From $2 Per Day to AI Millionaire
What does it take to go from a factory worker in India to an AI visionary impacting millions? In this raw and powerful episode, Manuj Aggarwal breaks down how he rewrote his life, using code, mindset, and relentless vision.
We dive deep into: How AI is amplifying human potential—not replacing it Why emotional intelligence is the new tech stack The one mindset shift that took him from survival to scalability His take on the future of work, innovation, and the soul of technology What most entrepreneurs get completely wrong about success
Hosted by Jake Giffin, this conversation fuses grit, humor, and future-thinking strategy that every leader, builder, and visionary needs right now.
This episode is for everyone who wants to be relevant in an AI operated world.
Connect with Manuj Aggarwal: Website: https://manujaggarwal.com/my-story TetraNoodle: https://tetranoodle.com/
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#AI #Entrepreneurship #ManujAggarwal #MindsetMatters #ArtificialIntelligence #Podcast #Leadership #BusinessGrowth #MachineLearning #FromZeroToMillionaire
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[00:00:00]
[00:00:00] Introduction and Guest Welcome
Speaker: Welcome to the Jake G.
Jake: you, how do you pronounce your last name?
Manuj: Agarwal.
Jake: Agarwal. Okay. That's, I could have probably guess I, I guess pretty good at your first name. And so I, I, I didn't want to, I didn't wanna, you know. Oh
Speaker 3: no,
Jake: I didn't want to gamble too hard. I don't know how to, but you are, man. You are a fascinating guy. I ran into you and I, and I read some of your stuff.
I find it fascinating. So many folks come here from India, middle East and they just, and they dominate man.
You've done so well in your career.
[00:00:36] Journey to North America
Jake: How long have you been in the States now?
Manuj: Well, I'm actually in Canada, which is, you
Jake: know Oh, okay. In Canada.
Manuj: Funny enough, I knew that, but
Jake: I, I knew that I was testing you 50.
Manuj: Yeah, 51st state now. So, but anyway I've been here since 1998, so that's like 27 years now.
Jake: Okay. How, what was the reason for leaving India,
Manuj: As [00:01:00] you do follow a girl, you know?
Um,
Jake: just like that, huh? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Did you end up marrying? Yeah. Most,
Manuj: yes. I was married I was married for, uh, 25 years.
Jake: Okay.
Manuj: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So we had a good run, yeah,
Jake: yeah. As they do.
Manuj: Yeah. 25 years, uh, is pretty, pretty decent these days.
Jake: Yeah. I read somewhere. Was it in, was it when you were.
[00:01:30] Early Career in Technology
Jake: When you were in India or when you got to Canada, where you read the book on technology or, or coding?
Manuj: Oh, I, I actually got into software and technology back in India. And that's how sort of my life started shifting. So this was 1996 around that time and computers were so new we didn't have an internet.
Uh, are we, are we now recording now or yeah. We're
Jake: going.
Manuj: Yeah. So what happened was, uh, you know, I was trying to figure out what to do with my life. I [00:02:00] wanted to get out of that small town and like experience life. Mm-hmm. And, um, computers were very new Internet. We didn't have internet in mar in our small town.
So we had like these sloppy discs. We used to write programs and then. Copy it on the floppy disk and then take the floppy disk to another computer, copy it there. And so that's how it used to work. There was so much fun that I said, okay, you know, this is, uh, something that I enjoy because I'm an ex, I'm an introvert.
And, um, being an introvert I, uh. Didn't like talking to people. So talking to machines is like, okay, you know, you give them a command, they obey you, they do exactly what you ask them to use. Yeah,
Speaker 3: yeah. And
Manuj: then and then you get to do it again because you just need to copy that code, uh, over.
And so that was my journey, and I got deeper and deeper and deeper into it. So here we are.
[00:02:52] Founding Tetra Noodle Technologies
Jake: Here we are Now you're the, now you're the Chief Innovation Officer at Terra Noodle Technologies. Yeah. Now you, you founded that company. [00:03:00] Yes. Tetra Noodle. Yeah, that's right. Tetra Noodle. What are you guys doing over there?
[00:03:05] The Depth of AI
Manuj: So, uh, you know, everybody wants, uh, to adopt ai. Everybody's talking about ai, but most people don't understand this AI thing is a miles deep ocean. Okay. Thousands of miles of ocean, and people are just like, sort of, you know, scratching the surface. Okay. You know, I wrote my social media. Post with it.
I wrote a, you know, a nice, uh, business plan with it. Nice, uh, email with it, but that's just scratching the surface. Imagine finding solutions to your life problems. Imagine finding, you know, uh, uh, ways to create generational wealth. Connect with your teenagers, uh, you know, finding cure to cancer. So these are some big challenges that can be solved easily with, um.
With, um, ai. Not only that, but actually a lot of these things are already underway, so mm-hmm.
