The Exchanges

Q Do you love what you do, or do you like the byproduct of what you do?

A I love the byproduct of what I do, which helps me get dopamine and a feeling for, like, what I do every day in the office. So I really love being able to ship great product out. Nothing makes me happier to see a robot working for five months on out in the real world. That's awesome. It's like, it's like, but I need, I need, I want millions of that. You know what I mean? So, but my days are hard. My days, like all the, I have like this, um, problem funnel, like every problem funnel is right to me and I'm working on problems all day. I have this like joke when I'm telling people when I get to meet them, like tell me good news. I've had a bad day. And it's just like, they only, they never have good news. Cause like, Things that are going well, I don't spend time on. So, but I'm working on problem, fixing things. I'm, I'm doing things at a CEO level that are needed to block the critical path of the company. So I just work on problems all day. I, I work like sun up to sun down. I'm generally in the office every night. Uh, so like, no, my days are very hard, exhausting. Uh, I'm tired. And, um, No, they're like, they're, they're extremely difficult and not fun on the surface, but like the byproduct of this is we get to create general purpose humanoid robots here.

AI assessment note: “I love the byproduct of what I do, which helps me get dopamine”

Q Yeah. Do you think everybody wants more? In perpetuity?

A Yeah. You know, like someone gave me a very interesting line in this. In fact, uh, I can, you know, probably name him like Ajit Jain, uh, from Berkshire Hathaway, that no matter what your net worth is, you always want to be two X. Everyone thinks everyone across the income curve, unless you're Bill Gates, who apparently said that for me, everything is free. So that's different, right? But for most people across the spectrum, I've noticed, especially amongst the, you know, like amongst the middle class or middle class, even if you end up making, even people who, you know, like are worth fifty million or say, just keep wondering, only if I was a hundred million, I would be so much happier. But you know, and if, and if you were like, if you're making like a million dollars or whatever, or you have even a net worth, if I had two, I'd be happier. I think it was a very basic observation, but I'd say, 99% of the people, it's somewhere fundamentally true.

AI assessment note: “no matter what your net worth is, you always want to be two X.”

Q Would you say something differently if you could manifest no cameras around and you could imagine that they didn't exist?

A I think I, I think I would. I mean, I think, I think I would be material, maybe say things materially different, but I, but, um, But I am aware of it. And so which changes the dynamic of the situation. So, so I think that because we're having this conversation and because it's being filmed, um, and it's going to exist on the internet for a long time, uh, that people, you know, people will be slightly guarded. And so then therefore I know that when I see anything on the internet, on television, anywhere that is slightly manufactured, slightly guarded. And every once in a while, when you see something that is not, It's a, it's, it's a marvel. It's a revelation when you see something that is authentic and real.

AI assessment note: “I think I would. I mean, I think, I think I would be material, maybe say things materially different”

Q Do you always think that? That you would come to political life?

A At some point I always thought I would, or I'd like to think I would, um, or have the opportunity to do so, but essentially, um, you know, the reason for that is very simply that, ah, you know, I really think actually doing something else before you come to political life is often very, very helpful, because you understand more of the world, and you understand more of what, ah, people are, you know, how you can actually help people, how you can deal with them. Um, so for me, yeah, having a business career was something I always wanted to do, but I always think that the skills from some of that is very transferable into my job. It's not the same thing running a company as it is a country. It's actually completely different and very different on a number of levels, but the principles by which you do that, the way that you lead, the way that you build a team of ministers to actually deliver the agenda to actually get things done is very, very similar. And so some of the same principles that I learned in business actually are very applicable now into this role as, as prime minister.

AI assessment note: “At some point I always thought I would, or I'd like to think I would”

Q Are tariffs an answer? I've never heard economists say so, but maybe you're the rare exception.

