#21: Gerd Leonhard | Humans, Artificial Intelligence & The Future

We should think of the future as a positive thing. As we look at the future, so we act and as we act, so we become. So we should think of the future as positive, and despite of all the issues like geopolitics and wars and so on, we should keep a positive mindset because the future is made by optimists. Now, it's not made by pessimists. Alright everybody, welcome back, welcome to the live on-bone podcast. This is the space where we explore the stories, secrets and skills of the world's top performers. I'm your host and high-performance consultant, Steve McDonnell, and I'm very lucky to get up close and personal with world-class performers in different high-performing industries including business, sports, entertainment, military, CIA, the ballet and much more. You can hear stories, groundbreaking insights, practice logits in a really fun, top-of-walking and inspiring way. And my hope is that you take on at least one action or one subtlety or one subtlety change from each episode that would enhance your life and those wrongdoings. At this episode, I was really lucky to speak with GERD Leonhard. GERD is a world leading futurist and humanist, and he says the future is already here and it is better than we think. As technology rapidly advances and may exceed human capabilities, GERD highlights the necessity for a harmonious balance between technology and human values. In this conversation you can expect to hear more about how to develop a future-ready mindset in an hour a day. So GERD role models this, spending time in the future every day, and we learn more about how he does this and then how we can actually do it ourselves. GERD's vision for the future, a good future, we think in economic models to prioritize these people, planet, purpose and prosperity, which is GERD's mission purpose. Ethical considerations and regulations for AI and more of X-Paradox which is really empowering. What's simple for humans? It's hard for AI and vice versa. So a lot of good stuff here and I think it's great timing to tune into this episode as we face into another year, 2024, and before we know it, we've been 2024. So why not give us a space to be future-ready? Great, Fabian, GERD, I really appreciate you coming on your time. You're going to give it to the show, and to the people that are listening is going to be usually valuable. So thanks very much. You're welcome. So what you do right now is centered in kind of humanism and futurism, technology being a key part of that. So I know you also had it background in music, right? So you've had an interesting journey in life to where you are right now. So what I didn't want to do was aspects of your earlier days and your childhood where you were growing up that have shaped you into the person you are today or that have kind of just put you on this path subtly when you reflect back. So I didn't come to mind. Yeah. If I think back to where I grew up, you know, grew up in the forest in Germany, near the Ryan Valley, you know, I think there's two things from that, this patient that I like nature. I like technology also, but I really enjoy nature. And that's like, yeah, to be in nature. And the second part is that in the Ryan River Valley in Germany, near Cologne, in Cologne, they have this kind of special mentality of being a little bit funny, a reverent, asking questions and being very casual, you know, it's very, it's very un-German. Like Cologne is a particular different place and say Munich or Berlin, to where people are much more open and like they investigate, it's just a whole area and it's just a different culture there. And I think I took that with me when I moved to San Francisco in 1982, when I was 22 years old. I moved there and I basically lived there for 18 years. I went to Berkeley College in Boston and you know, I became half American and so it was very hard to get back to the German way of doing things. And I moved back after the internet crash in 2001, you know, when my startup went bankrupt and you know, I learned a lot in living in America and you know, I came from the music business and then to online music and stuff. So ever since then, basically since 2001, I've been working on the future, yeah, which is a topic that's getting bigger by the day. Absolutely. So you've been working on the future, I mean, can you tell me about how you work on the future, right? So what does that actually look like for you in terms of you doing your work? Yeah, you know, a lot of people don't understand what a future is. It's a very low thing, you know, so people in Ireland and in the UK and America would obviously understand what it is. But many Europeans have a hard time with that idea and really what it is is that I don't predict the future, you know, I observe the future. So my job is to go and say, okay, five, eight, 10, maybe 15 years from now and collect what I see coming in to collect the signals and to observe. And like, you know, I in the late 90s, I said, music is moving to the cloud, you know, music will not be in the plastic problem product anymore. It will move the cloud, which click a button and it will start playing and we're going to have what we want and all media is moving to the cloud, including films, of course, right? And that was kind of revolutionary then, but it's completely normal now. And