Speaker 3: The
[00:03:58] Future of Work and AI's Impact
Manuj: big question becomes in five, 10 [00:04:00] years, you know, not to scare anybody, but there's gonna be a, there's gonna be a huge change in our, uh, society. Yeah, that's a fact. Yeah. There's gonna be like, uh, some unemployment, some short term pain.
So if you ask anybody. Anybody you meet today, you know, say who. Okay, tell me, uh, introduce yourself, who you are. The first or second sentence will be, okay. I'm, you know, a chief innovation officer. I'm, I'm deputy manager, I'm blah, blah, blah. Like, my identity is tied to the work that I do. My purpose in life is to, you know, like my, it's tied to my profession.
Yeah. That's how society is today. But imagine if 80% of the people, if 80% of the work is done by.
[00:04:44] Human Identity in an AI-Driven World
Manuj: Robots and ai, what identity will you have?
What purpose will you have in life?
Jake: Yeah.
Manuj: So these are big questions that we work on. How to, uh, help people find their true [00:05:00] identity, find their true purpose, find more creativity, more expression in their life as automation will take over the entire world.
Jake: So you're doing, you're doing that at Tetra Noodle to help. So while you're working on ai, while you're doing all these and your AI or what you're working on now are projects that are going to help people recalibrate a bit to this new society that's coming. 'cause it is gonna be revolutionary, right?
It's not, we don't even know the, we don't even know the magnitude of the impact it's gonna have. We just know it's gonna be, you know? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We just know it's gonna be crazy. And Yeah, exactly. And so you're building, you're building stuff that's going to help, let's say a guy like me go, okay, now that you're not an entrepreneur anymore because all the robots have taken over, who are you really?
Yeah. So the ai, not only that,
Manuj: but entrepreneurship is actually not going to go away. Entrepreneurship is actually going to become the mainstream profession.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. But [00:06:00] now
[00:06:00] Bridging the Gap to the Future
Manuj: Think, okay, so let me give you a simple example, right? Like, uh, think about, primitive human beings, they saw, oh, there's another piece of land across the ocean.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Manuj: And probably there's more food there. More animals. How do I go there and find more opportunities?
Speaker 3: Okay. And you
Manuj: need a bridge. You need to build a boat. You need to figure out how to cross this ocean, right? So you need to, you need to work with somebody who has, who knows, swimming. Who probably has some knowledge of deep diving, some knowledge of how boats work or so, something along those lines.
And if you go to an advanced level, how to build bridges and all of that. So that's what we are doing. We are creating these bridges for anybody like you. And you say, okay, this is my business today. And I can tell you, but just by looking at your business. Okay. What it, what will it be like in five years, in 10 years?
And then build a ramp. Build a a plan. Build a a bridge. Okay. [00:07:00]
Jake: From here where you
Manuj: are today. To five years, 10 years and whatnot.
Jake: Yeah. Are you projecting out, I mean, are you, you, are you able to project out beyond five years with technology? What, what's gonna happen? Nothing. You
Manuj: know, nothing, nothing can be projected out, you know?
Yeah. As humans statistics, all of this can be like, you can mold them in the way that you want to mold them, but nobody truly knows what the future holds. But all you can do is I can rely on my 30 years of experience.
Speaker 3: I
Manuj: can rely on my experience of business about HU and my knowledge of human beings, my knowledge of how these algorithms work.
What will the world, uh, look like and just make a better decision than most people can. Yeah. So, yeah.
Jake: Well, and you have, uh. When you look at the history of mankind and you have, you know, a lot of things we've always adapted, right? It's like you said, we have to get across the ocean. How do you get across the ocean?
You know, you might observe a [00:08:00] leaf that is floating on the water and you go, oh, how can we float on the water? You know, how can we navigate and like, necessity is the mother of invention, right? But Correct, correct. Exactly. But these guys have, you know, when, when time is running slow? They have a long time to carve out a tree, test it on the water, figure out buoyancy science or whatever they're doing right to get across the water and then explore.
They have a generation or two that they can do that. The way that we're facing the future right now is that those changes are, boom, are just gonna, they're, they're happening like my gen. My mom or my grandparents worked at the same place for 40 years. They worked in factories or they, they had the same career.
The generation now is changing careers five or six times in let's say gen, gen X and other places, gen, you know, other [00:09:00] generations, millennials. Moving into the future, moving into the future, it's when AI has everything change is gonna happen, like. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Jake: Lightning fast. Is that, is that what we're kind of anticipating coming and how to help
Manuj: people?
Yes and no because I believe this is my personal opinion, uh, we change careers because we don't know exactly what we want in life, and we notice other people having more fun, having more money, having more success, whatever we desire. And then we say, oh, you know what, like, I'm bored doing this thing, so let me try something else now.
