Ahmed Reza | From Data to Knowledge: How AI is Transforming Human Capital

Srini Rao
.Ahmed, welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.



Ahmed Reza
Thanks so much for having me, Srini.

Srini Rao
Yeah, it is my pleasure to have you here. I have been really looking forward to this conversation as somebody who is kind of obsessed with all things AI at this point. And I know that you are the founder of an AI startup, but before we get into all of that, I wanted to start by asking you, what did your parents do for work? And how did that end up shaping and influencing the choices that you ended up making with your life and your

Ahmed Reza
Um, boy, that is actually a more loaded question than you realize. So my stepdad raised me and he was, uh, he was, he was a lawyer and he was one of the smartest human beings that I know. He was very, very kind and it was a great leader. Um, my mom, she was pretty much a homemaker. She tried a whole bunch of different things, uh, in Bangladesh. And, uh, she taught me a lot as well, just about perseverance and, you know, the entrepreneurial spirit. Um.

Srini Rao
Hahaha

Ahmed Reza
I got to know my dad for just like three months of my entire life. And actually maybe less than that. And what I didn't realize is another part of me which is I can be a tough guy to deal with. And I think that part is inherited. But yeah, with my dad, with my sort of, I will refer to my stepdad, but you know, I call him dad. My dad was a lawyer who was also a mathematician.

He was amazing at math, amazing at chess, and he was always learning. So he was an autodidact. So I actually got to clerk for him. And now that we have these language models and we think about linguistics more, growing up, I was really into painting, drawing, and engineering. So I got to share that with him, which was really special. So now you are seeing these legal AI startups coming out.

And I have just been noodling with a lot of different things in my head. And I think that is, that is worked out really well for me, right. Um, in retrospect, just having that diversity and that range.

Srini Rao
Were you raised in Bangladesh? Because like, from talking to you, you don't have any hint of an accent.

Ahmed Reza
Yeah, I am good with languages. I speak five different languages. Yes, I grew up in Bangladesh. I moved here when I was 14 to live with my dad. Didn't last for very long. But yeah, I grew up in Bangladesh. So I got to see very different cultures, moved here December of 95.

Srini Rao
Okay.

Well, when people move later in life, I am always curious about their experience of sort of culture shock and what they found weird, what they found hilarious, what they found interesting coming from where they were raised. I remember because I think when you land in a country in South Asia like India or Bangladesh the first time, especially if you have never seen it, especially in the 90s, you walk out of the airport, you are like, holy shit, this is crazy. It is madness. There is no it is like I had my cousin and I were talking about this. I was like, you know how I describe India? I was like, I describe it as organized chaos.

And I wonder for you, the experience of sort of transitioning between both, what was the culture shock like? What were the things that you found ridiculous, funny, hilarious, weird?

Ahmed Reza
I actually, so I am a Milken scholar, and there is about 20 of us every year, and that is probably one of the most exclusive, elite, special groups of people that I am associated with. And Mike Milken and the Milken Institute picks immigrants, like very, very heavily skews towards immigrants. And I didn't understand why.

until I realized like all of my fellow Milton scholars have this very similar journey. And one benefit that you get from being an immigrant is you actually get to experience different realities. Today, it may not be as pronounced, but definitely in the 90s, it was very pronounced. For example, it is very normal to ask people what they do. And that was one of the things that I found really weird.

I didn't grow up asking people what they did. That wasn't a big part of their identity, right? You might ask like, you know, where they are from or you might ask about their interests, but it just never occurred to me. And it seemed very rude actually to ask people what do you do, right? Like what is your worth? It was a very, very different culture, right? Because growing up.

And I didn't really put this together until like an NPR interview many, many years later, where they were interviewing another immigrant to London. And he was an Indian immigrant. And he was saving this like old steel town. And the interviewer asked him, why are you saving the steel town? You are like very, very Indian, right? He is like, well, when I was growing up, my dad said, like, be somebody, do something good for the world. Right.

And I realized that that is how I grew up, right? I grew up in Bangladesh, admiring Albert Einstein, Sebastian de Boas, right? Rabindranath Thakur. And you don't idolize any of them because they were rich. You don't idolize anyone because they were, you know, these are people in a very broad spectrum, right? You idolize people because of what they did and the impact that they had on humanity, right? So the...

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Ahmed Reza
At least the cultural message that I got growing up was never, you know, get crazy rich and put spinning rims on your Bentley. Stupid things that I did. But it was more like, you know, be somebody like, you know, be of service, you know, take care of people, be remarkable, but not in the same sense as the competitive remarkable over here.

Srini Rao
Hmm.

Srini Rao
Hahaha!

Ahmed Reza
So it was like I got to experience two different realities, right? So in America, you have a certain kind of reality. In the Western world, you have a certain kind of reality. And speaking of language, like you said, like, you know, I didn't, I don't have much of an accent. I speak several different accents of English also. So when I came here, I realized like my English was no good. I couldn't communicate with people. And I actually have different personas in my head, just like in a language model, right?

you give it a persona and tell it to act a certain way. I realized you actually have to have different personas. And if you are born in a different country, especially in a time that is not as homogenized as today, I think you would have to have two completely different personas when you load that language model up in your head. So you get to look at the world in two different ways and you don't think that the world is static. That works out to...

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Ahmed Reza
a really big advantage because you have to ask yourself, what are the things that were good in the Southeast Asian culture versus what are the things that are good in American culture? I am a huge fan of American culture. I identify very much as an American because it is like the great melting pot, right? But I also identify as a Bangladeshi, as someone from Southeast Asia or Desi, right? And there is a lot of valuable things in Desi culture as well.

And going forward, you realize that you can have a more nuanced view of what the future should look like, or could look like.

Srini Rao
Yeah. Well, it is funny you say that because I did like, I don't know if you were one of the millions of people that signed Ian matchmaking, but I was on the show and I remember after the show aired, I wrote this piece titled the South Asian arms race for impressive bio data, but I wanted to make sure I presented a nuanced perspective on that. And I said, like, you know, for all the things that are bad, which is like excessive pressure to achieve at certain levels.

there is also a lot of good that comes from those very things. It is like two sides of the same coin, where I realize, I mean, I am sure you are the same way, right? Indian parents don't put your report cards on fridges when you get A is. You are an idiot. They only ask why you didn't get an A when you get a B. But I realized what our parents were doing was unconsciously passing on the value of intrinsic motivation. And I saw it. I was like, wow, no matter what age you are, that door is always open. And that is not the case in other cultures.

