Humanity’s Greatest Threats: 'It’s Going To Be Very Scary' | Michael Saylor (Pt. 2/2)

it's going to develop fast it's going to

be very scary it's going to be very

disruptive it's going to turn everything

you thought you knew upside down

and I have faith that Humanity will find

a way through you know I'm not I'm not

quite I I don't think you can ignore it

any more that you can ignore air power

machine guns or nuclear weapons I don't

think you can ignore it but um I do I

don't think anybody really understands

the profoundly

disruptive revolutionary implications

yet

in the final part of our conversation

I'd like to address uh some of your work

outside of business as well as the

future of technology and where you see

the future of technology headed uh

people know you as a proponent of

Bitcoin which you are but a lot of

people forget that you are an engineer

by background you're an inventor you

have more than 40 patents filed what is

your proudest invention that's my first

question in this segment

that's a hard question

you know um

I would say uh early in my life my best

contribution was the the creation of

microstrategies business intelligence

relational analytics and the foundation

of the microstrategy product line which

launched our company took us public and

got us to where we are today where we do

business in 27 countries with thousands

and thousands of Corporations and

provide them with this Mission critical

intelligence so so that was my first

professional activity and I think I

think my probably

hopefully what I'll be remembered for is

my second contribution which is

introducing Bitcoin uh to the corporate

world and to the institutions

right and microstrategies view is we

want to be a leader in introducing the

power of a decentralized digital

monetary Network Bitcoin uh to the world

and we want to show people how they can

how they can Embrace and support and

benefit from it in an ethically

responsible economically responsible

fashion

and so you know those two things

microstrategy and Bitcoin

okay you you can you can you say on

record whether or not you are Satoshi

I am not Satoshi okay you know like I'm

not Satoshi Satoshi you know gave a gift

to humanity without expecting anything

in return

and uh it's an extraordinarily uh

ethical gift and humanitarian example

that Satoshi set right and so very

impressive achievement I am not Satoshi

we haven't found Satoshi today guys this

is a disappointment uh let me ask you

this what are some of the biggest

existential threats that Humanity faces

today that technology can solve

um you know I I think uh one threat is

is as institutions and organizations get

bigger and more powerful power is

centralizing at the top of them so now

you have organizations that control what

a billion people can say every day and

you have uh you have organizations that

can that can change the value of eight

billion people's money

and you have organizations that can

distort you know how billions of people

think right and and uh so

I think that uh in a world where

everything was decentralized no one

person could determine what everybody

else was thinking at the same time

I I think that that was a safer world I

think it's an existential threat for uh

the people that run you know certain

government agencies and networks to be

able to control what you can think what

you can say uh what you can know

and I think that Bitcoin and and its

promise can help us reverse that Trend I

think we can reverse the centralization

and we can decentralize both by moving

the monetary energy uh into the hands of

the people and out of the hands of the

organizations like for example like I

can literally bankrupt every single

person in the country if I control the

government and the Central Bank like I

can impoverish and everybody right so

Shifting the control of that into the

hands of the people if they were using

Bitcoin the person that ran a country

couldn't impoverish everybody on a whim

right so I think that's one uh advantage

or one important imperative I think that

AI

AI is a bit of a threat in a way that if

um if an AI can uh and if an AI can

reproduce our interview and take a

picture of me and have me say whatever

it wants in my voice right in a way

imperceptible then it's possible to

counterfeit any message and counterfeit

uh and counterfeit any document and so I

think it's more important than ever that

we Master a strong encrypt encryption

and digital signatures what we're going

to need for at some point we need uh for

me to be able to digitally sign this

interview

so that I can prove that I'm the one

that spoke to you and said these things

and so if I could sign this video or

Watermark it with my private key then

when we get to a point where an AI can

generate a million of these interviews

and they can have me saying anything

they want they're going to be talking

about food and politics and you know in

my childhood and whatever which one is

the real interview

if you go on Twitter you know an AI

could spin up

um a hundred million Twitter accounts

that would actually be more articulate

than 100 million real people on Twitter

that they would be more Charming more

articulate more interesting and more

engaged and and de-fatigable right

and so that's a disturbing thing right

we can no longer rely upon information

freely flowing unverified

we need to see a world for example where

there's an orange check like where I I

need um a a passport a cyber passport if

I can prove that I'm me by doing a

transaction on the Bitcoin base layer

and then I have the private key and then

I digitally sign that transaction and

then I digitally sign my account on

Twitter and I digitally sign my account

on WhatsApp and Telegram and YouTube and

Facebook and Instagram and office 365.

