unbelievable opportunity that's
sitting out there right and this is
where I think with the work that you're
doing Peter is so important because
you're non-stop showing people the world
is unbelievably abundantly full of
opportunity
we can go get it go have some fun so
walk me through why why is
why does adaptation return so much more
to shareholders and what does one have
to do to be adaptive okay so let's take
the car industry right you're trunking
along making combustion engine cars and
you're incrementally improving those
cars eight valves to 16 valves okay you
add turbo you add anti-lock braking
systems etc etc Along Comes Elon with
the Tesla and goes totally different
Paradigm right now you have two choices
right there you go ah this is a joke
it's never going to work look at it it's
like the Kodak camera uh the first
version is clunky and it doesn't work so
well Etc and you keep trying to do
things your old way over time you're
going to get wiped out because you're
not adapting to where the world actually
is right there's so many hundreds of
reasons why an electric car today is
much better than a combustion engine car
now it's taking the car industry 10
years I would argue that until the tycon
came out last year that the 20.
um I would argue that the 2012 Tesla
Model S was still the most uh Advanced
car in the world
until the taikan right so 10 years it
took them to respond well the mark of
cap you can see the result there The
Unbelievable loss of capability Leading
Edge thinking Etc and you have the same
thing happening in drones and in
aircraft and other things all Industries
are geared towards the status quo I'm
trying to make incremental and this is
where you devolve to meanwhile you have
breakthrough thinking breakthrough
opportunity and the recent explosion and
AI capability just as a rocket booster
to all of that
so now we're going to see new companies
emerge that are creating unbelievable
value in very very little time and if
you're a legacy organization you have to
figure this out and we've actually
figured out a tool set for this we find
that we've come up with a 10-week
engagement that we run in big companies
that hacks culture at scale and we're
able to solve what we call the immune
system problem so when you try anything
disruptive in a big company you the
antibodies attack you right Finance
legal HR branding goes you can't you
can't do that the general answer in a
big company if you're trying to do
anything crazy is no and we've learned
how to switch that to a yes and we've
done that now this one's just gloss
pasta because even so a company of my
size which contractors et cetera et
cetera is a little over 100 people yeah
and there are times where I want to
headbutt my own teammates yes because
the first thing we have is if you're
over about 50 people you have an immune
system yeah I've had that at the X prize
I've had that every place right because
you're a quick start you want to try
things and one of the things that's
critical that a lot of companies that
are built as exos have they begin with
an experimental culture
and a data driven culture with
dashboards and the tyranny of confidence
isn't given a place to grow the tyranny
of confidence the tyranny of confidence
is where I'm confident I know the right
answer versus let's run the experiment
and see what the right answer is right
because we've lived in this as Humanity
you hire the expert you hire the guy
who's or gal who's been in a a
competitor and you bring them in and you
base what you're doing on their on their
experience level
but that is so limited compared to the
world we're living in today and so how
do you build a data-driven
experimentalist organization I had one
other feature on top of that which is a
founder-led company so you get companies
like Tesla and SpaceX or Amazon where
you've got you know where Jeff Bezos and
his very famous shareholder letter of
like 2008 whatever it was
I'm not going to optimize for
profitability I'm optimizing for growth
and if you don't like it invest
someplace else right so how do you have
that kind of uh you know
benevolent uh dictatorship that's
where you're then looking at the data to
decide not the way all your competitors
are doing it
I have an obsession as an entrepreneur
which is uh as a human but this really
manifests as an entrepreneur people need
to stop trusting themselves so much yes
people are so convinced that they know
that that they don't even recognize that
they have a world view and if they do
recognize that they have a world view
they are utterly convinced that it is
simply a reflection of what is
objectively true yeah and so they're
like no the way that I see things is the
right way and I'm like oh my God like is
that your view uh yeah exactly
confirmation that's my view and it's
right Peter I mean one of the big things
that AI is going to give us as a gift is
the ability to overcome all of these
biases we have right all these cognitive
biases recency bias negativity bias
confirmation bias recently all of these
things which our brain is really sucks
at processing and so we have all these
hacks right you trust someone who looks
like you you give higher weight to the
most recent information you got you give
higher weight to negative information
over positive information
and you know there's going to be a
version where you go to Jarvis your your
AI and you say you know I want to put
cognitive bias alert on tell me if I'm
being biased
you know when we were building
Singularity University
um I was the founding executive director
there
um a few years in I was I'd written the
book and I was often Peter asked me to
come to a board meeting and say what
should Ashley look like in five years or
ten years and I made a comment I said
you know you should shut it down
because you you build an organization
and over time you spend more time just
trying to sustain the organization than
trying to solve the problem that you set
out to solve in the first place and the
at DARPA is the big organization they do
this every role even the CEO is three
years long
and then you have to rotate out you're
not allowed to hold any role for more
than three years and you're then you're
measured you're worried about things
eating stale stale and therefore they
keep things fresh and the your legacies
what did you do three
three year patterns ago and was it good
or not so now you're always focused on
the long term you take out all the
politics Etc and I think in today's
world if I had to kind of boil it down I
would say you build a company and after
three to five years you just go we're
going to shut it down after this and
force us to reinvent her or re or
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when the X prize got won and we had
spaceship one fly we held a meeting and
said we shut it down or do we reinvent
ourselves into a platform yeah and we
did and now we're getting ready to
launch xprize 3.0 which happened during
covid I said you know pull the board
together I said this is a perfect
opportunity for us to reinvent ourselves
and so we I need to brief you on it but
we've reinvented xprize and I'm excited
about that and so there is you need to
be constantly disrupting yourself and
it's tough because we're lazy in some
ways yeah you tell a story in the book
about Elon walking in seeing him all
long face yeah and saying what's wrong
walk me through that moment so
um
I was amazed so I've known Elon for 23
20 23 years now and when uh when Falcon
won which was their first vehicle failed
on the first time the second time the
third time and it succeeded on the
fourth time
um they
miraculously and timing is everything
got a contract for the falcon 9.