Okay. And moving forward, our work, my work specifically, involves not just doing this hidden trial because hidden trial needed was needed when, you know, we, we, uh, we didn't know exactly what we wanted. We didn't know how to get there. But now imagine, within one or two [00:10:00] hours, you know exactly why you are here on this planet.
Yeah. What is your life purpose? You know, why are you, why are you. Going through life, uh, what, what made you appear on this planet. And then once you have that purpose, every decision you make, every decision for partnership, for you know, building a business, for investing your money where to earn money, how to earn money, who is gonna help you, all of this.
Yeah. AI can, can truly help you like a guide as a personal friend. And mentor or whatever you want to call it. Yeah,
Jake: sure. E
Manuj: every decision is made towards that goal. Okay. Imagine how powerful that will be because now you are not second guessing life at every moment, every day you wake up it's like, I don't know, what the hell am I doing?
It's like, okay, now exactly. I know what I'm doing and this is how I'm going to get it done.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. And
Manuj: this is where technology is helping me. And you know, you, you do this day in, day out. [00:11:00] You truly find fulfillment in life. You know? That's the whole idea.
Jake: Yeah. And you have, so it's like a, you're gonna have this pers this super powerful personal assistant.
That can help you navigate some of the most complex things that you can possibly navigate. And I, I always tell the young, young guys that listen to this podcast, I go, look, you guys should be the most intelligent people that's ever walked the planet. You have, you have information at your fingertips.
There's nothing you can't learn how to do, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. With ai, though, we're gonna kind of subcontract that out. Mm-hmm. And then they're gonna give us, let's say, a step by step, or they're gonna give us guidance. It's gonna say, here's what to do. Uh,
Manuj: le less so, because I think what we will as humans AI cannot do is observe the world and understand what other humans need.
Okay? Because if, if you see, if you see any science fiction or Star Trek, star, uh, you know, whatever, star Wars, anything, [00:12:00] all the work is done by machines. But the humans are observing the world and saying, okay, you know what? Like this is, these are the levers. We need to pull these. These are the moves we need to make.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Manuj: This is what other humans want. That's what an entrepreneurship and business is all about to understand what other people want. And that AI cannot do.
Jake: Yeah,
Manuj: not yet. Never.
[00:12:23] Human Emotions vs. AI Capabilities
Manuj: It'll never be able to do because the thing is desire, emotion, creativity, jealousy. These are deep emotions that are.
Innately human. And there is no algorithm that can create emotions. There is nothing like that.
Jake: Fair enough. But when you imagine a world that has that is, let's say you have this technological singularity of sorts where you have AI and you have quantum computing. I mean, if you had, let's say a quantum computer that was running, I don't know, a million qubits or something.
Which is [00:13:00] still, probably, still way far off. Mm-hmm. Does it need emotion to realize that you don't have a reason to be here?
Manuj: Um, here is the thing like, so I obviously have, uh, three decades of experience in technology. Yeah. AI and that, but also I have a very deep meditation practice, so I understand consciousness.
At a very deep level. So when I hear these kind of arguments that, oh, if you have a most powerful machine and then you know, you really need to truly understand what human consciousness is, what emotions are.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Manuj: Computation can mimic stuff. It can mimic language. Sure. It cannot mimic your soul, your heart.
There is no way to do that. Yeah. Yes, maybe it can mimic it so closely that it's indistinguishable from the real world. So let's say if you watch a movie in imax with surround sound and all of that [00:14:00] mm-hmm. Uh, or this new, um, place that has opened up in Vegas, like it's a dorm. It's called like, yeah, I think, I think it is called Globe or something.
Phe. Phe. Yeah. Something like that. So it's, it's massive. And then they play these realistic movies. Now it, they, they look so real that you can imagine your senses say, oh, you are in the real scene right now.
Jake: Yeah, immersed in it. Immersed in it,
Manuj: Momentarily you can enjoy that.
But your, uh, your mind. It cannot be tricked forever. Like mm-hmm. You know, so you, the reality is different now. You can choose to live in that environment 24 7 and say, okay, I'm going to live in a simulated life. That's perfectly okay, but the reality will never be exactly the same.
Jake: I mean, you wouldn't get a judgment from me if that's what you wanted to do, but kind of what we experienced, and I know Canada is a beautiful place.
[00:15:00] I'm currently in Southern California. So it's, I mean, you know, the idea is of the idea of plugging into a pod or, you know, I imagine at some point technology kind of will merge with, let's say, what Elon Musk is doing with Neuralink and create some kind of matrix like plugin where you know, it's ultra realistic.
And if you're in there too long. You might forget that this exists. Mm-hmm. You know, something like that. But when you're move, when you're thinking about moving people into the future, 'cause you're build, you're, you're checking buoyancy on the water, you're observing the floating leaf kind of thing, and you're, yeah.
