Kunal Gupta on AI Literacy, Burnout, and the Digital Aristocracy

0:02 Georgie Healy: Founders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes. Hire anyone, anywhere. Get visas handled fast and get back to building. Visit deel.com/dayone. That's d-e-e-l.com/dayone.

0:18 Kunal Gupta: Guaranteed, like every person listening to this podcast has used an app that was built by me. The first one that builds an AI chatbot for seniors is going to win.

0:33 Georgie Healy: My mind is blown. That is genius.

0:37 Kunal Gupta: Right? Like, my parents are getting old and it's the same UI for somebody who's 70 years old and somebody who's 17. And what's scary is that it takes place in the year 2034, but a lot of things have already started to come true. And thank you for saying yes to interviewing my AI. That was the first, and I bet he loved it too. Keep inspiring listeners and sparking meaningful conversations.

1:03 Georgie Healy: Mate, you can go. I'll just chat to Kunal instead. What if he did a better job than you? How would you feel about that? Hello and welcome to In the Blink of AI, where I talk to the brightest AI startups and innovators each week. I'm Georgie Healy, and this week I am speaking to Kunal Gupta. Kunal is a founder, investor, author, and thought leader in AI, and it's safe to say he contains multitudes. Kunal navigates and is passionate about living intentionally while also having a passion for technology. As he says, it's innovation and intentional living. On the show, we talk about AI hacks, business, and building AI companies in this incredible time in technology, but also growing communities momentum, something his 32,000 followers on LinkedIn can attest to. We talk about his latest book, 2034: How AI Changed Humanity Forever, which has become quite dog-eared in my house. And it's the first time we've had someone dial in from Portugal and dial in with their AI version of themselves. So I've chatted to both Kunal and his AI clone, which was very fun. Huge thanks to Kunal for being on the show. I can't wait to hear what you think.

2:25 Kunal Gupta: You're listening to a Day One FM show.

2:29 Georgie Healy: Hi, Kunal. Thank you for joining In the Blink of AI. I genuinely have been looking forward to this for months now. I have your incredible book here with me, How AI Changed Humanity Forever. It's not your first book, but we'll get into that soon. I did really try and write a concise bio or a brief description, and it's not easy to do that. So maybe you can help me. What's your current day job, would you say?

2:58 Kunal Gupta: Every day is a different job, and that's what I love about it. And I kind of designed this, this life and lifestyle. Now, a friend put it to me this way. It's like, it was very inspiring design of life that you don't need to take a vacation from. And I feel I've been experiencing that.

3:16 Georgie Healy: So, yeah, some days— You're dialing in from sunny Lisbon right now. So you're definitely practicing what you preach. So, so what, what will this week look like? Let's not, let's not tie you down for the rest of the year.

3:29 Kunal Gupta: It could be writing, which I was doing a bit of yesterday. It could be wrestling with different AI chatbots and LLMs and tools to try to bring to life some idea that I have. I could be hanging out with my fiancée Tanya and planning our wedding. We're flying to Canada where I'm from originally in a few days and we'll be with family and friends there and be in New York next week where I spent 10 years. And then Lisbon has been home for the last 4 years now.

4:08 Georgie Healy: I love speaking to you, even though we haven't caught up as much as I would like. You're very much a jet-setter, um, because you, you wear many hats, you do some really incredible things. And on paper, I would imagine someone like yourself would be very highly strung. Definitely don't get that sense whenever we speak. How do you manage your, for lack of a better word, uh, output and, and sheer volume of, of things that you create and bring into the world and not let that energy come across so intense. Like, I genuinely would love to, to absorb some of that calm energy.

4:48 Kunal Gupta: I give credit to meditation. It's been a big part of my life for the last 10, 11 years now. And, uh, as an entrepreneur, I started my company when I was 20 years old. And didn't know a lot about regulating my emotions and intensity and energy level. And about almost 10 years into my entrepreneurship journey, I discovered meditation almost as a coping tool, as a coping mechanism to help bring balance and clarity and ease to others. What I'm sure many people listening to this can relate to., a very volatile and turbulent journey as an entrepreneur and as a young entrepreneur. Um, he doesn't know too much, but believes he knows he'll figure it out. And, uh, yeah, the first 10 years of my, so my 20s, my approach, uh, very different than my, my 30s.

5:43 Georgie Healy: Uh, this so rings true, especially in the tech ecosystem, uh, startup ecosystem. Ice baths are really popular, saunas are really popular, and it's exactly as you say, it's like a way to offset the stress, like mitigate it or offset. And that's definitely the approach I've been having. Uh, any tips for anyone listening who's like, I'd prefer to have a more holistic approach? How did you get started into making that transition?

6:11 Kunal Gupta: I got to a place of curiosity from a place of burnout. And a place of fatigue and a place of dissatisfaction after working like a dog and continually striving, striving, striving. I actually, I hit this point, it was about 10 years ago where I had achieved a lot of what I was trying to achieve at that moment in life. And I still remember the day actually, I was sitting in my office in Toronto and I had nothing to do because I had done everything on my to-do list. I zoomed out, the business was working and profitable and none of the clients were complaining and nobody in the team had quit. The product actually worked for once. And I thought, I don't know what to do. And I was in a committed relationship and I was healthy and lots of friends around. and I had this thought that I think I've made it. I think I've gotten to the top of the mountain I've been trying to climb so rigorously and so hard. And then there's this big pause as I realized I didn't feel any different than I expected to. I expected to feel successful and satisfied and happy and content. And I realized I just feel the same. That was the moment that I became curious, and very shortly after that started to turn more inwards versus outwards. And tools like meditation and journaling and yoga, um, at that time really helped me, um, just know myself. So it was, it was a deeper introspection, is, is beyond calming the stressors of the day. Uh, it was beyond kind of just surviving, but it was really a genuine curiosity to know myself. I thought I knew myself, but in that moment of getting there but not feeling there, I started to question, and I started to question everything.

