April 29, 2026 • 41 mins
Live from The Royal Institution of Great Britain, it's TechStuff! Oz sat down with two visionaries at an event hosted by Quilt.AI. First, he spoke with Ali Eslami, a Distinguished Research Scientist at Google DeepMind, who built the prototype for what is now AI Search. Ali talked about how working on AI can feel like surfing, and what went into connecting Gemini to Google Search to create what he called "neural Google."
After that, Oz chats with Saad Mohseni about his work with MOBY Group. Saad guides Oz through his twenty-year effort to bring top-tier news and entertainment to Afghanistan and beyond — from a reality TV singing competition that changed the country, to using WhatsApp and AI to provide education to girls banned from school.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Welcome to tech stuff. I'm os Valoshin. Today we're bringing
you two conversations that I had last week at an
event hosted by quilt dot Ai. And it was a
pretty cool experience for me because the conversations took place
on stage at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Back
in eighteen twenty one, they dissected a mummy on the
exact stage where I was speaking. Fifteen scientists attached the
(00:39):
Institution of one Nobel Prizes, and not less than ten
chemical elements were discovered here, including sodium and potassium. So
I was in ridiculously good company, and I was there
to interview two contemporary visionaries. The first is Ali Islami.
He is a distinguished research scientist at Google's Deep Mind
who built the prototype for is an ai search. Would
(01:01):
be fair to say his work has changed the front
page of the Internet.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
I see my role as being one of a surfer,
where I have to be leaning just enough into the
future to kind of make forward progress, but not too
far that I fall into.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Like the this.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
The second conversation I had was with Sad Masni, CEO
of Mobi Group. He created the first privately owned radio
and TV stations in Afghanistan and built media networks in Iran, Iraq, Ethiopia,
and India, and he continues to harness platform technologies like radio,
TV and WhatsApp to drive culture in fascinating and powerful ways.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Initially was a bunch of students tutoring girls on WhatsApp.
Now we have a WhatsApp AI chatbot and we have
turned fifty thousand kids that use it. It's a bridge
between a time when we have education and a time
hopefully we'll have education for girls.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
I hope you'll enjoy both conversations. So you might not
know Ali's name, but you likely know his work because Ali,
you built the prototype at DeepMind that became AI search
at Google.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Yeah, so if you've used Google Search, you will have
seen something called AI mode where you can kind of
have a conversation with AI about the thing you're searching for.
That started off about two years ago I think now
where we had Gemini, which was our LLM, and you
may not remember, but back then these ais they weren't
(02:33):
really connected to the Internet, so you could ask them questions,
but you couldn't ask them about local restaurants or recent news. So, yeah,
we built this prototype that we called neural Google, as
in like, how can we make Google like a neural network?
And we connected Gemini to Google Search and that has
now been rolled out and many people have used it. Yeah,
(02:57):
so I was involved in kind of creating that.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Yeah, I mean it's kind of amazing because also for
anyone here who's ever been turned down from a job,
you were turned down for your first job at Google,
and you went on to basically redesign the core product, right, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Forgot about that. That was a long long time ago. Yeah.
So I I fell in love with computing when I
was a teenager, like playing video games like so many
other people, and learned how to code when I was
in my teens and went on to actually study AI
during my undergrad which was super uncommon back then. So
(03:33):
in two thousand and five, I did an undergrad in AI,
and yeah, I applied to work at Google, and due
to my nationality I'm from Iran, I was told that,
you know, there were some restrictions Terranians working at Google.
That didn't work out, so I went on worked at
a games company. Then I worked at Then I did
a PhD, worked at Microsoft, and in twenty fourteen fifteen
(03:54):
joined Google again. Thankfully the rules had changed or they
didn't realize. I don't know what happened.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
But one of the things, I mean, growing up in Iran,
this is a conference about AI and creativity. I mean,
it wasn't AI, but in your bedroom you were you know,
you were building websites for powerboat owners in Florida. In
a sense, you were using technology to travel the world
and to create alternative worlds for yourself as a child.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah, I mean that was one of the things that
I found super attractive as a teenager. You know, I
was in Iran on my computer and through the internet.
It felt really like I was flying around right. I
could be in any conversation anywhere in the world. I
made friends with people from all across the world. There
(04:39):
was a guy I became friends with, Trevor. He actually
messaged me just last week out of the blue, and
him and I we would make websites, we would get
find clients, and I never met him. I still haven't
met him. This is like more than twenty years on now,
and it felt like a superpower and writing software even
(05:01):
back then, I could feel like it was a superpower
because I didn't have to get permission from anyone. You
didn't need material resources even as a child. Basically, as
long as your brain could work, you could do whatever
you wanted, and that's how everything kicked off.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
You mentioned that you sort of started your career or
your study of AI when it was very unpopular field.