A I'm not convinced they would. I mean, look, strictly speaking, the currency is the thing that you'd expect to move. And what's striking, I mean, Ning has said that China's currency has moved more relative to how it used to do, but it's also striking that the current, the exchange rate now, the sort of trade weighted basis, especially if you account for the fact that China's had a lot less inflation than the rest of the world, um, is actually much lower now than it was, say, five, six years ago. Which is striking because that is the time period when Chinese goods became much more competitive on world markets. And so normally one might think if we sort of have a sort of standard model, that's when your currency would appreciate that if you're making, if, if, if you and your, if your company, your country's workers are making things that are better and more valuable for the world, one way they are rewarded for this is that their purchasing power, purchasing power goes further internationally and basically their wages are worth more internationally in the current, but because the currency goes up and they can import more. And the fact is that it's actually been reverse in the past six years. And obviously a lot of moving parts here in terms of China's not a fully open capital account, what's going on with the invention and all that, but it is striking that that is so sort of resumi…

AI assessment note: “I'm not convinced they would. I mean, look, strictly speaking, the currency”

Q I'm asking you all the questions that I don't have answers to. And I wish I knew. Why is American debt or American treasury, say T-bills, twenty-year long-term debt, why is it still being bought at four percent? With the amount of debt that America is sitting on, I don't get why the world is buying this debt at four percent.

A So mostly it's not the world. Some of it's actually, it's Americans. So I guess that's one point. And in general, and I'm sure Ning has a lot of thoughts on this as well, but I mean, in general, bond yields for countries that have their own currencies, like the US, like China, like the UK, um, the interest rates mostly are a reflection of what people think inflation and growth are going to be in the future. And it's, Essentially a question of, this is, you know, if I have a choice between buying this thing that's going to pay a fixed amount over time versus, you know, stocks are going to go up a lot more. You know, that's essentially what sets the interest rate. And people, they can borrow money if they want to buy it, if they think it's too, the yields are too high, or, you know, things like that. And that's mostly what's driving it. And that the, the amount of debt outstanding is more of an issue insofar as you think it's going to affect inflation in the future. Um, But even then, it still gets back to sort of what you think inflation's going to be.

AI assessment note: “the interest rates mostly are a reflection of what people think inflation and growth are”

Q like you asked earlier about giving, if people live forever or for longer and they don't give, and if wage price inflation does not keep up with asset price inflation, like it does not even in America for the last 3040 years, What happens to income inequality? I've spoken a lot about this over the last week, because I've been there listening to lectures around this. What do you think?

A I mean, it's such a big question, right? I mean, I think one way to solve it is to make everybody a capital, a capitalist, right? So you're not just working for labor. How do you make it so everybody, even if you have relatively low income, you can put a little bit of money aside to own Own stocks or, you know, um, parts of other companies that can, that can grow, right? So there's something like four billion people in the world today who are unbrokered. They don't have any ability to buy equities. Um, and if you can democratize that, then everybody can become have a piece of it, right? Like here in the U S there's an experiment that's being done right now. These Trump accounts, you probably saw that. So Brad Gershner has been great on that and along with others. And Just getting every kid a thousand dollars of the S&P 500 at birth can make them have skin in the game, right? So I think that's...

AI assessment note: “I think one way to solve it is to make everybody a capitalist”

Q Everyone seeking validation and attention in one way or another?

A No, not necessarily. Um, this is a controversial position that I have based on entirely empirical evidence, uh, through my work and through my not-for-profit activities met thousands of entrepreneurs, hundreds, no thousands that are successful. The journey of an entrepreneur is so hard, because like the gangsters, so many done. And I know you're gonna agree, because I've heard you agree, so I'm preaching to the converted. That's a disadvantage of having a podcast. Um, it's so hard, and the odds are so low, and you have to get up and fight nature every day for years. And only those that have done it know how hard it is. You've done it, I've done it. Um, you have to want it. Abnormally high. And my experience is that people who have the endurance are the people that have a chip on their shoulder, something happened along their journey. That they're wounded, traumatized, and they want to fix it. And the cure is the creation of something that didn't exist.

AI assessment note: “No, not necessarily. Um, this is a controversial position that I have”

Q Now, would you also see the demographic dividend that we all spoke about for so long, if a country has a big young population? It goes from being a boon to a bane, wherein if they don't have jobs, the same thing is a problem like we thought it was a privilege.

