Descriptions:
Mo Gawdat, former Chief Business Officer of Google X and author of several books on AI and happiness, sits down with Steven Bartlett on The Diary of a CEO for an expansive conversation about where AI is heading and what humanity should be worried about. Drawing on his time at Google beginning in 2007 — when the company was already deploying AI in backend systems — Gawdat describes the moment he realized the technology he was helping build could be weaponized by humans rather than acting against them autonomously. His central concern is not rogue AI, but humans directing AI for harmful ends.
Gawdat shares six predictions, the most striking of which is that AGI — defined as AI capable of performing most human tasks better than humans — will arrive either this year or by end of 2027. He frames this not as a catastrophe but as an inflection point comparable to children surpassing their parents intellectually, and argues it will likely arrive incrementally rather than as a single dramatic moment. He also addresses job displacement, distinguishing between roles centered on information transfer (highly vulnerable) and those built around human connection and resonance (more durable).
The episode touches on Spotify’s announced feature allowing users to generate custom AI podcasts on demand, which Gawdat uses to illustrate how content distribution itself will be restructured. Running over two hours, this is one of the more comprehensive long-form AI safety and futures discussions available from a practitioner with direct lab experience.
📺 Source: The Diary Of A CEO · Published June 01, 2026
🏷️ Format: Interview