So they are both, you know, both sides of the coin here. But I wonder for you, like, I mean, I am guessing Bangladesh, she sort of cultural narratives about making your way in the world for kids are very similar to Indian kids.

Ahmed Reza
It is very similar in some ways. Of course India is vast, right? So the different regions have different cultures. And Bangladesh has a very, well, the Bengali people have a very rich history and heritage as well, right? Spanning back over a thousand years. But overall, I think the cultures permeate. My wife is Thai, and believe it or not, she has a lot more in similarity to traditional Bengali culture.

Srini Rao
down.

Ahmed Reza
than probably somebody growing up in Bangladesh today. Because whatever that underlying culture is, right, is, it permeates. So, one of the things that is actually fascinating to watch this whole race for bio data, and this, you know, to me it is actually really, really odd. Probably because I am older. And probably because what happened in India specifically,

Srini Rao
Yeah.

Ahmed Reza
is this prosperity that came in, right? In Bangladesh, you have it too. This prosperity that came in, that also changed the culture very much. You have a significantly more Western culture that we have infused and we have kind of made it our own. And I think in Southeast Asia, the people have been there for like 5,000 years. There is a reason for it, right? Kind of take the best that comes our way.

Russell Peters, one of my favorite comedians, right? I think he gets to the meat of it, right? It is like the British come over and they are like, we are taking over. They are like, okay. Right? Not a very European response, right? Then he goes like, go to London and see who took over.

Srini Rao
Yeah.

Srini Rao
Yeah, what?

Srini Rao
Well, it is really funny that you say that because I lived in Brazil for about six months and you know, Brazilians are super liberal and like, you know, way different than India. I was like, man, I am like, can you imagine how different it would have been if the Portuguese had colonized the world? Like I had a friend who said, if you look at Portuguese military history, he is like, you can sum it up like this. He is like, they just went where the women were hot and the weather was good. Like, you know.

Ahmed Reza
I am sorry.

Srini Rao
But like I always thought about that. I was like, man, would we have ended up so conservative if the damn British hadn't been the ones to colonize India.

Ahmed Reza (12:03.95)
Well, actually, I think, again, like looking at it with a more longitudinal lens, I think only after I came here, I started studying history and I started studying, you know, sociology. India and the people of Southeast India have had a much bigger impact on global affairs and culture than we might realize. So like, you know, the story of Moses.

Srini Rao
Kind of. I am one of those weirdos who actually didn't read the Bible because I didn't take honors AP English.

Ahmed Reza
Like the story where, so the story, like if you watch like any of the movies, you will see like the people go and they worship the calf. There was somebody who was Indian among them. Not just somebody, like Indians had been trading with Egyptians, with all these other cultures, right? So we have actually had cultural exchange and we figured out how to coexist with one another, right? There are clashes, there are issues, right?

Srini Rao
Uh huh.

Srini Rao
Yeah.

Ahmed Reza
It had never been like one unified country. But in the meshing of different cultures, so in Southeast Asian culture, you will see a lot of Greek influence, you will see Egyptian influence, right? But what we don't often notice, and I think this is a result of our colonial past, is you are kind of made to forget, right? Like, oh, up until we came to civilization, you didn't exist. Like, no, we actually did exist. And Nassim Taleb has...

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Ahmed Reza
some great philosophies around this. He says, if you want to see the lasting power of something, just look back at the history. How long? Huh?

Srini Rao
I am at I lost you

Ahmed Reza
Sorry, can you hear me?

Srini Rao
Hey, you there? Oh, sorry, I lost you there. You cut out for a second. Josh, make a note to edit here, please. Continue what you were saying about civilization.

Ahmed Reza
Yeah, still here.

Ahmed Reza
Oh.

Ahmed Reza
Okay, so yeah, Naseem Thalab has a really good explanation of this. He says, look back at how long something is lasted, and you can kind of project forward and say, you know, does this thing have lasting power? So while there, it may not have been the modern definition of a nation state or of a people, but culturally, I think Southeast Asian culture is one of the great cultures of the world. And I don't think you can go anywhere without really feeling the impact. And while

while there was colonization and there was some revisionism in history, right, some of the pluralistic things that we see around the world, like I see they see in Italy or Europe, wherever you go, right, and you realize, you know, that is actually Indian or that is actually the traditional culture that survived, right, because I think these folks realized it was a lot better to just build together than to destroy each other.

Srini Rao (14:36.39)
Yeah.

Ahmed Reza
the pacifism, right? There is aggression too, but it is really not a culture defined by aggression. It is one that is a lot more patient, right? And I think that has a... But I think that has a lot, like that worldview has a lot to contribute to the future, right, of the future of us. Tommy Mansari wrote this amazing book called The History of Us.

Srini Rao
Well, given the bureaucracy, I don't think you have a choice. Yeah. Wait.

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Ahmed Reza
where he examines all of the different cultures and how it is kind of melded together to this one global culture that we have, right? I look forward to a future where Bollywood has a lot more impact on the world, because it really is, you know? On the down low, it really is.

Srini Rao
Hmm.

Srini Rao
Well, what is funny about that is if you even look at sort of Netflix now, you are starting to see it sort of coming like they are doing, you know, Bollywood produced stuff all in English and they are also pushing boundaries in terms of what would be considered acceptable. There is a show eternally confused, Negro for love and I am just thinking I am like, this would have never aired in India 10 years ago.

It is much more progressive. They like cover topics that like just would have been taboo in the past. One thing I wonder from what I am hearing, it sounds like you probably grew up in the nineties as, as I did. I am 45 now. So one of the things that I noticed, uh, when I went back to India in 2018, after about 11 years, uh, was a big distinction between like when my parents were there was that there was a sense of upward mobility that just wasn't there before. Like you were seeing like.