which was a billion dollar contract and
had they not won that they may not be
here today but they did and Elon made a
incredible decision that took guts he
shut down the rocket line that just
began flying and there were very few
successful operations he said focus on
Falcon 9 Falcon 9 is our future
and so that went on for some number of
years and I was coming into SpaceX and
Hawthorne to have lunch with him and he
was kind of uh you know like you said
long faced and I'm like what's what's up
and he goes uh I just figured out you
know Falcon 9 had been up and operating
and doing damn well it's the most
successful launch vehicle on the planet
by a huge margin right it's like it's
like very few no countries compete with
him he's like the number one space
bearing power and uh and I said what's
wrong he goes I just figured out the
Falcon 9 is not going to get us where we
need to go meaning to Mars right he's
driven by this MTP this massive
transformative purpose making manual
planetary getting Humanity to Mars
and um I need to start
afresh and so that has become Starship
and then he goes on to make a a comment
that when Starship begins uh
successfully operating he's going to
shut down the Falcon 9 line which again
is like it's like I don't know what the
analogy is but it's like you're the most
successful at the top of the Heap and
you're about to shut down that entire
Revenue flow now whether or not he does
or does not that was the statement he
made but it's that mindset of focus
of absolute Focus I'm going to do
whatever dedication to the big The Big
Goal yeah
okay so as somebody who knows this
intimately from the inside of the need
to disrupt yourself or somebody else is
going to do it the willingness to look
at something and go okay we're gonna
have to start this all over
how do you get your organization on
board with that because the the normal
human is going to rebel against that you
don't massively you don't so the the
only model we found that works at all is
to go to the edge of your organization
and build a new capability aiming into
an adjacent area or totally separate
area right so I remember one of the
events that singular Larry Page came to
me and said hey I was I was the head of
innovation at Yahoo before building out
Singularity and he came to me and said
hey you're a unit at Yahoo is successful
should I do an incubator model at Google
and I said no you'll have this immune
system response the more disruptive an
idea we came up with in this incubator
the less Yahoo could handle it and
you're like my job description is is is
not workable right and so there was
partly the result that lots of other
inputs was Google X which is separate
going into it they use Hardware to go
into adjacent spaces uh Google car
Google X contact lenses Etc the master
of this model of going to the edge and
doing something different is actually
apple and yes they have a great design
capability and a technology supply chain
I argue that Apple's real Innovation is
organizational because what they do
unlike anybody else is they will form a
small team that's really disruptive put
the team at the edge of the company keep
them Secret in stealth and they'll say
to them go disrupt another industry
whether it's watches or retailer
payments or glasses or whatever now so
they have a portfolio of teams looking
at different Industries at the edge in
secret and when they see something they
go into it and that becomes the new
Gravity Center
and this there's hundreds of examples of
this Nestle for years tried to run
nespresso's line of business and it just
failed stop finally they set up as a
separate entity on its own boom every
hotel room in the world has an espresso
machine and so that's the only model
that we've ever seen there is one more
which is the dictator
it is the uh Larger than Life leader who
says this is what we're doing if you
don't agree with me leave
um yeah do we have a good example well
Elon and and Bezos uh as well Steve Jobs
for sure it's like you know it's the
founder leader it's very hard to do it
in a uh an older Legacy company that's
you know hired a CEO but it's people
when you have a strong enough MTP and
the Visionary has a strong enough MTP
and they come to work for you when they
come to work for this Vision then they
will have faith in you to make those
right turns right going back to mindset
how does somebody cultivate that in
themselves like if you want to become
that guy or gal like what do you do what
is it that an Elon has or a Steve Jobs
has that other people can replicate so
we close out the book with mindset and
it's the area I'm spending most of my
time and I'll phrase it like this for
everybody listening if you look at the
most extraordinary leaders on the planet
Mahatma Gandhi Martin Luther King Elon
Musk Steve Jobs Jeff Bezos I don't care
who's on your list and you asked what
made them successful was it the cash
they had the friends they had the
technology they had or was it their
mindset right I think almost everybody
would say with their mindset your
mindset is how you deal with challenges
and opportunities it's your reaction
it's how your neural net is wired
so the question is if your mindset if
you agree that mindset's the most
important thing a leader can have an
entrepreneur can have what mindset do
you have first and foremost where did
you get it
and then ask yourself the question what
mindset do you need for the world ahead
and so I posit there's a few key
mindsets
um and these are what I teach in my my
abundance Community
um uh first off a curiosity mindset is
fundamental I know you you believe this
through and through aggressively can you
go into a little detail on that like
when you say curious what do you mean so
curious is a willingness to actually dig
and ask and have conversations in the
chat GPT world it's everything right so
it's like how do I use chat GPT open it
up and ask it how do you you know and
then ask the next question the next
question next question so when you have
a kid who is asking you questions go to
your eight nine ten year old self in
that and just be openly curious and
asking as many questions as you can and
going down the rabbit hole while Steve
Wozniak calls it tinkering right we're
we're in the organization can you just
tinker and play what stops people from
tinkering or being curious time
constraint quarterly targets yeah doing
stuff that they were told is important
not having the time uh you know and I
think falling into ruts so a curiosity
mindset especially if you're an
entrepreneur is like one of the most
important things that you can incubate
and have
um the second mindset for me is an
abundance mindset and the abundance
mindset is there is nothing truly scarce
um we can talk about this also as first
principle thinking you know and this is
one where Elon
uh and I have had lots of conversations
about abundance and that there is
nothing truly scarce right that that
your abilities entrepreneur to take
something that was scarce and make it
abundant is what entrepreneurs do great
so you know the perfect example is uh
energy right we used to kill whales on
the ocean to get whale oil to light our
nights then we ravaged mountainsides for
cold then we drilled kilometers under
the ocean right and then we fracked
natural gas but we live on a planet
that's bathed in 8 000 times more energy
from the Sun than we consume as a
species and here's the key point the
energy is there just not in a useful
useful form yet so technology takes
whatever was scarce and makes it usable
so water is another example we live in a
water planet for God's sakes right
two-thirds water yeah but 97.5 assault
two percent is ice we fight over a half
a percent but their Technologies
transforming scarcity into abundance
and first principle thinking I wrote
about this in in Futures faster and you
think when Elon decided to make Tesla
um
he basically looked at what was the spot
price of lithium and nickel and could
you get the cost of batteries down from
first principle thinking and the answer
is yes we can get it there and therefore
the cars don't have to be that expensive
and that led him to go forward a long
story there so that's abundance thinking
that instead of if you have a pie my
favorite example of a pie and friends
are coming over for dinner instead of
slicing the pie into thinner and thinner
slices which is a scarcity mindset you
bake more pies which is an abundance
mindset so we're living in a world where
you can bake more pies everything can be
abundant
and I mean my whole mission on extending
the healthy lifespan is about making
time more abundant for people probably
going to take pies out of that equation
yeah
unfortunately okay anyway so an
exponential mindset a moonshot mindset a
a purpose-driven mindset and a gratitude
mindset other other mindsets I speak to
you and we could talk forever about
those but there are mindsets that are
important for us in this day and age
yeah I want to go back to curiosity so
when I think about what derails my my
team I love them to death but one thing
that I've encountered over and over is
When people's ego gets tied up in being
right ah and they're not just obsessed
with finding the right answer it's
because I think they have not yet
accurately identified the way the world
Works which is that if you are obsessed
with being right you will be wrong most
