I am excited. This is my favorite topic in the world, artificial intelligence. And we are now going to get a chance to talk to two of the heavyweights. Google obviously a powerhouse in this space, growing every day, but also states matter, governments matter and the UAE has the first ever minister of AI. 10 years ago that would have seemed like science fiction, that's now science fact. So, what we're going to try to get out of this conversation with these, these are like literally two of the giants in this field. And give it up to John Hope Bryant for giving us the best people in the world to talk to and to learn from.
I want to start with Ruth. Listen, part of the, there's a hope AI is going to give us heaven on earth and then this fear is going to give us hell on earth and somewhere in the middle is the truth. And I just love to hear from you, what do you see as the actual practical next 5, 10 years of both progress and peril for AI? Just give us your overall statement about where you see the opportunity and where you see the peril.
Well, first it's great to be with you as always and you're excellently wonderful to see you again. So there are a number of areas that excite us about the upside from AI. There's the economic upside in the US. It's estimated to be $4 trillion. If we see this adopted across businesses small and large and in government, it's the opportunity to improve delivery of education, of health care, to advance science. But I think if you want my just the short, what do I think of when I think about the opportunity with AI, it is that the art of the possible has changed. And the place that hits me most deeply and that I get most excited about is what it means for all of us with respect to health because that does affect every one of us, our children, our siblings, our parents, ourselves, and the art of the possible is completely changed. So, as I'm a two-time cancer survivor, which is probably why I keep anchoring back to this and so I always turn to my oncologist and say test everything out with him. The first area is early diagnosis of disease can be the difference between survival and not. And with AI, you can augment, support, fortify the radiologist. My oncologist has said the only way to democratize that early detection is with AI. The second is there are not enough nurses and doctors across America, around the globe. We can save 30 to 50% of their time with AI freeing them up from the administrative so they can do what we want which is focus on the patient. That's what they want, that's what we want. We can empower everyone with, and we are, these are not like to your point science fiction in the future, this is here now. We are empowering people with more information and so again my oncologist says that means doctors have to be at the top of their game because we as patients are better informed. And then the most exciting is it is realistic to say with the advances in science that we will cure diseases in our lifetime. I'm privileged to work with someone who won the Nobel Prize for something that is described as the biggest contribution to drug discovery in our lifetime. It's called AlphaFold. We can cure cancer in our lifetime. That is not out of our reach. So that's what I get excited about and much of it is here and now. Here now and then more to come.
Well, look, first of all, that's exciting. You should applaud. Somebody says we're going to cure disease. That's, but folks are scared. Folks feel like, you know, there's bad things coming. People are scared they're going to get pushed out of jobs. What do you say to the people who are concerned? I think in our community we're sometimes we're threat sensitive even before we're opportunity sensitive and you know we're all friends here, we speaking among ourselves. Where do you see some threats and some challenges that people should be aware of and begin to prepare for as we shift into a new age, new positive possibilities, also maybe some perils? How do you look at the peril side of it?
Yeah, this is such an important question. And I really like the way you framed it, threat sensitive more than opportunity sensitive. So at Google when we talk about AI, any technology that has the potential to have this kind of impact, we want to be bold and responsible. We want to help people capture the upside and protect from that downside. And you're 100% right. There's downside risk. I think the one that most people are concerned about is what does it mean for me with my job, for my family, my ability to provide? Where do I go with this? And I think a couple of data points because I keep going back to history. 85% of economic growth throughout history is attributable to technology. 60% of the jobs that exist today did not exist 80 years ago. They have always evolved. And throughout change, more jobs have been created than destroyed, which is absolutely not helpful if you're the person whose job is eliminated. And so I think the couple of elements when we look at what that means. First and foremost going to the heart of your question. Jobs will evolve. They will change. They have throughout history. We each need to get fluent, as fluent as possible with AI. And the beauty of it is that the magic is done by the computer scientists. Like many people are using AI today and don't even see where they are. In search you're using it. You can play with it to support creating better art history, you know, pulling from the content that's available. It's when you go travel and it's Google Translate that's using AI. So, there are places that we're using, but the magic is actually under the hood. And so, what we have done and John O'Brien has done so much on this. We focused on skilling and training and giving people the confidence and the fluency. We created something called an AI opportunity fund. We've done digital skills training so you can get certified in areas like cyber security or data analytics and literally have in a 3 to 6 month period the proficiency that's needed so you can evolve with jobs as they evolve. So that's point number one. Point number two, many jobs actually are augmented by AI, not replaced by AI. They make you stronger. It's like having a coach. And so it's not necessarily about finding new roles, it's about having the skills to operate at the highest level just like when I started in my career.