today, I would say, for example, it's totally clear that as we're moving it to the future, we're going to drop the fossil fuel concept of all this gas being so important to everything. And now everything is becoming sustainable. So observations that I make and then I help companies, governments, business people to kind of get ready for that future and to develop scenarios and to make the right decisions. Because a lot of times we think the future is far away, knows like science fiction. But really, the future is only like a week, well, you know, all of a sudden we realize, oh, the future is already here. Like today, you know, we have 18 million souls on Spotify for 10 quid. And that was like totally hypothetical, even 15 years ago was all like pie in the sky. And you know, Apple music back then was $1 per track, right? It'd be 18 million dollars to get all the tracks here. So basically, these things happen much quicker and I always say the future is already here. We just have a notice and we need to pay more attention to the future. So what are some red flags for, you guys, I'm thinking about humanity here, right? But I mean, that's a broad one, right? But like in terms of when you're looking into the future and you're observing those 10, 15 years on the lane, is there anything I know there is, right? But I suppose to, like, what's, do you know a noticeable rate, right? Is writing that you're kind of anxious or anxious about? I think the biggest red flag for us is that we are, we are an urgent need of changing our economic logic. Our economic logic has been fit for a time where there was a lot of growth and possibilities and there was like the land of Plenty, you know, we could use all the fossil fuel we wanted and didn't pay much attention to it and so on and so on. And today turns out if we only focus on profit and growth and, you know, more money, more jobs, more, everything, then we end up in a place where we wreck everything around us. If we wreck nature, we wreck other people, you know, we were coming from the sort of extraction economy, taking things out and using it and growing and now turns out that's not a good recipe for the future because basically we had to think further and we had to change our economic logic to encompass people, land and purpose and what I call prosperity, not just prosperity. Because if we don't do that basically we will eat up everything around us and then the whole system crashes and it's quite clear with our deficient intelligence now that this could be heaven or it could be hell. If we have the wrong policy and we don't need attention to the side effects, you know, then we end up in the same place again like with the Northern gas where we had really lot of great benefits, then boom, before I know it, it was emergency time. So when you say artificial intelligence is artificial intelligence good for society, good for people, good for humans, I would take a step back and say, you know, basically that pretty much every technology that does amazing things, you know, general purpose technology, as we call it, like fire, the printing press, electricity and AI is kind of like fire or the printing press, you know, it's very, it's going to be absolutely everywhere and it's changing everything. These things can be very good for society, making us prosper, making us live longer, making us faster and also helping the planet of course last but not least. So in principle, it's a good thing to have artificial intelligence to help us to deal with all these things. But we have to also have the right context, the standards and the safety and the security of people in mind. For example, if you're looking at how already it's possible to spy on people using the mobile and the internet and now if we add artificial intelligence to it, it's like a super spying possibility, right? So it makes everything more exponential. So what we need to do is to take the maximum benefit and safeguard against the things that are not so good. For example, the story that makes up the inventions, the hallucinations, you know, the things that aren't true that are easily made up with AI because after all, it's a limited understanding of real life that it has. So we need to be careful with it, but in principle, it seems like an amazing opportunity. Yeah, and I agree with that approach, you can look at the context and you can look at AI and it's a magic, it's a beautiful thing that you can take and use it for the better, but there also will be people that will potentially use it for, you know, for the wrong gain against other people in the selfish manner. So in a selfish manner, so I noticed anxiety around that and also I'd imagine that there is something anxiety around future jobs and what might be removed as a result of AI. All technologies like this, all technology can be used for great things and for not so great things. You know, I can take a hammer and build a house where I can go kill my neighbor with a hammer. It's not, you know, we don't regulate, we don't regulate hammers, you know, everybody can buy a hammer, but it's basically all technologies like this, but the more powerful technology gets like new technology or genetic engineering or artificial intelligence, the more powerful it gets, the more we have to think about rules and standards and also regulation. So we have to say, okay, if we're going