Episode 1447: Interview with Manuj Aggarwal About If AI is "Evil"

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining us on episode 1, 447 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:08] Manuj Aggarwal: Hi, I'm Manuj AgAggarwalI challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent, your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to be self aware is key.

[00:00:26] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this. The Inspired Stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Maderer.

[00:00:44] Maybe I have a new idea in my industry where they are taking all this time, doing this repetitive work. Maybe I come up with a new product and sell it to my competitors. So the idea is to get started at this stage of the game. We are very, very, very early right now. [00:01:00]

[00:01:02] Scott Maderer: Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:01:07] If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:38] In today's podcast episode, I interview Manuj Agarwal. I asked Manouche about his journey from poverty to being a leading expert in artificial intelligence. I asked Manouche about how AI is often misunderstood. And Manouche also shares with you why you need to pay attention to AI now. I've got a new book coming out called [00:02:00] Inspired Living.

[00:02:00] Assembling the puzzle of your call by mastering your time, your talent, and your treasures. You can find out more about it and sign up for free. for getting more information over at inspired stewardship. com. Inspired living. That's inspired stewardship. com. Inspired living. Manuj Agarwal went from making 2 a day as a factory worker to holding four patents in AI and being a recognized AI thought leader.

[00:02:30] Manuj grew up in a small town and began working at 15 in a factory. In 1995, a computer institute opened in his town, and though tuition was more than a year's salary, he scraped together funds and began his journey into finding his passion for computers. It's also where he found and married his wife, despite the disapproval of his family.

[00:02:50] Eventually, they left and immigrated to Canada to start a new life. Now he works in the field of AI and helps others understand the reality [00:03:00] of AI. Welcome to the show, Manouche!

[00:03:03] Manuj Aggarwal: Thank you so much. Excited to be here.

[00:03:06] Scott Maderer: Thank you so much for coming on. So I I shared a little bit in the intro, but you've had a pretty dramatic transition and journey in your life from your beginnings to where you are today.

[00:03:19] Can you share a little bit more about what brought you to the point where you are today and what was that journey like?

[00:03:28] Manuj Aggarwal: Yeah, sure. The journey basically was from a third world country developing country, not third world country, developing country, India. I grew up in a very small place.

[00:03:39] And my career started at 15 working in a factory and I just wanted to change my life from it was quite a difficult life earlier on. I was working 12 hours a day, going to school, all of that. And I just wanted to [00:04:00] figure out, okay, how can I have a better life for myself? I knew there was a way out and I got some inspiration one day just during lunch hours flipping through some business magazines.

[00:04:14] I read some amazing stories of these tycoons who made it big. So that inspired me to do something, but I didn't know what exactly what it was going to be. What I understood was in order for me to improve my life, I need to build value for the world and I needed to acquire valuable skills for that.

[00:04:36] And that led me into technology, software, computers. And it turned out like I was pretty good at it. I was really interested in it. It felt almost like a hobby for me. I was extremely introverted back then. I'm still introverted, but back then I was like, not able to talk to anybody face to face and talking to machines sounded like a comforting thing because they never [00:05:00] talk back and all that.

[00:05:01] And and then now

[00:05:03] Scott Maderer: they're starting to learn to, yeah,

[00:05:05] Manuj Aggarwal: yeah, now they get our stuff exactly. But anyway, so the idea was that I found this skill that I enjoyed. And also I had this I don't know, it was inner desire. I wish I had a plan. There was absolutely no plan. I was just going with the flow.

[00:05:24] And I had a, I had this notion that, Hey I have led a difficult life and many other people lead a difficult life. How can I help them through technology? I got into projects where education was involved, healthcare was involved. People, where they live, like real estate, where people lived, that was involved.

[00:05:47] I, even with technology projects, I was never drawn to hardcore algorithms or like very complex technology engineering. I was focused more on, [00:06:00] okay, how can I apply these skills to solve real world problems, right? And so I think that was the key thing that led me to work with a lot of startups working on innovative projects.