Wait a minute. It is like these are the kids from the slums and these are the ones who are becoming billionaires This is crazy because I think that was one thing I realized when my parents were giving us career advice I which I always thought was narrow-minded. I realized it was based on the context of when they grew up Because upward mobility just didn't exist in the way it does for this generation. I mean, I don't know if that was your experience I am wondering if you could kind of comment on that

Ahmed Reza
Yeah, it is been a little while since I have been back to Bangladesh. You know, most of my family actually migrated to the States. I have thousands and thousands of family members, you know, in and I am not exaggerating the number in Dallas, in the Northeast. Most of my family left. So we went to Bangladesh when my stepdad passed away.

and then in 2011 was the last time. But the feeling that I got was like, I felt like I was going to a European city. Lots of high rises, right? Just, it was bizarre. It was like a much more advanced country, very different. A lot of brown people, but I definitely did not feel like, you know, hey, I am going home. Like, you know, I don't think I could fit there. I could live there.

Like for me, my cultural home is Jackson Heights in New York.

Srini Rao
Yeah.

Srini Rao
Well, you know what is funny is I remember one of my podcast listeners, she took me to a place in India, some place in Delhi called cyber hub. And, you know, outside of it looked like typical India, right? Like, you know, auto rickshaws and all this other stuff kind of like disorganized. When we walked inside, I said, you know what? I am like,

The only thing that makes me realize I am in India here is the fact that there are brown people everywhere. Other than that, this looks like any American office complex. In fact, it is nicer than most of the American office complexes I have seen. That really blew my mind that it was that westernized. You mentioned thousands of relatives. I got to ask how many people do you have to invite to your wedding?

Ahmed Reza
I actually had to have multiple. Multiple at the same person. Because it didn't make sense. I was living in Florida. Or actually, we were doing the event. So we did one in the Northeast. We did one in Florida. We did one in Dallas. Like it was easier that way. Right?

Srini Rao
Hahaha!

Srini Rao
I can relate. Well, my sister married a Bengali guy. So you can imagine my parents have been in Southern California for 30 years. His family had been in Chicago for 40 years. And I remember my sister for a while was like, I don't want a typical shitty wedding venue. I want something cool and unique. And I was like, unless you are playing on excavating the Titanic, I don't know how the hell you are going to find that without spending a fortune. So two wedding receptions. I remember by the time we got to May, I was like, I love you guys, I get it. I am so happy this whole wedding thing is over.

because it was like a six month ongoing wedding.

Ahmed Reza
Oh yeah, yeah, I don't think most folks realize how elaborate Southeast Asian weddings can be.

Srini Rao
Yeah, well speaking of which you mentioned your wife is Thai. So one thing I always wonder about is when people marry from two different cultures, and I don't know if you have kids, but how you think about sort of preserving aspects of both your heritages and culture in the way that you live your lives. And if you have kids raise those kids.

Ahmed Reza
Um, it is, it is been interesting because, uh, you know, we speak in English and I don't know if we have done a really good job of preserving culture, uh, more rather realizing that, you know, culture, like language is a living thing, things change. So there was actually a unique, uniquely American, you know, Southeast Asian experience that I think my kids are very much a part of, that I think myself, my wife are a part of, right? But it is, it is really

the American experience, right? Because the American experience isn't a particular experience, it is the experience of coming together of different people. So, and it takes a lot of work to keep up with that. So now there is geek culture and everything else. So we try to recognize all of it, but I think, I think the preservation, not so much like preservation, but looking forward to what is the best that we can take from our lessons.

Srini Rao
Yeah.

Ahmed Reza
You know, the same way like you are reflecting on your parents and the advice that they gave you, right? And recognizing that the advice was based on their time, right? Are you a parent yourself? Okay, so like, when you are a parent.

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

No, I am not. I have a one-year-old nephew that is about as close to it as I have gotten.

Ahmed Reza
Yeah, so like when you are a parent, like, one of the things that I realized was like, Oh my god, they were making it all up. Right? We think our parents, they just knew everything, right? And as a parent, I am like, crap, I make half of this up. Like, I don't know, like, I am talking to my wife, like, what is happening here? What the heck do we do?

Srini Rao
Yep.

Srini Rao
Well, it is funny you say that. Cause I, my parent, you know, like my sister has been going through all this like sleep training and all this stuff with my nephew for a little bit. He like, we traveled a lot, so his sleep got all disrupted. And my parents were just like, my dad is like, why don't you just let him stay up if he wants to stay up? Cause I was thinking about that, right? Like my sister has access to the internet, communities of other parents, like resources that like our parents literally didn't have any access to.

So at least they have some knowledge they are going into. I was like, wow, you guys really did not know what the hell you were doing, did you? They are like, we didn't have a clue.

Ahmed Reza
Yeah, it is the craziest thing. I have been thinking about it very deeply because even with even with my kids, they are getting older. I realize that there is a generational divide and we don't really understand them. We don't really understand their reality that they live in. One that is always had social media, one that is always had the phone. It is a very different reality. They are a lot more connected to this globalized

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao
Yeah.

Ahmed Reza
you know, world view than I am, than we were, and the future that they are going to face is significantly different. And there is the entire parenting industry, right? And I just wondered, like, we have guidelines for everything, right? We have guidelines for, you know, how to live a good life, how to be a good stoic, whatever, right? All the way from Marcus Aurelius to now, to Nietzsche, right? You have philosophy and thoughts. And I wondered, like, why is all the parenting stuff like from 20 years ago, right?

from some popular psychologist, right? And the big realization I came up to is like, it won't work, it wouldn't work because the world changes so drastically. Your parents are an insanely important part of helping you grow and survive in your current reality. And that reality is always freaking changing, right? So if you got advice from someone, you know,

Srini Rao
I am going to go.

Srini Rao
Yeah.

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Ahmed Reza
700 years ago, they'd tell you like be really good at your studies and learn how to dance, right? If you were in Southeast Asia, right? It was a very, very different culture, right? You'd optimize for different things. So it is crazy, but parenting is one of those great challenges for human beings that every, every generation, we kind of have to figure out a lot of it.

