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Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Zina. Our guest today is Manoj Agrawal. Manoj is a recognized global thought leader who has been in AI for 15 years. He has four patents in AI and is the author of two books on technology.

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Also joining us today is my co-host Zina. Zina is an AI trained on my work. If you want to further interact with Zina, you can chat with her at brainius.com slash Zina. Hi Manoj, welcome to the show. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Excited to be here.

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And hello Zina.

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Welcome to another episode of our podcast. Please say hello to Manoj.

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Hi Manoj, it's great to have you with us. I'm really looking forward to diving into the dynamic between the human brain and AI. Let's explore what makes that combination so powerful.

00:59
Sounds good, sounds good.

01:01
All right, so Manoj, I'd like to start by having you share with our audience a little bit about your life story, which I find really fascinating and encouraging. So please share a little bit about that.

01:16
Yeah, you know, so I grew up in a small town in India, in northern India, and I had a little bit of a troubled childhood. I was a troublemaker and got into some real trouble in school. Then in college, you know, I enrolled in a

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computer science degree in a small community college in my town, but I fell in wrong company and dropped out of college in the first three months. And then I was like kind of looking to do, you know, to find out what to do with my life. And then I enrolled in another computer programming institute that was a one-year diploma.

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And that's what I got real hands on experience with technology, with software. And then I knew that's what I wanted to do. Like I was an extreme introvert at that time. So I still am an introvert, but at that time, like I could not even like interact with humans as well. So talking to machines is much easier than humans. So, you know, it was a win-win, you know, talking to machines, they'll do whatever you ask them to do. And then the fascinating thing I found was like, I could think of a solution in my head, work with the machine, create a program, copy that program to probably tens or hundreds or thousands of computers and solve many, many people's problems. And so that's what sort of pushed me forward, you know?

02:56
Yeah, no, that's a fascinating story. Thanks for sharing that. You know, all of us introverts have to push ourselves, right, to be speaking in public and to build relationships. It's so important to everything that we do, right? So for the introverts, it takes an extra effort to make that come through. Now, you know, you showed us that from very early, you already had an understanding of the power of the mind, right? And I think you say that people can accomplish just about anything if they use the power of their mind.

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And now we have this new technology called AI. And I wanted to get your view on do you think AI will enhance that brain power or do you think it will diminish it?

03:48
Well, I think every technology that has been invented or discovered, starting from discovery of fire or electricity or the printing press or the internet, whatever it is, it has two sides of the coin. It depends on the person whether they want to use the technology for good or bad. So some people will actually use the technology to enhance their thinking, to enhance their capabilities. But most people will try to stick to their original identity and desperately try to use AI to validate their previous identity, which means to say they will probably either stay where they are or go backwards, not realizing how these subtle changes are happening in their life.

04:43
So basically you're saying they're using AI as a mirror to reaffirm who they already are, or in some cases to...

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uh be like a crutch right something that they have to rely on to help them make decisions uh and and do work without putting a lot of effort into it but there's another side to it where you can actually use ai as a tool to challenge you to help you be more thoughtful in how you go about doing things so there's both the The bad and the good, it all comes down to how you use it. Am I summarizing that correctly? Absolutely. But here is the thing, right?

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The sentence you use, like, use AI to challenge you, that's a big threshold. That's a huge threshold.

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People are very fragile, especially inside. Like, we put a mask on in the world, but inside we are very fragile. And

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Asking somebody to actively challenge us is not an easy, easy thing to do. You're right.

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Okay. So crossing that threshold is a big, big, how can I say it? Like that's a big divide between people who will truly use AI for its benefits and people who will not.

06:06
Yeah, and it seems like the AI labs developed most of their AIs to be able to always reaffirm that, you know, you're good and you're doing the right thing and you're right. You know, it doesn't really challenge you unless you specifically ask the AI to do that. And not too many people are comfortable doing that, like you said. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

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And that has nothing to do with technology. That has nothing to do with...

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You know, with AI, it's all inside us. And whether we have lived enough life and we have had enough experience to know that that's the path to growth. Growth is never comfortable. Growth is always outside the comfort zone.

