Podcast with Denis Rothman Part 4
Summary
In this captivating podcast episode, Denis Rothman takes usdeeper into the world of AI and its potential impact on humanity. Discover why
Rothman believes that AI won't surpass human control and how electricity
shortages, internet cutoffs, and social unrest could shape our response to AI
threats. Dive into the fascinating discussion on the scarcity of raw materials,
including computer chips and rare minerals, essential for AI systems. Gain
insights into the challenges of colonizing Mars and the crucial role of an Iron
Core in sustaining life. Prepare to be enthralled as Rothman shares his
unconventional views on robots, digital transformation, and the remarkable
influence of mathematics. Join us for an eye-opening conversation that
challenges traditional notions and offers a unique perspective on the future of
AI.
In this fourth part of the podcast series with DenisRothman, the discussion continues from the previous episodes, focusing on the
future of AI and its potential implications. Rothman shares his insights on the
limitations of AI becoming a superintelligence and emphasizes the role of human
intervention in preventing any perceived threats. He raises concerns about the
availability of raw materials for AI systems, such as computer chips and rare
minerals, which are predominantly sourced from Asia. The feasibility of human
colonization on Mars is also questioned due to the absence of essential
elements like an Iron Core, necessary for creating a protective atmosphere.
Rothman predicts a future dominated by robots in space exploration, while
affirming that humans will maintain control to prevent dominance. For aspiring
AI students, he advises them to have fun while retaining their identity and
mastering the foundational mathematics. In terms of digital transformation,
Rothman suggests that business leaders seek efficient individuals with AI
expertise and identify areas where AI can save costs or enhance productivity.
This podcast episode serves as a continuation of the previous parts, offering
valuable insights and encouraging audience engagement through questions and discussions.
[00:00:00] Andrew Liew Weida: So you don't think thateventually AI will become like a generative ai, like super AI in a sense,
[00:00:06] Denis Rothman: things like, no, what's gonnahappen is I'll tell you what's gonna happen.
[00:00:10] Denis Rothman: Yes, please. I'm pretty sureit's gonna happen. If you have artificial intelligence systems that begin, that
human beings begin to detect as something that is a threat. then ex expect
electricity shortages, internet cutoff, expect groups of people that will
destroy anything that looks like it.
[00:00:29] Denis Rothman: Okay? And it far be before itbecomes anything that looks like a terminated. And the other question is, where
are you gonna get the raw material? Where are you get the computer chips? Right
now everyone's focused on Asia because everything, all the computer chips come
from Asia. Okay? If you talk about Taiwan, I'm talking about GPUs.
[00:00:48] Denis Rothman: I'm not talking about politics,I'm talking about GPUs. I'm talking about rare minerals. I'm talking about
China. That's why everyone's focused on that because they have the rare
minerals and they have the computer chips. So[00:01:00]where you get the computer chips to do all that, there's so many poor people.
[00:01:03] Denis Rothman: You, you'll get revolutionsbefore people are hungry. There's a lot of social unrest in western com
countries. Human beings, we have big problems to solve, like climate change.
What uses are going to be and going to Mars. Who's gonna live on Mars? You live
on Mars, you know that you can't live on Mars.
[00:01:21] Denis Rothman: You know that to have anatmosphere, you have to have an Iron Core. The Earth has an Iron Core that
creates an electromagnetic field that protects us. It's not the atmosphere.
People think, oh, we're protected by the atmosphere. No. You're protected by
the geomagnetic protection around the Earth due to your Iron Core.
[00:01:42] Denis Rothman: If that didn't exist, theatmosphere would disappear in 15 minutes. So on Mars, how are you gonna create
that atmosphere with no Iron Core? So where are we gonna going to live in
cracks? Because every day you're hit by thing and there are earthquakes all the
time on these even on the moon, there are a lot of problems.
[00:01:58] Denis Rothman: So we we can't [00:02:00] go live there. So Elon Musk is anindustrial genius. But don't listen to him when he's speaking because the only
thing that's going to go there are robots. There'll be robots everywhere in
space, robots on the moon, on Mars, on asteroid, picking all the minerals to
make billionaires into trillion.
[00:02:15] Denis Rothman: Trillion trillionaires. Okay?There'll be trillion, but there's not gonna be, there'll be people, but not as
we're thinking of on earth. Cool. What happens if you go to Mars and there's a
psychopath? .
[00:02:26] Andrew Liew Weida: I
[00:02:26] Denis Rothman: don't know about that. What?You go to Mars and all of a sudden there's a Covid times 10, another virus.
How?
