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The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Tech Whistleblower: You Only Have 3 Years Left Before This Hits! - Mo Gawdat

01 Jun 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chapter 1: Why did Mo Gawdat start talking about AI before anyone else?

0.031 - 17.218 Steven Bartlett

Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers.

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17.438 - 22.807 Steven Bartlett

It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where Aura comes in.

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Chapter 2: What are the implications of AI on job disruption?

23.007 - 44.657 Steven Bartlett

Aura actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But Aura goes beyond data protection. With one app, you get a VPN, antivirus, password manager, spam call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance, all backed by 24-7 US-based fraud support.

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44.938 - 67.33 Steven Bartlett

Other companies might sell just credit monitoring or just a VPN. We have video evidence of people abusing children and not a single person got arrested.

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67.35 - 88.726 Mo Gawdat

How can you call that a democracy? So humanity is at a crossroads. where for the first time ever we need to wake up and realize that we're ruled by maniacs and what we believe is democracy is not democracy and what we know is not the truth like companies and governments will blame the geopolitical and economic challenges we have on ai but the truth is ai is not the enemy.

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Chapter 3: How could AI impact the future of capitalism?

88.746 - 109.01 Mo Gawdat

Like I'm not worried about AI turning against us. I'm worried about humans telling AI to turn against us. Like when I worked at Google, we were building amazing things, believing that we were making the world a better place. And we were. But then suddenly there is a moment where you recognize that maybe the world will not use what you're making the way you want it to be used.

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109.03 - 111.232 Mo Gawdat

And sadly, this is upon us.

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111.252 - 121.429 Steven Bartlett

So I have lots of questions. Okay, that's good. So what's your take on this job disruption point? What is the risk of these very intelligent models that the creators of these models don't actually understand themselves?

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Chapter 4: What are the potential risks of AI that we might overlook?

121.61 - 131.912 Steven Bartlett

Do you think Sam Altman's pro-humanity? How do we get to a point of ethical AI when the incentive structures are so highly competitive? And then I wonder if there's a path that ends in AI being net positive for humanity.

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131.932 - 139.65 Mo Gawdat

Of course. Somehow we've been pre-programmed to believe that this is upon us and we cannot change it. And I refuse that. So we will talk about the solutions.

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139.91 - 141.333 Steven Bartlett

But are you optimistic?

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141.354 - 144.701 Mo Gawdat

I'm very optimistic about the future. I'm not optimistic about the next year.

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144.982 - 145.563 Steven Bartlett

Why the next year?

145.764 - 150.154 Mo Gawdat

Come on, Stephen. You don't want me to say it? So...

152.294 - 169.489 Steven Bartlett

Guys, I've got a favour to ask before this episode begins. The algorithm, if you follow a show, will deliver you the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed. So when we have our best episodes on this show, the most shared episodes, the most rated episodes, I would love you to know. And the simple way for you to know that is to hit that follow button.

169.67 - 192.755 Steven Bartlett

But also, it's the simple, easy, free thing that you can do to help us make this show better. And I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the app you're listening to this on right now and hit that follow button. Thank you so, so, so much. Mo Gowda, I spoke to you, I think about four years ago when you wrote a book about happiness.

192.795 - 211.461 Steven Bartlett

And I remember you came in and you'd written this book about AI, but I particularly wanted to speak about the subject of happiness because I was fascinated by it. What I find astonishing is the fact that you were talking about AI before anybody was really talking about AI. No guest that had ever come on my podcast had ever mentioned the subject of AI. It just wasn't interesting to the world.

Chapter 5: What are the implications of AI on job displacement?

3850.759 - 3861.408 Mo Gawdat

If you can build a targeting technology that can find people with their cell phone numbers, there is another entity that is against you that can find you with whatever.

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3862.349 - 3882.488 Steven Bartlett

The thing that makes me highly skeptical of that there'll be any kind of treaty is just that as it relates to other things that were risky, People don't, countries just don't sign on to it because it's competitive. So China didn't seem to give a fuck about the environment. So let's look for solutions because I am with you, okay?

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3882.508 - 3889.975 Steven Bartlett

I think we're... You think Trump's going to say to Putin and China, listen, we're going to slow down, yeah? Promise? We're going to slow down with this super intelligence?

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3889.995 - 3907.61 Mo Gawdat

I think he will, but he's never going to keep anything he says. I mean, he's going to say a lot of things. I don't think any of them will. Yeah, but the trick is this. The trick is, so what do you and I do? And I really genuinely believe that humanity is at a crossroads where for the first time ever, we need to wake up and realize that what we know is not true.