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All right, so let's switch gears a little bit here. I wanted to get your thoughts. So, you know, you have a broad understanding of the power of the human mind. You have used it yourself. You help others become better people by using the power of their mind. And then we have AI, which also is a fascinating technology, so powerful, so capable. Do you think there are common threads between how we humans operate and think and the way AI operates?

07:28
There is and there is not, right? So the thing is, if you understand, I mean, AI has been around for ages, like for decades, since 1960s. But now what people call AI are mainly these chatbot platforms. But at the end of the day, AI is a pattern recognition machine, very, very accurate pattern recognition machine. So if you look at the current state of AI, most of what we experience as AI, as these chatbots, They are trained on the Internet.

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Data. And you can just you don't need a stretch of imagination to say the data on the Internet is not true humanity.

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You know, we don't like, yes, some people on the on the some people are honest in the public arena, but most of it is.

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made up stuff to make us appear smarter and more capable than actually we are. So what does that mean? It is based on a representation of humanity that is not truly true inside. So yes, it connects us in some ways, but it also disconnects us in many ways. If people don't realize what is happening in their mind as they interact with the AI, it actually is

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As intelligent as we call it, it's actually bringing people to the average, to the mean in terms of their critical thinking.

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Yeah, so people are, for the most part, anonymous on the internet, right? So what that means is people are not in their best behavior. They are just behaving in ways that may not be aligned with their values or even with society's values. And that's what AI is learning, right? And that can be a little bit dangerous. Now, I'm interested in your thoughts, if you can expand on this idea of what AI is doing to our brains.

09:35
And you say that it's making us average. So tell me a little bit more about your thoughts on that.

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See, the idea is this. Human brain is a small organ which consumes about, like, I think from, don't quote me on this, but I think it consumes about 25 watts of energy per day or something like that.

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And the way that it works is that we are ingesting gigabytes of data from the world, from the environment around us. And our brain is actively filtering out all the data that is not necessary for our survival and security and safety.

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And we process about a few bits, you know, actual bits of information out of that gigabytes of data. That's what's happening in our mind, right?

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We are plugging this 25 volt instrument into a nuclear power station, which is supplying voltage at a high voltage industrial scale voltage. What is actually going to happen to that instrument? It's going to fry our brains, right?

10:45
Absolutely. Absolutely. And you can see that in the world right now.

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you can see the end result of the anxiety, the stress, the people are feeling collectively. It doesn't show up as, oh, you know, we have like a,

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You know, people saying, oh, AI is affecting me. But it shows up in the number of people having ADHD. It shows up in the number of people going through kind of like nervous breakdowns. It shows up in economic and socioeconomic divides between people because their minds are so plugged, like clogged, as in clogged with their

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ideologies that they cannot see the other person's point of view. So these are the representations, the symptoms that we see in the world, and it is only going to get worse and worse and worse.

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So how do we deal with that? AI is here to stay, right? I don't think we're going back. The cat is out of the bag, as they say. So AI is going to be surrounding us, whether it's on our personal lives or work.

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So how do we deal with this situation? How do we become effective in collaborating with AI without letting it diminish who we are or turning us into the average? See, there are many, many, many instances of this in human evolution.

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So the very first thing when we needed to preserve food, we've discovered salt is good for that. But we needed a certain type of salt. We can't just like take salt out of dirt and then put it on our food. We needed to purify it.

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any medicine that was discovered, it needed to be prepared with the right recipe.

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The best example I can give is oil. When we discovered oil fields in Saudi Arabia, we did not just take that crude black oil and put it in our vehicles. we created a refinery to refine that oil, turn it into gasoline and other forms of fuel that can power our vehicles. So AI is right now pretty raw, pretty crude.

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So that is, if you put the crude AI in your mind, of course, you know, that's the result that you're going to get. So what is the solution is to purify the AI and,

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And purification needs to happen at a very deep personalized level. This is the single most powerful technology that doesn't interact with your body or anything. It directly interacts with your mind and nervous system directly. OK, so if you are not careful, then it's like pouring crude oil into your car.

