Hi everyone, welcome to Masters of Automation. Today's episode I have the pleasure of hosting Guy Kawasaki. Thank you very much for having me as your guest. It's an honor and pleasure. So you don't need any introduction, I'm not going to go through all your work experience and the schools and everything that you've done. I want to go right into it. There are two
sections I created. One is more tailored for like the tink remarkable, the book that you published, and then tying the conversation more to future of artificial intelligence and its impact on our lives. So I'm a big believer of Ikigai myself. I actually built my own Ikigai by filling the band diagram and so forth. But to kick things off, what is your Ikigai these days and how the remarkable people that you interview structure theirs?
Sure. So for those of you who may not be familiar with the term, it means Ikigai is kind of this reason to wake up in the morning and what's your passion, maybe one word for it or you're kind of obsession in a positive way. So I would say that podcasting is one Ikigai. My substack newsletter is turning into an Ikigai and surfing is definitely an Ikigai for me. That's awesome. That's awesome. And in terms of the people that you interview
and then talk to, that tink remarkable, how do they structure their Ikigai? Based on your interiors with that? I don't know if it's right to characterize that they structure their Ikigai. It seems more like their Ikigai structures them. It's when podcasting or writing or surfing takes over your life. So you're not going to slip those things in. I tell people, I take a break from surfing to do work, which is very different from saying I take a break from work to do surfing.
So I think Ikigai's tend to take over your life and there's not this clear distinction between work and play. Like I don't consider podcasting or work and I don't consider substack, newsletter work. Not in the sense that most people would define the word work. I think in a way when they converge and then they coincide, then it becomes like a true passion
so that it's the time flies right? We are in the flow. It does. It does. And you know what else an Ikigai does is you can tell you're involved with an Ikigai when people who are not, who people who know you tell you that why do you eat that shit sandwich? You know, like podcasting has a lot of shit sandwiches with editing. So does writing a newsletter. People say like, why do you why do you spend one hour to make a 30 second introduction for your podcast? Why do you eat that
shit sandwich? You know, come to find out. You love the shit sandwich. So when you love a shit sandwich, you know, you're on to something with Ikigai. That is, you're on. It doesn't taste shit anymore. So in your book, you mentioned about like being remarkable means you're making a difference and making a world a better place. And there was one quote that you had that stood out to me that was like, although they were not necessarily wealthy, powerful or famous, they all made a world,
made the world a better place. They personify empathy, resilience, creativity, and grace. So in the world that we live in today, and especially that Mark's vision intelligence coming into play and then the society having different realities based on the apps that they're in, things that they read, how can one define what is a better place and what could be their compass?
Think a better place fundamentally benefits other people, not yourself. So I mean, you know, how can you say what somebody like a, you know, a political activist or a climate activist or a environmental activist or even a teacher in a classroom or a coach, you know, what they're
doing is making the world a better place. They're not just making money for themselves. So, you know, if you looked at my podcast and my book, I don't think I have any billionaires in there because quite frankly, I don't know many billionaires and even the billionaires that I may be able to get to, I don't think they're necessarily making the world a better place. Yeah, so in a way, it's like then selflessness and then giving and then taking.
I think in the last third of your life, you figure out that it's time to give back. And if you have not yet come to that conclusion and taken the high road, the problem you're not remarkable. I'll give you a good example, right? If a few years ago, five, six years ago, you said, who's the most remarkable person alive or who's the closest person to being a Steve Jobs? I want to told you Elon Musk because Elon Musk electrified cars. He's, you know,
traveling to Mars. He's implanting chips into people's head. He's solar panels. I mean, you know, reusable spaceships, starlink with internet access via satellite, you know, a lot of remarkable things. If you think the test for remarkable is that you have growth, grit and grace, Elon Musk has zero grace. He has negative grace, right? So I don't know. It's not that it's going to happen. But if he called me up as a guy, I want to be in your podcast. I might not say yes.
