Minter Dialogue with Faisal Hoque

In this episode, I sit down with Faisal Hoque, an entrepreneur, best-selling author, and innovator. We explore Faisal’s journey from Bangladesh to the US, his experiences in tech entrepreneurship, and his shift towards philosophical writing. Faisal shares insights on leadership, resilience, and the importance of humanities in the age of AI. We discuss his upcoming book “Transcend: Unlocking Humanity in the Age of AI” and delve into the ethical considerations of AI development. Faisal offers a unique perspective on serving others, drawing from his experiences working with the US defense sector and his personal life. The conversation touches on the value of adversity in fostering innovation and the need for a balanced approach to technological advancement and human values.

Please send me your questions — as an audio file if you’d like — to nminterdial@gmail.com. Otherwise, below, you’ll find the show notes and, of course, you are invited to comment. If you liked the podcast, please take a moment to rate it here.

To connect with Faisal Hoque:

• Check out Faisal Hoque’s eponymous site here
• Find/buy (preorder through April 8 2025) Faisal’s new book, “Transcend,” here
• Find/follow Faisal Hoque on LinkedIn
• Find/follow Faisal on X (formerly Twitter)

Other mentions/sites:

• Other books by Faisal that were mentioned: the WALL STREET JOURNAL besteller and USA TODAY bestseller, Everything Connects, Cultivating Mindfulness, Creativity, and Innovation for Long-Term Value and Lift, Fostering the Leader in You Amid Revolutionary Global Change
• Interview with Karin von Hippel here

Further resources for the Minter Dialogue podcast:

Meanwhile, you can find my other interviews on the Minter Dialogue Show in this podcast tab, on Megaphone or via Apple Podcasts. If you like the show, please go over to rate this podcast via RateThisPodcast! And for the francophones reading this, if you want to get more podcasts, you can also find my radio show en français over at: MinterDial.fr, on Megaphone or in iTunes. Music credit: The jingle at the beginning of the show is courtesy of my friend, Pierre Journel, author of the Guitar Channel. And, the new sign-off music is “A Convinced Man,” a song I co-wrote and recorded with Stephanie Singer back in the late 1980s (please excuse the quality of the sound!).

Transcription courtesy of Flowsend.ai, an AI full-service for podcasters

Minter Dial: Here we go. Faisal, it’s great to have you on my show. We’re just having a little warm up chat beforehand. Always interesting to get to know you. Everything I, I researched about you people, what people say about you and mate had to have you on because you have a book that’s about to come out in April. Transcend Unlocking Humanity in the Age of AI and boy, is that a topic near and dear to my heart. In your own words, who is Faisal?

Faisal Hoque: Thank you for having me. I’m looking forward to this.

Minter Dial: And who are you, sir?

Faisal Hoque: Look, I’m a entrepreneur, I am an author. I have had a pretty interesting ride from coming to us when I was 19 years old and then kind of got into school, dropped out in my senior year, build a couple of software companies, worked for some large organizations and then you know, started writing maybe 20 years ago. And as I kept writing started with very technical stuff and more and more it moved towards philosophy and that sort of a thing. Spent quite a bit of time in Japan, spent some time with some Zen monks along the way. Being from Bangladesh, had a kind of a foundation in, you know, deep literature and Sanskrit literature and Eastern philosophical tenets. So, that kind of date in the background, but it’s just propped up lately as we explore all this philosophical tenet. I live in Connecticut, as we were talking earlier in Stanford, Connecticut. I have a son who is a cancer survivor. So, all the book proceeds goes to cancer research. So, that’s my way of living in gratitude and giving back however I can.

Minter Dial: That is a soulful story. So, let’s start with the 19-year-old who lands in the United States of America. What was the stimulus for doing that and how did it go at the beginning?

Faisal Hoque: Rough. It was quite rough. But the stimulus was because I actually went to a American missionary school in Bangladesh that was taught by the fathers. And then I, after school I would spend a lot of time what they used to call the US cultural centers, they don’t have those anymore, but they used to have those. And I got exposed to jazz and you know, the, the American literature and, and I was taught somewhere in, you know, being in Bangladesh, I was taught on the, the basic, was very British schooling system, you know, but, but I was a level A levels at all levels and British literature and whatnot. But because of my, because it was American missionary school and I had access to this, this, you know, those days, you know, we’re talking about no Internet, no phones. I mean, you know, this is like a long time ago. So, so, so it Kind of started there and there was this show that time called the Paper Chase. You know, I don’t know whether you remember that it was based know Harvard Law School and the students in Harvard Law School that kind of got me hooked into this notion that I had to go to US to study. But I had no money because my, my parents comes from middle, middle class and as a foreign student is a very, very expensive to come. So, I tapped into my entrepreneurial spirit and started to save up some money by selling stereo equipment and applied for bunch of scholarship. So, somehow managed to get a part from Southern Illinois University. And I kind of took the plunge and came in, came to us very rough because after my first semester’s tuition fee, I basically had $700 left and I had to quickly figure out how to survive and then put myself to school. So, I started applying to other schools to get a full scholarship. Ended up getting a full scholarship from University of Minnesota. And I was graveyard shift janitorial engineer as they used to call at that time. So, it was rough. It wasn’t a typical, you know, that, that tender college experience that a lot of people have in their undergraduate, the privileged ones have. Yes, you could say that.