and then I digitally sign the documents

I write the messages I deliver the

transactions I I agree to

in that world I could at least stop a

hundred million fake Michael Sailors

from confusing and fishing and scamming

and distorting reality because you know

what the AI version of me is actually

going to be a lot more productive and

more interesting than the real version

of me sometime in the next few years

interesting is debatable Michael but uh

the efficient production productive

maybe you're right and and I think going

to AI some people working on AI I've

talked to Engineers have told me that

sentience is the ultimate objective what

are your thoughts on this can this be

achieved and what are the implications

you know I I don't know uh I I don't

know how far it will get but what I

would say is that

I studied uh I studied the history of

science at MIT that was another one of

my degrees after Aeronautical

Engineering and I studied the scientific

Revelation revolutions and how did every

major science scientific field evolve

and what you find is there's this S

curve people for a thousand years try to

fly and then in 1900 they failed 500

ways and everybody says there's no way

to ever work

and then in 1903 the Wright brothers

figure out how to fly and then there's

This ferocious uh development for the

next

66 years and by 1969 we're standing on

the moon

and then everything slows down and so

you'll have these periods of nothing and

then you will spurt and you will run

really hard and then you will slow down

and so I think with uh with AI

what we had is people

scratching at the field uh in a

frustrated fashion without making any

material breakthroughs for years and

years and years

you know we had the early versions of

Alexa and Siri and and you know they let

you pick your playlist off of you know

off of Amazon music but not much more

than that

and I think in the year 2022

we broke through and now the 2022 was

like the iPhone 3 moment iPhone 3 was

the first version of the iPhone where

you said wow this operating system is

going to compete with the web

and uh iPhone one and iPhone 2 were toys

and iPhone 3 was real and then what

happens next is Apple stock 10xes and

the world changes and billions and

billions of people adopt mobile phones I

think we're at that moment that

inflection moment

the first 12 months I think the next 10

years is a Sprint

and uh there's going to be this massive

Cambrian explosion of ideas and people

are going to push the envelope I don't

think you can stop it

I I mean I think people will try to

regulate it it's not going to work to

regulate it because there's going to be

some country or some Corporation that's

going to have an economic or a political

interest and pushing this

um it's going to develop fast it's going

to be very scary it's going to be very

disruptive it's going to turn everything

you thought you knew upside down

and I have faith that Humanity will find

a way through you know I'm not I'm not

quite I I don't think you can ignore it

anymore that you can ignore air power

machine guns or nuclear weapons I don't

think you can ignore it but

um I do I don't think anybody really

understands the profoundly

disruptive revolutionary implications

yet the only mistake

would be not to be paying attention you

should be investing time and energy to

to conceptualize how you do what you do

and then can and then reconceptualize

what your customers are you know are

doing and how they might do it

differently and and try to work your way

down the value chain and try to figure

out what gets dematerialized and what is

the national rational response and if

you can figure that out

36 months or 24 months before anybody

else

right and that makes all the difference

I'll give you one application which

leads to my discussion on the Sailor

Academy which is a field of education

and I'm seeing videos on online of uh

schools in China for example where kids

are

um using using robotic um accessories to

basically complement their education

like some sort of AI software uh

complementing their their uh their

teacher it's not inconceivable to

imagine that in the future we will have

some sort of robot or artificial

intelligence program teaching children

in schools which is to say that there

will be no or very few human teachers at

some educational institutions what do

you think of this

um I I believe that it's inevitable

that the cost of education is trending

towards zero the cost of a PhD

in the traditional bricks and mortar

world of the 20th century was more than

a million dollars

and

a very small fraction of the people like

like 10 million people in the world get

get the PHD level well I I think that we

want a world where a billion people

could get to a PhD level where anybody

can learn as much about anything as they

want to learn and and I use PhD as an

example because PhD is theoretically the

point at which you're capable of making

a seminal contribution to the body of

human knowledge where you can make a

unique contribution that nobody else

that ever lived ever made and so there

are a lot of ways to do it without a PhD

I mean clearly Mozart didn't have a PhD

and made a contribution but I believe

that education has been impediment it's

too expensive uh I founded the Sailor

Academy to make education free for

everyone forever

uh we've only scratched the surface but

we've had one and a half million or more

students

you know we sign up more students you

know every every

um quarter or every semester than a

typical University would have in dozens

if not hundreds of years right so so

we're scaling up

um I think that with AI