Exactly. You're plotting this bridge to get from here to there. What's what's scaring you? What scares you the most?
Manuj: First of all, we have observed the, uh, the leaf. We have observed the buoyancy, we have built the bridges. People are [00:16:00] already crossing over by the way, just so it's not like, oh, science fiction or something.
Jake: Right. I believe it. We already doing it. Yeah.
Manuj: The scariest thing is that people are still you know, we have been conditioned for centuries and centuries and centuries to think logically, logical mind. It rules the world today. But people don't know the, the rugby is going to be like pulled out of their feet because logic will not be the realm of humans anymore.
We will not be able to compete in terms of thinking and solution building, uh, thinking of solutions with the machines today, chat, GPT or any other AI platform today, they, they have, um, IQ of about 150, 100. That puts them in a genius realm. Okay.
Jake: Yeah.
Manuj: Einstein had an IQ of 170.
Jake: Yeah.
Manuj: Alright. I just came back speaking at Mansa Foundation, which is like, you know, the top 2% IQ geniuses.
So they only accept [00:17:00] people above 135 in their organization. And, um, average IQ on this planet is 90.
Speaker 3: Right.
Manuj: Okay. So I, I'm giving you this context. By the end of this year, charge G, PT five is expected to come out any uh, day. It's ex, any AI platform by the end of this year is expected to have a IQ for around a thousand.
Jake: What? That's crazy. And and it's maturing exponentially. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Exponentially. Yeah. So, yeah. So, whereas like if say six months or a year ago, I think it was maturing 14 years every day.
Manuj: Yeah, absolutely.
Jake: So that's going to be like, now it's maturing 30 years every day.
A hundred years, every day. Yeah. What happens when you, you know, when you add in, when you add in super or quantum computing to that and [00:18:00] excited, is that brutal?
Manuj: And now you, can you imagine your life without the internet?
Jake: No. No, I can't. Yeah. So this is how, yeah. I see.
Manuj: Yeah. You know, this is how technology becomes part of your life and you become habitual to it.
Jake: I, I couldn't wait. And now that I, now that I have it, like I can't live without it, but then there's a part of me that resents it a little bit.
Manuj: Exactly. That's the human experience. That is always the human experience. We always create solutions to problems which create more, uh, you know, those solutions create more problems and then we continue.
That is part of our evolution. You know, this is, this is who we are.
Jake: What's the next phase of evolution when let's say, you know, like in your world where you're thinking five, 10 years ahead, what's 10 years from now look like?
[00:18:54] Merging Technology with Humanity
Manuj: Well, I think, uh, you know, we are sort of getting into the world of, of fusion of [00:19:00] technology with the humans.
You know, we already have prosthetic limbs and things like that. The only thing that was outside the realm of technology was our cognitive. Think like thinking processes with ai. That is also, now, this is the first time in human history that a technology is able to replicate cognition.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Okay.
Manuj: So the only natural path forward here is merging the human mind and body with technology. So there's gonna be like, um. There's gonna be cyborgs or like mm-hmm. Partial human partial machine.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Manuj: These type of scenarios, which were science fiction, they are, these are going to be commonplace now.
Jake: Yeah. And so after, like, Neurolink makes it through human trials, and I'm not sure if they, I don't agree.
Manuj: I don't agree with Neuralink again. Okay. See, my, my practices are more about truly understanding what consciousness [00:20:00] is. So consciousness. In a western medicine world or, uh, you know, scientific, uh, world, people say, oh, consciousness is produced by our brain.
But when you read ancient wisdom, you know, uh, from the east, from the Greeks, from uh, uh, Chinese Indians indigenous people of North America, consciousness is the. Universe, that's everything. And we are just tiny s uh, you know, radios, radio antennas, catching a little signal of that consciousness.
Jake: Yeah.
Manuj: So when you flip that, thinking on that, on that aspect putting a chip in your brain is not going to make you intelligent. It's just going to catch the same signal that the brain is catching probably a little bit more. But not nothing. So in my opinion, these, these whole, uh, these practices of like, you know, figuring out, uh, what is the mind doing and adding [00:21:00] chips to it, like, I think that's gonna fail spectacularly.
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3: Uh,
Manuj: it's more about really, truly understanding what a human being is, what, what our mind is, not brain, what our mind is, and then enhancing that with the technology.
Jake: Yeah. I think there's a, I think. You're, I think what you're thinking a about is the most beautiful part of the technology that's emerging.
It is the, it's the getting back. If it's a, getting back to it all. It's getting back to understanding yourself, getting mm-hmm. Grounded, taking, doing beautiful things again rather than, let's say, here in Southern California, if you stop for a moment. The economy, the competition that anything you can imagine comes and swallows you up.