Minter Dial: So, how formative was the toughness of that experience for you?

Faisal Hoque: It was, it was quite, quite foundational, if I can use that is that term because I didn’t come from a very privileged family, but I was privileged in the sense that, you know, my father was an engineer, my mother was like a homemaker and educator. I never worked in my life before I came to us. I never had to think about where the food is going to come from and what’s to have, you know, what is to have for meals. So, I was privileged in that context. Right. So, so you come there and you have to kind of, you know, fend for yourself. You know, you have to kind of cook for yourself and you have to figure out what to eat, where to go, all that stuff. So, built a foundation of resiliency, which I didn’t quite appreciate it going through it, but I really realized it later on. So, that was one thing. The other thing that, that, you know, since you talk and write a lot about empathy and mindfulness and, and soulfulness and finding yourself. I had a supervisor, a graveyard year, graveyard shift supervisor, quite older than me and this black gentleman, and he would just harp on me, said be one with the floor and because I would buff these floors, you know, and I said what the heck be one with the floor means. And what he was really trying to Teach me is that, you know, be focused on whatever you’re doing and shut down everything else. And that was kind of my genesis of, you know, mindfulness. I didn’t realize, I didn’t recognize that at that time. I recognized that lot many years later, looking back and when I was writing one of my book called Everything Connects and Talks a lot about mindfulness. And this was right after my couple of trips to Japan and getting reacquainted with a lot of philosophical, Eastern philosophical tenant. So, these were two foundational things that I walked away from school, you know, that, that how to survive and be resilient. And then also kind of the introduction to mindfulness, you know, and it stayed with me.

Minter Dial: Be one with the floor. It sounds like an Obi Wan Kenobi type of thing.

Faisal Hoque: Yes.

Minter Dial: You know, getting into the flow with the floor.

Faisal Hoque: Yeah, that’s exactly what it was.

Minter Dial: And, and yet a beautiful idea. And it’s simplicity.

Faisal Hoque: Yeah. And, you know, and you, you know, you learn stuff. You don’t, I mean, you get exposed to a lot of things and you learn stuff along the way, but you don’t know what stays with you and what doesn’t. And, and somehow that stuck with me. And, and, and I, I, I have a depth of gratitude to that, that man, because I think that was a pretty formative, you know, formative lesson, you know, that, that I, I try to use it now and obviously expand it since then.

Minter Dial: It makes me wonder about how we craft our existence as well, because somehow, as you said, you didn’t see it at the moment. And then you basically rewrite history because at the time you’re kind of cussing probably under your lips. I have to do this. It could be one with a floor. Easy for you to say.

Faisal Hoque: Yeah.

Minter Dial: And then you sort of go back and, and then things fall into place and, and maybe you can sort of brush over the, the groin and, and cutting of cussing of teeth. But there we, we, we write our history and then we lean into it and then that becomes who we are 100.

Faisal Hoque: You know, I mean, it’s, it’s a, you know, because, you know, and, and the way I started to recognize that is probably 10, 15, 15 years ago while I was, you know, by then I was, you know, I was somewhat successful. I traveled across the globe, you know, and, and got kind of reacquainted with a lot of this philosophical, you know, lessons that I’ve had. Have had it not just then, but also when I was going to school because I was a, I was a Kind of like a literature buff and mostly, you know, the Bengali literature and Shastrian literature and also some English literature. But it kind of reconnected me with all this stuff and that kind of, you know, created that foundation for next 15 years because I kind of lost it, you know, all those kind of connection because I was so ingrained in chasing my dream and wanting to be so successful and building companies and whatnot. But it was a kind of a nice, you know, to be reacquainted and be in touch with that while I was trying to figure out what does it all mean and why am I doing what am I doing and is there any meaning behind all this and whatnot.

Minter Dial: You know, the meaning thing. I definitely want to get into that. I want to just circle back one second on the, the 19 year old Faisal who arrives and has that hard experience, the notion of being an immigrant. And oftentimes it strikes me you come with a hunger, you also don’t come with a safety net. And that is very structuring. Then all of a sudden the hard work pays off, you’re chasing your dream, you have kids who were brought up under your new status. And I’ve long wondered about the idea of transmission. Is hunger transmittable? Can you build resiliency through words? How do you view those?

