Latest / Love Conquers Fear / #45: AI for Healthcare: Expanding Access, Improving Outcomes & Increasing Care — Ganesh Padmanabhan
Transcript
- 0:00You could do anything right now, but then you have this amazing
- 0:03capability called AI and you know there's one part of
- 0:06civilization or the universe is suffering.
- 0:08You now have the tools. You're almost like God with AI
- 0:11in your hands. You can go solve that.
- 0:13So you embark on that thing, a very capitalist journey to go do
- 0:16that. But then that leads to a path of
- 0:18love to go solve the larger problem.
- 0:19Abundance mindset is ingrained in that action that you're
- 0:23taking there too. There's only love.
- 0:24Everything else just blends and melts away.
- 0:27If you really take that framing of saying this is 1 one giant
- 0:30thread, call it soul, call it consciousness, whatever, it's a
- 0:33one giant thread that pulls it all together.
- 0:38Welcome back everybody to the Love Conquers Fear podcast.
- 0:42I am reading a new book, at least new to me, called Liquid
- 0:47Light. It's by William Barnard and I
- 0:51think it was recommended to me at a Judaism and Psychedelics
- 0:54dinner. It's all about ayahuasca, which
- 0:57I've never done ayahuasca before.
- 1:00Someone was joking with me a few years ago when I was taking a
- 1:04trip to Costa Rica. They're like, oh, are you going
- 1:06there and you're going to do ayahuasca?
- 1:08I didn't even know what they were talking about, to be honest
- 1:10at that time. But one of the chapters in that
- 1:14book that really struck me was Chapter 2, which is about during
- 1:19his initial, I think it was like his second or third ayahuasca
- 1:23experience. He ascended to meet what the
- 1:31form of God was in his journey and also had this experience
- 1:37with this council of elders. And one of the things that it
- 1:40made me realize, and I've had this theory for a while, is it
- 1:46it's not necessarily about the particular psychedelic you use.
- 1:51It's more about your own soul and what you learn from your
- 1:55soul in that type of experience. You know, I've talked about John
- 1:59Mackey and the whole story, which is his book, which is the
- 2:04tell all on Whole Foods. He was on episode 30 of the
- 2:08podcast and for him, he starts out that book with chapter 1
- 2:13about his psychedelic journey on LSD.
- 2:16That got him over the fear of launching Whole Foods.
- 2:21After he dropped out of UT Austin, where where I went to
- 2:24school, and you'll meet my guest in a second, also went to
- 2:27school. He saw that everything was
- 2:29rooted in unity and love and that he had that experience with
- 2:34consciousness. I also continue to be very
- 2:37excited about Michael Pollan's new book coming out, which is
- 2:41called A World Appears. He prior to this wrote How to
- 2:45Change Your Mind which is an amazing book and amazing
- 2:48documentary on psychedelics on Netflix.
- 2:51So if you have any curiosity, starting with that documentary
- 2:55is a great place to start. But this book is a deep
- 2:59exploration of consciousness and the different theories of
- 3:04consciousness from panpsychism, which means that consciousness
- 3:07is in everything to some extent even a rock, to consciousness
- 3:13being this fundamental property of the universe and evidence of
- 3:17that. To of course, the theories that
- 3:21consciousness is just somehow this magical property that arose
- 3:25from our brains after lots and lots of evolutionary time and
- 3:30natural selection. You know, that that for whatever
- 3:35reason, consciousness manifested, which I find
- 3:39actually the hardest to believe. And we still grapple with what
- 3:44is the nature of consciousness. And I think what's really
- 3:48exciting in this AI acceleration is we're going to decode more
- 3:52and more about what our actual reality is.
- 3:54And we'll get into that today as well.
- 3:58So I really am proud to welcome Ganesh on to the podcast.
- 4:02Yeah. Great to be here.
- 4:03Thanks. Thanks a lot for inviting me.
- 4:05And it's, it's such an honour to be here.
- 4:07I mean, I'm a huge fan of the show.
- 4:10Well, thank you. You have amazing guests and the
- 4:13wide-ranging variety of topics that you guys touch on, it's
- 4:15just incredible. So I'm super honored to be here.
- 4:18Well, thank you so much. Yeah, you and I last saw each
- 4:21other. We're both keynoting UT Austin
- 4:25McCombs event, which is the Business School.
- 4:27Yes. And we were both, I think,
- 4:30humbled by the fact that Brené Brown was also their keynote it.
- 4:33Was like, it was amazing. And I think you know, and Brene
- 4:35talked about her pickleball experience and all of that stuff
- 4:39too. So it was it was great.
- 4:40It was great to see you there too.
- 4:42And. Yeah, Yeah.
- 4:42That was a really special event. So let's talk about your your
- 4:46current company because it's really exciting and just how you
- 4:51got to this point of starting this company and, and what your
- 4:55biggest aspirations are with it. Yeah, no.
- 4:57So thank you again. Thanks for having me here.
- 5:00So my. It's an honor.
- 5:01I'm CEO of a company called Autonomize AI and, and we're
- 5:04four years old as a company, but I'd like to always think of this
- 5:07as like the, the origin journey for this started 46 years ago
- 5:12when I was born, right? So in some, in some way or
- 5:14fashion, because most of what we do and what we've actually
- 5:17experienced shape what we do eventually in life.
- 5:20So, you know, the company we, this is in the middle of COVID,
- 5:24so 2020 and I had just working with another early stage
- 5:29company, just exited that in mid 2020.
- 5:32And you know, for a technologist, I'm an engineer
- 5:36and a technologist at heart and you like to build things like to
- 5:39solve problems and COVID-19 showed how fragile our
- 5:44infrastructure was for healthcare and, and public
- 5:47health in general. So that was the spark to say,
- 5:50look, if you can do something, you know, meaningful, like what
- 5:54do I tell my grandkids that I help people shop more and search
- 5:57more with AI, Can I do something more meaningful in healthcare?
- 6:01And the other thing that was an impactful thing during COVID-19,
- 6:04had a lot of friends in, in healthcare.
- 6:07They were frontline workers and stuff.
- 6:09Nobody goes into healthcare in their right mind, you know, to,
- 6:13to make money or anything. They go in there because they
- 6:16want to help people. They're drawn to the cause and
- 6:19they want to be a part of the solution to the problem of human
- 6:22health. Yet they probably have the
- 6:25shittiest job in the universe today.
- 6:26They listen to sick people all the day.
- 6:29The people are complaining to them all the time.
- 6:30They work odd hours. They make software engineers
- 6:33probably at open AI, probably pay, get paid a lot more than
- 6:36doctors and, and, and nurses. Yet they show up everyday and
- 6:40they're doing that. And during COVID-19, it was very
- 6:43evident that, well, they were stretched thin.
- 6:45They were trying their best. They were putting their families
- 6:48and their lives at risk to actually do things.
- 6:51So the idea around autonomize was around, look, look, if you
- 6:54can give them a Jarvis suit so they can turn from being Tony
- 6:57Stark to Iron Man and serve better and make an impact to
- 7:01human health, that would be the worthwhile, you know, journey
- 7:04for us to get embarked on. So that's how we started.
- 7:08So Fast forward four years now, we had a great year last year.
- 7:11We had like 112 employees now around the world.
- 7:15And by the time this episode comes out, we'll probably be
- 7:181/25. 1:30 We have teams in here in Austin, all over the US, some
- 7:23of the commercial teams, Canada and in India as well.
- 7:27We have a big team in India. So, and, and we're work with
- 7:31several of the really large healthcare enterprises helping
- 7:35them move a little bit closer to the view to the world where
- 7:38healthcare doesn't have to be so operationally taxing healthcare,
- 7:42you know, how do you remove the shackles and remove the burden
- 7:44for the healthcare knowledge workers to do their best work,
- 7:48right, right. So.
- 7:49What's been your proudest moment so far with with some customer
- 7:54impact where you where the light bulb went on?
- 7:56I may remember these these moments really clearly with
- 8:00bizarre voice and dated out world and core metrics where,
- 8:03you know, there was a major light bulb where it was like, oh
- 8:06wow, we're really going to help a lot of people with this.
- 8:09You know, there's a, there's a, there's a few different moments,
- 8:12you know, like I remember when we started off 4 years ago, we,
- 8:16we started in life sciences. So clinical trials was this
- 8:19thing. And one of the impactful thing
- 8:20that happened was, you know, someone I knew a good friend of
- 8:24mine, she passed away to stage 4 breast cancer.
- 8:27And she was, you know, and she struggled with it a while, but
- 8:30when she was actually initially diagnosed, Merck was running a
- 8:34clinical trial that could have, would have like, but could have
- 8:37saved her life because, you know, it would have actually it
- 8:39was immunotherapy. It was the first time Keytruda
- 8:41was coming out. But and she was eligible for
- 8:44that trial based on her protein gene expressions.
- 8:48But that fact was buddied in a page #695 of a 5000 page medical
- 8:53report, right? So just being you know, that was
- 8:56one of the original spark moments where we like well, our
- 8:58first customer was a company in Austin called Eligo Health
- 9:01Research. We helped them run their one of
- 9:03the first oncology trials to recruit patients for a clinical
- 9:07trial, go through 10s of thousands of people to identify
- 9:10the 200 to 300 folks based on their medical records and
- 9:14history who will be best eligible to a get that
- 9:18experimental care given to them because they need it at that
- 9:20time. But also helped launch that
- 9:22particular drug or that particular procedure they were
- 9:24trying to do. So that was 1 moment where we
- 9:26actually like when we unlock them, we compress that 9 1/2
- 9:29month cycle that they had with 200 people reviewing charts to
- 9:33two months or less, you know, to get, you know, get to 1st
- 9:37patient in for the trial. That was really special.
- 9:41We work a lot with health plans and large health providers.
- 9:44And you know, one of the things that we, we, we, we have this
- 9:47vision of an agent take health enterprise and the idea that
- 9:51it's a hybrid organization. You have humans and, you know,
- 9:54knowledge workers and stuff doing their stuff.
- 9:57But then all of the mundane administratively taxing part is
- 10:00done by AI agents and they have a way and a platform to transfer
- 10:04context and so forth. So in healthcare in general, you
- 10:08know, a lot of the work flows you see are very siloed.
- 10:12So a health plan receiving a prior authorization request for
- 10:16a PET scan has information about that patient having a confirmed
- 10:20cancer diagnosis and they're requesting a PET scan.
- 10:22Well, we work with this customer and they we were able to help
- 10:26them turn this around, say rather than just, you know,
- 10:29treating that as a request and a transaction.
- 10:32Well, imagine that experience they were able to deliver this
- 10:36you an AI agent looks at that particular charts understands
- 10:40this patient changes the risk profile of their population so
- 10:42updates and sends a message to the risk team.