to use artificial intelligence to write broadcasts or books or articles, then, you know, we have to put a flag that says it was written by a machine and therefore maybe it's not entirely true. I mean, of course, there's stuff that people write that may not be entirely true. Yeah, yeah. Right, but we have to have a flag that says, okay, this was done by a machine and therefore maybe I thought we stupid or maybe really interesting, we don't know. But it's like Google Maps, you know, we use Google Maps as the same thing. We look at Google Maps and say, oh yeah, that's a good way to go. But if you're from Dublin or Cork, you know, you would know that it's not always true and you make up your own mind. So what we should not do is we should not use artificial intelligence to stop thinking so that we use the machine to do our thinking because the machine always sees a fraction of real life. It does not feel, it doesn't have agency, it doesn't understand really. It's just putting together facts. You know, we have to be aware of that. So there is limitations to AOE dash. Obviously, people are always going to be more efficient and effective at certain things related to social intelligence chemistry between people. And I wouldn't say efficient. I think I think people, what people are picking up on other things that machines have a very hard time doing. It's called the Moravatch paradox, the the Hungarian researcher. Moravatch says to says, whatever is easy for a computer is hard for a human and vice versa. So basically what happens is that I can speak to you when I meet you, I can discover in like four seconds, you know, who you are basically just from the interaction when we meet in real life. It's very hard to do that for a computer because a computer will look at your face and will say, oh, he looks tired or, you know, his white is black, whatever, obvious things. But really no knowing and judging a person, that's a whole different cup of tea. Machines don't do those things very well. And so what our future is, we're going to let the machines do the dull things, you know, that the commodity work, the monkey ones, the donkey work, whatever you want to call it, you know, filing the inputting and breathing, you know, the simple stuff. But we can't let computers do stuff that takes you with judgment like probation, you know, that people out of jail, you know, the computer observes the video and says, yes, that person will do fine. You know, the kind of thing that we shouldn't do. And we shouldn't let computers make our news AI completely because it doesn't understand the value of truth because truth is important in media, the news. But machines don't understand truth because it's not a zero or one, you know, yes or no factor. Yeah, yeah. No, I definitely, you know, can appreciate that. Yeah, so this question is related to, and you were in Dublin a couple of weeks ago. So you don't talk, right? Did you do talk to, as a parent of a program, is it the IMI? The IMI, yes. Yeah, we had a great session, one in Dublin, one in court, and we had about 150 people or so. Really, it was a great event with many questions, not just about AI, it was about the digital workplace education and the future in general. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And I think the IMI is doing good things. I don't have some sessions for them. It's some key notes for them as early a couple of years back. And it was brilliant. Central leadership and performance and culture. And yeah, so from your perspective, George, what was the, when you, when you were going into that session, I suppose, what was the key? A couple of the things, right? But you want key messages that you wanted to give to the people in the audience, to the participants. What was the key longer to stay, what you wanted to stay away? Yeah, I think really important is the, what I call the future mindset, you know, to understand what is coming and to prepare for it. Like, you know, Ireland has a particular scenario that makes it prosper today, not just the tax thing, but everything else also. It's the old English-speaking country in Europe, right? So it has, yeah. That's an interesting start, right? Yeah. I mean, you, that's such a simple thing, which you people know, I'm living in Ireland that I don't even, first time I've heard that, we're doing English-speaking countries. Yeah, that's a bunch of really interesting advantages. But everything moves in Windows. And basically what we need to do is we just say, okay, this is why I think it's a good idea to have a fund. I think Ireland just started the future fund, you know, for development to take the current money and say, okay, if the current gravy train stops or changes and if the tax regime changes or whatever, you know, what's our next window for being or prospering in? What does prospering mean anyway? You know, to attract people to come back to Ireland or to stay in Ireland or you know, and if you're looking at countries like the Emirates or Dubai, you know, Dubai is painting itself as the future, not the past. And it's very important to understand what's coming, for example, in most businesses, we have these three revolutions. One is the digital revolution, which changes how we do everything pretty much. And especially AI. And then we have the sustainability revolution, the great revolution, which we change as