Why Apple defies gravity and AI is God

Note: Transcripts are automatically generated from episode audio, and are not fully corrected for spelling, grammar, and formatting.

GUY KAWASAKI: I think Apple literally defies gravity.

If you think that it’s hard to figure out how an LLM works, it’s even harder to figure out what sustains Apple.

BOB SAFIAN: And you quip that nobody at Apple seems to use the product anymore. It sounded a little bit like you think Apple’s lost its way.

KAWASAKI: Well, some of it is, I think, the natural human tendency that when you leave an organization, you believe that you were so essential to the operation of that organization that it could not possibly be as good without you as it was with you. So that’s some of it, right.

SAFIAN: That’s Guy Kawasaki, the Chief Evangelist at Canva and former Chief Evangelist at Apple. Guy also hosts the podcast Remarkable People, part of the Masters of Scale Network. I wanted to talk to Guy to understand where Apple is headed right now, from someone who lived and breathed the organization. And I wanted to understand why he says “AI is God.” The lessons and perspectives Guy shares aren’t always conventional, but they are plenty insightful. And whether he’s talking about what it means to be remarkable in modern life, or why you should assess business opportunities like catching a wave to surf, Guy’s wry sense of humor and fun spirit sparkle. So let’s get to it. I’m Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

[THEME MUSIC]

SAFIAN: I’m Bob Safian. I’m here with Guy Kawasaki, the chief evangelist at Canva, former chief evangelist at Apple, host of the terrific podcast, Remarkable People, and the author of many books, most recently Think Remarkable, Nine Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference. Guy, thanks for joining us.

KAWASAKI: Yeah, thank you.

SAFIAN: We saw each other recently at the Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco. You spoke about some key lessons to be a remarkable leader. And I want to try to double click on a couple of them there for the audience today, if that’s all right.

KAWASAKI: You can triple-click, you can expand, you can collapse.

Copy LinkThe power of saying “I don’t know”

SAFIAN: So one of the ones that stuck with me was your lesson about saying “I don’t know,” which is so counterintuitive for leaders. They feel like it’s their job to be decisive, especially with the world changing so fast. Why is that so important? How often can a leader get away with saying, “I don’t know?” If you say it too much, does that become a bad thing?

KAWASAKI: Well, I’m not suggesting that you hire someone who ran a wrestling organization to run the department of education. I’m looking for relevant experience.

I understand that, yeah, if you say that 50 percent of the time it might be a problem, but I think that if you said that one out of 10 or 15 or 20 times, that’s not a problem.

And in fact, I would make the case that saying “I don’t know” builds your credibility instead of reducing it. Because when you say, “I don’t know,” it implies when you actually say you do know, you really know, and I think that is very reassuring to people.

SAFIAN: I mean, it also sort of, it’s an indication of curiosity too, right? Like you’re not going in. So it may make the environment more open. I mean, you’re hearing this from the different remarkable people you talk to; it’s got to be useful for them too.

KAWASAKI: If Jane Goodall or Neil deGrasse Tyson said, “I don’t know,” you pretty much know that, wow, this might not be such an easy problem.

I will tell you, though, there is a slight nuance here, which is, if you are working for somebody, you should very seldom say, “I don’t know.” Now I’m not suggesting that you lie and say you do know — I want to make that perfectly clear. If you work for somebody, your answer should hardly ever be “I don’t know.”

It should be “I will find out” or “I will figure it out.”

I guess you could say “I don’t know yet, but I will,” and it’s been my experience that pretty much every question you want answered has already been answered on the internet. Now, let’s go back three years in time. Let’s say you had a problem like: how do I add an HP printer to a wireless network?

There are a lot of people who don’t know, not even HP knows if you ask me. But anyway, so like three years ago, if you said, “I don’t know how to add an HP printer to a wireless network,” if you went to YouTube, you would find the answer, right? Now fast forward to today.

If you go to ChatGPT and say, “How do I add an HP printer to a wireless network?” ChatGPT is going to give you the answer — not just links — they’re going to give you the answer in about two seconds. And so there is no excuse anymore.

Copy Link“AI is God”

SAFIAN: Well, that leads me to another one of your points about AI. You said put AI first, and then you drop this line: AI is God, and God is AI. Can you explain what you mean by that?