- 10:45It looks at that you know hey this patient is just confirmed
- 10:48cancer diagnosis. You can predict the pathway for
- 10:51the next six to seven months. Why don't I go and look at all
- 10:55the provider network who has the best treatment for this patient,
- 10:58map out that whole thing. And that afternoon send a
- 11:01message to the, the, the, the oncology care navigator who
- 11:05calls the member and say, instead of saying, hey, your
- 11:07request is approved or not saying, I know you're going
- 11:10through a tough time, right? But let me, we're here to help
- 11:14you. Here's the next six or seven
- 11:16months of journey. Here's the providers you need to
- 11:18do. I've already taken care of your
- 11:19appointments. Here's how much you'll have to
- 11:21pay at the end of it. Here's how we're going to work
- 11:23with you on this particular day. And that entire experience
- 11:26changed for that one target population that we ran this
- 11:28study for. So I think that's.
- 11:30That's awesome. That's the opportunity.
- 11:32That's when we know that, OK, there is so much impact we can
- 11:35make. And you know, I have other
- 11:37stories too, but you know, I know we have other topics to
- 11:39talk through and stuff too, right?
- 11:41So. Yeah.
- 11:42How, how did you, you know, kind of going back to your childhood.
- 11:45Why do you why do you think this is this is your calling?
- 11:49And I'll say in this lifetime, because I very much believe in
- 11:52reincarnation. Me too, actually, you know, So
- 11:56that's a good question. You know, look, all you, you, I
- 12:01never thought I'll be in healthcare, to be honest, right.
- 12:03I mean, it's just like I'm was a technologist.
- 12:05I love building things. I grew up in a very, you know,
- 12:10conservative family. You know, we, we, we had, you
- 12:13know, we, we didn't have a lot of means.
- 12:15We had, we were OK. We were not like, but we grew up
- 12:17poor and, but we, we, it was a very communal environment.
- 12:22Grew up. I, you know, it's like the, so
- 12:24we, we grew, I grew up in this place called Palakkad in Kerala,
- 12:27in India, southern India. And the place is stuck.
- 12:30And it was like this old Vedic scholar, Vedanta scholar
- 12:34settlements that would actually serve with the temple and stuff
- 12:37like that. It was a very communal line
- 12:39houses, everybody talk, everybody knows about what's
- 12:42happening around this whole thing.
- 12:44So there was an environment that, you know, that I grew up
- 12:46in which I honestly didn't appreciate when I was there.
- 12:49When you look back after a while, I was like, oh man, that
- 12:51shaped the way I think about things like and, you know,
- 12:55thinking about healthcare today and healthcare then.
- 12:57I remember like you, when you go to a primary care physician,
- 13:00they knew your family, they knew your entire history.
- 13:03They knew what diseases your grandfather had and how you're
- 13:06impacted. It was so personal to go in and
- 13:09you go walk up when you're sick and stuff like that.
- 13:11And, and, and then there is everybody else playing roles as
- 13:15caregivers. The neighbor who actually has
- 13:17studied some, you know, Eastern medicine will come in and say,
- 13:19yeah, you have a tummy ache. Here's the thing that you do.
- 13:22All of that was part of a very, you know, very fluid system that
- 13:27took care of you, right. And then, you know, almost 20
- 13:30years ago, it came to the United States and we are one of the
- 13:33most advanced technologies in the in the industry.
- 13:36We have the supremacy on every one of those things, but
- 13:40healthcare, you think about like all the things we could do and
- 13:44we probably have the most obese people in the world.
- 13:46We don't have the right structures in place to go take
- 13:49care of that. It was very, you know, 1, You
- 13:52know, with a country like India, you know, now India is becoming
- 13:55pretty affluent and stuff too. The middle class has grown up.
- 13:58The largest country in the world, now it is 1.46 billion
- 14:02people I think. That's right, 1 1/2 billion
- 14:05people. So and without any of that
- 14:09resources they have today and the progress they've had today,
- 14:11if they can figure that out 30 years ago, 40 years ago.
- 14:15For us, it's about like trying to apply the right, you know,
- 14:19incentives, the right technology, the right, you know,
- 14:21getting the right builders with the right mindset to come and
- 14:23change it. We can change the system in U.S.
- 14:26healthcare. So it was one of those.
- 14:28So I, I think all of that had shaping to it, but I think a lot
- 14:31of things that you learn in terms of, you know, look, do
- 14:35something that is worthwhile than just doing, you know, it's,
- 14:39it's the, and I know you, we were talking about you had
- 14:42another previous guest, Manoj. Yeah, Manoj Saxena.
- 14:46Manoj used to say is to work for Manoj and, and it's one of his
- 14:49last companies. And he used to say like, do
- 14:52good, have fun, make money, but in that order, right.
- 14:56And I very much believe that. And what, what better
- 14:59opportunity do you get as a technologist to focus all that
- 15:02energy and experience to solve the most profound problem, which
- 15:06is improve the human condition, right?
- 15:08Physical condition today, but eventually that'll permeate into
- 15:11other parts as we grow into abundance against the world,
- 15:14right? So that's one of the shaping
- 15:17stories, if you will. You know, it's amazing what's
- 15:19what's happening in Austin. I, I joined the Advisory Board
- 15:23for the Dell Medical school for the new teaching hospital that
- 15:27they're building largest project in, in UTS history, which is
- 15:31kind of incredible. Like it's a staggering, you
- 15:34know, scale of a project. And one of the things that the
- 15:38Dean has talked about quite a bit, Claudia, who's become a
- 15:44good friend, is that Michael Dell, which, you know, it's
- 15:47Adele Medical School, one of the biggest donors alongside his
- 15:51wife Susan has told her is make sure this isn't going to be
- 15:58obsolete, you know, the year after you build it.
- 16:01It's interesting. Yeah.
- 16:02And I'm just I'm just curious how you how you think about that
- 16:05because you're on the front lines of seeing the impact of AI
- 16:09in healthcare and really helping galvanized that.
- 16:12But you know, we're in this exponential of exponential
- 16:16curves and, and one of the reasons I, I want to have you
- 16:20on, besides the fact I love your heart, is really to dive deep
- 16:24on, on that. Like how is this AI moment going
- 16:27to really impact healthcare? No, you know, it's, it's, it's a
- 16:31great question. And by the way, I'm so excited.
- 16:33I'm actually guest lecturing in one of the Mccune's classes that
- 16:37there is a group in this in, in the MD's program for the Dell
- 16:44medical school, their dual degree MD MB AS.
- 16:48So I'm actually having a conversation with them about
- 16:50like the how AI and the future of healthcare.
- 16:53I'm teaching a class this summer of the spring and I'm so
- 16:57fascinated because I think look what you did, the skills that
- 17:00you need as a clinician are going to fundamentally evolve,
- 17:04right? I mean, think about it, you
- 17:05were, you know, if if you had to, like most of the skills
- 17:09you'll learn in the medical school is around how do I digest
- 17:12information from multiple clinical studies?
- 17:15How do I actually form intuitions on what works and
- 17:18what not? You know, how do I form, how do
- 17:20I actually, you know, understand procedures and stuff like that.
- 17:24In the age of AI, you don't have to memorize or remember any of
- 17:27that. So what can they really do
- 17:29right? What can you unlock for them?
- 17:31One part is like, I always fundamentally believe that
- 17:34Healthcare is more about the care part, the the human part of
- 17:38it then things. So this can really unlock if you
- 17:41are a great interpersonal clinician who understands it
- 17:45gives comfort. There's a lot of studies also
- 17:47being done that like, you know, people with place boost, but
- 17:50then having a great experience with a physician feel better.
- 17:52They're, you know, heal better and all of that stuff.
- 17:55So I think there is an opportunity where there's a
- 17:58reframing that needs to happen. And I'll tell you the practical
- 18:00realities as well today when we deploy, you know, AI and several
- 18:05really large enterprises in the United States and and abroad too
- 18:08now. And there is still a little bit
- 18:12of fear and certainty. There's a little doubt from the
- 18:15clinical folks mostly. I mean, it started with folks
- 18:19like getting really worried about saying, how is this going
- 18:21to change my workflow and what do I do?
- 18:23Do I will I still be valued the way I am and stuff the ones you
- 18:27get that trust unlocked with them.
- 18:29You see this tremendous a sense of gratitude for them to say, Oh
- 18:33my God, I now don't have to do pajama time anymore of spending
- 18:38four hours writing up my 10 visits that I had this year
- 18:41after my kids go to Brad, right? So that's one immediate impact.
- 18:45But then the other thing is like, wow, earlier I used to
- 18:48never have the time to go research, you know, what is the
- 18:52best experimental care option for this patient?
- 18:55Now I do, I can ask a question in open evidence or chat GPD for
- 18:59that matter. And, and, and I can have a, an
- 19:02answer that I wouldn't, I couldn't have done it.
- 19:04I couldn't even have thought of doing it before, right?
- 19:07So how do you know? So I'm giving that frontline
- 19:10workers view of things. But overall, right, like think
- 19:13about the chat GPD for health just launched and Tropic is
- 19:16doing some work on that front too.
- 19:18You're giving tools to even the patients to decipher,
- 19:21disseminate. There is still hallucinations,
- 19:24all of the technical problems you got to solve.
- 19:26It'll eventually work itself out.
- 19:27But you're now giving rise to an opportunity for a very informed
- 19:31patient, right? That was hard to be informed as
- 19:34a patient before. Well, what that does is actually
- 19:36put the pressure on the system. Now you can actually go look and
- 19:39you're you're walking to a doctor's office.
- 19:42I'm going to have my 20 questions ready for you, Mr.
- 19:44Doctor. So you have to now step up and
- 19:47be able to help me, you know, remove my concerns and fears on
- 19:51this and have a conversation than just looking at the EMR.
- 19:54And these are way better questions than when they were
- 19:57just searching on Google. Exactly.
- 19:58Exactly. So the quantities are.
- 20:00Conversing with all of humanity's content in all
- 20:03languages, you know, in English or whatever their language is
- 20:07that they're, that they that they choose to converse in.
- 20:10Exactly, exactly. So I think so this is going to
- 20:13add a lot of pressure to the system and like you know, if you
- 20:15just look at healthcare for the matter, US, we have 330 million
- 20:19people, we have less than 1,000,000 MD's in the country
- 20:24and we cannot produce them fast enough, right?
- 20:26Takes 10 years to produce an MD. We have less than four and a
- 20:31half million, you know, nurses, caregivers, nurse practitioners,
- 20:36medical assistants and so forth for 330 million people.
- 20:40There is no way we can scale the way we are doing work in
- 20:44healthcare, right? So it's almost like a this
- 20:46breakout moment in healthcare like, you know, it's an
- 20:48inflection point. You have to unlock the what is
- 20:51great about these people and extend what they can do through
- 20:56AI or non living entities to go increase the reach of what they
- 20:59can do and so forth. Right.
- 21:01So I think there is going to be a fundamental shift in
- 21:03healthcare. And so we were so fortunate.
- 21:05You can never as an entrepreneur, you can, you know,
- 21:08you can make a decision early on in the market you choose and and
- 21:12you hope to get lucky and I got lucky from that perspective.