There was one other quote that I like to mention that stood out to me in the book was that like, you can't enter the universe to imagine that new, but you can't go through the live negative. And there was one quote where you talked about, I think in early 2020, twos that you had like an issue with hearing. And you mentioned that if that toll was able to compose music while I'm not hearing, I would be able to do still the same.
And that really stand out to me because it's like taking a situation and completely imagining it differently from a different lens from a positive lens. Can you walk me through like how what kind of mindset it takes to see the positive in that situation? Listen, like you said, you know, a few years ago, I became deaf and I live now with this cochlear implant. So cochlear implant takes you from being deaf to just having really lousy
hearing, but going from deaf to lousy hearing is a miracle. Don't go me wrong. That's a big deal. And you know, a lot of people when I tell them I'm a podcast and I'm deaf, they're like amazed. You know, how can you do podcasting when you're deaf and all that? And I tell them, you know what? Listen, being deaf is not the worst thing in the world. I mean, nobody ever died from being deaf. And you know, if somebody said to Steve Jobs, you can either have pancreatic cancer.
You can be deaf. I guarantee you would you would pick deaf, right? And so I just look at my life that way and I've interviewed people for my book that had ALS, which typically is lethal after two years. I mean, those people truly overcame stuff far beyond deafness. So it's hard to feel sorry for yourself when you look at what other people have gone through. How they came up from a tough situation with grit and in comparison makes it easier to go through with now AI coming into play.
A lot of startups, a lot of developers are picking up the tools, building new applications on top of open AI or anthropics, foundational models. And that is creating the huge community right now, community of people who want to reimagine new experiences, reimagine a new way to design, create music as well as take the mundane tasks away that people hate to do. Just invoice processing things like that. From from from your perspective, as technology gets
democratized and there's open source and closed source, of course. But what are some ways people approaching to solve the problems that stood out to you and that you thought this was impressive? And what are some ways that they are not approaching or they are still afraid? To tell you the truth, I don't know how to answer the second part because I try not to look for losers.
But the first part, I think AI is a humongous deal. Maybe bigger than the internet. And some level, I understand that it's just a mathematical model and the technology is looking at what's the most likely next two syllables or whatever the algorithm is. But I swear to God, when you ask chat GPT some questions and it gives you back really intelligent thoughtful answers. It's hard to believe that, oh my God, this is just taking a mathematical model and putting a next
symbol, syllable and a next syllable and a next syllable. You know, I asked chat GPT, should we teach the history of slavery to American students? And it gave back a very intelligent, coaching, you know, thoughtful answer like far more than you would get out of the governor or Florida's. You know, I don't I think I think LLMs are sentient at this point and you know, yeah, I mean, mathematics, mathematicians can tell me why I'm wrong, but it sure feels that
way. And in terms of like education, that's definitely an interesting aspect because based on the persona, it adopts, it can tell wanting or the other. What are some of your perspectives on it being integrated into education? I'm sure people don't write their essays anymore. You know what, but if I were a teacher, you're not going to put AI back in the box. If you were to
ban AI from your students, I think you're doing them a disservice. It would be like saying, you cannot use a calculator, you have to use paper and pencil or you cannot use a computer, you have to use a typewriter. So now you're saying you cannot use AI. I think that is a big mistake because you're going to put your students, you know, reduce their ability to cope with the world. So you
have to teach them how to use AI. No, you can make the case that yes, you could go to chat GPT and say write me a thousand word essay on the reasons why slavery should be taught to American students. And you know, five seconds later, you would have that answer. Yes, I mean, that is true, but also, I think that it can tell you things that you never would have thought of and you can put your essay in there and ask it to check your grammar and do stuff like that. And I mean, any tool can be
used to cheat, but I don't know, I use AI every day. I swear every day, every day, I say to myself, how did I do this before? And I'll give you an extreme example. So I have something called Kawasaki GPT and it includes all my writing, my speaking, my videos, and it includes the transcripts of all my podcasts. So it's a very limited data set. So it's much less likely to make shit up. So you can go to cat Kawasaki GPT and you can ask it questions as if you are asking me. And I promise you
that Kawasaki GPT gives you better answers than I would give you in person. And like for drafting my sub stack newsletter or for writing forwards or for writing blurbs for people or contributions to magazines, guess what I do? I go to Kawasaki GPT and I ask myself the question and I take it as the first draft. That is really. Just take my sub stack newsletter. So with my sub stack newsletter, I'm trying to make that the most useful newsletter in the world that it actually helps you do stuff.
