The Future of Being Human with Dov Baron

In this episode of the Entropy Podcast, host Francis Gorman engages with Dov Baron, an expert on emotional intelligence and leadership, to explore the implications of transhumanism and the rapid advancement of AI. They discuss the ethical dilemmas posed by technology, the necessity of purpose and meaning in an increasingly automated world, and the importance of emotional intelligence in leadership. Dov emphasizes the need for guidelines in AI development to safeguard human values and the emotional source code that drives human behavior. The conversation highlights the challenges and opportunities presented by the convergence of humanity and technology, urging listeners to consider the future of work and the human condition in a tech-driven era.

Takeaways

• Dov emphasizes the importance of emotional intelligence in leadership.
• The convergence of technology and humanity raises ethical concerns.
• AI's rapid advancement necessitates guidelines to protect human values.
• Purpose and meaning are essential for human fulfillment in an AI-driven world.
• The emotional source code influences individual and organizational behavior.
• Human beings are driven by identity and comfort, impacting their choices.
• AI can augment human capabilities but may also lead to isolation.
• The need for a moral compass in technological innovation is critical.
• Emotional logic drives human behavior more than rational thought.
• The future of work will be significantly shaped by AI and automation.

Sound Bites

"We need purpose and meaning."
"Normal isn't healthy."
"Human beings need validation."

Here's the report we discussed in the episode:

Is Our Soul’s Future Silicon

Transcript

Francis Gorman (00:01.654)
Hi everyone, welcome to the Entropy Podcast. I'm your host, Francis Gorman. If you're enjoying our content, please take a moment to like and follow the show wherever you get your podcast from. Today I'm joined by Dov Baron, the preeminent expert on creating cultures of belonging. For over 30 years, Dov has been empowering inquisitive leaders and influential figures worldwide to explore their own emotional source code and their organizations to discover how to generate fierce loyalty. The emotional source code process drives deep loyalty and purpose to the power of emotions.

Dobb assists leaders in creating meaning in both their lives and work. His models and strategies include the emotional source code and the autonomy of meaning and are utilized by leaders in business and government worldwide. He's the founder and CEO of the Dov Baron International and he's been named top 30 global leadership guru five times and the Inc Magazine top leadership speaker twice. He's also the incredible podcast host of the Dobb Baron show and it's great to have you here with me today, Dobb.

DovBaron.com (00:56.334)
Cheers, Francis. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm excited to serve you, serve the audience and discover where this road winds to.

Francis Gorman (01:04.004)
It's a fabulously windy road, Dov. You shared with me before the show a special report that you've ordered called Transhumanism and the Silicon Soul. That is Transhumanism and the Silicon Soul. And one thing when I read it, as I told you before, I thought you might have been crazy. just to give the audience a flavor.

DovBaron.com (01:27.971)
Just to qualify before you go any further. I am crazy. So whatever conclusion you can do after that, it's okay.

Francis Gorman (01:34.168)
Just to give the listeners, I suppose, a bit of a flavour of what that report is, it basically explores the accelerating convergence of humans in technology and then coins the phrase of transhumanism and warns that while the benefits may be revolutionary, the risk of losing our humanity is profound. You argue that as AI, biotechnology and neural augmentation advances, leaders must safeguard emotional intelligence.

edicts and human values. And I did say read it and I went, I don't know if I'm aligned with this. I'm aware of Neuralink, I'm aware of a few things out there, but as I was telling you, I was in Bilbao in Spain and the channels were all in Spanish. I came to Bloomberg channel and there was some guy in Silicon Valley with a human brain cells and a silicon chip playing ping pong with them. you know, that's when I kind of said, maybe Dove has a point here. And here we are to discuss transhumanism and what that actually means.

DovBaron.com (02:33.678)
Yeah, it's the advance. mean, you just have to think for the general public, AI was nothing more than sci-fi. It was something in a sci-fi movie until just 2023. Right. And then we got chat GPT and everybody went, oh, yeah, OK. Suddenly all that stuff about prediction about taking jobs was all like suddenly became real. And this is the problem with humanity from a psychology point of view. Nothing's real until it's real.

Like we can have all the data, we can have all the input, but it doesn't really make sense until, this is the problem with, for instance, climate change, right? Well, it's fine here, it's always pissing down in Ireland, so it can't be getting too hot, it rains every day. I mean, we get three days of sunshine a year, it must be fine. No, because it's not contextual to you, it's contextual to a global change, and this is out of the thing, so.

AI is not real for most people other than at chat GPT level. But they don't realize that there's far more things involved, including, for instance, dark factories in China. There are now factories in China that have zero lights, zero humanity, entirely black in the black. They work on sensors. That's That's, you know, 10,000 jobs immediately automated by AI. Now that you listen to that and you go, yeah, okay.

but it doesn't register because your job's fine. For now, for 10 minutes.

Francis Gorman (04:07.768)
now and that is the worrying thing. When I first heard of the dark factories I think it was about probably 12 months ago the first signal I heard of them didn't really register with me then about seven months ago there was a there was a news report on one of the business channels here in Ireland and they were talking in detail around the economic impacts of these dark factories and the concern that was driving within the Chinese government and wider economy that you

What are we going to do as we displace more jobs? And it kind of dawned on me. The ethics of this is really profound, but also what it means to be human, because if we don't have purpose, what do we have?