how we power everything, you know, sustainable circular economy and so on. And then we have the purpose revolution, which is about why we do things. And so what we talked about in Dublin at court was to say, well, if we're going to look at the next five to eight years, maybe we can learn something and start getting ready to have a future ready mindset that has answers when things happen because today the future isn't science fiction anymore, the future is like, you know, already here, we just have a notice, like at the car industry, you know, the car industry is quite simple, you know, it's a great example for how people worked for a long time to make the perfect engine, like William W. Mercedes and so on. And turns out, that engine is no longer needed because now it's electric, right? So lunches and all these things, we don't need anymore. It's like the old generation and all of a sudden, you're in a different place where, you know, these things are no longer needed and you're in a new world. And that new world, you have to learn because it's not going to take 20 years to be in the new world. It will take two or three years. And then in 10 years, it will take two or three months, right? So you have to constantly invent. And this is really important. Yeah. Like invent is really important word, I think, in order to just having that curiosity data kind of imagination to like that, where I'm going, oh, George, I'm really curious about, you know, you say the future isn't in the future is here. And it's around us. How can you begin to notice that more? How can we get to be intentional about embracing that and taking action to change, I suppose, and be ready to future ready? So I know future ready is actually here. I know. So I'm just curious around that. Do you have anything to contact you? You know, as far as the future, we focus a lot on present day things, because when we run businesses, we wanted to run well. And so we spend 150 percent of our time on just making things work. And then we realize that technology and everything else around that is change you society. And by the time we get to the intersection, we're going full speed ahead because we're so focused, you know, on doing one thing. And then we realize the future is not the extension of the present. The future is completely, in some cases, like in the music business, we don't sell records. We sell, I don't know, streams, right? And shows. And all of a sudden, I mean, Dublin was big and there was big in the music business. It's nothing like it was 20 years ago. It's completely opposite. Now, record sales have waned an importance. And now we can go direct. It's all about marketing. And so on. So we basically have to be ready to make that shift and understand where it's going. So I always say we have to spend one hour per day in the future. And I'm not talking about watching movies. I'm talking about reading books, watching great shows and podcasts, reading stuff, you know, basically being aware of what's happening because then you can say, okay, I get it. I'm not going to sell records. I'm going to sell special performances or music fulfillment television, or, you know, basically I'm looking at possibilities and then I can react quicker. Yeah, that's brilliant. One hour a day. That's going to really practically kind of, and then you mentioned kind of somebody, some of the key things you can do in that one hour. You said podcasts, you know, you're going to your work. And you've done a lot of talks as well. You're right. And you've been on podcasts and you're here. No, right? So I think you have a lot of insights that people can learn from. And you've got five books, probably six down the way I would imagine. I've done six books, but, you know, I realized early on that, that the past was really about books, you know, writing clever books and selling books. And that's still a good thing if you're into that. But it's such a painful thing to write books, you know. The future is about audiovisual materials. I mean, you know, I have two of the 50,000 so subscribers on YouTube. And I make videos now. I still want to write a book. But, you know, it's all about video and performances and keynotes. And you know, it's a completely different medium. And when you write a book, the skills are so different than making a video. You have to learn, you know, you have to learn what you're most comfortable with. Many people are comfortable writing in their, you know, seclusion. And then that put out the book and there it is. But, you know, videos are completely different. So it's much more interactive. You know, YouTube has become the new television. And so I think that is also very much about this is important, I think, for businesses to find out what is your strengths, you know, what are you good at? What are you like? You know, there are people who are in business finding that there's an opportunity, but they don't really like to do that. It's not what they're set out to do. So it's a question of if you like, what you can do, what you're good at, you know, what is feasible or how great people that happen. But it's all about awareness and intuition. I mean, basically, every businessman or every person, period knows that the most important thing is your intuition and to rely on it and to investigate what is possible and to see how that resonates with you, but then