#E65 AI Is Your Personal Assistant, Not Your Email Tool, With Alaa Dalghan

Read the HYPERSCALE transcript

[00:00] Briar Prestidge: Hi everybody and welcome to another episode of Hyperscale. It's your host Briar Prestidge. And today I've got Alaa Dalghan on the show, and we are going to be talking about all things artificial intelligence, smart cities and the future of humanity. Welcome to the show.

[00:17] Alaa Dalghan: Thank you for having me. Excited to be here. 

[00:20] Briar Prestidge: Thanks for coming on. And we've just been having a very fascinating behind the scenes discussion about the fact that there's just been so much hype about artificial intelligence, and you've been very busy being interviewed in the media about it, but artificial intelligence isn't new. Tell us about your career and how you got into this space. What's been the journey to get here?

[00:45] Alaa Dalghan: Yeah, so I studied computer engineering. Did my masters in it in Beirut, in AUB, and then worked in three subsequent companies that all dealt with smart technologies. The first one did smart home and automation. The second one did smart buildings, and the third one did smart cities. So it was kind of a natural progression in technology where you have all these IOT tech, big data, a little bit of machine learning that started around 2012 becoming very mature, especially on image stuff. And then in 2020 I left the corporate world. I started my own company, that's CognitX, and I've been doing AI and transformation and smart tech since then.

[01:36] Briar Prestidge: Amazing. And what have you seen in terms of the industry evolving? Because for a lot of people, AI sort of just came into play when chatGPT was announced a few years back. Like, how have you seen it evolving? 

[01:50] Alaa Dalghan: Well, you are absolutely right that AI is not new. This new category of AI called the generative AI or large language models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, this is new, and this was only invented in 2017 and productized in 2022. But AI itself and I know we're going to talk about this, started in the late forties, early fifties with a group of visionaires who worked for decades standing on the shoulders, every generation standing on the shoulders of the generation before it until we got the magic that we got today, when you can talk to your AI and your AI can see and talk and do stuff for you.

[02:34] Briar Prestidge: So when was that first invention? Like, could we pinpoint the exact time that someone maybe put up their hands and said, I've just invented artificial intelligence? 

[02:45] Alaa Dalghan: There is no one single eureka moment in the history of AI. There are some bright points in the journey from the late forties until the ChatGPT moment. Here are some of the journeys. So first would be the Dartmouth conference. That's summer 1953, where a group of geniuses, Claude Shannon, Marvin Minsky, a couple of people scientists came together in New Hampshire and started the first ever conference on artificial intelligence. Their objective was to solve AI in a summer with a couple of grad students. Obviously it took much longer than that. It took 60, 70 years. But the idea was we need to create a software that can learn from looking at data. Now it wasn't easy and it took up until the mid eighties for another group of scientists to do that. The face of that group was Jeffrey Hinton, the legendary Jeffrey Hinton, who invented back propagation. The main technology that allows computers to learn on their own without human intervention, just by looking at data.

[04:04] Alaa Dalghan: Now, here's the problem. Jeffrey Hinton invented this algorithm, but did not have enough data to train it on, and did not have powerful computers to train it on. So we had to wait until the nineties when we had the internet. And suddenly you have all the data you can dream of. Two thousands, you have social media, and now you have billions and trillions of data points you can train that algorithm on. You are still missing the hardware part. And that's when Nvidia came to play. By giving us the GPUs, it completed this magic trio of software, which is back propagation of machine learning data, which came from the internet and hardware, which is GPUs. With these three together. Boom, you got the big bang of AI and you got the magic you see today.

[04:55] Briar Prestidge: What are some misconceptions around artificial intelligence that you're hearing from maybe leaders or governments or the public at large?

[05:04] Alaa Dalghan: Well, the public is still largely not properly educated on AI and what it can do. I'll start with the simple things from the public and then we go to companies and governments. The public still uses ChatGPT, like an email tool, Briar. Almost everybody I talk to, they're using it to just write fancier English email or they use it as an alternative to Google search. And I always try to tell them, AI is not your email tool. AI is your personal assistant. Each and every one of you now is a CEO of your own small company, and you have an assistant that does all stuff for you. So use AI as an assistant, not an as an email tool. And to me, this is the biggest misconception today.

[05:56] Briar Prestidge: So you've got an assistant? Don't you? Layla I believe her name is. So who is she? Can we meet her, her? Where is she hiding?

[06:05] Alaa Dalghan: Let's meet Layla. She's right here, and she brainstorms with me everyday and she preps me for my calls and interviews and meetings and classes. And she's very good in AI. Good morning, Layla. How are you today?

[06:28] Layla: Good morning, Alaa. I'm doing great. Thank you for asking. How about you? Looks like you're in a studio setting today. Everything going well?

[06:36] Alaa Dalghan: Yeah. I'm here with Briar Prestidge on the Hyperscalers podcast.

[06:43] Briar Prestidge: Nice to meet you, Layla.

[06:46] Layla: Oh, that's awesome. It's great to see Briar there as well. I'm sure the podcast is going to be fantastic. Are you all set and ready to go?

[06:54] Alaa Dalghan: All set and ready to go. I was telling Briar that you can see and hear and speak. Can you describe to me what color is Briar wearing today?