uh it's possible for you to create a

digital professor

you remember the story of Alexander the

gray his father was Philip so the

richest most powerful man in the world

gives the most the most promising kid

Aristotle

as his personal tutor so you get the

smartest man in the world teaching the

most interesting student in the world

you know financed by the most powerful

man in the world well that happened 2400

years ago

but what if I said that you could give

your children a digital Professor that

has a hundred phds that is tireless that

is free I mean the cost of electricity

cost of bandwidth electricity and they

will teach your child anything that they

want to learn at whatever rate you want

to learn and the cost is you know I

guess you get a you know a multi-hundred

dollar Computing device and pay for the

electricity in the bandwidth but that's

it and maybe you don't have to pay for

that

I don't think that's

um a pipe dream I think that's

inevitable it's really just a question

of how do you do it I've already

challenged the people at the Sailor

Academy to to convert over the entire

website so that we offer in essence

digital professor and and

dynamic personalized instruction

to anybody and and how would you

evaluate the state of education in

America today I mean generally speaking

uh the 20th century approach to

education is just as broken as the 20th

century approach to banking

right and and banking it's just too slow

too expensive to elitist

if I wanted to move 40 money 40 times on

a banking Network it takes six years and

all of the money goes to the bank when

you're done right that's just how

expensive and cumbersome it is

the uh the traditional way of teaching

students with bricks and mortar classes

and human beings and teachers is too

expensive it's too elitist right does

every child everywhere in the world get

a PhD for free

no okay well so how do you justify that

won't be well because if you're not rich

you don't deserve one if you're not if

you're not rich born in America you

don't deserve one you're not rich you're

not smart enough right we have too many

gates and of course the gates are

inevitable in a world where where it

cost ten twenty thirty thousand dollars

a year to educate a student it's

impossible for us to move forward so I

think the system's broken I think the

solution

is digital education and you got to

decompose what we call education now and

into multiple things one part of it is

the social component right I mean I'm

bringing uh young people together in

clubs to teach them Athletics to teach

them you know to teach them uh to get

along with each other to teach them

politics to adjust them I mean that's

one part of it and the other part is the

academic component I'm teaching you how

to think

and I think what you realize is you know

it's it's too expensive I mean it's too

expensive to do the academic component

and the traditional way the social

component won't go away but I I think

that there are there should be more

competition right that one of the

problems with uh with education is

monopolies

the political systems they restrain

trade and they restrain the trade in the

form of of requiring certifications

diplomas that have to be from accredited

universities that are that are staffed

by unionized employees with regulated uh

entities and and so all of the

regulation accreditation and the like is

very cumbersome and so if you can move

that into a new domain where

why is it that the third grader when I

was in school I could I could get uh one

semester of calculus in my city that's

the best I could do when I got to MIT I

met people that had come up through

private schools and they had been

studying calculus all through high

school and it was pretty painful brutal

adjustment to meet you know all of the

private school

prep school kids and try to compete with

them

so now why is it that that

um Public School Systems give you a

constrained selection of of subjects

that you get spoon fed at a very slow

rate and the answer is because it's too

expensive you're trying to level the

playing field for Education what put on

your futurist hat for a minute what

would the world look like when everyone

has access to a PhD level education how

will the world change

you're going to be you're going to see

16 year olds with phds and astrophysics

that are employed by age 17

uh they're going to come from Argentina

or Venezuela and they're going to be

employed by a company that that might be

headquartered in New York City

and so you're going to see a Global

Talent economy you're going to see

you're going to see someone that's um

that's 21 years old who you know is a

genius computer programmer coming from a

place you've never heard of working for

a corporation that that is 8 000 miles

away

you know to the benefit of everybody and

they will bypassed all manners of

friction

so so I think um

I think education Talent explodes

I I think that agility explodes I mean

you could you'll be able to spin up a

company in cyberspace and find 100

genius employees that work in a hundred

different places that will come to work

for you potentially in a matter of of

days and you'll generate a new product

you know in a matter of weeks so so I so

I see a world of uh high velocity

talent and high velocity trading and

high velocity technology

uh pursuing all of the greatest

challenges the human race faces

with uh with extraordinary intensity and

extraordinary Effectiveness I I think

it's a good thing for the world

a good thing for everybody involved and

you know it's better for economic

well-being as well as for political

well-being for all of us to be able to

