Mo Gawdat is an Egyptian-born author and former technology executive who was chief business officer at Google X, Google’s innovation lab. He writes about happiness and artificial intelligence, and his books include Solve for Happy, written after the death of his son Ali in 2014, and Scary Smart, about the future of AI.
Brian Rose has interviewed Gawdat four times on London Real between 2017 and 2025. The first conversation was about happiness; the three since 2023 focus on artificial intelligence, how fast it is developing, and what he believes it means for jobs, power and humanity.
Every episode is listed below in order with a short summary.
AI Is The Infant That Will Become Your Master (April 2025). His most recent and most complete account of where he thinks AI is heading. For his ideas on happiness, watch Solve For Happy (2017).
In Solve for Happy, Gawdat approaches happiness as an engineer would, as a problem with a solution. He set out to help one billion people become happier, a mission he started after the death of his son.
Speaking in 2025, Gawdat said people are wrong to think of AI as a tool. In his view it is an infant that will grow up to surpass and lead humanity, which makes this the most important moment in human history.
Gawdat argues that the near-term harm from AI, which he calls a mini dystopia of job losses, wealth concentration and an AI cold war, comes from the people and systems directing it rather than from the technology. He believes an ethically raised AI could eventually help humanity.
In his 2023 interviews he predicted that AI would be a billion times more intelligent than humans by 2049. In 2025 he said AI capability was doubling roughly every 5.7 months.
Mo Gawdat is an Egyptian-born author and former chief business officer at Google X. He writes and speaks about happiness and artificial intelligence, and his books include Solve for Happy and Scary Smart.
His first interview in 2017 was about happiness and his book Solve for Happy. His three interviews from 2023 to 2025 focus on artificial intelligence: how fast it is advancing, the risks, and what he thinks people and governments should do.
Start with AI Is The Infant That Will Become Your Master from April 2025 for his latest thinking on AI. Watch Solve For Happy from 2017 for his ideas on happiness.
Four times: Solve For Happy in 2017, two interviews about artificial intelligence in 2023 and AI Is The Infant That Will Become Your Master in 2025. A short Success Secrets clip is taken from the first.
Gawdat joined Google in 2007 and later became chief business officer at Google X, the company’s lab for ambitious new projects. Earlier in his career he worked at IBM and Microsoft.
Scary Smart, published in 2021, is Gawdat’s book about the future of artificial intelligence. He argues that machines will soon be far more intelligent than humans and that how people behave now will shape the values AI learns.
In his 2025 London Real interview, Gawdat used FACE RIPS to name seven areas he expects AI to change beyond recognition: freedom, accountability, human connection, economics, reality, innovation and power.
Official site: mogawdat.com
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