Kind: captions
Language: en
and i think another important thing is
meet a lot of people who are smarter
than you and
ask them questions
and pay attention
and follow up and validate and check the
things that you learn if you feel the
whole world can be your teacher and
you're learning asking questions keeping
an open mind that i think probably is
what i have done
hey everybody welcome to impact theory
our goal with this show and company is
to introduce you to the people and ideas
that will help you actually execute on
your dreams
all right today's guest is one of the
most prominent and successful tech
investors on the planet named one of the
100 most influential people in the world
by time magazine his contributions to
both the chinese high-tech industry and
to the broader field of artificial
intelligence simply cannot be overstated
as chairman and ceo of synovation
ventures he manages roughly 2 billion
and through some of the most blindingly
prescient investments he and his team in
just four years have helped birth 15
unicorn startups including an
unparalleled five in a.i alone the
author of 10 u.s patents and more than
100 journal and conference papers as
well as being the founding president of
google china the founder of microsoft
research asia and a former executive at
both sgi and apple it's easy to see why
so many consider him one of the most
central figures in the realm of
artificial intelligence the numerous
innovations he's helped bring the world
have been featured on good morning
america abc television and the front
page of the wall street journal he's
also the author of seven best-selling
books and has more than 50 million
followers on social media his leadership
and insights into the future of
technology have not only garnered him
followers but have also made him one of
the most respected educators of the next
generation of entrepreneurs and policy
makers so please help me in welcoming
the best-selling author of the new book
ai superpowers the oracle of innovation
himself dr kaifu lee
[Applause]
thank you thank you absolutely man it's
so good to have you it's great to be
here i am very excited to dive into ai
and all that stuff which i have an
absolute fascination with but i actually
want to start you've talked a lot about
the chinese work ethic and how like
crazy intense it is was that already
something that was present in your
family i know you've talked about it was
there a lot of pressure in your family
to excel
there was especially from from my mom i
was her only son and i think she
really wanted me to excel so i remember
when i was very young she would have me
write these chinese characters and every
time i make a little mistake she would
you know slap my hand have to do it over
had to memorize all those chinese poetry
every time i miss one character she
would throw the book out the door
so it was a push to work very hard but
also very rewarding she would buy me any
book i want to read and she would you
know give me
you know reward and hugs and lots of
good food
when i do a good job
so very much the following the chinese
reward punishment system to push towards
incredible hard work and
excellence that's interesting how much
that have you now employed with your own
kids
none
really yeah that's interesting why none
because i
think people really need to find their
passion
and
forcing someone who's not good at math
to
you know enter the math contest or some
someone who hates spelling to win the
spelling bee is not something i want my
kids to do so i always
help them explore things they might be
interested in and then supported them
when they found that that's really
interesting i want to talk more about
that so
your mom was pretty intense
but was obviously you said that it was
very rewarding was it just rewarding in
the sense that okay i had access to
books and i would get anything i want or
has it been like that knowledge that she
forced you to get has it helped you
you've been so successful
i think it certainly has helped me and
but also i think
having the chance to study in america
was perhaps even more important
that asian schools
really didn't
give people a chance to learn how to
learn
and the asian schools are really good at
providing a decent level of competence
by forcing you to memorize everything
but it actually stifles creativity so
coming to america was probably even more
important than being forced to work
really hard before the age of 11.