[00:06:10] Then we worked with the large corporations, Microsoft, IBM, T Mobile, and I saw like these corporations, how like one of the projects that we delivered was an education space, and it started making hundreds of millions of dollars within five years. And so I saw the transition going from an idea to a a giant 400 million annual revenue company, how it all unfolds and what are the challenges and all that.

[00:06:39] And then during that time my, all my desire is also to stay at the cutting edge. I know I don't want to like you know stay with the status quo. So as new technologies come about blockchain, artificial intelligence, I try to get into those. And so that has been the journey just like [00:07:00] finding what you can bring of value to the world using that to do more good and then trying to stay trying to challenge yourself to stay up up to date and current with the technology.

[00:07:15] I think those were the key principles which led me to where I am.

[00:07:20] Scott Maderer: So when you reflect back on it, you think about the early beginnings and finding computers and then. Going to Canada and working in that field for so long how much of that, looking back on it, how much of it do you think of as quote unquote, the luck of the draw versus no this was the direction that you always would you would have probably found a way, but a different way if that

[00:07:46] Manuj Aggarwal: makes sense.

[00:07:46] Yeah.

[00:07:46]

[00:07:47] Manuj Aggarwal: I think luck plays a role very much but in my opinion the luck part is only how much time it takes for you to get there. [00:08:00] Eventually, if so, when I tell, when I mentor people, entrepreneurs and others, I tell them, look, there is no, nothing such as failure. Failure is just a learning.

[00:08:11] So if you never give up, you never fail. So luck only plays the role of how fast you get to the destination. And actually life is a journey. There is no destination per se anyways, right? Once you get there, you find a new destination. So in my opinion luck favors those who are prepared, who are willing to go the extra mile.

[00:08:35] But also, people who know what they want out of life, because most people don't know what they want out of life. And when things get tough, they give up. And then that's what they call failure, right? But if you know what you want, if you keep going, then life and universe just make, keeps making you lucky.

[00:08:56] Scott Maderer: Yeah. The, one of the [00:09:00] definitions of luck is where preparation meets opportunity, right? The idea of being prepared first and then when opportunity shows up, you actually take it if that makes sense. One of the things I like to highlight too is how, whatever our own particular spiritual or faith background or journey or beliefs, how that intersects with our journey in terms of our life journey.

[00:09:24] How have you seen that kind of intersection in your belief system and those things and the practices you do there with what you've done in the, in, in your career journey?

[00:09:34] Manuj Aggarwal: Yeah, that's a great question. It has been a quite a transition. Actually I grew up in India land of many faiths, Hinduism.

[00:09:45] I grew up as a Hindu and my family was religious as a teenager rebellious teenager, I never believed in, in all that. I didn't go to temple And [00:10:00] I used to be ridiculed by my parents, by my friends. I was like, Hey what's wrong with you? But I said, Hey like if there was a God, he will take care of me.

[00:10:10] I don't believe in this because I'm going through all this trouble and it's a waste of time for me. But then when I came to Canada I, at one point I was like I had lots of ups and downs in personal life as well. And I was suicidal at one point in this was around 2011, 2012.

[00:10:32] And so I went to psychiatrist psychologist and try to get some help, but nothing really gave me a solution. So then I found meditation. And interestingly enough, meditation is basically from India, right? I never paid attention to any of these there, but here in the West, like I found meditation and really opened up my eyes about how our mind works, how this whole life [00:11:00] basically is what we create out of it.

[00:11:02] And through that meditation practice, my belief system started to Again, find my roots into religion, Hinduism, Buddhism. So I started studying all kinds of religions, Christianity, Islam, Judaism. And also I started to peel away from actual organized religion, just learning about their learnings.

[00:11:28] and finding my own faith, my own belief in what I call universe. The universe and life is what some people call God. Some people call different names. But if you're curious enough, I think we gather the information from all religions and at some level, they all coalesce.