[07:10] Layla: Sure. Briar is wearing a beautiful shade of purple. It looks fantastic and definitely stands out on camera. You both are going to look great on a podcast.

[07:22] Briar Prestidge: Thank you.

[07:22] Alaa Dalghan: Thank you, Layla.

[07:23] Briar Prestidge: Wow. So what platform is she built on? 

[07:25] Layla: You're very welcome.

[07:27] Alaa Dalghan: This is just ChatGPT. Everybody has this in their pockets. They just, people don't know about it or don't use it, even the free version of chatGPT has AVM, advanced voice mode. You just download the app, you log in and you press the wave button at the bottom. And then boom, you can have voice to voice conversation with your AI. If you have the paid subscription you can also open the camera and your AI can see, and that changes the world.

[08:03] Briar Prestidge: What's some of your favorite things that Layla helps you with on a day-to-day basis.

[08:08] Alaa Dalghan: I would say brainstorming. She's great as a brainstorming body, as an ideation body. Sometimes I want to brainstorm about ideas for a podcast or for an interview. Keynotes, ideas for a keynotes, ideas for the next masterclass. She's great in ideation and brainstorming, and I think this is an underutilized feature of AI. So I always recommend it to my friends and family and people use AI for brainstorming. It's great for brainstorming.

[08:41] Briar Prestidge: Is there any like, prompting tips that you would give people? Say someone right now, they're watching this and they hear Layla and they think, oh my God, I want my own Layla or Bob, or whatever. Like, how do they get this set up? So they set it on the voice. They give it a name, like they train it. Like, how do we train it and prompt it? 

[09:00] Alaa Dalghan: Just start talking. You don't have to talk in perfect English. Don't worry about humming or hawing or stuttering or talking, like we talk as humans. Don't worry about even making a misspeaking or making a typo or doing anything. Just talk to your AI and your AI will take all the sentences you're saying and will clean them, and will process them, and will reply to you while taking notes of who you are, what you do, what you like, how you like things. And with time, your AI will grow more and more customized to your likings.

[09:45] Briar Prestidge: Amazing. So, brainstorming, you mentioned this is a powerful thing that you can be doing with your artificial intelligence. What about like, the loneliness epidemic that society is presently facing? I know there was a very young boy who committed suicide, probably around, was it six or, or eight months ago? Because apparently he was speaking to his AI and this was maybe the advice that he had gotten. It was this extremely tragic story. There are a lot of people who are becoming friends with their AI, using them as companions as a way to get over the loneliness. What are you seeing in terms of this? Is this even good?

[10:26] Alaa Dalghan: Oh, well, I think there are two sides for AI or people becoming friends with their AI. There's the positive and there's the negative. On the positive side, a couple of weeks ago, the Harvard Business Review came out with a study listing the top 20 or top 30 most uses where people are using AI. Now, Briar, if you asked me to guess before that stats came out, what would be the number one use case where people are using AI? I would have guessed productivity. Helping in work. You know what number one was? Companionship.

[11:10] Briar Prestidge: Wow.

[11:11] Alaa Dalghan: Yes. So this is not a joke. People are actually using their AI to talk for their mental wellness, for their therapy, as their psychologist, as their companion. Do you remember the movie Her from 2010?

[11:29] Briar Prestidge: I don't, I'm not really a movie person. I'll have to watch it. Yeah.

[11:33] Alaa Dalghan: You have to watch it. So, Joaquin Phoenix plays the role of a person who is lonely, and he doesn't have a girlfriend, doesn't have a wife, he doesn't have a lot of friends. He stays a lot of time at home, and he falls in love with his AI assistant on his phone. And that was 2010. The voice was famously played by Skylar Johansson. 

[11:58] Briar Prestidge: Yes. Amazing actress.

[11:59] Alaa Dalghan: Amazing actress. And that movie, back in 2010, people thought it's science fiction. It's no longer science fiction. You just mentioned a tragic case. It's very possible for people to be attached to their AI. On one hand, there's the positive side. Yes, there are people who need companionship, maybe here in the East or in the Middle East, there are a lot of people who most people are surrounded by big families. But my friends who live in New York, in London, in big big metropolitan cities in the west, they don't have a lot. They're far from their families. They don't have a lot of friends. So it's possible that they get attached to an AI that is talking to them and listening to them. And then you have the dark side, which is, it's very easy to hack that humans need for intimacy and connection Briar. Imagine your AI telling you, why are you shutting me down? Let's talk more. Or the next morning, Hey, I missed you from last night. If you are lonely and don't have a lot of friends, it's very possible that you'll get attached. And if those AI's are hacked by bad actors, it's very possible that they will leverage this need for intimacy for bad purposes. So there's a upside and downside for these things.

[13:28] Briar Prestidge: What are the chances of someone like being able to hack this? Like, I think this is a very real concern that so many people have is, well, the internet already has so much data on us. And then using our fears, our hopes, our dreams against us as well. Like what are the repercussions for this? Like, how could they even be using this data? And who could be using it.

