How to Live Without Regret | Kai-Fu Lee
- Hey everyone.
I hope you enjoy this episode
and today it's brought to you by our friends at Wix.
- And I think another important thing is
to meet a lot of people who are smarter than you
and ask them questions and pay attention
and follow-up and validate and check the things
that you learn.
If you feel the whole world can be your teacher
and your learning, asking questions,
keeping an open mind,
that I think probably is what I have done.
(audience applauding)
- Hey everybody.
Welcome to Impact Theory.
Our goal with this show and company
is to introduce you to the people and ideas
that will help you actually execute on your dreams.
Today's guest is one of the most prominent and successful
tech investors on the planet.
Named one of the 100 most influential people in the world
by Time Magazine, his contributions to both
the Chinese hi-tech industry
and to the broader field of artificial intelligence
simply cannot be overstated.
As chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures
he manages roughly two billion dollars
and through some of the most
blindingly pretient investments,
he and his team in just four years have helped birth
15 unicorn startups including
an unparalleled five in AI alone.
The author of 10 US patents and more than 100
journal and conference papers,
as well as being the founding president of Google China,
the founder of Microsoft Research Asia
and a former executive at both SGI and Apple,
it's easy to see why so many consider him
one of the most central figures
in the realm of artificial intelligence.
The numerous innovations he's helped bring the world
have been feature on Good Morning America,
ABC Television and the front page of
The Wall Street Journal.
He's also the author of seven best selling books
and has more than 50 million followers on social media.
His leadership and insights into the future of technology
have not only garnered him followers
but have also made him one of the most respected educators
of the next generation of entrepreneurs and policy makers.
So please, help me in welcoming the best selling author
of the new book AI Super-Powers,
the oracle of innovation himself,
Dr. Kai-fu Lee.
(audience applauding)
- Welcome to the show.
- Thank you, thank you.
- Absolutely man, it's so good to have you.
- It's great to be here.
- I'm very excited to dive into AI and all that stuff
which I have an absolute fascination with.
But I actually want to start,
you've talked a lot about the Chinese work ethic
and how crazy intense it is.
Was that already something that was present in your family?
I know you've talked about it.
Was there a lot of pressure in your family to excel?
- There was, especially from my mom.
I was her only son and I think she
really wanted me to excel so I remember
when I was very young she would have me write these
Chinese characters and every time I make a little mistake
she would you know, slap my hand.
Have to do it over.
Have to memorize all those Chinese poetry.
Every time I missed one character
she would throw the book out the door.
So, I was pushed to work very hard
but also very rewarding.
She would buy me any book I wanted to read
and she would give me,
reward and hugs and lots of good food
when I do a good job.
So, very much the following the Chinese
reward/punishment system to push towards
incredible hard work and excellence.
- That's interesting.
How much of that have you now employed
with your own kids?
- None. - Really?
That's interesting.
Why none?
- Because I think people really need
to find their passion and forcing someone
who's not good in math to you know,
enter the math contest or someone who hates spelling
to win the spelling bee is not something
I want my kids to do so I always help them
explore things they might be interested in
and then supported them when they found that.
- That's really interesting.
I wanna talk more about that.
So, your mom was pretty intense
but was obviously,
you said that it was very rewarding.
Was it just rewarding in the sense
that okay I had access to books
and I would get anything I want or has it been
like that knowledge that she forced you to get,
has it helped you?
You've been so successful.
- I think it certainly has helped me
but also I think having a chance to study in America
was perhaps even more important.
That Asian schools really didn't give people a chance
to learn how to learn and the Asian schools are really good
at providing a decent level of competence
by forcing you to memorize everything
but it actually stifles creativity.
Coming to America was even more important
that being forced to work really hard before the age of 11.
- Because you were able to find creative outlets?
- Yeah, because then I found programming to fun,
AI to be fun and I was able to pursue my passion.
Maybe a little bit late but still got to.
- So interesting.
So, listening to you talk,
I am so interested in your theories around
why you think the Chinese are such high performers
and in fact, talk about that.
So, you said that if,
if the sort of Chinese culture comes up against
basically any other culture,
where's the work ethic fall?
- Well I think work ethic is a very critical part
why China has risen so fast and work ethic
is not only a century old Chinese tradition,
but it's also accentuated now because China has been poor
for so many recent centuries.
So imagine a single child in the family
who has pressure from the two parents
and the four grandparents.
