Yasir Drabu is the founder and CEO of Taazaa Inc. and leads hundreds of passionate engineers in building advanced software solutions for finance, eCommerce, and other industries.
Yasir is passionate about finding promising new startups and helping them build the software they need to rocket to success. He enjoys working with thought leaders, learning their processes and needs, and then creating software products that make a meaningful impact on humanity.
He’s also the Co-founder and CTO of Innago, creators of a cloud-based property management software that simplifies the rental process for landlords and tenants.
What you will learn
- How AI is transforming software development by automating tasks and boosting productivity.
- The impact of AI agents in simplifying business operations and solving everyday challenges.
- Why protecting and leveraging proprietary data is critical for businesses in the AI era.
- How AI helps people think differently, break fixed mindsets, and make smarter decisions.
- What it takes to build meaningful solutions using technology that creates real impact.
Transcript
Jeff Bullas
00:00:05 – 00:00:49
OK. Hi everyone and welcome to the Jeff Blu Show. Today I have Yasir Drabu with me. He is the founder and CEO of Taazaa Inc. and leads hundreds of passionate engineers in building advanced software solutions for finance, eCommerce, and other industries.
Yasir is passionate about finding promising new startups and helping them build the software they need to rocket to success. He enjoys working with thought leaders, learning their processes and needs, and then creating software products that make a meaningful impact on humanity.
He’s also the Co-founder and CTO of Innago, creators of a cloud-based property management software that simplifies the rental process for landlords and tenants.
Jeff Bullas
00:00:50 – 00:01:14
So welcome to the show Yasir, it’s actually great to have you here.
Yasir Drabu
00:01:14 – 00:01:17
Thank you, Jeff. It’s a pleasure being here and talking to you.
Jeff Bullas
00:01:18 – 00:01:52
So Yasir, you have been embedded in, in almost all your education in science. So where did that come from? You’re in Kashmir, which is a far-flung, beautiful corner of India up the north, and it’s on my bucket list to visit one day. Um, I’ve got to Delhi and I’ve got to Bombay slash Mumbai. I’m still confused which name to give it, because the Indians themselves are actually confused about it. So, um, how did you, this interest obviously in science and technology rise?
Yasir Drabu
00:01:54 – 00:02:23
Yeah, I, I, I think my parents obviously started there. My mom is a teacher and, and she was a science teacher at that, and I think some of it comes from there, but the first time I came across logic and I was, you know, doing more of an electronics logic board, and I was like, wow, this is predictable and interesting. I think the light bulbs went off back then. I was probably in middle school.
Yasir Drabu
00:02:23 – 00:03:05
And then a friend of mine ended up getting access to a rare Commodore 64, which in India at that time was a rarity, and we ended up coding, we ended up coding together some games and small things, and each time we did something and made things move on the screen based on logic and algorithms, as you put it, it kept amazing me and it kind of, uh, that journey continued as I went into high school, undergrad, and eventually grad school, so. Uh, I, I guess it’s somewhere, somewhere around there, but it’s, it’s been, uh, and it never stops to amaze me how much innovation has happened since the 1st, 1st time I’ve coded, so things have changed quite a bit. So,
Jeff Bullas
00:03:05 – 00:03:11
So what, so just for interest’s sake, I don’t even know, but what sort of software or code were you using?
Yasir Drabu
00:03:13 – 00:03:35
Uh, back then, uh, so I started, I think in BA and then Pascal, yeah, Basic and Pascal is the two where we started my first attempt and then eventually got into it evolved into C++ and then Java and then .NET and C and eventually node and all the newer languages.
Jeff Bullas
00:03:35 – 00:04:21
Yeah. I, I, look, I tried to do basic, you know, do some programming basics when I was doing, starting to do an accounting degree, which I didn’t finish. In fact, I barely started because, um, it was consolidated spreadsheets and everything else. And, and then on top of that, they’re actually asking you to try and do some programming in BASIC. I have no idea why, but, um, I admire people like you that actually can code, cause, um, Uh, used to be the meek shall inherit the earth, but now we say the geeks are inheriting the earth, and they’re the ones that do software coding and uh you’re one of those and I admire, It’s a different way of thinking almost, really, isn’t it, in terms of, um, either, I think you either can do it or you can’t. Is that true?
Yasir Drabu
00:04:23 – 00:04:58
Yes, I think, I think if you truly enjoy it, it is, it is that binary, no pun intended there, but it is either you, you like it or you don’t. So, uh, but, but obviously there are people who make a living out of it and they’re decent at it, but they may be miserable doing it, but it pays the bills in some cases. So there are those cases, but the ones who truly shine are the ones who really enjoy this. And they’re passionate about it. I’ve seen, I’ve seen both, and the ones who really enjoy it and who get it and do it, they really strive and they can, they can do really well. So.