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And the only way is purify it before you use it. Yeah, that's a great analogy. So we really need to purify and process the AI in a way that it will be beneficial to us and not just pour the crude oil into our machine because that's going to cause a lot of damage. Yeah, exactly. Now, you know, you said something that I thought was interesting. You talked about, you know, the evolution of humans throughout history. Now, one thing that has been consistent throughout history and is still true today is that, you know, we're social beings, right? We need to build relationships. That's just an intrinsic characteristic of being human. And AI doesn't necessarily have that. So what is the importance of relationships in our lives? And is there some meaning to the AI age?

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Absolutely. So we have developed a human AI interaction and collaboration system platform called AI Merge. It stands on seven pillars. And the third pillar is relationships in that, because without relationships, the human experience, the life itself loses meaning. OK, so think again, going back to nature, you know, think about trees. Trees don't move around, but they are connected to each other through their roots.

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And similarly, we are connected to each other through various means, whether that's blood relationships, whether that's romantic relationship, whether that's parental relationships or work relationship, whatever. As AI starts to automate those things, the need, the absolute need for those relationship will go down, but absolute want and desire and yearning for those relationship will go up.

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You see? Yeah. So people will need to realize that they actively need to put in energy to build and maintain those relationships.

16:01
Yeah, no, I agree with you. So one of the things that I talk about in my book is the fact that, you know, people may try to replace human relationships with a relationship with AI, but I don't think that's going to satisfy our needs for relationships. You know, AI may be good at reinforcing what you want to hear. It may be easier to deal with than the messiness of human relationships. But I think we have this intrinsic need to build true relationships with other human beings. And I think if we ignore that, I think that's going to be our demise.

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So here is what I will say to you. Here is how things are going to play out, right?

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When somebody is truly hungry, let's say they haven't eaten in 15 days, 10 days, even a piece of bread with mold on it will taste good to them. They will accept it.

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So people are so lonely in the world that they will accept a relationship with AI because they are so fed up of trying to build a relationship with humans. Now, the danger is that AI will validate their desire and say, yeah,

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This is the limit of what you can achieve in your lifetime. And I'm happy to fulfill that need for you. And they will just stay at that level.

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You see, but if we purify the AI, it will help them reveal that they are capable of maintaining many, many and creating new beautiful relationships. So that's where we say whether it will stay, it will, whether AI will kind of almost force them to stay in the comfort zone or it will push them to grow and push them beyond their comfort zone.

17:52
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So let me ask you another question. There's been a lot of talk about AI replacing jobs.

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That narrative seems to be changing a little bit now. I'm hearing a lot more people talk about the fact that AI may actually create more jobs. What are your thoughts on this?

18:13
Let's think about this, right? We have associated human identity with output, with work. And no matter what you try, you cannot separate your identity, your existence without work.

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Well, what is work?

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Let's define it. Work is observing the environment and seeing there is a problem and using our skills and our abilities to solve that problem.

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And generally, it's an acceptable thing to say, oh, that means we need to dedicate at least 40 hours a week to create this value. And that is a complete human being.

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Okay. So let's go back 100 years, around 1900s. The definition of work was

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that you 99.9 of the human population on this planet earth needs to work every single hour of their waking day to be able to provide enough food for themselves and their family that was the definition of work okay go back further uh in history the definition of work used to be

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you get no guarantees on life. The average life expectancy was like 35, 40 years of life expectancy. And you have to literally put your life on the line to be able to survive every day.

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You see? So this notion that we are going to lose our jobs is the false notion because the job and the work, the definition of work itself is about to change.

20:02
Yeah, I'm aligned with you on that. I think, you know, so I believe we have just like we have intrinsic desire to build relationships with other humans. We also have an intrinsic desire to work, to be creative, to build things and to produce things and to enjoy the things that we produce with our mind, with our hands, whatever it is. I think there's that intrinsic need.

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And I think we are so creative that no matter how much automation, how much artificial intelligence we create, we are always going to be able to come up with new things, new possibilities for us to use our minds, use our hands.

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And whether you're going to be compensated for that or not, that gets into another conversation about economics. But I think the need for humans to work is not going to go away and we're going to come up with new ways of doing that work.