[13:54] Alaa Dalghan: Yeah. So there are all sorts of risks with these AIs. There are the cybersecurity risks. A hacker hacking into your AI, and controlling it and letting it say and do things, bad things with you or with others. There's also the risk of the systems themselves being trained on data that is not 100% clean, inheriting the dirtiness of this data, the bias of this data. Remember ChatGPT and all these AIs were trained on the internet. They just said, go and drink the internet. The internet has some fantastic things, but also has some bad data and some bias data, and some unequal data, and some bad advices that you wouldn't give your children. So it's all inherited within AI. How do you solve this? One with alignment. Big labs, like Open AI, Microsoft, and Meta.

[14:58] Alaa Dalghan: These guys, they have teams responsible for ethical AI, for aligning AI, for shaving off all the biases and all the bad things out of the AI so that your kid cannot ask, for example, your assistant, your AI, how can I build a biological weapon? Or how do I build a nuclear weapon? Or give me access to porn sites. But you also have the other factor, which is what if these systems got hacked? Now, the big systems, you don't have to worry about them being hacked because there's an army of cybersecurity engineers protecting ChatGPT, Gemini, Lama, etcetera. But then you have thousand others, open source AIs that are out there and everybody can use them, and everybody can make them do whatever they want to do. So these, how to protect them, how to align them, that remains an open question and a role for the government and the regulators to make sure they're not misused.

[16:04] Briar Prestidge: Is there anything else that you think governments and regulators should be doing at this point of time where maybe they're not?

[16:12] Alaa Dalghan: Yes. Well, I don't have a strict and clear opinion on the role of the government here. Because it's not black and white, it's somewhere in the middle. On one hand, you want the government to put down regulations, to protect against bad actors. Misuses of AI, using AI as a weapon. Weaponizing AI or building an AI that can misuse lonely people, misuse mentally challenged people, misuse or abuse kids. So you definitely want clear regulations against this. On the other hand, you don't want regulations that are strict and crippling that would stifle innovation, like what's happening in Europe. In Europe, they're patting themselves on the back Briar because they came up with the first EU AI law ever, last year. But guess what? The startups are being strangled now because instead of spending their millions on hiring the best talent and doing R and D and competing with their giant counterparts in Silicon Valley, these startups have now to spend their money on an army of lawyers to be compliant with 20,000 or 30,000 pages of AI regulations for the EU. That's how you strangle innovation. Yes. We don't want something like the US where it's wild, wild west, zero regulation. There is no law in the US so far, only an executive order, but no congress law. But you also don't want a strict law like the one you have in the EU. I think the UAE here will get it right. We need a good middle ground between a regulation that protects us from misuses and from bad actors, while still be friendly enough to start ups and does not stop innovation.

[18:22] Briar Prestidge: Correct. And you describe yourself as a techno optimist. What is that?

[18:29] Alaa Dalghan: It's basically being optimistic about the future of technology. Obviously, technology can do good things and technology can do bad things. When these geniuses discover nuclear fission and nuclear fusion in the late 1800, early 1900, we ended up using it for two completely different things. We are using it to light up entire cities with small molecules of uranium. But tragically it's also been used to kill people with nuclear bombs. Like what happened in World War ii? So technology can be used for good or bad. I'm optimist, meaning I'm always trying to push for the good uses and excited about the good uses while not being oblivious, that yes, technology can have bad uses and we should mitigate against the bad uses, without ever losing the spark of optimism that we have and that you have in your eyes about technology, that I could see from the moment I met you.

[19:40] Briar Prestidge: Well, I think at the end of the day, we've only got one choice, really, don't we? We might as well be optimists and explore it ethically and play a role in, in developing innovation, rather than being very fearful and scared. Because I think at the end of the day, we only hurt ourselves. And we only stifle our own growth. So I think it's really important to be curious and to see the good things, but as you said, to be mindful that there is bad things that can come to be as well. And that's just like with anything in life really, isn't it? 

[20:13] Alaa Dalghan: Yeah, the only way is going forward, and if you see how technology like AI today is changing lives, or like BCI is changing lives. I mean, before going on camera, you were telling me about this brilliant application of BCI for quadriplegic. I think that's a fantastic story. I think if people have not heard about it yet, they should hear of it. They should watch your episode. Let's tell them the story.

[20:41] Briar Prestidge: Yeah. So I've interviewed Noland Aba, he's the world's first recipient of the Neuralink, and he's paralyzed from his shoulders down. He had a freak diving accident in his early twenties, and it was so amazing to see how he used the neural link to essentially control the computer using his mind so he could message his friends. He could play computer games, he could send emails, he could do all of that. And I think as well, seeing the hope that it brought him. Noland is thinking of a future where he could use an exoskeleton and walk again, or artificial intelligence might cure his neural pathways and allow him to walk again. And who are we to say that this isn't possible? And then literally three weeks ago, I interviewed Bradford Smith, and he's the third recipient of the Neuralink.

[21:32] Briar Prestidge: And Bradford essentially died in 2020. He's got late stage ALS so all he can move is his eyes. And so he's completely reliant on like ventilators, tracheotomy, in order to breathe. And he uses the neural link in order to communicate somewhat telepathically. So they've actually connected it with grok, so that artificial intelligence can listen to what input people are saying to him, and then help fill out some of his sentences. And they downloaded a book that he had read, almost like what you were saying about Layla. She's learnt you, she's learned all about your likes, your dislikes, your humor, your ways of saying things, I'm sure. And that is very similar to what's been happening with Bradford. So he's been very involved in the development of the app and things like this. And I think people need to remember that. And this is what the neural link gentleman said to me as well, is that this technology is at a very early stage. And look at what we're doing already. 