of the time if you're obsessed with
identifying the right answer then you
can actually make progress and so I mean
this was certainly the Trap that I fell
prayed to in my early 20s that is is
like a demarcation Line in the Sand my
life before I realized that if I built
my ego around being willing to stare
nakedly at my inadequacies and figure
out what the right answer is instead of
trying to position myself to look smart
that I could actually move forward and I
love that that switches everything
because there's no there's not only no
emotional friction to admitting that
you're wrong there's like a little
twinge of excitement of like oh I've
gotten this far being wrong and now
somebody's going to remove the scales
from my eyes now I really can make this
forward momentum but man I really like I
for all the time that I spend on camera
telling people how to think in this way
I find it very hard to get somebody who
isn't ready for that to like hear it
make that switch and change so you guys
have the magic words I'd love to hear so
actually
um this is music to ours in a sense
because uh organizationally individuals
are pretty good we have a lot of tool
sets for transforming individual
thinking Tony Robbins NLP psychedelics
nowadays Etc to to change your own
mindset but the group thing that comes
inside an organization is really hard to
change and we've what we found in exos
the characteristics that add up to an
exponential organization by default have
it be embracing with this mindset so one
of the ways we talk about what we've
done in the same way that a Tony Robbins
you go in there and you completely
change your subconscious state from A to
B right from a scarcity to an abundance
mindset whatever we're able to do that
at the organizational level we can take
an organization that is old thinking
stuck in particular other markets Etc
and you open it up using a combination
of these characteristics the mindset the
MTP Etc how do you introduce the ideas
about how do you get them to actually
let me give you the hack I learned this
from uh Astro Teller I had him on stage
at a360 a few times and he shared with
something that I love
you're in the midst of developing a
product everybody's absolutely sure of
what's going on and how you're going to
launch it how it's going to work and you
hand out a piece of paper to everybody
and you say listen guys it's six months
from now and the product has just failed
and you know why it's failed write it
down
you know exactly why it's failed write
it down right now
and you are incentivizing someone to
actually flip their situation and look
at the flaws and Elevate those and then
you go around the room
and and review why people say it's going
to fail and if you've got two or three
people saying the same thing
you know it's maybe you got to look at
it test that one first yeah the other
one we've come across that's a great
hack is as Amazon they created something
called the institutional yes have you
ever heard of this no so they realized
in any big company it's really easy to
say no one of 20 people can say no it'll
kill the idea whereas if you're in a
startup and you go to one investor and
they say yes or after the race Assad you
deal with that impedance mismatch so
they came up with a policy so that if
you're inside Amazon you come to me with
my an ID and I'm your boss I'm not
allowed to say no my default answer must
be yes if I want to say no I have to
write a two-page thesis as to why it's a
bad idea and post it publicly brilliant
right so they've created friction and
embarrassment to say no it's much easier
for me to go go ahead you'll fail at the
next level anyway
and I've actually one of the outcomes of
this policy was Amazon web services
nothing to do with their strategy not on
the roadmap but nobody could figure out
how to say no to it and now it's one of
the most successful products of all time
delivering I think 75 of their Global
profits wow because nobody could figure
out how say no to it right so we found a
collection of little hacks and cultural
transformations in companies that allow
you to basically operate in this new
modality being very curious
purpose-driven constantly testing
assumptions uh using small agile teams
operating at the edges as autonomously
as possible and then getting the
business of the organization done wow I
love that so much I've taken a lot from
Bezos over the years like he's got some
really amazing ideas I do have to
chuckle a little bit that this business
genius still got taken down by dick pics
but
just the human mind is absolutely
hilarious we are all frail but yeah no
no look I don't even throw shade of the
guy I get it live your live your best
life but uh that's really brilliant and
uh I will Implement that immediately
yeah we've had the luxury of watching
hundreds of big companies deal in
different ways right and it used to be
the big companies were terrible at this
and then about five or seven years ago
they got started getting better so
instead of and Google or Yahoo or
somebody saying we're just going to
compete with that little startup they
would just buy them Zuckerberg saw that
he was going to get disrupted by
Instagram and and and WhatsApp
Etc bought them instead and in in
general you should leave them alone uh
over time the corporation can handle it
gets his grubby fingers messed and then
they tend to typically kill it
um but we're starting to learn now if
you look at say Google with llms they're
actually too scared to release them and
Amazon just went let's just go for it
boom
oh sorry uh Microsoft Amazon sorry sorry
Microsoft what about this what do you
guys think about Bard very impressive I
haven't touched it we've been playing
with it it's very impressive it's early
days yet but I'm finding fun
uh doing stuff on open Ai and at bar at
the same time and comparing them and
there are a few places where opening eye
failed and Bard succeeded and vice versa
so they're they're both they're both
useful and um what I'd like to mention
if I could just because I want to go
back to the thesis on the on the book
um you know again our mission is to give
uh give people who are running
large-scale companies who want to
survive the next 10 years a series of
this is what you should do if you want
to reorganize your your company and if
you're a startup this is what you should
do to be able to thrive in this decade
because the world has changed I mean
fundamentally how you start a company
today and how you succeed today is very
different than 30 years ago um it's very
different than six months ago well yeah
true that's crazy it scares me like
we've really just lived through the most
uh disruptive six months nothing has
ever more more instantaneously impacted
my business model the way that I
approached my employees ever than the
release of yeah I mean no honestly that
did not impact my business nearly it did
like the day-to-day as you were not
seeing people but the fundamental way
that we ran our business yes yeah I I do
it I mean we're in a world right now
where every doctor in the world is
freaked out if they see this and every
lawyer in the world is freaked out a
teacher in the world I love the fact
that open AI chat GPT passed the U.S
medical licensing exam two months after
it was launched right and the barns
crazy yeah it it passed the touring test
that was the one I didn't see coming the
signing of the hey let's slow down
letter and so I had yahshua bengio on
the show it's considered the Godfather
of AI and I said hey your name was on
that what made you sign it and he said
in knowing certain terms I did not
expect it to pass the touring test as
fast as it did that set off every alarm
Bell that I have and like pump the
brakes this is the thing that we find
most interesting because we've known
emad and all these guys for a while they
are blown away by the success of these
models yeah so that's really fascinating
the thing that the folks themselves are
just blown away I know it's still early
days yeah ladies and gentlemen it's
still early days you know we're gonna
see so much more coming and the
recursive nature of self-improving
capabilities you know I showed this um I
showed this work done where a group of
Physicians were showing these case
studies and to diagnose a patient and it
was like they took 55 minutes and got 60
right and the AI took like 12 minutes
and got 85 right whoa and the Physicians
aren't going to change next year but the
AI will get much better and will be you
know seconds and 100 right bro yeah yeah
this is where this gets really
interesting so I know you have another
company Fountain life yeah uh you guys
are using AI are you open to talking
about this yeah sure so longevity I
couldn't be more obsessed just with the
idea and so as you were talking about it
my first question is
how are you guys going to start getting
the patterns down because to me this is
the big thing you talk to somebody like
Peter attia and he's like look it is
just next to impossible to do really
good studies on diet and nutrition what
works what doesn't work there's just too
many confounding variables and I was
like AI is going to answer that like it
can pull a pattern anything that can be
reduced to a pattern they can figure it
out regardless of like amount of
variables if there is a pattern to be
had it will suss it out and given that