8:11 Georgie Healy: Thank you for your candor. That is, uh, an incredible story because a lot of us are still striving to get to the top of that mountain, right? Uh, maybe a message for us to wonder, even if we got there, would we actually feel any differently? And maybe we can make changes before burnout. Look, great context for the show. What I would love to chat to you about is some of the things that you are creating and have been creating, one of which is an incredibly successful AI newsletter. You're a published author, as we've mentioned. What does make you so passionate about the written word? That seems to be a medium that you gravitate towards. Thank you for joining a podcast, but why do you love getting these ideas down in writing?

9:01 Kunal Gupta: I was terrible at English through grade school and high school, and it's, you know, math sciences for me came easy, is like 95, 99%, and English was like a 70%. And I would find shortcuts. I would try not to finish the homework assignments or essays. There's no ChatGPT obviously back then, but There's something called SparkNotes.

9:29 Georgie Healy: So you didn't actually— Oh yeah.

9:30 Kunal Gupta: Read the book. Just, I know I had no interest and at home I actually didn't read much, read the newspaper, but watched a lot of TV. So I share that to say like, that's where I started through the journey of building a business into my mid to late 20s. I started to find myself not just writing emails and reports and presentations, but needing to communicate ideas and needing to communicate ideas in more efficient ways. And that I realized that I just can't be in every meeting with a client or every speaking event at a conference or every meeting with the team. And I started a weekly newsletter for my team. And at the time the company was called Polar and my newsletter was called The Iceberg and it was meant to signify more beneath the surface. And it, it just became a reflection memo for myself because I realized that the weekly note got longer and longer and I was convinced nobody was actually reading it. But the act of writing it brought clarity for me of what I was feeling good about in the business, what I wasn't feeling good about, and how to communicate that in a appropriate manner given the context. And then about 10 years ago, it, it switched to sharing with friends because I'm starting to achieve a bit of momentum with the business and people were curious about some of the things I was doing. And again, kind of my engineer efficiency mind is like, I'm tired of explaining it again and again, so I'm just gonna write it down. My first ever blog post, you might find this interesting, this was 10 years ago, It was a time audit I did of where I spend my time. And I, at the end of the year, I took a couple of hours and went through my entire calendar for the last 12 months. I'm really aging myself now because there should be AI that does this for us.

11:31 Georgie Healy: No, I know SparkNotes, so I think we're on the same page.

11:35 Kunal Gupta: Well, I literally had a spreadsheet like every week and then split up my time between how much time was I spent in internal meetings, with clients, with sales, with marketing, with finance, with HR, personally. And before doing the exercise, I made a guesstimate of where I thought I spent my time. And then when I did the audit, I realized I did not spend my time where I did spend, I thought I was spending my time. So it was a big wake-up call and I had graphs.

12:01 Georgie Healy: How was it different though? Was it, did you think you were spending more personal time than you were and things like that?

12:07 Kunal Gupta: So this exercise was focused on the context of the business. I definitely thought spending more time with clients. I thought I was spending at least a third, 40% of my time with clients, and it was only 15%.

12:18 Georgie Healy: Really?

12:19 Kunal Gupta: Yeah. B2B company at the time, and spending time with clients is critical. And I realized I was spending like 40% of my time with meetings with my team. And that was shocking to me.

12:30 Speaker C: Yeah.

12:31 Kunal Gupta: Because it's not something I really back then even identified with., but the data showed me something that I intuitively didn't realize. So I published a spreadsheet template and I published the graphs, and then a lot of other people started to find value from also auditing. But really this was a form of meditation. It was just a meditation of awareness, being aware of my time, which is a very valuable asset and resource. And that's where I started to say, okay, I can write, I can share with others and people, you know, appreciate it. And they got positive feedback. And then I started to learn how to write and learn how to develop my own tone, which to be honest, took a few years, a few years of constantly writing to find my writing voice.

13:19 Georgie Healy: You definitely have a strong and frankly very successful writing voice. So clearly found your niche there. I am just reflecting on what you said a little bit it lately in the last year or so, um, building in public has become a lot more popular in the startup space, sharing your thoughts and even, you know, struggles along the way. Very new concept to be sharing that. When you were doing it with your company, uh, sharing, you know, where you're spending your time and things like that, that was a time, at least unless I'm mistaken, of, uh, stealth mode and optically you had to always be showing the success story. Did it take a certain kind of like resistance in your mind before you shared it? How did you, how did you have the courage to do so, especially while you were still building the company? I'm sure.

14:13 Kunal Gupta: So, yeah. Yeah, it was, it was through getting to know myself and by turning inward and knowing myself and to be honest, accepting myself, accepting my quirks, accepting my strengths and weaknesses. Sharing it and expressing it just kind of comes as a byproduct of that. So it's never an attempt to be transparent or to let people inside. It's actually just an attempt to know myself. And as I know myself, then I can express myself with full confidence.