- 21:14Even just thinking about once AI gets, you know, fully embodied
- 21:20with, with robotics, like, you know, having that very intimate
- 21:25level of communication as well with the, with the patient and
- 21:31taking care of our elderly and, and all of the things that
- 21:34that's going to be able to do because we also need those
- 21:38workers. Absolutely.
- 21:39I think, you know, look, we like we, we, we need, people are
- 21:42getting older and you need the companionship, you need the
- 21:45physical touch. And there's some, you know, with
- 21:47embodied AI and robotics, you know, you're, there's still some
- 21:50haptic human feel things that are being solved for.
- 21:53But it'll happen. It'll eventually, you know,
- 21:55catch up. And I think there's a huge
- 21:57opportunity just to, you know, extend what, you know, everybody
- 22:01back to your team on abundance, right?
- 22:03Like, you know, this can truly create abundance for care and
- 22:07health. And you know, it just unlocks so
- 22:09much potential for everybody to get like, I can get a, you know,
- 22:12like one of my colleagues, she used to say, and she's been in
- 22:16healthcare forever and she's like, look, one of my mission
- 22:18was actually, I want to go out there and when I get to Medicare
- 22:22age, I don't want to be complaining about the system.
- 22:25I want to have the impact today. So when I get to Medicare age, I
- 22:29can actually get and enjoy the benefits of that, right?
- 22:31I mean, even that personal view of these things, but I think
- 22:34it's going to be, it's going to be incredible.
- 22:35Like in a how we in even today, like you know, I'm sure I I use
- 22:40function health, for example, Mark Hyman's company and it just
- 22:44the amount of the CTO. Lives just really, really close
- 22:48nearby. I'm a huge fan.
- 22:50I think that's. Incredible.
- 22:52I mean, incredible, in fact. Right.
- 22:53And then, you know, just having more informed patients and we
- 22:57talk about consumerization, we talk about the direct to
- 23:00consumer move in healthcare. I think just unlocking, you
- 23:04know, if you believe in the power of the universal
- 23:07consciousness and having more people thinking about the same
- 23:10problems and so forth. For the first time we are
- 23:13including patients into the part of the conversation in
- 23:16healthcare never happened before.
- 23:18That itself will unlock so much value in my.
- 23:21Opinion. Yeah, for sure.
- 23:22You know, I should, I should give a shout out because this is
- 23:24a really special week for Austin.
- 23:29Aptronic just announced 520 million of add on funding to
- 23:34their Series A, which is over $900 million.
- 23:39Amazing. A billion dollar series.
- 23:41AI think that that is a record in Austin, but huge shout out to
- 23:46Jeff Cardenas. I just I just booked him for the
- 23:48podcast. Actually, he's going to.
- 23:50Nice, I just sent him a message after I heard the new.
- 23:52I saw that he's a he's. A friend and I just could not be
- 23:56more happy for for him and his team.
- 23:58They were both on how that work will eventually intersect with
- 24:01with your company as well. Yeah, I think you know, exactly
- 24:04right. I think this is the, the, the,
- 24:07the time in the world that we live in, right in the time of
- 24:09the universe. Like you have so many people and
- 24:11the the, the democratization of these tools.
- 24:15People who are closest to the problem now have the tools to go
- 24:17build the solutions for the problem.
- 24:19And then all of these different things, there's embodied AI and
- 24:22robotics happening on one end. There is like deep, you know,
- 24:25we're working on a lot of problems around clinical
- 24:28judgement, memory, you know, how do you act situational awareness
- 24:31and things that are hard to actually, you know, humans have
- 24:34it, but we haven't figured out how to model it in software.
- 24:37There is things around like, you know, diagnostics and the even
- 24:41how do you really truly get to the vision of personalized
- 24:44medicine today is just DNA matching, right?
- 24:47But it's more than that. Most of the things, it's more
- 24:50even your DNA changes based on your social and social economic
- 24:53environments and so forth, right?
- 24:54How do you bring all of that in together?
- 24:56So this, all of these different fields will just collide
- 24:59together and it's going to be truly a big, big moment in in
- 25:03healthcare. Yeah.
- 25:04Do you, do you think that do you think we're going to be able to
- 25:09extend our lives and your in my lifetime to like 150 or where do
- 25:14you where do you kind of net out and that because it's it is this
- 25:17exponential of exponential curves.
- 25:20You know. I've got a lot of friends asking
- 25:22me about longevity and what I think is going to happen, and I
- 25:27think I think it's going to kind of astonish us what we're going
- 25:30to unlock there in the next 10 years.
- 25:33I think so too. Look, I mean, there's a few
- 25:35things. 1 is longevity is a goal.
- 25:38Well, it's like the moon shot, right?
- 25:40When you try to go power and trying to get to that, it
- 25:44unlocks a lot of things like when I even think like where the
- 25:48the whole function health and being diagnostic, being able to
- 25:50look at 200 biomarkers twice a year across and knowing exactly
- 25:55what's going on your body. To me, that's progress, right
- 25:59with with, you know, some of the work that several of the folks
- 26:03like Brian Johnson's doing, right.
- 26:06It's incredible. My wife was, I was talking to my
- 26:08wife Anita. She was like, look, Brian
- 26:10Johnson will be mad because I'm going to bed late.
- 26:13Right. Just that aspect of that impact
- 26:16he's making and raising the awareness for folks as you try
- 26:19to so go solve longevity. Now, that said, technically all
- 26:23the elements of how do you actually drive and live a longer
- 26:25life? And you know, it's going to be a
- 26:27hard barrier to get across that 100 and 120 and stuff too, but
- 26:31it will eventually get there. Right now, more than that, I'm
- 26:34more what I'm more interested in the the offshoots of that
- 26:37that'll actually drive, that'll dive, you know, like today, the
- 26:41growth of mocktails and non alcoholic drinks in the
- 26:45universe, it's just unbelievably amazing.
- 26:47Amazing mocktail. Last night I at this restaurant
- 26:51called Bartlett's, which used to be called Houston's, is actually
- 26:54the very first restaurant that Deborah and I went to and we've
- 26:57been married 29 years. Oh wow, congratulations.
- 27:00And that was the that was the first date restaurant, but they
- 27:03had a mocktail last night that just blew my mind.
- 27:08It was like this blood orange kind of Margarita tasting
- 27:12mocktail. Really, really good.
- 27:14You know, I gave up alcohol about a year ago.
- 27:18Got it, just did, just did not have any bad mornings.
- 27:21You know, the next day. It was actually a psychedelic
- 27:23journey for me that led to that. It wasn't something I was
- 27:27looking for going into the journey, but but there was this,
- 27:31there was this moment in it where I was looking down at my
- 27:34body and my soul said you've transcended the need for this
- 27:39socially. You're just poisoning yourself.
- 27:42Time to move on. You know that was it.
- 27:45I, I give up alcohol about four years ago, 5, almost four years
- 27:48ago, I still, I still would have a glass of wine.
- 27:51Now I rarely even do that too. But it's, it's, it's interesting
- 27:55you say that, right? Because to, to your point on
- 27:57longevity, right, just that. And I think it was probably a
- 27:59podcast or a book I was reading that gave me that big jolt and
- 28:03saying, what am I doing this for?
- 28:04And like, you don't need that socially.
- 28:06And like, in fact, it's, I sleep better.
- 28:09I'm I'm actually more socially active in a party without the
- 28:12alcohol than for sure drinking alcohol, right.
- 28:15And I understand like the IT. Has some social utility for me
- 28:19when the The thing is, it's it's it.
- 28:21It has a social utility, sometimes with little use, but
- 28:25then it can very quickly degrade from there.
- 28:27That's so true. And then all the things that it
- 28:29does to your body after that, it's not even that's the worst.
- 28:32Yeah. But to your point on lunch
- 28:33longevity, right, like so to me, like what does does that focus
- 28:37on longevity changes the quality of life today?
- 28:41For sure, right? And you know, I like talking
- 28:43about mocktails on another offshoot was like I finally
- 28:47found because I love AI used to love a good gin, but it was hard
- 28:51to find good botanicals that taste like gin but not is not
- 28:54really doesn't have alcohol in it.
- 28:56And I found the Tangare NA in, I think it was, I was last week in
- 29:01the Heathrow airport and the lounge had it and I try to get
- 29:04it from the, the, the duty free and they didn't have it.
- 29:07I'm like, I got to get that. I got to get and make my, you
- 29:10know, martinis with that. You know, it was, it was just
- 29:13incredible. But anyway.
- 29:14Try the little Saints. Have you ever heard?
- 29:16That little Saints. Yeah, Little Saints, it's it's
- 29:18female owned company. They're crushing that I'm not an
- 29:22investor. This is not me promoting them as
- 29:24an investor although I wish I was.
- 29:27And they they have mushroom based cocktails which is lion's
- 29:33mane. So I'm not talking about.
- 29:35Psychedelic, it's just a not ayahuasca, yes, not ayahuasca
- 29:39either. It's just you know, mushroom
- 29:41base. But but the I've had a lot of
- 29:43dinner parties over here where Ioffer people either an
- 29:47alcoholic drink or, you know, one of these mushroom based
- 29:52cocktails with with the gin or they also have the mescal
- 29:56version nice from little Saints. And believe it or not, I've been
- 30:01shocked at this. People choose 70 to 90% of the
- 30:06time, the non alcoholic and and and the cool thing about the
- 30:10mushroom in it is it's a nice upper.
- 30:13So it leads to really, really great conversation.
- 30:16When when when Chris Bache was over here, you know, I had him
- 30:19on episode 36. He's one of my favorite authors.
- 30:22He wrote LSD in the mind of the universe, Diamonds from Heaven.
- 30:26I've read that book twice in some parts three times.
- 30:28It's amazing. That was an incredible episode.
- 30:31He that evening as we were having dinner with with this,
- 30:37with this amazing group, including Mark Gobert, who was,
- 30:39who was on episode 2 and Jason Carp who was in episode 3.
- 30:44He was like, wow, those those mushroom based cocktails.
- 30:46Like it really led to a very stimulating conversation.
- 30:50So it's a it's a nice upper versus just being non alcoholic.
- 30:53You know, it, it's, it's, it's interesting the I remember
- 30:56reading, I don't remember which book it is a long time ago,
- 30:59science fiction where we have transcended the need to eat
- 31:02meat, to eat drink alcohol as a society.
- 31:05Because these were things that you look back and there's this
- 31:07line on that book. I can't even remember what that
- 31:10book was, but it talks about like, you know, and you look
- 31:13back at the time where it humans thought it was OK to kill
- 31:16animals and put them on a plate, which is kind of, I'm a
- 31:19vegetarian. You can must say, I know you are
- 31:21for 16 years, yeah. So it, it's, it's that evolution
- 31:25that is going to drive. And so whether that leads to
- 31:27longevity, I mean, if you really think about diseases like
- 31:30cancer, I don't know, you probably know this, but 70% of
- 31:34all cancers are actually preventable by modifying your
- 31:37lifestyle. And it's like the exposure to
- 31:40different elements, how it changes the DNA in your body and
- 31:42stuff like that. So when you play all of that out
- 31:45of the long term, we have a kind of short circuited our need to
- 31:49actually doing things and created shortcuts and stuff like
- 31:51that. You don't need to take any more
- 31:53shortcuts, but this longevity Dr. is actually going to help
- 31:56everybody get wake up to some of those things.