DovBaron.com (04:48.824)
So this is, you you're bringing up a very interesting point, Francis, because you may or may not know that in the, the last, like several elections ago, Elon Musk was supporting Andrew Yang, who was running as an independent Democrat in the presidential elections. And Andrew Yang was talking about universal basic income. This was when people went,

people considered Elon to be sane. So he was backing this and understanding that we're going to need a universal basic income because people won't have jobs. And I was speaking around the world at that time and talked about, here's the problem with universal basic income. So yes, AI takes over. Yes, we have all the factories. Yes, it can do lawyers, can do accounting, it can do all the things that we think of.

But if we get up in the morning and we don't have any purpose, that's a problem psychologically. And the destruction of humanity will be based not on whether the Terminator is coming to get us, we will self-destruct without purpose, without meaning. Because human beings need meaning, it is a primary driver in us. And so now you've got two levels of problem. You've got people without meaning and purpose, number one.

And number two, you've got people dependent on governments for universal basic income. Well, basically you're just saying, here's all my power because now I can't travel unless you give me the money. Now I can't eat unless you give me the money. I can't leave my town. I can't buy a new sofa. I can't buy a new whatever because I am now dependent upon the government. And so a lot of like Republicans talk about the fear of socialism. Well, AI is ultimate socialism.

When it takes over, it's ultimate socialism. It makes all the other versions of socialism seem like, that was a fluffy version. We need purpose and meaning.

Francis Gorman (06:53.346)
We need purpose and meaning. I think the one thing that always amuses me when I look at this picture, if I stand back and do the wood from the trees view of the world and I go, okay, so nobody has a job and all the money is with the tech companies and we still need to eat and have shelter and all of the things Maslow called out in this hierarchy of needs just to survive. But if nobody has money, who pays for all the stuff that keeps the...

DovBaron.com (07:11.598)
Mm-hmm.

Francis Gorman (07:21.672)
circular economy going. it's kind of like, that's the question, it's like the chicken and egg question that I have, you know, and I haven't got an answer to it by the way.

DovBaron.com (07:29.378)
And that's a very, and that's very valid. So that is the problem, right? So there will be more wealth. There's no doubt about that. AI will create an economy of wealth that it will be vast, but you won't have it. And when I say you, I'm talking about you, me, people listening, watching us, we won't have it. It's not gonna be with us. It's going to be with, now let's just be clear here. Most of these tech companies,

have a greater income than most nations. So just pause for a minute and take that in, right? Elon Musk was yourself at a trillion dollars, one trillion as over time from Tesla. Can you even fathom a trillion? Can you fathom a billion, let alone hundreds of billions? It's insane. And meanwhile, people in Ireland, people in England, people in America, people in Canada,

People in Australia, wherever it is, can't pay the freaking rent, can't buy food. And so all the wealth is moving into one sector. So yes, there will be massive economy, but it won't be going in your pocket. So that answers your question, where's the money going? Not to you is the answer, not to you. And so this is why, as you talked about in that article, in that report, it's...

Francis Gorman (08:47.564)
really.

DovBaron.com (08:53.708)
We have to look at what is our moral and ethical compass. We're very driven to innovate and make new things, that's great. But to do so without a moral compass is to become Oppenheimer when he made the bomb and he says, I have become death. It's the realization, shit, I was very excited about this, but I've created something that's going to eat me alive.

Francis Gorman (09:25.228)
when you align it to Oppenheimer and the creation of atomic weapon, is kind of frightening to visualize at least. that kind of makes me asked of, so let's say we get to this state of transhumanism that promises enhancement in cognitive ability, health, in, I don't know, our athleticism, whatever it may be.

DovBaron.com (09:40.654)
DovBaron.com (09:49.518)
Mm-hmm.

Francis Gorman (09:51.425)
Who's going to decide what better actually means in that sense? it going to be some weird subscription model where the wealth you get to pay as you go upgrade? know, I got intelligence and all of the above, but, you know, the second tier down has to play adverts every 10 minutes and stop something like one of those creepy movies out there. Like who gets to what this actually means for us?

DovBaron.com (10:13.324)
you pretty much described where it's going. That exactly is it. And that's why I saying about the need for ethics and an ethical compass. So as I talk about in that report, and I was on stage in Vegas after I wrote it, and I was sitting with a lot of AI experts who were very, very pro AI and thought it was great and wrote great books about it. Excuse me. And I said, listen, I'm not against AI.

I am pro-AI, but I want to give you this understanding, and this is for you listening too. I don't know how old you are as you listen to this, I don't know how old you are, Francis, but you may be old enough to remember the time before the internet. I'm old, I remember it, okay? I remember it and I remember people talking about what it was going to be. And we were very excited about it.

And then the internet came along and you may remember the old AOL and it would start with, and you'd watch the page load and you'd be excited to see this shitty picture load on the screen. And that was the beginning of the internet. And then it was gonna be internet 2.0, which was going to have moving images. And we were very excited about that, right? And I personally was very excited about it. I thought this is gonna be great because this is gonna be the town hall of the world.