Faisal Hoque: So, look, I have a unique experience in terms of, and can you build the resiliency and whatnot. And, and I, I’m very fortunate in the sense that I have one child who has turned into, I wouldn’t say hungry, but very resilient because he’s a cancer with the illness. And, and, but even when he was younger, you know, he was very grounded and he was, he was wiser, you know, for his, for his age, you know, and, and then when he got diagnosed that was, he was about 18 years old. Now he’s 22 years old. And he pushes himself, you know, and, and, and a lot of the things that I told him or try to teach him, you know, I mean, we, we are, we’re not the kind of parents, you know, who try to tell you have to be this or you have to pursue that or you have to do, because I lived through that, I didn’t want to do that with my child. So, he had a kind of a free range in terms of what his interest is and what he wants to latch onto and whatnot. And he turns out to be very philosophical, grounded and cares about the world and bellowing human being. But he’s also very resilient because he, he doesn’t look at this as an obstacle and it pushes all this as a, as any, you know, now a young man would be of his age would pursue. So, it’s different, you know, he doesn’t have the hunger like I did that shoot, if I don’t work, I won’t have a meal, you know, and, and I don’t want to be poor again. You know, that was, that was, that’s one of the motivation, you know, it’s like a, kind of like a following Maslow’s hierarchy. Right. So, once you have the basic things covered, my mind also shifted in terms of I don’t have that hunger of I need more wealth or I want to build a bigger company or I want to do this or I want to do that. I’m very, very fortunate to be able to say, you know, I care about my country, so I’m going to go and work with our government. I don’t care whether that allows me to build my next company or not. I will do that. So, I’ve been doing that. Then I said, okay, I’m going to keep writing. I don’t care if anybody buy, buys my book or not. I’m not making a living from selling books or speaking or any of that stuff. I want to write because I want to explore and I want to share. So, it kind of changed. So, is it transmittable? I don’t know. I think it very much depends. And you also have to define what is it. Not everybody has the same level of definition of what success is or what it means. Means and whatnot. Right. It’s certainly my definition of who I am and what success means and how I lead, how I interact changed. You know, I’m not the same person that 19 year old versus now 50 plus year person, you know, it’s completely different.

Minter Dial: So, I, I wanted to dial in on the, the 15 years ago because it sounded like that was a sort of a pivotal. You have.

Faisal Hoque: Yes.

Minter Dial: Was it a specific moment you decided to move away from, Chase the dream, get the money and the success. That’s sort of bing bling.

Faisal Hoque: Yeah, it was kind of pivotal because you know, at that time, you know, I was kind of at my height of my, my, you know, craft. Right. I mean in the sense that by that time I had, I think two companies or I was maybe running the third company and we had customers all over the planet and you know, we kind of talked about Pepsi. Early on I was working with Peps, north of French Social Security service. A whole slew of things going on and you know, very. And, and then I, I had a board member who happens to be Japanese and he now passed away. He was the chairman and CEO of, of Toshiba America. And he said, and we connected and he was a lot older than me, but we connected at a different level. He was very kind of a grounded, humble man, even with his monumental success as a corporate leader. And, and he kind of, we latched on to each other because I had this affinity with Japanese culture and these Zen philosophical things. And he would tell me that, you know, you are more educated about this stuff than my children. And I would, you know, my children never want. Have no interest in this, you know. And so, I started going to Japan and you know, not, not the typical Japan in the sense that, you know, the, not just the, the, the business side and the typical tourist stuff. He would take me to these very obscure place and you have to have like a local, not just local, who really cares about that kind of cultural, you know, the thousand years history of, of cultural notion. And I would, I would share with him, you know, my learning from, from where I come from and we’ll compare notes. And I started to feel a shift that. Because we would get into this deep philosophical question about who you are and what humanity is, the practice of empathy, the practice of mindfulness, all that stuff. And that was a pivotal thing. And I was actually sitting in Dubai airport and I said, I want to write my next book and I want to talk about how we are very interconnected and how important it is to realize who you are and how that keep changing and then how that impacts what you do. I’m not mean by what you do in terms of your professional career ladder or any of that stuff in terms of, you know, what really triggers you and you know, how you find purpose and whatnot. And so, I sat, I mean I had like a 8, 9 hours layover and I wrote out the, you know, the outline of Everything Connects. I sent it to, you know, one of my publisher and, and I really got into it and I had a wonderful partner to write with who is a lot younger than me is. And we kind of battered, you know, the idea. And he, by the. I mean, he was also kind of a young man at that time who was blood wiser for his age. And he was really into these philosophical, you know, Eastern philosophical tenant. So, he got into it and that completely changed me. I mean, the process of writing that book completely changed me in the sense that I kind of reinvented who I was and what was really important going forward. And then I did that and then I kind of got tired of writing and whatnot. And I was exiting out of my last company and I was kind of thinking that, you know, I. This country has given me so much. Maybe I try to help the country. And I had some friends that was, you know, that was in north of Grumman. They went to a company called CSCI who is also a feral contractor. And you know, they said, hey, why don’t you try help us, you know, help these agencies, large complex agencies with their innovation and transformation. Because that’s what you have done. And you’ve got some methodology and software tools. Because I’m still a software guy, right? So, in terms of profession. So, I got into that and that was now like eight, nine years ago. And then, you know, and then, you know, I was. Pandemic happened. My publisher said, why didn’t you write something around Pandemic and how world has changed? So, I published a book called Lift and that’s also when my son was diagnosed. I said, okay, well I really don’t feel like writing because this is like, this is like a major blow, you know, as you can imagine. And, but I kind of looked at that as an opportunity to maybe rebuild my platform and use that platform to create awareness around cancer, but more specifically multiple myeloma because more younger generations are being affected with these kind of blood cancer related things. And so, I want to use my platform to create an awareness. Since then, the last five years I wrote re-released Everything Connects, second version or second edition where I added more stuff around resiliency and mindfulness, released a book called Reinvent that kind of focused on leadership mindset that drives transformation. And then now Transcend, which is around AI, but is deeply philosophical, not just around, you know, all the technological stuff. So, it’s, it’s, you know, I mean, just like anybody else’s life, it evolves and incidents and events changes you and allows you to look at things positively negatively. You know, I mean I could easily spiral several times over, but I kind of found that one with the floor metaphor as a grounding factor and kind of stayed focused, you know, and in between, obviously my parents got older. I just lost my mother last year, you know, so, so, you know, this, this is life. I mean this is nothing special or unusual, right? So, it’s, it’s, it’s a, it. Every single one of us go through this journey. What we make out of it and who you become, that’s very individual. But I don’t consider the journey Very unique in the sense that you know the, the, the, the good fortune or the misfortune. It’s, it’s part of life, you know. So, I’ve kind of look at it from that perspective.