[00:02:35] Denis Rothman: Because we live on this planet.Because even in the bedtimes, we help each other because it takes the whole
planet to solve a problem. So the guy has a heart attack on Mars. He needs the
best specialist in the Newark Hospital. What are you gonna do? Send him back two
years. Okay, , we'll send you back. Solve the problem to I The future is
robots.
[00:02:54] Denis Rothman: Robots everywhere. Robots onbattlefield robots. We see the drones already [00:03:00]are Yeah, virtual robot robots everywhere. But they're not going to, they're
not going to dominate us because we're going to, we're going to cut the
electricity off or blow up the factory that manufacture computer chips.
[00:03:13] Denis Rothman: Human beings are the mostdangerous predators on earth, and there's no way you can underestimate 'em.
Don't under any species that underestimated humans doesn't exist anymore. Even
human beings between we're very dangerous. So I'm not, I don't fear that some
kind of super thing is going to take over because we'll destroy it before we're
very good at destruction.
[00:03:35] Andrew Liew Weida: I, I think I agree withyou. I think that human mankind, trial history are known to be. Predators. We
fight among ourselves. But let's think about the Brexit. Let's say a fresh
graduate of people who came out of school, like you mentioned with higher
education and they wanna be a artificial intelligence talent or worker into
future.
[00:03:55] Andrew Liew Weida: What is your tips for them?The first thing before going outta school is [00:04:00]to enjoy artificial intelligence. is to play around with ballet, play around
with Chad. P t Do not underestimate Google. Google is making thousands of times
more money than OpenAI. OpenAI is not making money. Google is making a lot of
money.
[00:04:17] Denis Rothman: Apple is making a lot of money.And they're not talking. They're earning the money. They have Chad, G P T.
Google has the same algorithms inside the recommended, but they're just making
a lot of money out. . China has extremely powerful artificial intelligence.
It's not on social media, so open ai, just open the door to social media.
[00:04:37] Denis Rothman: But what I'm saying is thisstudent should enjoy himself first. As a student, you enjoy yourself. You want
to play with it. You want it to become fun. You want to play around with
algorithms, you want to see their limits. And once you reach the limit, you
wanna find maybe I'll find a way to take it beyond the limit.
[00:04:54] Denis Rothman: Maybe I can write the algorithmeven on a piece of paper and suggest it to opening our Google. Or [00:05:00] maybe I'll just use AI as a tool. MaybeI'll just go get a nice job with an average salary. Not too many hours. That's
the French. Many French engineers think like this. If you take a French
engineer, take an American engineer.
[00:05:14] Denis Rothman: Maybe you want to go, I don'tknow, to see Tesla. Yeah, take a French engineer. He's the first thing I'm
gonna ask is, how many hours am I working per week? vacation. . If you're a
woman, how long do I get when I have a baby? Now, the men have the same rights
in France. The younger generation is looking for life, not for work.
[00:05:33] Denis Rothman: So this is why there are a lotof riots right now in France about retirement age. So I would say have fun.
Enjoy your life. Go to the movies. Go see friends, have nice dinners. Don't
worry about and have fun with artificial intelligence to the extent where
you'll be able to share your passion with your future customers or employees.
[00:05:54] Denis Rothman: They're gonna say, oh, thisguy, he likes ar this nice guy to work with. He [00:06:00]really likes it. He has all these ideas and and then at the same time, be very
efficient. Be efficient in the sense of mastering science, mastering everything
to the detail, doing math and math. Artificial intelligence is math.
[00:06:13] Denis Rothman: Doing a lot of math. , not justprogramming. Do the math before the programming. Try to write all the
algorithms down the piece of paper. Do it with the math. And once you
understand the math, artificial intelligence, I'm afraid to say is nearly a
joke, , because once basic math derivatives and things like that it's very
easy.
[00:06:33] Denis Rothman: The math of artificialintelligence is very it can be complex. You can go up to master's level for
some parts, but it's never going to reach the research level of like we have a
fields medalist in France called gi Oh, when you talk, when he talks. Yeah. We,
France is one of the country.
[00:06:52] Denis Rothman: If you look at the number offield medalists per country in the world, you're gonna see that France is
almost equal with the United States. Yes. With a [00:07:00]population of only 70 million facing 330 million. And out of those field
medalists, how much, how many were really Americans or like football players.
[00:07:09] Denis Rothman: How many you kids? So Vince hasa lot of math and vi when he speaks about artificial intelligence, he, it's
about, takes him five minutes. He says, yeah, okay. All these algorithms and
you take the data, plug the equations in there and it'll predict something that
existed before. But I'll never invent anything new.
[00:07:28] Denis Rothman: Okay. Maybe people should knowabout this better now. Can we talk about something else?