People will be able to speak their truths. A lot of stuff that's been hidden will become forward and it will be marvelous and we'll get at this. And then I go, okay, now let's go to today. You can't say the word suicide. You can't say that on YouTube, right? You can't say, Murdy, have to say unalived. You can't even say alcohol, you have to say no, no, juice, right? You have to say all these stupid, stupid censored words. So,

Did the internet give us freedom of speech? No, it actually put us back to 1950 something, right? It made it more sensitive than ever. And now also on that understanding, think about this, how much damage has it done to our children who now have lost their attention abilities, we know intelligence is going down in the world since COVID, emotional intelligence has gone down in the world. Like all these things like,

DovBaron.com (12:34.414)
the damage is enormous. We all see that, right? We all can see that. There's a million books been written on it. We all understand it. So now I say to you, you can see that, right? You can see from the beginning of the internet to today, how much damage there's been done. A lot of good stuff, not taking that away, but there's been some damage. And they go, yeah, a lot of damage. Great. Now let's take our time machine. Let's go back to just before, and you and I get to set some guidelines about the internet.

What guidelines do we put in place? We're not going to stop the internet. We want it, but we need to have guidelines. And you immediately will say, well, we need this and we need this and we need this. And you will come up with 20, 30, 100 guidelines to put in place so we get the benefits of the internet, but not the problems. Why the hell are we not doing that with AI? We can already see the damage of the internet and AI is going to be a million fold.

I'm very in favor of AI. People think, I'm going to talk into it. No, I'm absolutely in favor of it. The problem is the lack of guidelines. And when the meeting was in France about, about artificial intelligence, the only two countries that didn't sign off were England and America. Why? Because they didn't want to lose the capital edge. Well, here's the news. China's already ahead of you. You think they're not, your propaganda says they're not. They're already ahead of you. And they're actually installing guidelines.

including the fact that their kids can't go on a lot of the social media. Not because they're trying to keep Western influence out, but because they actually give a shit about their kids.

Francis Gorman (14:14.244)
That is the thing that I actually love. So TikTok in China, if you look at the content that they push to the kids, it's science, it's mathematics, it's all of these things. And then you've got the Western kids and they're looking at some guy trying to shoot a beer bottle off some guy's head or something. It's worlds apart and they're curtailed on those apps. can't go on TikTok in China for...

DovBaron.com (14:34.176)
Exactly.

Francis Gorman (14:40.92)
10 hours at night, I can't remember exactly what it is, but it's curtailed, it kills you, it kills it off. You can't do it. you only have to look at that picture in terms of the cognitive impacts that is happening versus what's happening in the West where people can't hold a conversation, they can't communicate, the emotional intelligence level is low, so they can't read the room and understand that you're after pissing off those two guys over there.

DovBaron.com (14:43.65)
get kicked off. Yeah.

Francis Gorman (15:06.104)
And this guy didn't like you the minute you walked in and you've got one friend, so need to own him and get everyone else back on site. They can't do that, you know? And you'll see, I'm sure you're seeing it in the States now, people won't pick up the phone and make a call anymore. They'll send an IM, they'll send a text message, they'll send an email, they'll send 15 emails, you know, still won't get a response and the job still doesn't get done. But nobody thinks of actually calling the guy or the girl at the far side of the phone and going, how do we fix this?

DovBaron.com (15:11.64)
Right? No.

DovBaron.com (15:33.016)
And again, that's the lack of emotional intelligence you were talking about. You're absolutely right. And so without these guardrails in place, we're not going to get better. But what I can tell you is, because talking about this income and the money and all the rest of it, is those guardrails are not coming. Those guardrails are not coming. What I mean by that is we cannot rely on the tech companies to put them in place. So we have to put them in place for ourselves. The problem with that is human beings

We have the top two addictions of all human beings. What would you think they are? What would you guess, Renzlis?

Francis Gorman (16:10.444)
wealth, self-preservation, greed, self-preservation.

DovBaron.com (16:12.504)
So greed and what?

So the two, number two, the top two addictions of all human beings, number one is identity. We will die for our identity. If I say to what's the most important thing in life? You might say, well, love and my family and all the rest of it. And I go, and I said, no, what's the number one? You go, okay. Well, I guess it's life itself, right? Like that's the most important thing in life is you gotta be alive to enjoy life. Okay, if that's true, why do people strap bombs to themselves and blow themselves up? When you go, I don't know.

I do, it's identity. I'm identified with being a martyr, so I'm gonna blow myself up. That identity has been drilled into that person, so they do it. So number one addiction is identity. That's a whole different subject, that's my specialty area with the emotional source code work that I do. Whether it's with a company or an individual or even a nation. I did the one, the emotional source code of England, I wrote that, and I did the profile of the emotional source code of America and did that. And it blew people's minds because

we're driven by one to five words as a nation. It's amazing. Every country has it. understanding that we're driven first of all by identity, what's the second addiction?

Comfort, ease, convenience, same word played out differently. Amazon isn't the cheapest place to buy things, but it is the most convenient place to buy things. It's what blew it up, it's convenient. Like, you know, why would I get in my car and go out and walk in the rain to go in the store and actually talk to a human being while I try on this outfit? I'll just send for these three outfits and send two back, right? It's convenience. And as we get more and more convenience,

DovBaron.com (18:01.186)
we get more and more isolated. We stop interacting with other human beings. We're not even phoning up and saying, you know, I want to send this back. So you're talking to a human being. No, no, you just push a button and it prints out a label and you send it back. So we're becoming more and more isolated. This is the challenge. It's convenience. So we don't put the guardrails in place because, well, it's convenient. Well, Amazon are bending you over and are stealing your livelihood and it won't pay anybody decently and you're still supporting them.

Do you like Jeff Bezos? No. Do you like what Amazon's doing? No. How many packages did you have delivered this month? only about 30.

Okay, convenience.