Jeff Bullas
00:04:58 – 00:05:17
Yeah. Yeah, I’ve got a friend who’s a mathematician and uh he gets right in the abstract elements of, you know, maths. I just want to add up, subtract and divide, you know, so um. I occasionally multiply and I can’t, I can actually understand compound interest, so that’s actually really important, you know, um,
Yasir Drabu
00:05:18 – 00:05:20
very, very important concept.
Jeff Bullas
00:05:21 – 00:05:46
Yeah, so, uh, when he starts talking to me after about 3 minutes saying Trevor, I do not understand a word you’re saying, uh, just. Just, he’s been a friend for a long time and um I just say stop right there, Trevor, can we actually have a conversation about life or something else instead of abstract maths? Any rate, but um, But there’s a beauty in maths, which is almost what we call almost like pure science, isn’t it in a sense it is,
Yasir Drabu
00:05:48 – 00:06:22
it is. So I think some of that leans into programming as well, right, especially if you, anytime you deal with complexity and you deal with a lot of that within software. So the only way to handle that for a human. Uh, from a cognitive load standpoint it is an abstraction, right? So I appreciate your friend’s point of abstraction. So you really need to be like, OK, this is the problem. You come, somebody will give you 20 problems, but then you kind of have to zoom out and say, well, in general, this is the pattern or this is the abstraction of the problem, and then try to solve it that way. And abstraction is pretty powerful, especially for us, for our human minds too.
Jeff Bullas
00:06:23 – 00:07:12
Yeah, I, I see, I tried to sell software when I started in the computer industry back in the 1980s. And I really just didn’t get it. I was trying to sell a software program called Revelation, which was a 4GL programming language. Ah, And I was trying to sell development, um. I moved on to just selling hardware because I could actually see the box and go, that’s a computer. This will actually, you know, do spreadsheets, it’ll actually allow you to send emails, you know, so it, for me, that was my level of. But I was good at watching trends though, so I’ve written a few trends since that, but, and, So, but for me, uh, what I’ve been blown away with, I think, just like you mentioned before, um, was, um,
Jeff Bullas
00:07:12 – 00:07:25
The amazing change that we’ve observed in technology since, especially since the personal computer came out in the mid-eighties, I think that’s where technology became visible.
Yasir Drabu
00:07:27 – 00:07:54
Yes, very, very, I, I think the PC revolution actually started it and then the internet revolution accelerated it. And now, we’re seeing almost The 3rd wave or 4th wave depending on which other ones you consider in between, but that’s really, that’s being very transformative. I mean, the amount of information you carry in your hand with the phone is just mind boggling. If you just think even 1015 years ago. I mean 15 years ago my parents were in
Yasir Drabu
00:07:55 – 00:08:23
Kashmir and to call them they had to come to the city because there was no direct trunk line long distance calling to the place they were staying, so they had to come to the city to our uncle’s place. This was just 15 years ago. Now I can do a video call with them wherever they are on their lawn in a remote remote part of Kashmir. Uh, and it’s, it’s phenomenal, just the communication part of it and now, now if you look at what, uh, how, how things are going to evolve.
Jeff Bullas
00:08:25 – 00:09:03
It is amazing and now we have AI and I think what’s interesting about a lot of technology, um, the PC democratized computing. Yes. In other words, it puts the power in the hands of the average human. Not that we’re not that we’re all average in fact we’re not average, we’re all different and unique, but um. For me, just watching these continuing waves of technology, in fact, I have in my hand, I just grabbed it out of my drawer right then, this is a 15 year old smartphone Apple. Uh yeah So that is the one of the original.
Jeff Bullas
00:09:04 – 00:09:23
iPhones. I think it mightn’t have been the first model, but it certainly, I think, at least model number 2. But I just look at that. I remember my partner sitting next to me one morning. It was a weekend, and she said, I’m in love. I said, Oh, that’s nice to know. Thank you. She said, No, I’m not talking about you. He said, I love this phone. Because of what I could do.
Yasir Drabu
00:09:25 – 00:09:40
Wow, yeah, yeah, I can see that. We are really passionate, I think uh Apple has created a cult like following at least till recently. Uh, they’re, they’re floundering right now a little bit in my opinion, but they definitely have some amazing, amazing products, so.
Jeff Bullas
00:09:41 – 00:10:23
Uh, let’s, yeah, so let’s leap forward, um, to today and well into where you went from being a PhD student who actually tried to work out how to actually make cellular phones talk to each other, uh, more easily in remote areas, which is what the thesis was, apparently of your, uh, PhD. So, what, when, when did you go from being a student? Because some people are perpetual students, they never leave school. But you moved on to actually doing something, in other words, acting on your intelligence and your learning and your experience. When, when was that leap made from being a student to being an entrepreneur?