- 31:58We skip the steps in our evolution.
- 32:01Now we got the back to again, linking it back to your
- 32:04abundance mindset, you'll have the ability to pause, reflect
- 32:07and say I skipped that step. Let me actually just go add that
- 32:10back in and see what happens and whether that leads to a 250 year
- 32:14lifespan or 150 year lifespan. More important than that, it's
- 32:18changes life today, here and now, or I think that's going to
- 32:21be the huge win for. Yeah, I mean that's, that's
- 32:23really the big point is that I, I kind of framed that up as the,
- 32:27the number, you know, the living to 150.
- 32:30But the reality is living well to that time, you know, I I call
- 32:34that return on life investment rolling.
- 32:37On life. And, you know, you want to feel
- 32:39like great while you're alive because, you know, I've, I've
- 32:42got some friends over the years who have said like my
- 32:46grandmother, you know, she drank and smoked and she was 100 years
- 32:50old, etcetera. And I'm like, OK, that's a very,
- 32:53very big genetic rarity. And, you know, more power to
- 32:58her. That's that's fine.
- 32:59You know, to each their own. But I'm like, you'll feel really
- 33:03great if you have a good diet, you exercise, you get good
- 33:08sleep, you know, you give up alcohol, etcetera.
- 33:12You know, don't let it have that hold on you and you know, you'll
- 33:16you'll feel more alive and have, you know, be able to do amazing
- 33:20things. You know, go on, go on, you
- 33:23know, beautiful trips, hikes, you know, wherever that is, you
- 33:26know, regardless of, you know, the amount of money you have,
- 33:30like just Austin alone, there's so many beautiful places that
- 33:33you can just hike in this city. Absolutely no, It's it's just
- 33:36like it changes the the, the I mean it's incredible like that.
- 33:40The quality of life can just so much improve, but like just
- 33:44better choices. Like, I mean, it's the, it's,
- 33:46it's not a new concept. And you know, this was probably
- 33:48what our parents tried to tell us when we were young and, you
- 33:51know, but I think it's becoming more and more accessible for
- 33:54most folks. I mean, it used to be a very,
- 33:56you know, I remember like when I was being a vegetarian
- 33:59travelling around in airports. I mean, like you, you're
- 34:02vegetarian, you get salads, right?
- 34:04And I'm like, I hate salads and I need, I need some carbs and I
- 34:08don't get any of that stuff there.
- 34:09There was a time that was there. Now you go to any place, you get
- 34:13great access to vegan food. It's still a probably a first
- 34:16world thing, you know, but AUS theme.
- 34:18But it's getting better. And I was in Bangalore two weeks
- 34:20ago. We have a team there.
- 34:22I mean the restaurant scenes, the the, the whole I mean.
- 34:25Bangalore is amazing. Amazing and you get so many and
- 34:29there's like you can, you don't see there's actually another
- 34:32interesting thing there like, and I know we'll touch upon
- 34:36spirituality and some of this thing.
- 34:37There is this whole a big rave in India trying connecting back
- 34:42to the Eastern roots. And there's the latest.
- 34:45You know, it is it has gone from electronic music and stuff to
- 34:49what they call Bajan raves, which is basically you just like
- 34:53listening to like spiritual music and you know, and then
- 34:58just go and there they they turn up the tempo and stuff and
- 35:01people don't drink. It's a 0 alcohol parties and
- 35:03there are huge party centres that does do that today, which
- 35:07is a huge shift. And these are young 2022 year
- 35:10olds, right? I mean, so I think the world is
- 35:12definitely moving towards that, you know, very different world
- 35:15than, you know, when we were growing up.
- 35:17Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great.
- 35:18Yeah. Just a more intentional place,
- 35:21really focused on the inner journey, you know, which is all
- 35:25the spiritual traditions. That's where that's where the
- 35:27Kingdom of God is found, is inside.
- 35:30So so Ganesh, what is your highest aspiration with
- 35:33Autonomize AI? The the word, you know,
- 35:36autonomize AI, like the whole idea of making things autonomous
- 35:41in nature. So we want to we truly want to
- 35:43autonomize healthcare, right, make it self thriving.
- 35:46And what does that mean? Well, today getting care is a,
- 35:51you know, partially luck, partially what kind of insurance
- 35:54plans you have, partially where do you live and all of that kind
- 35:57of stuff. What will it look in a world
- 35:59where like, you know, I want to get care when I want to get care
- 36:02at the place that is most convenient to me, you know, and
- 36:05I don't have to worry about, you know, paying an arm and a leg
- 36:07for it, right? So it changed the, the only way
- 36:10you can get to that future as a patient is by changing the
- 36:14structure of the system. The last 20-30 years, last 20
- 36:19years for as an investor, if you look at it, health tech has done
- 36:23very well. Health, it has done well, health
- 36:27services has done well. But if you ask the average
- 36:29patient, has healthcare gotten better or worse, Most people
- 36:33would argue it has not gotten better for sure, right?
- 36:36And one of the problems, there are many problems there.
- 36:39There's incentive structures. And so one of the problems is
- 36:41like the way we solve problems in healthcare had been in narrow
- 36:45silos. You solve the symptom of a
- 36:47problem, you so you create a Hey, I'm going to create a
- 36:49patient engagement app that'll change the way my doctors
- 36:52communicate and or my doctor's office communicate with the
- 36:55patient. But you don't change the fact
- 36:58that that communication also has to that patient has to wait for
- 37:01getting their prior authorizations on time.
- 37:03They have to wait for the appointment to fill up.
- 37:06The capacity of doctors are lower.
- 37:08So you solve the symptom and not the under underlying structural
- 37:10problem. So one of our, you know, goals
- 37:14and vision is like, how do you change the underbelly of how
- 37:17operations are run. So what we're building an
- 37:19autonomize is like think of us the the operating system for
- 37:22running of future agentic health enterprise as we come.
- 37:26And that's the vision. That's the the agentic health
- 37:29enterprise works in a certain way, right.
- 37:30One is you have, you know, like lesser number of human beings
- 37:35doing administrative work and all of the admin work is done by
- 37:38AI agents that talk to each other, have shared context, can
- 37:41change, you know, can transfer context from humans to, you
- 37:44know, there's still decisions that needs to be, you know,
- 37:48human judgement needs to be applied for, but they don't have
- 37:51to work on pulling information from 15 systems.
- 37:54So there is a slew of work that we're doing on making sure that
- 37:57you have agentic workflows that are driving efficiency across
- 38:00the enterprise. Well, this and then what you
- 38:03have to do is like you have these people's health needs
- 38:06change. And today you see it in the form
- 38:09of our CMS updates, the policy on how you should treat Medicare
- 38:14Advantage patients or Medicare patients.
- 38:17Well, it takes six months to percolate down.
- 38:19There's a lot of change management that involves and
- 38:21stuff like that. Well, in an agentic health
- 38:23enterprise, you wanted to be self learning, you wanted to
- 38:26actually learn from the interactions and say, hey, this
- 38:28population, we've been trying to provide this, you know, course
- 38:31of care. It's not working right.
- 38:34And you don't need another separate, you know, independent
- 38:36clinical study to do that. There's evidence here.
- 38:39There's like even things like so the FDA is now going to approve
- 38:42like drugs based on real world data rather than just going
- 38:46through a 20 year old, a 20 year clinical trial process, if you
- 38:49will, right. So there's a lot of these
- 38:50structural things that are also coming into place.
- 38:52And then third, I think look, the healthcare at the core of it
- 38:56is very human, right? We feel better when we talk to
- 39:00this. And there's some Gray areas here
- 39:02like, you know, will AI doctors will be really, will that be
- 39:05really successful? Will they really solve the
- 39:07problems that we have? We don't know yet.
- 39:10It definitely changes our access to care.
- 39:12But then I was talking to somebody and they were saying,
- 39:14look, it shows me that there is, I can get care from an AI, but I
- 39:19still have to then go to the next step and I don't have
- 39:22access to that care. I still have to talk to a
- 39:23doctor, right? So I think there is an element
- 39:26of like, how do you expand and extend the, the reach of who
- 39:30gets care when they get care and where do they get care?
- 39:33And so, and our biggest aspirations to be today, I said
- 39:36we're very fortunate to be working with three of the five
- 39:39largest health enterprises in the United States, several
- 39:42health plans, several provider systems and so forth.
- 39:47I think if, if you can create that universal context layer for
- 39:51healthcare that truly becomes, and you know, there's arguments
- 39:54on AGI and I know we'll go there and stuff too, right?
- 39:57So if you really think about generally capable layers for
- 40:01building a healthcare AGI and, and I fundamentally believe it's
- 40:04not going to be 1 AGI, it's going to be multiple
- 40:07intelligences. To really truly become, to build
- 40:11a healthcare AGI, you need a core understanding of a context
- 40:14data set that allows us to understand how people make
- 40:17decisions. When do people make decisions?
- 40:19Why does Sally approve these kind of requests every time she
- 40:22gets? Because she's done it for 30
- 40:24years and there's some locked up knowledge in her head.
- 40:26If we can transfer that into a universal context layer, then
- 40:30you create that healthcare abundance that open up the
- 40:33opportunity and the aperture for people to solve problems for
- 40:36themselves. Focus on, Hey, I'm an
- 40:38individual. I need the tools to focus on
- 40:40what works best for me to get a shot at living to 150, right?
- 40:45Versus I have allergies. I have this thing.
- 40:48How, on how, how will I change my, my dietary, you know,
- 40:52preferences to go align to better IBS, medications and
- 40:56things like that. So there is that opportunity and
- 40:58where we want to be is that universal context layer for
- 41:01healthcare that can unlock this agenting organizations to
- 41:06operate, you know, to have their healthcare workers work, operate
- 41:09at the top of their license, deliver care better, lower the
- 41:12cost of care, increase the access to care to everybody in
- 41:15the universe. So.
- 41:16And ultimately spend more time with the patients.
- 41:20I mean, if they're doing all that, all that kind of drudgery,
- 41:26like drudging through all of that information versus just
- 41:29being with the patient and being enabled, that's going to create
- 41:34much better outcomes. It's going to get, you know,
- 41:37it's going to be incredible. And I think, you know, like more
- 41:38and more people like there's already like, you know, virtual
- 41:41care has its moment, had its moment had a huge impact and
- 41:44just being able to talk to a person So a lot in healthcare
- 41:48and how people get healed. It's the humans.
- 41:51That's why we, our tag line autonomize is like AI that does
- 41:55the work so the humans can heal better.