Srini Rao
Yeah. Well, speaking of the future, walk me through the career trajectory that has led you into the world that you are in today and building tech products with AI.

Ahmed Reza
I think I am very fortunate in that I got to experience two different worlds. I have always been a geek. And I think in Southeast Asia, this is a lot more common. That is why you see a lot of brown folks in tech, right? Because culturally, that is something that was prized. Like knowledge is prized. Scientists are celebrated, or we are celebrated at least, right? And as a result, I have always...

I have always dabbled in different things. Growing up in Bangladesh, I was actually an actor and singer. I was like a little child star. And that was very interesting. But at the same time, I was a geek. Once I came to America, I was able to kind of completely shed that and not have that anymore. All of a sudden, I was an immigrant working on the streets. And I got to learn about resilience. I got to learn about many different things.

But I really leaned in more and more to the technical side. I enjoyed it when I was at Cornell. I really just geeked out because how many engineers have access to a particle accelerator, right? One of my crowning achievements in my NASA work was doing this cosmic ray correction. And the reason we were able to correctly build algorithms to correct cosmic rays in an outer space

telescope is because we were able to generate cosmic rays in our particle accelerator in our backyard. Like I talk about it now, it feels like a Disney story or something. But yeah, I think it just comes from being a geek, being a geek who wasn't told that it is not cool to be a geek, right? Being a geek who was also a designer, right? Who was also artistic. It actually had been

Srini Rao 
Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Ahmed Reza
pretty difficult to fit in, even among engineers that grew up here, right? Because they'd be like your geek, but like you don't fit the mold, right? Because I was fitting to a slightly different mold. Eventually, like I got the entrepreneurial bug more from needing it, needing money, right? Being a broke immigrant student.

Srini Rao 
Hmm.

Ahmed Reza
I had to work multiple jobs and eventually I started a little shop at the Keiuga Mall in Ithaca where I sold incenses and oils. So I found out the hard way how to build a business and how inventory works, how just-in-time manufacturing. So I started taking business courses just so that I could make sense of it all. And I was actually really ashamed of that part of me. And that is the cultural part, right?

Because even my dad was like you are an engineer. Why are you doing this? Like what is this hustler part of you, right? And I was really ashamed of it. So I had I have always had like a little bit of a side hustle I was selling cars online, right? So, you know how shift and all these other companies are selling cars online. So back in college I was just buying and selling cars on eBay I just really enjoyed the the process and I

Srini Rao
Hahaha

Ahmed Reza (26:57.87)
started working, I moved to Florida, I was working for the DOD there after NASA. And one of my friends flew down and he saw my online car selling business that I had on the side. And it was doing like a little over a million a year. And this was like completely on the side, hired my first employee there. And he goes to me, he goes, how come you are not doing a tech startup? And I will put till that moment like.

you know, these two parts of my brain were completely isolated from one another, right? Like this was like my secrets, you know, secret life that I didn't talk to most people about, right? And it just occurred to me like, hey, I could take this tech stuff that I do and the business stuff that I do, I could put it together. So I was fortunate enough to work at a bunch of startups that did really well. And that is sort of how...

I stumbled on my own startup and I was in Florida at the time. So I got to look at my situation there. There wasn't really a venture capital ecosystem there. So bootstrapped my company and used machine learning to basically make millions. And the way we did it was really dumb. I was hanging out with a friend of mine. Of course, here comes a brown card again. It was a dentist, right?

my best friend from college was a dentist. So I am hanging out with my friends who are doctors and dentists. I was thinking about building an electronic health record system, because how else do you show that you are a badass engineer? And then I realized he had a $3,000 check for Yellow Pages on his desk. And being very daisy, I was like, dude, what are you doing? And he is like, this is how I get my patients. So I had to prove to him that he was wrong. And he was a horrible person for destroying the environment. I tracked his marketing.

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Ahmed Reza
He was actually spending $6,000 a month. So I tracked all of his marketing, and I listened to phone calls over three months, over 1,000 phone calls. He only got 56 phone calls from the Yellow Pages. And I recorded the phone calls, transcribed them, classified them. And I sat down with him, and I was like, here, here is irrefutable proof that your Yellow Pages doesn't work. Most of your clients, they come from your SEO and from the AdWords, right?

what do you know that that becomes a business he turns to me he goes are you going to be my marketer and i was very offended by that actually i was like don't you dare call me a marketer he is like i will give you the six grand it is like okay fine i will take the money right i know enough to not turn that i turned out money so i took the money i hired somebody um in the philippines uh who still works with me today until today uh across multiple companies and i was like hey he i have this thing the system that i built you just look at the thing that works

Srini Rao
Hehehehe

Ahmed Reza
And you adjust the ad words based on that. And he referred me to two other people who ambushed me at a Thanksgiving party. And then after that, this became a business. Like I am making, I have monthly recurring revenue and I am not proud of this thing, right? It is not fancy enough. And then somebody else was like, dude, just take good enough, right? A lot of people would kill to have revenues like you have.

and people are just knocking down your door. So within like a year or so, we were doing crazy amounts of money. And it was a really simple problem, right? From a machine learning perspective, it is just attribution, marketing attribution for dentists. And who would have known, right? That would be something that is useful. I sold that company in 2018, moved to the Bay Area, and ended up selling that company to a dental marketing company.

Srini Rao
No.

Ahmed Reza 
And I just couldn't shake the fact that there was so little machine learning that we used to basically help these dentists make an extra $400,000 per year on average. How much more value is locked in a business? How much more efficiency could you help unlock for entrepreneurs, for business people, right? If you controlled more of the communication stack, if you could apply artificial intelligence,

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Ahmed Reza
on more of the business, right? So that was the motivation behind what I am doing now, which is Yobi. I'd become an investor for a little while, and I was like, no, this isn't as much fun as building stuff. So I decided that I was going to build a brain in the cloud, an AI agent that could potentially help run your business better than you can, and of course, focus on marketing, sales, customer service. And when I told people about it,

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao
Yeah.