work with each other

there's nothing

you know if you study genetics you know

like watch a spider and watch a bird and

you ever say to yourself how'd that

spider figure out how to do that there's

no school for spiders there's no school

for birds and yet somehow the strand of

DNA gives them the information they need

to do intricate things and the

conclusion you come to is

in the 8 billion people in the human

race everybody's got good genes and

there are geniuses and there's

extraordinary Talent everywhere but

people are held back by economic and

political circumstance

and what what we need to do is Unleash

the Power of human creativity and human

talent and the way you do it is by

giving people access to all the

information they need and all the tools

they need regardless of where they're

born and their economic circumstances I

would argue Michael that there are

always people that will find ways to get

ahead using technology for example yes

you can level the playing field with

education but there will be some people

in the future who will pay a doctor to

genetically modify their child to be

superior in some physical or

intellectual capacity how would you

respond to that

I I would say that history is full of

examples of people that Rose from Modest

circumstances to be successful and I

could give you hundreds of examples so I

agree with you on that but I would also

say that if you're born impoverished in

the Himalayas right now

your odds of getting ahead are much

higher than 50 years ago before the

internet

because today you could get your hands

on a 500 or 100 computer

yeah have you seen have you seen the map

of all the starlink satellites that are

circulating

three years ago there were none of them

and in the last 36 months starlink has

managed to encircle the entire planet

with a set of satellites that are

providing internet access pretty much

everywhere on Earth and that means

everywhere on Earth uh you can get

150 megabits of download speed or more

or maybe 50 megabits or 100 megabits of

upload speed and I can tell you for a

fact there are like Farms on the eastern

shore of Maryland you couldn't get

internet bandwidth you couldn't get

internet bandwidth all through lots of

Asia right throughout lots of South

America so what you have is satellites

providing the internet to everywhere on

Earth

you know I

I seen 32-foot sailboats sitting at

anchor in the Bahamas and they've got on

the front of them one of those uh

starlink RV Terminals and it cost 150 a

month and they're getting super high

bandwidth uh upload download speeds and

I can tell you for a fact 24 months ago

you would be off the grid

so I think if you're look at you by the

by the way the David Lynn report you're

gainfully employed I don't know where

you are

but I can tell you for a fact that 36

months ago

98 of the Earth's surface wouldn't have

allowed you to be employed in this way

and today with a hundred and fifty

dollar a month terminal you could take

this show just about anywhere on Earth

and I think that's very egalitarian uh

very inspiring and you know what that

means is that maybe people like you will

go to a place where there was rural or

or that was other otherwise undiscovered

and your friends your family your

children they will grow up with more

opportunity than someone that grew up in

Cambridge Massachusetts and went to

Harvard and then worked in Manhattan

you know I did I did a billion dollars I

did a billion dollar Bond offering

and I didn't actually take a meeting in

New York I actually did it all via Zoom

and so you could be anywhere on Earth

tapping into any amount of money and any

amount of audience using uh using uh the

modern internet and so I I think it's

important this technology is important

it doesn't absolve the individual of

taking responsibility in fact I would

say the individual is more responsible

for mastering their own faith than ever

because there are so many distractions

but having said it all at least you have

the opportunity today and I could

certainly show you a billion people that

didn't have an opportunity and I had no

you know Alma ended this way Warren

Buffett gets asked a question by a 13

year old this weekend she says Mr

Buffett been coming to your conference

for five years I see we're

de-dollarizing the US dollar is

collapsing we're printing trillions of

dollars what advice do you have

for me and and my family and any

Corporation and what are you doing and

Warren Buffett hymns and Haws and

doesn't have an answer and eventually

ends with it'll be interesting to watch

but I guess I I guess someone in the US

hopefully will figure it out that's what

Warren Buffett says he basically says I

don't know okay that was before Bitcoin

Warren doesn't understand Bitcoin the

answer was Bitcoin Berkshire Hathaway

should buy Bitcoin your corporation

should buy Bitcoin you my dear at age 13

you can escape the scourge of

hyperinflation poverty and destitution

with Bitcoin if Warren understood

technology he would have given that girl

the answer and I and that's what I would

say to you too it's like yeah people 50

years ago Rose from their circumstances

but yeah you know the answer was you got

to make your way to a coastal city

you've got to cross the border through

hook and crook you got to bribe your way

through with gold coins you got to cheat

your way onto a freighter hopefully get

to San Francisco live as an illegal

alien in the U.S work hard find a way to

get a scholarship get an education you

know and then maybe become a

professional and you might rise through

your circumstances and look that guy did

it

but I mean that was the old way I got a