with somebody else because you can just copy somebody else. I mean, you know, nobody is like Richard Branson, like Richard Branson is just involved. And he didn't set out to be, you know, I don't know, Einstein or something. He's an inventor, right? He's an inventor. And he's powerful. We can learn for that, but we can't just make a copy of it. And in the music business, you know, basically, I was a musician producer for almost 20 years, and I realized that, you know, I wasn't quite strong enough to get up to that level where like, like you two or any of those people like, oh, no, I started to get to that. You've got to walk with them, you know, I mean, who is, right? Not very few people are. So anyway, I realized that, you know, you have to really find your own way of doing things. And I like being your stage, and I'm kind of on stage now, which is a graduation of what I did as a musician. Very interesting. And that one already, I want to stay there for a moment, because I know there's people listening in there. I got created an hour a day, and I got to give myself space to do to look to be in the future. Is there a particular tool that you have? Are you used? Are you used? Are you used? Gerard, did you teach people like if you're some space, I know you mentioned some of the questions and prompts people should affect on as they go through it, but is there anything else that people can just them have intention around when they give themselves that hour maximum? Is it who you're in a framework? This is certainly habit I have is just like, you know, if you enter being fit and keeping your body in good shape, then you spend an hour a day on that. And you make a decision that's important. And if you don't do that, then it's not important. Maybe there are other reasons. But anyway, so you can't really shortcut that. So if you think the future is important, which I think basically, if you don't think the future is important, you're in deep trouble, because the future isn't like far away. It's here. So that's why you spend an hour a day in the future. So that means I have a great list of books on my website, FeaturelessGarard.com. Just look at the book list. You read books. You read the good magazines. You read the guardian. You read the economist. You read all the leading publications. You don't spend time on social media. Social media is by and large not a good way to go about this, unless you know, out of filter, as most of it is bots and noise. You read the good stuff. You watch the good podcast. And there's so many great opportunities now. And you pay attention to the leaders. You know, I read a lot of Bill Gates stuff. I look at what people are putting out in different ways. I have a search engine methodology, where I search for my key terms. I read all the current articles. I have a tool called InstaPaper, where I save all articles that I like, offline, and I can read them later. So InstaPaper and Pocket for saving. So there's a certain knowledge management that you have to have. After you do that for a year or two or three, you realize that you've gone exponentially further than other people who haven't done that. Because you're much more aware of it. And then you're basically the context. So you have the context of understanding what's around this issue. And that means when something happens, you have ideas. And you can react. You're not unprepared. You're saying from China, you know, luck favors the prepared. That's really what it's all about. Yeah. So that's that's good. Because I was thinking about as you were talking around taking action, the importance, taking action. That's important. But ultimately it was also the, as you said, just the act of doing that and giving yourself that one over a day is important as well that it kind of, it gives you an opportunity to be instinctive, intuitive, and make a right decision when to, when you're presented with a challenger. Well, I mean, these, you know, these are personality skills and not skills like programming or running a spreadsheet or something, right? I mean, basically, the future ready is a personality skill. It's like, okay, can you imagine things? Can you pay attention? Can you be creative? And those things are about personality. And these things have to be developed. So, for example, today in school, you know, many times in school, we learn all the functional skills, you know, downloading information, looking at case studies. But that's not really creative. The reality is that today, most of the new jobs have been invented yet. But, but 2030, we're going to have jobs that nobody hasn't even imagined what it says. So, we have to learn to un-mode and re-learn, like Alvin Toffler, famous futurist said. You know, we have to be ready to be in the future before it arrives. And that is something that we can learn and practice, and that people have done so, many of them in technology like Jeff Bezos and, you know, all people who want to take business like Tim Cook from Apple, you know, because as basically, technology can do great things, but it doesn't want to do great things. It doesn't want anything. And so, we have to be ready to do great things as humans, not as technologists. Yeah. And as I kind of think about, when you speak, the certain things come to mind around them, even the school, like our conditioning, you know, being conditioned to