because you were able to find creative
outlets
yeah because then i found programming to
be fun ai to be fun and i was able to
pursue my passion
maybe a little bit late but but still
got got to
so interesting so
listening to you talk and i i'm i'm so
interested in your theories around
why you think the chinese are such high
performers yeah and in fact talk about
that so you've said that if if the sort
of chinese culture comes up against
basically any other culture
where's the work ethic fall
well i think work ethic is a very
critical part why china has risen so
fast and the work ethic is not only a
century-old chinese tradition
but it's also accentuated now because
china has been poor for so many recent
centuries so imagine a single child in
the family who has pressure from the two
parents and the four grandparents all
the pressure on one person and
feeling that this person
is the only chance to bring the family
out of poverty and the family may have
been in poverty for five ten twenty
generations
so you can imagine the pressure to excel
so as long as china still has not ha
created a large middle class like
america has there will always be these
poor families with great expectations
for incredible work ethic
so it's so interesting to me so that
there's something maybe distressing in
me that makes me like that so much it's
created this
just wave of innovation in china that
certainly an ai is rapidly becoming
unparalleled and to hear you tie that to
that you know you've got these people
that have expectations on one person and
they've got that one shot to pull them
out of poverty but they're really doing
it
so it for me it begs a question then
what's more important to you so you
obviously champion that you've invested
in a lot of companies very successfully
and you bet on a lot of chinese
entrepreneurs because of this work ethic
so
why not
instill or push your kids in a similar
way what's what is it that
is more important that makes you not
want to do that
well i've gone been through a lot myself
i i've had cancer
and i've
i'm now in remission
and in facing cancer i realized that
working hard can't be the purpose of our
lives and it can be something you would
do when you love it but it actually
creates a lot of stress
and
at the end of the day when you really
look at your life and facing death in
maybe maybe measured in hundreds of days
as i once did
i felt working hard was not on my
priority list at all if anything i
regretted working too hard so talk to me
about the cancer diagnosis so so the day
that that
comes down what was that moment like
you've been in fact give everybody a
little bit of frame of reference for the
chinese work ethic you said that there
was one company that said hey come work
with us we're far more balanced we're
996. what does that mean yeah that
company is now listed at about 60
billion dollars and they attracted the
employees on the basis of work-life
balance
and
the 996 meant 9 a.m to 9 9 p.m every day
for six days a week and that's the
balanced company that's the balance
company you get sunday off
so you're in that environment you're
working were you working like that yeah
oh god uh talk to us about when your
wife was about to give birth
right um
so for my first child in 1991 december
16th
it was the day i had to present to
apple's ceo on artificial intelligence
we had a demo that would work really
well with my voice and less well with
other people's voices
and i wanted to put the best foot
forward but
my
my daughter wouldn't come out so
i had to face a decision of do i see my
childbirth or do i make the presentation
on ai
and i was set getting ready to go back
to work but uh just um half an hour
before i had to leave she cooperated and
came out
otherwise i would have missed her birth
all right so we go from that yeah and
then that type of work ethic do or die
all in
where 996 is is balanced
how do you
hear that cancer diagnosis what what is
that like first
hour first day like i went through the
usual phase of
denial
and why me
negotiate with god what have i done
wrong what can i do right
and then and then quickly came to my
senses that this is what it is and i
need to first
rewrite my will
tell my family
and then go on the internet to look for
any possible chance that i might
still be treatable
so it was both the emotional side and
all the also the rational side
simultaneously uh uh firing away
uh
and
once i got both sides settled you know
all the all the emotion anger
kind of calmed down and also found that
this cancer is actually still possibly
treatable
then i reflected on my life and realized
that
i really put work first
um and and and and my family my loved
ones they um
i was i was a passable son
um husband and dad
um because i was a good uh
like an ai algorithm
i i knew how to spend enough time with
them so they would consider me passable
but but never put them at a top priority
were you
living like that with work first as a
sense of duty or obligation
actually
i just thought i loved it
i loved
the sense of accomplishment
i love the fact that my employees called
me ironman that was my my nickname i
loved the fact that i responded to email
within five minutes always had my pc
with me at the time there's no no mobile
phones