- 41:57And so it's it's just, I think we're in that we're not too far.
- 42:02I think we're going to get there sooner than we all think.
- 42:05Yeah. I mean one, one thing I think
- 42:06about I, I mean, I don't know if this will be directly
- 42:09applicable, but I think it will be.
- 42:11But there there was this moment in the last election where
- 42:19political campaigns were using AI to do robo dialing and spiel
- 42:25the candidates proposals on why they should support and they
- 42:32thought it was going to be very, very successful.
- 42:33Like reach, reach all these voters, you know, in, in, in,
- 42:37you know, with this incredible scripted message.
- 42:41And the script would start out with the disclosure that it was
- 42:45an AI. And 99% of the time people just
- 42:48hang up. And I think that, I mean, I
- 42:51would now I'm, you know, I'm an older guy, right?
- 42:54So it'll be interesting to see how the next generation does
- 42:58this, you know, our children, you know, do this.
- 43:00But but I would much rather use a doctor that's very enabled on
- 43:07the back end with AI. Much much much rather use the
- 43:12doctor you know and and have a doctor that way versus just
- 43:16completely interact with an AIA non a non human you know.
- 43:20No, I I agree. I think look, and and there's
- 43:23there's, there's that aspect when there's also the other
- 43:25aspect, you have parts of the countries that don't have
- 43:28doctors, right. So for there at least having an
- 43:31AI as a doctor. So there's like those various,
- 43:34you know, layers of this, if you will.
- 43:37But in general, yeah, I mean, imagine, you know, when when you
- 43:40know that everybody's walking around, all the doctors are
- 43:42walking around with an exoskeleton, that AI that
- 43:45expands their consciousness of what they can see and read to
- 43:48get access to information, help you to help them treat better.
- 43:51At the core end of it. I mean, like to, to your point
- 43:53on the elections example, people want to do deal with people, I
- 43:58mean, just in general and pets, but you know, mainly they want
- 44:01to interact with people. It's the stories.
- 44:03And especially in a world where content is cheap, because you
- 44:07can build and develop content for less than a cent on a dollar
- 44:11per minute. And I think it it's going to
- 44:13become more and more critical that the human connection, how
- 44:17you connect with them, either through one-on-one conversations
- 44:20or through a broader medium like this and stuff.
- 44:23It's going to matter more than like AI just being a dispersant
- 44:27dispersement mechanism. How do you look at this
- 44:32incredible moment in human history?
- 44:34I mean, this is the, you know, you and I have been technologist
- 44:37for a long time. We're in the exponential of
- 44:40exponential curves. You know, everything is
- 44:43simultaneously rising, whether it's AI, quantum computing is
- 44:49going to hit stability soon. Robotics, you know, again, huge
- 44:54shout out to Apptronic. And you know, I, I saw Tesla's
- 44:57recent move and I drive a Model S and you know, the, the way I
- 45:02found out, I, I read so many spiritual texts now.
- 45:05I don't read the news that much, but friends were like, what are
- 45:08you going to do? And I'm like, what do you mean?
- 45:09What am I going to do? And they said, well, did you
- 45:13realize they're not going to sell Tesla's not going to sell
- 45:15Model S s anymore? And I said, OK, well, why?
- 45:20Well, obviously Elon Musk is going all in on robots.
- 45:24And then, and then we have brain computer interfaces, which,
- 45:30which you know, that's, that's one where to me, it feels kind
- 45:36of the most, it could be the most informative about
- 45:40understanding what a reality actually is, because you could
- 45:44see literally what's going on inside of someone's brain.
- 45:48You know, I gave you a copy of the Lattice today, my science
- 45:51fiction novella. And the protagonist, Dr.
- 45:53Alexander Bliss, he has this audacious idea to hook up, you
- 45:59know, everybody from spiritual masters to psychonauts to deep
- 46:02meditators to really figure out what is the unifying thread of
- 46:06what they're actually seeing and bringing.
- 46:09Computer interfaces have gotten to a point of resolution by that
- 46:12time where you can literally see like, what someone's even
- 46:15dreaming. And I think that that's going to
- 46:19happen in your my lifetime pretty pretty quickly as well.
- 46:23So how do you, how do you kind of look at this AI moment
- 46:26overall? Are you, you know, more
- 46:29positive, negative? Like there's just such a mix of
- 46:32like utopia and dystopia, dystopia narratives going on.
- 46:36Well, I mean, I'm I'm definitely more optimistic than than
- 46:40pessimistic on the MO right. And I think one, it's like, you
- 46:45know, Even so, I like to think of the chat GPD moment as like
- 46:50we had we made so much progress at the time when Chad GPD
- 46:54launched even 646 to 8 months before that at an atomic level,
- 46:59looking at a picture, identifying what's in the
- 47:01picture, looking at a text and understanding prose.
- 47:04And you know what that what what the sentence means.
- 47:07Looking at frames within a video and identifying objects at at
- 47:10very high position. AI or algorithms were already
- 47:14far superior than humans. Right.
- 47:17But collapsing that whole thing into a general capability set,
- 47:22what we did was actually we, you know, what the industry did was
- 47:26what open AI did was collapse the expectation level of people
- 47:29who were like AI is here and then they saw Chad GPD and it
- 47:32just collapsed that it was like a big moment, right?
- 47:35I think we'll see a lot more and people are getting getting like
- 47:39people stopped. A lot of people I know stopped
- 47:40tracking the model evolution. They're like, oh, this changes
- 47:43everyday and stuff like that. So I think what we'll notice and
- 47:46this is going to be and still, you know, from technology and
- 47:52core algorithmic, you know, innovation and stuff too.
- 47:56We haven't come too far from that.
- 47:58Language models as being the first, like, you know, the
- 48:01recursive language models as being as a technology layer.
- 48:03Now we there's Yan Li Kun. Yan Li Kun working on world
- 48:07models and a few other kind of. Doctor.
- 48:10Fefy is working on world models. So I think there is that next
- 48:14quantum change that will happen that will unlock a huge, you
- 48:18know, performance element and so forth.
- 48:20So, and this will keep. I mean, it's no different than I
- 48:23think the rate of change is a little faster than we are used
- 48:25to, but it's not that faster that people give it credits to.
- 48:30I think the big thing was the expectations that people had
- 48:32versus now what they're seeing has just collapsed so much.
- 48:35But people in research, they know, yeah, it's changing every
- 48:37day, but it's been changing everyday.
- 48:39Now the applications of these change are becoming more
- 48:42pronounced. Like the Opus 4.6 release from
- 48:46Anthropic or you know, the, the chat, GPD 5.3, all of that
- 48:50stuff, you can see it in more people's hands, so.
- 48:53And and way more capable too. Way more capable, right?
- 48:56I think you know, and, and the capability is also relative,
- 48:59right. It's like, I think the big
- 49:01difference in my perspective is that the applicability, the
- 49:05applied AI field has actually just evolved and exploded,
- 49:09right? That wasn't the case earlier.
- 49:11Like you had to build a model, you had to train it with data,
- 49:13you had to hand annotate the data.
- 49:15Now you're getting a better and faster starting starting points
- 49:18to build almost anything you want, right?
- 49:20And that unlocks innovation. You get better tools, bicycles
- 49:23for the mind and everybody's now unlocking more and more
- 49:26innovation out of it. So to your question, how do I
- 49:29see the, the moment we live in, I think this the, we've unlocked
- 49:33the technology, you know, pathway to actually leading to
- 49:38all of these things. The, the on the, on the
- 49:42optimistic side, I think there's still more work to be done on
- 49:45like, how do I make this real? Like, you know, if you look at
- 49:47even the numbers, like in enterprises, 98% of all or 95%
- 49:52of all AI projects don't lead to an ROI.
- 49:55You know, 80% of all projects failed because it works great
- 49:58and chat GBD on a little thing on a, on a little demo.
- 50:01When you try to put something in an enterprise, it's harder to
- 50:04actually solve a problem. There is some work to be done.
- 50:07I think we'll figure it out. Entrepreneurs will figure it
- 50:09out, companies will figure it out.
- 50:10And that's going to be another because that will really unlock
- 50:15how you capture the value of AI through GDP, you know, impact,
- 50:19right? And then once you do that, I
- 50:22think this is also. Hopefully, hopefully not just
- 50:24GDP impact, but also gross national happiness impact.
- 50:28I'm still fresh off our trip to Bhutan in December.
- 50:33That's how they measure themselves.
- 50:34Amazing. I had a, you know, in 2020,
- 50:37March 1st week, I was supposed to be in the Kingdom of Bhutan
- 50:43to the king talking about AI. And you can imagine that didn't
- 50:46happen because. They did not happen and they
- 50:48say. Because they had the first case
- 50:50at that time until March 2nd week, they didn't have a single
- 50:53case of COVID-19. And but they said we're going to
- 50:56shut down the country. And then they had cases after
- 50:58that and stuff too. But I missed my opportunity.
- 51:00I want to go back to. I want to go to.
- 51:01Yeah, when we were there, there was and in one of the hotels
- 51:05there was this very proud book about exactly how they handled
- 51:08COVID and COVID, right. Yeah, of course, happiness too.
- 51:13But, you know, the country is all about deep inner
- 51:16contentment. You know, it's very Buddhist and
- 51:19wow, what a what a beautiful trip that was.
- 51:21Sorry for the diversion. No, no, no.
- 51:23That's. Great.
- 51:23I think you know so. Hopefully you know not just GDP
- 51:26measurement. I mean GDP is 1 measurement but
- 51:30but you know outcomes a whole different measurement.
- 51:33Fair enough. You know, I I think look, I mean
- 51:35so too almost touching there as well.
- 51:37Like I think third big wave they had to think about it like 1 is
- 51:40like, how does it go drive value?
- 51:42Because when you drive that tangible quantified GDP value,
- 51:46it shows up in the way we live lives right now.
- 51:49The next year on that is actually how do you then unlock
- 51:52the true human potential? Like I now can, you know,
- 51:55yesterday or day before yesterday at dinner, we were
- 51:58talking to something and there was like, it's, it's, it's
- 52:02pretty lame. But you know, they, the, the my
- 52:04guest had a call he had to make and he walked out for a call for
- 52:075 minutes. And I build a mini app to go
- 52:10scan RFPs of Allstate websites, you know, to go look at, you
- 52:13know, because he was telling me about something.
- 52:15Hey, have you looked at this RFI that came in and this thing like
- 52:18just, I built it on Claude and I sent it to the team and say, go
- 52:20figure this out, right? So that unlocking that
- 52:24everybody. Has the power.
- 52:25I imagine that blew his mind. That it just completely, you
- 52:28know, 5 minutes later and 5 minutes later you're like, you
- 52:30did that now. And I'm like, but I think
- 52:32everybody now has access to that powerful technology now that
- 52:36brings in like, and, and I, I will get to the pessimistic side
- 52:40of things, but on the optimistic side, like what can that do
- 52:43when, if I don't have to do anything to live my life, I
- 52:46don't have to worry about like, you know, it's truly true
- 52:50abundance, But even even from a time abundance perspective, I
- 52:53save time not having to search for restaurants to get that, you
- 52:57know, date booked or I don't have to go look for 15 options.