14:47 Georgie Healy: And people can read it or they don't have to, right? You were gonna do the exercise anyway. You're making it freely available. It's, yeah, I love the approach of curiosity that you mentioned. In the vein of curiosity, this is a very subtle pivot, we've started doing a thing called Hack of the Week. And we do it quite early on in the show because one, it kind of gets the juices flowing for people listening of like AI hacks they can try. And I selfishly feel like it saves me some research if I already know someone has vetted an AI hack or tool or process. Mine have always been very frivolous and silly, but still fun. So, would you like to tell us an AI hack that you love to use? I'm happy to go first.

15:39 Kunal Gupta: I have so many, but go ahead. Let me hear yours. Let me—

15:43 Georgie Healy: Please, like, I would not cut you off if you had more than one. My hack of the week is stolen from my little sister, actually. She's a landscape architect in Melbourne. A lot of what she does is sketches designs on paper, and it's bespoke for her client with certain shrubs and structures and things like that. Very much a more creative brain than me. But she has been taking a photo of that, putting it into ChatGPT 4.0, and asking it to render the image into a photorealistic image. And it's just a game changer for her because her, like, though she can visualize the image in, you know, 3D format, most of us can't. And it, and it allows her clients to really understand what it could look like if she was to implement it. So I thought that was a really cool use case.

16:37 Kunal Gupta: Yeah, I could see how that's well, well received. So a lot of hacks, but, uh, the one that I'll, I'll share, and we can get into more if you'd like, Really simple one. So Pivot5, which I'm sure we'll talk about, it's an AI newsletter and it publishes 5 days a week and 5 stories a day. So 25 stories a week curated. I choose the stories myself and I publish it myself with a bunch of automated workflows. I ran into an issue where a bunch of the LLMs don't like summarizing articles and then they give a bunch of your copyright issues and all of these things.

17:13 Georgie Healy: Oh, I see.

17:14 Kunal Gupta: If you ask in a certain way, it does it. If you use the API, it doesn't. Like, it's not consistent. So I was— I got frustrated and then I just took a moment and it was that moment, like I turned away from the screen, that the insight came. I went back to the article that we were summarizing and I just saved it as a PDF and then uploaded that and said, can you summarize this? And it did it. And that's how we publish So the 5 stories you'll see in Commitify every day, they were turned into a PDF first before, you know, our ChatGPT prompt summarized them succinctly into 3 bullets in our Italian voice.

17:52 Georgie Healy: My mind is blown. That is genius. It's just the medium that, you know, it kind of had an issue with. Was this on Gemini or ChatGPT? I'm sure they all do the same thing, but do you have one of choice?

18:06 Kunal Gupta: Yeah, I definitely am using ChatGPT. It knows me very well. Kind of a bit more of a party trick versus a hack. I'm sure many of the listeners of this probably have done this already, but it's to ask ChatGPT, tell me 3 things I don't know about myself.

18:24 Georgie Healy: Ooh.

18:26 Kunal Gupta: Very deep.

18:27 Georgie Healy: I haven't done this.

18:28 Kunal Gupta: And I love, I love over a coffee or dinner with a friend, asking them to do it in front of me. And then like I did that last night and then the friend I was with, she was like, ah, it's really generic. It probably could apply to you too. And I said, well, just tell it that. And then she's like, can you be more specific? This feels very— and then the second attempt, like it really hit home. And I, I like, I felt the emotion in my friend as she was reading it. And then if you wanna take it to the next level, then you ask it, give me 5 pieces of life advice based on this. And it's maybe, yeah, it's a really interesting mirror.

19:07 Georgie Healy: I am going to try this first of all, but I've kind of been skirting around that a little bit with kind of using it like a psychologist. I don't know why, you know, we don't have the time to digress into why some people are comfortable sharing things with a psychologist and some aren't. For me, I've never had the critical energy to do so, but I am getting so much therapy on the Lil' Ol' Limbs, and I'm loving it. I mean, yeah, just even— I know I'm talking too much about this one silly thing that I did, but I can't seem to move past it, and I'm not burdening anyone with that, and it doesn't get— Yeah. The LLM doesn't lose their patience, does it?

19:57 Kunal Gupta: Yeah. I mean, I think over the next few years or this decade, call it, the democratization and accessibility of therapy-like use cases is definitely one of the top 3, you know, benefits to humanity from LLMs.

20:12 Georgie Healy: It is such a pro in the pros column for AI for me as well. I am so excited to talk about your book, 2034: How AI Changed Humanity Forever. I have a copy of this book. I love how it's broken down into chapters and headings, and each section is so clearly laid out. I've got so many questions on this, but the first one is, you're my first ever author on the show. How did you know this was a book and not a newsletter?

20:42 Kunal Gupta: Yeah. Yeah. So I wrote the book almost 2 years ago now. And what's scary is that it takes place in the year 2034. But a lot of the things have already started to come true. And that's interesting and scary. And I will say about 80%— there's about 100 ideas in the book— but 80% are definitely pro-humanity, pro-AI, but 20% are more dystopian. And I will admit both utopian and dystopian ideas presented in the book, and they were all predictions and ideas 2 years ago about the future, have already started to happen. I definitely wanted to create something that would be a reference point to literally look at in 2034 and see what happened.