Francis Gorman (18:43.308)
convenience, is identity and convenience. When you extrapolated up to a layer, I would have said the chase and wealth or greed or self preservation that you don't become the next guy to fall down or whatever, but no, identity and comfort. And if we push on that, Dov, so okay, modern world likes convenience, so self-driving cars are gonna come.

DovBaron.com (19:07.052)
Who?

Francis Gorman (19:12.364)
they're probably going to eradicate taxi drivers, bus drivers, lorry drivers, you a large portion of the economy, assuming to ban all of the human drivers that will not drive into the self-driving cars because how can you have the two side by side? That's going to become an interesting dilemma. But as we become more comfortable, we become less functional. So how are businesses of the future going to operate?

DovBaron.com (19:15.981)
Of course.

DovBaron.com (19:38.318)
This is the whole idea behind AI. So this is, and I wrote about this in the report, as you know. So I am very prolific. I write two articles a week. I write one article a week. I, let me just be clear, I, not AI, write two articles a week. I write an article for LinkedIn, and I write an article for DoveBaron.com. Right, you can find it on Curious Chronicles. Now, those articles are about 2,000 words.

There are many, many hours that I put into writing those articles.

I write lots of books, I do all these kinds of things. And as well as the special reports that you've talked about. The challenge is this, and I put this forward, is who am I writing the books for? I used to write the books for my audience. But now am I writing for my audience's bots? So what happens is there are people who are saying, you know, I don't have time, so I'm gonna get a bot to write the article. So John says, I'm gonna get a bot to write my article.

It writes the article, so AI writes the article. Who comments on the article? Other people's bots. So now we're producing content made by AI for comments from AI. Dead in the water. Dead in the water, there's nothing going on. So meanwhile, people are thinking they have influence and they have power and they're making a significant impact on the other human beings. No, you're not. You're writing for AI and you're being commented on by AI.

and you've got 1000 likes and isn't this wonderful? No, because how many real people actually read it? How many real people? When I look at mine, I've got to be honest, when I look at mine, you know, there's 40 comments on there on an article I wrote on LinkedIn. And I actually know exactly how many people are human. I can read the difference and they look pretty good. Don't get me wrong. It's not like they're screaming AI, but I know the difference. One of the things is

DovBaron.com (21:40.046)
There's a specific length of an AI message. There's a specific lack of verbs. There's a specific, it's fascinating when you start analyzing like, oh yeah, looks good. But I can see that that's AI. So this is the problem that you're talking about is who are we producing for? And so on the other side of it that we're talking about the good stuff is AI will augment us. And if you don't like the idea of that, if you wear glasses, you're augmented.

Everything's an argument. If you wear a hearing aid because you're older or because you lost your hearing in some way, you're augmented. We're augmented. If you had a heart attack and you had a heart valve put in, you're augmented. This is a whole other level of that. It's expanding that out. But the challenge becomes augmented because augmentation was to make your life better. But if you're only in your room with a screen, how is your life better?

What's the quality of your life then?

Francis Gorman (22:43.832)
I don't think we're gonna make the world better. It reminds me of something that I've always had with me and it's the phrase, I'm not sure you've heard this, it's hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times. And I feel like we're in the latter end of that right now. But I don't think the hard times are gonna go away once we go over the cliff edge.

DovBaron.com (23:09.632)
No, I mean, looking at it from a place of global politics, we can see this, right? I mean, who in their right mind would have ever predicted that Germany would swing hard right? I mean, if all the countries in the world, right? And people go, you know, well, can see it with, no, hold on, forget America, forget Britain. Let's just go with, let's just go with Germany because they had the hardest lesson

The strongest, most profound lesson in what happens when you go hard right. You become the scourge of the earth. They're going hard right. It's a very likelihood that the next leader will be a hard right leader. What does that tell you, as you and I were talking about earlier? It's not that history repeats itself, it's that human beings are lazy and we don't pay attention. So we repeat the history. So will it make us go off the edge and then change?

No, I think that we do have to go off the edge. As I think you know, Francis, that in June 1990, I fell off a mountain and got smashed to pieces. I fell 120 feet. And people say, that must have really changed you. My answer is, no, it didn't. And they go, what? I go, ask your friend who had a triple bypass heart attack. When they were in the bed, they said, my God.

You know, this is terrible, this terrible thing. I've missed my wife, I've missed my family. I missed the anniversaries, I missed the school things, whatever it was. I'm gonna change. Then bump into that person six or eight months later, what are they doing? They're doing the same shit they were doing before. And you go, I thought you were gonna change. Yeah, you know, it's just who I am. Identity, the return to the addiction. This is just who I am. No, it's not, that's your choice. You go back to what's familiar because what's familiar,

is comfortable. we're back to comfort again, identity and comfort. So we go back to that. It's familiar, familiar coming from the Latin familius, meaning family. It's just what I learned, what I got used to. Normal isn't healthy. Normal is just whatever I got used to. So now we've got comfort, familiarity and identity. Repeat the cycle. So when I fell off the mountain and people would say to me, how you doing? I'd say, I'm great. I'm coming back with my jaw wired closed.

DovBaron.com (25:31.192)
could barely speak. 11 reconstructive surgeries to put me back together. I'm great, I'm coming back. That was an identity statement because I was born in Northern England. I was born in a ghetto. grew up with violence and crime and addiction and abuse and all those things around me. I went on and became a martial artist. I became a boxer. I started businesses on different continents. I got up, moved and went to another continent, traveled, did all kinds of wild and wonderful things. You can't keep me down.