Yasir Drabu
00:10:24 – 00:10:50
Uh, if I, if I, honestly, it was accidental. So there was no grand plan. It was just, uh, uh, I ended up, as you acquired skills like programming and others, you’re helping people solve some problems. That’s really basically where it started. I had somebody who needed help with, yeah, I can’t get this to connect to this or this doesn’t work. So it started very organically and at one point, somebody said, hey, I’m
Yasir Drabu
00:10:51 – 00:11:18
I want you to build this for me and I’m going to pay you a bunch of money. I’m like, Oh wow, that light bulb is going on. I said, OK, I can actually make a living off of this. I, I set out to, I thought I would be more in the teaching profession and become a teacher. That’s the reason I spent all those years doing a PhD. But as I was helping different folks, whether they were small businesses or individuals solve their tech problems.
Yasir Drabu
00:11:19 – 00:12:03
Uh, I saw the same kind of, uh, impact that I could have, which I was hoping, uh, that I would, I was doing at school as well, with, you know, teaching students or running labs for, uh, kids and things like that. So, um, and this, and this, uh, seemed more interesting and slowly the shift came in there. And I think there were inklings of that. In school, you know, trying to sell small things to kids and so there was an entrepreneurial, uh, aspect somewhere, but the, the academics and, um, knowledge is where I initially leaned towards, but then as I kept helping these people, it ended up accidentally one thing led to another and then, uh, uh, the business kind of started evolving, um, over a period of time, so.
Yasir Drabu
00:12:04 – 00:12:33
And I, and, and, and being somebody who was an avid student, I kept learning how to do business. I have no business school experience. I, to this day, say I am, I’m the worst salesman, but I had to sell for the company at some point and do everything in the business that I just thought I would never be doing. It pushes you in ways that, uh, you know, you’ve, you’ve run a lot of successful business yourself. So this is, uh, this has been a lifelong journey of learning, but in a different sphere of life, I guess.
Jeff Bullas
00:12:33 – 00:13:05
Yeah. So let’s fast forward today. So quite often the accidental entrepreneur is not that rare a beast. Um, it’s actually quite common, um, sometimes an observation, or someone will pay me for my skill and expertise. And then you move on, and then you hire someone to help you. Um, and then you start learning about scaling and not doing it all yourself and selling, and then you’re going, Well, I hate accounting, so I need to hire a bookkeeper, right? So, because that, yeah, exactly,
Yasir Drabu
00:13:06 – 00:13:29
exactly that way. So I think in hindsight it is always 20/20. Now, if I go back and if I run it backwards, I could say, oh. This is like the Japanese icky guy, right? You found what you love to do and you’re good at it and somebody’s going to pay you for it. That’s the perfect harmony of things, but that’s more hindsight. It’s not when you’re not when you’re going through the daily motions of life. So
Jeff Bullas
00:13:30 – 00:14:13
yeah, the Japanese philosophy is something I really um love with distillation of um finding your purpose. And quite often it’s accidental and um. And sometimes it’s just the intersection of experience and life, both the good, good and the bad. And yes, that’s true. And sometimes you need, sometimes you need to gently move into it and it just evolves. Other times, your life’s blown up by someone else. It might be a relationship, it might be whatever. Or you might, but decide to blow it up yourself as well, as in, I’m gonna make a big change, because as humans, we’re very afraid of change.
Yasir Drabu
00:14:13 – 00:14:15
Yes. A lot of. Yeah.
Jeff Bullas
00:14:16 – 00:14:57
So, you know, for me, the icky idea of that intersection of experience, expertise, passion, um, and also what the world will pay you for, um, is, it’s very difficult. Because it sounds simple, but you all know that it isn’t. And uh Quite often, if you go looking for it just to make money, it doesn’t work. Whereas if you look to solve a problem and you’re curious about something, just lean into it, then that happens. And, um, I mention this all the time on my shows, uh, as Joseph Campbell said, you know, follow your bliss. And, your bliss is basically just love.
Jeff Bullas
00:14:57 – 00:15:31
Programming and solving problems in an abstract way, which then solve real world problems for companies and businesses. So, he said that he had, he doesn’t think there’s one thing that we should be doing in life. He said, just follow your bliss, which is following your curiosity and also what you’re just really curious about. So, let’s look at today. We’ve had these huge technology shifts. And in less than 2 years, in fact, at the end of this month, we will have the anniversary of the public release of Chat GPT to the world.
Yasir Drabu
00:15:32 – 00:15:35
Yup. yeah.
Jeff Bullas
00:15:36 – 00:16:07
It’s November 30, 2022. So How has AI impacted your industry, and I’m interested in your thoughts about it, so we’ll get into that a bit more, so. Has AI impacted Software development And also the businesses that you’re writing code for as well. I’d be interested in what your observations are around AI and software and, and how, you are seeing practical applications of it into, into business.
Yasir Drabu
00:16:08 – 00:16:42
Sure. I, I, I think to start at a very basic level. I think it’s made everybody a little bit more thoughtful if they integrate that AI tool into their daily lives. For example, our management team, others, they, when, when they incur a problem earlier, there would be an email that would be either reactionary or may not be fully fleshed out in thought. Right now if they use this agent to go along with them, they actually are able to look at multiple dimensions of the problem, empathize more with what the problem is coming in. So I think even at the base level, having summarized.