It's just not raging on stuff and just expressing my opinion. This is really like I want you to read my sub stack newsletter and say, okay, so here's five ways that guys said, this is how you can improve your apologies or this is how you can get a standing ovation or make a great pitch. So it's very tactical and practical. And what would happen in the past is I would say, okay, I need a sub stack newsletter and I would procrastinate and procrastinate and procrastinate.
And then finally at the very last minute, I would just start and I would just like have to just just cut it out for three hours and do that. I say, okay, I need a sub stack newsletter. So I go to Kawasaki GPT and I say, give me a 600 word essay with five bullet points all starting with active verbs on what it takes to get a standing ovation. And five seconds later, I get this draft. Now,
the fact that I have a draft means I can immediately start editing. Now, and I will tell you that I probably, one of you, all things are considered between using chat GPT and not using chat GPT. I probably don't save that much time because I edit so much. But what chat GPT does is that it makes me start faster and earlier. There's no procrastination between the time that I decide, you should write an essay about how to get a standing ovation and I have the first draft is five
seconds, not five days. So I think it really helps you get over the initial hump of let's get. So when you iterate over with the chat GPT type of foundation model in a way, it's a reflection of loss. So it allows to iterate over our thoughts with the same intellect. What would be like some some told that you wouldn't think, but you solve it think. I'll give you an example of how chat GPT improved think remarkable the book. So I was looking for examples of people who made really
huge career changes, you know, that shifted completely. So I asked chat GPT that question, it gives me five examples. One example was Julia Child. So I learned that Julia Child used to be a spook. She used to work for the OSS, which is the organization that became the CIA. So Julia Child was a spook until she moved to Paris in her 30s. And that's when she fell in love with French food and became the French chef. I would have never known about that example if it was not for chat GPT.
That's incredible. In a way, it brought an example of like past lives and make it live again. Yeah, absolutely. Which is very powerful. Yeah, this is interesting because when it comes entrepreneurship side of things, right? Like right now, there are a lot of startups coming into play using the AI and addressing today's some business problems. What are you seeing from your side? And like, well, what are people working on? And then startups probably entrepreneurs trying to
pitch to you? I think that we are just at the beginning of the application of AI. And I mean, the obvious ones are things like grammar checking and writing and improving that kind of thing. Also programming. I mean, I know programmers who say, yeah, we take, I'm really familiar with this language. So I write it in this language and I give it to chat GPT. And I said, now, you know, put it in Python or put it in Java or put it in whatever I'm not familiar with. How would you
have even done that before? Right? I mean, it's just amazing to me. That's the kind of stuff. I mean, you're talking to a 70 year old guy about how to use the latest greatest. You need to talk to 20 year old people about how to use the latest. But it enables everyone. I think the, it's like that's the democratic power of democratization. Like it enables everyone and like, it benefits all humanity, hopefully, and then everyone to adopt. And I know like with Canva,
it also enables to create a lot of content in PowerPoint. All the things that people went to CD for, right? Like, are finally getting automated now. Like from those fronts, like with hot businesses done, what are some ways that you're seeing in addition to not only today or for the next year, but more on what the future of work will be like, right? Like, because do we? Right? What do you think? I think at least in the short term, you read these things about the fears that AI will take your
job. I can see how that's a well-founded fear. If, if you were a copy editor and all of a sudden, chat GBT can spit out, copy edit ideas better than you can, fast it and you can achieve it and you can. But in my mind, it's not so much AI killed your job as much as someone who can use AI better than you took your job. So your goal is to be the person who can use AI the best as opposed to being replaced by AI. Because the person with the best prompts is going to win. That is true. And I think
the person with the best prompt is in any language. Right? Like, it was not it understands any language and I can communicate with AI to accelerate their work. If you think of AI as you have this tutor and this tutor knows everything and this tutor is available 24 by 7 by 365 and this tutor never gets tired, never gets depressed, never gets pissed off with you, never gets disappointed with you. Just keep asking it. You get the answer. I mean, how much better can it get than that?