Minter Dial: Amen. It is not what happens to you, it’s how you react to what happens.

Faisal Hoque: Yes.

Minter Dial: Counts and happens everywhere to everybody. And it’s not to diminish people’s but it’s, it really is about how you deal with it. Totally, totally subscribe to that. So, we’re going to get into the last half of this into elements of transcend fear you not.

Faisal Hoque: No worries. It doesn’t matter.

Minter Dial: Yeah. And yet this journey is what’s interesting for me. And I think one of the things that strikes me is so often. So, I think 37 is a sort of a pivotal age in the west where you are able. You’re still full on. It’s the prime of your career. Physically you’re great. And, and you probably have a.2 kids. You probably have a mortgage or house and maybe bills to pay. And then you have this sort of fork in the road what am I going to do with all this? And, and it may not be the age of 37, 38, you make that decision. But it tends to have a little bit of a fork in. Right. And I feel that a lot of people miss that fork and stick with the bandwagon thinking that having the fourth home and the third car and the. In the two ex-wives or whatever is being, you know, a male. But is, is where they go with that because they just forgot to actually figure out smell the roses and what’s actually important in life.

Faisal Hoque: Yeah. I mean absolutely. You know, or, and, and so. Absolutely. I mean it’s. That is a very classic way of describing how life happens. And, and there’s. I have those folks all around me being, you know, you know where I live. You spend some time around here and it’s, it’s a, that is the story. You know, it’s rare.

Minter Dial: Yeah. And it seems to me that a lot of them end up sort of going and sort of giving off half their money to charity to try to make up for the screwed up life that they’ve been leading. Right. So, in this notion of dealing with AI, which were so many of us are scrambling around with in this fast-changing world, lots of doubt. So, geopoliticalness. One of the big questions is who’s to decide what is good?

Faisal Hoque: Yeah. I mean it’s what is good for you may not be good for me. Right. And what is bad for you is very good for me. Right, so, so that is, how do.

Minter Dial: You architect a, A game plan around good when we have national, international, there’s regulation, there’s security issues there, there’s money to be made, Someone’s got to pay for all this, much less the, maybe even the natural issues. So, if we just start with the idea of, of good, doing good, you know, or if I put it maybe in another context which fits with what you’re talking about is humanity. So, my version of humanity or your version of humanity, how can we all come to agree on what is humanity?

Faisal Hoque: Yeah, I mean, actually, it’s a very difficult question and I don’t think anybody knows the answer, right? So, the way I left it is that what it will be is whatever we do collectively, right? And because it’s not. Not. It’s not, you know, just like you said, I mean, there’s every nation, every organization, every individual has a role to play in it, right? So, and we will play our role and humanity will take its own shape or form, right? The. The way I, if you ask Faisal and Faisal’s view of the world, because that’s the only view you can probably.

Minter Dial: Well, that’s the one I’m asking for right now.

Faisal Hoque: Right? So, so I, the way I look at it is, is very basic in the sense that try to do things that doesn’t harm others, you know, and try to do no harm.

Minter Dial: Do no harm. Sounds like a book.