Yasir Drabu
00:16:42 – 00:17:08
A distilled knowledge of the world at your fingertips and being able to prompt it correctly to at least guide your thought process at the management level has helped our managers and senior leaders become better at communicating and also effectively thinking through a problem and presenting a meaningful solution that everybody can get their heads around. So I think it’s just generally elevated the management practices within the company. Now moving further down.
Yasir Drabu
00:17:08 – 00:17:33
Uh, where we have programmers, we have a lot of our team members who actually integrate with co-pilot or other code-aiding tools which help them remove some of the mundaneness of the problem they still need to solve. I don’t think AI is anywhere near solving the problem, but you know it’s simple plumbing stuff they don’t need to worry about, but they can focus on the core problem that the uniqueness of the algorithm that’s
Yasir Drabu
00:17:33 – 00:18:01
Human ingenuity is still needed. That’s where they can focus on improving quality, and I think productivity has increased a little bit. I won’t say it’s, you know, some bigger companies that are reporting 30% to 40% gains, but we’re seeing 10 to 15% gains in quality and outcomes. So I think just by the virtue of its existence in two years, which is unimaginable for the rapid rapidness of this change and adoption.
Yasir Drabu
00:18:02 – 00:18:28
I think we’re seeing it have a lot of positive impact on thought, on how to communicate, how to manage people better, and then on the coding side, being able to generate and support their coding practices and move, move, move things a little bit faster and more predictably. I think those are some of the obvious things that we’re seeing. The side effects of these are now how do we, uh, how do we automate some things that
Yasir Drabu
00:18:28 – 00:19:06
Uh, people hate, right? So, uh, just, this is a very simple example, nobody dreams of having a life where they had to fill up time sheets at the end of the week to make sure our teams hate it, our engineers hate it. We don’t like it, but it’s necessary just from a transparency standpoint reporting certain things to our customers, and we’re trying to automate some of that using AI, right? So. I think in the next wave, which everybody’s calling the agentic AI wave, is, uh, what we are adopting in small measure right now is uh automating some processes that are just from a human.
Yasir Drabu
00:19:07 – 00:19:25
Day to day people pushing. Nobody, you know, we didn’t wake up or come to this world. I’m gonna, I’m going to sit and refill time sheets and create TPG reports. So some of those things that are not inspiring for a human being will be the next, the next frontier, uh, at least in the near future.
Jeff Bullas
00:19:26 – 00:20:17
So he raised an interesting point talking about AI agents, uh, which appears to be the next phase of AI from my observation. And Salesforce just released Dreamforce this year, um, their AgentForce app. Because what’s great about AI and chat GBT is it can help you think. It also can mix things up in a different way that breaks your fixed thinking. Because we’ve tapped into the wisdom and creativity and intelligence of the planet because it’s all captured in ones and zeros. and large language models help you make sense of 8 billion people that are here today, and the billions that have been before us, and the books that have been captured and put into the data and the information, which is overwhelming. So
Jeff Bullas
00:20:19 – 00:20:44
An AI agent from what I observed is an AI where actually it’s not just about ideas, it’s actually implementing the ideas and you just mentioned one which is, actually doing worksheets or time sheets. Can you tell us a little bit more about um, AI agents and what’s happening now and where do you see them going? I’ll be intrigued.
Yasir Drabu
00:20:44 – 00:21:29
Sure, I think, uh, obviously there’s Microsoft and others were further along on this, but the way we see agents are, there’s a lot of um enterprise need, right, which is where we focus right now where there’s a lot of processes that are very, very manual. I mean, if you look at even simple things like which you mentioned accounting, which, uh, which you never made into and I don’t like, but there is a need for invoicing, collecting payments, just the day to day operational business pieces. There are parts of that like simple things like account reconciliation, those kinds of things that will get automated to agents. Now what they do is they look at historic data, you create an enterprise AI model which has a lot of inputs from existing.