Mm-hmm. So it's like there's a beautiful part of what you're talking about that just is like, okay, AI's gonna be here, it's gonna be [00:22:00] fantastic, and it's going to allow me the freedom to explore.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jake: Um, the world. Mm-hmm. Explore myself, understand who, who I am at a deeper level. You know that. Yep.
Yep. That's. That's the exciting, that's the exciting part for me. And I'm, I think I'm on that train with you. I, I really like that. Mm-hmm.
Manuj: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Jake: It.
[00:22:24] The Role of AI in Human Life
Jake: But with the beauty also comes like that little trepidation of, you know, at, we're gonna be able to do all those things and we're gonna use AI as a, as an assistant, or, you know, as a augmentation to our weaknesses, wherever those might be.
Mm-hmm. Um. I guess I don't imagine, I mean, I, I kind of imagine a time when AI or robots will just do everything. Yeah,
Manuj: yeah. Absolutely.
Jake: So what, what happens then? Like, you got 80, you know, 3 billion people in the world, 4 billion people in the world, whatever it is. Eight. [00:23:00] Eight? Is it eight? I'm really, I'm low.
Yeah.
Manuj: Well, uh, you know, uh. It doesn't take that much effort to sort of understand.
[00:23:12] Historical Context and Human Creativity
Manuj: You cannot predict the future, but you can like, sort of like make educated guesses on what is going to happen by looking at history. So, uh, in the 15 hundreds in Europe, there were, uh, there was a period called Renaissance period, and that was a period after the, uh, you know, crusades and all of that.
Like, when the dust settled, people were like, you know, they, they had a lot of time, a lot of money. They're like, okay, what the hell are, are we gonna do? So they started doing music, painting, poetry, and those were the kind of people who were at the top of society. They were the ministers and the, and the highly paid officials in the king's courts.
So when humans have more time and freedom it doesn't mean the world stops.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
[00:23:57] The Pursuit of Connection
Manuj: We just look for new avenues to express [00:24:00] ourselves and find new, new things that we are curious about, you know, exploring space creating new ways of connecting with people that we haven't even like seriously thought about yet.
Like, if you think about it, 90% of technology and business is all about connecting people.
Jake: Yeah.
Manuj: That's basically it. Like, we just want to connect. With ourselves, with other, like, why do you think we go to space and all that? Like, we are wondering, Hey, is there any, anybody else out there like us?
Mm-hmm. Like we, we would like to connect with them or something like that, right?
Jake: Sure.
Manuj: So it's all in a pursuit of connection. It's all in a pursuit of understanding, deeper understanding of the universe. And it's not like, we are going to figure it out and say one day we are gonna say, okay, nothing to do.
Now we just. Done. Like I figured out everything there is to figure out. And for example, I think there was a meme I saw a while back, very, uh, funny meme. It's like there was one guy who was addicted to internet and uh, his wife [00:25:00] was not happy about it. And then I think one day he was just like surfing the internet.
And after like two or three days, like, he's like, wow, I'm done with the internet. Like I've. You know, I've done everything I've done,
Jake: I've done everything on it I can. Yeah, yeah.
Manuj: So imagine like, is that possible? No, no, it's not possible. So, um, so the idea is that as technology facilitates our exploration, we will find those ways to explore.
Jake: That's, yeah.
[00:25:31] Exploring Space and Technology
Jake: So even out, because even outside our own. Let's see. Outside our own galaxy or within our own galaxy. 'cause we haven't really made it very far. We've made it to Mars. I think we've been on Mars since like the seventies or the sixties, right? Mm-hmm.
Manuj: No, we've gone until one and Voyager two. Those were the two space sent out and I think seventies or eighties.
So now they basically think one of them crossed the threshold of the solar system. [00:26:00]
Jake: Oh, is that right?
Manuj: Oh,
Jake: that's like how many light years is that?
Manuj: How many light years is that? Oh, no, no, no. Light years is, uh, no, not light years. Light years will be
Jake: Oh, the galaxy. Uh,
Manuj: out of the galaxy.
Jake: That's, yeah.
That's, they haven't found life though yet. No, not yet. We have an audio problem, huh? Is there an audio problem on your end? Yeah, I think sounds, can you hear me? Yeah. It sounds like it may have resolved itself. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:26:36] From Humble Beginnings to Major Achievements
Jake: So it's, so you went from, you went from making like $2 a week in a factory in India to taking a company where you have four patents and $500 million, or is it 500 million in, in revenue?
Manuj: Our revenue, it's creation of some value. Like, you [00:27:00] know, we have built new technology, new startups cumulatively. Their value has been. Much more than that. Mm-hmm. But I conservatively, I will say 500 million we have generated over the last 30 years. Not th this doesn't by the way, go all in my pocket.
Most of it goes in other people's pockets, so
Jake: Yeah. As it is. Yeah. It's, uh, you, there is something, uh, I read some writeup or something. Was it like Microsoft, IBM or something? Are they, who's using your technology right now?