we have some people that live to 120 and
some that don't there is a pattern yeah
yeah and I'll put it this way you
there's a lot of interesting things not
only are there some people who live to
120 and some people who make it to just
65 there are large species on this
planet like the bowhead whale that lives
to 200 years or the Greenland shark that
lives to 500 years and my question is if
they can live that long why can't we and
I said it's either a hardware problem or
a software problem all right and we're
going to understand that this decade is
the decade we understand that it's going
to be Ai and Quantum technologies that
give us that insight it so fountainlife
is just foundlife.com
um we have these 10 000 square foot
facilities uh we have four of them right
now we have a waiting list of like 50
that will build out globally and you
come and we digitize you it's a full
body 150 gigabyte upload of you uh full
body MRI brain brain vasculature brain
function a coronary CT all of this with
AI overlay 80 80 blood biomarkers
genomics metabolomics uh you know your
your gut and
then we do this year on year this is not
a one and done right so in the first
time you do it we're going to see is
there anything going on that you should
worry about most of us are optimist
about our health and we don't actually
know what's going on inside our body and
by the way the body's really amazing at
hiding disease yeah I'm gonna put myself
you know it's like it's like you are you
think you're fine
but you know seventy percent of all
heart attacks have no precedent dude
that that one freaks me out that the
what the first symptom of uh heart
disease in most men is death yeah crazy
right and 70 of cancers that kill you
are not screened for
so it's this [ __ ] that drives me nuts
and so it's like an idiot not to be
looking inside your body and we used to
not look because well if I find out can
I do anything the answer is yes you can
so you want to know and so we screen
people first and then every year upload
you every year and it's looking for the
patterns and what medicines and we have
a large Corpus of data and the AI
ability to analyze that to say with your
genome with your microbiome with these
meds with this
um it's going to be huge uh learnings
out of this right and so I'm trying to
build
uh Fountain life into an exponential
organization so I'm building around this
book that we've built and every company
I'm involved with is like we need to use
these 10 attributes in the book
otherwise we're not going to be able to
have the impact globally that we want
what are you going to tell the AI to
look for
um so right now it's it's you don't have
to tell it to look for anything you have
to ask it to find any kind of any kind
of anomalous patterns it's always you're
looking for Trans uh it's it's data over
time so you're looking for for changes
tell me what's changed tell me what's
changing and tell me um so I'll give you
one of the examples we're building this
is a fun part about Fountain life we're
building a brand new health insurance
company on top of it so uh if you get
Fountain life insurance which is
available today your employees insurance
is a perverse business all right fire
insurance pays you after your house
burns down life insurance pays your
Mexican after they're dead health
insurance pays you after you're sick
what we've done instead is when you sign
up your employees go through a set of
pre-testing for us to discover any kind
of disease and prevent it from a big
payout later down the stream right so
it's keeping your employees healthy and
what you want to do how does that model
work though so is the employee paying
roughly what they would pay exactly the
same or less the numbers are the same
and the the insurance company is
actually saying we're going to do
preventative we're doing preventative
testing yes preventative testing and so
here's what we're doing one of the
interesting things is
there's a number of expensive tests we
can do and a number of cheap tests we
can do and one of the things we're doing
with AI is correlating which of these
lower end tests correlate highly to the
expensive tests so you'll do the lower
end cost test to find a signal in the
noise and then you'll verify with the
expensive test
okay this is uh this is very interesting
walk me through what your fantasy data
would be my fantasy data would be to
track what everyone eats the state of
their microbiome and when they die and
what else would I want maybe their blood
glucose levels I I want uh every I want
functional data the state of my
cognitive Health my muscular Health my
skin Health my ingredients it's
correlated to
because it's got to be tied to something
that you do otherwise it's not going to
be actionable it's going to be
correlated to my age and my activities
and the meds and the supplements and my
daily living
right and so for example right now I'm
on a tear to add 10 muscles 10 pounds of
muscle so I'm doing a heavyweight
workout three times a week I'm eating
150 grams of protein minimum per day I'm
adding creatine onto my diet for that
I'm taking a couple of peptides to
increase my you know igf-1 levels and
all of these things are aimed at that
objective now do you do trt at all I'm
doing a small amount of testosterone
replacement therapy yes
yeah so at the end of the day that is
an objective I have but we're way off
subject from an exponential organization
well I mean so the thing that I'm most
interested in is what do people apply
this stuff to and so as we look at
exponential Technologies I think one of
the most important things for people is
longevity like if you're not getting an
extra uh bit of life out of this I mean
so if I got better life out of it sure I
would still be interested but if we can
get better and more then I'm on board
yeah I mean everything I'm doing right
now in building companies you know I've
got a uh what will be a 700 million
dollar Venture fund aimed at age
reversal and Longevity right so
investing in these companies and then
Fountain life
my catchphrase is there is like I'm
going to prevent people from dying from
something stupid preventable which is
the first thing right but then there's a
whole slew of Therapeutics that are
coming down the line how do we how do we
test all these Therapeutics around the
world that we're hearing about from stem
cells and exosomes and syllabic
medicines and and how do we know if they
work they only know if they we only know
if they work if we have longitudinal
data and that's why Fountain life is so
valuable because we have massive Corpus
of data a minimum once a year as these
people are going through the
Therapeutics and we're seeing
who's it working for what what are they
taking what's their genomics what's
their with wearables you understand the
amount of sleep they're getting the
amount of exercise they're getting we're
digitizing ourselves I mean this is the
for me the longevity discussion is as
important as the AI discussion because
if you can crack through that it the the
potential in the the implications for
society are unbelievable it's a complete
transformation in society at every level
right I would uh the one of my favorite
experience over the last 10 years I got
asked to come in by the Vatican because
they have the worst immune system in the
world if they try as the pope is trying
to update the church so we did a
workshop there and one of the
conversations we had was listen your
your business model is about selling
heaven and we're entering a longevity I
actually said that yeah that's amazing
well that's their business model right
all the religions sell Heaven they gasp
and cluster pearls they know this is
what this you're selling hope and you're
selling eternity Etc
um as we have longevity extending our
lifespan what happens to your business
model if people aren't dying and that
was a conversation that that yeah
right so I think the the the broader for
one of the things I'm fascinated by is
the idea that every institution by which
we run the world completely changes now
over the next 10 to 15 to 20 years
because it can't none of the
institutions regulatory legal systems
Health Care Systems intellectual
properties broken education systems all
change completely based on these
exponential Technologies the
implications of longevity and we have no
feedback loop in those hmm what do you
think happens when you die
um I'm of the opinion that we um there's
an energy life force in us that then
transcends and takes on some other so I
would fall into The Reincarnation
conscious way you know I mean when you
study the Tibetans they've learned how
to do it in a conscious way because they
actually choose where they're going to
get reincarnated into and they have
trackers they've they've laid down
cookies yeah do you know this no this
all sounds oh it's crazy so so do you
know how they choose the Dalai Lama uh I
know like the movie version like there's
toys or whatever so they they give let's
say there's five prospective kids that
could be because they've exhibited
certain character they give them this
massive jar of beads and if they pick
the right marble out of that massive jar
that's one marble out of hands like a
thousand in this jar okay okay is it
like the only black marble
I just can't imagine they're
indistinguishable from each other
literally that's and if they pick that
