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