KAWASAKI: Well, I’m obviously trying to be slightly controversial and interesting, but I will use my favorite phrase. I don’t know how people who use AI cannot be absolutely gobsmacked, impressed at how intelligent AI is already.

I mean, it gives, I think, very sentient answers, and it’s kind of like blew away the Turing test. There used to be this test called the Turing test where a human interacted with a computer, and if the computer passed the test, it would mean that you couldn’t tell it’s not a human answering you.

I think we have left that in the dust, and I would make the case that the more interesting thing today is a reverse Turing test where the computer is testing the human to see how smart the human is as opposed to vice versa. So, in my mind, AI may be the only solution to society’s problems because clearly man himself, herself is not able to solve our problems. And we’ve had about 2,000 years of proof of that. I think that AI is omniscient. Maybe it’s going to be omnipotent and certainly it can be eternal, and that sounds like a definition of God to me.

SAFIAN: But not necessarily moral or spiritual, right?

KAWASAKI: I think you would be surprised that ChatGPT can exhibit morality and empathy. Certainly, it will show you empathy and morality higher than a lot of politicians, a lot of politicians.

Now, what’s magical to me is at some level, I understand it’s just statistics, it’s just math. It’s predicting what the next syllable should be based on trillions of searches or whatever the magic is, but I understand that at one level. But when I interact with ChatGPT, I really think that it is absolutely wise, moral, and empathetic.

However it comes up with it, the outcome has that feeling to you as the consumer of that information, right?

I mean, yes, there’s a lot of people who are very suspect and hesitant to embrace AI because, quote, “we don’t know how it really works.” Right? Like we think, “oh, in order for us to trust a system, we have to know exactly how it works.”

SAFIAN: Have to understand the magic trick.

KAWASAKI: Right? So may I point out to you something?

SAFIAN: Yes.

KAWASAKI: We don’t know how the human brain works. If we were to only trust things that we already completely know how they work, we would not trust anything.

SAFIAN: Even the technology that you and I are using and doing this discussion is something that I’m not sure I understand all the pieces of, although I guess there are some people who do.

KAWASAKI: I would say that if anybody told you that they know exactly how an LLM works, that person is bullshitting you, maybe bullshitting themselves. We don’t really know. But then again, like I said, we don’t really know how the human brain works, and we’re willing to trust human brains. So what’s the problem?

SAFIAN: Just have to accept that. That’s part of the reality.

KAWASAKI: I think so.

SAFIAN: I’m not a super skeptic about AI, but I feel like as I go down this road with you, it’s like what I hear a little bit is like, well, you can’t trust people, so the fact that you can’t trust this doesn’t matter so much. It’s like we can’t trust anything.

KAWASAKI: Okay, but that’s a healthier attitude.

I mean, I think that’s a better attitude. We cannot trust anything, then we can trust humans but not AI. I think that is a big mistake.

You should always be skeptical.

Copy LinkGuy Kawasaki explains his “Chief Evangelist” role

SAFIAN: Your role as a chief evangelist… there are a lot of people who are evangelizing about different things about AI right now. What do you define the role of a chief evangelist is?

KAWASAKI: The word evangelism is a Greek term, and it means bringing the good news. So I brought the good news of Macintosh that it makes people more creative and productive. I’ve brought the good news of Canva, where it makes people better communicators, able to create beautiful graphics. It’s not like I’m the chief evangelist of OpenAI or ChatGPT. It’s just, this is kind of like just an interest for me. And it’s just so obvious to me about the implications of AI. So I’m not the chief evangelist of AI, but I doubt you would find many people who more believe in the power of AI and that it could, in fact, save society.

Copy LinkEat what you cook

SAFIAN: One of the other lessons you’ve shared at the Masters of Scale Summit was “eat what you cook,” use your own products, basically. And you gave examples about Apple, about how awkward it is to charge a Bluetooth mouse or like the rigmarole required to turn off and on notifications. And you quip that nobody at Apple seems to use the product anymore. It sounded a little bit like you think Apple’s lost its way. Is that the way you feel?

KAWASAKI: Well, some of it is, I think, the natural human tendency that when you leave an organization, you believe that you were so essential to the operation of that organization that it could not possibly be as good without you as it was with you. So that’s some of it, right. But I mean, the paradigm I’m talking about is eat what you cook.

So, like no pun intended, but you know, how does Tim Cook charge his Bluetooth mouse? Does he have a personal assistant to charge his mouse?