[00:07:33] Denis Rothman: So it's a tool. It's a veryfantastic, so the student needs to understand that the essence of who he is or
who she is, or Gek or whatever you want to call yourself or it, or they, or
whatever you want to be today. That's, in fact, that's an interesting comment.
Everyone's focused on who he is, gender and all that, because identity people,
there are two sides to that.
[00:07:58] Denis Rothman: Is it woke or is there an [00:08:00] identity crisis in our societies or are wetoo manufactured? The Pink Floyd song, bricks in the Wall. So human beings in
the western world, maybe they're not so woke, they say, you're gonna call me
what I want cuz I'm a person and I want to be called if she they or whatever.
[00:08:17] Denis Rothman: I'm not a brick in the wall.You're not going to just put a name on me, a label. No. I'm changing that
label. I'm who I want. So part of it is something difficult to accept for a lot
of people that say, that's woke. Another part is an identity crisis. So the
person that's learning AI must retain identity.
[00:08:39] Denis Rothman: And that's very important. Soif you, the person can have fun, retain. It's she or whatever identity and
show. I have an identity. I'm going to go to work. I'm a man. I'm going to go
to work tomorrow with a skirt and a blue wig and you're gonna call me. She, I'm
Dennis, but tomorrow you're gonna call me Patricia.
[00:08:58] Denis Rothman: It seems crazy, but at the [00:09:00] same time, you're showing people thatyou're not a, just a little brick there. You're not just a little, you're not
just a part of an algorithm. You're a real human being. So that's interesting.
So the person should have fun identity and be extremely efficient in math in
implementing, no nonsense, no height, no buzz.
[00:09:21] Denis Rothman: Creating the tool to optimize afunction and not dream about all that stuff people are talking about. Just get
things done for the company and then quickly go home to the, to your close
ones. Yeah.
[00:09:32] Andrew Liew Weida: So your three tips was havefun retain your identity and be good at math. what about and be efficient when
you're efficient when you're delivering.
[00:09:41] Denis Rothman: Yeah. And be
[00:09:42] Andrew Liew Weida: efficient. Okay. Let's saythe other audience out there, which is like the business leaders or
corporations listening to this podcast, what are your tips for them to start
applying digital transformation and large language model? Where should they
start or how should they think about it?
[00:09:58] Andrew Liew Weida: In a sense,
[00:09:59] Denis Rothman: [00:10:00]yeah. I've done this many times because this, I've been selling artificial
intelligence for all my life. The first thing to do for a CEO is to find the
person we just talked about, . That is efficient, that knows, no efficient, no
hype, no buzz that has an identity and has fun doing it.
[00:10:18] Denis Rothman: And then what you have to dofirst, I'm sorry to say this and I've done it many times, is take a paper board
and. find the basic flow of your company. What is it, what do you, what, how do
you sell what, I don't know, in four or five lines of graph, what is your
company? What, and where are you?
[00:10:37] Denis Rothman: Where do you, where are youlosing money? Where's the money? It's
[00:10:41] Andrew Liew Weida: like you're talking aboutcash flow or workflow or what kind of flow I'll tell you how I got you. You
saying how I got my first contracts? Yes. The one with afa, I went to see afa
and in my competition I had all these big universities and they had these
corporations and I said, where are you losing money the most?
[00:10:59] Denis Rothman: And they were [00:11:00] losing money on silver because in thosedays, in the photography, using a lot of silver. And I say, what if I saved 1%
of your world production and you saved 1% of all the silver you're buying in
the year? I said, wow. said I can do it with artificial intelligence. I'm in
1991. Okay?
[00:11:19] Denis Rothman: And I said, I can do that withartificial intelligence. So what I'm saying is you have to look where the
prison is going to need something to earn money. So to to, because this is a,
it's gonna cost a lot of money to do ar real artificial intelligence. Yeah. Not
gimmick, but real. So you say, I would say if you, I'm gonna earn you, I can
save you $5 million.
[00:11:44] Denis Rothman: How are you gonna do that? Sohow so I, in fact, we saved more cuz then I partnered with IBM and we saved far
more than $5 million. We're talking tens of millions of dollars. So I said,
first of all, I said, first of all, don't believe me. He says [00:12:00] what? I said, if I was sitting in yourshoes, And I was talking to one of the general managers of World, said, I wouldn't
believe someone that just came up.
[00:12:08] Denis Rothman: Cause I was young and told mesomething like that. First of all, don't believe me, this is science says, how
are we gonna do this? We're gonna write a contract and you're gonna give me
that much money if it's true in one year. Cause if you sell it, you short sell
it, then you No, I'm get, I'm, I wanted the, I need a lot of money at that time
to pay for my mortgage.