Yasir Drabu
00:21:29 – 00:21:58
Uh, you know, existing data within the organization, which is proprietary. And I think organizations are realizing more and more that their proprietary data is what’s going to differentiate them in the future. If, uh, so they’re going to be very protective about that and they’re going to not let the larger open source models leverage that. They want to keep that to them, that’s how they would bring uniqueness to the world. So now they would take what we’re seeing is a lot of these data sources getting aggregated and fed into
Yasir Drabu
00:21:58 – 00:22:48
Uh, uh, into these uh, language models using something called RAGs or there are a few other techniques where you could, uh, you could then bring in the uh intelligence of the organization into the agents. And then with guardrails and testing, you can actually then invoke what you call APIs or robotic automations into other Uh, you know, other aspects of the business to automate certain things, right? So it can be a simple, um, as something as simple as a Monday morning thought leadership email that goes out or something more, more, uh, mission critical that’s, uh, uh, that’s along the lines of making sure we are, uh, compliant on certain quality metrics and things like that. So there’s a lot of, a lot of those things that
Yasir Drabu
00:22:48 – 00:23:32
We do it manually, which will slowly be done more automatically, uh, uh, and then made accessible to, uh, to everyday, um. You know, everyday business operators, so I think that’s where the agents are kind of going right, so they’re going to get more autonomous. If you look at just 5 years or 10 years ago, you would have software systems as modules, right? They would be built using this function, that function, or this service and that service. Now it’s more like here’s a collection of agents and somebody’s an orchestrator of these agents and they’re going to go do their own thing, get the work done, and then report back to the main agent and then that would summarize it further up. It’s an interesting architectural model in
Yasir Drabu
00:23:32 – 00:24:00
I think it’ll bring about some newer use cases that were very hard to solve in the traditional sense, right? So. So that’s where I think it would go. And if you look at the commercial side, like on the B2C side, you can say, hey, I want to go on a vacation next week, and here is all it has your preferences. So everybody in the future is going to have their own PA personal assistant that does 90% of the stuff that they don’t want to do, is my guess. and that’s where it’s going to get to.
Jeff Bullas
00:24:00 – 00:24:37
Yeah, so it’s, it’s, I suppose we’re all just leaning into this next phase of it, because I do, I do see AI agents as maybe the next primary phase that actually brings the biggest benefit. Um, so. You mentioned the thing too about uh proprietary, in other words, what makes a business different to another business, and then it comes down to proprietary data, um, and it’s also their particular way of looking at the world or at business. Yep, yep. And uh, then we find companies go out and patent that, um, but you mentioned the fact about you want to keep that data within,
Jeff Bullas
00:24:38 – 00:25:22
Boundaries, in other words, you don’t want to give your data and insights to the large language models that are open source because that means anyone can copy what you do if they look hard enough, and it’s sitting in the cloud of AI’s large language models. So something was raised with me about 6 to 9 months ago about the fact that we need to look at how we protect our proprietary products. Data and use it in the wisest way to give us a competitive advantage. So what’s some examples that you are seeing emerging where, um, industries are going or companies are going, OK, we’re not gonna release this data to the world, into the wild, we’re actually gonna keep it in our zoo. Have you got any examples?
Yasir Drabu
00:25:22 – 00:26:04
So I think there’s your traditional way, right? So people are protecting them with firewalls, encryption, and all of that. So there’s 11 that’s your traditional way of thinking about data is, hey, we have a lot of data. Let’s protect it with, you know, put it behind closed doors and only give it access to access control and policies and things like that. That’s one, that’s an approach, and I think It works largely, but you’ve also seen a lot of data leaks and hacks which eventually end up, you know, I think at this point I don’t even, I think all my personal data is on the dark web because the number of hacks that have been in different agencies across the organization, it’s impossible to know that. Now on the other side, if you look at
Yasir Drabu
00:26:04 – 00:26:33
How do you flip that model? Can you, can you invert that model and say, uh, there’s, there’s a, there’s an initiative called the Smart Data Smart Data. Uh, it essentially, it’s an idea, but, uh, and, and a protocol where the data actually has, is inherently encrypted and is designed to only be made accessible under certain conditions. So if we, if we flip the model and make the, uh, each data packet, let’s say it’s my name, but it’s encrypted and it has certain
Yasir Drabu
00:26:33 – 00:27:17
Keys and locks on it, and it only opens under certain conditions, uh, that data is inherently going to be secure. So there’s, there’s ways that their companies are thinking about, OK, if I share my data with somebody and they, they, they’re contractually only supposed to do certain things with it, they don’t, they don’t go out and sell it to somebody else, right? Like data, uh, data marts and other things are pretty, uh, pretty common. So I think there’s either using some sort of blockchain to do smart contracts plus smart data protocols which will inherently encrypt data by default. Given how much computing power we have. 10 years ago, the fact that you could encrypt everything was considered stupid and insane, but now it is.
Yasir Drabu
00:27:17 – 00:27:45
Um, now, it’s quite possible with the data storage being cheap and uh encryption being fast and dedicated chips for that. So I think there’s going to be a flip in the way we look at it. There’s going to be the traditional, here’s my, here’s my data and I’m going to protect it with all the firewalls, but then the other is going to be, I’m going to encrypt my data in a way that only based on the smart contract that I can open it up only for that specific purpose, otherwise, you cannot see it.
Yasir Drabu
00:27:45 – 00:28:27
So that’s where I think eventually, uh, data is, you know, data is going to go and then you can, you can say I can see this data only in the US or in Australia, but I cannot see this data in Russia or China. It can be as sophisticated as that, or, uh, you know, who can see it, what, what part they can see. Uh, those are the things that I think these new protocols are put into place to protect it. I think ultimately what people are realizing with these AIs is data is going to be Uh, uh, the key differentiator as, uh, it’s, it’s going to be data, you know, uh, knowledge, and then eventually wisdom. It’s not just data itself and so there’s that whole pyramid of that.