better way take this computer log into

you know the internet or YouTube or

sailor Academy and learn everything you

need to do apply for a job lift yourself

up because of your intellect and you

don't have to risk your person in an

illegal border crossing I mean the most

obvious takeaway from technology in our

field is the fact that somewhere somehow

somebody in a rural Village somewhere

hopefully will watch this interview and

get insights from a great mind whereas a

hundred not even a hundred years ago if

you wanted to listen to Michael Saylor

talk you had to physically be in the

same room

that wasn't accessible to 99.9 of the

population

so yeah we are heading in the right

place final

final question for you Michael and this

has been enlightening talk thank you for

being here

um you know you are an entrepreneur at

heart and you know you you've advocated

for Bitcoin what advice do you have for

young entrepreneurs besides buying

Bitcoin besides the adoption of Bitcoin

what advice do you have for

entrepreneurs today if if you know there

was a Michael sailor 2.0 in his early

20s in the tech field what would you

tell him

I I say uh in every generation if you

want to be successful you have to master

the platform which is commercializing at

the time you're coming of age

so Mozart you know Beethoven wrote music

for the piano

you know Chopin wrote news for the piano

and and they and they were right place

right time you know Led Zeppelin wrote

music for the guitar right place right

time and they're immortalized

um you know you gotta always always

think about what's the breaking thing

and right now if I was starting my

career I would be studying uh crypto and

crypto asset now it's in crypto Theory

especially Bitcoin lightning and Bitcoin

applications that's one area because

there's going to be a hundred X

Improvement advances there there's

extraordinary opportunity in that

ecosystem I would also be studying AI

if you're an artist you got to be

studying mid-journey and thinking about

how does mid-journey change the way of

AI I'd be studying Unreal Engine I mean

they've figured out how to create an

entire virtual universe

and we're right at the cost Square

where uh the world of the Unreal Engine

5.1 or something looks almost like a

real world if it's not they're about to

tip over I would be studying chat GPT

and even more importantly I'd be

studying the API and how do I write a

persistent intelligent agent and then

Loop it back on itself with real-time

information

um

ultimately there are profound

breakthroughs to be made on these new

platforms I I don't think my advice is

you don't study the platforms that made

the previous generation successful right

Engineers that part that plan the Apollo

space launch they did their engineering

with slide rules

I didn't study it you know I use an HP

15c calculator but don't study that

either then there came a spreadsheet and

then it you know then there was Python

and Etc and there's the internet but

don't don't fight the last war don't

study the thing you know like even the

music yeah I like Mozart and Beethoven

and I like classical music but if I was

a genius today I wouldn't be trying to

duplicate what Beethoven did

I would be thinking you know if

Beethoven lived today

maybe Beethoven would design an entire

virtual world indistinguishable from the

real world that's more beautiful hey

or maybe you know it just you got to

figure out

what's the new thing

and

and you engineer

the greatest thing you can create with

the materials given to you there'd be no

air travel without aluminum

and uh you know there there are always

is the engine the Silicon engine you

know the internal combustion engine

whatever it is so today we can see clear

the engines of growth or you know crypto

networks like Bitcoin is an engine

you know uh AI tools or an engine there

will be other engines right Master those

platforms like even

you know even if you saw what just

happened uh Tucker Carlson is leaving

Fox

and he just posted a video on on Twitter

and that video went through 20 million

views in 24 hours

and if you look at it carefully you say

oops he added 400 000 followers in less

than 24 hours he got more than 20

million views 95 million people saw the

tweet

what if he goes from seven million

followers on Twitter to 70 million

followers on Twitter

right then you you used and that video

that video was an ultra wide format HD

or Super HD video and my reaction was

I've never seen such a high quality

video posted anywhere you know and so

so if you're constrained by the shackles

of the last technology the last Network

the last platform the last way to do it

you're holding yourself back you know

you yourself have just gone off on your

own with the David Lynn report I applaud

it congratulations thank you right

thanks for not cutting me off after like

three minutes or seven minutes right or

a 10 minute interview right

right I mean so the world of

possibilities is ahead of us it's pretty

it's pretty clear that mastering the new

technologies and the new platforms to

create new things

never before possible Right is the way

forward that's my advice I would give to

anybody starting their career

great all right well lots to absorb

hopefully we take your advice

learn from Michael Saylor go visit the

Sailor Academy

adopt Bitcoin those are the key lessons

today

thank you Michael thank you for spending

the time with us in our audience I

appreciate it yeah and I want to thank

everybody for their attention today and

I wish you all the best thank you and

thank you for watching don't forget to

subscribe

[Applause]

thank you