and even when i went to bed
i would wake up automatically at 2 a.m
and 5 a.m
to answer all my emails
because i was working for google and
there were questions my colleagues and
boss may have i wanted to be responsive
i also wanted my employees to feel like
well the boss worked so hard i should
work hard too so i never thought there
was any issue with making working hard
the only priority in life
so man when i say this resonates with me
because i'm still in that mode where i
love it and i had an employee tell me
that she didn't think i was human and i
loved it yeah um so now help me see the
perspective of
like
when you really start to reflect and
start regretting why regret like if you
were really enjoying it
what is it that your family
gives you or means to you or whatever
that you realize that was a mistake
well when i found out about my diagnosis
and got over the denial period
i started rethinking my life's
priorities and i saw how my family was
so
selfless in taking care of me
you know my wife would you know
sleep in the hospital with me on a
little couch
and my sisters were making me food and
my daughters were making me little
presents
and trying to cheer me up and i saw that
you know i
never did that for them
and
and then i also i read a book by ronnie
ware um she was a caretaking nurse who
saw 2 000 people on their death beds
and in her book she said
not none of them wish they had worked
harder achieved more wealth or fame they
only wish for
giving love spending time with the loved
ones
and also pursuing their dreams and not
just just blindly following fame and
wealth
and and also during my illness i visited
a very famous buddhist monk uh master
shinrin he's perhaps the most famous
buddhist monk in in the world he's very
wise in the mountains in taiwan
and and then i talked to him about my
illness and and my regrets
and he said kaifu what really drove your
life and i said very simple
making a difference to the world making
an impact so i measure everything i do
minutely by how i can make a bigger
impact
how i can invest in a better company how
i can write a book that sells more
copies how i can give a speech
listened to by more people
and i said this has to be good for the
world and why do i have cancer
and he said are you sure you're doing
all this for the world to be better or
are you just doing it to make yourself
more famous
and and then i started to realize these
two were not separable
and it was
and then he explained that
people
can
basically succumb to
two temptations um
uh greed for money and greed for fame
and and he said that
um in a lot of chinese teachings
the greed for fame is considered bad so
a lot of scholars
shun that but greed for fame is praised
because that's considered
leaving a good reputation changing the
world helping the world be a better
place but he said kaifu i think you're
just fooling yourself
to say that you're trying to help the
world you're really just trying to be
more famous aren't you
and then that really
hit me
and and he said well if you agree with
what i said
um really i think you should change your
purpose helping the world be a better
place is good but it is through giving
love to other people it is not through
making yourself famous you need to
separate these two things and and and
that was probably the the big wake-up
call that i needed how did you separate
them
well when i wanted to do something i
would ask
if this is something that would really
make the world a better place or is it
just yet another effort to make myself
more famous
and and i would prioritize the former
goal
and then if there are people who needed
my help
that would have nothing to do
with my advancing myself but it was
something that i knew they needed i
would spend more time for that
and and i would spend more time with my
family
and and really i still work hard but
i always put my family's priorities at
at first family and friends when when my
kids take vacation home that's when i
drop work and spend time with them
rather than the other way around it's
just reversing the priority because
family isn't going to take all of your
time if i if one just puts that at a
higher priority i think
the number of hours at work maybe 20
less it's not
down dramatically but but now i feel
much more gratifying that
every day i i feel like
my my life is more meaningful
and and also i've
killed all my bad habits you know
refuse to get up at night have a
wonderful try to get a good full night's
sleep every night so walk me through the
barometer that you use to determine
whether something's actually going to be
good for the world like what so you're
at this nexus of something that is going
to disrupt the world so profoundly
how do you look at that and go this
project is worth my time and energy and
this one is not
well
we can choose to invest in a lot of
artificial intelligence projects
obviously if we see a good business
opportunity we can't pass
but
i would spend more time on
ai for health ai for
education
those are things i would spend my
personal time on because knowing that
those will be beneficial to the world
also when i look at all the ai
investments we've made i can see that
there are many jobs that are being
displaced by the investments we made and
also by ai in general