Jeff Bullas
00:28:28 – 00:29:20
Yeah, I just, um, you mentioned the word wisdom. And uh, There’s a lot of information. But there seems to be very little wisdom in the world, especially currently. Cause we add to that disinformation, you know, fake news. And the list goes on. Um, I recently actually wrote a piece on, can AI enhance human wisdom, and I think it can. And I’d be interested in your thoughts on how maybe AI can increase humanity’s wisdom. Which is basically applying information and knowledge wisely and safely for the benefit of mankind, let’s make it as simple as that. Let’s maybe simplify it, but I’d be interested in your thoughts on what AI is, and how they can help us make wiser decisions.
Yasir Drabu
00:29:22 – 00:29:48
I think that, uh, there’s this fear of AI generally, and I think many people say this, it’s going to be people who do not use AI versus people who use AI, that’s going to actually be the differentiator. So when you use AI, what that means is it’s enabling you to augment your thought process and breaking out of that thought mold that you’re talking about. I think, I think as long as we as human beings are open to that.
Yasir Drabu
00:29:48 – 00:30:13
And we review the vast knowledge that’s been created and we’re standing on the shoulder of giants as you put it. If we leverage that information, it, it, it’s amazing how much information is summarized and referenced and can, you can quickly digest, right? Uh earlier you would have a book to read on a certain principle. Now you can get the summary of the book at least to At least have a shortcut in your mind as to what do
Jeff Bullas
00:30:13 – 00:30:13
I
Yasir Drabu
00:30:13 – 00:30:14
do
Jeff Bullas
00:30:14 – 00:30:19
that regularly. It is 1000 words and gives me action takes and keys.
Yasir Drabu
00:30:22 – 00:31:09
As long as you do those kinds of things, uh, you’re breaking, you’re breaking your own uh lack of knowledge or understanding in certain areas. And then if you understand. Uh, uh, I, I don’t know how else to say it, but I think the whole, the, what we call the, you know, the DIKW pyramid, which is data, information, knowledge, and wisdom, and you can kind of figure out how to work that up. Uh, uh, you, I mean, I think we Humanity will benefit. Now, we don’t want to be bars and everybody kind of has the same mindset, and I think that’s unlikely given how different we are as human beings, but it actually helps us kind of evolve our own thinking and expand as long as we’re open to learning. Obviously, if we are dogmatic or rigid about.
Yasir Drabu
00:31:10 – 00:31:55
You know, religion and there’s a lot of sensitive things that we cannot, we don’t seem to get past. But if we are open to that learning mindset, the growth mindset, and the curiosity that you mentioned earlier, like it’s one of our core values that our company is curiosity. How do you, if you’re not curious enough, you cannot learn. If you cannot learn, you cannot get better. If you cannot get better, you can’t create new things. So yeah, I think it’s very, there’s vital, and I think. Yeah, I actually have expanded my personal horizons and I’ve seen it. I’ve seen a sea of change in a lot of people around me who are able to produce more meaningful, thoughtful dialogue and conversation, uh, that has been enabled by, uh, you know, just simple summarizations or being able to interact with the AI model. So.
Jeff Bullas
00:31:55 – 00:32:36
Yeah. I love, um, what you mentioned too about escaping your own thought bubbles and, and for me, AII. Because we’re all raised in certain schools, certain cultures, certain religions, certain tribes, certain ways of education, different types of schools, which I certainly for me, I feel like I’ve been trapped by that. It’s also made me who I am. But trying to escape those bounds for me is like, there’s much more out there. And that’s where I think AI adds that X factor to us, almost becoming polymaths that are escaping fixed thinking, isn’t it?
Yasir Drabu
00:32:36 – 00:33:18
It is. I mean, uh, I, somebody, uh, uh, when I was naive and younger, I said, I want to be a polymath. That’s so amazing, you know, you can learn about art, history, mathematics, and be good at everything. Uh, as you age, you realize your limitations, but, but in general, but in general, at least, uh, AI can actually help amplify some of those, uh, uh, core, uh, human desires of being able to elevate your own thought process and, uh, being able to communicate using meaningful tools. So I think if nothing else, it will help us if we adopt it in a meaningful way, of course, uh. Yeah it can help us be better human beings, I hope. Yeah.
Jeff Bullas
00:33:19 – 00:34:21
Yeah, I interviewed at Polymath recently, um, earlier this year, um, Nick Bostrom. Um, out of Oxford University professor who’s a polymath, um, he’s got like neuroscience, economy, economics, like PhDs just pouring out of him. Oh. And, uh, he’s written two books, one on, one’s called, you know, Super Intelligence, written in 2014, and the other one lately this year was Deep Utopia, which, first one was dystopian. This one, deep utopia was utopian and um. Interviewing him was actually quite um daunting because. Here’s a brain that just operates in a different way, and um. But in one sense, AI can give us that ability at a certain layer. And, you know, if I don’t understand something, and I, one of my key things I’m trying to work out now is, we, we’re trying to communicate with each other and we use one word.