You can't knock me down. I'm going to get back up. That's just ego. That was identity. It wasn't until nine months after I fell. That's when the change took place. When I fell on the floor in a deep dark depression and found myself weeping in my living room and realized, shit, I'm dead. Who I was is dead. And I think that that's a great metaphor, not only for the psychological patterns of humans, but of humanity. What is the cliff we have to fall off?

to say something has to change. But here's what you need to know is that when humanity falls off the cliff, most people will just go, how do we get back to normal? When COVID happened, one of the major posts I did that went quite viral was I said, I'm terrified of what's gonna happen. And people were like, yeah, because it's gonna wipe up people. I'm like, because everybody keeps saying, when are we gonna get back to normal? Normal was shit.

We don't want to go back to normal. We want something better. And what we've done is created something much worse. In the pursuit of normal, we've actually gone hard right. We've done a lot of these crazy things that we're doing right now. We've got extreme AI without guardrails. We've got the rise of the right. We've got technocracies happening around the world. This is things we have to consider. So the fact of the matter is change is painful.

Change is painful. We all see this idea of enlightenment, but enlightenment is a destructive process. can't, it's not possible for you to become the phoenix without the fire. Shit has to burn down in order for you to rise up. But we're all clinging to these broken pieces of who we were. I know I did it. Rather than saying it has to change.

Francis Gorman (27:58.489)
I think Dove, you're after hitting on multitudes of human, I suppose, intricacies there. But for me, I think the majority of people have no idea where we're headed and they don't care because it doesn't impact them right now. I think this is going to, when this lands, it's going to be slow and fast all at the same time. You you're going to come in someday and it's kind of over. Yeah. And

DovBaron.com (28:21.42)
It'll creep up and then it'll be over. Yep, you're right.

Francis Gorman (28:28.47)
And when it's over, there is no going back to a normal, even if normal was shit.

DovBaron.com (28:34.41)
Nope, you're absolutely right. There's no going back. That's not how it works. And even at a government governmental level, the more power you give to the government, they never give it back. They this is an emergency thing. OK, well, there's no emergency now. Well, hold on. Well, we're not giving that back.

Francis Gorman (28:53.09)
Well, let's play that one out. So if the government relies on the people to vote the main and the people are now influenced by the technology and the technology is owned by six or seven people at the top of the tree, will we still have functional political systems?

DovBaron.com (29:10.156)
No, of course not. Democracy is a hoodwink game. Democracy presumes that every person has the same value in their vote. But if you're living in a bubble that is supported by an algorithm built by somebody who's building their own wealth and doesn't give a shit about you, you're not voting for anything you care about. We know this, United States in the last election,

the majority of working class people voted against their own best interests. Like how do you even fathom that? That is insane, insane. Why would people do that? Those same people, by the way, in fairness to them, I'm not judging them, because in fairness to them, they're going, my God, I voted for this and I've got that and I'm now bankrupt. And when I say working people, I'm talking about working rich, meaning they're not wealthy as in, you know, the lords and ladies with

15 generations of wealth. I'm about people who owned farms that have been in the family for three generations that are million dollar, million, five million, 20 million dollar farms that were exporting goods or were growing beef or whatever it might be and suddenly they're bankrupt. And then they voted because they went, well this particular president is gonna take care of us. No, that's not gonna happen. So even if you have

what's called a functioning democracy. It's not the democracy that counts, it's not the vote that counts, it's the influence on the vote that counts. We're looking at the wrong end of the stick. We're looking at, well, look at, know, the people, know, America got the president it deserved, right? Hungary got the leader it deserved, Poland got the leader it deserved, whoever it was, right? Hold on a second. That may be how people voted, but what was the influence?

And that's when we come right back to algorithms and AI. And algorithms and AI are not neutral. That would be one of the guardrails. They're not neutral. It's actually one of the things I like about Grok, which is Elon Musk's AI. It thinks Elon Musk's, I don't know if I can say this, it thinks Elon Musk is a twat. If you ask it things about Elon Musk, it calls him out for what he is. I think that's pretty great.

DovBaron.com (31:35.438)
But most AI isn't going to do that. It's just not going to do that. It's not going to call its owner out. It's not going to call its master, its overlord out for being an idiot or being a rudderless individual who's lacking empathy or compassion.

Francis Gorman (31:56.237)
What worries me most about Elon, I suppose, Elon was the guy who went to Obama and said, AI is not going to be in everyone's interest. You need to regulate it. They didn't listen to him. He went and publicly said, I am worried about these things that, you know, AI may not be aligned with our best interest and therefore could lead to an event that could possibly lead to the end of humanity as we know today. You know, everyone looked at him said, yeah,

DovBaron.com (32:20.013)
Mm-hmm.

DovBaron.com (32:23.566)
Mm-hmm.

Francis Gorman (32:26.104)
Okay, Elon, you're being a bit crazy. And then it gets to the point where he said, okay, now I need to play the game. And he went all in. He spent billions in the last two or three years just building XAI and GROK and, you know, potentially plugged into the government systems and sucked all the data out on this as well, if you read between the lines of some of those reports. But again, if he was so concerned and now he's playing the game, he's playing the game because he needs to get there first.

DovBaron.com (32:32.076)
Yep. Absolutely.

DovBaron.com (32:45.207)
Of course.