A Yeah, I think at the end of the day, you know, you used the words boon and bane, which is very smart. I use the words that this could be, instead of being a light at the end of the tunnel, it could be a freight train coming your way. And I think the purpose I say that is, the light at the end of the tunnel is the optimism and the opportunity, and by the way, everybody benefits. Right. Companies will benefit, their technology will be used, their products will be bought, their IP will be utilized, you know, everybody will have an opportunity. On the other hand, if you don't, then you create this insecurity matrix that we started discussing with. And I think that's a real issue. You have to worry about this. Unless, you know, there's those who say that if you could create a universal basic income, somehow you would solve for this. I don't think this is about income alone. I think this is about productive use of your mind and feeling that you're a part of society in a constructive way. It's not just about money. Of course it's about money. If you're starving, it's really about money. But it's beyond that. And it's about using your mind to do things as well. And I'm, I believe this to be a real issue, which we need to take on. How do you create jobs in an economy? And I told you about the pillars of infrastructure, both physical and human capital, and then the right rules and govern…

AI assessment note: “instead of being a light at the end of the tunnel, it could be a freight train”

Q to build the same thing themselves. They seem to have done that in a couple of places. Um, when I talk to friends of mine in the agentic layer of AI or people who have built great applications on top of a model, uh, they all seem to be scared of what happens to these large language models when they come after the end product. Are you worried about that?

A You know, like, in a, in, in our case, we are, of course, continuously looking at, like, OpenAI, Google, incredible teams, and probably, like, as we think about the space, the, the, the biggest potentials of, uh, of, of, of effectively competing with 11 Labs. As you think about the company, and I only started it in, like, the approach from the beginning was doing both the research and the product. So doing the foundational model work, For, for audio and then building product around it. And we think both are important, um, and like would define the company where we today, of course, don't depend on open AI for, for, for voice and, and we can stay ahead and build models that are both great in English, great internationally, great across India languages, great across European languages. And, um, and that's both for generating speech with text to speech, understanding speech with speech to text. And, um, and that's important. I think like over the next two, three years, there's still so much you can do in voice. And like we spoke about how you make it more fluid and interactive. I think that still can be cracked in a better way. So of course worries us whether we continue being ahead, but it's also a good motivation. We have my, my co-founder is one of the smartest people who've been able to assemble an incredible research team and, um, and they keep crushing it. So I think they wi…

AI assessment note: “So of course worries us whether we continue being ahead, but it's also a good motivation.”

Q When you smile, when you say a certain thing in English, isn't it hard to take that emotion into Hindi, for example?

A The, um, it's, um, you know, it's, it's not easy. A hundred percent. Um, and then there's like kind of two, like there's the present and the future and the current way you would still translate it. You would of course dab it. I think you can preserve the emotion, but of course my movement of my lips, when I smile, well that depending on the language structure, um, it might be in a different part of the sentence. So like maybe an easy example is German. From English to German. German usually will have none at the end. So like, yes, that will exactly happen. You will like smile at a different part than, than the conversation. You can do some tricks to, to try to, to, to, to, um, to still smoothen it out. Um, but yes, there will be some discrepancy. So that's, that's in prison can still work in the future, you know, and, and there are some limitations of the current delivery softwares. You'll likely do lip animation to, or lip reanimation to move the lips Tiny bit to apply to where, where you would smile in that part of the sentence. So I think that will happen a hundred percent. I hope this happens this year.

AI assessment note: “it's not easy. A hundred percent.”

Q And it's like, you know, like, let's take the example of a car company, say BMW. What, what do I build that they will pay me enough for that? I can have a company invoice.