And it's and that ties actually one of the biggest use cases in customer support. Because a lot of the customer support agents find the dealing with customers that are angry. But when you actually augment AI in there, that working in tandem with the human agents, even the customer gets very angry,
the AI agent doesn't get hurt. I mean, I think that's a great application because no matter how great a human is, you would hope that AI would understand that, you know, like this one little use case of you're using your Macintosh and it's on, you know, Catalina operating system and you're using a Hewlett Packard laser jet and, you know, it's like so many little things and, you know, and and the thing prints upside down and like, you know, what random customer service agent in India is
going to know the answer today. So what do they tell you? Reboot your machines. Yeah, plug it and unplug it again. It's like, God help us if AI is trained to say unplug and re-plug your machine. That will be the end of AI. So I was I was thinking about it. You have when you when you are presenting, you always have the top 10 framework and I think that really helps making things concise and easy to follow. And I noticed in your book, it is top nine. Markables. It's deflation.
Yes. Why did you choose nine over 10? This time. I love tricolins. So tricolins are things in three, right? Like I came, I saw, I conquered. Right. And so I wanted to have three sections. So that's growth, grit and grace. And then I wanted to have a littleeration. So I wanted them to all start with G. And then I even better is they will all start with GR, right? So growth, grit and grace. So when I die, the sections will be
renamed growth, grit and grave. So I got the, you know, I got the next sets already. And then, you know, I just, I happen to like, I'm kind of OCD that way. I like consistency. So I had three sections. I wanted to have three chapters each, you know, and there's nine. I mean, that's just that was it. Look at all my sections. Every section begins with an active verb and every bullet item, I think this is true. It begins with an active verb. I love. I hate
when some bullets start with a verb and some bullets start with, you know, the or end or but. I mean, I want like everything. Do this, do this, do this, do this. It makes it easier to follow as there's a pattern. So there's this saying that AI eats software, software eight, like basic tasks and then AI is now eating software and then slowly growing. And in a way, it's also, I'm not going to say this in a bad way, but it's also eating right now, like the way we
write, the way we express ourselves and and consume the information. How can, so as this progress, right? So my question is more around what do you think is not going to be eaten? I mean, if you think about it, I use chat GPT to come up with three words, one syllable, beginning with GR, right? Girls, Greta and Grace. Now, you could say, wow, AI, I took your place, guy, you know, it looked up in the Thaisaurus, it looked up, you know, it found the words, right?