Faisal Hoque: Yeah, it sounds like a book. And then also, you know, the fact is that, you know, treat or try to treat other people as you will treat yourself. If you don’t think it is good for you, it’s probably not good for somebody else, right? So, it’s very fundamental, simplistic way of looking at it without over philosophizing the process, right? So, if we collectively did all that, right? So, then maybe it will turn into a good place. If you want to manipulate, you know, if you want to scheme, if you want to win at all cost, then it will be exactly the opposite, right? Because there’s a, there’s a, you know, you can put framework, you can put legislation, but there’s a moral compass, an ethical guide that is very individually driven. And the bigger leader you become, meaning, bigger meaning the more people you can influence, your responsibility of that moral and ethical compass grows exponentially, right? So, because it’s a, you know, it’s like that notion of absolute power is absolute corruption, right? So, so the more powerful you get, you. You become in love with yourself and you think whatever you, you become God, like figures. So, so, so there’s that element to it too. And so, so, so there’s, that’s, this is all about humanity. There’s other side to it because, you know, specifically, I mean, if you talk about AI, I mean, AI is a new species that we’re creating, if I can use that word, and it’s a digital species. It’s not, as you know, a natural species, but nevertheless it’s a species that we’re creating. Right. And in never, ever in human history there has been anything that is more in that, that, that, that, that has the potential to be more intelligent than humanity. But that’s what we’re creating because of the fact that you and I are talking. But then you can have, let’s say, one of those large language model running simultaneously. It’s tapping into thousands of us, millions of us. So, it’s already more powerful data source than you would be, or I would be. Right, collectively. So, it’s already more powerful. You don’t have to start arguing, is it going to be AGI, meaning the general. Yeah, super intelligence, et cetera. It’s already more powerful in many ways. So, what happens if you have a more powerful species than humanity? Then? Are we going to be dominated and controlled by that species? But by the way it’s learning from our behavior. Humanity is a very dominant species in the sense that we like to dominate, we like to control, we like to extract. We’re giving, but we’re given, giving. But as long as serves us, at the end of the day, that’s humanity. Right. There’s a very dark human history. So, is it going to come to a point where this new species collectively now try, you know, in the hope of saving humanity, starts doing exactly what we did to our, ourselves. Right. So, those are the bigger question. And I don’t think anybody knows that answer, you know, so I’ll just leave it there.

Minter Dial: Well, so in the, in the realm of, of making it a debate of sorts there I, I feel that there are three things that make the idea of good very difficult and probably not realistic because the first is good only exists thanks to the presence of bad. And we all have bad in us. And so, if we are honest with ourselves, we could sometimes want bad for ourselves. Take how we smoke some cigarettes, some people or whatever it might be. Then there’s a second thing which is fear and fear of death, fear of failure, fear and, and how the amygdala goes apeshit in so, so many cases. And that’s A hard thing to manage because there’s an instinctual element to it. And the third thing, not the least, is that resources are limited as much as might. There might be infinite opportunities with AI, even AI consumes what is finite in terms of energy. And these three things mean that there’s caps. So, we have to make choices and who’s going to be the arbiter of these choices when it comes to machines like AI that can do so much, including make, you know, humanless killing or endless cyber hack, hacking and.

Faisal Hoque: Sure.

Minter Dial: And other malevolent uses. So, that. Yeah. How do you go for that? That.

Faisal Hoque: Well, see, that’s why, that’s what I was trying to say that, that I don’t think we can predict that we will be in control because of the fact that as it becomes more and more connected and more and more powerful and you now, you know, you add to the fact that it’s a network of intelligence. This is not just, it’s not like there’s one AI and you just go and turn on the switch. It’s a, you know, it started in the days of, you know, this is why Internet. So, yeah, I mean it made so much, so much sense because we are now connected. Right. So, so it’s a, it’s a, it’s a network effect. And then you look at the level of, you know, data access that you can, it can generate from, create your own logic, et cetera, et cetera. Then you add the fact that we’re already pushing, you know, pushing the, the, the quantum computing infrastructure which, which will allow it to be even more faster. Meaning it, meaning this network of intelligence. Right. So, so it’s a really, you know, using the Star Trek metaphor, it’s really the Bork, right. So, once the Bork takes over, what happens? And I don’t think that this notion of some arbiter or some neutral party that’s going to break the ties, I think that’s very difficult to imagine. So, this is where my pessimistic side comes in, by the way, because once I start. But thinking about that, I think we may be in trouble already. And I don’t know how you undo that. And I think what we end up. But there’s like thousands and million other argument that says all the good things that you can do, which I explore, as you know, and I’m very optimistic about that as well. So, I don’t know, I don’t know the answer well.

Minter Dial: And I think, as you say, it’s not an easy thing to answer, but we bring it down to a business. And so, we need to make money. We want to innovate. How does a company, let’s say a sizable company, but even any company really arbitrate between, oh, I could do this, for example, I could innovate and make us live longer.

Faisal Hoque: Yep.

Minter Dial: So, that’s at a, at a company level, I have this new idea. I want to use AI to make us live forever. When. And how does the ethical framework come in? How do you. Using one of your frameworks, perhaps as an example, how do you look?