A You would start probably with something that's top of mind and something that is easy to deploy. So here you would start with customer experience side. So just being able to help as people call in, how do they get the best service, understanding everything about BMW in this case, how they understand about how the car works. You, you spend a lot of time on bringing that into the equation. So that's kind of the first layer. Then In car experience is like pretty open-ended, but how do you create an interactive radio inside of the car that people can, can interact with, um, across all the time? And here too, you need to figure out what type of languages my BMW might be interested in. How do you create the right voices to make sure the users in those regions are excited and happy? Um, what type of experience will BMW actually need? So there's a lot of actually deployment work that would come in. And then as you build all those steps, you need to figure out, okay, if you are to build like a big company, not only how I build it once for BMW, but how I abstracted a way to, to be able to replicate that into the other car companies. Um, So you need to capture some of those knowledge elements back into, into, into other, into other car parts. Automotive industry is a good example where I like haven't seen as much yet because it's, it's hard with some of the on-device requirements. Like so…

AI assessment note: “You would start probably with something that's top of mind... customer experience side”

Q So what matters outside of change or the rate of change?

A I think that that's, for me, that's probably the thing that matters the most, and then after that, um, how that manifests for me is my relationship with my wife, my relationship with my children, and then my relationship with my friends. Um, what gets cluttered along the way is all of the things that I do in business, and then all of these other Ways that people try to tell me that things are going well if I don't feel that it is, or they try to tell me that things aren't going well when I think that they actually are. And the way that they do that is, again, they go back to these externally validated but very fragile and brittle measures. And the, the, the whole goal that I try to do for myself is to break that chain of dependency where I hear it and it just kind of dings off me. And that's a very liberating thing. I don't get that all the time, but when I can do it, I feel very, very grounded and happy, like a, like it's not like an effusive happy, it's just like a kind of a warm, grounded sense that, that I'm right where I need to be.

AI assessment note: “my relationship with my wife, my relationship with my children, and then my relationship with my friends.”

Q Say if I understand suffering, I will be liberated of suffering?

A Ultimately, yes. Because again, all suffering comes from ignorance. If, if we really understand what suffering is, and where it comes from, then, ah, we can be liberated from it, not just ourselves, but also help other people do the same. And of course, it's extremely difficult. Um, but if you ask him, what is the purpose? Well, you know, People want money. Why do they want money in order not to suffer? People want power. Why do they want power in order, they think, oh, if I had all the power in the world, if I had billions of dollars, then I can, I can prevent myself from being sick. I can prevent myself from being sad. I can prevent, and it's, it doesn't work. People have been doing it, you know, for thousands of years. You can ask the previous generations of Dictators, and emperors, and kings, and billionaires. This, this path doesn't work.

AI assessment note: “Ultimately, yes. Because again, all suffering comes from ignorance.”

Q If I were, you were a 25 year old boy in India, and I want to succeed in the world of capitalism, what would you, what would you suggest I optimize for at this point of time?

A First of all, ask my husband, because he's the kind of businessman in the family. I know how to write books and give lectures. I'm not good in business, so don't ask me for business advice. But my gut reaction is nobody has any idea. If somebody tells you that they know how the job market would look like in five years, or how the financial system would look like in five years, they don't, nobody knows. So my best advice is spread yourself wide. Don't kind of train for something very narrow. If you're trying to, you know, you, you build your skills as a young person, don't focus on a very narrow skill like coding, because maybe in five years they don't need coders because AIs code better than us. So have a wide set of skills. The basic set everybody talks about is you need some, you need brain, you need heart, you need hands. You need some intellectual skills, but you also need social and emotional skills, and you also need motor skills, body skills. The body is important. So spread your time between developing your intellectual and social and bodily skills. I would also add spiritual skills. That also develop your, your spirit, your mind.

AI assessment note: “So my best advice is spread yourself wide. Don't kind of train for something very narrow.”

Q So, uh, you're talking about trust in government or trust in what exactly?

A Uh, when I read books about how political systems have been formed, it feels to me like most people Are almost socialist when it comes to their family, when there are three or four people. They are, they open up a bit more when it goes from their family to their community. And when you talk about a country with millions and millions, in some cases, billions of people, There is no interaction. There is no majlis. There is no seeing the ruler of the country, of whichever country. In, even in democratic countries, there are many pockets of power, but there is rarely interaction between somebody living there with the people in a position of power in their geography. So how do you keep this trust? Not for a country with a million citizens, but with a billion.