not be in the future or not be creative and innovate. It's kind of our school systems and stuff, like body or thoughts around the conditioning we get in school and school system, and, you know, I know there's some great schools out there, but in general. Well, in general, you know, we focus too much on functionality. So, we, back when the fall, another great futurist said that we go to school to be de-genius, perhaps the genius removed. And that is a very bad thing, because the only thing that we have as humans is exactly the genius. Yeah, it is not functionality. Efficiency is for robots. That's what robots are good at. Robots and AI, they can function, they are logical, they don't break, they're not in unions, they don't ask for raises. You know, they're very simple, right? And they just know about their thing, but they're not human. They don't have agency. So, to have human agency and to be creative and to understand and to have wisdom and to really invent, you know, those are human things. And that's what we have to learn in school. So, I'd rather hire somebody that is capable of building a same castle than somebody who knows how to program HTML. You know, I mean, a robot, a robot program itself already is. I mean, if you look at what happened with the AI, you know, if you're a programmer, you can speak to the, to the bot and the bot will make a nice program, and then all you do is you make it look better. And so, so it's the human-only skills that we have to work on in a lot of times in education. That is exactly what's being emphasized is what we do as deal with. Yeah, yeah, it's also learning information, you know. And while we just say to parents, you know, like that are kind of aware of this, Parima, the kids are going in to be, as you mentioned, you know, DG, you know, he's the wherever he, I mean, what would you say to parents that, how can, I suppose, what can you do about that? What can we do? I know it's brought a system, but what can I do as a parent for my kids? It gives you a better opportunity. You know, I think it's quite clear that if you're a parent, your kids have to understand technology and use technology that doesn't mean they should become technology. Like, of course, they should know how to use an iPad or how to make a website or those kind of things, but it doesn't mean that if they know that they have a leg up, now the leg up means they can be creative, they can negotiate, they understand other humans, they have compassion, they have empathy, that's what we have to teach our kids, and also, of course, our adults. So, where you're in a company, you'd rather have a person that's compassionate and understanding and creative, then somebody that has three different degrees, then of course, you can be bold, ideally, you can have empathy, compassion, you know, it is possible, but many times at school, you don't learn those things there, you learn them inadvertently, like you may learn compassion by going to Harvard or MIT on the site, you know, that may be part of the outcome if you're lucky, but I think a lot of education is just so functional, and that we're supposed to function later, but the thing about function is that computers will do the functioning, we have to be aware of this, that machines would do all of the routines, all of them, that don't require human judgment, which includes writing computer, you know, handbooks, writing, translation, and call centers, and fact checking and power legal work, anything that's kind of commodity work, machines will do. There's a selfish question here, right? I'm in the coaching industry and I'm a performance coach, I've worked with teams and executive teams, also sport teams, real culture, and all of that. What do I need to be prepared for? Are doing right now to future any? Well, the culture industry is in good shape there, because machines can truly be creative because they don't exist. To be creative and to create things requires emotions. Computers don't have, AI does not have emotions, it can simulate emotion, that's completely different. David Burns once said famous musician, had said the computers can play music, but they can't make great music. They can just simulate music, right? And so I think the culture industry has the focus on the human aspect of what we create and why we create how we create it, and the performance aspect in the unique human aspect, because yes, I could say, okay, the robot and AI can make a painting like Dali as a perfect copy like Dali, you know, make them say the Irish coasts look like Dali. That's possible, and it's funny, but you know, there's a very big difference between what derivative AI, you know, AI that makes things. When you look at it, you could say, okay, that's really entertaining, it's interesting, it's potentially inspiring, but there's a mountain of difference, a huge canyon between being somewhat good or really good, you know, it's like cooking, you know, a computer can do the cooking and a robot can cook a pancake or a burger, but I'm really good at me. That's a whole different class, you know, that I don't want machines. And then the other thing is that we don't want machines that can be there can be conscious, because that's our advantage that we have consciousness. That's the real machines to be confident. You know, we want to get the job done. We don't want machines to be