Faisal Hoque: I mean, so, so before I get into the framework, there’s. There’s a couple of things, you know, we’ve been dealing with this notion of, you know, like the, the doing good. I’m talking now from a business point of view. Right. You know, the sustainability esg, there’s a lot of version has come and go and now a lot of people have started to talk about, well, leaders need to start thinking of regeneration because the sustainability is not enough in the sense that you can’t just stop at being sustainable. You have to figure out how you regenerate because all the things you mentioned, limited resource, you know, finite amount of things, et cetera, et cetera. Right. So, in that context, you know, I think especially in the context of AI, this notion of regeneration will become even more important because you can’t just say, well, let’s make profit for profit’s sake and make our innovation sustained, not sustainable, meaning it just, you know, it just sustains the organization. And maybe it does some. Do, you know, does some good or whatever, and it goes from there. And there are tons of tons of data that shows that organization that focus on doing good are doing better financially and otherwise making money. I don’t know whether you saw this. The Unilever CEO just stepped down. But if you look at the performance of Unilever because he focused on sustainability, it actually did better and whatnot. So, so what I ended up with the framework because I’ve kind of seen a number of organization in number of industry and if you look at, in the context of AI, I’ve always led the organization with this notion of that you have to create a set of innovation portfolios that looks at many different options and that allows you to stay competitive, but it also allows you to say, allows you to look into what is the potential to impact society as a whole or as a large. So, what I added in the context of AI is that we used to look at risk and we used to look at risk at a product innovation. Are you going to impact the environment or your people that works for you or the marketplace, et cetera, et cetera. In the context of AI, you have to think about the risk at a catastrophic level because the product that you’re creating, it could actually create it may increase your profit, but it could also create a enormous harm that’s not acceptable by any human measure. In transcend we said look, you have to be open to possibilities. And we have a framework called open and it’s a bunch of acronym and it allows you to run through those, create whole bunch of innovation out of possibilities. Care, which comes from caring for the humanity also is a framework, but it’s a governance framework and it stands for it catastrophized. Exactly. How do you look at this risk from the worst case scenario and should you be pursuing? So, if you balance your portfolio from this open to possibilities and care for humanity, that gives you at least some moral and ethical guideline regardless of legislation and legal, regardless of law and regulation.

Minter Dial: Love it. Yet when I, let’s say I’m, I were to be running a company, I also have stakeholders, a board to deal with the history of my company. And, and it feels like many companies are completely lost in terms of their navigation system. And as much as they might say it’s catastrophe, oh, this might be catastrophe, or this might be an option, but, but the challenge seems to me to make sense of both the option and just where you want to go in the risk side of it.

Faisal Hoque: Sure, yeah. No, I mean, and you know, and actually the biggest opportunity and the biggest risk is actually from the tech giants. Right. Because we are moving. We already moved. You know, I mean if you look at the industrial revolution and information revolution, now we are getting into this. You know, we went through like a brief period with digital revolution and now we’re getting into AI revolution and it’s really dominated and, and, and led by the tech industry. Right. So, which I’m part of. So, I don’t excuse, you know, I’m a, I’m a contributor to the good and the bad and, and so, so, but that, so if you look at the large, you know, large tech giants, CEOs viewpoint and their philosophy, you can kind of see when someone is trying to lead with morality and ethics and when they are not. Right. So, if world dominance is your mantra, then you will build stuff and lead the organization towards that. If you are driven by some sort of a motive that, look, I care about the humanity and obviously I want to create stuff that’s going to move the humanity for Humanity’s sake. It’s not move replace humanity with something else. Then you’ll move it differently. And you can already see very nuances and variants in terms of leadership and the way they’re trying to lead the organization. And obviously look, you need legislation and framework that doesn’t go away. And then actually it’s good to have even for the people who are profit driven because it gives you a structure that keeps them safe from potential customer and consumer from we’re a very lawsuit happy society. So, there being number of lawsuits that you’ll see coming up in coming days and coming months and years. So, you need a combination of that. You know how you are creating this meaning you know how you’re creating next products and services from a moral high ground and ethical point of view. You need the leadership that’s setting up that mindset and the culture to drive that. But you also need legislation and legal framework that that prevents and people gets punished for doing the wrong thing.

Minter Dial: So, I hear you and things like the precautionary principle do no harm, let’s do good. Let’s say do no harm is that’s the pharmaceutical route. Don’t be evil. That’s Google a precautionary principle, let’s save everybody it. I almost feel there’s a place for be bad and I’m not being wicked but I feel like oftentimes we’re not allowing the bad into the conversation enough. It’s pointing at there’s bad over there but actually when I’m pointing that way there are three fingers pointing back at me and somehow being a little nauseous, being more boring, maybe more exclusive, being a little bit more bold and courageous on some decisions which may not please everybody. I feel like doing a little bit of bad, adding some dust into the, I mean you know, into the grind.

Faisal Hoque: Yeah, look, I mean I, I, I spent last eight years with our, with our defense working with various parts of US DoD and DHS and I’ve got fair amount of research and work in that space that are going on right now. So, I can so I’m not So, I wouldn’t call it bad. But it’s a different lens in the sense that you talk about being. You have to be exclusive, and you have to be protective if I can use that word because I do believe that you need to be, you know, if you took a form of geopolitical point of view, you have to protect yourself. Right. Because if so from that context you have to create stuff that are counter. It’s a counterattack or defensive attack from the bad, that’s going to come to you. Right. So, whether that’s somebody shutting down your infrastructure or that’s, you know, robots armed with machine guns coming to your doorstep, you have to be able to have, have things that are allowing you to prevent yourself or things that you don’t see in the sense that some cyber-attacks shuts down all our airports, you can create all kind of scenarios. Or some terror cell is being built in my backyard, and I need to make sure that I can have some sort of a reconnaissance way to gather that data to come up with a defensive mechanism. So, you can put all. I mean, if you take a very naive viewpoint, I say, how could you do that? Well, that’s actually very naive because there’ll be always rogue people, rogue agent, and nations with different kind of belief system, then, I mean, that’s what makes humanity so interesting and also what we are. So, there are different ideas and thoughts of what, what good and bad is. But so, if you don’t add that element of, call it aggressiveness, call it defensive, call it leading from strength, you are going to be at a disadvantage. So, I’m not at all in the category of believer that you don’t have to make yourself strong in order to do good. And, and when you’re trying to make yourself strong, you may come across that you are evil. Right. And that’s a matter of opinion. But what you do with that strength matters. Just because you have the strength. It’s like what I said before, that with power comes responsibility, with freedom comes responsibility. Absolutely, absolutely.