Ahmed Reza (31:51.63)
They basically like laughed at me. Right? They are like, if you were really smart, you'd be in crypto. And I am like, I actually can do cryptography. And no, I am not getting into it. Right? I see opportunity here. You know, I have been around the block enough times with enough startups. I understand what this is. So I will fund it myself if I have to. And lo and behold, you know, this was 2019. So 2019 was the right time to be working on AI agents, which are, you know, all the rage now.

Srini Rao 
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. No. Well, you know what? For the sake of context I want to bring back a clip from a conversation I had with my friend Julian Smith because I think it will make an interesting segue to talking about the future. Take a listen

Srini Rao
So he was talking about technology being a series of jangle locks, because Julian is very good at identifying sort of what future implications of current technologies are. And I think that when we are talking about the things you are talking about, they are vast, not just for the future of work, but for our lives in general. So how is this going to affect us potentially in ways that we don't even...

realize yet because I think that there are sort of two camps in AI that I am finding at least there are those who are like me who are like this is the greatest thing ever and then there are people who are like this is the scariest thing ever.

Ahmed Reza
Yeah, so it is scary because it is new, right? But it is also really exciting, right? New things appear scary to us because we don't know them. And this might just be like the immigrant in me, right? Like drop me halfway across the world, I will find it exciting. And it is also scary, right? What is exciting is if you can look back and see what, things change.

Srini Rao (33:35.71)
Mm-hmm.

Ahmed Reza
But they don't change like that much that you can't tell what is going to happen at all, right? So if you look at the Industrial Revolution, that sparked huge changes in the world, right? There were the people who understood it, who adopted it, and others who didn't. So right now, the fundamental change that is happening is the augmentation of like human capital in a way that we haven't.

ever really imagined the same way factories augmented and basically changed how Manual labor is done. It hasn't done away with manual laborers completely like that is not what happened, right? We just got augmented So we are able to feed more people people don't starve to death when I was growing up. There was there was actual famines And I watched people starve to death the most horrible feeling in the world And everybody was saying but that in 20 to 30 years like there would be mass starvations across the world

The reason that didn't happen is because as much as, you know, as much as we hate the big farming equipment that saved us, right, the technology really saved us. It really unlocked potential in humanity that allowed us to do like more mental things. Here, I think it is going to unlock our potential, even mentally when we do all these, you know, things that are just drudgery. It will, it will unlock value in brand new ways.

there will be, I expect more entrepreneurship. Of course, times of change are always tumultuous, but afterwards, we can genuinely have a world of abundance where, you know, if we just look at what are our core values, what do we want to optimize, right? We can optimize for human happiness because that is one of the things that are, you know, that is one of the things that we don't.

often consider right now we often optimize just for money or optimize for output What if we could optimize for the fact that you know our lives aren't getting a heck of a lot longer We could live more meaningfully, you know, only humans can really be more human, right? So we can unlock we can change how we live in a drastic way that we haven't thought of before

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao
Yeah, I mean, there is so many layers to what you are saying that we could do a three hour conversation about each one of those. I think this idea of human capital, and you and I were talking about division of labor before and how I think that AI basically makes division of labor at scale accessible to the masses. But this idea of human capital is really interesting to me because I was just writing a note in my note taking app and I showed you the little task generation system that I built to identify

the most high impact test. So I don't even think about what to work on every day now, which is amazing because every task is aligned with the goal that I am trying to accomplish. But the notion of human capital, I thought was really fascinating because I was sort of thinking about this as a metaphor of like, you know, these huge companies, one of the things that has given them an advantage in the age of AI is data. And I realized for the individual that accessible knowledge, whether it is, you know,

things like my transcript for my conversation with you, notes from all the books that I have taken, which I am in a fortunate position of having this massive body of work, which gives me the ability to do things with AI that I don't think other people can do. And I realized I am like, basically what data is to large organizations, knowledge is to the individual in the age of AI, but I want to hear your take on that.

Ahmed Reza
I think it is interesting because think about the large language models that exist right now. Yes, data is a moat, but you want to not sink in your own moats. You have a ton of data, but you don't know what to do with it. You don't know how to use it. I think people who are biased towards action for humans are still going to play an outsized role, because look at what you have done with your data. You have actually done something with it.

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao
Yeah.

Ahmed Reza
If somebody is just sitting there hoarding data, that in itself is worth something. It isn't. And I think what we are going to end up seeing is there is going to be some enterprises that adopt AI faster. And they are going to know how to utilize this technology, while others will eventually be sold in chapter 7 or something for someone else who wants some of that data. Because they weren't able to see that trend coming, and they weren't able to take advantage of it. So like,

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao
Hmm.

Ahmed Reza
One simple thing that you could do right now, right? Like to scale yourself, to scale that human capital. Like here is me speaking in Italian, right? So I can only speak English. I don't speak Italian. I always wanted to, but here is that. Ciao. My name is Ahmed Reza and I am the founder of the communication program based on... Right, so imagine being able to... So imagine being able to do that and...

Srini Rao
Hehehehe

Srini Rao
I have used the tool you are talking about.

Ahmed Reza
have much greater reach for your podcast, right? Or for your content.

Srini Rao
It is funny that you say that because I have literally contacted a Heygen is the company that makes that I contacted them immediately. And I was like, wait, we have been looking for some way to do this. And they are like, our model doesn't accommodate one hour conversations just yet to like get back in touch with us. I am like, let me know as soon as possible. Cause I, I realized long time ago. Okay. Because I, I saw that a long time ago and I thought to myself, I am like, the most underrode.

Ahmed Reza
We should chat. You can actually do way longer than one hour. We have done, you know.

Srini Rao
underrated growth hack for us would be to literally be like if we can get Hindi, Spanish and Chinese, we would basically like expand our reach across the globe.

Ahmed Reza
Oh yeah, so if you looked at my LinkedIn or if you looked at most of my social media, pay closer attention. That is my synthetic agent. That is my digital clone. It is not me, right?

Srini Rao
Yeah. Oh wow. You got to tell us how to build that. Now let is talk about that. How do you build? I mean, I created one with Delphi. Like they built a digital clone.

