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How to Live Without Regret | Kai-Fu Lee on Impact Theory

Mar 17, 2024
- And I think another important thing is to meet a lot of people who are smarter than you and ask them questions, pay attention to them, follow up, validate and verify the things you learn. If you feel like the whole world can be your teacher and your learning, by asking questions and keeping an open mind, I think that's probably what I've done. (Audience applauding) - Hello everyone. Welcome to the

impact

theory

. Our goal with this program and company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that will help you execute your dreams. Today's guest is one of the most prominent and successful technology investors on the planet.
how to live without regret kai fu lee on impact theory
Named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine, his contributions to both the Chinese high-tech industry and the broader field of artificial intelligence simply cannot be understated. As Chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures, he manages approximately $2 billion, and through some of the most eye-popping investments, he and his team in just four years have helped create 15 unicorn startups, including five unmatched in only AI. The author of 10 US patents and more than 100 journal and conference articles, as well as being the founding president of Google China, the founder of Microsoft Research Asia, and a former executive at both SGI and Apple, it's easy to see why so many people consider a of the most central figures in the field of artificial intelligence.
how to live without regret kai fu lee on impact theory

More Interesting Facts About,

how to live without regret kai fu lee on impact theory...

The numerous innovations he has helped bring to the world have been featured on Good Morning America, ABC Television, and the cover of The Wall Street Journal. He is also the author of seven best-selling books and has more than 50 million followers on social media. His leadership and insight into the future of technology have not only earned him followers but have also made him one of the most respected educators of the next generation of entrepreneurs and policymakers. So please help me welcome the best-selling author of the new book AI Super-Powers, the oracle of innovation himself, Dr. Kai-fu Lee. (Audience applauding) - Welcome to the show. - Thanks thanks. - Absolutely man, it's so good to have you. - It's great to be here. - I am very excited to dive into AI and all those things that completely fascinate me.
how to live without regret kai fu lee on impact theory
But what I want to start with is that you've talked a lot about the Chinese work ethic and how incredibly intense it is. Was that already something that was present in your family? I know you've talked about it. Was there a lot of pressure in your family to excel? - There was, especially from my mother. I was her only child and I think she really wanted me to excel, so I remember when I was very young she would make me write these Chinese characters and every time I made a little mistake she would slap my hand.
how to live without regret kai fu lee on impact theory
I have to do it again. You have to memorize all that Chinese poetry. Every time I missed a character, she would throw the book out the door. So, they pushed me to work very hard but also to work very rewarding. She would buy me any book she wanted to read and she would give me rewards, hugs and lots of good food when she did a good job. Therefore, largely following the Chinese reward/punishment system to drive incredible hard work and excellence. - It's interesting. How much of that have you used now with your own children? - None. - Actually?
It's interesting. Why none? - Because I think people really need to find their passion and forcing someone who is not good at math to participate in the math bee or someone who hates spelling to win the spelling bee is not something I want my children to do, so I always help. They explored things they might be interested in and then supported them when they found it. - That's really interesting. I want to talk more about that. So, your mom was pretty intense, but obviously you said she was very rewarding. Was she just rewarding in the sense that she had access to books and would get whatever she wanted or was that knowledge that she forced you to obtain, did she help you?
You have been very successful. -I think she has certainly helped me, but I also think that having the opportunity to study in the United States was perhaps even more important. That Asian schools didn't really give people the opportunity to learn how to learn and that Asian schools are really good at providing a decent level of proficiency by forcing you to memorize everything, but that actually stifles creativity. Coming to the United States was even more important than being forced to work very hard before the age of 11. - Because you were able to find creative outlets? - Yes, because then I discovered that programming was fun, AI was fun and I was able to dedicate myself to my passion.
Maybe a little late, but I still have to do it. - So interesting. So listening to him talk, I'm very interested in his theories about why he thinks the Chinese are such high performers, and I actually talk about that. So, you said that if the Chinese type of culture is pitted against basically every other culture, where does the work ethic fall? - Well, I think work ethic is a very critical part of why China has grown so fast and work ethic is not only a centuries-old Chinese tradition, but it is also accentuated now because China has been poor for so many recent centuries. .
Let us then imagine an only child in the family who suffers the pressure of his two parents and his four grandparents. All the pressure on one person and the feeling that that person is the only chance to get the family out of poverty and that the family may have been in poverty for five, 10, 20 generations, so you can imagine the pressure to standing out. So while China has yet to create a large middle class like the United States, there will always be poor families with high expectations of an incredible work ethic. - Very interesting for me. So there's something angsty about me that makes me like it so much.
There's been this fair wave of innovation created in China that certainly in AI is quickly becoming unparalleled and if you relate it to that, you have these people who have expectations about a person and they have that opportunity to take them out of there. poverty, but they are really doing it. For me a question arises then, what is more important to you? Obviously you defend that, you have invested in many very successful companies and you have bet on many Chinese entrepreneurs because of this work ethic. So why not instill or encourage your children in a similar way?
What is more important that makes you not want to do that? - I've also been through a lot of things. I have had cancer and I am not in remission and when facing cancer I realized that working hard cannot be the purpose of our