Jeff Bullas
00:34:22 – 00:35:06
But I’ve discovered that almost every word is what I call a suitcase word. In other words, if you open the suitcase and inside that suitcase there are multiple, sometimes dozens of meanings for one word. Happiness, what does that mean to you? It could be something different to you as it is to me. And the list goes on. Success, what does that mean? So we’ve got, so for me, having access to wisdom, intelligence, creativity. An ancient wisdom of the world within AI’s. Distillation of humankind’s mind and heart and soul and creativity, it’s for me I just find it mind-boggling.
Yasir Drabu
00:35:07 – 00:35:48
And I, I think that’s why AI safety and other things are important and just as you said, fake news is incorrect information. It’s harder to do than, you know, I know some of the companies put Guardrails around it and the guardrails themselves are biased based on cultural biases, right? So I think the way Chad GDP works versus cloud, they come from different countries, their guardrails are very different. And you realize that OK, they’re doing their best, but it’s a very different, you know, take on what is, what is, what is the, what’s, what’s, how to distill and put those guard rails in place. So I think those biases will carry into the models, but
Yasir Drabu
00:35:48 – 00:36:02
Uh, as we define our, you know, uh, our, our opinion on things, uh, our thought process as it evolves, and, uh, I think that, that will reflect in this and just help us augment. Uh,
Jeff Bullas
00:36:04 – 00:36:55
yeah, I came across, uh, by the head of CEO Navidia, um. He’s one of the things he talked about along with Mustafa Suliman, uh, That we need to consider things like maybe sovereign AI. Because AI is almost the homogenization of humanity. Cause it’s basically about, so almost an amalgamation of humanity, so what happens is that the voices of indigenous people that are small minorities lost in the noise and so each country’s got indigenous people, uh, they’ve got different mixes of faiths, religions, culture, um. Australians will use words that Americans would have no idea what we’re talking about, like, good day mate, you know, OK, said that with his buddy, um, you know, put a shrimp on the barbie, you know, all that sort of stuff, right, um.
Jeff Bullas
00:36:56 – 00:37:12
So I’ve thought about it. It’s like, I think governments may need to consider creating sovereign AI which is a big investment, but it’s almost an investment in the culture. Of a country or a nation, I’d be interested in your thoughts on that.
Yasir Drabu
00:37:13 – 00:37:50
I think that’s actually very important. That’s why I, I think I made a reference to the Borg, which is actually a sci-fi series called the Star Trek in which they encounter a borg. You can look it up later. I’m not sure if you, it’s a, it’s a, so the borg essentially is uh one queen and everybody’s minds melded together and they act as one monolith. And Uh, the homogenization is really what I was getting at is if everybody reads the same model and it’s the same way, uh, do we, do we end up becoming thinking the same way and
Yasir Drabu
00:37:50 – 00:38:36
Um, you know, don’t lose, lose some of that creativity, not necessarily creativity, the, the distinction of each culture. So I think whether you want to call it sovereign AI or something that is, it understands the cultural nuance of different cultures that I think becomes very important. So that’s why it’s important to not have Like open AI be the only. Biggest model in the world. I think countries or other tech companies across the globe need to, need to, need to address that, uh, uh, that nuance and distinction of every culture. So something that’s, you know, in, in the US for example, eating steak is something delicious, but in India it’s, it’s probably culturally forbidden. So, so, so I think cows
Jeff Bullas
00:38:36 – 00:38:38
are sacred. That’s why,
Yasir Drabu
00:38:38 – 00:39:06
yes, yeah, exactly. So I think. Uh, the, uh, you know, obviously, uh, I’m oversimplifying it and some of this is captured in these models, but I, uh, to your point, I think there needs to be that, uh, sovereign, uh, you are a cultural, culturally different depending on which country, uh, models there are so that they, they’re not drowned. Those voices are not drowned in that homogeneity of things.
Jeff Bullas
00:39:07 – 00:39:48
Yeah. Yeah, I’m just reflecting on it. The two countries you’ve lived in in your life, India. Yep. And the USA. And before AI, we’ve had homogenization of culture, which is actually being broken up a bit now, which is Hollywood dominated the world in terms of entertainment and still does to a point. On the other hand, we’ve got Bollywood in India. Yeah. And Bollywood’s growing and growing and growing. So what we have is a bit like the Indian culture breaking out going, Hang on, we’ve got some good shit here as well. Um, we’re, we’re funny and we can write good stories, and we can create good movies and,
Jeff Bullas
00:39:49 – 00:40:14
Then, and on top of that, there is also the music industry. Um, and we’re seeing the rise through networks and communication. They’re global now as the rise of, you know, African music, um, that’s getting into the mainstream. So, it’s really interesting to watch. So, yeah, but I think we want the world to be an interesting place. There’s nothing more boring than just vanilla ice cream every night, right?