[00:11:46] They are all saying the same thing. And it has really helped me. and I infuse all that in my work as well. So I try to bring the Eastern philosophies, religious philosophies, those type of things into my [00:12:00] AI projects as well. So it really works out well.

[00:12:04] Scott Maderer: And the work you do now in, in AI if you think about, AI as a, I don't even know what word to use, but as, as it's presented, let's put it that way.

[00:12:19] In other words when people hear AI right now, they just got a picture in their head. I'm not saying it's a good picture, bad picture, right picture, wrong picture, but people got a picture. When you think about AI and kind of the work that you do there, how do you see is the connection between that and what brought you to the point of working in AI, if you understand what I'm asking.

[00:12:42] See so for me technology is a tool, right? So let's say somebody, a client comes to me, they are trying to solve a big problem. Then As a practitioner, I try to look for the right tool for the right job and whatever [00:13:00] is available we try to use it. So for me somebody came to me for educational, like they wanted to build a personalized education system to being in teaching, you will understand if in a classroom full of 50 students, if everybody gets the same curriculum some kids are advanced, some kids need more help.

[00:13:20] Manuj Aggarwal: So a teacher cannot provide a personalized experience to everyone. It's almost difficult very difficult. So with AI we were able to understand each student's level and then personalize the curriculum for each student within the same classroom. Now, this was a tough problem to solve.

[00:13:39] And then When we said, okay maybe we can use some AI here or analytics and put it all together and it worked and it produced some amazing results. So then I realized, oh, this is a fantastic, powerful technology. Let's look more into it. And now this was 2006, right? People don't [00:14:00] realize AI has been around since the 70s.

[00:14:03] I started building more and more products with it, more startups, more companies with it. And now people everyday person realizes the power of AI. But the thing is change is never easy for humans any new groundbreaking invention printing press or steam engine or automobile, whatever people always hesitate to adopt it.

[00:14:30] And that's just human nature. So people gravitate towards negative portrayals of AI the terminators and all that. But the fact is, if anybody's using a smartphone, if anybody ordered a package from Amazon, if anybody's listening to music on Spotify, anything like that, they're already using AI.

[00:14:50] They just don't realize it, right? For me, it's a natural progression. Tomorrow, there's going to be You know, some other technology, quantum is coming. So we will adopt [00:15:00] that for solving problems. Technology never stops based on personal opinions. What do you think are some of the things that people misunderstand?

[00:15:09] Scott Maderer: You were just talking about some of the ways that AI probably showed up in our real life and there is that pushback and that fear and that kind of it's going to take over the world. It's going to take all of our jobs. You hear all of that messaging. What do you think some of the things that people really misunderstand about AI and what it is and how it's used?

[00:15:30] Manuj Aggarwal: Yeah. So let's talk about the biggest question I get is AI is going to take away my job, right? Now I'll share some statistics. 80 percent of the world population who is working in nine to five job, they are disengaged. Okay. They don't like their job and it causes about 8 trillion worth of productivity loss globally.

[00:15:53] Okay. Now AI and these are not, these are all published statistics, not my [00:16:00] sayings, right? AI is going to add about 10 trillion 10 to a hundred trillion dollars to the world wealth in the next six years. Okay. So more billionaires, more opportunity, more wealth will be created than any time in history in the next five years.

[00:16:15] So if I ask somebody, Hey you, you are worried about your job. Let me ask you why are you like, why are you doing the job, oh, so that I can accumulate enough money and I can retire when I'm 65. So I say, okay, let me ask you, let's say you are able to retire next month and money just comes, shows up in your bank account every month without you working, what kind of will you like that lifestyle?

[00:16:41] They're like, Oh yeah, that pretty awesome. But I have to work like, how can I do this? Now, AI is a technology that is going to do that if you want, if you imagine a life of retirement, not retirement as in not doing anything, being lazy, but focusing on things [00:17:00] that you are passionate about, focusing on things that you like to do and earning a living that allows for a comfortable lifestyle.