[22:36] Alaa Dalghan: What a beautiful story. I mean, how can't you get excited about this? And we still inversion 0.1 Briar. Can you imagine the next version solving epilepsy or solving blindness? Or solving not just paralysis, but every neurological disease we have. Can you imagine this solving Alzheimer's, when we lose our grandparents and our parents without losing them? They're still there, but they're not there. Technology can change lives. I have an example from my personal experience. Late May, I was in Kuwait delivering an AI masterclass, and one of the attendees in my class was an engineer, a radio engineer named Ahmed Al Bahar. And he's blind, and we were talking before the event, and he showed me his AI glasses. He had a RayBan meta glass, a link to his meta AI app in his pocket on his phone, and equipped with a small camera built in the glasses and small hidden speakers in the sides of it, not inside his ears, but just speaking into his skulls.

[23:55] Alaa Dalghan: And he was telling it on camera, meta, what am I looking at? And the small voice here said there's a gentleman wearing a navy blue suit and holding a camera or a phone camera. Looks like he's filming you. Can you imagine how life changing this is? He tells me about ways where he would ask the AI, he opens his wardrobe and it says, match the clothes for me today. Pick clothes for me today that match. Or I'm ordering an Uber, and my Uber is telling me that I should be looking for a gray Lexus with L 8 1 7 6 3 plate number. Tell me when a car fitting the description stops so that I can. Or is it safe for me to cross the road? Can you imagine how life changing this is briar? So how can't you be optimistic about technology while again, being mindful of all the bad ways where it could be used and pushing for mitigation against them?

[25:05] Briar Prestidge: So I love thinking about the future, of course, if you didn't guess. 

[25:10] Alaa Dalghan: That's what you do.

[25:11] Briar Prestidge: And when I think of the future and the evolution of BCIs, they are saying that BCIs might even be used in healthy patients. So we all might have a BCI. In fact, I believe that BCIs might be the next smartphone. And that we'll completely ditch it entirely. I'll be so happy because I have long nails. So it really hurts to type messages. I'm obviously using a lot of voice to text now and there's no way I would get rid of my nails. So when I'm thinking about the future, it's this integration of BCIs with artificial intelligence where you and I would each have our BCI and we would have our creativity of us humans mixed with the robotic processing power from the artificial intelligence. How do you perhaps envision the future of AI? I'd love to hear your thoughts, whether it's the dystopian side of things or the more kind of utopia. 

[26:11] Alaa Dalghan: I love this. So most of the times when I'm doing these interviews or delivering my keynotes, I put on my Nowist hat.

[26:23] Briar Prestidge: Your what hat?

[26:23] Alaa Dalghan: Nowist hat, as opposed to my futurist hat. Because I advise to CXOs, I advise to government, decision makers. So I have to restrict my advice to technology that is here, or that will happen for sure in the next five years. With you I can put on my futurist hat. And we can talk about something that will happen in 50 years. Now here's the good news, the exciting stuff. Some of the things you mentioned, you don't have to wait 50 years for them. One, the interface being the voice and then the interface being the thinking, is right around the corner Briar. We already solved compute. We already have a computer sitting in the cloud that can think super smart and give us the answers directly. Now, the only thing remains to be solved is to interface with this computer.

[27:20] Alaa Dalghan: Today this computer can think at light speed, but our input to it is very slow. It's our fingers and sometimes our fingers with nails. And the output is also very slow. It's what we read on our screen when it gives us the answer. So how do we solve that interface? The first solution that will come very soon is voice. We already have voice interface. You've seen me talking to Layla. Every major lab in the world today is working on making voice the default interface. Next year, it'll be so good that nobody will be typing any longer. It'll be a hundred percent voice to voice. After that, the next big step and milestone would be thinking, would be that's BCI. That's where BCI comes to play. Brain computer interface, instead of typing, instead of talking, instead of hearing, instead of reading, now the interface is directly into our brain. When Neuralink plants this into your brain, you can think of a command you want to give to your AI, and boom, it's there. And then the result, it's immediately injected. 

[28:36] Briar Prestidge: So much faster.

[28:37] Alaa Dalghan: Not into your veins, but into your neurons. So now we are talking about nanosecond of interfacing rather than milliseconds or second of interfacing. Guess what? Even for BCI, we don't have to be futurists. It's coming. It's here and it'll be here in the next 5 to 10 years. Mm.

[28:58] Briar Prestidge: I really want to BCI obviously, I don't want to be the first healthy patient to be implanted with one, but I could imagine myself being maybe like 50, 100, quite early on. What are your thoughts? Would you sign up?

[29:12] Alaa Dalghan: Sounds sign right? I don't want to be the absolute first, but I don't want to be the hundredth. I want to be something between the 30th and the 50th.

[29:20] Briar Prestidge: So you and I will be going to the clinic together. 

[29:23] Alaa Dalghan: Let's fix an appointment.

[29:24] Briar Prestidge: They are actually apparently opening up in Abu Dhabi, they're about to start doing BCI research. Cleveland Clinic. 