Yasir Drabu
00:40:15 – 00:41:06
Oh yeah, I mean, I, I mean, I, uh, like when I talked to my, as I said, I had some extended family, when I talked to them, they’ve adopted a lot of Australian ling lingo and. You know, he’s like, what’s up, mate? I’m like, when did that happen? I mean, that’s just, I, I mean, I mean there’s just one piece of, uh, but I think, but that makes it interesting. I, you know, we, we love the different dialects, we love the different languages. There’s just, uh, ideas and expressions that each language can better express, right? Whether it’s uh Hindi in India or Urdu or, uh, you know, uh, Spanish, you know, English, they all have their strengths, but they also, other languages have terms and things that are unique to them. I think, uh, Ultimately celebrating that diversity has to kind of
Yasir Drabu
00:41:07 – 00:41:14
It has to kind of flow into these models as a whole. I’m an optimist on these things, so I’m
Jeff Bullas
00:41:14 – 00:41:36
generally an optimist as well and and for me the diversity is both. Can be a joy or a blessing and a curse, and like I’ve, I’ve been in India 4 times, which isn’t a lot, but it’s 4 times and, Because of the melting pot that is India. Um, I’m sometimes not quite sure what to do.
Yasir Drabu
00:41:37 – 00:41:45
Yeah, yeah, there’s a lot of contradictions, right? So there’s the old words and things, a lot of things come up as contradictions. So anyway,
Jeff Bullas
00:41:46 – 00:41:49
I just feel like I’m living in a pool of paradox in India.
Yasir Drabu
00:41:50 – 00:42:23
It is a pool of paradoxes. I mean, there’s a lot of, uh, change, uh, structural, economic, social changes that, that have, uh, happened and then there’s obviously. Uh, you know, uh, there’s a little bit of a pullback, um, uh, from, from that as well. So it’s a, it’s, it’s definitely a very diverse, uh, eco ecosystem of cultures and people and, uh, languages. I mean, there’s so many languages and food. It’s just, it’s mind boggling. It’s,
Jeff Bullas
00:42:23 – 00:43:11
It’s almost overwhelming for me because it’s so complex and also so populous. Um, you know, Mumbai’s, you know, you walk through the streets and you walk through the parks and there’s, You know, 50 cricket games going on in a park, you know, in the center of Mumbai, right? And then you go through the slums, which you just, you know, watch humanity try and survive, um, and, uh, but then you’ve got the wealth that sits in the big cities as well. So you’ve got these constant extremes. Uh, India especially brings to the table and um I it’s. Yeah, I just find it amazing. Um, but I do feel overwhelmed when I go to India. That’s why I, I’ve actually had Indians who have been my guides to, um, to help me make a little bit of sense of it, so it’s great.
Yasir Drabu
00:43:13 – 00:43:19
I’m looking forward to getting to Australia and enjoying some of the beach and the sunshine.
Jeff Bullas
00:43:20 – 00:43:44
Uh, we’ve, we’ve got great beaches here, so you’re most welcome. So, just to wrap it up, um, You see, it’s been absolutely fabulous chatting about life and software. I don’t know how that happened, but that’s fine, and AI as well. So, I want to ask you one question, what brings you deep joy, if you had all the money in the world, what would you do every day? What brings you deep joy?
Yasir Drabu
00:43:44 – 00:44:17
I keep saying I’m a builder, so I like building things that actually help people. I think, no, no amount of money can bring that joy. I think at the end of the day you can only drive one car and you can only eat 3 meals a day and you can live under one roof. So I think the joy is in creating things that bring meaning to the world. I mean, if you as long as I can do that, that’ll bring me the deepest joy and sharing that bed. Uh, immediate friends, family, and then the broader world as a whole, hopefully.
Jeff Bullas
00:44:18 – 00:44:43
I love it. I, I think um we are humans, we are creators, and we, but we also need to share that gift with the world, and I think. Um, for me, um. I enjoy writing, I enjoy doing podcasts, um, and for me also, I’m curious about a lot of things, especially the intersection of AI and humanity, because AI asks big questions of humanity. Yes,
Yasir Drabu
00:44:43 – 00:44:45
it does, it does.
Jeff Bullas
00:44:45 – 00:45:04
Um, and, uh, but I think, um, it’s great to hear that you love creating and making a difference in the world and, um, I look forward to, uh, if you visit Australia, stick up your hand, let me know you’re coming and uh we’ll look after you and uh take you out in the harbor and um. Show you a different world.
Yasir Drabu
00:45:05 – 00:45:08
Thank you, Jeff. Thank you for that kind invitation, sir.
Jeff Bullas
00:45:09 – 00:45:18
Thanks and thank you for bringing your gift to the world, um, even though I don’t understand it. Um, no, how you do it.
Yasir Drabu
00:45:23 – 00:45:25
That’s maybe, yeah, yeah. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. It’s a pleasure talking to you, Jeff. Bye.