Manuj: Yeah. Microsoft, IBM T-Mobile, Pearson Education. Um, a lot of large companies, but hundreds and hundreds of uh, small to medium sized companies as well.
Jake: That's fantastic. That's like from $2 a week, $2 a day, or $2 a. Oh, okay. That's, well, that's not even, that's much now. It's much better. Yeah. Yeah, that's much better. Like five times better, you know, it's, uh, you know, it's five times better, but it's still only two. When was [00:28:00] that? Was that seventies, eighties?
Manuj: No, no, that was like around, uh, yeah, late eighties. Late eighties to early nineties. Yeah.
Jake: Oh, yeah. That's so good, man. What's, what do you and your, and your colleagues talk about this? That like nobody else is talking about. Quiet concerns maybe? Um,
[00:28:23] Unlocking the Power of the Mind
Manuj: yeah, I think you know, these, these are the typical things where the, there is a saying that as humans we have access to 10% of our, you know, the, the rest of the 90% is more accessible.
Mm-hmm. So what we talk about is what will happen if we unlock that 90% for 8 billion people.
You know, mind is a very powerful you know, it's, it's a machine to think, but also it's, um, way to, uh, finding ourselves. So I'll, I'll give you a couple of examples. I was talking to a very accomplished surgeon [00:29:00] and he works with kids.
So he says that, you know, I work with a lot of kids, like they have, uh. Many of them have terminal diseases and you know, I, I, I operate on them and I fix them physiologically. Yeah. But they go through such a big trauma mm-hmm. You know, going through surgery and all of that. Many of them, they lose the will to live or get healthy.
Mm. Yeah. So the mind is like, you can fix, you can do surgery and give medicine, but how do you fix the mind? Right. Uh, there's a lot of, uh, there's a lot of anxiety, stress. I mean, stress is the major, major, major reason of all kinds of diseases.
Jake: Yeah.
Manuj: So how do you utilize the power of the mind?
Like, you know, we are all talking about, hey, you utilize the sun's energy, or solar, solar energy, wind energy. But the, what about the 90% of the mind energy that is just sitting there? How do we [00:30:00] utilize that? That's what we talk about. That's what I talk about.
Jake: Uh, you guys just all sit around watching that Scarlet Johansen movie.
I forget what Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I forget what the,
Speaker 3: or something,
Jake: the name of, I forget the name of that movie. She got a hundred, she got control of a hundred percent of her brain. She. Eventually became one with the universe or something. It was like, uh, yeah, spoiler alert, if you haven't, it's a movie.
It's like 15 years old, but it's a, if you haven't seen it by now, it's a good movie. I'm talking to all the young guys out there, scar Scarlet Johansen, you can't go wrong. But it's a fascinating movie. Mm-hmm. It's, uh, if I, if you had, if you had, I got, if I, if you had $10 million to build AI that solved one global crisis, no strings attached.
Mm-hmm. What would you design?
[00:30:43] The Future of AI and Human Collabor ation
Manuj: I, uh, I, we are already sort of, you know, I told you like I'm hinting towards that. We are already working on merging the subconscious mind. We are, like my background is, uh, again, technology, but I'm fascinated with the subconscious mind.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. That
Manuj: is our 90% mind.
So whatever we [00:31:00] are doing, it will go into that. Like, you know, how do we connect people, like even in teams, even in organizations, if you think about it. All we are trying to do is logically connect people towards a common cause.
Jake: Yeah. Correct. Yeah, exactly right.
Manuj: Yeah. So when we do that, there are a lot of dynamics at play, jealousy, there is a backstabbing, there is politics, there is all that nonsense that happens in, in coming in the way of actually getting things done.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Manuj: So how do you. How do you use technology to flip that switch and bring people together? Like think about a, a soccer team. A soccer team has one goal, which is to score goals on the other side.
Jake: That's right.
Manuj: Of the, on their upper, they wear the same jersey. They go to the same, they eat at the same place.
They, they work with the same coaches. They are one.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. You know,
Manuj: even though there are like 15 or so players on a team, but they [00:32:00] behave like one.
Jake: Yeah. But.
Manuj: Can you say that about any other organization, like a corporate team or your own small business team, or your own mind for heaven's sake?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Manuj: You wake up in the morning, one part of your mind says, ah, you know, I'm feeling lazy today.
And another part says, oh, you know, I need to go make some money for family. Another part wants to just just take off from this world and go to the mountains and just say, okay, don't bother me at all. You know?
Jake: Yeah. You just, you just outline my whole morning, like every morning. That's my thing. Yeah,
Manuj: exactly.
So this is a common phenomenon. Mm-hmm. Like it's, and so imagine if you can coherently tap into that and say, okay, I know exactly what I'm here to do. I know exactly who I want to collaborate. I know exactly what they want from me and what I bring to the table. And no mo no bs, no politics. You're just gonna get things done.
