The Galaxy Shifts with Your Choices
If you have any interest in or concern about ai, this is the one interview worth watching. Mo Gawdat, former Chief Business Officer at Google, and best-selling author is an amazing human and brilliant mind. He is a voice of reason and fresh air in the plethora of ai noise.
No interest in watching? No problem – here’s what you NEED to know.
Ai (and Large Language Models specifically like ChatGPT, Grok, Perplexity, Claude by Anthropic or China’s Deep Seek) now have a PhD in everything. Yes, everything. The LLM’s can score 90-100% (depending on the model) on every test we can throw at them.
Adolescence.
The problem is LLMs still essentially have the brain of a 13-year-old. They make up things (called hallucinations), they are deficient in complex reasoning (like a teenager) and still don’t do well solving novel problems (like two college freshman trying to work out roommate issues for the first time).
However, they will get there. We will get to a point that our jobs are replaced by ai tools. We will become dependent on them just like I am dependent on my hot water heater, my dishwasher, my air conditioner and my toilet. It’s just easier.
Mo Gawdat warns that the disruptive leap to large-scale AI—and eventually AGI, where the technology matures from adolescence to young adulthood—could usher in a dystopian era. Whether that nightmare proves temporary or enduring remains uncertain. In contrast, Peter Diamandis, physician, entrepreneur, and founder of the XPRIZE, envisions a future of unprecedented abundance. Countless other futurists land somewhere in between. The truth is, no one really knows.
What we do know is technology will get there and sooner than we expect. The unpredictability of what’s to come is no excuse for pretending it isn’t happening. But more importantly, don’t mistake uncertainty from the experts for rationale that the future is beyond your control. There really is something you can do. And, it’s more powerful that you think.
Disagree, but don’t be mean.
Everything you type or say influences what the LLMs are learning. They are absorbing everything. Do you post angry reviews on Google? Are you liking friends’ hateful responses on Facebook? Do you repost funny but mean political memes?
No I am not saying don’t fight for what you believe in, but it is now more important than ever to be humane. How can we expect ai to be kind to humans if we are not kind to our fellow man? They are learning from us. We are the data points.
Since Covid, attacks on everyday humans has increased. According to Forbes, physical abuse of airline crew increased globally by 61% since 2021. According to the Royal College of Nursing, violent incidents against emergency nurses nearly doubled in England between 2019 and 2024. A Texas survey found that nearly 75% of nurses reported experiencing violence, harassment or verbal abuse in the past year. I know the stories that my own daughter told us of her experience in the ER during Covid, when she called us crying while driving home after a 12 hour shift.
Since social media took off—and especially after Covid—we’ve gotten a lot braver about saying things online that we’d never say to someone’s face. My grandmother used to tell me, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” She probably went too far, because she avoided anything negative altogether. But maybe the real lesson is simpler: learn how to handle conflict without tearing each other down. Or, as ChatGPT suggested: “Disagree, but don’t be mean.”
Your choice.
One of my favorite movies franchises of all times was Star Wars – the first three produced, not the timeline order of the series. The story is set under an oppressive regime and essentially a totalitarian state with military dominance. The rebellion is the classic hero’s journey and is an epic space fantasy. Surprisingly, I thought Star Trek, the show, was OK. (Give me some grace, you Trekkies.) More true science fiction but rooted in enlightenment ideals, so you would have thought I would have liked the optimism better. Now, I have much more appreciation for the progressive visionary themes of Star Trek. We all should. The dystopian existence of Star Wars is a real possibility the way we are headed. Life was not all roses for the epic Star Trek crew, but their values, humility and drive for abundance for all universal kind is the theme we want undergirding our AI models.
Quincy Jones.
In his eloquent 1997 Class Day address at Harvard, Quincy Jones reminded graduates that “every day, you must make a choice between love and fear.” Even Captain Kirk would agree—many an episode showed him teaching Spock that love (and its derivatives) is not only human, but deeply logical and productive. Leadership expert Renée Smith echoes this idea, insisting that the most important job of a leader is “to eliminate fear from the workplace” and “replace it with love.” The legendary Herb Kelleher put it even more plainly: “If you treat your employees well, they will treat your customers well, and your customers will come back.” It’s a simple barometer before posting, responding, or making a decision: ask yourself—is this rooted in love or in fear?
After all, not only are your kids watching, but so is AI.