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3908.151 - 3910.676 Mo Gawdat

And what we believe is democracy is not democracy.

Chapter 6: How might ethical considerations shape AI's development?

3911.017 - 3913.482 Mo Gawdat

And what we believe is governance needs to change.

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3914.204 - 3922.955 Steven Bartlett

I think it's worth acknowledging that I don't think AI in and of itself is an inherently evil technology.

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3922.975 - 3923.976 Unknown

Then we agree, yeah.

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3923.996 - 3931.586 Steven Bartlett

Because I use AI all day, every day. It makes me more productive. I invest in companies that are using AI a lot.

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3932.267 - 3937.393 Mo Gawdat

It's a force with no polarity. Apply it right and you get amazing results. Apply it wrong and you get a dystopia.

3937.373 - 3953.276 Steven Bartlett

But I also think that there's going to be a big social shock, especially as it relates to unemployment, that we need to be thoughtful about. I think especially if you move into a world of humanoid robots, I think that shock is going to be even more pronounced. And we don't have a plan for it.

3953.737 - 3960.646 Mo Gawdat

I agree 100%. I don't think it's the biggest risk. I think autonomous weapons are the biggest risk.

Chapter 7: What role do governments play in the AI landscape?

3960.666 - 3981.319 Mo Gawdat

I think war has become so cheap. The next wave of weapons is going to be $20,000 each. And so if you have a budget of $50 billion, you can literally rain drones on the world, every corner of it. Defense will get cheaper though, won't it, as well? Correct. But do we want to live in a world where drones are hitting each other all the time?

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3981.518 - 4001.704 Mo Gawdat

But they might not be because there might be autonomous defense drones. Deterrence. So what's going to happen is we're going to reach a moment of mad, of mutually assured destruction, where basically everyone knows that we can overpower those little nations that didn't develop their autonomous weapon army, but every other big nation, we might as well hold off now.

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4001.684 - 4024.705 Mo Gawdat

The path to get there, that to me is worse than jobs because from one side, it's very dangerous for a very sensitive world that we live in today. And from the other side, it's leading already. I mean, we can't ignore the economic impact of this last war, right? And it's the economy that's going to accelerate everything, not AI getting there.

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4025.045 - 4027.307 Steven Bartlett

We're already at mutually assured destruction. For sure.

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Chapter 8: How can individuals prepare for a future with AI?

4027.487 - 4031.691 Steven Bartlett

With nuclear weapons. So there's no nuclear powers that are in direct conflict.

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4031.671 - 4057.947 Mo Gawdat

We are in mutually assured destruction of nuclear weapons is a statement that I would have agreed to if Iran had a nuclear weapon and that would have stopped America from attacking Iran. You understand what that point means? It means that not every nation in the world has a nuclear weapon. The mad situation, the mutually assured destruction situation is only among nuclear players, right?

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4058.248 - 4065.038 Mo Gawdat

Autonomous weapons are... are so cheap, so manageable, that every nation in the world is developing them as we speak.

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4065.659 - 4067.963 Steven Bartlett

But they will also develop defences.

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4068.543 - 4068.884 Mo Gawdat

Correct.

4069.585 - 4088.373 Steven Bartlett

Which I think is what people have figured out now because of this recent Ukrainian war, is that if you need to use a ballistic missile, which costs $2 million, $3 million, whatever it is, to target a $20,000 drone, you're fucked. So you need a $20,000 defense solution for a $20,000 weapon, which I think is probably going to happen.

4088.514 - 4096.504 Mo Gawdat

It's very doable, yeah. It's just that you have to get rid of your THAAD batteries to be able to say the next wave of defense has to be drones.

4096.524 - 4117.38 Steven Bartlett

You could imagine a world where like a wall of drones fly up to where the drone is incoming and they kind of block it. They will explode at the same time to block it, knock it out of the air. I had Palmer Luckey, who's one of the guys who's building Andril. Yeah, I know Andril, yeah. Talk at length about some of the technologies that they have coming and it's just mind bending. And very scary.

4117.68 - 4138.915 Steven Bartlett

They showed me this gun where you just point it in the rough direction. So a pistol that aims for you depending on where the target is. So you don't even have to aim it. You can imagine at war, you just, you hold it up and shoot. And it has this AI on the top of like the barrel, which will turn your hand perfectly so that you hit the target every time.

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