[00:12:28] Denis Rothman: So I saying, you don't pay mefor one year, but after one year we're gonna have these financial controls with
IBM and we're gonna get this percentage of what we're making. We're helping you
earn. So first you're looking for where the person can save a lot of money and
then you're gonna say, we're going to cost a proportion of that and you're
going to give me that cost is going to be the proportion of what we're saving.
[00:12:52] Denis Rothman: So the only driver is finance.. It's not what can the, what can it be more sales or [00:13:00]less cost? What else? What do you wanna offer a company? More sales, less cost,
more productivity. But if you're gonna say, oh, I want to give you this nice
chat bot put on your website and it'll cost you a hundred thousand dollars.
[00:13:12] Denis Rothman: Okay, and how much am I gonnaearn with, oh, nothing. But it looks so nice. . Oh yeah, sure. The door is over
there. The cos I'll show you something you haven't maybe seen at a door. You
see that door, you go out of it and never come back. Okay? Because cos give you
like five minutes, often, less often. You have one minute, maybe you have 10
seconds before they get, they begin become very nervous because in my
experience, I've met a lot of people.
[00:13:39] Denis Rothman: So when I start, I say, I'm notgonna start with my bio. I'm not gonna start with anything. I'm just gonna tell
you that I studied your company. And I can save you company this many dollars
that, that, that is, that was generally my first sentence. Early in my career I
knew I had three or four sentences before the guy gets aggravated he said,
what?
[00:13:59] Denis Rothman: I have things to [00:14:00] do. I said, no, I can earn that much moneynow if you come in and said, if you give me $20,000 and I'll find some money in
your company, you're gone. So I would do a lot of research before on the
business as an expert and figure everything out of that company and know it
from A to Z before I walked in.
[00:14:16] Denis Rothman: And the guy would generallysay, after 15, did you work here? I said no. But I did a lot of research and
what can prove, what can, how can you prove it? I said, I don't want to be
paid. You pay me when it works. He says, so it costs me nothing. No. And how
much am I gonna get? Maybe $50 million, 5 million.
[00:14:34] Denis Rothman: Okay. When can we start? Can westart tomorrow morning? I said we can start today. That's how I got my LinkedIn
profile. .
[00:14:41] Andrew Liew Weida: That's a fan. Fantasticstory to give advice to any c e o listening to this, right? I can, I
[00:14:48] Denis Rothman: didn't invent anything. Ilearned this in the marketplaces of Mache and Morocco. Ah, they have probably
you can learn this in a marketplace in Mgai.
[00:14:59] Denis Rothman: [00:15:00]You can, this is very traditional thousand year old merchant discourse. I
learned that as a student in Morocco. You go, for example you're standing there
and the guy says, Hey, buy some of my food. I said, and I that's Western. Say,
taste some of my food. Take this free. I said, I don't want it free now.
[00:15:19] Denis Rothman: Take it free. You don't evenhave to buy it. So then you taste it. It's good, but you didn't pay anything.
You pay after. . Then if you go to any market in the world where you have these
good salesman, they'll say, Hey you like my chicken here? Taste my chicken.
They always have something that taste it. You like it, buy it.
[00:15:34] Denis Rothman: You don't like it? No. Noproblem. Don't. No. And they'll be giving th that's, this is a thousand year
old business first. You show what the person you can do and then you ask for
money. But if you start asking for money immediately, maybe you won't get far.
That's why I never, we, I never had it to raise funds.
[00:15:52] Denis Rothman: I was never a really a realstartup. I had money from the start. The
[00:15:56] Andrew Liew Weida: interesting question, Ialso wanna ask, like, why do you decided to partner if [00:16:00]IBM at that time?
[00:16:01] Denis Rothman: Because at one point projectsare too big. I always wanted to have only a small company with a small team so
we could all go home early.
[00:16:09] Denis Rothman: Yeah. And have a family life.And for big projects, you need big people. I'm not a big project person. I'm a
big algorithm for. , I can solve almost any algorithm in optimization you want,
but I'm not a, I'm not a Elon Musk, and that's where you have to know who you
are. Elon Musk doesn't know that he's not a philosopher.
[00:16:28] Andrew Liew Weida: Okay, that's a
[00:16:29] Denis Rothman: amazing, okay. But I know thatI'm not Elon and I cannot scale corporations like they do. Okay? It takes very
big talent to scale, and usually the people that scale are not the people that
do the algorithms. Okay? The people that do the algorithms are people like me.
They're just intellectual.