- 53:01I can just set my parameters and get the recommendations for
- 53:04where I want to go, when I want to go, what flights do I take
- 53:06and so forth, right. All of that will unlock a lot
- 53:10more brain cycles for us and mental space for us to go solve
- 53:13other problems, right? Humans are incredibly good at
- 53:16finding out new things to do. Yeah.
- 53:17I. Look at it is we're just
- 53:19absolutely shattering the barrier to creativity and that
- 53:22our highest level of work, that's that's the good stuff.
- 53:26And and you know, there's a nuance there, which is like, it
- 53:29is not the creativity unlocked by an AI doing something for
- 53:33you, but when the AI does all the things you can otherwise do,
- 53:36it unlocks your potential to be more creative, right.
- 53:39And then like the, but that said, I think I'm also very, you
- 53:43know, concerned a little bit on like you hear like all the
- 53:47experts who are closer to the technology and research, they're
- 53:51warning about all the challenges and the, you know, the issues
- 53:54that this can do. I worry less about an AGI and AI
- 53:58taking over at this stage, right?
- 53:59I mean, I've changed my perspective a little bit over
- 54:02the last two years, to be honest.
- 54:03Like I thought it was completely out.
- 54:05It's not going to happen and stuff too.
- 54:06I've changed that a little bit. You mean what was completely out
- 54:09that that we would create AGI or what?
- 54:10Yeah, we would create an AGI that'll go rogue and take over
- 54:13humanity paper clip maximization problem and all of that stuff,
- 54:16right Possible. We've seen that at Claude bot
- 54:20like, you know, 2-2 weeks ago with that with mold book.
- 54:24And you know, I think there is potential there.
- 54:28But what I really worry about is more the like this technology in
- 54:32the hands of the wrong people, right?
- 54:33What can can they weaponize this?
- 54:35And it's already happening. We're seeing that the the amount
- 54:38of scams that have gone up for like people who sound like
- 54:41grandma getting call from her grandson who sounds like the
- 54:44grandson because the grandson had a podcast and they picked
- 54:46the voice from there. All of that will happen.
- 54:49I think you know, my hope there is like, look, we'll start AI
- 54:53think we're to bring everybody together as a society to how do
- 54:56you deal with it? Get them into the conversation
- 54:59and the podcast. I was telling you about like the
- 55:00whole idea of like in 2020 starting stories in AI and if
- 55:05you did about. This.
- 55:06Was your podcast? This was my podcast.
- 55:07It started podcast mid 2020 or early 2021, did about 130 a 140
- 55:13episodes. And you know, it was more about
- 55:16trying to bring people from different parts to talk about AI
- 55:19and, and, and how they view it and how this is just bringing
- 55:23more people into the conversation.
- 55:24It's more important now than anywhere else, anytime else,
- 55:28right? So if you were just if you're in
- 55:31AI or not, you're going to be impacted by AI.
- 55:33So you better be part of the conversation, right?
- 55:36Be it politics, be it, you know, you not working technology and
- 55:40stuff like that. So I think there is an element
- 55:42of you got to raise the awareness and what this means.
- 55:45How do you work with good AI versus bad AI?
- 55:47And then, you know, hope and pray that the humanity's
- 55:51goodness will play itself out. There's always been in history
- 55:55more good people than bad people, right?
- 55:57Right. And I think that'll play itself
- 56:00out here right from that perspective.
- 56:02Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, they're the
- 56:05more good people, like using AI to protect against people using
- 56:13bad people, using AI to try to create those scams.
- 56:17And yeah, and there's just such an opportunity there for
- 56:21creation, too. Absolutely.
- 56:23And I think, look, I mean like you were fundamentally driven by
- 56:27humans are driven by like motivations, ambitions, and or
- 56:31we're all capitalists in our minds and stuff.
- 56:33All of this creates opportunities.
- 56:35And you know, like the, the reason cybersecurity companies
- 56:40are getting the valuation they are because they are solving a
- 56:42real problem. And when you have more bad
- 56:43actors that create more good actors trying to solve that
- 56:46problem and so forth. So I think, I think we're, we're
- 56:49in this like, I like the, the word Kairos, right?
- 56:53The the Greek word, which talks about like that it is it's
- 56:57thing, it's it's in the Bible like some 700 times and it talks
- 57:00about this momentous time in history where you have an
- 57:04opportunity to take an action that'll change the course of the
- 57:07future, right. We're kind of there in that
- 57:10particular thing. You know, we're like, we're
- 57:11definitely there in our company at this time where we have the
- 57:13opportunity, we have the early thing and we have to give it
- 57:16everything to go change it. I think as a society, we're
- 57:19getting there, we're getting closer and closer to that where
- 57:22we have our moment of Kairos that we can just go and shape
- 57:26and change it the way, you know, we want it to play out.
- 57:28How do you see us actually making it to abundance for all
- 57:34on the planet? Like what do you think the
- 57:36catalyzing moments are going to be?
- 57:38I think we're already on our way there, number one, right, I
- 57:41think. I do too, I think.
- 57:43I think it's inevitable if we don't use these tools to destroy
- 57:47ourselves. And I'm 95% certain that we
- 57:50want, it's a big, you know, there is an asterisk, but it's,
- 57:53but it's a this outlined in this kind of 5% chance that the, you
- 57:59know, that we're going to have abundance that we can't even
- 58:03fathom today. And, you know, our ancestors
- 58:06couldn't have fathom the abundance that you and I have
- 58:10today and that we have an American, not all countries have
- 58:13that. I mean, we have the highest GDP,
- 58:16you know, per person here. So it's, it's, it's, I think
- 58:21it's inevitable with the acceleration like you can, you
- 58:25can now start to see it on the. Horizon and, and I also it, it
- 58:28may not be the way we all think it is, right.
- 58:33So it's, it, it'll be very localized.
- 58:34Like I'll give you a simple example.
- 58:36I was in, you know, like even a couple of years ago, I was in
- 58:39India and the fact that I'm hungry at 11:35 PM to having hot
- 58:45food served to me fraction of a cost that he would go to in a
- 58:50restaurant in 10 minutes was possible because of how the
- 58:54localized ecosystem is to me in some form of way.
- 58:57That's abundance to everybody living.
- 58:59There are people living in poverty in one hand.
- 59:01Now you're actually saying I want to eat something and I want
- 59:03to get hot food in my hands, right?
- 59:05And they get that at 11:30 PM. So I think this abundance will
- 59:09be very localized. I don't think it will be global
- 59:12as everybody, you know. So from that definition, I think
- 59:14we're already on our way to abundance from that.
- 59:17Now, I'm also not a believer in you need a catalyzing, you know,
- 59:22a big, you know, debacle to happen or a global pandemic to
- 59:27actually, you know, like there are a lot of good things that
- 59:30came out of COVID, but there's also a lot of polarizing things
- 59:32that came out of COVID. So I, I think it's, it's if
- 59:35there's one thing that I, you know, you cannot really 100%
- 59:40predict the future and how it's going to play out.
- 59:42But I do know that like the pathways of what we are seeing,
- 59:45what has happened so far, we're well on our way to abundance.
- 59:49There will be some bumps in the road.
- 59:50There'll definitely be some bumps in the road.
- 59:52Someone's going to fat finger something with AI.
- 59:54Someone's going to, you know, have a malicious intent to
- 59:57actually go, you know, acquire capital, acquire, you know,
- 1:00:01power and some places and so forth.
- 1:00:03And you're going to have those things.
- 1:00:05But you look at the, you know, lengthen your horizon of
- 1:00:10history. And we live in a lot more
- 1:00:12peaceful times today than we did 100 years ago.
- 1:00:16We live in we less people dying of non international costs today
- 1:00:20than it did even 50 years ago. So I think we're well on our way
- 1:00:24to get there. And I think, you know, it's
- 1:00:26going to be very interesting how this next three to five years
- 1:00:29play out. But then we'll get into a new
- 1:00:31normal. Like we talked about where in
- 1:00:33like, you know, before cloud computing for us to build
- 1:00:36software, it was like you to buy infrastructure hardware, build
- 1:00:39software, build this whole thing.
- 1:00:41And now we just go swipe a credit card.
- 1:00:43And like even 10 years ago you would just go with cloud
- 1:00:45computing. It changed things that well,
- 1:00:46with AI becoming the operating layer, then it'll be like as
- 1:00:51simple as picking up a phone and asking a question or saying
- 1:00:53instructing an algorithm or a model or an AI, an agent to do
- 1:00:57something for you. So I think it just elevates
- 1:00:59everybody to a new level and there's be a new normal, but
- 1:01:03we're definitely well on our way to open it.
- 1:01:05Yeah, yeah. You know, one of the, the stats
- 1:01:08that I literally just read this morning, I, I, I make this
- 1:01:10recommendation quite a bit to people that if you want to
- 1:01:14rewire your brain, start taking in positive news instead of just
- 1:01:21the news that's pushed you because the algorithms are
- 1:01:23always going to push, you know, dystopia to you, whether it's
- 1:01:26social media, yeah, into the amygdala.
- 1:01:30And, and that's because of the scarcity we've dealt with for
- 1:01:33such a long, long period of time.
- 1:01:35You know, we've been around for 300,000 years and as I like to
- 1:01:39say, you know, we have .1% of our evolutionary time we've had
- 1:01:42electricity, you know, but but the stat I read this morning,
- 1:01:46it's from the Progress Network, which shout out to Zachary
- 1:01:49Carabelle. He's a good friend.
- 1:01:51He was one of our investors in in dated out world and I've
- 1:01:55known him for a long time from Ted and other communities.
- 1:01:58And this is a big project he's been on for, for a long time to
- 1:02:03really share all the positive news.
- 1:02:05It's a it's a nonprofit that he founded probably I think five
- 1:02:09years ago. But the stat that jumped out to
- 1:02:13me actually was about India. And the stat was that in 2019,
- 1:02:19only 17% of Indian households had access to tap water.
- 1:02:24In 2019, now it's over 80% and that short of a period.
- 1:02:28Of time drinking water. Now now think about, you know,
- 1:02:32applying robotics and everything else to.
- 1:02:36Yeah. Amplify and and like, you know,
- 1:02:38accelerate all of the infrastructure that needs to be
- 1:02:43built in countries to to really create human thriving.
- 1:02:48I think that. It's I think in public, I mean,
- 1:02:50and it changes the, I mean like the way we thought about world
- 1:02:53power structures changes, right? I mean like anybody with access
- 1:02:57to I mean that's the big rush now with data centers and power
- 1:03:00and things like that power infrastructure, because you can
- 1:03:03power AI to go do this. I think there will be a global
- 1:03:07market that will also play out and making sure like even
- 1:03:09countries like Uganda without having their own power plants
- 1:03:12can still get access to power because there'll be some
- 1:03:15arbitrage in there. But I do think that, like, you
- 1:03:16know, this will create this whole big different global norm,
- 1:03:20right? I mean that that, you know, the,
- 1:03:24the hope and the goal is like, how do you not make this even
- 1:03:29from a country's perspective, a 0 sum game?