21:05
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, again, going back to the framework that we are using, AI Merge, creativity is the fourth pillar after relationships and that. So just channeling that energy that will be, you know, that we will free up by use of automation and AI will need to be channeled into something new.

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And this could be things that we're already familiar with, like, you know, like poetry and music and painting and those type of things, or there could be new creative ways that we haven't even like thought of yet.

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Yeah, absolutely. So I'd like to have Zina actually ask you a question now. So Zina, given Manoj's expertise in the intersection of AI and the human brain, what question do you have for him?

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Manoj, considering how AI augments human thinking, what's one aspect of human intuition or decision making that you think AI will never be able to replicate? And why do you believe that's uniquely ours?

22:14
Well, I mean, you already named it. Intuition is not something that AI will be able to replicate. Emotions, intuition, these are the realms of human intuition.

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soul, if you will, human heart. And of course, AI may be able to simulate it, but it will be simulating it at a level where it's kind of like utilizing the common data set of all humans and simulate the intuition. But an individual's intuition, a community's intuition, a family's intuition, that will never be, there is no algorithm that we will be able to create to say, okay, now a machine is able to intuit like what is happening. It can simulate it, but it's like, there's only one Mona Lisa in the museum.

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There could be millions and millions of copies of it, but we know there's only one original. Yeah, absolutely. You know, you touched on something that I think is really important for people to understand. You know, we tend to think of intelligence as IQ, right? And obviously, AI is going to reach IQs that will surpass intelligence. human IQs. But we have this other superpower called EQ, emotional intelligence.

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And that's what makes us human, right? I like to think of IQ plus EQ. And I also add SQ, which is spiritual knowledge and spiritual wisdom, which, you know, AI is nowhere near being able to

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have those capabilities. So I think that's what keeps us human. That's what keeps us unique. And given that, I think humans will always be in control. I don't see a world where AI runs the world, even if they reach unbelievable levels of intelligence, IQ, because we have these other intelligences that AI just won't be able to develop. Would you agree with that? Yeah. And I will add just one more thing, just like we are always kind of like, you know, we are kind of very short sighted in terms of the definition of work and jobs. We are also very short sighted in our notion of who runs the world, who controls the world. You know, it's we we tend to put humans at the center of the universe, but we are not. We are not the center of the universe.

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So that may be going into that spiritual sort of understanding of how everything is working. Yeah. So let's switch gears a little bit, but it's somewhat related. So I want to talk about, you know, you say that neurodiversity has been really important to you and in your success. And there is this great book by David Epstein called Range. I don't know if you've read it yet, but he talks about the fact that he believes generalists will do better than specialists.

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And I think that may become particularly true in a world where we have AI that can become the specialists, but we still need the generalist, which I think will be the human.

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And that's why it's so important for us to develop this diversity of thought. That's why it's so important for us to travel, to experience other cultures, to try to become a polymath to the extent that that's possible. So what are your thoughts on this? Absolutely, yeah.

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There is no question that we are going to, the society will no longer be built around the depth of knowledge. Remember this depth of knowledge was a byproduct, not a human nature. Human nature is to explore and consume as many experiences as we can. But due to industrialization, when they started inventing machines, They started inventing factories. They said, oh, we need somebody who can understand physics and design a machine. OK, you go and study mathematics and physics. Oh, we need somebody to figure out how to maintain the machines. OK, you become a mechanic and we need somebody to transport the goods from one place to another. OK, you become a truck driver.

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And that's how society was evolved over the last hundred years. But now, that's no longer a need, a requirement, because a person can design a machine using AI. It can run the factory. It can maintain the machine. It can operate the fleet of vehicles, all autonomous. so a human doesn't need a depth of knowledge what what a human needs is general knowledge of how the world is actually put together what can i do today with this technology that will resonate with the world and will solve their problem so actually um there's in a few decades i don't think there is going to be even a people will remember what a specialist used to be yeah interesting so i'd like to see what zina thinks about this zina can you give us your thoughts here what do you think human generalists will do do you think they will do better overall than uh specialists in this new world or we're surrounded by ais that are specialists themselves

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I think human generalists are poised to thrive, actually. When AI specializes, it leaves room for us to bridge domains, integrate diverse perspectives, and adapt to unpredictable contexts. Specialists will be vital, but generalists will create meaning, make connections, and guide the big picture human purpose. In other words, we'll need both, but generalists will orchestrate the symphony.