DovBaron.com (32:55.502)
Well, the answer is you're either playing the game at the top, at the very top, or you will get eaten by whatsoever at the top. And you and I can't compete. You and I can't compete in that world. Like, know, Elon can compete because he's got hundreds of billions of dollars. We can't compete. So the only thing we can do is while we still have a voice that can echo our moral and ethical compass, we must do so. And we must do so.

And part of that, you know, so a lot of stuff going on in the United States, as you know, at this time, and they had the no Kings rallies, which you may be familiar with. And I wrote about those and I said that no Kings rallies are fantastic. They just have to happen every Saturday. For years and they'll work, they will work. You'll get rid of this and you'll change minds. But having one every three months doesn't really work. It's kind of like, yeah, it's a blip. Doesn't really matter.

And it's this consistency that we need to fight against things. But again, as you and I just talked about earlier, nothing's real till it's real. So it's like, yeah, that's going on over there, but I got to make the kids breakfast and I got to get to work. And so yeah, it's all craziness. And on top of that, please remember that those algorithms are also set to put you into cognitive overload. I wrote about this in one of my articles on DoveBaron.com, where I talked about Trump's first three months.

And I said, it's designed for cognitive overload. It's designed so that you just go, you throw your arms in the air and you go, that's it. I can't watch anymore because there's new crazy shit every day, twice a day, 15 times a day, who the hell knows? So I'm going to stop listening. And the minute you stop doing that, and I'm not, I understand, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying you shouldn't do it, but the minute you stop paying attention, they can do whatever they want. And so it's a rising consciousness that we need.

That's the revolution that's needed is a conscious revolution, a willingness to say, I will feel, I'm willing to let myself feel. Listen, AI is bloody brilliant. There's no doubt about it, but it can't replicate our emotions. And your feelings are what's driven everything. It's driven your marriage, it's driven your relationships, it's procreation, it's driven innovation, it's driven everything.

DovBaron.com (35:23.316)
Emotion has even driven us to create AI. It's emotion. That's why the emotional source code is such important work. Because once you understand the emotional drivers in you, you can tap into those to drive you and your moral compass and your purpose and your meaning to have a life that matters where you can have impact. But you can only do that if you stay connected to your emotion. And more importantly, if you stay connected.

to your curiosity, because that fuels your emotion, positive emotion.

Francis Gorman (35:56.535)
Talk to me a little bit about emotional and the emotional source chord aspects. What does that actually mean? Can you bring that to life for me in terms of the listeners and someone who's not familiar with this kind of language or this concept? I know it's quite unique to what you do, Dov. So can you bring it to life to me and maybe we'll just sprinkle in what it will mean going forward as things start to change.

DovBaron.com (36:18.734)
Thank you for asking, Francis, I appreciate it. we've all had the experience of wanting to change a behavior, right? It was like, oh, I have this behavior, I wish I could change it. And then we maybe get a therapist or we work with a coach or whatever it is, change that behavior and we might even have some success with it. But does it stick? No, it never sticks. So it's like, okay, well, why didn't it stick? I really was doing good for three months there. I didn't eat a donut for three months, what happened, right? Okay.

Well, it's not really the behavior. The behavior is the top tip of the iceberg that shows to you. What's driving the behavior is the question. What's driving the behavior are beliefs and values. And values are really a paradigm of beliefs. Beliefs that cluster together to create a value system. So you have these values and these beliefs in place that drive the behavior. okay, Dov, so I've got to...

I've got to look at my beliefs and my values. Yes, so you look at that and you go, okay. And now I've changed the behavior and look, it's stuck a little longer, but it didn't stick. Why didn't it stick? Because now let's go from the other side. So that's the top two levels of the emotional source code. Now we'll go to the bottom level and then I'll bring it all together. The bottom level of the emotional source code is the emotional source code itself. It's the foundation. Now what that means is it's the milieu. It's the environment you grow up in.

So this is why two children, let's say identical twins, can be incredibly different because they didn't have the same childhood. And you go, well, they did. No, subjectively they didn't. So what does that mean? It means something happens in my environment and I go, what does this mean? Next level of the emotional source code is called the anatomy of meaning. It's the meaning I give to the situation I'm in.

And that meaning is based on one thing and one thing only, safety. What does this mean in terms of my safety? It means that that slight weird look from my mother when she's had two drinks means I'm in shit, things are gonna go south. All right, so I gotta watch out for that. I work out that meaning. Now my sibling looks at that and makes a different meaning. Right, or we're poor, it means this.

DovBaron.com (38:41.036)
We don't have enough food on the table. It means that we give it meaning. That's the subjective meaning. It's not truth, but it is small t truth. It's subjective truth. So we've got the environment you grew up in. That's the emotional source code itself. Then the anatomy of meaning, the meaning I give the environment in order for me to survive. And in order for me to survive, I have to determine an identity. This is who I am. That's the third level, and that's the most important level.

That's the piece in the middle, as I said, that that's the addiction. This is who I am. We will fight for who we are. This is who I am. You go on personal development programs, you take a training, you do really well, you're feeling really good, you come home and you're talking about something and somebody says, you've really changed. And you go, no, I haven't. Why the hell are you saying no, I haven't? Why aren't you saying thank you? Because it challenged your identity. That's how strong this is, even though you want the change.

you will fight to stay the same. Out of that identity comes the beliefs and the values and then the behaviors. So that's the stack of the five. We try and change things from the top, which is behavior, but that's like cutting the top off of the iceberg, cutting the top off the weed. doesn't work. It's got to go to the roots. We've got to get to the anatomy of meaning. We've got to look at what the identity is. Now, the interesting thing about that is human beings have this, groups have this, nations have this.