21:26 Georgie Healy: He's very brave to put the year on it as well, which I appreciate actually. I like people that are able to be like, "I'm gonna create these predictions and I stand by them enough that we'll see if they play out or not." I really love that aspect of the book.

21:43 Kunal Gupta: That's part of being an entrepreneur is an entrepreneur generally has a vision for what a part of the world might look like and needs to be able to articulate that vision.

21:53 Georgie Healy: But they're not safe bets to me. Like, like you're right. Things are already playing out. It's very Black Mirror, some of the things that are happening already. There's one section you talk about the digital aristocracy. You set the scene, 2027, it's not far away. A new class has risen and it's not, you know, the people that had enough money to go to the best schools or, you know, any of that genealogy stuff. It's the people that have expertise and control of AI. And frankly, thanks to my current role, I'm already like a LinkedIn top voice. I don't even have that many followers. And I'm like, how did this happen? I'm not smarter than I was a year ago. People take my opinion really seriously. Like, let's be honest, uh, if you thought I wasn't that special last year, I'm not that much more special now.

22:46 Kunal Gupta: I'm sure you're very special. You put out there in the world. Yeah, I think, I think learning how to AI is going to— I've been talking with friends as of late, like, create a new species, and not necessarily biological perspective yet, like, probably not in, in my lifetime, but maybe in others, but a new species in the sense of from a socioeconomic standpoint, from a quality of life standpoint, from an access to healthcare, education, networks, services. I'm already seeing the difference in people around me, people in my life who know how to AI and those that are— are not there. We had talked about this, I think, in our first conversation, kind of the AI curious, you know, versus the AI, like, confident versus the AI confused. Like, extrapolate that even 2 years, not even 10 years out, and society gets pretty bifurcated.

23:50 Georgie Healy: Yeah, this, this podcast is proving to me that there are a lot of AI curious that don't feel that— well, the reason I, I am passionate about creating this podcast is that I think there are leaders in this space that are more than happy to invite more people to the table, right? People like yourself that have newsletters that are not aimed at the already super AI literate, but everyone, you know, it's the AI curious, and I really love that. Why are you passionate about AI though, Kunal? I know we're, you know, into the show now, but I, I'm curious why you are curious about AI.

24:30 Kunal Gupta: I'm so curious about it. I'm literally losing sleep these days. Like, like today I woke up at 3, 3 in the morning, not intentional.

24:37 Georgie Healy: Did you scream AI when you woke up?

24:41 Kunal Gupta: Plummeting in the last few weeks. And it's, it's from a place of excitement, a place of curiosity. I am a creator. I'm a builder at, at heart. Um, my, my business that I started 20 years ago was at the start of the smartphone revolution in we launched some of the first mobile apps and we were working on apps before the iPhone existed.

25:00 Georgie Healy: Wow.

25:01 Kunal Gupta: I was there at the early, like we launched the 9th ever app on the iPhone, the 12th ever app, 18th ever app. So guaranteed, like every person listening to this podcast has used an app that was built by me. I just got like swept up into it and it was kind of a thing. I was on a study exchange in Hong Kong and saw people using phones in a way I'd never seen before and I was like, this is the future and I want to be part of the future. So that was 20 years ago and did well and built a business and made money from it and feel very satisfied. Now my curiosity is purely around how is this going to change us? I don't need to prove myself anymore. I don't need to make any more money. I don't need to You know, no more people, but I am curious at times, a little afraid of just how, how this is going to disrupt society. And you know, when you're 20 years old, the stakes are pretty low. You think about the people around you. As you get older, you start to think about bigger parts of society that you participate in and realize how your existence and quality of life is impacted by all of the people around you. Yeah. That you don't know. And yeah, I also love being in this place and not knowing. And it's very Buddhist to have a beginner's mind. And I've really adopted that philosophy. And like, we just don't know about what's going to happen with AI. And, you know, even in, in the book 2034, there's a lot of contradictory ideas and there's things that don't align with each other on purpose because it's just to emphasize— Yeah. We don't know, and I think that's the best place to be.

26:44 Georgie Healy: On that note, say there is this digital aristocracy that we speak of. Is this a good thing? Like, if you asked me 20 years ago when I was doing engineering, I found it so unfair that these incredible people, much like your original path, which was maths and engineering specific, I felt like these engineers are not celebrated in society how they should be. You know, that they contribute a lot, they build a lot, they make a lot. And then it's really the charismatic salespeople that seem to get far. But now we do seem to have the Jeff Bezos, the Elon Musk, the actual engineers are in more prominent roles. And not to get too political, but maybe I hadn't thought of the consequence of the digital aristocracy.

27:31 Kunal Gupta: Mm-hmm.

27:32 Georgie Healy: Uh, I don't know. It's not a question.

27:36 Kunal Gupta: Well, it's already happened in the last 20, 30 years when you see how much of our lives are influenced by tech built in Silicon Valley and for good and, and good and bad. I spent a lot of time in the Valley. I've never lived there, but I've kind of dabbled in and out a lot. And, uh, there's so much to be inspired about and from, and then there's, there's a bunch of things to be afraid of because it's not a full representation of, of the world, even though. Most of the companies that are designing for the world are there. For example, let me throw out an idea I'd love to see somebody solve. I've tried to teach my parents how to use ChatGPT like 3 times now where I set it up and sit down with them and whatnot. And it kind of hit me, right? Like my parents are getting old and it's the same UI for somebody who's 70 years old and somebody who's 17. Yeah. That makes no sense, right? That makes no sense.