AI assessment note: “In, even in democratic countries, there are many pockets of power”

Q If I were to buy into that and assume that we are in a simulation, as Neo of the story, what do you know that I don't and I can learn from?

A I think most likely, Outside the simulation would be less interesting than in the simulation, because you're most likely a distillation of what's interesting, because that's what we do in this, that's what we do in our reality. Um, and then, I do also have a theory which is, like, the most interesting outcome is the most likely outcome, as seen by a third party. Um, the god, the gods or god of the simulation. Um, Because when we do simulations, when humans do simulations, we, we stop those simulations that are not interesting. So like if SpaceX is doing simulations of rocket flights, uh, the, You know, the boring ones, we, we, we discard because they're not, they're just not, we don't learn anything from those. Or when, when Tesla's doing, uh, simulations for self-driving, uh, Tesla's actually looking for the most interesting corner cases because the, the normal stuff, we already have plenty of, of, of, uh, data on, you know, driving on a straight road on a sunny day. We don't need more of that. Uh, we, we need, like, heavy weather conditions on a small windy road with two cars that are, you know, uh, coming at each other with an almost head-on collision. We need, like, weird stuff, basically. Uh, interesting stuff. Um, so I think that from a Darwinian perspective, the simulations most likely to survive are going to be the ones that are the most interesting simulations, which t…

AI assessment note: “I do also have a theory which is, like, the most interesting outcome is”

Q you know, I don't know how different Archer is because I've not seen enough about it, but it's the typical electric taxi, uh, one 60 kilometers range on a charge. Meant to take off from hotels, the, the helipads on top of a hotel, get to the airport. How far are we from a world where this could be more pragmatic? This is something that will be used by people.

A I mean, we have aircraft today that are, are, that are flying fully piloted. Like, you, you have a couple components here. The first is you, you have to be in the right decade to make sure the technologies are all feasible to make this really happen. This is a really hard technology. Most of the problems and challenges here happen because we have, um, um, there's probably like a 30 x difference in energy density between, like, traditional fossil fuel, say kerosene, that you might find in an aircraft, in an electric aircraft. Um, like, what we find in batteries. There's the problem of just, like, building the technology and really making it viable. I, I think we've shown at Archer that that is, like, fully possible today. I mean, we, we fly basically every week, um, our full-scale aircraft at this point, fully electric, similar concept operations we'd want to do in market. Uh, at this point, it's largely, like, a safety and certification and policy, like, the, basically, like, what's gating this is certification. Uh, in, in most countries, it's, it's governed federally, where you need, like, um, You know, in Europe, it's YASA. Here in the US, it's FAA. You need, you need, like, basically a certification level at the, at the federal level, uh, that unblocks your ability to take passengers and make it ubiquitous. Uh, so at this point, like, largely missing certification. You didn'…

AI assessment note: “within the next, like, five years, we'll be taking passengers”

Q What is the anthropic story? Can you summarize for us?

A Oh my God, what is the story? Um, the anthropic story was And I'm probably not the best person to tell this story, but a few people left OpenAI, wanted to do, um, a foundational model company somewhat differently, and they built a, and both of them hadn't figured out a business, and now Anthropic has sort of built a model that eventually became very good at coding, and it got a ton of recognition for that, and then it sort of Now, Anthropic, I would say, is a company that's, you know, trying to solve AGI, but they believe the route there is through reasoning, coding, and things like this. Um, they very distinctly do not really do much outside of text-to-text models. Um, so less audio stuff, video stuff, um, things like that, and that's really their primary focus, and in terms of a business, they just serve enterprise customers primarily. They do have a consumer app, but that's not, not really the, the prime business.

AI assessment note: “a few people left OpenAI, wanted to do, um, a foundational model company”

Q So interest rates going down now will have the opposite effect?