Who adds the printer to Tim Cook’s wireless network?

Ah man, I’d like to see him do it. I mean, I’d like to see the CEO of HP add an HP printer to his home network. I think that would be, I’d like to have a video of that. And so I’m just saying that one of the great tests is that you actually eat what you cook. So go ahead, add your own printer.

Copy LinkThe magic that sustains Apple

SAFIAN: As you’re talking about Apple, I’ve always been fascinated by Apple because it’s the premium priced product in its category and also the largest, and that usually doesn’t happen, right? The premium is usually a niche. It’s a luxury brand. It’s not a mass brand.

Apple’s just turned that on its head. And I’m curious whether from your perspective, how did that happen? Is it destined to not last? It’s like, it’s a magic trick of its own.

KAWASAKI: I would say that if you think that it’s hard to figure out how an LLM works, it’s even harder to figure out what sustains Apple. I mean, talk about magic. I mean, you’re absolutely right. We go and buy $29 dongles from Apple, I mean,

SAFIAN: Yeah.

KAWASAKI: And we’re thanking them for it.

This is one of the challenges that, if you look at Apple, I think Apple literally defies gravity. I don’t want to get into too many religious discussions, but I could make the case that Apple’s continued success is also proof there is a God because you cannot be an Apple customer and be an atheist because nothing else can explain Apple’s continued success than the existence of a benevolent God.

SAFIAN: Guy sees god in AI and in Apple. He really is a tech evangelist! At the same time, he doesn’t necessarily believe Apple or AI are perfect. There’s something so mature about that. We’re not always so good as humans at holding opposing ideas in our head simultaneously. But that can often open the door to deeper understanding. And to better opportunity. So where is Apple going from here? What would Steve Jobs think about Elon Musk? And what does it take to be a remarkable person? We’ll dig into that after the break.

[AD BREAK]

SAFIAN: Before the break, Guy Kawasaki, chief evangelist at Canva and host of the podcast Remarkable People, talked about why, as he sees it, AI is God and God is AI. Now he talks about how Steve Jobs would handle today’s business environment, how surfing explains entrepreneurship, and what it takes to have a remarkable impact. Let’s jump back in.

Copy LinkThe future of Apple

SAFIAN: When Tim Cook took over for Steve Jobs, it seemed like an impossible act to follow, right? But actually, Steve had set things up really for amazing growth, and the size of Apple today would totally astound him. In some ways, the impossible act to follow now is following Tim Cook, right? To try to keep this magic trick going.

KAWASAKI: I’ve never even met Tim Cook, so I don’t really know, but if you just look at the financial results, I mean, there’s nothing to argue. But I would say, having said that, at some point, what is to Macintosh what Macintosh was to the Apple II? I don’t know the answer to that.

SAFIAN: Haven’t seen it yet, but it’s gonna come.

KAWASAKI: I hope so. And probably it’s going to be some kind of quantum computer. I don’t think it’s the ProVision thing. I don’t think it’s iOS. But again, I have to admit that some of this is just, I think, my human emotion that, you know, when I was inside of Apple, we were doing everything right.

And now I’m outside of Apple, and I don’t know what they’re doing. But what the hell do I know? I mean, you’re talking to the guy who left Apple twice and turned Steve Jobs down once for a third job.

Copy LinkWould Steve Jobs thrive in today’s business environment?

SAFIAN: You know, part of the reason I asked you about this is I didn’t get to work with Steve Jobs the way you did. And one of the things I think about, he’s become so iconic, but there was like this cult of personality around Steve, but today there’s a cult of personality around Musk. There’s a cult of personality around Trump. Like, do you think Steve would have thrived in today’s business environment? What would he think about it?

KAWASAKI: I mean, it’s hard to think that Steve Jobs would not be continuously outstanding, right? I mean, listen, he was truly a unique, unique individual, and don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t pleasant. It wasn’t easy working for him, but he was truly amazing. And I think he would still be amazing today.

And the bizarre thing is that a few years ago, if you had said to me, who’s the closest thing to Steve Jobs that’s alive, I would have said Elon Musk. And one of the things we’re tapping into, all the things that I cannot figure out. So the third thing I cannot figure out is: how can somebody make cars that are so good, make solar batteries that are so good, and make satellite internet access that’s so good but be so strange and like, ‘oh my God, now he’s going to run the federal government’? Oh my God, this is going to be interesting.