And, uh, and that's a beautiful life. And that's, uh, that's where I'm gonna put all, I'm already putting all my money into it. If there's [00:33:00] 10 million more, I'm gonna put it in there.
Jake: Yeah, that's, yeah. It sounds like you're doing a Fanta, I mean, I think you're. That's right. 'cause if you, you know, if you remove self, if you remove selfish ambition, if you remove fear and greed and politics and all these things from the equation and you're foc and everybody's focused on a central goal, then you can, you can move the world.
Like there's nothing you can't achieve when every, you mentioned earlier about everybody's kind of getting a, a little part of the signal. No, I take, I take my little part of the signal and I combine it with your little part of the signal and you know, a million other people, parts of the signal. And we have like a, this unity that says
Manuj: absolutely, absolutely
Jake: right where we, where we can accomplish anything if we just get out of our own greedy way.
And absolutely.
Manuj: I will, uh, make a little tiny adjustment there. Mm-hmm. I think greed is good. I think, uh, personal ambition is good, [00:34:00] but politics and jealousy and backstabbing and those things come because our logical mind is not able to align our goals with our team goals, with our, our organizational goals.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Manuj: With our community goals and national goals. But if there is a super intelligent, uh, companion, each one of us has. It can guide us on everyday basis and say, this is how you align all your goals along with the other humans that you care about. And everybody gets exactly what they want. Mm-hmm.
There is no more zero, zero sum game where we are fighting for the same resources. Yeah.
Jake: And maybe that's the, maybe that's the, the upside of this, of the AI revolution and what you're kind of building boats and bridges for and what you have been is that. All of those platforms, everything you're building is gonna be their IQs are in the thousands and they're growing exponentially, and then they're gonna connect, like we would connect to solve [00:35:00] exactly to solve the world's problems.
And they're gonna solve the world's problems in a second. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Assuming we have the power. You know, the energy to f to fund it, right. We're at some point we're gonna reach a bottleneck of energy where we have the computers and we have, they're all very smart, and they could accomplish great things, but we won't have the power to mm-hmm.
To power. Yeah. But let's say they do that, they're off, seeking out the universe and maybe we're on board that ship with them because they're mm-hmm. They have the ability to keep us alive. And then, and then we're freed up to just entertain whatever exploratory things we want to entertain as.
And then maybe that's what eliminates the greed or the selfishness or whatever else. Maybe it's like, yeah. We can't accomplish anything unless we do it together. The robots got all the hard stuff.
Manuj: And then here is the interesting [00:36:00] part.
[00:36:00] The Evolution of Human Nature
Manuj: There could be another version of greed that humans have not even experienced so far yet.
You understand? Yeah. Because the environment has not been there for us to experience something different because it has been always a zero sum game. But now if, if the environment around us changes. We may experience another form of selfishness or whatever that we have that we don't even know yet.
Jake: Yeah. That seems to be the way of human nature. Correct. Exactly. Take the, really take the great stuff and then figure out how to hoard it. Keep it for ourselves. Hoard it.
Manuj: But yeah. But, but see we, we tend to label things, but the first and foremost thing we need to realize, the most powerful phenomena in this universe is evolution.
Okay. So evolution doesn't care how things move forward. Greediness, like selfishness, doesn't matter mean That is part of the reason why we became the most dominant species if [00:37:00] we were so benevolent, so like giving. Yeah.
Speaker 3: You
Manuj: know we'll say, Hey tiger, you seem hungry. Okay, why don't you take my arm and just be satisfied?
Jake: Yeah. Why take my arm? Why would be satisfied? That's funny.
Manuj: Exactly. And we are selfish and we will say, okay, I'm gonna kill you before I freaking like suffer. Uh, uh, an iota of inconvenience. Like, I wanna not, I will kill you not only for today, but I wanna rest for the next. 10 days and not have to get up to feed myself.
Jake: You see, that's part of
Manuj: evolution.
Jake: Yeah. That's part of, yeah, that's part of evolution. But you guys are building AI predicated BA based on the neuroscience that we have, right? That correct. This is how the human brain works. So kind of we're building AI and programs to operate in a similar way.
Exactly. So can we expect that if we. If we build AI in our [00:38:00] image, that eventually they're going to become potentially selfish and greedy themselves. So, so there is, there is a,
Manuj: a difference here how I, again, I look at it, okay, so think about a billiards or a snooker table, right? Mm-hmm. When you strike a ball you typically strike the white ball, which strikes the colored ball.
Jake: Yep.
Manuj: The objective is not to. Dunk the white ball, the objective is dunk. The colored
Jake: ball. Yep.
Manuj: So the white ball is an intermediate object.
Jake: Okay.