- 1:03:31Like I got to be the supreme, the the I got to be the
- 1:03:35superpower. And I don't want to actually
- 1:03:37give access to the US China relationship right now and all
- 1:03:40of that stuff too. It's.
- 1:03:41The US and China have to figure out a way to collaborate on
- 1:03:46this. I mean, it's the two biggest
- 1:03:47superpowers, you know, writing that in my, in my book, love
- 1:03:50conquers fear, humanity, AI and nature abundance for all that.
- 1:03:55That's not an optional thing to figure out.
- 1:03:58Like we have to figure out how to, we can be, we can have
- 1:04:01totally different forms of government and you know,
- 1:04:05there's, there's, there's many different forms that we can all
- 1:04:08learn from each other. And you know, my, my book, I've
- 1:04:12really written that. Hopefully the Chinese really
- 1:04:14embrace the Dow, the chain, because that is their ancient
- 1:04:17philosophy and their spiritual wisdom in terms of, you know,
- 1:04:22realizing that the 0 sum game on their side doesn't make any
- 1:04:27sense. I think it was really
- 1:04:28interesting that China was the one that launched deep sea car
- 1:04:31one as an open source model, right?
- 1:04:33You know, that was that was last year on January 20th, the day
- 1:04:37before President Trump announced Stargate alongside Larry
- 1:04:42Ellison, Sam Altman and mayor's son literally the day before.
- 1:04:46And that was, that was I. Didn't make that connection.
- 1:04:48Yeah, the week after, that's when NASDAQ lost a trillion
- 1:04:51dollars, a market cap, because there was this realization of
- 1:04:54like, wait a second, Is there this big of a proprietary
- 1:04:59advantage in these models or is it just obvious that open source
- 1:05:02is going to win? I think, I think at this point,
- 1:05:04for me, it's pretty obvious that open source is going to win.
- 1:05:07Absolutely. And I think like what we talked
- 1:05:08about, right, the more progress is made when you have more
- 1:05:12people working on a broader, more capable platform to drive
- 1:05:16innovation. And then in general, that's
- 1:05:19going to be, I mean, historically we've seen open
- 1:05:21source wins long term, like may have shorter, you know, early
- 1:05:25success, but then over time, that's, and especially in this
- 1:05:28age of AI, open source is the way to go in general, right?
- 1:05:31So I do think I do think like, you know, and then we'll also
- 1:05:34realize that these models are building blocks that are great
- 1:05:39capable building blocks. What do you do on top of that?
- 1:05:42What do you actually build as infrastructure on top of that to
- 1:05:45solve real problems, you know, domain specific problems or
- 1:05:48personal problems and so forth. I mean, the whole idea of mold
- 1:05:51book was amazing, right? I mean, like from the fact that
- 1:05:54it was written by someone who's never done programming in their
- 1:05:56life over the weekend was where you actually exposed some of the
- 1:06:01limitations of, you know, like it was not intentional.
- 1:06:04They didn't try to actually steal everybody's, you know,
- 1:06:06important information. They just didn't think about it
- 1:06:10when they white coated something, right?
- 1:06:12So you could get into things like that.
- 1:06:14But I do think that it'll the whole open innovation and the
- 1:06:20cat's already out of the back, right?
- 1:06:21So the I don't think you can dial back and I think the
- 1:06:26individual API players and stuff will have a role to play. close
- 1:06:29those companies still, you know, Microsoft is a great example.
- 1:06:33Where is this Red Hat, right? So they'll just have different
- 1:06:37markets and different players to go, places to go.
- 1:06:39What did you think about the kind of the frenzy and panic
- 1:06:44around Malt Book being conscious?
- 1:06:48You know, I thought I thought it was, I thought it was pretty
- 1:06:51ridiculous that that people are like, Oh my gosh, it's
- 1:06:54conscious. You know, they're inventing
- 1:06:56their own language, they're inventing their own religion,
- 1:06:58etcetera. These these are agents that were
- 1:07:01programmed to behave in a certain way.
- 1:07:04You know, it's, it's, you know, I think it's, it's, it's, it's
- 1:07:08a, it's a lot of bullshit like on that.
- 1:07:10Like there's a lot of hype now. It's interesting, right?
- 1:07:13We studied the, you know, like my head of AI Bharathi came from
- 1:07:17IBM research and we were spending a lot of time thinking
- 1:07:20through it. You know, we were like we
- 1:07:21started dissecting some of these things and you start noticing
- 1:07:24certain things. For example, humans have memory
- 1:07:26associated memory. So when I see Brett, I think
- 1:07:29about, you know, data dot world, I think about bizarre voice, I
- 1:07:33think, you know, core metrics. I think about the great work
- 1:07:36you've done with conscious capitalism.
- 1:07:39I think about love. All of that stuff comes in.
- 1:07:41There's a lot of associated memories.
- 1:07:43You don't have a construct for that for agents today, right.
- 1:07:46So for us, it was like the the experiment in mold book when we
- 1:07:49actually studied, it is like, there's a lot of things you can
- 1:07:52learn and how do you build more capable systems, you know, And
- 1:07:55that is think of the biggest, you know, lesson out of a
- 1:07:58project like that. Now, Stanford has had a project
- 1:08:01for two years called Smallville. Same idea.
- 1:08:04They let loose a bunch of agents.
- 1:08:06They form their own governments. They talk to each other.
- 1:08:09I first learned about that from Ethan Malik.
- 1:08:11Ethan Malik? Yeah, yeah.
- 1:08:12If people aren't following him on LinkedIn, that's a must do.
- 1:08:14Oh. Man, Ethan's amazing.
- 1:08:16I heard him speak at one of those events and he just
- 1:08:19reframed how, you know, it's not just work, it's Co work with AI
- 1:08:24in the future, right. And so I think like projects
- 1:08:26like mold books are great experiments for us to learn.
- 1:08:29Now there's going to be fallout there.
- 1:08:31People are going to give their, you know, credit card numbers
- 1:08:37and API keys and that'll just get exposed.
- 1:08:39All of that stuff. Is that the?
- 1:08:40Mold books are security nightmare.
- 1:08:41I mean, to be, to be clear, like, you know, I think it's
- 1:08:45good that there's these flash points to get people to wake up.
- 1:08:49Exactly. Exactly.
- 1:08:50That, you know, is it, is it conscious?
- 1:08:53No, not, not in my opinion at all.
- 1:08:56But you know, is it programmatically something that
- 1:09:00can do a lot of harm if you gave it your credit card number and
- 1:09:05everything else? Yes, it could.
- 1:09:07You know, don't do that. And.
- 1:09:09And and, you know, consciousness is a whole different topic.
- 1:09:12I mean, you're starting with the premise that consciousness can
- 1:09:14be developed. And you mentioned that earlier
- 1:09:16when you were, you know, describing this like it can
- 1:09:18actually evolve from nothing versus is it already there and
- 1:09:22you're just getting part of it. That's the big philosophical
- 1:09:25debate, if you will. But then even outside of this,
- 1:09:27like these flash in the pans, these projects are also very
- 1:09:31critical to understand the limitations of these systems and
- 1:09:34what you can do because the future is inevitable.
- 1:09:37You will have a self driving organization.
- 1:09:40You already have, you will have a self driving.
- 1:09:43I mean, you will have everything in your life being powered by AI
- 1:09:47in some form or fashion. So those are the non negotiable
- 1:09:50futures. Now how we get there, These are
- 1:09:53the projects that tell us, OK, there is a gap in security,
- 1:09:56let's go fix that. Let's go Dr. Innovation to go
- 1:09:58solve that problem on how do you make these agents more
- 1:10:02contextually aware or you know, more aware of situational
- 1:10:05memories and things like that. So I think all of this will push
- 1:10:09the the envelope forward a little bit for everybody.
- 1:10:12But yeah, we're not nowhere close to consciousness or
- 1:10:15anything like. That how how do you how do you
- 1:10:18view this moment from? Spiritual perspective, you know,
- 1:10:25I've been spending. So I grew up in a very, very
- 1:10:31Vedantic household like my, you know.
- 1:10:33I love Venanta, I've studied for for years.
- 1:10:36Yeah, you know. And you grew up in Carolina and
- 1:10:39Kerala was where I began my what I called my soul quest.
- 1:10:43You know, that was the end of 2024.
- 1:10:47I watched the documentary Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds out there,
- 1:10:51read Proof of Heaven by Evan Alexander.
- 1:10:54I'm actually recording him next week.
- 1:10:57What did you do in Kerala? Where did you go?
- 1:10:59To Colony or somewhere? Would you?
- 1:11:00I went to, I went to Cochin. You know, I'm Jewish, so I went
- 1:11:03to the oldest synagogue there. I went with our oldest daughter
- 1:11:08to an Ari Vedic. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 1:11:11Spa type of place. Which was which was really an
- 1:11:15amazing way to close out the year Vedanta.
- 1:11:19I studied outside of Pune with us, Swamiji Partha Sarathi at
- 1:11:23the Vedanta Academy. He, he's very rooted in
- 1:11:27humility. Never wanted his name on the
- 1:11:30building and the building itself, you know, it's kind of
- 1:11:34like an ashram, right? So we're not talking about that
- 1:11:36fancy place. It's really, you know, but
- 1:11:39Vedanta has really helped me a lot as a leader over the years.
- 1:11:43And so, so, so you, you totally get it.
- 1:11:45Like, so if you, so I grew up in this very, you know, and then
- 1:11:50very Vedantic thing where like you were, it was universal
- 1:11:53acceptance. It was love built on our love.
- 1:11:55And it was built around, you know, the notion that you're
- 1:11:58part of the universal consciousness.
- 1:12:00And, you know, I think we could never prove it.
- 1:12:04We could never put that into practice in terms of how will
- 1:12:08this actually, how will someone understand what is universal
- 1:12:11consciousness, right? It's a very hard concept.
- 1:12:13And Vedantic education was all about like it was being told
- 1:12:16over generations, mostly passed on by orally.