and that is a warning call that the
world needed so i decided to write this
book
this book is not
just about ai technology it's about
china and u.s rising as a dual engine
to push ai forward and that ai
is
an ability within one single domain to
do a superhuman job whether it is
picking fruits washing dishes
working on the assembly line customer
service cashier loan officer i see those
jobs as being displaced over the next 10
years
and and there needs to be a warning for
young people to pick the right
professions and the warning for people
in those professions to get ready for a
new beginning so
that i think was clear call to me
that it was a call of duty that someone
needed to alert the world on that it's
really interesting and what i love about
it and putting you in context you in
particular talking on this subject is so
fascinating because you've said that the
very purpose of life is to give and
receive love
so somebody who says the very purpose of
life is to give and receive love how how
do you think about the disruption that's
coming it's going to
just eradicate jobs and ironically
enough so
i partnered with a dj named steve aoki
we wrote a comic together called neon
future and it's about the trough of
joblessness that we're gonna go through
right and what the story we wanted to
tell was
how do you get out of that yeah like how
do you come out of the trough like it's
pretty inevitable that that's to happen
that there is going to be this
disruption so knowing that the purpose
of life is to give and receive love
knowing that you're trying to help
people pick jobs that are going to work
well with ai
what is that what should be what should
people be thinking about now yeah i
think it actually all works out because
if you look at this defensively and say
what are the things that ai cannot do
it really and falls into two large
buckets one is jobs that require
creativity strategic strategy conceptual
thinking
and the other is jobs that require
compassion empathy
and human connection because you don't
want a robot to be a nurse a doctor a
nanny an elderly caretaker
so it turns out the latter bucket is the
only bucket large enough for the job
displacement
i i think you know
for the next 20 to 25 years
people's values are what they are
as much as i have come out and realized
my life can't be just about work there
are many who will not have that
death-driven epiphany so they won't
realize it and
and so it is important for them to find
a new beginning and it is really
serendipity that
the jobs that are large enough in
quantity and trainable in a fairly short
amount of time are the jobs of
compassion so
so that will be how the routine jobs
when people are displaced out of
warehouses assembly lines
call centers the job waiting for them
with the training will be jobs of
compassion but that won't happen
unless the jobs of compassion
are understood to be a
valuable job and are well paid in the
society
so part of in the book is talking about
how we can
really help that happen because ai won't
make someone want to do an elderly
caretaker job it just has to pay better
and and that job that category elderly
caretaker is going to
blossom because people are living longer
people over 80 need five times as much
care and yet
the one million positions open on
elderly
caretaker are not being filled because
the pay is not enough
so ai is going to create just in the
next 12 years 17 trillion dollars of net
value to the world
so now i want to bring that together
with two things you've talked about so
we've got the
notion of humans are really going to
find
their purpose in love
and humans have this desire to chase
their dreams so how do we bring those
two things together when
dreams are often conflated rightly or
wrongly with the fame with the money
how do you help people maybe even your
own kids like how do you help them see
a way to bring those two things together
well so when we think about beyond the
current trough um maybe 30 to 50 years
from now
uh that trough being like joblessness
joblessness right
um i think we really need to think about
a different world that the ai is
uh not only meant to wake up
us now to go for the jobs that have more
compassion service jobs and so on but
also
it's meant for education to be changed
i think there are two two aspects i
think one is all the kids should be
encouraged to really do what they love
it's really important for us not to
let the current
prejudices or or beliefs um these these
are the good jobs doctors lawyers
engineers these are the good jobs well
many of these jobs will be gone too
within each area
certain jobs will open up certain jobs
will close down let's take the medical
domain
i think radiologists dermatologists
in 30 years they'll be gone there won't
be any more humans doing those jobs but
medical researchers
people who invent the next drug well
that's going to be what we need so
i think
encouraging people to go for the jobs
where ai is a tool that amplifies your
creativity that would be the ultimate
job to have but it has to be an
education that encourages creativity and
an
education that helps people go after
what they're passionate about
wow i love that talk to me about follow
through so a lot of people are going to