conscious, I hope. We'll never be conscious. George, will it ever be like, is that ever something in the future where machines will be able to have a motion and be conscious? You could argue that they would get so good at simulating it that we would have no way of telling. Yeah. I mean, basically, and then we had a computer, one billion, if a computer has a one, an IQ of one billion, you know, intellectual IQ of one billion, it could get very good at simulating if we possible human emotion and understanding, basically, you know, in 10,000 synchronous cases, you know, so it would not have an issue with that, but and we couldn't tell it. And this is one of the things that's most important about what's happening with AI today. We can't tell anymore if the story or picture or video or a podcast that is done is actually real or not, because the computer is very good at simulating. And so we need to find the mechanism to clarify that. There's a music video. I think the the director says, "toe of law." Whatever it is, I mean, maybe I'm correct with the name, something like that, but in the music video, and it was basically audible or falling in love with a robot, you know, and it just goes into the robot. The robot is delivered to the door and in the packaging opens, the robot's there, and in the phone and over and in, something happens in the robot. There are lots of shows about this, like humans or, of course, Black Mirror, right? Black Mirror, yeah. In the end, it is possible that a computer may eventually live up to that expectation. Some people say it by 2050. Then the key to me is that we want that. I don't think we want machines. The Westworld kind of environments. I think it's possible, but it's probably not a good idea. And so today, we're sitting here and saying, "okay, is it possible, but basically anything is possible." And you can vary a robot already. And in Japan, they have robot pets that they're buried when they break, right? These things are already happening. The question is, do we want that is that a good idea? Is it funny or is it going to be a kind of perversion of human lifestyle? Yeah, and I think that that's the challenge. I mean, who might say that's the challenge, but as far as I can kind of say it is that human nature is, and I can't suppose, human life and human emotion and challenges of humanity. At times, people look for a shocker, or the kind of void doing a hard rock or a dealing with a outbreak or putting themselves out there in a fear of rejection. You hardly think so. With that option of having something really easy at hand, I think people can be exploited. And a big business could be created out of just exploiting humans and giving them an easy option for love and an easy option for other things. And I think it could be very damaging. And you know, so there's already a business that is exploiting you with this called Facebook. That's really what they do. But you know, in the end, I think that's something we have to be aware of is at what point does it become counterintuitive? And it can have great effect, for example, if you could work three or four times as efficient, let's say, as a translator, or as a court clerk, or you know, whatever, using tools, that's going to be amazing. But we should protect the spaces that make us human, because they're really important to society. So we should always keep the human in the loop. We should not take the human out. That looks more efficient, like we can say, you know, let's have a politician, that's an AI, because it'll be completely neutral. There's no such thing. There's no such neutral. And you know, there's no such thing as an all-knowing machine. And this would really lead us to science fiction territory. Yeah, and I think taking a human out of it isn't sustainable. So even if that was the case, I think the human would, it wouldn't be, it wouldn't succeed in a long term, you know. I think in Europe, particularly Ireland also, but in Europe in general, you know, we are humanists, right? We want to stay human. Yeah. And even though we want to progress, we want to, you know, we want to live to be 100, maybe 120, that would be nice, right? If we could, everybody wants that, you know, but maybe not 250, but you know, 100 or so. And we're heading in that direction very strongly. But we're still value human things, like mistakes, emotions, accidents, change of heart. Yeah, all of these things, and what's called free will, which is a huge box of questions, you know, whether we actually have that. We have that. Yeah. And we have to retain this. And then, and then we look to Silicon Valley where people are saying, we want to be super human, you know, or a China saying thing, we want to be like living 200 years and not make any mistakes. And I think that's a very bad idea because why would I give up something as Marshall McLean, the famous media theorist said, you know, every time we had something in technology, you all say you lose something that we used to have as humans. And, and we have to be very careful that when we had television, when television came into the living room, we stopped making music. And, and then music came back in a very big way. That's good. And now we have both a television and we still play music. Okay, that, that's good news really. But we don't want to lose everything just because we use a little artificial intelligent