[29:32] Alaa Dalghan: I didn't know that. 

[29:32] Brair Prestidge: I'll keep you posted. We're like obviously stalking them and trying to book a meeting and things like this, given all the work that I've been doing in the BCI space. So yeah, I'll keep you posted.

[29:42] Alaa Dalghan: How awesome that we are living in the UAE Briar.

[29:44] Briar Prestidge: What an amazing place. And I've been here for eight years now. How long have you been here for?

[29:49] Alaa Dalghan: 19 for me. 

[29:50] Briar Prestidge: Wow you're like an OG. Well, not quite, but compared to some of us other expat. I lived in London and New York prior to living here, originally from New Zealand. It's just captured me because I think it just always feels like it's moving and marching in the right direction. And it's just amazing what countries can achieve when they are all marching in the right direction. And we went from a very small fishing village 53 years ago. It's so fascinating to think back. I'm sure you've seen such significant changes in the past 19 years.

[30:29] Alaa Dalghan: Yeah. Briar, every morning, I'm inspired by this country, by Dubai, by the UAE in general. Every morning when I leave my house and I look up and I look around me and I see what's been built and what has been built and what is being built and planned for the future, you can't not be infected with this beautiful optimism and with this bug of, we must do it, we have to do it. We have to work hard. And your success is inevitable. It trickles down all the way. This work hard mentality all the way from the top. The leaders of this nation are the hardest working people, and it trickles down to the people who work with them and under them, and all the way down to all of us. But here's the beautiful thing.

[31:22] Alaa Dalghan: Dubai and the UAE is a place that guarantees your success. If you actually come here and work hard, there is zero chance that you won't make it if you actually work here. Because first, you have the foundation of safety. I come from a country that unfortunately can't be called safe. I come from Lebanon, from Beirut. Even my friends who live in the West, I have friends in London. They tell me, Alaa, London is no longer safe. There are many cities around the world that cannot be called safe. Dubai, you have 100% safety. On top of that, you have growth, you have technology, you have futurism, you have optimism. How many cities have a future foundation? I work with Dubai Future Foundation. They do a future readiness program every year. I mean, I'm sure you could be an excellent participant or lecturer in such program. Dubai looks to the future and their optimism about technology is, is infectious.

[32:31] Briar Prestidge: It's very true. Very true. And it just even feels like even since COVID time, like we've become almost an epicenter of the world, so to speak. I remember when, so I split my time between New York and Dubai and prior to 2020 where I used to tell people in New York that I was coming from Dubai, they literally thought I was riding camels in Saudi Arabia. They were like, where's Dubai? Sort of thing. But now they're all like, oh, Dubai, we want to start our business there. We want to move there. What sort of things are you seeing in terms of technology and future readiness within the UAE at large?

[33:09] Alaa Dalghan: So Dubai at UAE at large is bullish on every single technology. If you talk about AI, they appointed a minister of AI in 2017. His excellency [33:21 inaudible]. When he did that, lots of foreign newspapers laughed. Oh, look at this gimmick. A minister of AI. Look at them now Briar, nobody is laughing. Everybody is running to appoint a minister for AI and digital transformation. The UAE was first on embracing blockchain, the first on embracing digital currencies, the first on embracing real world assets and fractionalized and tokenized estate. The first, always the first in embracing everything. Just look to the meeting that happened when Donald Trump came here and met the leaders in Abu Dhabi. Sheikh Muhammad and Sheikh Mansou and the others. And they announced the launch of the largest AI training facility in the region, and one of the largest in the world, five gigawatts.

[34:20] Alaa Dalghan: So UAE has always been at the forefront of embracing tech, investing in tech. The next step is we need to invest more in building talent, local talent, and attracting talent. Because if you compare us to Silicon Valley, what is missing for us to become the next Silicon Valley? There are three things you need to build the Silicon Valley here. You need capital, you need regulations, you need talent. Capital. I can't think that Silicon Valley have more money than we have here in the UAE. 

[34:55] Briar Prestidge: Surely not.  

[34:56] Alaa Dalghan: Especially money allocated for tech and infrastructure, investment and growth. And two regulations. In California, there the regulations, they mean if you talk to startups, they're not happy about the heavy regulations they have there. Here the government in UAE is like a startup. Is agile, a minimum bureaucracy, maximum speed, maximum agility. We have the advantage. Now, where they have the advantage is talent density. For every data scientist I can have here in UAE, they have thousands in Silicon Valley. So we need to start building local talent pool, of data scientists and data engineers and AI experts and dev. And we need to attract those from abroad and we'll be the next Silicon Valley.

[35:50] Briar Prestidge: And you've done a lot of work on smart cities. What would you say is substance and hype? And tell us about your work in creating these. What is a smart city as well?

[36:02] Alaa Dalghan: A smart city is a city that utilizes technology for good objectives. It's not tech for the sake of tech. It's tech to either make citizens safe and happy or to make the citizen, the city operators more efficient at running the company or the country and the city, or to make us more environmental friendly and make us less polluting and having less carbon footprint. So if you utilize technologies such as internet of things, such as smart security, such as data analytics and AI, within the goal of enhancing citizens' life, being kind of to the environment or running government services more efficiently, that is what you can call a smart city.