I think it's so good. So just say again, there's the fund is an AI opportunity fund. Is that correct? Did I get that right?
AI opportunity fund to train.
So if you just, how do I get in?
So Google, just go ahead and Google, you can get online training. We also have the Grow with Google skilling so you can actually learn specific areas. Google it, you will find it. And we're working with, we're providing it so individuals can do it. We're working through local organizations.
I think it's really important to get out to full communities. It's important because listen, when you're a delegate, when John O'Brien lets you be a delegate here, you're an ambassador. So, a lot of this information is not getting out to people. And so, you know, literally there are resources that are available to us to not just not get left behind, but to leapfrog and to lead and Google's making that available. So, give a round of applause to Ruth.
Now, if I could thank you for that. I just, if I may just one point because it's so important. Each of us can learn this easily and that's what you'll find and what I have found when people go through training programs is it's not just the skill that they get through what we call AI Essentials and Google, but it's the confidence that actually this is doable for each one of us and that's why we're really proud to work through so many local organizations that can reach out to their community so that everyone has access to the training.
Oh, that's awesome. And you know, by the way, I'm with an organization dreammachine.org. If you, yeah, you can apply for my group. Y'all got, look, I got low self-esteem. Y'all got to encourage me now. Look. So, that's it. Thank you. Thank you. So, yeah, dreammachine.org is also a place where you can get in line for some tremendous educational resources. Now, I am actually jealous of our next guest. Before you, sir, I had the coolest job in government as far as I'm concerned. I was a special adviser for green jobs to Barack Obama. That's a good job. That's a cool job. But I think now you have the coolest job in government ever to be the first minister of AI. Now this is extraordinary. First of all, how did you get this job? No, I'm just joking. That's on Wikipedia. You can get that. Why is the UAE moving so aggressively to put government in alignment with this? And what are you doing to make sure that as you guys scale up, you're also scaling up your people? Because you're setting a precedent for every government on Earth. And that's why John wanted you here. Why are you focused on this? And how are you using this to bring the people who might be left out into the conversation?
Thank you very much for that. And in all honesty, I don't think you should be jealous. Try to be jealous after I retire. In this job, one doing a good job until the very end. I've been in this position since the year 3 BC. So 3 years before COVID in 2017 and it feels like a few millennia. It feels like there's a few lifetimes that have passed. Now when it comes to the UAE's ambition on this and this brings me back to hope, our region used to export science, technology, culture and had the broadest and biggest economy in the world at one point of time. So for over 600 years the Middle East was the most advanced part of the world and something changed and what changed is a lesson for all of us. We focused at one point of time at actually embracing technology and using it. And in the year 1455 there was a technology that was invented that had the opportunity to change the world. Every single civilization embraced it. The only civilization that banned it was the Middle Eastern civilization which was the printing press. When the whole world has had access to knowledge, we were the only region where unfortunately you had to get on a horse or a camel for multiple weeks to be able to access knowledge and that completely changed our region. We went from being the most advanced part of the world to being one of the most unfortunately underdeveloped parts of the world. With AI, we believe the opportunity is going to be as big. It's going to help countries leapfrog. It's going to help nations either have access to the future or be backwards. And we want to be one of the countries that leads the future. Now, when it comes to what we've done, if you look at the UAE, we're a country of around 10 million people. We've already done programs to train a million how to become super users of artificial intelligence. So, that's 10% of our population by the end of next year. And we're actually not going to stop until every single person in this country, be it rich or poor, be it a citizen or a non-citizen, become a super user of the technology and able to create using this tool to change the world.