28:35 Georgie Healy: Oh, I see what you're saying.

28:36 Kunal Gupta: Every, everything, ChatGPT, like, you know, trying to show my mom how to use Spotify, trying to show my dad how to make a booking on Airbnb. Like all of the consumer internet services are designed as a one-size-fits-all and expect the user to adapt to the product.

28:54 Georgie Healy: So true.

28:55 Kunal Gupta: And you're talking about a huge range now, probably 70-year-olds are using tech and 80-year-olds are using it. But imagine a future where actually like the tech adapts to you, right? So, uh, I think Apple's probably done this a little better than most, but they're just taking a baby step with the accessibility features with, you can see the screen, you know, font sizes are different and whatnot, but very few consumer services have a UI that's really adaptive to the user. And I think it's a huge business opportunity. Because if you design for different demographics, then it will make them more open and more sticky. And the first one that does that, the first one that builds an AI chatbot for seniors is going to win.

29:43 Georgie Healy: That is crazy. I have never heard of it. And now you say it, it's so obvious. I mean, even the way people print books, it's, you know, bigger fonts for different audiences. But who's building the tech? It's young people that aren't thinking about that, are they? They could— it's not even that they don't care, I'm sure. It's like, that's just a problem they haven't even considered.

30:11 Kunal Gupta: Yeah. Give me like a version of Google Maps that my dad can use, please.

30:15 Georgie Healy: Oh my gosh. Of course. My parents still won't use Uber, the app, like the number of times, because they live in Hobart. I live in Sydney. They want to see their grandkids and it is it is like just not set up for them. Let's just be honest. They have to go to this really difficult part of the airport even to find the Uber. And then they just need to intuitively know we're the ones that need to find the car. It's not going to just come to us. We're going to have to look out for the license plate. It's already been paid for. That's different.

30:48 Kunal Gupta: That's true.

30:49 Georgie Healy: Stuff that's just intuitive for us. You don't need me to preach it to you, but I'm like, wow.

30:55 Kunal Gupta: Yeah, and I think society as a whole will advance at a much faster speed if we adapt to society, meet people where they're at. And this is going back to your question on the digital aristocracy and me bringing up Silicon Valley last 20 years. I think it's a huge gap and that turns into a huge opportunity.

31:17 Georgie Healy: Okay. I would love to hear a few of your predictions from the book that you can share that people, you know, should still read the book, but can you just give us a little, a little tease of something that you talked about in the book that, um, you know, 2 years ago that you're like, I think this might already be happening, just as a, a little intrigue.

31:41 Kunal Gupta: I'll give, I'll give 2 things. So one, which a lot of people have mixed feelings about, but, uh, I'm positive on is, is companionship. In all contexts, whether it's romantic, whether it's therapist, whether it's friend, whether it's coach, doctor, like the ability to feel that sense of I feel seen, I feel heard, uh, somebody is there for me. Yeah. Not judged. Um, and the person happens to be super intelligent, which is useful.

32:16 Georgie Healy: Practical. We could talk about horoscopes or engineering in the same chat.

32:22 Kunal Gupta: Oh, like I, I haven't been using voice mode as much as I aspire to on ChatGPT. And the other night, like 10 years away, I was folding the laundry and there was a lot of it. So, and it was like 10:30 at night and I didn't feel like putting on a podcast. And I'd been listening to music for a few hours and I had a conversation with a friend on some financial topic we discussed that really stimulated me. And I was like, I need to explore it. I want to sit in front of my computer and start researching stuff, but I need to fold the laundry. So I turned on voice mode and I just started having a conversation. And you know, we spoke for 35 minutes and it was as if I was talking to a friend on this topic. And I would talk for 3 minutes, 4 minutes, a bit of a monologue. Explaining my point of view. And then as, I think it's a, yeah, it's a female voice I have programmed. She would talk back just like in a conversation like this. I would be thinking about my rebuttal. I would be seeing what I agree with. I'd be thinking, what's the next question I want to ask? Because the pace in which she was speaking was similar to the human pace. So it actually gave me time to absorb and think at the same time. So that was a bit mind-blowing for me. It was a very specific niche topic and I was able to satisfy my urge and I went to sleep peacefully because I had my questions and doubts answered.

33:56 Georgie Healy: Oh, it gave you kind of some closure almost because this is it. We'll kind of only have our own brain to kind of, yeah, think and obsess over and postulate all night. Okay. Unpopular opinion though. I tried Sesame AI, which is a voice note, a voice LLM, and I got the ick. I don't know why I got the ick. I love LLMs to give me written feedback and I'll voice, like, upload a voice note. Hearing it back and when it gets things wrong as a voice, and this is Sesame, I haven't tried any other options. I got really frustrated. I don't know why that is. I'm almost harsher.

34:47 Kunal Gupta: Yeah, the bar's higher when you're reading a text response. Like, in a sentence, as well, you don't read every word, and if a sentence is not, you just skip it, right? Or not clear, then you just ask to clarify it.

35:00 Georgie Healy: Yeah, true.