Manuj: So AI is an intermediate object to create optimized life for humans. Rather than it becoming an entity in itself.
Jake: I see. Yeah. So in, in your world, AI is always gonna be somewhat dependent on humans.
Absolutely. For its existence. And there won't ever become a time where it's untethered from us,
Manuj: you know? Um, [00:39:00] an untethered person can take control of a certain type of AI and try to do certain things. But at the end of the day we, we have this notion that AI is its own entity or its own.
Organism. That is where most people mistake this to be because it's not another species. It's not a, a live organism, it's just an algorithm running on electricity. That's it. Yeah.
Jake: Tool.
Manuj: Yeah.
Jake: It's kinda a, in a, yeah. All you need to do
Manuj: is plug it off and then it's, it's off.
Jake: Well, yeah. Right now.
Uh, right now, but I'd like to be in some of those dark, you know, some of those rooms that you sit around with your friends and think about the future. I'm,
Manuj: I'm telling you, I mean, this is coming directly. I mean, you know, I, I interact with people, uh, from philanthropic, from open ai, from Microsoft, Google, like, you know, I'm telling you that because this is, these are the things that we talk about, and, uh, and truly [00:40:00] that's what it is now.
I can't say I know everything. Uh, what is going to happen in 50 years, 60 or a hundred years. Maybe there's gonna be a fusion of, uh, human DNA with some sort of another entity or whatever. Like, who knows? I, I don't know. Who
Jake: knows? Right. But yeah.
Manuj: Yeah. But as of today, what I'm, what I know about technology, which I know quite a bit about, and what I know about humanity and consciousness, again, which I know quite a bit about.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Manuj: This is what I'm presenting you, my opinion.
And these are my true beliefs. But tomorrow if I see new data, I mean,
Jake: I'm happy to change my views. Super. That is man. It is. That is super exciting. I I, I am, I'm optimistic about it. I'm, you know, I have, you know, I'm learning. I'm learning.
Um. Gentech ai. I am learning how to get robots to do some of my more mundane tasks I'm doing, you know, I'm trying to learn, stay ahead of it as much as I can, but it is going super [00:41:00] fast. Mm-hmm. It is, you know, it's a full-time job almost. Trying to just stay on top of what we're actually, yeah.
Yeah. Trying to extend our employable lifespan. Now, I'm fortunate I own my own business, but. You know, there are a lot of people who don't, so it's, you know, you're trying to extend your employable lifespan by five or 10 years by learning technology.
[00:41:25] AI's Role in Business and Society
Jake: What do you see as being the future of business?
Manuj: Business? I think, again, as I said, like business has been you know, our economies have been shaped over centuries, and again, they are based on this principle of zero sum game. And, uh, there's only so much resources to go around, but I think with AI, there's gonna be almost unlimited wealth created.
So there's not gonna be a situation of, um, zero sum game. It'll be more about, okay, what value do I want to create in the world? And a lot of the kind of greed [00:42:00] and, and bad practices to like gouge people and all that. I believe we'll start to. Kind of melt away. Mm-hmm. Because everybody will be able to get to their heart's content.
Now some people may say that, you know, there is no depth to human greed, but I believe it's more about like, greed is all about proving ourselves to the world. And if there's a better way to prove ourselves to the world through expression, through creativity, I think people will do that more
So the business will change.
Towards more emotional intelligence, empathy, learning about other people's needs and wants, you know? Mm-hmm.
Jake: I hope you're right. Give one piece before I let you go.
[00:42:40] Advice for the Next Generation
Jake: Give one piece of advice for the young men who are listening to this podcast or who will listen to it in the future. What, what is the very next thing they should be doing or thinking about in regards to their futures?
Manuj: I think first and foremost. Really get good at communication, human communication. Okay. That, that, uh, skill will never go outta [00:43:00] style and it'll actually become more and more valuable moving forward. So communication, develop emotional intelligence empathy, uh, you know, travel the world, learn about culture in, uh, the, the human culture.
Like what is human species all about? Because everything else honestly is going to be. A real of the computer. So real world exp experience, experiential wisdom will be invaluable.
Jake: Well, that is, and and I think that in is, is the heart the heart difference between head knowledge and actual knowledge.
You can read a book on how to do things, but until you actually go out and put it into practice, you don't really know. Excellent. So that's some, that's good advice. Manu, I thank you so much for coming on here, man. I am, I'm psyched to have met you, and I hope that we can have more talks like this in the future.
It's a, it's really been fun and a great pleasure to meet you, man. You're, you're having an encouraging story that, that's inspiring. Thank [00:44:00]
Manuj: you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, no, these were great questions. Uh, thank you so much.
Jake: Thanks, Maje. You have a great day and, uh. Uh, thanks for coming on again. I appreciate it.
Manuj: Thank you. Thanks. Absolutely.
Thank you.