That's awesome. Look, you know, I love the vision. I love how inclusive it is. You said citizens and non-citizens. It sounds like you feel like everybody counts and everybody matters. Imagine that government that feels like everybody counts and everybody matters. I like that. But you know, to your point, you're representing folks who may have felt left behind in the last century, the last several decades. There's a hunger to catch up and yet there has to be actual programs and things that governments can do. What are, and we need to learn from you. Sometimes the United States we think we have to teach everybody. We need to be learning from folks. What are some of the concrete things that you're doing that you think will be helpful to the companies and to the people? Concrete steps from your government.
Excellent. So, I'm going to give you maybe a few very broad things that have worked for us and maybe later we can talk about the things that didn't work for us and it's good to be transparent about these things because it's always good for people to learn from each other. The first thing is in most countries there is no one leading the conversation when it comes to artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence isn't coming. It's already here. Artificial intelligence is the most addictive technology we've ever invented. It's more addictive than anything else. And that's why you can't let go of your phone. That's why you use it to get all the information that you want to get. That's why you use it for everything, right? It knows more about you than your loved ones. And it's the most fundamental technology that has shaped our lives over the last decade or so. Why aren't governments doing anything about it? In the last 200 years, every single time a technology has reshaped the world, there is a ministerial portfolio that was created for it. When we were living off coal and woodfire, there wasn't a single minister of energy. But when electricity became so important for governments to deliver the promise of prosperity to their people, ministers of energy and secretaries of energy were introduced across all governments around the world. The same is true for ministers of aviation, ministers of ICT, ministers of telecommunications. With every single technological leap, there was a ministerial portfolio that was created. Why aren't we doing that for artificial intelligence? It doesn't make sense. It's already here. It's not coming. Now, what we've done first and foremost is we have a chief AI officer in every single government department across the government. These guys are the orchestra. They ensure that every single department understands the overall vision of AI and one deployment does not harm people across other sectors. So let me give you an example. If you look at AI for healthcare, if I deploy AI for healthcare but that increases your insurance premiums, it's actually a bad thing. Even though AI for healthcare is excellent, the fact that you need to be paying more because the insurance companies are being able to use these tools to identify if you have any challenges when it comes to paying your premiums or living a long healthy life. That's a challenge when it comes to government deployment of AI. So this orchestra ensures that the main focus of AI is improving quality of life. Our ambition from this is AI for quality of life improvement. The second initiative we did, we don't shy away from big bold initiatives. So we have an initiative called 1 million AI prompters which is training a million people how to become super prompters of AI and wielding this tool to reshape their lives in whatever sector that they want to use it for. And there is no prerequisite to joining this program. You just sign up and you have access to it. The third thing we did was every single time someone comes to you, they will tell you that they're working on the greatest AI tool. And one thing that you can see is if you go to LinkedIn today, whether someone's a truck driver or someone's a consultant, the skill sets always say AI. Everyone thinks that AI is the hottest thing. So they add it to their CVs. They claim that it's a thing that they're using. So as a government, we launched a program called the AI Seal. We actually assess different use cases of AI and we give them rankings so any company, any government department that wants to use the tool understands first is it good for society to use this tool, second is it built credibly on an AI foundation and third is it something that is built in the UAE or abroad and it's perfectly fine if it's built abroad but it increases transparency. And then finally, we have AI actually deployed as a key curriculum within our schooling system. So kids from kindergarten to grade 12 all learn about artificial intelligence, what AI is going to do for them, how they're going to become users of this technology and the ethics related to AI.