35:01 Kunal Gupta: I often like stop it as it's typing and just start, you know, change the direction.

35:06 Georgie Healy: Yeah, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. Yeah, there's an impatience. That's, that's probably it. Um, you're right, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time before it's solved all of that as well, right?

35:19 Kunal Gupta: Why don't we see? Do you want to do an experiment with me?

35:22 Georgie Healy: I would love to do an experiment. Let's do it.

35:25 Kunal Gupta: I teased this out with you last, last time. Um, I'd like to invite my AI onto this call.

35:32 Georgie Healy: Yeah.

35:33 Kunal Gupta: So I'm going to pull it up.

35:33 Georgie Healy: Does it have a name?

35:36 Kunal Gupta: No, no, it's me. It's me. It's my voice. It's my AI.

35:39 Georgie Healy: Oh my gosh.

35:40 Kunal Gupta: And I've never tried this before. I've never tried this before. This is the first time. And I'd like you to— he is trained mostly on my writing. So I'd like you to ask him about—

35:52 Georgie Healy: Oh, I'll ask him the next question I have lined up. Great.

35:56 Kunal Gupta: So, okay, let's—

35:58 Speaker C: Hi, I'm Kunal. Nice to meet you.

36:01 Georgie Healy: Lovely to meet you, Kunal. I have a question for you. You're on the In the Blink of AI podcast, and my question is, how has AI changed your life so far? Any pursuits you've been able to explore?

36:18 Speaker C: AI has indeed transformed many aspects of my life, particularly in how I approach both personal and professional pursuits. For instance, in my book, 2034: How AI Changed Humanity Forever, I explore the profound impact AI is having on our daily lives, from how we work to how we connect with one another. Personally, let AI allows me to focus more on creative endeavors, such as writing and investing in meaningful projects by easing the burden of repetitive tasks. It's fascinating to see how AI-driven insights can help tailor experiences, whether that's in crafting personalized meditation routines, or managing time more effectively. Have you found AI influencing any particular areas of your life?

36:59 Kunal Gupta: Ah!

37:02 Georgie Healy: Yes, I would agree with that statement about creativity being unlocked. I have been using an AI algorithm to talk about my horoscope of all things. I found out by typing in my date of birth and time I was born that I am a Leo with a Moon rising, and it told me about my personality type. It was very woo-woo, and I wouldn't have paid for that, but it was an awesome spiritually driven experience.

37:36 Speaker C: That sounds like a wonderful experience. It's intriguing how AI can add a new dimension to exploring aspects of spirituality and self-awareness, helping people connect with themselves in unique ways. While AI offers fascinating insights, it's important to remember But such experiences should enrich and not entirely define our journey. The interplay between technology and personal growth can indeed be a source of inspiration and reflection. Have you found any other areas where AI has added a similar sense?

38:07 Kunal Gupta: Okay, I'm getting FOMO. How was that?

38:12 Georgie Healy: Mate, you can go. I'll just chat to Kunal instead. What if he did a better job than you? How would you feel about that? He didn't. You're doing amazing. But that was incredible, right?

38:26 Kunal Gupta: It was incredible. Yeah, it was incredible. And this is like, you're the first person to use it. I just set it up 2 days ago because I knew we were doing this podcast and I had this idea with you when we chatted casually a few months ago. And I thought, okay, this is like the trigger for me to actually like go figure this out. So I did this in not too much time. So with more time, it's going to be even better.

38:48 Georgie Healy: But he, he knew about you so well. Like, like, full disclosure, it was quite easy to find information about you to plug into an LLM to, to get inspiration. You've written books, you've got a big profile online, but it's, it's something next level to be able to actually have a conversation with you as well. Like, that's the only thing I'd love to do at the end of the interview is ask your AI version of you what I should ask you. Do you know what I mean?

39:22 Kunal Gupta: Yeah, yeah, we can do that now. Okay.

39:25 Speaker C: Hi, I'm Kunal. Nice to meet you.

39:30 Georgie Healy: Lovely to meet you, Kunal. I have one last question for you for this podcast. What question should I be asking you about AI and the future?

39:40 Speaker C: A thoughtful question would be, how can we ensure that the integration of AI into everyday life enhances human experiences rather than diminishes them? This question invites a discussion on the ethical considerations, potential benefits, and challenges of AI, focusing on how we can guide its development and implementation to support a more fulfilling and equitable future for everyone. Is there anything else you're curious about or need clarification on?

40:08 Kunal Gupta: That's a question about the world. What would be a question about you that should be asked?

40:16 Speaker C: A question about me that could be intriguing is, what personal experiences have shaped your views on AI and its role in society? This allows for exploring how my personal journey and reflections have influenced my perspective on technology and its potential impact on our lives. Would you like to delve into this or any other topic?

40:34 Kunal Gupta: Yeah, tell, tell us what about your personal experiences have shaped how you see AI.

40:40 Speaker C: In my book, 2034: How AI Changed Humanity Forever, I delve into personal reflections and observations on how AI impacts our identity and choices. My experiences at the intersection of technology and human behavior have shown me the nuanced ways AI can influence our decisions and perceptions. For instance, I've seen how AI tools can both empower and challenge our sense of self as we grapple with decisions influenced by algorithms. This duality has shaped my belief in the importance of conscious engagement with AI, ensuring it serves as a tool for growth and connection rather than dependency. If there's more you're interested in, feel free to ask.