[00:17:08] AI is the first technology that will make it happen. So we are holding onto this thing called job, which it's misnomer that, Oh, this is the only way to survive. Whereas technologies like AI will help us get our time back, get our freedom back, enjoy our lives, live a comfortable life.

[00:17:33] And that's it. that's a misconception that people miss. Regardless, it is going to happen whether they like it or not. Some people will struggle and hang on to their job that they don't like, but then eventually they'll realize, Oh, this is a technology for good.

[00:17:48] Scott Maderer: One of the posts I saw somebody I can't remember where Facebook, Twitter, whatever some, something.

[00:17:56] It was interesting because it said what, something [00:18:00] along the lines of, I want AI to be able to do more of vacuuming and cleaning my house so that I have time to do music and poetry. I want AI to do music and poetry. So I have to vacuum my house. And I thought it was an interesting way of putting it up.

[00:18:18] Oh, yeah. If it could take away some of the mundane stuff, we'd all be happy. I think the threat is they feel like it's almost going to take away the creative you know the pleasure side of life. I don't think,

[00:18:29] Manuj Aggarwal: see, the thing is that humans are creators. We are explorers. We take risks, right?

[00:18:36] And when you talk about creativity, it's about imagination. It's about the emotional expression of human beings. There is no algorithm that I have come across that can plant even a single emotion in an AI. Like humans themselves, 99 percent of people cannot understand what human emotion is. We have had we have had messiahs on [00:19:00] this planet, like Jesus Christ Buddha and Muhammad.

[00:19:05] They teach love your neighbor, but they could not explain what life is all about, what consciousness is, right? And here we are trying to say, Oh AI is going to take over the world. It is going to become so jealous, so ambitious that it's going to say, okay, I'm the only thing that will survive.

[00:19:22] Humanity will be under my supervision, whatever that's our projection of AI. of how we think as a human being onto another entity. Whereas AI is only a tool. If you don't like it, just unplug it and it will just go away. In terms of creativity, See, everybody has their own way of living.

[00:19:45] Now I may like music. That's why I want to spend my time working on music and I want to offload my mundane tasks to to to this robot. On the flip side, there are people I know in my own life, [00:20:00] in my own family that thoroughly enjoy cleaning. They will spend four hours a day cleaning and could not care about painting or music or whatever.

[00:20:10] It's And if they have a music class or something that they have to do, they'll be happy to get some help from AI to help them learn music. So everybody's different. The idea is that you get personalized help for whatever you want out of life.

[00:20:26] Scott Maderer: Yeah, that's I have a friend who's a very high powered attorney makes many hundreds of thousands of dollars a year kind of attorney and he spends his weekends.

[00:20:42] doing yard work. And everyone's you should just pay someone to do the yard work. And he's I enjoy doing yard work. Stop trying to make me have someone else do it. I like it. That's how he relaxes on the weekends is he goes and works at his garden and works at his yard. [00:21:00] But everyone else thinks he's crazy for not paying someone to do it.

[00:21:04] So yeah, it is that kind of interesting connection that we have why, what do you think? If you had to predict it, what, where do you think AI is going in the next few years? I don't even want to put an exact date on it, but what's the direction it's going in?

[00:21:24] Manuj Aggarwal: See, I think we are going to approach like human level intelligence within next 10 years, in my opinion.

[00:21:30] Pretty much everything will be like pretty much everything will be infused with AI like I'll share a couple of examples. I think Sam Altman, who's the CEO of OpenAI, he said that maybe in 10 years, a 1 billion company will be run by one single person who is the CEO and everything else will be done by AI.

[00:21:52] In my opinion, driving will be made illegal by humans within the next 10, 15 years. I believe like [00:22:00] when you go to the doctor today if you have any medication prescribed to you it'll say, Oh, these are the side effects because we've tested it on thousands of people, but 5 percent of the people get impacted by this.