experiment with a lot of things they're
going to start they're going to stop and
that's going to become a pattern in
their life start stop start stop
how do people develop the level of
discipline
i'm putting words in your mouth maybe
but discipline or grit to see things
through
well i think um
one part is to recognize that we're not
just
in a society with other people we have
a.i
so we really need if we really want to
be
that group of the creatives the group
that have the win behind their sales
with ais tools pushing and amplifying
their creativity well you got to work
hard at it right i think
that's going to be have a higher bar
than ever before so that self-motivation
i think needs to be there
also i think you got to be doing
something you love to do
i don't think anyone can be
amazing unless they're
doing what they love those two are
really combined you know i think there
was a a book by um malcolm gladwell
where he talked about the the ten
thousand hour rule and that really
continues to be true so it's got to be
that ten thousand hours plus something
you're deeply passionate about
um and then that i would add on top of
that uh
pick something that ai can be put when
in your cells
if you have that then um
i think you know the future will be very
very bright the way that you look at the
problem is really really interesting and
i think too many people probably dismiss
you just saying that oh you grew up in
america and china so you automatically
have this purview but i think that you
have an exceptional ability to learn and
i'm wondering if um you have a system of
learning like how do you go about taking
a big problem and really getting
perspective on it
well i think first you got to have an
open mind i i think if you start with
any a prejudice that chinese companies
are just copycats or silicon valley
people just don't work hard then i think
you um
have blinders on and and don't look at
the whole picture
and and i think another important thing
is
meet a lot of people who are smarter
than you
and
ask them questions
and
pay attention
and and follow up and and
validate and check the things that you
learn if you feel the whole world can be
your teacher and you're learning asking
questions keeping an open mind that i
think probably is what i have done
it's really interesting you talk about
an open mind so you said something in
the book and i was very surprised and
you said that um
[Music]
even if we're wrong and we don't have a
soul
we're better to believe that we do
why is life better if we believe we have
a soul
well um
many people
feel
either we have a soul or we don't it's a
very
strong belief that people have if you
ask religious people
they'll believe of course we have a soul
of course ai can never do what we do but
if you ask a lot of ai scientists
they'll say well it's all um it's all
physical matters and we just need to
duplicate and replicate everything in
our brain and
and body then there will be a replica of
a human
um and of course everything we do are
just you know
um
electrons firing chemical reactions
everything can be replicated so how can
there be a soul
so both team both sides are very
dogmatic uh having gone through cancer
having seen what are the things that um
uh are most important to me and having
been humbled by many mysteries that i
don't understand i would be with the
group that believe we have a soul
we're at a very tough juncture in
humanity where we face a lot of great
technologies and that our collective
consciousness
is going to create a self-fulfilling
prophecy so if we all choose to be
optimistic and believe that we have a
soul and believe compassion will take us
out of any of the issues and believe
we'll find a better purpose to humanity
then we will
but if we believe it's all a downward
spiral then it will be that so it's not
so much a matter of do we have a soul or
not but it's a matter of our collective
consciousness will create a
self-fulfilling prophecy which is either
utopia or a dystopia yeah yeah i love
that
um you said that there are mysteries
that you've encountered that you don't
fully understand what are some of those
mysteries
um
why does intuition work why do you when
you see someone you either feel affinity
or not
um
why is there placebo effect right by
just our determination
by believing that this useless drug is
going to cure us we actually get cured
so those things i think are very
hard to explain um
with a simple ai can replicate
everything we do
[Music]
yeah that that kind of stuff is really
really fascinating to me um one thing
that i should have asked you
is what what is the soul like what is it
that you want people to believe in and
why does that make our experience more
love-filled and beautiful
um
i think is
a belief that human to human can truly
connect
and that is
not replaced
by any machine that is a belief that the
human to human connection is true and
genuine
and that machines cannot do that and and
that our soul
i think there's also a belief once you
believe there's a soul that even when
our body dies the soul potentially
continues
so i think
that may or may not be true but i think
i'm choosing to believe it um and and
you know i think a lot of the religions
have that element i think religions also
have elements of superstition which is