live

s. It may be something you do when you love it, but it actually creates a lot of stress and at the end of the day, when you really look at your life and face death, perhaps measured in hundreds of days, as I once did, I felt that working hard was not on my priority list at all.
If anything, I

regret

ted having worked too hard. - Tell me about the cancer diagnosis. The day that happened, what was that moment like? In fact, you had given everyone a little frame of reference on the Chinese work ethic. You said there was a company that said, "Hey, come work with us, we're much more balanced, we're nine nine six." What does that mean? - Yes Yes. That company is now trading at around $60 billion and they attracted employees on the basis of work-life balance. And nine nine six meant 9:00 am to 9:00 pm every day for six days a week. - And that is the balanced company. - That is the balanced company. company, you have Sunday off. - So you are in that environment, were you working like that? - Yes. - Oh God.
Tell us about when your wife was about to give birth. - Clear. So, for the first time as a child in 1991, December 16, was the day I had to present artificial intelligence to the CEO of Apple. We had a demo that would work very well with my voice and not so well with other people's voices and I wanted to do my best, but my daughter wasn't coming out (laughs), so I have to face the decision of seeing my son born. son or do the AI ​​presentation, and I was getting ready to go back to work, but just half an hour before leaving, she cooperated and left.
Otherwise she would have missed her birth. - Okay, so we move on from that and then to that kind of work ethic, life and death, everything where nine nine six is ​​balanced. How do you hear that cancer diagnosis? What is that first hour, the first day, like? - I went through the usual denial phase and why me? Negotiate with God. What have I done wrong? What can I do well? And then I quickly realized that this is what it is and that I need to rewrite my will first. Tell my family and then search the internet for any possibility that it may still be treatable.
So both the emotional side and the rational side were triggered simultaneously and once I got both sides to calm down, you know, all the emotion, the anger, calmed down a little bit and I also found out that this cancer is still possibly treatable, so I reflected. in my life and I realized that I really put work first. My family, my loved ones, I was a passable son, husband and father because I was a good optimizer like an AI algorithm. I knew how to spend enough time with them to be considered acceptable, but I never made them a top priority. - Did you

live

like this with work first as a sense of duty or obligation? - Actually, I thought I loved it.
I loved the feeling of accomplishment. I love the fact that my employees called me Iron Man, that was my nickname. I love the fact that I always responded to email within five minutes. I had my PC with me, there were no mobile phones at that time. Even when I went to bed, I would automatically wake up at 2:00 AM. m. and at 5:00 a.m. m. to answer all my emails because I was working for Google and there were questions my colleagues and boss might have. I wanted to be receptive. I always make my employees feel like "Well, the boss works really hard, I should work hard too." So I never thought there was any problem with making working hard the only priority in life. - So, man, when I say this it resonates with me because I'm still in that mode where I love it and an employee told me that she didn't think I was human and that I loved it.
Now help me see the perspective of when you really start to reflect and start to

regret

it. Why regret it? Like, if you were really enjoying it, what is it that your family gives you or means to you or whatever that you realize was a mistake? - When I found out about my diagnosis and got over the denial. At that moment I began to rethink the priorities of my life and I saw how my family was so selfless in taking care of me. My wife slept in the hospital with me on the small sofa and my sisters prepared food for me.
My daughters made me small. gifts trying to cheer me up and I saw that I never did that for them. I also read a book by Bronnie Ware, she was a nurse practitioner who saw two thousand people on her deathbed and in her book she said, "None." many of them wished "they had worked harder, had achieved more wealth or fame." "They only wanted to 'give love, spend time with their loved ones' and also pursue their dreams and not just 'follow fame and wealth' blindly. And also during my illness I visited a very famous Buddhist monk, Master Sheng- yen.
He is perhaps the most famous Buddhist monk in the world. He is very wise, in the mountains of Taiwan and then I told him about my illness and my regrets and he said, "Kai-fu, what really drove your life?" ?" and I said, "Very simple, "make a difference in the world, "make an