[00:22:16] side effects, but I think medicine will become so personalized. They'll take your DNA and create a new medicine based on your DNA so that there is no side effect. These kinds of things are going to start happening, right? Beyond that, I, even I cannot imagine cause it's going to, we are getting into an exponential curve of technology because think about it.

[00:22:38] New inventions. are what is the limiting factor of new inventions? It's time and our intelligence and our ability to put new concepts together. But with machines actually becoming even more intelligent than human beings and faster, machines are going to invent new things. So the invention [00:23:00] He's going to invent new things.

[00:23:01] So now it is going to be an exponential curve of innovation, which I don't know how it is going to unfold.

[00:23:10] Scott Maderer: Obviously people have we talked about the misunderstandings. We've talked about the direction it's going. What should people be doing right now to understand and prepare themselves for the direction that we're headed in?

[00:23:29] Manuj Aggarwal: Sure. So everybody most people know how they learn how to ride a bike. You basically just start with some training wheels and just get a push from your dad or mom and just start cycling and you may fall off and you may get hurt, but eventually you learn.

[00:23:46] Same thing with any new technology. My advice is start using it, sign up for a free account for chat GPT or Google Gemini or what have you start using it, start getting familiar with it, start learning where it [00:24:00] is good, where it is not good. It will start to save you maybe five minutes a day, 10 minutes a day, and then you start getting more and more proficient at it.

[00:24:10] Moreover, our mind is a very powerful machine. It starts to recognize Oh, I can save five minutes here. Why not? I applied here. Why not? I applied here. Oh, maybe I have a new idea in my industry where they are taking all this time doing this repetitive work. Maybe I come up with a new product and sell it to my competitors.

[00:24:30] So the idea is to get started at this stage of the game. We are very early right now. But if people don't start today, they'll have to play a lot of catch up later.

[00:24:42] Scott Maderer: One of the, I saw a research paper, not too long ago, where they were looking at using AI in, like in a brainstorming or the the things where you bring everyone together in a company.

[00:24:58] And our job is to come up with a new [00:25:00] way to solve this problem. And they give you the problem and you're supposed to brainstorm and produce it. And what they found is that most people began using AI the same way they would do it, almost like a Google search. So they just used AI in terms of trying to produce a volume of information when in fact the teams that instead use the AI is almost a partner.

[00:25:22] in terms of troubleshooting. And they talk to it more like they would talk to a human being exactly had a lot more success, but that's not something I think most of us naturally do when we sit down at a computer.

[00:25:35] Manuj Aggarwal: Yeah. See that a very interesting point. So there is if people use chat GPT.

[00:25:41] There is a feature called custom GPT and I highly recommend people check it out. So what we do is in my company, we do exactly the same thing. We create custom GPTs for each employee in the company and we upload their thought processes, their experiences, the way they think, all of [00:26:00] that into a custom GPT.

[00:26:01] So it starts to replicate my mindset or my teammates mindset. And we invite these custom GPTs into our brainstorming session in the meeting, because let's say if I'm making an important decision and I didn't get enough sleep last night, my decision will be impacted as a human being. But if I ask a custom GPTA, what do you think?

[00:26:25] It is going to give me an objective answer based on the scenario we are dealing with. So it has been quite powerful in that aspect to your point. That is where we are going. We are going to have companions like we have pets. We are going to have companions. AI companions who will understand our background, who understand our objective, and they will be able to talk to us like a best friend and say, Hey I'm having a bad day.

[00:26:50] Okay. You know what happened? Blah, blah, blah. All of that is coming already here, by the way.

[00:26:57] Scott Maderer: So I've got a few questions that I like to ask all of my guests, [00:27:00] but before I go there and ask theirs, is there anything else about this work that you're doing and what people understand about AI that you think is important for the listener to hear?

[00:27:09] Okay.

[00:27:10] Manuj Aggarwal: I already mentioned, right? AI is the biggest wealth building opportunity. AI is the biggest opportunity to impact your life, your family's life, your community's life, your nation's life. And here is another quote I will share with you. This is from Peter Diamandis. He's a one of the founder of XPRIZE, very successful person.