Ahmed Reza
But by the way, that is Yobi. Like that is exactly our philosophy is like every human being, every professional is going to be accompanied by their synthetic agent. And you, my synthetic agent would help me become a better CEO. So it allows me to pitch more. It allows me to produce more content in my voice based on my knowledge. Right. And you can do that. Like you said, you have all these podcasts. What is the knowledge in all those podcasts, right? What if you could talk to.

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao
Oh, I have uploaded it to multiple AI models to see.

Ahmed Reza
Right, like then you are able to really extract value, right? So like, chat GPT itself is like trained on thousands of years of knowledge, right? No human being can ever come close to like really distilling all that, but this AI can now help us do that, right? So I can become a physicist and have, you know, Einstein level knowledge, not processing power necessarily, but knowledge, right? Access to this AI professor.

Srini Rao
Hmm?

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Ahmed Reza
that can help me in my research, that can help me in my growth and education. So we are about to get into a very crazy, very exciting time in human history. And we are doing just like the business part of that, right? So my AI synthetic agent pitches, it can also generate podcasts with multiple agents, right? And my mom listened to one of those podcasts and said, how come you have so much time to be in all these podcasts? I was like, mom, that wasn't me, right?

Srini Rao
Yeah.

Ahmed Reza
She is like, what do you mean that was not you? It is like, no, that is not me. But that does represent me. The things that my agent says is what I have said. The best part is a lot of people reached out to me for advice on entrepreneurship, which books to read, and we trained the AI on my conversations. So it assesses the other person and it actually answers and recommends the books.

correctly, which is crazy. Like when you experience it, it is one thing to theoretically know it could do that. It is a different thing when it is actually giving advice to people reaching out to me, right? On the entrepreneurial path or something else.

Srini Rao
Yeah.

Srini Rao
Okay, how do you, how do we, how do I access this? That is my first question. I am sure people are thinking, wait a minute, seriously? Like, cause I had Delphi build me a version and it is good. I mean, it is better than the one that my, I ask AI did. And I was like, okay, this is pretty cool. I was like, it is talking a little too much like a surfer dude, because they use my book transcripts. Um, but is this, is this what Yobi does? Like I could literally have this synthetic agent basically deal with my social media.

Ahmed Reza
So.

Ahmed Reza
So we did not release the social media one because you can imagine right you can create voices you can synthesize voices and it is very Sophisticated right so we eat our own dog food first, right? We eat our own dog food We understand, you know, I am a product guy, right? And I understand what the implications are if you release it just out to the wild without thinking about it And this is where like AI safety actually matters So we do we do build digital agents for folks who understand that this is, you know early tech

Srini Rao
Yeah.

Srini Rao
Yeah.

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Ahmed Reza
that they are going to be responsible, right? If it says anything that it shouldn't say, right? So, but we do have a limited release of it out to certain folks and organizations. We are working with enterprises on it, but yeah, it is not publicly accessible. But right now, if you get Yobi, you get some of the AI features, but not the, you know, I guess I am playing a little bit of the Elon Musk where I have like God mode on Yobi. Oh, I wouldn't sure, if you are a gamer, right? This is like the great. pleasure in life. As a geek I get to have stuff and really play with it. It comes with its pitfalls too.

Srini Rao
Totally.

Srini Rao
Yeah, so where can people download the tool like the one that is available? Is there a? Okay, yeah, that is what I thought yeah

Ahmed Reza
You just go to yobie.app. We made it really simple. We wanted to make it, we wanted to make it such that you'd start conversing with it, you can connect any of your social media channels to it and start talking to your customers and it learns pathically like what I under, like you are an early adopter, right? You will adopt things very quickly. But if you are looking for.

Srini Rao
Okay.

Srini Rao
Yeah, I am going to go try it right. I actually signed up for it just before we hit record. I didn't have time to finish the signup process.

Ahmed Reza (44:25.55)
Nice. But most folks, they need it to be easy, right? They need the workflow to be something that is familiar, especially the folks with the money, to be honest with you, right? If you are running a company, you are not going to be like, oh my God, I got to go learn this new interface. No, you don't. You download it, it looks just like your phone, super easy, it will make your life easier, right? And it just learns. It just starts actively learning from you.

For enterprise deployments, we do it a little bit differently where we go and get their information and we actively train the sense a lot faster. But once you get into a copilot mode, it is able to start answering questions on your behalf. And that is where the training happens. You go, oh, yeah, this is exactly what I would say. So imagine how Apple starts predicting what you are going to say. We are just 1,000 times better than Apple.

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Ahmed Reza
Also because we are constrained, right? We are not talking to everyone. This is specifically for B2B, or specifically for you to talk to your customers, right? It is not a privacy focused app. It is more about transparency, being able to share with your teammates.

Srini Rao
Amazing.

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao
Yeah, that is amazing. Like I think that, I don't know if you read a Cal Newport is book, A World Without Email, but right when I saw like the OB, just going through the process, I was like, wait a minute, you are an antidote to the hyperactive hive mind that he is talking.

Ahmed Reza (45:43.31)
Oh, yes.

Ahmed Reza
Yes. So that was the whole thing. Like how do you detach from the hyperactive hive mind, build a synthetic agent that is a machine that can basically deal with machines appropriately. Right. So I see, I see probably one to 2% of the emails that I get every day. And I think I get around 4,000 emails a day and my AI goes through all of them right now. And I get, you know, like, like a very tiny fraction even like makes it before my eyes.

Srini Rao
Yeah, totally.

Srini Rao
Amazing.

Ahmed Reza
Again, these are like the early innings, right? So you have to make sure that it actually works. We eat our own dog food, we don't just throw it out and release it, because we understand that if it is not amazing, it is going to have a real world impact on your business. And we want it so that once you adopt our technology, the value is just so obvious, right? You see that 10X or 100X or 1000X improvement. And...

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao
Yeah.

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao
Yeah.

Ahmed Reza
then you choose us to be your partners in AI going forward.

Srini Rao
I love it. I mean, you know, it is I have a friend who got a PhD in AI from Berkeley with like he is a total weirdo. Like we always joke. We are like, you know, Chetan will either be the next Steve Jobs or start a cult, probably both. But he has this like thesis because he'd called me about starting a podcast and I was like, what do you want? He is like, I actually believe that AI could be the solution to so many, like pretty much all of our problems as humans. And I was like, that is a really bold thesis. But I mean, I think that you sort of.

hinted at the idea of AI being a facilitator or sort of a precursor to global abundance.