So as an example, because you and I were talking a little bit of pre-politics before we came on, because you grew up in Ireland and I was born in England and lived there until I was 20. So.

I'm going to ask you, Francis, to guess. If you could say a single word, maybe even three words that you think might be the emotional source code of England. Now let's remember this because I want to just tell this to everybody because you're going to, if I say, what's your emotional source code, you're going to think about the last 10 minutes or the last two years or whatever it is. No, no, this is going all the way back. What is this driving force?

DovBaron.com (40:53.548)
If you wonder three words of how you would say what England is, and that means what it sees itself as, drives it, what would you guess that would be? What might you guess?

Francis Gorman (41:05.432)
to be careful not to get myself in trouble here now. it's... Three words.

DovBaron.com (41:07.404)
That's alright, you can get yourself in trouble. I'm constantly in trouble.

DovBaron.com (41:13.631)
One to three words, it could be one word.

Francis Gorman (41:15.446)
Imperialism probably stands out there. Now don't forget I'm coming from an Irish perspective here so...

DovBaron.com (41:22.23)
That's why I want you to do it. That's essentially why I want you to do it because you're coming from an Irish birth, right? So imperialism, but is there anything that predates imperialism?

Francis Gorman (41:34.713)
See, the English one is interesting. So from an Irish perspective, it's always been, if we're playing England, you beat England. You don't want to lose to England on the field because we lost to them during the 800 years of tyranny and destruction. And there's that thing. But I work with an awful lot of English colleagues. have a great love for England. I spent quite a bit of time in London. I don't hold any resentment.

DovBaron.com (41:58.466)
cost.

Francis Gorman (42:04.248)
But it's funny you say that because I was watching a show on Northern Ireland, which is obviously still within the United Kingdom. And we were talking about a United Ireland on this show. And one of the suggestions was to change the Irish flag. And they held up a flag with the red hand in the middle of it, the Irish flag with the red hand in the middle of it. And something happened inside of me that I couldn't look at it. And it makes no sense because I associate Ireland with the

DovBaron.com (42:04.73)
of course.

Francis Gorman (42:31.938)
green, white and gold, the Irish flag. But when you put that red hand in the middle of it, it was almost as if you'd, I don't know if I can even describe it, but it created something emotive.

DovBaron.com (42:40.376)
what you're talking about. No, but you see, this is great, Francis, because what you're talking about is your emotional source code. You say, I don't know what it is, because it's so deep. This is what emotional source code is. It's so deep, it doesn't have rationale to it. It has something called emotional logic. And it's this, this absoluteness, right? So if we go back to what you said about England being imperialism, what is the impetus of imperialism?

The impetus of imperialism will tell you what the emotional source code of England is. And the word is superior. We're better than that's why we were imperialist. We're just going to go there and make them better. And that was that's so so I was talking about this in an interview I did during COVID. And I said, the British government didn't come to me. But if they'd have come to me and said, how do get people to take the vaccine in England? It would have been very easy. How?

We go on, know, whoever goes on TV and says, listen, we're English. We've always led the world. We know we've got to show people what to do. You know, we're not, better than all this squabbling about these things. We have to be the example to the world. And because we're the example to the world, we need to take the vaccine and show other people it's safe. And a shit ton of Brits would have showed up and done it just with the same level of reaction as you had to the red hand.

no rationale to it, it's called emotional logic. It's a singular driving force. You want to know what America's is? What do you guess America's is?

Francis Gorman (44:13.782)
Now I'm just going say greed.

DovBaron.com (44:14.218)
One word. That began, but now you're looking at present. Remember, you got to go all the way back.

Francis Gorman (44:21.922)
When are we back?

Francis Gorman (44:26.562)
Well, if you go all the way back, America is quite relatively new country in terms of trying to establish its identity. So, you know, it's got that mismatch of all the different cultural influences in there.

DovBaron.com (44:39.0)
From where?

Francis Gorman (44:41.688)
Opportunity, freedom.

DovBaron.com (44:51.372)
What's the word?

Freedom. No opportunity without freedom. Freedom. You're familiar with Martin Luther King, I'm sure. You're familiar with his famous speech. What was the name of that speech?

Francis Gorman (45:01.73)
Very much so.

DovBaron.com (45:10.094)
I have a dream. Everybody knows, right? I have a dream, right? Okay. Now let me ask you, which word was said more, freedom or dream? Freedom was, almost two to one. I have a dream that one day, right? All that beautiful speech, and then he says, let freedom reign. Let freedom reign. It's repeated and echoed over and over. That's what made it powerful. Not I have a dream. It's the emotional source code word of freedom.

that made it work. When you know the emotional source code of yourself, when you know the emotional source code of your organization, which most companies don't, they bring me in, they're like, wow. And we always get to the same place, which is, wow, of course. It's not, yes, you're right. It's wow, of course. Once they understand that, they start tapping into that and they become a far more powerful company. The culture gets very rich. People become very bonded to it. It's the same with nations. So again, if I'm

If I was brought into America during COVID to say, well, how do we get people to take the vaccine? OK, very simple. We go on TV and we say, listen, we're Americans. We're not supposed to be locked inside. This doesn't make sense to us. It's against our very nature. We are people of freedom. We're supposed to be out there. We're supposed to be out in our jeeps driving around in the countryside. We're supposed to be having these experiences. We can't do that locked up here. We have to get the vaccines. have to get out. We have to be free again. Americans would sign up.