But I had to tell chat GPT, I want three words, starts with GR and one syllable. Chat GPT didn't decide, oh, this is a good format guy. We're going to make it three sections. I'll start with GR, oh, one syllable. My brain had to come up with that idea. And as long as it's me writing the prompt, as a, as opposed to the prompt, writing me, I think we'll be okay. It's in a way like the trigger of knowledge or that creativity is still us. And then AI is there to accelerated,
grow it and be that voice that can iterate with us. So I asked a few of my previous guests about what they would like to ask to the next guest. And they don't know who the next guest is. So I wanted to ask you just two questions. So the first one is if you were 13 years old right now, so today, and looking at how the world is changing, what would you be studying and what would you say that you want to become when you grow up? I don't think at 13, anybody knows what they want to
know. I don't know. Well, you say I'm a high school senior. Okay, high school senior is that. High school senior. If I were a high school senior today, I would think what I would like to major in in college, if I could do it all over again, is behavioral economics. Because I think behavioral economics is the key to understanding understanding consumers and influence and persuasion. It makes you the ultimate marketer. So behavioral economics is what I would study. Interesting. And is that
like there's the understanding of game theory and how humans operate. So the next question is around what are some of the AI use cases? And this is more from business standpoint that you think are out there and maybe two or three of them and this could be in medicine. It could be in art. It could be anything. Well, I mean, I basically think that you should put yourself in the framework of yeah. As I said before, you know, you have this buddy who just knows everything works
24 by seven by 365 for free and can answer you immediately. It doesn't lose patience, doesn't get pissed off with you. So anything that enters your mind, you should ask it. You should say like so here's an X-ray. Does this person have cancer? So this person is taking diazide. Will it increase? Will it will it interfere with his statins and you know, all those kind of medical questions? Anytime you would ask a question, why not ask what it is? Yes, AI makes up shed and AI
can be wrong, but so can humans. So it's not like oh, humans are perfect and AI is flawed. Everything is flawed. It takes some amount of intelligence to understand what's not intelligent. Well, I mean, you know, if here's an extreme example. So let's take as a supposition that they are going to be nuclear weapons in this world. Okay. Now, I'm going to give you a choice. Who can launch a nuclear weapon? Veladimer Putin, King Zhang-un, Donald Trump or chat GPT. Who would you trust the most
with the ability to start a nuclear attack? I would trust chat GPT more than those other guys. That point, chat GPT most have like safeguards around, like the like what do you think actually will get chat GPT there? Right? Because it has to think in all perspectives. No bias. Okay. And what? The logical. Why do you say chat GPT has to have these guardrails and these protections? Do you have the same thing with King Zhang-un, Donald Trump or Veladimer Putin? So then the world may be
a better place if you have AI actually controlling some high risks. I don't want you to think I'm too weird when I tell you this. Okay. But, but it's too late in this podcast. I think that AI is God because God is omnipotent, omniscient and so is people. A lot of people think I'm joking, but I this is my theory. All right. So my theory is we are living in a simulation. Nothing else can explain this. I think God is running this simulation and God has a real sense of humor and God says,
oh, you know, I am such a dumbass. Why did I give humans free will? Why did I let them make so many decisions? I should have just like, I should have just done everything for them, but no, I let them figure out some stuff themselves and they completely blew it and they're killing each other and they're polluting the world. So now they are so arrogant. They're so full of themselves that
they're not going to listen to, not to listen to me anymore. So I'm going to invent something called artificial intelligence and I'm going to let the humans think that they created it so they listen to it. But it's really me. I God, and AI, and AI is God. That's my. It's an interesting theory.
No, what to say to that theory. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I'm sorry to that. It's I mean, it's been a lot of theories and I think something like this one ties to how best role this like the TV show and the book last year or the they created this human park where humans can go to then do whatever they want and all their counterparts that are like everyone who worked
in the park are AI robots and then their intelligence is there. So it's in a way that like it's creates the simulation environment where humans come in and think they can do anything just because they interact with AI. But then of course towards the end of the book AI gets consciousness and then has two missions one of them right eradicate classical this topic society and then the second is more like the topic society of like AI makes the decisions but it's not evil. So in a
way there are a future is unknown. So like I will entertain an interior around it. Well, listen, if you know, in let's say 2020, if you had predicted where we are today, you would not have predicted this. There's no way. No, when Barack Obama got elected, if you said all right in 10 years or whatever it is, we're going to have someone running the United States who used to run the apprentice. You would
say, well, how are you kidding? In like what parallel universe are you living in? Right? So I just my only rational explanation is we are in a simulation run by God and she has a sense of humor. That's the only explanation. Yeah, there's there's a life works in unexpected ways. You have a moment when the think different campaign happens and then you're in the room with Steve Jobs and then they think they have two copies of the thing different and then Steve wants more of them for
himself. Well, was your emotion then in that room that escalate things and then? Well, I, you know, to explain it further for your listeners. So this is at the end of the presentation of a think different ad campaign and and Lee Cloud, the guy from the agency who showed it to us said, I have two copies of these ads. I give one to you, Steve and one to guy and Steve says, don't give one to guy. And at that moment, you know, this is one of those moments when you look back in your life and
you think, why did I just shut up? Why did not a stand up for myself? Why did I not take him on? And so I wasn't going to go through the rest of my life thinking, God, God, you're such a wind pass. You didn't even do anything. I said to Steve, well, Steve, is it because you don't trust me? And Steve said, yes, I don't trust you. And I said, Steve, that's okay. I don't trust you either. And I think that cost me about $200 million, but it was worth it because I get to tell all the
podcasts was this story. That story is worth it. And what did you do after that? Like, what, like after you left your room? Probably went and got free orange juice from the refrigerator. That's for sure. At this point, I'm 70 years old. I'm never going to apply for another job. I never need another job or anything like that. So, you know, it's a very free time of my life. Let me just say it in the shortest way I can. I just don't give a... It's liberating.