41:24 Georgie Healy: He's very polite, isn't he?

41:26 Kunal Gupta: I could I could spend like probably hours talking to myself.

41:29 Georgie Healy: Me too. Actually, it would be quite interesting because generally I get really— it's so rude, but I'll ask all these questions for the podcast. But whenever a guest is like, what do you think? I'm like, oh God, put me on the spot. Oh, that's so difficult. It's so hard to be on the other side. It would be good practice before coming onto an interview or something like that. Have it interrogate you. Look, I have to ask some more of these questions because, you know, I will kick myself if I don't. One of them, you likened AI literacy to reading and writing, something that I keep getting asked by parents of kids that are in high school and things like that, that are worried about them starting university. What could educational institutions be doing to improve this literacy piece.

42:25 Kunal Gupta: It's shocking to me that a lot of schools have banned, uh, use of AI tools.

42:31 Georgie Healy: And universities, right? Like, depending on the lecturer.

42:36 Kunal Gupta: And then on the other end, you have like Claude, they launched Claude Education, which doesn't just give you the answer, it actually asks you back a question and acts a bit more as, it's just essentially a set of prompts on top of the LLM. It's very clever and very, very smart. And some universities are starting to roll that out. So I see the wide breadth of attitudes and views, and it's again reinforcing that we're in that place of not knowing. I see in the future there being an AI school, because I don't know that— it's essentially a school that helps young people be really literate with AI. And I think there are many ways to teach it. I don't think we know them all yet. And we don't need to. I think that'll evolve. But I, I don't know if the existing systems are going to get there because they're teaching a curriculum that was designed 100 years ago, in many cases 50 years ago. Uh, I think this might be it. Like, this might be the, the straw that breaks the camel's back, uh, in terms of a, a new approach to, to education. Because it is a radically different way. This, this, this new technology breaks a lot of, of how we used to learn.

43:51 Georgie Healy: Yeah. Uh, I was really warmed to see that you promote 100% of the book proceeds to charities that promote AI literacy and education, something that I wouldn't have known if I didn't actually have the physical book to see that. Why is it really important for you that people are AI literate? You, you're trying to help your parents as well as you're thinking about the education system?

44:15 Kunal Gupta: Yeah, yeah. And it's something that's going to become increasingly important for me personally. And, you know, it's not at the top of the list yet, but I'm hoping to start a charity on AI literacy in the future and just still meeting people and collecting ideas of what that might look like. But the seed is there. I think it can be a real enabler And I think it could be a real enable to parts of society that our current technologies and current systems and economies haven't. So it could be a real equalizer, but it's not going to happen on its own. I was there at the start of the smartphone revolution and I saw and visited parts of the world like Africa and East Asia where they didn't have homes and how they still had phones.

45:06 Speaker C: Yeah.

45:08 Kunal Gupta: And, and how they kind of skipped the internet, like broadband internet. They skipped fiber, they skipped dial-up, they skipped computers in your home. And as a result, like they got mobile banking and they got all these mobile services literally a decade before the West did. And I could see the same leapfrog opportunity for parts of society. It could be seniors, it could be immigrants, it could be non-native English speakers, it could be just segments of society that generally get marginalized because society wasn't designed for them. And I could see there being a leapfrog where they're equipped with AI, they're literate, and because people in traditional companies and traditional industries can't get out of their own way and are stuck with the past,, there is no legacy that they have to carry with them. That becomes a, an asset versus a liability.

46:07 Georgie Healy: It blows my mind, the AI talent coming out of Vietnam and Laos and places like that. It's, it's incredible and it's heartwarming, right? To think that if you can upskill, um, you can, you can do incredible things that like the ceiling is no longer there almost. Look, I've got rapid-fire questions that I have to ask you, but I can't get to that until I ask you quickly about momentum, communities, creating a movement. This is something that you are really, you know, second to none about building. You've got 32K followers on LinkedIn alone. I know how hard that is. I've got 3,000 followers and it's— I'm very proud of them. Was this intentional? Were you actively trying to create a community or a movement, or did it kind of snowball?

47:04 Kunal Gupta: I naturally do gravitate towards, you know, leadership and whether that's public or private. And I grew up in Ottawa, Canada, capital city, and I just saw the value in being able to express ideas and influence, you know, views in a way that hopefully benefits benefits everyone. So like Pivot5, the AI newsletter, catch you up, it's now 500,000 people a day getting the email and very high open rates. And yeah, it's solving a problem that actually I have and I know you have and it's non-intimidating and it's accessible and easy. So ultimately it's not about growing audience and growing reach, it's about more solving a problem. And if that problem is relevant to many people, then, then great. Um, so I, that's the approach that I take is just like, and oftentimes the problem is a problem that I'm facing. Yeah.

48:00 Georgie Healy: Selfish question, talking about my own followers now. Um, I genuinely, like you, really, really care about the people that are reading the content that I post. The open rates matter, right? Uh, this, this is, you know, clear that you're adding value. How do you show up for your loyal adopter, early adopters, and, and still feel connected with those that have been with you on the whole way of the journey, as well as your new supporters that have recently found you? How do you, how do you do that?