Minter Dial: And I think the how counts all the same. I, I had on my podcast, Karen Von Hippel, who was in charge of the largest think tank on security and military matters. So, we talked a lot about that and I’m having, after you, I’ll be having the head of the British army for the last 15 years.

Faisal Hoque: Yeah, I saw that. Yeah.

Minter Dial: Carlton Smith. So, we’ll be talking about this as well. The, the notion of resiliency becomes really relevant and you mention it for you, obviously, for your son dealing with his illness and coming through that. And I feel somehow, and don’t get me wrong, but I feel like we sometimes need to invite more difficulty into our privileged lives, especially in the West.

Faisal Hoque: I couldn’t agree more because it is adversity that actually creates new path, new innovation, new ideas, thoughts, etc. Because when you, when you’re always successful or when you’re, you know, when you’re always status quo, you kind of lose that edge to do Anything different, right? I mean, that’s why, you know what happens, you know, companies rise and then they fall because they, well, it’s working. Why do I have to reinvent?

Minter Dial: Why fix was not broken.

Faisal Hoque: Exactly. Right. So, from that point of view, I think it is only through adversity you learn and the things you learn, I mean, anyone going back to where we started, be one with the floor. I think it stuck with me because where I was at that particular time in my life, right? And then when I, you know, when I had to, you know, and when in the course of running companies, when I got in trouble, you know, it is only then I had to think about, okay, this is not working. Let’s come up with a new product or net next, come up with a new offering, right? It is always those chaos, you know, comes out of chaos, comes light, you know, so during this uncertainty, chaos and adversity, you come up with things that are very impactful, very monumental. Could be personal crisis, could be business crisis, could be any kind of crisis. But I think you’re absolutely right that we need certain amount of chaos and crisis to make ourselves better.

Minter Dial: So, I might abuse your time. I have one more question.

Faisal Hoque: No, please, no problem.

Minter Dial: So, there’s. On the one hand I have this and we talked a little bit about, about it before, how so many, There are so many amazing leaders in North America that I know of that come from the Indian subcontinent. And I have a little narrative my mind which explains that. I’d love for you to explain your perspective. And the other thing is the other counterpoint to that, which actually is very much something I had, which I studied trilingual literature at university, so maybe. No, no Bangladeshi literature, which I’ll need to come back to you on to give me some advice. But the study of humanities has fallen off the cliff. Yes, we’re talking about more than half of students at university studying humanities, literature, history. It’s all no good to anybody anymore. And so, out of those two questions, what advice do you have to people who want to become great leaders?

Faisal Hoque: Look, even the tech giant, I mean, I was, I think it was Saty was giving an interview and he was saying, which I wholeheartedly agree that, you know, I mean, in the context of AI, what’s going to become more relevant is the teaching from philosophy, teaching from humanity, teaching from creativity and art and sort of a thing. Because that’s what humanity is at the end of the day, right? So, you, if you have the machine doing all the mundane thing and it start writing codes and doing Calculation for you. You’re going to have to think very differently and you have to think differently, answer all the questions we talk about what’s good, what’s bad, what’s right, what’s wrong, how do I stay creative, etc. Etc. These are very. So, my advice to anybody, which I’ve been giving or, you know, same advice last 15, 20 years, even when we were not talking about AI, is that don’t forget your human lessons from your humanity, you know, teachings. Right. Whether that’s. Whatever that is. Right. So, I mean, there’s many branches of it, but stuck with it. In my case, I, I mean, I, I come from a family of, you know, like science people, meaning engineers, doctors and this and that. And they tried to make me exactly that. And I kind of did it and I’m still doing it. But I was also very much, because of my mother, very much into literature and music and that sort of a thing. And I’m so glad and so grateful that it stuck with me and stayed with me and it served me well. So, I think the great leaders and you talked about a lot of the successful CEOs are from subcontinent and there’s always have been pinch on all of them. Right. And. But they’re. Yeah. And also, like, you know, I mean, you’re talking about, I mean, even like if you look at the British singers and a lot of celebrities have on and off from 60s, 50s, 40s, you know, has this affinity towards that part of the world because of the philosophy, spirituality and the culture and et cetera, et cetera. Right. So, I think that is an edge because it allows you to understand people. And if you understand people, you can lead people better and you can kind of create a roadmap that’s more thoughtful, that’s more impactful. And that’s why I think they’re more successful, because all of them, if you really drill into it, beyond their engineering, beyond their. The fact that they are all hard work and all that, that notion of philosophical tenant, the spiritual tenant, cultural tenant, is something that is very much ingrained. And maybe they don’t highlight it, but that’s what their roots are and it’s impactful. We were talking about Pepsi. If you listen to Indra, I mean, she will tell you the same thing, you know, and, and so I think.