All the pressure on one person
and feeling that this person
is the only chance to bring the family out of poverty
and the family may have been in poverty for five,
10, 20 generations so you can imagine
the pressure to excel.
So as long as China still has not created
a large middle class like America has,
there will always be these poor families
with great expectations for incredible work ethic.
- So interesting to me.
So, that there's something distressing in me
that makes me like that so much.
It's created this just wave of innovation
in China that certainly in AI
is rapidly becoming unparalleled
and to hear you tie that to,
you've got these people that have expectations on one person
and they've got that one shot to pull them out of poverty
but they're really doing it.
For me it begs a question then,
what's more important to you?
You obviously champion that,
you've invested in a lot of companies very successfully
and you bet on a lot of Chinese entrepreneurs
because of this work ethic.
So why not instill or push your kids in a similar way?
What is it that is more important
that makes you not want to do that?
- I've been through a lot myself.
I've had cancer and I've,
I'm not in remission and in facing cancer
I realized that
working hard can't be the purpose of our lives.
It can be something that you do when you love it
but it actually creates a lot of stress
and at the end of the day when you really look at your life
and facing death maybe measured in hundreds of days,
as I once did, I felt working hard
was not on my priority list at all.
If anything, I regretted working too hard.
- Talk to me about the cancer diagnosis.
The day that that comes down,
what was that moment like?
You'd been, in fact give everybody a little bit
of frame of reference for the Chinese work ethic.
You said that there was one company that said,
"Hey come work with us, we're far more balanced,
"we're nine nine six."
What's that mean?
- Yeah, yeah.
That company is now listed at about 60 billion dollars
and they attracted the employees on the basis
of work/life balance.
And the nine nine six meant 9:00 am to 9:00 pm
every day for six days a week.
- And that's the balanced company.
- That's the balanced company, you get Sunday off.
- So you're in that environment,
were you working like that?
- Yeah. - Oh God.
Talk to us about when your wife was about to give birth.
- Right.
So, for my first child in 1991,
December 16th, it was the day
I had to present Apple's CEO artificial intelligence.
We had a demo that would work really well with my voice
and less well with other people's voices
and I wanted to put the best foot forward
but my daughter wouldn't come out (chuckles)
so I have to face a decision of do I see my child birth
or do I make the presentation AI,
and I was set getting ready to go back to work
but just half an hour before I had to leave,
she cooperated and came out.
Otherwise I would have missed her birth.
- All right, so we go from that
and then that type of work ethic,
do or die, all in where nine nine six is balanced.
How do you hear that cancer diagnosis?
What is that like first hour, first day like?
- I went through the usual phase of denial
and why me?
Negotiate with God.
What have I done wrong?
What can I do right?
And then quickly came to my senses
that this is what it is and I need to first
rewrite my will.
Tell my family and then go on the internet
to look for any possible chance that I might
still be treatable.
So, it was both the emotional side
and also the rational side simultaneously firing away
and once I got both sides settled,
you know all the emotion, anger, kinda calmed down
and also found that this cancer is actually
still possibly treatable,
then I reflected on my life and realized that
I really put work first.
My family, my loved ones,
I was a passable son,
husband and dad
because I was a good optimizer like an AI algorithm.
I knew how to spend enough time with them
so they would consider me passable
but never put them at a top priority.
- Were you living like that with work first as a
sense of duty or obligation?
- Actually, I just thought I loved it.
I loved the sense of accomplishment.
I love the fact that my employees called me Iron Man,
that was my nickname.
I love the fact that I responded to email
within five minutes always.
Had my PC with me, at the time there was not mobile phones.
Even when I went to bed I would wake-up automatically
at 2:00 am and 5:00 am to answer all my emails
because I was working for Google
and there were questions my colleagues and boss may have.
I wanted to be responsive.
I always my employees to feel like "Well, the boss
"works so hard, I should work hard too."
So I never thought there was any issue
with making working hard the only priority in life.
- So man, when I say this resonates with me
because I'm still in that mode where I love it
and I had an employee tell me
that she didn't think I was human and I loved it.
Now help me see the perspective of
when you really start to reflect and start regretting.
Why regret?
Like, if you were really enjoying it,
what it is that your family gives you
or means to you or whatever that you realize
that was a mistake?
- When I found out about my diagnosis
and got over the denial period,
I started rethinking my life's priorities
and I saw how my family was so selfless