impact

, so I measure everything I do "carefully by how I can make a bigger impact, "how I can invest in a better company," How can I write a book that sells more copies, "How can I give a speech that will be heard by more people?" And I said, "This has to be good for the world," and why do I have cancer?
And he said: "Are you sure you're doing all this to make the world better or are you just doing it to become more famous?" And then I started to realize that these two were not separable and it was um, and then he explained that people You can basically succumb to two temptations: greed for money and greed for fame. He said that in many Chinese teachings greed for fame is considered bad, so many scholars avoid it, but greed for fame is praised because it is considered to leave a good reputation, change the world, help the world to be a better place. better, but he said, "Kai-fu, I think you're fooling yourself" by saying you're trying to help the world. "You're really just trying to be more famous, aren't you?" And then that really hit me and he said, "Well, if you really agree with what I said," I think you should change your purpose. "Helping the world be a better place is good, "but it is achieved by giving love to other people. "It's not about getting famous. 'You need to separate these two things.' And that was probably the big wake-up call I needed. - How did you separate them? - When I wanted to do something, I asked if this is something that would really make the world a better place or is it just another effort to make myselfmost famous.
And I would prioritize the previous goal and then if there were people who needed my help, that would have nothing to do with I myself was moving forward, but it was something I knew they needed. I would spend more time on that. I would spend more time with my family. I still work hard but I always put my family's priorities first. Family and friends. When my kids go home on vacation, that's when I leave work and spend time with them, instead of the other way around. It is simply reversing the priority because the family is not going to take up all your time.
If one simply puts that as a higher priority, I think the number of working hours can be 20% less, it has not decreased dramatically but now I feel much more rewarding because every day I feel that my life has more meaning and I have also Eliminated all my bad habits. Refuse to get up at night, try to sleep well every night. - So, explain to me the barometer you use to determine if something will really be good for the world. You're at the nexus of something that's going to alter the world so profoundly, how do you look at it and say, "This project is worth my time and energy and this one isn't?" We can choose to invest. in many artificial intelligence projects.
Obviously, if we see a good business opportunity, we can't pass it up, but I would dedicate more time. AI for health, AI for education. Those are things that I would dedicate my personal time to because knowing that they will be beneficial to the world. Also, when I look at all the AI ​​investments we've made, I can see that there are a lot of jobs that are being displaced by the investments we made and also by AI in general, and that's a wake-up call that the world needed, so I decided to write this book. This book is not just about AI technology, but about China and the US emerging as a dueling engine to drive AI forward and that AI is a skill within a single domain. doing superhuman work, whether it's picking fruit, washing dishes, working on the assembly line, customer service, cashier, loan officer.
I believe that these jobs will be displaced in the next 10 years and there needs to be a warning for young people to choose the right professions and a warning for people in those professions to prepare for a new beginning. So I think that was a clear call to me that it was a call of duty that someone needed to alert the world to that. - It's really interesting and what I love about connecting with you, you in particular talking about this topic, it's so fascinating because you've said that the very purpose of life is to give and receive love.
So, someone who says the true purpose of life is to give and receive love, what do you think about the disruption ahead? It's just going to eradicate jobs and ironically I teamed up with a DJ called Steve Aoki and we wrote a comic together called Neon Future and it's about the nadir of unemployment that we're going to go through and the story we wanted to tell was how did you get out of that? How do you get out of the abyss? It's pretty inevitable that that will happen, that there will be this disruption, so knowing that the purpose of life is to give and receive love, knowing that you're trying to help people choose jobs that work well with AI, what is that? ? ?
What should people think about now? - I think it actually all works because if you look at this defensively and say, "What are the things that AI can't do?" It really splits into two big buckets. One are jobs that require creativity, strategy, conceptual thinking and the other are jobs that require compassion, empathy and human connection, because it turns out that you don't need a robot to be a nurse, doctor, nanny or caregiver for the elderly. This last bucket is the only one large enough for the displacement of the work. I think over the next 20 to 25 years people's values ​​will be what they are, as I come out and realize that my life can't just be work, there are many who won't have that death driven epiphany , so they won.
They don't realize it and that's why it's important for them to find a new beginning. It's really a coincidence that jobs that are large enough in quantity and trainable in a fairly short period of time are compassion jobs, so this will be like routine jobs, when people are displaced from warehouses, assembly lines, call centers, the work that awaits them with training will be jobs of compassion. That won't happen unless compassion jobs are understood to be valuable, well-paying jobs in society. Part of the book talks about how we can really help make that happen because AI is not going to make someone want to do a job as an elderly caregiver.