out that's the entry point into the
process
then you look at the next set of tests
and the final one they'll come down in
like four kids that could be the one
they'll write the name on a little [ __ ]
of paper wrap it in four balls of dough
they weigh them all to make sure they're
the same they'll put in a bowl and
they'll start swirling it around and
when the same ball pops out like 10
times in a row which odds are should
never happen that's the one and if you
add it all up there's no way in hell
probabilistically that you can ever find
the next dilemics like you've gone
through a 10 tests this is my curiosity
genius and this is like just fascinating
yeah this is just utterly fascinating so
uh if you when you study them they I
I've spent some time with some Tibetan
priests and so on they and they said it
used to take 14 lifetimes to reach
Enlightenment but we've gotten better
now now if you work really hard you can
do it in one lifetime right uh and so
you transcend that and frankly my belief
is that you die you your energy of your
soul whatever that is from a
phenomenological perspective we don't
quite understand it goes and rests
elsewhere
[Music]
okay so is the perception I have that I
have just infinite amounts of
non-existing followed by somewhere
around the age of five I start
remembering things is that an illusion
and I am on some I don't want to call it
a loop but effectively a loop
could be uh I mean look at look at the
tree growing a leaf right at the in the
fall the leaf falls off and in the
spring you have a new Leaf is that a new
Leaf is it a Reincarnation of the old
Leaf you get it this is where Ray I
think says the best when he talks about
this stuff and stuff like he goes
language is a really thin pipe to talk
about Concepts as deep as this because
you get stuck in the verbiage
yes but that also feels like a way of
letting us off the hook for not pursuing
uh an argument which I get like we will
reach the edges of what we're able to
articulate yeah but
um I do like coming to understand at
least people's own internal logic so is
to me uh a leaf another Leaf is like
another bit of hair right let me tell
you where I stand I having looked at the
data long enough
for me reincarnation is a real thing
okay what data are you looking at
um so there's a story I tell you uh This
is Gonna so uh in uh about 20 30 years
ago at the University of Virginia an
elderly fellow died left behind a chunk
of money for anybody that wanted to
study reincarnation okay now I may have
the details slightly wrong because I'm
going to give you the gist you can look
it up yourself
um some young graduate student goes oh
pot of funding I'll study it goes and
creates a big
um research database of there's a
phenomena where some two-year-old
suddenly knows who they were in a past
life and can walk into the house where
they lived and know that this was hidden
behind the painting happens a lot in
India where people are more accepting of
this Etc the most extreme example of
this was a kid born in the favelas in
Rio having never been out of the Favela
suddenly start speaking some weird
language so if they think the kids gone
mad taking to a psychiatrist
psychiatrist goes doesn't exhibit
Madness but this is I think he's
speaking a different language take him
to a linguist and after a bunch of
research they find this kid is speaking
a dialect of her make that hasn't been
spoken for 2000 years
and the kids never been outside the
favelas of real so there's a bunch of
phenomena like this the one that this
guy focused on was this idea that's at
the age of two or three some little
child suddenly remembers things and
knows things about that they couldn't
possibly or not so he starts tracking
this and putting this new big
spreadsheet
so I was I heard him speak at an event I
said what what does it take to get into
your database because it's pretty vague
it could be somebody how do you tell if
something and he said well it has to be
something physical that's what do you
mean he goes well if the young child
thought they were somebody else in a
previous life is there a scar or a
birthmark or an allergy or a
disfigurement that's the same and if one
of those meets the criteria one of those
is the same as the person that died then
that I feel that's qualified enough to
I'm like that's a pretty high bar
um to have one of those four things
present in in this how many entries are
there in your database
and the number blew my mind it's not
something 3500.
so this guy's 3500 fully researched
cases where a two-year-old
um uh said that oh that was me in the
previous that was my life before and and
had the one of those matching things
that to me is a ridiculously significant
statistically significant amount of data
and it turns out that distance was
fascinating distance was almost the
child that was born was almost within
four kilometers of the person who died
that was interesting the second was that
the time the age of the child was almost
always the baby was born five months
after the person died
sort of something there's something
around that period of time yeah and have
you always been open to that like I I'm
violently skeptical I'm but no I'm not
no I'm not I mean I'm from India
originally so I have an inherent
acceptance but I was raised in a very
diplomatic western family my dad was an
engineer I was I did engineering for a
while and then physics so I came across
this later
um but the data for me is fascinating
and show me something that countervails
that you know I I keep on telling Salim
I would love to have an experience I
can't explain
I've never had a UFO sighting or
anything that I can't with a scientific
technological mind explain I've had
hundreds including the episode 10 years
ago
we're building Singularity University
and three years in the model has gone
from zero to one it's working and I'm
fright my wife and I got married the
week of the launch of the the thing so
I'm at Nasa 20 hours a day she's hardly
seen me and he Peter and I were
disagreeing a bit on strategy you wanted
me to keep the faculty at Nasa and I
thought we should take them out into the
world and if you want to change the
world we should get out there and
Peter's like no let everybody come here
it's easier to logistically manage Etc
and after three years I'm kind of really
burned out and we're trying to have a
baby my voice like upset because we're
never home so I said to Peter look I'm
going to need a break and Etc so two
days later Peter says okay we've had a
board meeting we've replaced here I
thought wow that was fast but okay now
I'm free but and very friendly uh
overall Legacy is now set so great my
wife then gets pregnant
um so I said to her listen we've had no
alone time since we got married once the
baby comes that's gone so let's take
three months before I do whatever I do
next and enjoy each other and then she
said great but I don't want to be
anywhere near NASA I can't explain the
standing of my family and friends they
think NASA like the Bahamas uh it's a
big problem you pick the place so she
researches for several weeks picks up
Penthouse vacation rental in Santa
Monica overlooking the ocean
um and she's a yoga teacher so Santa
Monica's Ground Zero for this so we move
in put suitcases down I go out to get a
coffee come back and she's standing with
her hands on her hips she's very upset
she's like what's wrong we picked the
wrong place I'm like what do you mean
she goes well I said look at this Vista
you this is amazing she was come to the
balcony to go see the house across the
street right there where the bamboo
trees I'm like yeah Peter's house
in the whole of L.A
like next door
now if you tried to make that happen you
could not make that happen right I call
it karmic mischief
and you know and I'm if you think about
it almost every major thing in your life
has happened because of a weird
orthogonal experience yeah but just
think of the thousands of things that
you didn't notice understood actually
happened as well this is selection bias
I'm sorry maybe but Carl Carl Jung yes
yep was very very clear that there's a
there's a causal stream of reality that
everybody can see and you can link
experiences A to B to C of consequence
and there was an entirely a causal
stream of reality like wormholes with
things are happening Etc and that we
couldn't see and that was with those
aliens to come and you know take me home
but you've done some psychedelics I've
had some I've had some great well listen
yes but uh I I still in the normal
universe that I inhabit there hasn't
been I haven't seen anybody levitating
or haven't seen something that is like
that's miraculous you know a coincidence
interesting
miraculous no have you I have not no I
take a I am very much uh um what do they
call that we're materialist like it's
all cause and effect the odds that our
sense of
um
that I control my life is probably an
illusion and yeah that just all makes
sense to me like if you had a computer
that could track every atom since the
beginning of time that you'd be able to
predict where we're going to be in 10
years and you'd be able to replay the
universe all the way back to the big
bang that just makes sense to me and
that doesn't diminish my sense of awe in
the slightest like I look at it and by
the way I I asked the question if you
knew with certainty that you were living