Minter Dial: That’S one of the stories that she has where she comes home and she’s still expected to cook for everybody.

Faisal Hoque: Yes.

Minter Dial: And that kind, that kind of humility also.

Faisal Hoque: Yes.

Minter Dial: Not that all Indians are humble, but there’s A an element of groundedness.

Faisal Hoque: 100. I mean, look, I mean, one of the reason I kind of have a different lifestyle than I used to have is because it started when my mom started getting older and sick and you know, I started became a caretaker for her. So, I started cooking for her. I love cook and I love to cook and I’m doing that for my son and whatnot. And it is that, that nurturing nature that gives you a better perspective how you want to lead others, you know, and, and that’s very ingrained in subcontinental culture. They are very nurturing, if I can use that, use that word. Aside from being disciplined and you know, all the other stuff that comes with being a very successful CEO and whatever the case may be.

Minter Dial: Yeah. It seems that this idea of being of service is so important. And yes, while in, in the realm, we didn’t talk about it, but of course this idea of purpose and, and the other stakeholders, the thing that I see that many get wrong is not, not to be of service, but they don’t contain the level of service that they’re trying to achieve. In other words, well, I’m saving the planet. Oh, I’m gonna make all children fed dead.

Faisal Hoque: Yeah.

Minter Dial: And then what happens is that they discover that that’s not possible and that they’re going to fail. And then that’s when bang, the guillotine comes down. Or at least the, the hard, hard knocks life reality comes to bear. So, having a purpose that has some sort of realism related to it.

Faisal Hoque: Yes.

Minter Dial: That’s contained. So, you’re not trying to just whoop dee doo hope dee doo. I can do everything, I can save everybody and be a little bit more focused in the service that you wish to achieve. You know, like taking care of your family.

Faisal Hoque: Yes.

Minter Dial: I mean, certain people want to take care of the world, but they don’t even take care of the people on their streets or their family 100%.

Faisal Hoque: You know, I mean, I, I, what motivated me to write Lyft, you know, I was talking about the fact that if you want to lift everybody else, first start lifting yourself. You can’t lift others, you can lift yourself. Right. So, that’s. One second is that, you know, this a radical pragmatism that we forget in the sense that you can be idealistic, but if you’re not pragmatic, you know, like, for example, you know, I serve in small way every day, whether that’s serving my family, whether serving my country. You know, often enough people ask me, what’s your, why do you like working with or your, you know, our military communities. So, your personality doesn’t naturally tend to that. You know, I have this thing that I tell myself. I serve the people who serve us. Right. So, it’s very small, but it’s meaningful to me. Right. Because, you know, even if you can do something for somebody who is in the battlefield, it’s meaningful. Right. And because I won’t be that, but I can do this. Right. So, it’s a. It’s looking at, I think anybody can serve regardless of their station in their life. Right? So, I mean, I see, I saw when my mom was in nursing home, the dedication of all the people that took care of her. Right. I mean, it’s utterly humbling. Right. And I see the researchers or the nurse or the doctors that works at the, you know, the Yale Cancer center or Dana Farber and their dedication, 18, 19 hours trying to, you know, to. To come up with better quality of life for this patient. I mean, it’s very humbling. Right. So, they serve quietly. Right. You don’t have to be in a limelight. You don’t have to be doing whatever. But that is, to me, that is service. Right. You don’t. It doesn’t have to be big. Just serve any way you can.

Minter Dial: It makes me think. And I wanted to do a quick shout out to my cousin Chris, who joined the Marines when he felt that he needed to be of service. And it feels that the idea of being of service to one’s country has sort of fallen off the cliff in this world.

Faisal Hoque: Yeah.

Minter Dial: I did a book and a documentary film about the Second World War. And one of the things I learned is those who wait also serve.

Faisal Hoque: Yes.

Minter Dial: Because there’s only 10% of the military that’s on the front line. Eastern, the old days. And everybody else is serving those people. And your attitude towards that, not thinking, grumbling, oh, I’m giving all this to the. The people, the hot shots. And think about the floor that you’re buffing is the floor allowing them to. To get closer to what they have to do is a beautiful thing. So, Faisal, I. I definitely totally overstate my welcome. It’s been as I expected, and many. I saw one of many of your contacts said would be good. I certainly really appreciate it. Faisal, how can people obviously get your book, which comes out in April, any of your other books? What sites would you like to go see? How can people connect into you?

Faisal Hoque: Yeah, look, I mean, you can find me on my website, which is faisalhog.com and you can find me on LinkedIn. That’s a social media. I’m very active. I mean, it’s a. So, you know, I try to post something every day. There’s, you know, and whatever I am learning, I kind of share. So, so, so there’s tons of free content on my website. As I said, the books are all for charity, so you’ll be doing good. As we talked about, for less fortunate, because not just for cure, but a lot of people that suffers from has really tough time even taking care of themselves. So, it’s not just finding a cure, it goes in other places as well. So, appreciate it. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for having me. This was very meaningful. So, thank you.

Minter Dial: Yes, it was uplifting for me, too. Thank you, Faisal.

Faisal Hoque: Thank you.