It just has to pay better and that job, that category of senior caregiver, is going to flourish because people are living longer. People over 80 need five times more care, yet one million vacant aged carer jobs are not being filled because the pay is not enough. So AI is going to generate, in the next 12 years alone, 17 trillion of net value for the world. - Now I want to connect that with two things you've talked about. So we have this notion that humans will truly find their purpose in love and humans have this desire to pursue their dreams, so how do we bring those two things together when dreams are often conflated, rightly or wrongly, with fame , with the money.
How do you help people, maybe even your own children, how do you help them find a way to bring those two things together? - When we think about beyond the current depression, maybe 30 to 50 years from now... - Is that depression like unemployment? - Unemployment, right. I think we really need to think about a different world. That AI is not only destined to wake us up now to look for jobs that have more compassion, service jobs, etc., but it is also destined to change education. I think there are two aspects. I think one is that children should be encouraged to really do what they love.
It's really important for us to not let prejudices or current beliefs that these are the good jobs, doctors, lawyers, engineers, these are the good jobs. Well, many of these jobs will disappear too. Within each area certain jobs will open and others will close. Let's take the medical field. I think that radiologists and dermatologists, in 30 years they will disappear, there will be no more humans doing those jobs, but medical researchers, people who invent the next medicine, that will be what we will need. So I think encouraging people to look for jobs where AI is a tool that amplifies their creativity is going to be the best job, but it has to be an education that fosters creativity and an education that helps people pursue what they want. they want.
It captivates me. - Wow, I love that. Tell me about the follow-up. So, a lot of people are going to experiment with a lot of things. They are going to start, they are going to stop and that will become a pattern in your life, start, stop, start, stop. How do people develop the level of discipline? It may be putting words in your mouth, but discipline or courage to get things done? - I think part of it is recognizing that we're not just in a society with other people, we have artificial intelligence, so we really need, if we really want to be that group of creatives, the group that has the wind at our backs.
With AI as tools that boost and amplify your creativity, well, you have to work hard at it, right? I think that will be having a higher bar than ever, so I think the self-motivation has to be there. Also, I think you should be doing something you like to do. I don't think anyone can be amazing unless they do what they love. Those two are really combined. I think there was a book by Malcolm Gladwell where he talked about the 10,000 hour rule and that's still true, so it has to be those 10,000 hours plus something you're deeply passionate about.
And then I would add on top of that, choosing something that the AI ​​can be, giving wind to your sails. If you have that, I think the future will be very, very bright. - The way you look at the problem is really interesting and I think a lot of people probably dismiss it by just saying that, oh, you grew up in the United States and China, so you automatically have this scope, but I think you have an exceptional background. ability to learn and I wonder if you have a learning system. How can you approach a big problem and really gain perspective on it? - I think you should first have an open mind.
I think if you start with some prejudice, that Chinese companies are just copycats or that people in Silicon Valley just don't work hard, then I think you have blinders on and you're not looking at the bigger picture. I think another important thing is to meet a lot of people who are smarter than you and ask them questions and pay attention to them, and follow up and validate and check the things that you learn. If you feel like the whole world can be your teacher and you're learning, asking questions and keeping an open mind, I think that's probably what I've done. - It's really interesting that you talk about an open mind.
So, you said something in the book, it really surprised me, and you said that even if we are wrong and don't have a soul, it's better to believe that we do. Why is life better if we believe we have a soul? - Many people feel that we have a soul or we don't. It is a very strong belief that people have. If you ask religious people, they all believe that of course we have souls, of course AI will never be able to do what we do. But if you ask many AI scientists they will tell you: "Well, it's all about physics" and we just need to duplicate and replicate "everything in our brain and body", then there will be a replica of the human being. "And of course, everything we do is just electron shooting, chemical reactions, everything can be replicated, so how can there be a soul?" Both sides are very dogmatic.
Having been through cancer, having seen what the most important things are to me, and having been humbled by many mysteries that I do not understand, I would be with the group that believes we have a soul. We are in a very difficult juncture in humanity where we are faced with many great technologies and our collective consciousness is going to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, so if we all choose to be optimistic and believe that we have a soul and believe in compassion it will get us out of any of the problems and we will believe that we will find a better purpose for humanity than we will find.
But if we believe that everything is a downward spiral, then it will not be so much a question of whether we have a soul or not, but rather that our collective consciousness will create a self-fulfilling prophecy that is either utopia or dystopia. - Yes, I love it. You said there are mysteries you've encountered that you don't fully understand. What are some of those mysteries? - Well, why does intuition work? Why when you see someone do you feel affinity or not? Why does the placebo effect exist, right? Only with our determination, with believing that this useless drug is going to cure us, do we actually cure ourselves.