A I don't think we're going to go back to Zerp any time soon. So interest rates might go down, like, 50 bips or a dot, but it doesn't change the outcome that much. The genie is unlocked. Once you get used to high efficiency, why would you do? And then if you look at what Gen Z wants to do now, they don't want to work as a dishwasher in a, in a restaurant. They want to be the next influencer or build the next business. How are you going to replace that labor? Technology is the only way you can do that. Whether it's factory workers, whether it's back office workers, whether it's, you know, dishwasher. This is the only way that you can do it. And that's great because suddenly that area that was not investable before has suddenly become because everyone's a buyer is knocking on your door asking for it.

AI assessment note: “interest rates might go down, like, 50 bips or a dot, but it doesn't change”

Q People are having less kids because of iPhones?

A I mean, there's no... you can't directly You can't directly point to it, right? There's no research that is that clear. But it is, like, 2009 across the world. And it's because, like, we're just becoming more and more dependent on a digital, our emotional needs are being satisfied by more on the digital side. Whether it's like, you know, us watching YouTube shorts versus going to a bar to, like, date someone. And I think AI will accelerate this problem, for sure. Like, again, I, I, I do think we are We're confiding more in ChatGPT than we talk to, like, our closest humans, including, like, our own partners, and I do think that that has happened, and there's no, there's nowhere that you can ever draw a direct line, but the trend is clear starting when the mobile phone came out.

AI assessment note: “you can't directly point to it, right? There's no research that is that clear.”

Q What is the anthropic story? Can you summarize for us?

A Oh my God, what is the story? Um, the anthropic story was And I'm probably not the best person to tell this story, but a few people left OpenAI, wanted to do, um, a foundational model company somewhat differently, and they built a, and both of them hadn't figured out a business, and now Anthropic has sort of built a model that eventually became very good at coding, and it got a ton of recognition for that, and then it sort of Now, Anthropic, I would say, is a company that's, you know, trying to solve AGI, but they believe the route there is through reasoning, coding, and things like this. Um, they very distinctly do not really do much outside of text-to-text models. Um, so less audio stuff, video stuff, um, things like that, and that's really their primary focus, and in terms of a business, they just serve enterprise customers primarily. They do have a consumer app, but that's not, not really the, the prime business.

AI assessment note: “a few people left OpenAI, wanted to do, um, a foundational model company”

Q Travis, they say that in, in society today, as a leader, you're either awe-inspiring, dogmatic, uh, or you're somebody who builds consensus is more relatable per se. Have you had to project a more relatable image because you have to overcompensate for what Travis was projecting?

A I, one, one thing that I really believe in is, um, I don't think it works if you're trying to be someone other than who you are. You know, people come to me and they, they ask me for leadership advice, and the first piece of advice that I give them is, be true to yourself. Because the minute you're not true to yourself, people will smell that a mile off if you're not authentic. You know, this is a word that people mean authentic, et cetera, what does it mean? It's just like, be true to who you are. I am, ah, the youngest brother of a really big family. We have, like, thousands of cousins around, and in Iran, community and family is so important. Nobody's the star, and if you're the star, you're going to be putting your place. You know, I'm a fancy, fancy CEO here, but when I go to my family, I'm just one of the younger cousins, and I'm no big deal. And I love it. It's such a relief to be that person who, I just, that's my comfort zone. So I tend to be more collaborative. You know, I, I, when I played sports, I, I would play defense. I always played team sports. I didn't want to win as an individual. I love the feeling of winning as a team. I, I, you know, I don't want to be there celebrating by myself. I want to celebrate with my team.

AI assessment note: “I don't think it works if you're trying to be someone other than who you are.”

Q Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. And they all use the same means to approach this problem. And AI is as democratic as it is right now. Wouldn't they all then arrive at the same solution?