why they're losing traction but i think
there's something
some memories that people have
of of others and the affinity they feel
it seems plausible that even when
our body dies our soul goes on glad you
brought up meaning that's such an
important part of the book the the
notion that ai can if we're overly
focused on
working being a reason for existing that
there will be this loss of meaning right
what are you worried about in the loss
of meaning why is it important and how
do we avoid it i think ultimately we
will need to find
the meaning of our existence i think
philosophers religions have talked about
it i think our pursuit needs to continue
but for now we have been brainwashed
into thinking many of us think that the
meaning of our life is our work
and that's understandable because if you
go back to the roots of industrial
revolution
it was a process of creating a lot of
jobs that are repetitive and routine
that is actually taking artisan's job in
making a car let's say
into an assembly line job and in order
for the many people who are in routine
jobs to accept their jobs
it would be convenient
if they believed that their life was
about working work is suffering it's
repetitive it's boring but i got to do
it and if i do it well and do a lot of
it i will
earn more money and give my family a
better life give my kids a better
education so therefore
my work is the meaning of life but ai is
just the opposite of the industrial
revolution it is exactly here to
displace those routine jobs that were
created by industrial revolution so
when those jobs are eradicated
and and people have attached their
meaning of life to their work and their
work is gone displaced by ai
and
any job they're likely to find may be
displaced again by ai i think they will
fall into
depression substance abuse even suicide
there are a lot of evidence that
given this brainwash that we have
suicide rates depression rates substance
abuse rates all go up in prolonged
periods of unemployment so i believe
when we're facing this significant
unemployment in the next 15 or 20 years
we can't just
hope to cure it by handing social
welfare to people by giving them money
and saying don't worry you don't have to
get a job here's some money to help tie
you over because what people lose that's
most valuable to them is not the loss of
income but the loss of meaning
all right before i ask my last question
tell these guys where they can find you
online
uh i'm i'm kaifu lee on twitter just my
whole name spell k-a-i-f-u-l-e
and my book has a website
aisuperpowers.com
on which um i'll post my newest writings
excellent
so my last question
what is the impact that you want to have
on the world
i think the most important impact is
really to spread
love
and
to be sincere to people
and to do everything from my heart
and when i see opportunities
share my thoughts in a way that will
cause the world to be a better place
i like it
thank you so much for coming on the show
that was amazing
thank you
all right guys i'm telling you the
coming ai revolution is so massive and
to let it catch you off guard would
really be a tragedy largely for the
reason that he already talked about
which is there is this real fear of loss
of meaning coming because everybody has
their identity so tied up in their job
and i've never seen anybody more
gracefully be able to go from engineer
like really talking about the science
and what's happening and why it's
happening and have such a tremendous
understanding of how it's playing out
even geopolitically and then yet also in
the same book be talking about
love and meaning and connection and to
be able to share his personal story of
his cancer diagnosis and how it changed
and i really believe in yuval noah
harari's notion that
people have he said science fiction
writers but i'll take it farther than
that and i'll say that people in this
realm of dealing with future
technologies have a moral obligation to
paint a picture of the future that's
worth creating if we don't have a vision
to strive towards then the odds of us
getting there are exactly zero and that
is one of the things that i found most
extraordinary about his book is he
paints this incredible vision of that
and i'll encapsulate it with the moment
when the go player lost and he said
everybody saw this triumph of even
taking it so far as to say that it was
the west triumphing over china and
ai certainly triumphing over man and he
said that was to misread the situation
and what he saw was a man that loved the
game so much that he couldn't help
himself but to take on a challenge he
knew he would ultimately lose and i
loved that that hit me so hard because
that's the human experience
so i think that this is a truly unique
voice he is an ultra credible scientist
he has done extraordinary things in the
field of ai and what he's doing now from
an investment standpoint i think the 50
million followers are just the tip of an
iceberg of people that should be paying
attention to this man and i hope that
you will become one of them
all right if you haven't already be sure
to subscribe and until next time my
friends be legendary take care
kaifu thank you thank you so much man
it's an absolute pleasure
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