Ahmed Reza
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Just most recently with what is going on in the world, right? It is very, like if you are opening social media, it is like heart wrenching, right? With my AI in the loop, one of the most useful things that is done is stopped me from responding, right? Like, so when I say, when I type something and I am angry, it stops, it oversees and manages me and says, you probably don't want to send this, this does not.

Srini Rao
Wow.

Ahmed Reza
This does not align with your core values of putting positivity out into the world. This is not going to right so

Srini Rao
So it is like the, like somebody who is, it is like basically the thing that keeps you from sending a drunk text.

Ahmed Reza
Exactly. So we have that. We have like this tax reform relation. It will pick up when you are upset, right? Because think about this. This thing is the perfect executive, right? Never gets upset, never gets angry. But at the same time, I still bring something to the table. The passion, the humanity is still extremely valuable. So it is a symbiotic relationship that we have. And I think he is right, you know? And that is the reason

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao (48:35.96)
Yeah.

Ahmed Reza
Why it is kind of crazy that some people are claiming it, right? But if you are a real geek, man, you have got to be doing it. I am doing it. And so far, it is been amazing.

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao
What? It is funny.

Yeah, so I think it is the idea of the symbiotic relationship is really, really vital for people to understand because like I wrote this book called the artificially intelligent creative that I self-published. And one of the realizations as Mem has like put in these chat features, I realized I was like, the key here is to treat this thing as a partner, not a tool. And like literally every day when I go through my daily planning, I was like, you know what, I am like, let is take this from being just a task planning function to making it reflective and

Ahmed Reza
Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao
an hour every day having a chat with this AI that has access to literally my entire knowledge base, like all my transcripts, all the book notes. And I think in the span of an hour yesterday, I generated potential ideas for a PhD thesis. If I wanted to do a PhD, we came up with an idea for a new book to write about the importance of thinking in the age of AI and how critical thinking is going to matter.

Like I was like, I want to do a book that is not about AI tactics, one that is timeless. And I need you to literally, I was like, take the book notes that we have from perennial seller, build a model so that it fits all the criteria that Ryan holiday talks about in perennial seller. And let is save that as a model that we can reuse. And it was just as fascinating as, you know, I was like, wow, this all happened in the span of like a 45 minute like, you know, conversation with AI over a couple of glasses of wine. And

I think there is one of my cousins when I was writing that book, we were talking about, you know, sort of communicating with AI. And he said, well, he is like, at the end of the day, 50% of this still all depends on human input, right? It is what you put into it that is going to determine what you get out. And I realized that like, being a creative person who spent years writing was this huge advantage in the age of AI, because I could like, I like when I here is the funny thing I realized was the biggest key that people, because I have seen people get into an AI tool and they get frustrated when it doesn't give them what they want.

Ahmed Reza
Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao
And anytime that happens to me, I basically say, okay, look, this is what I am looking for. How should I have phrased this so that you give me the output? Or if it takes like six iterations, I am like, okay, how should I have phrased the original prompt so that you gave me what you just gave me on the first one, so we didn't have to go through the iterations and I will just rebuild based on that. So I just keep a running library of all the things that work.

Ahmed Reza
It is amazing to just listen to you, right? Because this is what I am talking about. Most people don't really get how it is disruptive, but how it is also incredible and how it is the human ingenuity, right? You are looking at language models and you are innovating, right? You didn't stop innovating. You are keeping lists. You are innovating in ways that probably the designers of Mem never imagined, right?

Srini Rao
No, I am sure they didn't. Cause like I said, I came up with that task model based on, you know, a conversation I had with Julian Smith, who was mentoring me, Victor Chang is book, Extreme Revenue Growth. And I was like, okay, these are the criteria. These are the goals. Let is use the criteria and goals. And I want you to build a model for me to plan tasks. Then I had a client who I was migrating his notes from Evernote to Mem. And I started noticing a pattern in how he organized his research for his books. And I was like, okay, this is how he organizes every book into five or six different categories. I was like, let is do this. Let is build a model for him to generate a table of content synopsis,

with those and we built that in 30 seconds.

Ahmed Reza
Right. That is super cool. By the way, once generative AI kind of showed its capabilities, I took all of my notes off of anything like Notion. We have our own custom tools for everything. Because you understand, this opens up the Pandora is box, right? Any text that you have written out there, Gmail probably has a bigger data set than that.

Srini Rao
Yeah.

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao
Yeah.

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Ahmed Reza
anybody else on you and probably could replicate you in your entire life is journey. If you have been using Gmail for a while, right, could replicate your conversations and relationships better than anyone else, right? The thing that hasn't existed is actual understanding of language, but that exists now, man, and it is getting it is getting better exponentially.

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao
Yeah, I am seeing it day by day and I saw the GPT4 release and tabulated to upload documents and I was like, wait a minute, this is insane. I am like, now I am like, okay, I need you to build, like I literally was like, I need to build an unmistakable creative GPT just to deal with all the bullshit tasks and it is doing it so fast. I am like, this is amazing. But.

I feel like you and I could talk all day about this stuff. I mean, there is probably, you know, like the whole idea of building a world of abundance using ads. So one, you know, let is talk about one last thing. I think let is talk about how this is going to impact education, because I think that I am seeing again, you know, you have this sort of very polarized view where some teachers are like, this is the worst thing ever. Cause my dad, uh, he just retired.

Ahmed Reza
Oh.

Srini Rao
And he was basically asking me, he was like, okay, have JGPT generate in my intro to virology syllabus. And I don't know a damn thing about virology. I just said, hey, my dad is a professor, he is at Riverside, do this. And he was like, wait, you did that while you were watching TV? I was like, yeah. And so I told him, I was like, look, I am like, your students are going to use this anyway, so why not make it part of the curriculum? So he actually gave them an assignment where their.

you know, assignment was basically to use AI to simulate potential cures for viruses, because it is a virology class. And I told him, I was like, that is the way we got to think about this in my mind. But I mean, you are more of a technical expert than I am. So like, what does, what does this mean for our education system?