in a simulation would it change anything
I know and the answer is no a no B so
you were talking about project Kaizen
before we started rolling that's its
premise is that this is a simulation and
it doesn't matter it's still all the
same it's great you know so if I could
finish that story with this weird
coincidence I got to a point about five
seven years ago where I was having not
this insane kind of coincidence used to
happen but once a year in my life
started happening quarterly and then it
happened started happening every two
weeks and I can barely process one in
the next ridiculous concept is on me and
I was freaking out because this is like
really messing with things so I have a
cousin who's done 40 Years of Taoist
meditation in the woods Etc so I said to
her she's my resident understanding the
universe person so I said help me with
this she's like well listen to me for a
bitching as well duh you've told the
universe you're ready for anything
they'll give you everything I'm like
wait what she's gonna have to come to an
agreement with the energies in the
universe to only give it to you when
you're ready for it I'm like where's the
manual for that so she coached me on
this and you can do this you can do it's
you know if you if you did it at the
fully reductionist level it's creative
visualization right you visualize what
you want and Things Can Happen Etc
um and there's a we all do that you do
that that's what the mtps
you you program yourself in your
surroundings your subconscious to out
for the outcomes you want and then those
things happen but there's a but but
those outcomes occur to a large degree
because I'm outwardly communicating my
math of transformative purpose I'm
telling the world those people who
gravitate to it are coming to me and
they're bringing things to me that are
in line with that MTP it's not like I'm
just meditating on on in silence and the
world is changing but what you're
actually doing is you're programming
reality
or I'm programming how I deal with
reality both right reality is happening
and again a mindset is how I deal with
opportunity or scarcity someone comes to
me with something that someone would be
scared of and I'm like excited about it
and I go in a different course than the
other person
um
so I didn't know you'd done psychedelics
what was your response so you guys have
both done it is yeah I went I went into
a you know psychedelics not for Joy or
pleasure but with uh with Shaman guiding
and I have done Ayahuasca number of
times I've done a combination of
psilocybin and um and uh MDMA but for me
it was my DMT Journeys that were the
most significant have you done no I
haven't done any uh I've micro dosed
psilocybin to virtually no effect so the
uh the DMT which is also called the toad
or bufo uh uh dimethyltryptophan I think
is it dimethyltryptamine tryptamine
um was uh was extraordinarily compelling
um and uh it is a dissolution of the ego
um which is and a connection with the
universe that lets you know that love is
a pervasive force and we're all
connected in that regard and that I had
my most significant
um
visualization about when if you ask me
the question uh what do you think
happens after after we're alive after we
die uh that was my that was it first of
all it got rid of the fear of death 100
which is probably the most extraordinary
because it you realize everything is
connected everything is connected and
we're just part of the universe and it's
it's a transitory so I want you to
imagine this is the visualization I had
which gives me goosebumps still to this
day uh I'm I'm
coming out of my journey with in these
in these DMT Journeys are very short uh
you know 20 minutes thereabouts unless
you're Salim because they last longer
there uh but let me finish so I'm I'm
seeing this this sea of energy just like
a frothing sea of infinite energy a
plane of energy in every direction
and I see coming out of the Sea of
energy to
double helices
and they come out of the energy
and they're there and then they go back
into the energy
and that was it
and it was the realization
I can see it like it was yesterday it's
a realization of this Infinity of of
creation and energy and life emerges
from it Consciousness emerges from it
and then re-enters it
I can you know listen this is my mind
giving it meaning we are meaning making
machines
but so let me so you've had that you're
just kind of rationalizing in your
previous question
that's fine but let me give you tell you
why I got excited by this whole world
2012 we had a lecture at Singularity I
think it was Chris De charm and he what
he'd been doing was doing a whole bunch
of clinical trials with people taking
different dosages of MDMA psilocybin Etc
and putting them through an fmri machine
so in the 60s when Timothy Leary and all
these guys were taking drugs they had no
idea where it was chucking it down right
but this now we know exactly that this
dosage substance of substance a will do
this to neural circuit B and know
exactly the emphasis on how much of an
impact it'll have
Etc and I found that fascinating because
now we have a feedback loop
what got me interested in DMT feedback
loop to what end well because now you
can see what neural circuits are being
Amplified or impacted and you can now
play with but play with okay so I have
to ask them so knowing how you're
creating that state by manipulating
certain neurons in your brain how how do
you see an allergy or a scar I don't
know that I I wish I did I don't but
it's fascinating that that's there at
the numbers that it's there if it
happened three four times you go ah
three four times thirty five hundred
times I got I gotta start looking at
that and that's that's just the sheer
numbers compel you to look at it a
little more deeply but so for me so
let's look at what DMT does DMT what it
does is suppress the parietal lobe which
is where your sense of self-sits when
you can take a dosage of it you suppress
that parietal lobe and you are now free
to explore the higher Realms of your
Consciousness that you didn't have
access to before so when DMT is going is
that all that's happening is is are
there any areas that are more active or
is it literally just shutting off the
sense of self unclear but it seems the
primary function is it reduces the
activity in the parietal lobe
and then you start looking at other
areas and now what's really interesting
to me on top of that is that we've it
turns out there's lots of little
practices whirling dervishes when they
do their Turkish spinning end up with a
DMT release they now know that
yeah she's naturally occurring in your
brain it gets released twice in your
life once it birthed once a death so
when people have a near-death experience
they see the white light thus DMT really
see in the brain interesting so now
they've found religious experience
almost all religious experiences are
essentially you work the physiology of
the body to a point where you have a DMT
release Tantra and Kundalini work
results in that they take ground energy
lift it through your body and you end up
with a DMT I don't take the DMT Journey
um lightly at all it's one of the most
insightful and again I I experienced it
with reverence uh and yeah and awe and
um as a means to explore
myself in the universe in in a different
way and I'm very thankful for it hmm
yeah I'm very intrigued I ask about this
a lot and and by the way you know I I
got to a point after it I said I'm just
going to openly I don't plan to run for
president and I don't care uh what
anybody thinks about it it was
critically important to me yeah it's
beautiful you met Michael Johnson a
couple of days ago yeah so one of the
most fascinating things about him he's
one of the most present people I've ever
met and I said how do you maintain this
like you have this incredible ability to
let things go not worry about stuff
things happen everything just passes
through them and and it doesn't stick
it's amazing he just kind of releases
instantly I mean he couldn't answer and
I kept wanting to pull it and he goes oh
I've done a hero dose a few times I go
hero dose so normal dose I guess is 100
milligrams of psilocybin hero doses when
you do like five grams it's like a
factory reset on your nervous system I'm
like holy crap you've done that he goes
I do it every year and and so all of
cognitive biases that he may have built
up Etc are constantly getting released
and they're free operates in this
unbelievably present form I think that's
just amazing and I'm completely
impressed by the younger generation
micro dosing you know one of the
conversations uh I've been having at
home recently is is the human species
um waking up right you've heard of these
conversations Sam Harris and all I was
going to ask you guys if you've heard
him describe his heroic dose and and so
when we talk about becoming conscious at
a species level
in the next uh
foreseeable future one of the questions
that um
uh that Kristen asked was are we
becoming conscious
before AI becomes conscious so this is
an interesting conversation
that would be I mean it would be very
interesting I don't know if I can
imagine an entire societal level
Awakening but certainly as humans
continue to progress as we are able to
share ideas so much faster in the same
way that culture has stacked on the
technological side if it stacks on the
Insight side and well imagine having a