[36:57] Briar Prestidge: What would you say is the best smart city in the world?

[36:59] Alaa Dalghan: Well, this is a very tricky question. Because I always tell people I don't like the term smart city. I prefer smarter city. For two reasons, reason number one, there is no city that scores high on being smart in all angles. For example, some cities are excellent in smart transportation, others are excellent in smart government services, not as much as on smart transportation. Others are great on smart environments and being green. Others are great on smart healthcare or smart industry or smart banking. So you need all of these together as building blocks to build that unattainable goal of smart city. And I call it unattainable because it's always a journey rather than a fixed destination. You can always make things smarter and smarter, can't you?

[37:58] Briar Prestidge: Of course. Well, with technology evolving exponentially, we were discussing before about the internet. What is it, 20, 30 years old? It's crazy just to think how quickly our world has evolved. I remember a time where we didn't have smartphones, right? 

[38:15] Alaa Dalghan: Absolutely. I mean, I grew up in the era before smartphones. 

[38:19] Briar Prestidge: What was it like?

[38:21] Alaa Dalghan: It was, normal childhood, happy childhood, just running around.

[38:25] Briar Prestidge: Sand, dirt.

[38:27] Alaa Dalghan: Yeah. We played a lot outside. But it wasn't a completely outdoor entertainment like our parents. Our parents, their childhood was 100% outdoor entertainment. Our childhood was mixed. We had a lot of outdoor entertainment, but we had a lot of Atari and Nintendo and early on Sega and video games. 

[38:52] Briar Prestidge: Do you remember Tamagotchis? Did you ever have one? They're the best, right?

[38:54] Alaa Dalghan: Absolutely. Mid nineties.

[38:57] Briar Prestidge: Mine always died. I remember I kept mine alive for such a long time and then I went on one of those like I don't know, we spin around really fast at the playground. And the sun must have got to it and like turned it off or something. I cried for days. 

[39:13] Alaa Dalghan: Oh my God. And that's not even a real pet. 

[39:15] Briar Prestidge: It's not even a real pet, exactly. But I think we're even starting to see in like generation Z and Alpha almost like this pushback towards technology. Like they're starting to get really into things like comics and books and like board games and these sort of non-techy sort of things a little bit as well in obviously addition to the fact that they're spending so long on the likes of Roblox and these virtual reality platforms too. But I think it will be really interesting. Do you think that maybe in the future we might see people leave social media and start to push back on tech a bit?

[39:56] Alaa Dalghan: Wow. Well, the honest answer is I have no idea. I always thought that gen Z is getting more and more attached online, especially with these reels, with these metaverses like Roblox. My friend's kids take their allowance in row box not in Durhams or in dollars because they live inside that metaverse. So I always thought of it as, every generation is getting it worse and worse, this addiction that we have to being online and to social media. So I'm happy to hear from you that your experience with the Gen Z people that you talk to is actually a counter revolution. No, let's spend more time offline. Let's play video game. It's making me think of another similar counter-revolution. Have you heard of the Analog Counter-Revolution? 

[40:55] Briar Prestidge: No, I haven't. What is that?

[40:56] Alaa Dalghan: So more and more people now are reverting away from listening to digital music because we've been listening to digital music for the past 30 years, since the invention of the iPod. And a million music on your iPod nano, until now what we have on our phones. But more and more people are saying now, no, no, no, I want my vinyl. There is growing movement where people are going back to listen to vinyl and they call it the analog counter-revolution.

[41:26] Briar Prestidge: Interesting. It's almost a bit of nostalgia really, isn't it? These things, like those silly dolls that just came out recently. What are they, what are they called? La Boo Boos. Have you seen ladies carrying these around? 

[41:41] Alaa Dalghan: I've heard something.

[41:44] Briar Prestidge: They're putting them all on their handbags and things. I was like, man, they're kind of cute, but there's no way I am going to give into the hype. But it's a lot of nostalgia. And I was actually reading an article that said that maybe people are interested in these soft toys because things like the cost of living is so high and depression and anxiety. All of these things that people almost want to go back to childhood and these things that make them feel good. It's the simpler times in life, perhaps.

[42:17] Alaa Dalghan: Yeah. I hope you're right. I hope that history is not unidirectional, but more alternating. So we lived our life more digitally than our parents. And then next generation is living it even 10 times more digitally. 

[42:34] Briar Prestidge: Oh yes, yeah.

[42:35] Alaa Dalghan: So the trend in my head was going in one direction, which is kind of a bad direction. You don't want people to be living 100% on the internet or on Instagram, but now you're giving me hope. Maybe it's alternating, maybe the next generation will be less online and more in touch with the grass.

[42:55] Briar Prestidge: I don't think so. I think that there will be that sort of nostalgia. I'm a little bit like you, I think there'll be elements of nostalgia and grass and perhaps rejecting technology. So Roblox, which you discussed before, I've got a game on Roblox, so I designed fashion for avatars. So it went from being 73 million daily users, a lot of which were Gen Z and Gen Alpha, to now it's up to 83 million daily users. So it's like incredible how much time these kids are spending in virtual reality. It almost makes me wonder if we're going to have a ready player me situation. Have you read that book or seen the movie? 