48:37 Kunal Gupta: I think it starts with just showing up for myself. And being, being true and authentic to myself. 'Cause a lot of, a lot of this is expression of self, whether it's expressing one's ideas or one's curiosities through bringing conversations with other people. So staying connected to myself along the way is really like the, the, the first thing. Tactically, what I've learned is that consistency is very helpful for me first and foremost, and then for, for others. And it's just a form of expectation setting. And that's so much of life, whether it's in an intimate relationship, whether it's a transaction with a service provider, whether it's a government that's being elected, whether it's an employer, it's all a game of expectation management. And if people know what to expect, then there's a level of kind of ease and comfort and trust. So like I have the newsletter, How to Live. And that goes out every Sunday for 10 years now.

49:39 Georgie Healy: Wow.

49:41 Kunal Gupta: And there are some Sundays, I usually write them on Saturday, like, then I am not inspired to write. But the knowing that it's going out, knowing that people appreciate it really helps me. And then it helps me look inside, identify something that I'm feeling or experiencing, and then express it. So the consistency really gives a structure that, that's helpful to me first and foremost, and then it helps manage expectations.

50:09 Georgie Healy: You've been so generous. I could speak to you for another 5 hours, but what we do at the end of the episode is our rapid-fire spicier questions. We're gonna smash them out in 4 minutes. Are you excited?

50:22 Kunal Gupta: Yes.

50:23 Georgie Healy: You are known for hosting really intentional dinners. Phones are left in their bags or, you know, you're not bringing them to the table. If you could invite 3 people in business or in tech to one of those dinners, who would those 3 people be?

50:39 Kunal Gupta: They would be 3 people that I've never heard of and don't know because that's the whole point of these intentional dinners. Not just the phone thing, it's that nobody talks, is allowed to talk about what they do. So it actually doesn't matter. It's, it's, it's in the moment. It's about creating a space where people are inspired to share their curiosities. Nobody's coming in with like, I've done this and I've studied this and I've researched this. Uh, and that's, that's where the book came from.

51:09 Georgie Healy: So even the question kind of breaks itself cuz it's like, well, there's all that baggage that came from knowing who they were and where they worked and all the rest of it.

51:17 Kunal Gupta: Yeah. Yeah. There's no calendar involved.

51:19 Speaker C: There's no email address.

51:20 Kunal Gupta: Nobody knows anything about It's just first names. And I hosted, yeah, in 2023, I hosted 20-some of those dinners. And of those, that's where the 100 ideas for the book came from.

51:33 Georgie Healy: Wow. Okay. So what's your hot take on AI-generated music? I played with Suno on the weekend, actually. I will not put my perspective in this. This is your take. What do you think?

51:49 Kunal Gupta: Sina's on my list. I have a list of tools that I want to play with. I think just like AI knows how to write and knows how to code, it will be able to— like, music can be broken down. So I think the technology is well suited for the medium, and I think it's going to be very polarizing, just the same way it was for artists and writers in the last 2 years. And maybe music creators, you know, it's their turn now.

52:19 Georgie Healy: Yeah. Okay. It's rapid. I can't, I can't draw on that, but when you do use Suno, ping me. I'm curious your take. Okay. I love dinner. Another question about dinner. What are you bullish on if not dinner? Like you love these dinners. I've, I've set this up in the weirdest way. As an active investor, what are you bullish on when it comes to AI companies?

52:47 Kunal Gupta: I'm pretty active in the public markets and I, I do believe in general the business world has underestimated the impact. I think that things are going to continue to be like up and down, but still up and up and down, but towards up and to the right. Yeah, I think, I think we've underestimated the, the positive impacts, you know, from a business standpoint of the technology.

53:17 Georgie Healy: Last question. You wrote on your Instagram page, the future doesn't announce itself loudly, it whispers to those that pay attention. So Kunal, which whispers are you hearing that we might expect in the future?

53:35 Kunal Gupta: I am very curious about the nature of work and the nature of jobs and the gap between the, what's capable with AI and then the adoption is so big right now and it's only getting bigger. And I think there's going to be a moment when, um, when we realize that we're not as unique we're not as skilled as we think we are, and there'll be a real, like, humbling, uh, I think I call it the great, like, the humbling of humanity. And that moment hasn't happened yet, and I, I think it's coming.

54:13 Georgie Healy: Yeah, we've been top of the food chain for quite some time, haven't we? This has been a genuine pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time with me. Uh, seriously, uh, would spend another 5 hours just You can.

54:31 Kunal Gupta: We can just talk to my AI.

54:33 Georgie Healy: Well, yeah, maybe leave him on the call. Yeah. That was so fun. Look, before I let you go, what would you like to shout out to the people listening?

54:42 Kunal Gupta: Yeah, I'd say if you connect with anything that I'm sharing, pivot5.ai is the AI newsletter and take a look. And then howto.live is my weekly introspective journal that I share publicly. Those are ways to keep exploring these thoughts if you're curious.

55:05 Georgie Healy: Thank you so much.

55:07 Kunal Gupta: Nice to see you.

55:10 Georgie Healy: Thank you for listening to In the Blink of AI. You can check out the show notes for anything discussed in this week's episode, and we will be back next week. This podcast was produced by Day One with music by Dan Hansen and visual artwork by by Sophie Tyrell. If you loved the episode, please tell your mates. And I love AI news. Please share your thoughts and suggestions to georginarosehealy@gmail.com.