[00:27:33] He said that there's going to be two types of businesses on this planet by the end of this decade, meaning six years. One who are fully embracing AI and one who are out of business. The idea is that risk and reward hugely favors adoption of AI, so don't give in to the misinformation, don't give in to the fear start using it, and if you need help there are, there is help [00:28:00] available all across the internet or even locally everywhere.

[00:28:04] But but please do use it.

[00:28:09] Scott Maderer: So I like to ask this question as well. I'm a big believer in looking at words and what words mean to people and my brand is inspired stewardship. I run things through that lens of stewardship. And you talked to early on about that idea of impacting and taking care of the, making an impact on the world.

[00:28:27] When you hear the word stewardship, what does that word mean to you?

[00:28:33] Manuj Aggarwal: See, in my opinion we all stand on the shoulders of giants, our previous generations, our mentors, our coaches. And if we have something of substance, if we have acquired knowledge or skill, it is our duty to pass it on to people.

[00:28:55] future generations, or even our current generation, or even a older generation who [00:29:00] may need it. So in my opinion, that's what it means, stewardship, to just take people under your wing because somebody took you under their wing. They passed on their knowledge, their skills, and we should do the same thing.

[00:29:15] Scott Maderer: So this is my favorite question that I like to ask everybody. Imagine for a moment that I invented this magic machine. And with this magic machine I could take you from where you are today and transport you into the future, maybe 150, maybe 250 years. But through the power of this machine, you were able to look back and see your entire life, see all of the connections, all of the ripples, all of the impacts you've left behind.

[00:29:39] What impact do you hope you've left in the world?

[00:29:43] Manuj Aggarwal: Okay. So my hope is my mission in life is to help 20 people win the Nobel prize. Okay. The vision came to me that I want to help a billion people. [00:30:00] Improve their lives. And of course that sounds like a huge number.

[00:30:04] So I narrowed it down to, okay, if I can help 20 people win the Nobel prize in turn, they can impact a billion people. So when I look back 250 years from now, I hope I'm able to do what I'm I'm trying to do. And it has ripple effect across the world. Across multiple generations, because I think this notion of stewardship, this notion of collaboration, this notion of just uplifting others through our skills.

[00:30:38] I think if more people realize how much power it has, it can transform the world.

[00:30:45] Scott Maderer: So what's next for you? What's on the roadmap as you continue on this journey?

[00:30:50] Manuj Aggarwal: Yeah right now, a lot of people need help in terms of understanding what AI is, how to extract value from it, how to make money from it.

[00:30:59] [00:31:00] So right now we are busy with these kind of initiatives, helping businesses, helping individuals adopt AI. Understand how to utilize this, like it's a magical technology that can really increase people's earning potential. We are seeing tremendous returns on investments on this technology.

[00:31:23] So that's what we are focused on right now.

[00:31:29] Scott Maderer: So you can find out more about Manuj over on his website at Manuj Agarwal, and that's spelled M A N U J A G A R W A L. com. And of course, I'll have a link to that over in the show notes so you can find it easily. Is there anything else you'd like to share with the listener?

[00:31:48] Manuj Aggarwal: I think the only message I will say is we are living in a transformative time.

[00:31:54] A lot of groundbreaking technologies are coming together. AI, [00:32:00] quantum, CRISPR take advantage. We are living in this time and we are lucky. So take advantage of these opportunities because I think your future generations are going to be so thankful for the work you do today. Because how it is going to impact future generations.

[00:32:21] I'm a tech guy. I understand these technologies, but even if you don't find somebody who can help you out and help you navigate these complexities.

[00:32:36] Scott Maderer: Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode please do us a favor. Go over to inspired [00:33:00] stewardship.

[00:33:00] com slash iTunes rate, all one word, iTunes rate. It'll take you through how to leave a rating and review and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your feed. Until next time, invest your time, your talent, and your treasures. Develop your influence, and impact the world.