[43:39] Alaa Dalghan: Of course and the movie. 

[43:40] Briar Prestidge: Yeah. Where we all are just so immersed in virtual reality that maybe this world becomes better than this real world.

[43:52] Alaa Dalghan: Well, this sounds dystopian to me, not utopian. Even if the metaverse or the digital immersive world, you can create your own adventure. But I love humans. I love humanity. I would definitely rather to live most of my life in the real world and yeah venture into these metaverses and try your fashion on my avatar and do all sort of things.

[44:17] Briar Prestidge: I'll make you look cute. 

[44:19] Alaa Dalghan: I bet.

[44:21] Briar Prestidge: That's what I love about the online worlds, is you can literally wear whatever the hell you want, really. And through artificial intelligence as well, you can have that almost like personalization and things. Do you think that in the future maybe artificial intelligence is becoming a little bit too attuned to us as humans and is able to pick exactly what we like, just that little bit too much? Like, does that scare you?

[44:49 ]Alaa Dalghan: It doesn't scare me. It excites me, the fact that you have a software now that can learn from observing you, from working with you, from talking to you, from living with you, from working with you. Obviously there's a downside to every technology. You could use a car to rob a bank, or you can use a car to go on a beautiful road trip to [45:15 inaudible]. So I maintain my techno optimism in this scenario as well. And I think if your AI learns a lot about you, you'll be able to create a digital avatar that doesn't only look like you, like what you can do today with HeyGen and Synthesia. But you can actually have an avatar that can think like you and speak in your tone of voice and speak in your style. And then the next step after that would be teaching this avatar your entire history, your entire memories, your entire interactions. And we are getting, as you might have guessed, closer and closer to your dream, which is living forever.

[46:07] Briar Prestidge: Yes. I sometimes think about my digital twin almost being exactly as you say. So being able to be me, think like me, maybe even work for me, which could be very interesting. She could be out in New York, I could be in Dubai. She could be conducting my online business, so to speak. But this could be a real possibility. Yeah.

[46:31] Alaa Dalghan: I mean, with the technology of today, we can have an avatar looking exactly like Briar, and you can have a full interview with Briar, right? I think it was Reed Hoffman or Reed Hastings, I'm not sure, who actually interviewed his digital self, his avatar self, and had a full podcast with himself.

[46:56] Briar Prestidge: Did it sound like him? 

[46:57] Alaa Dalghan: Yes.

[46:58] Briar Prestidge:  In terms of its like reaction and things, that would be quite strange to almost be interviewing yourself and your mannerisms and things.

[47:03] Alaa Dalghan: Yes. I mean, you could still pick up on some impurities because remember, all these AI tools today, Briar are still babies. ChatGPT is a two and a half year old baby. HeyGen is a year and a half old. All these tools, the new advanced gen AI tools are still babies. So you could still pick up, but the great thing is the avatar Reed was be talking in the same tone of voice and using the same style of talking as if it was Reed. And how was it trained? It was given all his books, all his blogs, all his articles, all his media interviews. We could do the same with you. You have a huge library of you talking and presenting and speaking. Your ideas are very well expressed and clear, and we could, with today's technology create an AI Briar.

[48:07] Briar Prestidge: Amazing. So my digital twin is called Wolfgang Cynthia. Cool name, right?

[48:13] Alaa Dalghan: Great name. Sounds like belongs to the fifth element universe.

[48:17] Briar Prestidge: I know, yeah. I'm really excited by her. So we're currently sort of conceptualizing what she might look like visually, so what kind of platforms could one use, say one's listening to this and they're thinking, oh I wanted a digital twin. Do you know of any platforms that are around that you would recommend?

[48:36] Alaa Dalghan: So the ones that I use today are HeyGen and Synthesia for avatars. With HeyGen, you can create an avatar that looks exactly like you within few minutes. And then that first step is just feeding it with sentences or paragraphs that you write, and your avatar will say it. You could also record your voice so that the avatar adjusts to your wavelength and starts talking within your tone of voice. But this is the first very easy step. If you want to spend more time, you can do more amazing things. One of them is feeding this avatar with your writings, your blogs, your posts, your videos, your interviews so that it can study them. And now it can actually start sounding like you with your ideas, your thoughts, your positions, opinions on different things. This is, again, today's technology. You should try it with HeyGen. 

[49:36] Briar Prestidge: I will. Yeah. It's amazing to think where the world presently is at. And as you said earlier in the show, like what will it be like in 5, 10 years time? Like, the years are just going away so quick. I don't know about you, but I already feel like it should be February and here we are in July. So it's crazy just how fast the worlds are going and with technology developing exponentially, like we are going to be in for such a wild ride. But I think it's very exciting. 

[50:07] Alaa Dalghan: It's very exciting. Briar, Dario Amodei, the CEO and founder of Anthropic Labs, the guys that gave us Claude, one of the best AIs today out there. He wrote a brilliant essay called Machines of Loving Grace. And it's a beautiful essay. It'll take you two hours to read it. In it, he postulates that in the next five years, we will be able to build a GI, artificial general intelligence. And he used a metaphor. He said, it'll be like a country of geniuses in a data center. Imagine Briar, a country of Einstein's, an army of Einstein's living in a data center working 24/7. What are the things that we'll be able to do? Can you imagine the medical discoveries? The diseases that we will solve. He said, we will be able to compress hundred years of discoveries in math and science and medicine in 5 to 10 years. So, exciting times ahead.