brain computer interface connection to
the cloud along with a billion other
people and sharing one's thoughts I call
this The Meta intelligence where we
become conscious on a large level right
you and I and Salim are all collections
of 40 trillion human cells you're not a
single life form you are 40 trillion
human cells and then trillions of
bacteria viral fungi and so forth but
you operate as one right and so are we
going to become conscious yet on another
level to bring it back to exponential
organizations a traditional 20th century
organization we would think of as
unconscious with trundling along trying
to get profits Etc and an exos a Very
conscious organization what makes it
conscious MTP
yes it's a massive purpose plus it's
constantly sensing with a feedback loop
it's constantly experimenting it's
allowing its people to operate in a
decentralized autonomous way to make
decisions on their own it's like an
amoeba moving around
sensing the world and little by little
evolving so there are I want to bring
this back because I really want the
community here to hear this and I want
to use oh and use impact Theory as the
example here so there are 10 attributes
that make an exponential organization
they have the uh the acronym
scale and ideas
and um uh if we could I just want to
take off the ones that that you hit so
let's begin staff on demand so
demands we do a bit but I actually don't
love that it was one of the things in
your book I want to talk about but so
okay staff on demand yes we do okay
second Community yes massive for you
right
um third Ai and algorithm yes
aggressively aggressively fourth
leveraging other people's assets
I don't know what you mean by that cloud
computing yes
you don't have computers servers in your
closet that you're using we do have some
of that but not nearly as much as we
Leverage The Cloud the Prototype there
is Airbnb the entire business model is
tapping into other people's bedrooms
making them available and the four the
fifth one in scale is engagement
gamification incentive prizes which is
your whole thing right you were like a
master of that so those are the five
externalities and exos use one or more
of them allows them to keep a very small
resource footprint and then scale very
quickly right Ted uses Community very
effectively for example then there's
five internal mechanisms that allow you
to manage culture and drive the
dashboard and the control framework of
the organization the first is interfaces
to those externalities so think about
Uber's interface with its drivers or
Apple's interface with this app store
developers it's an automated API driven
interface that allows you to
programmatically manage the abundance on
the outside and then add value to it the
second one is dashboards and this is
real-time business metrics to track
what's happening
left right and center and not as much as
we should but for our funnels yes sure
and then okr is for team performance and
Team Management we found as them so
those are dashboards the E is
experimentation which is Lean Startup
thinking constantly testing assumptions
non-stop running of experiments and the
a culture of risk taking inside the
organization constantly testing the
edges and seeing what works what doesn't
work etc
the a is autonomy decentralizing
decision making and allowing people to
self-select what they want to work on as
much as possible which is one of the
hardest things for a CEO or an
entrepreneur to do is to say listen
here's our mission our mission is 10
million viewers whatever it is doing
this and this and this
we want to give you the authority and
autonomy to go and work on projects that
are aligned with our MTP go
Google does this a bit
um the master of this I should tell this
quick story there's a Chinese appliance
manufacturer called hire h-a-i-e-r they
make like 55 million fridges in ovens
here Jesus yeah there's a huge company
um and uh um 80 000 people operating in
a classic pyramid form command and
control hierarchical as heck CEO one day
decides can't be my corporate goals with
this structure blows it up turns 80 000
people into 2000 teams of about 40
people each each team has a p l Target
each team elects their own leader and
most insane each team decides to do
whatever they want to do
now you go to any business school in the
world say I want to make 55 million
fridges and that'll tell you you need a
ton of centralized demand forecasting
inventory managers supply chain
turns out you don't
these literally these 2000 teams work
autonomously like a beehive every team
is deciding what they how do they decide
what teams to keep they don't they the
teams decide on their own you can't get
fired if you you can't if your team
doesn't mean it's p l targets you have
an issue
and the way they meet their parental
targets is they work on a product and
the products are the revenues are pooled
against that product so when they
literally can't imagine this there's a
whole book there's a whole book written
on this it's an amazing case study
what's the book called I'll get you the
title the case study is higher
um and when they want to vote on what
when decide what features should we go
in a new fridge they vote and 2000 teams
that are constantly outwardly facing
with vendor suppliers Partners customers
that come up with a much better decision
than some product strategy team hold up
with Market forecasts and research
groups right and so uh GE Appliances
actually gave up and sold that whole
division to hire because they couldn't
compete because you can do so much more
with the decentralized organization
we're not quite ready for Dows but we
will be over time and you're kind of
building one in in this I'm not I'm
violently not building a dow well think
about what you're doing right with your
metaverse environment anybody can come
in self-provision
and play in that environment they can
play in that environment they're
certainly trying to build things so that
they can build in that environment but
that is that's a platform play like I
get platforms and so our fantasy would
be on a long enough timeline where like
the YouTube of video games that's right
so people can come in and build not we
we could go down a rabbit hole about how
we're going to be different than Roblox
but we have a vision but leveraging some
of that but this is like I literally
wrote before you started talking the
thing I want to talk about is how you
leverage autonomy so the way that we
think about it at impact theory is I
want people to be able to make decisions
in their area like okay your function is
art for instance I'm not going to come
in and turn you into a pair of hands I
want you to think for yourself you
understand our objectives go do the art
thing but we set the objectives as a
company then the department sets their
own objectives and then the individual
works with their supervisor to set it
yeah but this is not hey you're in a
team of 40 and like I hope you meet your
piano know like I can't fathom how you
get to that I have to imagine that this
is never going to be the standard it's
non-trivial to implement but when you
can Implement is very powerful let me
give you two examples that bridge the
Spectrum one is if you're an employee
and you join Google as a new hire okay
you're not placed on a team what they do
is go you've got six months float around
meet different teams work with them how
do they decide to hire you you have to
they're hiring they hire basically
that's it they're super smart and we
know we need python developers so hire
the python developer now do you work on
Gmail do you work on Google Maps Etc
what you do is you float around as that
developer or front-end person or
designer whatever your skill set is and
you float around you meet the different
teams you see where you have chemistry
you go I really love what they're doing
on Google Maps team seems like me to go
sure come and join us now if after six
months you haven't found a team bigger
conversation you probably don't fit
there for some reason but if you found a
team after choosing over six months all
of a bunch of different options you're
probably where you really really like
being right so now off they go so that's
one example of implementing this in the
new hire model the full extent of
autonomy I'll give you the example of
Tangerine Bank in Canada which is used
to be ING Direct so they operate on this
fully autonomous basis they have no CEO
no reporting Lines no management teams
no middle management no meetings of any
kind they literally operate on a beehive
where each employee self-selects us to
what they want to do okay now you're a
regulated Bank Canadian banks are very
regular right so what happens is when
the marketing guy goes oh let's do an
online promotion because he's
self-selected wants to focus on that and
they launch an online promotion
everybody floods to the phone Banks and
helps out getting phone calls when it's
regulatory reporting time they all fled
to the regulatory systems and fill out
all the paperwork to fill out all the
forms to show the Canadian government
that they're viable the most amazing
example I've seen of this is valve
software out of Seattle that makes the
steam platform but for people same ethos
no CEO reporting lives so if I spot a
bug in the software I grab three people
we go fix the bug we disband every
