Former tech leader shares how personal loss, AI, and the power of human experience have guided his journey from tech executive to author
Published: 24 Nov 2025 - 09:01 pm | Last Updated: 24 Nov 2025 - 09:07 pm
Doha, Qatar: He went from being the Chief Business Officer of Google X to a bestselling author – and, according to Mo Gawdat as he spoke at Qatar Foundation’s Education City Speaker Series, his shift from the tech world to writing was “the best move” of his life.
Addressing an audience at Qatar National Library in Education City, under the theme ‘Giving AI a Heartbeat: A Conversation with Mo Gawdat,’ he explained why writing is so meaningful to him, and shared his perspectives on the future of AI and how it will influence our lives.
“Life will nudge you when you’re supposed to be in a different place and you keep resisting,” said Gawdat, explaining that when his son, Ali, passed away, “his departure was the nudge that made me write the book that I was hoping to write four years before.”
In April 2023, Gawdat told an audience of 10 million listeners that he would never write again, as he could already see a trajectory in which AI would be able to write better than him. However, he soon had a change of perspective.
“I realized that the point is I’m human,” he explained. “So what I write will be read by humans. And AI can pretend to be human, but it will never experience the feeling I felt when I hugged my son. That deep connection is never going to go away.
“People still crave that idea of ‘Mo, share with me your experience when your son did this, or share with me the experience of how your daughter said to you do that’.”
Gawdat explained how he decided that, instead of writing against AI or surrendering to it, he would write with AI – not as his researcher, but as his co-author: “I have an AI that has a persona, that has a voice, that has editorial rights on the book.”
And he also spoke about his current startup, Emma, telling the audience: “I always say, as a geek, that if I had started Emma in 2023, or 2022, before AI, it would have taken me three-and-a-half to four years to build.
“Emma is myself and my co-founder – a 27-year-old who is geekier than I am, believe it or not. Six weeks for the entire code – from vision to working model in six weeks. And it was so
empowering that we decided to rebuild the code from scratch seven times. And we will release a product by the end of the year that will blow humanity away. Two geeks, eight AIs, and a few months of work.”
Offering advice to the audience about the future of AI, he said: “Everyone has the right to be afraid. It is a change; it is a very massive change.
“The question is, what will your fear bring? This is a fact; it is upon us. It is not even about to happen. If you’ve lived in the labs where I lived, this has been happening.
“But if you understand what we're doing in the background, we have cracked intelligence. It is done. Your question is: do I want to sit in fear, hoping that it will go away? Or do I want to be on top of that wave? And being on top of that wave, or being crushed by it, is literally a difference of minds.”