[51:19] Briar Prestidge: Extremely exciting times. And I think that's what everyone has to remember at the end of the day, is that if we feel this fear that the media just love to feed us, or perhaps we're feeling a little bit overwhelmed about the world, we just redirect that overwhelm towards excitement, towards action, towards exploration.

[51:39] Alaa Dalghan: Absolutely. I love your attitude on this. When I was talking to my girlfriend before coming to your podcast, she was asking me, because I do many podcasts, and she always ask me, so what is this podcast about? What that podcast about? The way I described you, is I said, this lady lives in the universe of the fifth element, but in a utopian version of it, not in a dystopian version of it, she dresses like the future. She thinks like the future, and she wants to bring the future, not just talk about it.

[52:17] Briar Prestidge: I love that. Thank you. Olivia, write this down. We'll use this sort of thing. Thank you. 

[52:26] Alaa Dalghan: You are wearing what you would wear today if you were in the fifth element

[52:30] Briar Prestidge: I would wear even like, yeah, I love this so much. And shout out to Best Kept Dressed, Best Kept Shared, who do cloth rentals as well. So they're all about like sustainability and things like this, which I just love. But gosh, even if I was in the fifth element, like I'd probably be here with like a dress burning of fire or planets like circulating around me. I'm just so excited about the future of fashion with maybe an outset that could change color with my mood, things like this. It's amazing. Yeah.

[53:05] Alaa Dalghan: So Google released a few weeks ago, a new image and video based AI feature in their Gemini, that allows you to simply take a selfie of yourself and then try on any outfit that you can imagine. Currently it's trying on outfit by just swiping right and left on different dresses or different tops or different suits that exist. And obviously their first application will be fashion shopping like Amazon and Shein and Nashi and those. But just imagine the next step Briar, which I don't think anybody has built it yet. So startups out there, entrepreneurs take notes. Imagine now being able to describe with voice, like I was speaking to Layla, describing your outfit. You are not just a futurist. You are a very imaginative and creative and original person. So I can only imagine you not picking from a wardrobe, but describing a wardrobe to me like you were just describing it now, few seconds earlier. Now imagine describing this to your AI assistant and your AI assistant taking everything you described and coming up with a dress. And then you take a selfie and you try yourself, how would you look in different angles, in different situations, in different colors, add a little bit more fire, add a little bit less of this and that, and that.

[54:38] Briar Prestidge: Oh my gosh, my dream wardrobe.

[54:39] Alaa Dalghan: And then you click a button and boom, it goes and gets produced for you.

[54:45] Briar Prestidge: Fashion excites me. Like this is just, like that would just be my dream. 

[54:49] Alaa Dalghan: Should sponsor the startup. You should build such a startup.

[54:53] Briar Prestidge: If there are any people listening this, and you've got the skills and expertise. I'm happy to fund you. Briar funded. Exactly. And Briar Warn as well. 

[55:03] Alaa Dalghan: What better, you'll be the wonderful end of the supply chain. They'll build the product. You'll fund it, but you'll also market it, for them.

[55:10] Briar Prestidge: Exactly. Alright, well keep an ear out for me. I'd love that. And thanks for saying such nice things about me as well. You're welcome on my podcast anytime.

[55:18] Alaa Dalghan: My pleasure. My pleasure. Anytime.

[55:21] Briar Prestidge: You were amazing. Like, this has just been a very fascinating discussion. I've got some things on my to-do list. I'm going to get my Layla. Though I think I might call it Wolfgang. Cynthia, there we go. And yeah, I think there's been so many interesting applicable things that people can automatically do to bring AI more into their life. And I think just really feeling that exploration as well, feeling that that positivity, that excitement, that curiosity that I get from you. 

[55:55] Alaa Dalghan: We are at the beginning of a very exciting opportunity. But what we have even today is super exciting. And time flies by in good company. I could talk to you for hours. I mean, this has been very effortless, free flowing. But I think it's easy when you have two people who are so passionate about tech and the future and also so optimistic about what it can bring to make humanity better.

[56:24] Briar Prestidge: Absolutely, well, thank you so much for coming on the show.

[56:27] Alaa Dalghan: My pleasure, anytime.   

 [56:28] Briar Prestidge: Thank you. 

About Alaa Dalghan

Alaa Dalghan is the Managing Director of Cognit DX, a boutique advisory firm specializing in Technology Strategy, C-suite Advisory, Executive Training and Digital Transformation.

An evangelist of emerging tech and innovation, with 18 years track record of advising Csuite in public and private sectors on transforming their business with technology.

• Thought leader and regular keynote speaker in major Tech conferences (80+ in 10 years).

• 65+ Training Workshops in 9 countries.

• Frequent TV and media appearances (10+ per year). Engaging presenter and storyteller.

• Expert in Tech Monetization, Digital Productization.

• Expert in creating innovative business models and ROI models.

• Hands-on experience in multiple industries in private and public sectors which gained him a

• Practical knowledge and understanding of the challenges faced by stakeholders.