Copy LinkBusiness lessons from surfing

SAFIAN: You’re a passionate surfer. And you’ve talked about how in surfing, timing is everything, waiting for the perfect moment to catch a wave.

So, so much of business is timing. And I’m curious about advice that you might have for listeners about how you look out at the horizon and catch the right wave at the right time, in a sea that’s so unpredictable, in this environment that’s so crazy. Or is it less about choosing the right wave and more about what you do with whatever wave you get?

KAWASAKI: Okay. I can explain almost all of life with a surfing analogy. So as much of surfing is you’re waiting and you’re trying to pick the right wave. And then you have to pick the right time and the right direction and the right force and all this, right?

Now in entrepreneurship, that’s kind of the same thing, right? What’s the right product? What’s the right price point? What’s the right features? What’s the right entry? How do we bring it to market? Who’s our customer? There are infinite variables, and you try to optimize each one.

But I think at some point, like in surfing, you just got to launch. And once you launch, then you have to make your launch decision right. Now, obviously, you can pivot and change, but you know, it is about trying to make your decision right at that point. And I think one of the things that people don’t understand is that when you hear about an example, when you hear about iOS, you hear about Macintosh, you hear about Tesla, you hear about any of these remarkable accomplishments, you do not hear about the failures. And so your data is missing. And what we do in Silicon Valley is we throw a lot of things up against the wall and about one out of a hundred sticks, and we go up to the wall and we paint the bullseye. And then we go back and we say, “He hit the bullseye because I’m a visionary and I know how to predict and create the future.”

“I picked that. I made Facebook successful. I made Canva successful because I’m a visionary and I know what I’m doing.” I would say logically you should ask that person, “Well, what about Theranos? What about Webvan?” You know, what about those things? That’s it.

And that person will say, “I told my dumb partners not to invest in those companies. It wasn’t me.” So I guess I’m just trying to tell you that hindsight is perfect. I mean, yes, it was the right thing to introduce the Apple Store. Against all the negativity that said, “There’s no way that a store can be a single manufacturer’s representative.

People want to walk into CompUSA. They want to walk into Best Buy. And they want to be able to pick from Apple and Dell and Lenovo and all these IBM PCs. Nobody wants to walk in and only see Apple products. So there’s no way Apple can succeed.” That’s what they were saying. Now Apple stores have been a huge success.

So now we can look back and say, “Of course, Apple stores are successful. Of course, it would be a retail success.” Well, yeah, Apple stores could have failed and we would be saying, “Yeah, people want selection. How stupid could you be to only offer one line of computers?”

SAFIAN: So I guess I’m telling you that one of the cautions you should have is that you only hear about the success. You don’t hear about the failure. So, you gotta be very careful about correlation versus causation.

For the listeners who are here, should you be trying to leave a remarkable impact on the world as an individual? Like, is that something we should aspire to?

Copy LinkThe essence of remarkable people

KAWASAKI: With some caveats. Okay, so I define remarkable as making the world a better place. Now, I don’t want to give you the impression that you have to be Jane Goodall or Steve Jobs to be remarkable. You can be remarkable with just a sixth-grade classroom, a football team. You could be remarkable with a knitting club.

You could be remarkable just mentoring one student. It’s all about making the world a better place. My podcast is called Remarkable People, not Famous People and not Rich People for sure. So I don’t want to give the impression you have to be Steve Jobs.

And I guess I believe like in infinite points of light, that imagine if every American made one other American remarkable. We would have a lot of remarkable people. And I think that’s the test. I think, as a profession, if you ask me, “What’s the profession with the most remarkable people?” I would tell you teaching, by far.

So I am cautiously optimistic.

SAFIAN: Guy, this is great. Thank you. Thanks so much for doing it.

Listening to Guy is itself like surfing: the waves of ideas come in all sizes and shapes, and you feel the swell of impact from each of them. So which one would I try to ride to shore? I guess what sticks to me most is the need to be honest with ourselves: about what we know and don’t know, about failure and success, about how much luck — how much good timing — goes into our achievements. We can’t change the tides, but we can try to stay upbeat and optimistic, wherever the water takes us.

We’ll be taking a break from Rapid Response on Friday for the Thanksgiving holiday. But we’ll be back the first week in December with two new episodes. We hope you’ll join us. I’m Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.