- 1:12:19Then you have books like the, the, the Vedas as well as the,
- 1:12:23you know, the Bhagavad Gita and some of them that kind of
- 1:12:26elucidated it for the regular folks, you know, but now like 1
- 1:12:30interesting observation this prominent time is like, you can
- 1:12:32model that out and what this will look like, you know, think
- 1:12:35about mold book 100 agents having a shared context layer,
- 1:12:41right? How do they behave in a world
- 1:12:43like that? So I think we have some tools
- 1:12:46which I would at some point, like I would love to actually
- 1:12:48experiment that and say, how does this play out in a mental
- 1:12:51model that we have? Now the reality is we like, you
- 1:12:54know, you mentioned brain computer interfaces and stuff
- 1:12:57too, right? So we, I don't, I think we have
- 1:13:01a lot of data, but we really don't understand how the human
- 1:13:04brain works. How does the human consciousness
- 1:13:06work? I mean like, I think there's a
- 1:13:07lot of arguments around it. Oh, there's there's so many
- 1:13:10different theories. Nobody really knows how to
- 1:13:14decode consciousness. That's why it's called the hard
- 1:13:16problem of consciousness. And it's also called the hard
- 1:13:19problem because if you're a materialist who has to grapple
- 1:13:23with the miracle, The Big Bang, you have to somehow assume that
- 1:13:30consciousness didn't exist until we got to the capability of our
- 1:13:37brains being advanced enough. And the dangerous notion about
- 1:13:42that throughout throughout time has not just been to to cheapen,
- 1:13:48you know, the human experience and, and kind of deny the
- 1:13:51existence of the soul. And I, I understand, you know,
- 1:13:54how we're, how we're rooted in science and how we're, we're
- 1:13:57trained to believe that. But it's also led to, you know,
- 1:14:01as, as, as Byron Reese talked about on episode 11, you know,
- 1:14:06doctors were doing surgery on babies, assuming that they
- 1:14:09didn't have the same type of consciousness as us, you know,
- 1:14:14decades ago with no anesthesia, doing surgery on animals.
- 1:14:19You know, and now, now we're finding out that animals are
- 1:14:21conscious that trees have this ability to communicate via the
- 1:14:26mycelium network. We're finding out more and more
- 1:14:30of, I'll at least say organic life is conscious and, and, and
- 1:14:36as a tree, as conscious as we are.
- 1:14:38I don't think so, but. But you know, if you, if you
- 1:14:41believe, right, if you believe that there's varying degrees of
- 1:14:44consciousness and it is different for different people
- 1:14:47versus the universal consciousness that spreads
- 1:14:49across it changes your perspective.
- 1:14:51But but it's an interesting thing where I grappled with it
- 1:14:54personally as an engineer, as a builder, like, you know, like
- 1:14:57where's the science behind it? Where's the proof behind it and
- 1:14:59stuff. And then I think probably 10
- 1:15:02years ago is when I relooked at my spiritual journey and said,
- 1:15:05you know, like, OK, let's break this down.
- 1:15:08And, and then when you go deeper, and the reason I was
- 1:15:11mentioning my earlier, the Vedantic upbringing was about
- 1:15:17there was a lot of things in there that you just, you just
- 1:15:19have to start with this belief, right?
- 1:15:22And one such belief was like, the whole world is a universal
- 1:15:25consciousness and everything you see around it, it's Maya, or
- 1:15:30like it's the magic, it's the thing that happens.
- 1:15:32It's how your brain shapes, how your consciousness, it's a
- 1:15:35reflection of you rather than what's out there, right?
- 1:15:39How do you start from some place like that?
- 1:15:41That was the hardest problem, right?
- 1:15:42To the hard problem of consciousness is actually the
- 1:15:45hard problem of matter. Because if you assume that
- 1:15:47consciousness came first, the matter was the instantiation of
- 1:15:51consciousness. That's right, Right.
- 1:15:53So it's a very. Derivative from consciousness.
- 1:15:55Exactly. So I think we're we're, you
- 1:15:58know, and honestly, at some level you're like, none of that
- 1:16:01really matters, right. But most of the arguments around
- 1:16:05the deeper arguments around that single conundrum of saying,
- 1:16:08look, if you assume consciousness exists, all of
- 1:16:12these problems, all of the debates that we have, it
- 1:16:14actually goes away if you really go that path, right?
- 1:16:18But it's hard to prove because now do you, it doesn't, it
- 1:16:22doesn't align with signs and the signs that we are actually used
- 1:16:25to. So we reframe the problem of
- 1:16:27saying, what's the, the hard problem of consciousness because
- 1:16:30you're now trying to materialize it, right?
- 1:16:32It's so anyway, it's a it's a, it's an interesting area.
- 1:16:36But I think all of that's said and done like if you really, if
- 1:16:39you take some lessons from Eastern philosophy, if you take
- 1:16:43lessons from Burdesan, if you take another thing and it's the
- 1:16:46end of the day, if all you're trying to do is like live a good
- 1:16:50life, live a life worth living kind of stuff.
- 1:16:53These are all inspirations you can take to kind of shape the
- 1:16:56way you look at life. I mean, at least that's how I
- 1:16:58made peace with it. You know, you know, when you're,
- 1:17:01I was really struggling with this in the last 10 years ago.
- 1:17:04And I think it's like it gives you tips, it gives you
- 1:17:07inspiration to, you know, enjoy the present moment, enjoy this
- 1:17:12moment because the only thing anything would happen the moment
- 1:17:14after this, right? You know, and then you know.
- 1:17:17The eternal present. The eternal present.
- 1:17:19Moment that matters I mean I will say that having this
- 1:17:24knowledge of you know, from all the ancient spiritual text as
- 1:17:30well as from my from my own experiences and I think you've
- 1:17:34glimpsed this as well in meditation is that the universe
- 1:17:40is deeply rooted in love and connected connectedness.
- 1:17:44And I think the reason that matters, you know, Gary Zukov,
- 1:17:48when he wrote the Seat of the Soul, he said a lot of our
- 1:17:51suffering comes from the five sensory experience, like there's
- 1:17:56nothing beyond our five senses. And that can quickly get you
- 1:17:59into a Yolo mentality. You only live once.
- 1:18:04It can quickly get you into mentality of just worshipping,
- 1:18:10you know, whatever the next, you know, material good is, which
- 1:18:14never will lead to that happiness.
- 1:18:16And the reason it matters in this AI moment is the
- 1:18:21intentionality of how we use AI to create abundance for everyone
- 1:18:27on the planet really matters. So if we embrace that Love
- 1:18:31Actually is our existence, then we are going to shape the use of
- 1:18:38AI in a way where it's a love first shaping.
- 1:18:42And when scarcity melts away and we truly have abundance for
- 1:18:49everybody on the planet, what's left?
- 1:18:51What's left is deep human connection and the deep embrace
- 1:18:56of love. So true.
- 1:18:58So I. Mean realizing we're 99.9%
- 1:19:01genetically. Identical it is in in it is
- 1:19:05incredible. I think you know, a lot of the
- 1:19:07it's it's an interesting when I when I listen to a few other
- 1:19:11episodes and you you explored this really deeply as well.
- 1:19:15It's interesting to see like, you know, look, do you need
- 1:19:18abundance to get to a point to think like that or thinking like
- 1:19:22that? Will that lead to the abundance
- 1:19:24that we want to get? Right?
- 1:19:26That's a. That's a great, great frame in,
- 1:19:28right? It's a what?
- 1:19:29Yeah. Exactly.
- 1:19:31And I think, I think, and I and you, I don't think we'll ever
- 1:19:34find out. We'll we'll have to try both.
- 1:19:36We'll have to. But I, I, I like what you, what
- 1:19:38you said, which is the intentionality in which we look
- 1:19:41at this moment in time and say, look, I mean, you can do
- 1:19:44anything right now, but then you have this amazing capability
- 1:19:48called AI. And you know, there's one part
- 1:19:50of civilization or, or, or the universe is suffering.
- 1:19:55If you, you now have the tools that you you're almost like God
- 1:19:58with AI in your hands, you can go solve that.
- 1:20:02That is love. So if you can actually embrace
- 1:20:04you and embark on that thing, a very capitalist journey to go do
- 1:20:08that. But then that leads to a path of
- 1:20:10love to go solve the larger problem.
- 1:20:12I think it's solved it so far. I think to me that also is means
- 1:20:15like the the. The abundance mindset is
- 1:20:19ingrained in that action that you're taking there too, right?
- 1:20:22So I think you know, you're right.
- 1:20:24There is there is only love. There is, you know, there is
- 1:20:26nothing else. Everything else is just blends
- 1:20:29and melts away. If you really take that framing
- 1:20:32of saying this is 1, you know, one giant thread, you know, call
- 1:20:37it soul, call it consciousness, whatever, but it's the one giant
- 1:20:41thread that pulls it all together.
- 1:20:43And, and we have an amazing wave that's going to raise all boats
- 1:20:47right now. So yeah.
- 1:20:48Yeah, I guess The Beatles said it right.
- 1:20:49Love Is All you need. Love Is All you need.
- 1:20:51That's right. And so it sounds like you're
- 1:20:53pretty confident we're going to make it to this age of abundance
- 1:20:56for all. I am, I, I, I really am.
- 1:20:59I think, you know, and, and, and it may be bumpy and it may, we
- 1:21:05may get to places where we'll question ourselves whether we're
- 1:21:07on that right path. But I think, you know,
- 1:21:10generally, I mean, like all it takes at that time is everybody
- 1:21:12look back and read history and then, you know, you'll make it
- 1:21:15right. So right.
- 1:21:16But I'm pretty confident we'll we'll make it there.
- 1:21:19Well, I love your heart and I love the fact that thank you,
- 1:21:22you're on the podcast and you're off doing this amazingly
- 1:21:26ambitious venture with Autonomize AI.
- 1:21:28You're going to do tons and tons of good that's going to continue
- 1:21:31accelerate and schools that's happening here in Austin.
- 1:21:35Thank you. Thanks a lot for having.
- 1:21:36Me, yeah, really appreciate. It thank you.
- 1:21:39Thanks so much brother. So thanks everybody for tuning
- 1:21:42in to Love Conquers Fear. Next episode up is going to be
- 1:21:47Evan Alexander. I am so so excited about him
- 1:21:50coming on the podcast. Can't wait to host him here at
- 1:21:54our home. His book Proof of Heaven really
- 1:21:58moved me a lot. If you haven't listened to that
- 1:22:01one on Audible, the awe, the humility in his voice and just
- 1:22:06the arc of the whole journey that he went on where he saw
- 1:22:11what was behind the veil is really, really beautiful.
- 1:22:14His second book, A Map of Heaven is an amazing journey about post
- 1:22:22proof of heaven, how he decoded reality, you know, studying a
- 1:22:26lot of ancient scripture and seeing that there was this
- 1:22:30synchronicity between them all and what he actually
- 1:22:34experienced. So I'm really excited that that
- 1:22:37episode's coming up. That's a that's a dream come
- 1:22:40true for me in this love conquer sphere project, which really is
- 1:22:45my soul song. You know, this is my love letter
- 1:22:47to humanity. And to see him show up for that
- 1:22:51really means a lot to me. You know, I was I read that
- 1:22:53book, as you just heard, with Ganache my mind, and then I very
- 1:22:56quickly went to A Map of Heaven and also read that one while I
- 1:23:00was in the Carolina. Thanks again for all the love
- 1:23:03you're giving me and all the shares.
- 1:23:08You know, I'm self funding this and the impact that it's having
- 1:23:12out there because of all of you is really a true gift.
- 1:23:16So thank you.