[00:16:48] Denis Rothman: But then to scale, you needthese people. Like at one point we had all these customers a few years back
this is a, i, we did this. We had a small bet, family business. I said, it's
too [00:17:00] much. And we sold the business afew years. I said, I have too many customers. It's too much. Had Disney I have
the railway railroad manufacturers, airplanes.
[00:17:09] Denis Rothman: That's too much for this littleguy that's writing algorithms. I need to bring someone in. So I always worked
with these big corporations cuz they know how they have these project managers,
they have good structures. They will say, okay, your idea to give it, it's a
nice idea, but we have to put this in a contract.
[00:17:28] Denis Rothman: We have to write it down. Hasto be, how are you gonna check this? How are you gonna do that? You need IBM to
do that. You need Microsoft. You're not gonna do it by yourself. So you can
always have these ideas, but then all you have to go into the society, you have
to go and they know better than you do. I learned that tremendously with, of
course they take a big share of what you're hurting.
[00:17:48] Denis Rothman: Like people that sell onAmazon, they have these bookshops, they sell. Amazon takes a lot of money, but
it's Amazon. They know how to sell. We don't how to sell. Yeah. They're the
richest people in the world. They know, they, [00:18:00]they begin selling books. And look how much he earned selling books compared to
a bookstore.
[00:18:05] Denis Rothman: And now bookstores go to Amazonand sell old books because he knows how to scale. So I'm comparable to a
bookshop. I don't know how to scale, but I go to people that do know how to
scale.
[00:18:17] Andrew Liew Weida: Oh, that, that's an amazinganswer. For giving tips on how business leaders can start thinking about
digital transformation.
[00:18:25] Andrew Liew Weida: I think you and
[00:18:26] Denis Rothman: always remain, rememberidentity. Yeah. Remain who you are. But don't go beyond your window . Don't
undersell yourself because you're worth that much, but don't oversell yourself.
Stay where where your competence. And don't try to go over cuz you're gonna
burn your weight. Yeah.
[00:18:42] Denis Rothman: And you burn fast. And oncethey burn fast, it takes a long time to, to pay the money back.
[00:18:46] Andrew Liew Weida: That's really true. I I'malso still learning at the same time now. It's a fantastic podcast. Maybe some
maybe some last questions. Yeah. We could go forever. I think the last question
is that you have given so much [00:19:00] forthe listeners out there what is it that you want from the audience?
[00:19:04] Andrew Liew Weida: I know that you now youhave a lot of business. What is it that you, what is your ask for this podcast
cast show?
[00:19:10] Denis Rothman: I like people, so from theaudience when I was when I began my career, you were speaking about ibm. One of
my first customers was the Crocodile Laco
[00:19:21] Andrew Liew Weida: Oh, famous T-shirt.
[00:19:22] Andrew Liew Weida: Yeah. Yes. I bought one ofthem as well.
[00:19:24] Denis Rothman: I know, yeah. In fact it was myfirst big corporate customer. Okay. And they helped me a lot. The top managers
were old. I was like 23 and a half. Wow. And these people were like 40, 50. And
they liked me and they gave me a lot of information. They would come to my
office and they'd say, here's how you have to organize your schedule.
[00:19:46] Denis Rothman: Ah, you're a creative person.No. You have to sell also. So you have to make it into a product. You need
documentation. And they'd gain all this advice free. So all I expect from the
audience is maybe questions [00:20:00] and helpthem and do like people did for me in early in my career, because you learn a
lot when you explain things to people.
[00:20:07] Denis Rothman: You understand who you are andyou have to clarify a lot of ideas. So what I expect from the audience are just
a lot of questions, . Okay.
[00:20:14] Denis Rothman: Because when you answer thequestions, yeah. You have to clarify your mind. You have to make it into
something. There's a manufacturing process from something intuitive to
something clear.
[00:20:24] Denis Rothman: And then it helps me writearticles or books or programs.
[00:20:28] Andrew Liew Weida: All right. Cool. So to theaudience out there. If you have any interesting questions or burning questions,
feel free to contact. And that Rodman on LinkedIn. What else? Can they actually
contact you?
[00:20:39] Denis Rothman: LinkedIn? The only place Ireally look at is LinkedIn.
[00:20:42] Denis Rothman: Okay, great. Because I limit mytime on social media and then I go quickly back to real life . Yeah. Sounds
[00:20:49] Andrew Liew Weida: like the metrics you gottapull away from the, like illusion when Exactly. .
[00:20:53] Denis Rothman: Exactly.
[00:20:54] Andrew Liew Weida: It was really nice talkingto you, Dennis. I would like to catch up you again another time. And as, [00:21:00] and after that I I'm heading forcaregiving to my grandmother, but nonetheless, I really really thank you for
That's right.