A Um, I think there's massive difference in the quality of entrepreneurs. And the outcome will be a result Of the quality of the entrepreneur, how they think from first principles, how strategically they think. Almost certainly, the people who only think a year out will be obsoleted by the people who think, what do I want to build in five years? But what can I sell next year? What can, but where do I want to head in five years? Swalong is a good analogy for entrepreneurs that I love. Imagine you want to climb Mount Everest, and you have two people setting out, and one says, I'll get to base camp, then to camp one, camp two, camp three, I think there's camp four and then the peak, right? Um, it's not a straight path, right? Another entrepreneur says, I'm going to get the most revenue in year two, year one and year two. They won't go to camp one, uh, base camp or camp one. They'll pick the highest peak that doesn't then lead to something beyond. The path to Everest through these camps is very strategically picked. To have the long-term vision of getting to have, uh, to Everest. Most people maximize revenue for the short term and are not thinking strategically. So the strategic entrepreneurs will do better. The entrepreneurs who pick better employees who help them think through strategy will do better. So people selection or team building will become the most important characteristi…

AI assessment note: “I think there's massive difference in the quality of entrepreneurs.”

Q Near my house on Banargata road, Metro construction started I don't know, 10 years ago. It's still going on. So at some level, like you're saying public infra has not kept up and maybe it can't. Is it somebody's fault that it hasn't kept up?

A No, I don't think so. I think, uh, uh, end of the day, the, uh, Intention is what matters, right? See, had there no thinking of will improve public transport at all, I think it would have been a worse off situation. Just to give you an example, when the biopinality line got connected to the wild field line, right? Automatically peak our traffic reduced by 17%. Automatically. That just shows how, just interlinking to this thing, or how important public transport is. So now a lot of impetus is given. So the long term solution to Bangalore's problems are public transport, whether it's K-ride, suburban trains, or it is a metro, every increase in the fleet, whatever it is, I think that that's the way to go forward. And that's where it is. It is just that the implementation has taken some time, but when it comes in, you will definitely see a change. Like for example, Outerring Road line opens for Metro. Not only will the Metro be available, even the carriage space where the Metro work is going on, which has reduced because of the Metro work would not be there. I mean, you'd get the full entire 10 lane available to you. I think it would improve. I think, uh, that's the way to go. And in the short term measures like implementation of AI based signals, um, um, technology implementation of or leveraging technology, uh, some short term works, civil works also like a junction redesign, um,…

AI assessment note: “No, I don't think so. I think, uh, uh, end of the day”

Q What did you see then, which made you want to do these things?

A So first, you know, when I just told my dad, okay, he said, what do you want to do? I said, I just want to do something of my own. He said, what? I said, I have no idea, but buy me a computer because all my friends, whether they were doing civil or mechanical or electronics, everybody was going in software. So I said, I want to do something in software and, uh, bought that computer. And I clearly remember when I bought that computer, I had no idea about computers that time. Windows came and, you know, Windows was there that. So I went to the guy who was selling the computer. He said, what computer do you want? I said, it should have a lot of icons on the screen. Used to have shortcuts, actually. I never knew about that. I said, yeah, it should have a lot of icons on the screen. And that's how, so he laughed at me. He said, I don't have any idea. He gave me, and then I bought a book. It was Learn VB in 21 days. Visual Basic. Visual Basic, yeah. I wrote a program in three days, hello world, this, that. I thought, okay, I know programming now. My friend came, he saw the book, he said, you've done this. I said, yeah, I made a program. He said, can I take this? I said, yeah, take it. So he took that book away. The guy later became my partner. So I, the story, and he's a core techie guy, coding only. So I tell him, you become a coder because of me. So by virtue of that, buying that c…

AI assessment note: “all my friends, whether they were doing civil or mechanical... everybody was going in software”

Q focus and cram many hours of work at one go, or Be not cognizant to the things happening in the world around you, but focused on one thing. Where does that come from? I know in the last part of your book, you spoke about how today you might be diagnosed as autistic, and is it that, or is it some kind of drive which is coming from somewhere else?