It's a very good feeling not to have to give a shit about what everybody thinks. Yeah, it is definitely very liberating. Well, that's, that's it. So I want to ask one question to you about actually the imposter syndrome. As you mentioned in the book, man, it's something that happens a lot in workplace as well. And it impacts people at some point in their careers. It has like imposter syndrome crop top view during your career and like even inspire your credentials
and achievements. And also how can one can beat it? You know, first for your listeners, the imposter syndrome is when you are giving an order or you're, you know, you're present in some audience and you look around and you say, compared to all these people, I'm a fake. They're going to figure out I'm an imposter. I shouldn't be on this board of directors or I shouldn't have gotten this raise or I shouldn't have gotten this award. I'm an imposter. They're going to figure this out.
And I actually think that's a, that's a, it's a healthy attitude because at least you have some sense of self examination and some humility, right? I think it's much worse to have this entitlement syndrome like, of course I'm here. Of course I got promoted. Of course I'm the board of directors. Of course I've been honored. I deserve it. I am so remarkable. I think that is a much more
dangerous attitude. And I'd rather have people with the imposter syndrome and convince them why they do deserve it than to have someone who has the entitlement syndrome and try to convince them why they don't deserve it. So that's, and I'll tell you something else that I have interviewed about 250 people from my podcast and about 60 or 70% are women and women are the ones who bring up the
imposter syndrome. I don't think any man has ever asked me, what do I do to get rid of the imposter syndrome? Men are not capable of such self examination. So they're always thinking, of course I deserve this race should have been bigger and larger. So if you are a woman and you have this imposter syndrome, first of all, understand that, you know, everybody, every, every intelligent aware human being gets
the imposter syndrome. If you don't get the imposter syndrome, that's what I would really be worried. So that's number one. Number two is that the very fact that there is a syndrome named after it means that it's common. So it's not like you're the only person in the world to ever have this feeling. It's so common. It has a name for it. So chillax relax. You know, a lot of people get this. And then the last thing is it'll just focus on what you've done positively. Don't say,
you know, why did I deserve this instead? Remember what you did accomplish. And I hope that we'll reassure you that you're not an imposter. Then definitely takes time as well. Like takes time and then that told process come into play and then practicing over and over time, it's interactions. So I have a question around what would be your question be to the next guest. So like, what would you, what are you going to discuss this going to be? Yeah, you don't know who it is. It's good. It's just
something that makes you curious these days. And you're going to ask this guest for sure what I'm going to tell you that. Yes. And is this guest going to be an American so I can use American, you know, centric question? Who's you don't need to tell me who it is, but what country? Yes, American. Yeah. Okay. So you asked this American. If you were trying to decide whether to teach the history of slavery to American students, would you rather believe chat GPT or Ron
DeSantis? I want you to ask. It's a great question. Yes. Thank you very much. We'll see you