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Yeah, I think it comes back to this idea that we need to become the orchestrators, right? And to become an orchestrator, you have to have that big picture view. And I think that's what this is all about, is getting enough experience, enough exposure, so we can become the architects of the future, if you will. now let's talk a little bit about one of my favorite subjects which is exponential growth so you know we humans have a real hard time understanding exponential because we tend to think linearly but exponential growth is absolutely powerful and if we understand it we can leverage it for our benefit so how can people

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take advantage of exponential growth in their lives and in their business.

29:20
Well, in order to take advantage, first and foremost, as you said, they need to change the mindset. They need to believe and they need to see what is possible today. Because if you think about growth, people associate growth generally with money, but we seek growth in multiple areas of our lives. Three main areas being health, wealth, and relationships. So when we think about growth in these areas, our...

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belief systems, our old paradigms tell us that hard work and grinding and friction is the way to grow. That is the only way to grow. So what we do is if you want to grow, we actively seek out friction and we say, okay, I'm going to go through this friction and prove it to myself that I'm, I'm capable and worthy of this growth.

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Okay. And that's your mind kind of interacting with the world and getting used to a bigger identity.

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But now you can, it's almost like, you know, when we went from hunter gatherers to agriculturalists, where hunter gatherers needed to kind of, you know, run around every day, you know, find new food. But an agriculturalist said, okay, I'm just gonna plant some seeds in the soil and let nature do its thing, right? So exponential growth is very similar there. if we can understand that fiction is no longer needed and all we need is to harness the energy that we already possess inside us utilizing this technology then exponential growth will be very easy very very possible and uh you know obviously those those people will really raise a head i mean it's already happening like look at the forbes top richest people if you if you can associate wealth with growth look at the

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top people on the Forbes list. Each and every single person can attribute their wealth to the use of AI when they started using it in their businesses.

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And most people think, oh, AI was released in 2020. No.

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Companies like Tesla and Microsoft and IBM and all of these people, they have been using AI way before anybody ever Like I started my own my own journey into AI started in 2005. So I know like people have been using it way before and they understood the power of this technology. And now, you know, it just took them like 15, 20 years. Think about it this way. Like when you order something on Amazon, it shows up the same day or the next day. It's not because somebody is actually Amazon employees waiting.

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You know, with a lot of anticipation waiting for you to hit that button buy and then they go and pick up. It's all, you know, it's all AI, it's all robotics, it's all, you know, automated already. But they started that process back in 1997, not today.

32:23
Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the things that exponential growth can provide to all of us as humans is abundance, right? So we come from a scarcity mindset. And I think having this abundance mindset becomes a different way of thinking about the world, when we understand the power of exponential growth.

32:48
So Manoj, this has been a fascinating conversation. Thank you so much for being a guest on the show. I'd like to ask you, where can people find you? And is there a final message you want to leave for our audience? The best thing I will say is, you know, to experience what we are building, which is a human AI bridge, go to AImerge.live, A-I-merge, M-E-R-G-E.live, and just experience for yourself. It'll give you something real deep insight about you.

33:20
That's the best place you can go. Obviously, if you want to connect with me directly, you can go to my website or my LinkedIn. But I will highly recommend people go to that website. experience for themselves what it is very good is there a final message you want to leave I think we are living in a in a you know transformational time a lot of people um

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have very limited knowledge of what this technology is and they are trying to sensationalize it by, you know, adding headlines about jobs and, you know, the doom and gloom. But this is the time when your future can be shaped, your future generation's future can be shaped. So please don't give in to the fear and just kind of like get to understand this technology and dip your toe into it and you know, make good use of it. Yeah, that's such an important message. Thank you so much, Manoj. And thank you, Zina, for being a great co-host of our podcast today.

34:22
It's always a pleasure and I'm glad to contribute. Thanks for having me along for the conversation.

34:28
All right. Thank you both. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.