I think those things are very difficult to explain with a simple AI that can replicate everything we do. - Yeah, that kind of stuff is really fascinating to me. One thing I should have asked you is what is the soul? What do you want people to believe and why does that make our experience more loving and beautiful? - I think it is a belief that human to human can truly connect and that it is not replaced by any machine. That is the belief that the connection between humans is true and genuine and that machines cannot do that, and that our soul, I think there is also the belief, once you believe that there is a soul, that even when our body dies, the soul potentially continues.
I think that may or may not be true, but I guess I choose to believe it. I think many religions have that element. I think religions also have elements of superstition, which is why they are losing strength, but I think there is something, some memories that people have of each other and the kinship they feel, it seems plausible that even when our body dies, our soul lives on. . - I'm glad you mentioned meaning, that's such an important part of the book, the notion that AI can, if we focus too much on work being a reason to exist, there will be a loss of meaning.
What worries you about the loss of meaning? Why is it important and how do we avoid it? - I think that, ultimately, we will have to find the meaning of our existence. I think philosophers and religions have talked about it. I think our search must continue, but for now we have been brainwashed into thinking that many of us think the meaning of our life is hard work. And that's understandable because if we go back to the roots of the industrial revolution, it was a process of creating a lot of repetitive and routine jobs that actually turns the work of craftsmen in making a car, let's say, into line work. assembly.
For many people who have routine jobs to accept their jobs, it would be advisable for them to believe that their lives revolve around work. The work is painful, it is repetitive, it is boring, but I have to do it and if I do itwell and I do a lot I will earn more money and give my family a better life, I will give my children a better education and therefore my job. It is the meaning of life. But AI is the complete opposite of the industrial revolution. It is exactly here to displace those routine jobs that were created by the industrial revolution, so that when those jobs are eradicated and people have attributed the meaning of their lives to their work and their work is gone, displaced by AI and any work that they can find.
They may be displaced again by AI, I believe they will fall into depression, substance abuse and even suicide. There's a lot of evidence that given this brainwashing that we have, suicide rates, depression rates, and substance abuse rates go up in prolonged periods of unemployment, so I think that when we face this significant unemployment in the next 15 or 20 years, We can't just hope to cure it by giving people welfare, giving them money and saying, "Don't worry, you don't have to get a job. Here's some money to help you get by." Because what people lose that is most valuable to them is not the loss of income but the loss of meaning. - Alright, before I ask my last question, tell these guys where they can find you online. - I am Kai-fu Lee on Twitter, only my full name is written, K-A-I-F-U L-E-E and my book has a website: Aisuperpowers.com where I will publish my most recent writings. - Excellent.
So my last question, what is the impact you want to have on the world? ? - I think the most important impact is to really spread love and be sincere with people and do everything from my heart and when I see opportunities, share my thoughts in a way that makes the world a better place. - I like it. Kai-fu, thank you very much for coming to the program. That was incredible. (audience applauding) - Thank you. - Alright guys, I'm telling you that the coming AI revolution is so huge and letting it catch you off guard would truly be a tragedy, largely for the reason that you already talked about what the real fear of The loss of meaning is because everyone has their identity so tied to their work and I have never seen anyone be able to pass with more grace from being an engineer, to really talk about the science and what is happening and why it is happening and have such an understanding. tremendous. of how the situation is developing, including geopolitically.
And also, in the same book you will talk about love, meaning and connection and you will be able to share your personal story about your cancer diagnosis and how it changed. I really believe in Yuval Noah Harari's notion that people have, he said, science fiction writers, but I'll go further and say that people in this realm of dealing with future technologies have a moral obligation to paint a picture of the future worth creating. If we don't have a vision to strive for, the chances of us achieving it are exactly zero. That's one of the things that I found most extraordinary about his book is that he paints this incredible vision of that, and I'll summarize it with the moment when the Go player lost and he said that everyone saw this triumph, even taking it. to the point of saying that the West triumphed over China and AI certainly triumphed over man and he said that was misunderstanding the situation and what he saw was a man who loved the game so much that he couldn't help but say take on a challenge that he knew I would finally lose.
And I love that, it impacted me a lot because that is the human experience. So, I think this is a truly unique voice. He is an ultra-credible scientist. He has done extraordinary things in the field of AI and what he is doing now from an investment standpoint. I think the 50 million followers are just the tip of an iceberg of people who should pay attention to this man and I hope you become one of them. Alright, if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Kai-fu, thank you very much again man. - Thank you. - An absolute pleasure. and be part of this community.
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