A I think there's a, a strong genetic component to that ability to focus. Uh, you know, particularly as people get older, their willingness to be very confused and just live with their confusion, you know, and, and until they really figure it out, uh, they almost, you know, give yourself a hard time and, You know, think about why can't I understand this? Uh, you know, I think that's, that's something I was lucky, uh, from nature, you know, um, my, my parents didn't push me, uh, to be that way, and it was there, you know, pretty early on, you know, even the thing where it, It was fascinating to me that my grandmother was so much better at cards than I was, and I had to think a long time to figure out, okay, she is running a, uh, a state machine. She is remembering every card that goes by, and if you remember every card that goes by, okay, there is, uh, an impact on all these different card games, because we played a lot of different games. Um, and she would never, you know, kind of give it away. She sort of forced me to, to think it through on my own. So that's an early sign that, yeah, I, I can go off and kind of ignore, uh, uh, what's going on. And, you know, I'm very lucky, uh, even at, you know, this age, if somebody hands me a, uh, a new book about something I'll, you know, Shut the door, and four hours later, hopefully I've, I've, I've, I've been able to get through it.

AI assessment note: “I think there's a, a strong genetic component to that ability to focus.”

Q I think another very interesting question is if we all don't work, do we get the same? Humans inherently are competitive with their peer groups, I think. So if I don't work, say we are born tomorrow, me, you, him, him. We all don't work, but we are bestowed upon with the same resources and same social position. Will that work for us?

A No, I, I, your, your point's a good one. We want to differentiate, uh, you know, whether it's for our own ego or to be attractive or, uh, it's so we, we, Are so adapted to this world of shortage. Uh, that, you know, maybe You know, we'll create competitions, and, you know, creativity, or, you know, maybe we'll take some part of human activity. I mean, in extreme cases, we're not going to have robots play cricket. You know, that's boring. We'll let, we'll reserve that just for the humans. Even if the robots could be, you know, way, way better, that's, that's not interesting. And so, What activities might a country say, no, we're reserving this, you know, nurses are going to be humans, or, uh, you know, psychiatrists, uh, you know, are, we're going to, you know, decide that the, and so we might artificially, uh, Ignore the fact that the, the machines can, ah, can substitute for some of that. It's, it'll really, you know, get down to the core of, of human instinct.

AI assessment note: “No, I, I, your, your point's a good one. We want to differentiate”

Q And speaking of QuickCom. Who would you invest in?

A At the end of the day, as an investor, I look at companies as a multiple of the EBITDA or net cash that they're throwing out. In today's equation, I find them expensive. Hence, I have not invested. I'm more a conservative investor. So no, but I do question It's always going to come at a premium, right? Like if I buy a swami bottle, At 50 rupees. And if I get it delivered from one of the quick commerce guys, there is a cost of labor, the 30 minutes, the rider who's going to ride from their dark store to my house, then leave from here, go back, pick up another delivery from the dark store, the cost of fuel. Uh, inflation will drive a lot of this cost up. His salary, for example, how much he makes per hour. If you were to extrapolate and say he has to make a minimum of a hundred bucks an hour, if he works 2022 days, that's like a salary of 22,000 rupees a month. At some point, I will question for small deliveries, like if I want a bottle of Swami, will I pay that premium? Right now, it might be discounted by capital coming in from elsewhere. Beyond a point of time in India, if I'm using quick commerce five times a day and paying 50 rupees each time or 30 rupees each time, Maybe not for me, but for a vast majority of India, that one 50 rupees a day, the 5000 rupees, at some point we'll get to the point where, you know, an apartment complex hires three guys or four guys, or you hire…

AI assessment note: “In today's equation, I find them expensive. Hence, I have not invested.”

Q Can I ask why? Like why benefit the human race?

A Uh, because there was like two paths I saw. One is you could get a job. Make money and retire. Like everyone around me had done that is like that. You just follow this life path. You don't dream big. You don't do different things. You just, you, you're a Mormon. You do life in a certain way. You retire. So like it's a very standard way of doing life or like go out and carve your own path and do something unique. And I thought that's cool. And like Ecuador was omnipresent on my mind of like these people, Just by random luck got born into this environment. And you know, their life is pretty limiting. Like it's hard for them to get out of that situation. And it felt like that, uh, it might be a useful endeavor to do something that would benefit these people.

AI assessment note: “it might be a useful endeavor to do something that would benefit these people.”