employee self-selects what they want to
work on and it sounds completely like a
joke but they get more Revenue per
employee than Microsoft they make a
fortune
so it's very doable maybe you have to
start it you have to start it with that
principle in mind yeah it's like physics
something a particle born above the
speed of light can't go slower and below
the speed you can't see the speed of
light I think you have to this is found
founding uh starting conditions for your
company yeah this is I did I don't know
what I find harder to believe
reincarnation or that you can do this
but look I I don't shut down emotionally
I'm very open I just everything that I
know with perhaps just my limited skill
set that is a recipe for chaos or you
have to hit a certain size like when I
think about Google being able to do that
there's no way that you can start like
that I get how you can get so big you
have so much Surplus money that you can
let a person wander around for six
months with no like real specific job or
that you can hire somebody just oh you
know Python and you're smart great you
know valve software is about 400 people
it's not that they're also the company
when when you said uh we're doing a a
case study on valve in the book I was
like Oh you mean the company that
couldn't get Half-Life three or two
whichever it was out for 15 years I was
like yeah I'm not surprised but then you
said that they make more per employee so
I was like ah [ __ ] yeah so it directed
execution turns out to be non-trivial in
these organizations it's like Dow
governance right it's an oxymoron it's
very hard yes right so um but in terms
of resilience unbelievable
because you cannot break that
organization because everybody's
self-selecting when there's a problem
they naturally find the problem they go
fix it I think you need to still you
need to desire for that people need to
actually have to hire you can't you know
Tony Shea tried for three years to
implement that into Zappos and it just
failed you can't bring it into it this
is why we say when you're an existing
organization and you want to turn in
Newton EXO don't go through the
nightmare of trying to transform
yourself put up create new axles on the
edge and let those slowly become the new
Gravity let me see the example of the
company maybe it was the washing machine
company or the fridge company but they
literally were like uh we're firing
everybody and then a third of hiring
them left and they restarted with
two-thirds and they did just fine uh
Zappos did that and so did higher it was
higher than you look in fact Zappos when
Tony shade first suggests he voluntarily
said who wants to move to this model and
everybody was like yeah this is crazy
we're not doing that so then you went we
strongly suggest that you move to this
model then finally he said if you don't
move to that model you're fired and even
then it failed very hard to implement
into a legacy organization did we finish
the attributes oh so autonomy and the
final one of social Technologies
um Asana slack Zoom chatter Yammer Etc
it allows you to implement people
together right we found we have really
good evidence today the peer-to-peer
collaboration is much more powerful than
traditional top-down command and control
thinking so what do you guys think about
what Elon is doing at Twitter he
recently was interviewed and he said it
is immoral
to work from home
and I was like wow yeah we had this
conversation yesterday about you know uh
listen I miss having an office setting I
do and I miss and I I recognize and
realize that the intensity of the amount
of work that gets done when a group is
together is substantially higher than
alone but you know the flip side of that
is the geographic Arbitrage that I can
get access to Talent that I might not
otherwise get to move to Santa Monica
yeah
yeah I mean my CEO lives in the Bay Area
my VP finances in Spain my head of
communities in Cape Town
we have a totally distributed
organization and yes we're less
efficient than if everybody was in one
place but I can operate across multiple
time zones seamlessly people are living
where they want to live they're living
with their families etc etc so I'm a
Believer in the remote work side yeah I
also think we're going to see a
transition as uh as the next generation
of metaverse systems come online you
know if we're there will be a point
where we are sitting in the metaverse
and I feel like I'm here with you and
having this conversation and hopefully
the glassware becomes light enough and
easy enough where it's it's very
interactive the key heuristic I think
when you think about Elon with Twitter
Etc and people is do you trust them do
you trust your people right and most
corporations operate out of mistrust
you're like checking things and you have
to file a travel expense reports etc etc
and the entire structure is set up to
mistrust you
and when we move to this new model of
exos by default you tend to trust the
teams to do what they're trying to do
best you're trying to trust you trust
Over Control right trust beats control
is one of the key implications Jerry
mikulski is one of our community members
said this brilliantly he said
um uh scarcity equals abundance minus
Trust
it's interesting for me it doesn't come
down to trust I don't even want to have
to think about the people on my team I
want to play my position I want them to
play theirs and I never want to have to
think about it it really comes down to
results and focus and like you need like
this is going to be interesting saying
to you guys but you need some variation
of the immune system in that the immune
system will detect cancer so yes it can
say no to things that it shouldn't say
no to but it can also stop the free
writers and the the just reality is that
you will get people using Game Theory to
be like oh you can hide in this company
and everybody can just do whatever the
hell they want you will get people that
then just become selfish and then other
people look at that and resentment
builds and so you get other people yeah
how do you know there's there's a uh my
I'm moving all of my companies onto
something called the EOS the
entrepreneurial operating system
is informal it is it's a it's a it's so
you can go look it up entrepreneurial
operating system and um uh and what we
do is we meet and it's a process of
thinking and running your organization
sort of like an operating system for a
company and we have what's called a 10x
meeting every week with the entire group
we're reviewing our rocks our our action
items uh our dashboards and everybody's
got assigned specific actions and and uh
and it's not possible to hide in that
regard a few properly implement okrs you
you really can't hide and yet you can
give people a lot of autonomy and they
can go do their thing but whether it's
EOS or whatever the model is it brings
it together so we have today very modern
team and individual performance
structures that allow us to handle that
true you can hide in traditional
organizations
because there's 20 developers on some
team and nobody knows really Who's the
who the rock stars are
HR never knows yeah one thing we've
noticed with the particular indictment I
would have is today's most big
corporations are structured in a matrix
structure products on the verticals and
they have legal HR branding privacy Etc
and Terry Semel when he was running
Yahoo made the mistake of putting in a
matrix structure into it and it's like
that structure is great for kind of
command and control but it's terrible
for risk-taking and it's terrible for
Speed because every time you try and do
something you want to you have to clear
all those levels so it's taking as close
to a year to release some feature on
Yahoo personals and Myspace was released
and Facebook was the killer here where
they came along and Zuckerberg said if
you feel your code is ready take it live
on the live side we'll give you access
to the live side your code better be
good because otherwise if you take the
take us down you're fired but the
developers got such a sense of
empowerment and autonomy from that and
and wow he trusts us to let us take our
code lab they were rolling out features
every week do they still do that I'm not
sure if they still do that but that was
what got them that was what blew Myspace
away to Yahoo away at the time the early
days of high risk taking for any
entrepreneurial company is is amazing
where we don't have a legal department
yet when you don't have an HR department
and over time power cruise to the
horizontals because they have no
incentive in saying yes and so when we
coach CEOs we basically say take all
those horizontal layers and every three
four years just blow them up and
reinvent them so tell me where can
people follow along with you guys to
learn the stuff in detail to get help
executing we have built a community
around this whole model called in the it
sits at openexo.com and people can go
there it's free to join we now have 24
000 Consultants entrepreneurs innovators
in 140 countries that are using these
models to apply them to come join us on
the master class yeah either join us
live on the six or get the master class
in the book and the AI afterwards if you
haven't already be sure to subscribe and
until next time my friends be legendary
take care peace AI is changing the world
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