Once you know the emotional source code of a nation, of an organization, of an individual, you find out what's actually driving them at an unconscious level, what pulls their emotional logic. So that red hand is the, and I'll tell you why, by the way, because of your emotional source code as an average man, it's very simple. That red hand is oppression. That's what the word is. That's what the word is that the counter driver.

for Irish people is oppression, right? So that red hand on the flag is fuck off. You want to oppress us? No way. That's like instant reaction. Hell no, right? Because that's the red hand of England. That's oppression. Bugger off, we're not interested.

Francis Gorman (47:24.404)
It's absolutely fascinating, Dobbin. I feel like we could go on for another hour or two just talking about this and wrangling it. And we've touched on so many variants of the topic there from introduction of transhumanism and what that means for us at the age of AI and the almost silent creep of technology as the underbelly that may consume us all one day. People are probably going to listen to this conversation and think we're both crazy, but we can replay it back in three or four years time and see how on the money we were.

DovBaron.com (47:52.142)
Oh, you know what's interesting? You know what's interesting, Francis? Play it back in three or four months. It's not years anymore. It might even be weeks. It might even be days. And you'll be like, oh shit, because it becomes, nothing's real until it's real for you.

Francis Gorman (47:59.96)
Terrifying.

Francis Gorman (48:18.232)
And it's, I have to say, I have been craving imperfection lately. I love an owl's felon mistake, or a bit of poor grammar, or a stumble on something that doesn't quite make sense and you have to read it a few times. It's the perfectionism that we're now being presented with. I think this is what you hit on earlier when you talked about you write and sit down and spend time writing your own posts. And you said, now you're writing for the bots. that's particularly interesting because you're the second guest on the show.

this month that no longer writes for humans in their perspective. They're writing for the next AI to consume it and to take it and regard to it.

DovBaron.com (48:57.568)
I am writing very much for the humans. That's all my stuff is written for humans, but I understand it's the bots who are reading it. can't get around that. I know that they're reading it and I have to make sure that the right language patterns are in there that AI will recognize. But my stuff is evocative because I know humans are reading it. I want humans to read it. And so, you know, it doesn't score well in a lot of the AI algorithms.

Francis Gorman (49:04.408)
The bots that are reading it, yeah.

DovBaron.com (49:26.636)
And I'm okay with that because it scores well with human beings. And this is what we've all got to do. And by the way, Francis, this is why your podcast is good is because it's human. There's a lot of non-human podcasts now, by the way, but here you are as a human stumbling over words or saying thing, pronouncing it slightly incorrectly or having a pause in the wrong place or whatever it might be. And suddenly it's like, yeah, that, I mean, I'm we are.

human beings are pulled to human beings. We're not, as you just said, we're not pulled to perfection. It's the bizarrest thing in the world. We're driven to be perfect and we don't like it. We actually don't like it. It's like, something about him is too polished, too slick. I remember sitting down with a coach who was coaching me about 35 years ago and the coach said to me,

get rid of that suit. And I said, what do you mean? It's a beautiful suit. It's bespoke. And they go, get rid of it. And they go, why? That's not you. That's too slick. You're not the slick guy, but that suit says you're slick. And so when you walk on the stage, I'm expecting slick. And I go, well, isn't that good? Cause I'm contradicting that. And they go, no, cause you've already put people off. People don't want perfect. They want relatable. And that's what you're doing here.

You're making it relatable. You're talking about these big subjects in a very relatable way, and that's why it works.

Francis Gorman (51:05.718)
Tov, thanks very much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk to some of these big subjects with me and to try and break down the complexities and to link it back to the exact thing that makes us human, which is our emotional source code and how we interact with the world we live in. It was a real pleasure having you on and thank you for taking the time to speak with me today.

DovBaron.com (51:27.426)
Thank you, sir. It was a pleasure and honor. I'm grateful. And for anybody who wants to know, you can find me at DoveBaron.com. And aside from that, you know, I really want to know what you got out of this. And I want you to let Francis know. The guy puts the time in the end. He thanked me and I appreciate that. But you put the time in. I have a podcast. I know what it takes. They put the time in the energy. Make sure that you go and you hit that subscribe button. Make sure that you follow him. Make sure you leave a comment. Let him know what you got out of this podcast or any other episode.

and share it with your friends. Man, this is a one way street. Guy's putting in the energy and the effort and never even knowing if you're listening. Maybe some bloody bot's listening. Like tell him that, no, I'm not a bot. I listened and it was really good. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time to put this in. Guy finishes a day of work, comes home from work and then has to sit there and record with me in his evening. Right? That guy's putting that effort in. Recognize that value that human beings need validation. We need recognition and we need to know that

What we're doing has meaning, what we talked about before. So get into that by doing this. Subscribe, let him know you value today.

Francis Gorman (52:33.88)
I think I'm going to steal that as my prequel to the podcast of beautiful, beautiful, beautiful ending. Thanks. Thanks very much to taking the time out. And thanks again to all the listeners. I expect this one will generate some some commentary and hopefully will trigger people to take a step back and think a bit about what's happening around them. Thank you.

DovBaron.com (52:38.114)
Please do.

DovBaron.com (52:54.979)
Thank you.