assistant or something like this, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And it looked just the human connection is what I'm imagine TV is probably, you know, barrier to that. There's some degrees right and that's probably rotated for him over talking about no, but you said 2050, there would be potentially robots as powders or whatever it might be, right? But what it's is something you can foresee in 2050. What does it all look like in 2050? Well, I think it will probably only take less than 10 years for a computer to have the combined processing power that all of human brains that has been set forth by Ray Kurzweil from Google famous inventor, who talks about the singularity at the point in time when computers become essentially of that, that shirt. Yeah. And possibly uncontrollable. So that's only a decade or so. But I think ultimately by 2050, we're talking about the world that is, I mean, so unbelievably different. For example, we're going to have nuclear fusion or something similar, which essentially is the opposite of fission. So not a bomb, but an implosion, not an explosion, you could say. Yeah. Creating essentially unlimited energy. When we have unlimited energy, which is some people argue 15, 20 years away, nuclear fusion, which is a big deal, of course, and Switzerland, and, you know, trillions of dollars are being invested there. We move to a world where basically with unlimited energy, we have unlimited water, dissalination, we have unlimited, which we can have unlimited travel or we can go to space. Yeah, that's all 2050 right there. I mean, our kids are going to live in that world where in principle, computers can do and machines can do pretty much anything. And so the only question is, what do we want them to do? And I always say, this is really important about the future. It's not about what we can do because we will be able to do pretty much anything that we set our mind to. Yeah. But what do we want? And what kind of world do we want? And if we want to have a Star Trek society, which is more equal and more elective, what do we want to have fifth terms of technology and fight with each other to use it? I mean, this is all very big questions. Inspiring and frightening at the same time, right? But the world has many possibilities and Dr. Arda is trying to say thanks for coming on, right? Is there any, like, where can people find you, find your work, learn more about what you do, you know, take advantage of your services? The programs you have. Yeah, I mean, you know, I always say the future is better than we think. So I'm an optimist and my focus is what I call the good future to create the good future. So I made a film about this called The Good Future. It was filmed in Lanzarote, Calary Islands, TheGoodFutureFilm.com. And of course, I'm very big on YouTube, but I have my own channel. You can find it at goodger.grd tube.com, which is a short card, good tube. And my last book is Technology versus Humanity. It's available in 14 languages and it's on the Amazon everywhere. So techvshuman.com. And of course, on our website, FuturistGirt, FuturistGRD.com. As a huge amount of resources and you can watch my keynote, I have over a thousand hours of video on YouTube. So the next two weeks can be filled with constant watching. Christmas, Christmas time, you know, and this will be released on Christmas. So I think they live out of a lot of time to get stuck in. And the last message is George Anilast in advice to colleagues from anyone listening. Anilast message. Yeah, I think that my key advice is one that we should we should think of the future as a positive thing. You know, as we look at the future. So we act and as we act, so we become. So we should think of the future as positive. And despite of all the issues like geopolitics and wars and so on, we should keep a positive mindset because the future is made by optimists. And we have to make the future. Therefore, we have to think of the good possibilities and kind of eliminate the worst possible scenarios, of course. But think of the future as something that can be really good and positive. Yeah, this in George, thanks so much. You know, where I tell you what I want to just say, look, it was amazing to talk to you. I learned so much from it. You know, I didn't know that the people listening inman as well, that you're a force for nature. You're doing powerful things. And I'm looking forward to it. Following you and your journey and then being passionate in some way, you know, and I think more power to argue this. So that's an episode down guys. And whoa, what an episode was and what timing was as well, heading into 2024. So I hope you took some knowledge, some wisdom, some insight and some inspiration to take action from the episode. God is powerful. And he wrote models, I suppose, everything that he spoke about, which is what life is all about. Man of integrity. And I've wrote all I speak with him again. And don't listen if you feel this is valuable to you, please share it with other people. And, you know, leave a recommendation, leave a rating, good, bad or different. It all matters. You matter. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you tuned in and I'm glad you're still here. And I wish the best for you in 2024 and I hope you cross paths. And thank you once again for supporting the podcast and bring 2024 on.