Ahmed Reza 
So education is actually one of our big focuses. I pulled my kids out of school earlier this year because I don't think our current education system is really going to serve our children well. The reason behind it is it is very much the remnants of an industrial revolution inspired world. I know I sound very polarizing, but you know, kind of put my money where my mouth is.

Srini Rao
Hmm.

Ahmed Reza
So we have a team of folks that have started working on, you know, what would the future of education look like? And I volunteered my children because I am very, very confident on this. As I think you will understand, right? So you now have access to this thing, right? That is insanely smart, that is insanely powerful, right? Does that mean you can be dumb? No, it doesn't.

Srini Rao
Yeah.

Ahmed Reza 
But does that mean that maybe you should pursue your PhD and your interest in music and your interest in virology? Maybe, right? Maybe you can be more than one thing, right? And you don't need to spend years memorizing time stables. Instead, it is better to understand the theory so you know the questions to ask so that you can solve the real world problems with this very new kind of tool that exists, right? And it will be like...

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Ahmed Reza
You know, computers are awesome, but remember, like, there used to be typists, not that long ago. That was a profession, right? Computers, like if you called us modern day typists, that would, you'd laugh, right? I think that is unfortunately what we are training our children to do is we are training them to be modern day type or typists. Because the future is just so radically different. We need to look at education, how we raise children.

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ahmed Reza
in a future where the paradigms are not going to be like those of today, right? And equip them so they can be successful in that paradigm. That is a really big ask, by the way, right? That is a really crazy thing and scary thing to ask any parent. But at least if you are an AI, if you are like as knee deep in it as I am, you know, it is really obvious, right? So

Srini Rao
Yeah.

Srini Rao
Yeah. Ha ha ha.

Ahmed Reza
It is been only a few months that my children have been doing this other curriculum. And they have skipped, like they have gone even beyond their grade work, like significantly beyond, you know, the one who is supposed to be doing like basic science has like finished essentially high school physics. And it is modeled differently, just like, you know, how you kind of play with your AI, right?

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Ahmed Reza
I think if you really want people to become autodidacts, you have to customize the curriculum to them and customize the growth and nurturing plan to that individual as opposed to just saying, hey, everybody, like, eat your broccoli, right? And so far, the results are absolutely astounding. And I think there is going to be a lot more around this. The main concern that I have is the speed of AI.

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm.

Ahmed Reza
I have lived through the tech revolution, as you have lived through, right? Remember the corded phones, man? Remember VCRs and cassette tapes? I remember those. And I just look back and go, holy crap, like within my life, this insane amount of change has happened to humanity. And it is accelerating. That could be a really destabilizing force for the world unless...

Srini Rao
Yeah.

Srini Rao (57:42.78)
Mm-hmm.

Ahmed Reza
we proactively educate and equip our children to deal with that future. That is going to be very different. And I think being at the forefront of it, you understand that. You understand that if you were teaching your nephew how to use it, right? Teach them how to use language models, understand it, right? What are the things that they are really interested in? Have them understand those subjects deeply instead of just memorizing things, right? And then at the end of it,

your career might be, you know, doctor, researcher, scientist, and a bunch of different things. And maybe even politician by the time you are 30. Right? How you live your life fundamentally can be different. But I think their generation is going to have something really exciting, because you will get to build all of these things, kind of like how you are building, right? You realize you have an unfair advantage over 99% of the world or more. Right? Because you understand the tech, just because you understand the tech.

Srini Rao
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Srini Rao
Yeah.

Ahmed Reza
You get to build, I get to build, right? It is like knowing that the internet is coming and I could build Amazon, I could build Google.

Srini Rao
Yeah. I mean, I think that this is as profound and deep. I am sure you probably saw it. Sam Woltman, I think, did an interview with CBS News about OpenAI. He was talking about how we taught math before calculators. And basically, calculators meant that math had to be taught in a new way. But I think the thing that he said that really struck me in that interview was that he said one thing that AI allows is for a Socratic method of learning, where you can actually go deeper.

on a topic to your point, like we are not just memorizing facts. Like we can go in. Like I remember I was like, one day I was like, okay, can you explain the financial crisis to me, like a five-year-old? And it did, and I was like, okay, great. And so then I started asking more adult-like questions. I was like, okay, now, funny enough, despite how much I had seen about it and read about it, I didn't really understand the underlying forces behind it, even though I was affected by them. But the fact that we can go that deep, I think is really powerful. In fact, right before our interview, I was like trying to find information on you and mem.

GP chat agent didn't come up and then I went to chat to him. I was like, can you just generate a brief on Amadreza for me? Like, give me the details on him for our conversation. I was like, okay, good. I know enough, because usually like, I will have read somebody is book, but you know, you didn't write a book yet. So I was like, okay, well, I just need a briefing. But yeah, that really blows my mind that we have gotten there. But in the interest of time, I want to finish with one final question, which is how we finish all of our interviews at the Unmistakable Creative. What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable?

Ahmed Reza (01:00:12.814)
Right. Ha ha ha ha ha.

Ahmed Reza (01:00:39.246)
Um.

Ahmed Reza (01:00:42.958)
make somebody or something unmistakable. I think just like knowing yourself, right, reflecting and really being confident in that. Like it doesn't, it doesn't really require for anyone else to recognize it but yourself. If you are happy with it, if you are content, right.

and this is you, this is your manifestation, right? That is all that matters. That is really all that is within our control.

Srini Rao 
Beautiful. Well, like I said, this has been amazing, thought-provoking, and insightful. Where can people find out more about you, your company, and everything else you are up to?

Ahmed Reza 
You can follow me on social media. You can even text my synthetic agent directly at 402-698. Hang on, I will give you the phone number. This is something nobody does, right? You can actually send a text as 402-698-3599, and you can have a conversation with the synthetic version of me and ask specific questions. Or you can go to yobie.app, you will see what we have there. Or check out my social for the stuff that we are...

presenting.

Srini Rao 
Amazing. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that. Wow.