There was the kind of long AI winter where nobody
really believed it would happen. And I think you referenced
you didn't believe in your lifetime that you may never
see AI be able to distinguish between a cat and
a dog in your lifetime. Safe to say it can now,
(05:36):
But with your doubts about whether the field would actually
take off, what made you want to pursue it before
it was the hottest thing in the world.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Yeah, I mean, honestly, I think there was definitely a
bit of luck involved. So during those early years I
learned how to code fairly proficiently, and by the time
I came to go to university to study I loved
technology and computer science enough to know I wanted to
be in that field. But it felt like I wouldn't
(06:06):
be learning much new things if I just went on
to study computer science. So I looked around and I
thought to myself, Okay, what could I study, which is
like computer science but is beyond computer science and artificial
intelligence felt really interesting because it had computer science, but
it also had philosophy, It had theory of mind, it
(06:27):
had a bit of neuroscience, and I thought that that
might be a fun thing to spend, you know, a
couple of years thinking about. But the analogy I make
is back then it felt like studying teleportation feels to
us today. It's like cool idea in theory, but we've
(06:48):
never seen anything like teleportation. Probably it's not going to happen,
but yeah, sure, if you want to go and study that,
go ahead. So that's what AI felt like when I started,
and even and even when I did my PhD, I
genuinely didn't think that I would have a career in
this field. It felt like an intellectual curiosity.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
So what changed.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Well, actually, during my PhD there was this kind of
sequence of scientific breakthroughs that people at the time called
deep learning. We don't use that word so much anymore,
but deep learning, which is basically a statistical technique, came
to the fore and people started realizing that this thing
(07:30):
has legs, and very gradually, but at the same time
very rapidly, people who were in the know kind of
for the first time in fifty sixty years, started thinking, oh,
hang on a second, it feels like we've cracked how
we might be able to make progress in this field.
(07:50):
And that was when I kind of switched from oh,
this is kind of a fun thing to do, but realistically,
I'm going to go and do startup, So are going
to work in a bank or something, to oh, hang on,
I happen to be within the group of like three
hundred and four hundred people in the world who know
what this thing is about and what its potential is.
(08:12):
And so yeah, towards the end of my pH she
was pretty clear that this is going to be big,
and so I decided to stay. I did a post
TALC and then going school.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
I mean, do you it's interesting you mentioned like twenty
years ago it would have been like, say, I'm going
to study teleportation. And curiously, if you agree with my
kind of hypothesis in my introductory remarks about this idea
that if the Royal Institution founders could see what's happening today,
their minds would be completely blown. And yet there's this
cultural feeling of despair or darkness.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yeah, totally. I mean I am The topic of my
PhD was computer vision specifically, so it's how do we
get computers to see the meaning in images? Right, That's
one way of defining it. So when I look at
the scene, I can understand that I'm in a circle
the room and there's people. I understand the context. Even
(09:04):
ten years ago, if you were to show this photo
to a computer, the most I could say is that
this pixel has read. This pixel is black. But otherwise
it was basically mis drive. It was a mystery to
the computer itself. And yeah, as I mentioned to you earlier,
I as an expert in the field, I genuinely didn't
(09:24):
think that we would make meaningful progress on this problem
in my lifetime. I felt so out of reach because
we had no clue how to proceed. And even to me,
if you had, if you were to show me what
we can do today ten years ago, I ninety nine
percent would not have believed.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
You would have said, this is like impossible. So you,
I mean, you sit in many ways at the cold
face of the future. What are you seeing your when
you're working in deep mind, when you're interacting with AI,
when you're building it. What are you seeing the rest
of us should know?
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Right, Well, Well, one thing that's really changed is ten
years ago, when we were doing research, it really felt
like it was separate from the real world. So, you know,
when friends or family would ask me, what are you
working on? What do you see that we should know about?
(10:20):
I would be describing something that, you know, wordly abstract.
It was abstract, it was in the lab, and you know,
maybe I could point to research paper that they could
go and read and so on. One thing that's changed
is that the research that happens in AI today gets
turned into products very very rapidly. So the kind of
(10:43):
the stuff that you use when you go to Google
or Open AI or Anthropic or whoever else is actually
very very close to the frontier of what's possible anywhere
in the world. So in that sense, pretty much what
you're experiencing is what we're experiencing.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Having said that, except you know how to interrogate in
a way that we don't, right.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah, perhaps, And also I spend a lot of time
actually using this stuff. Most people might be using it
to the extent that it helps their personaliz their careers,
But it's my job to interrogate it, as you were saying.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
And I think that's an important point because when we
talked before this, you mentioned that for the last couple
of years you viewed yourself as a builder, and now
you've described the feeling as of surfing.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Right, yeah, I mean, I think the surfing has been
around for a long time actually, So what I mean
by surfing is that the sea is tumultuous and there's
waves of innovation that come. And I see my role
as being one of a surfer, where I have to
be leaning just enough into the future to kind of
(11:47):
make forward progress, but not too far that I fall
into the abyss, and so so much of the job
is to keep track of what's going on and to
push just a little bit. And going back to your
earlier question, I think you know, most people in the audience,
I'm sure, have used chat bots and image generators and
(12:07):
so on, and that's something that we're familiar with. Earlier
we heard about agentic commerce and agentic kind of chat experiences.
I think one thing that perhaps is less familiar for
wider audience is these people still use the word agentic
(12:29):
for them, but it's a slightly different concept where an
AI is actually in control of a full computer, and
it acts on your behalf with your credentials, possibly for
hours or days on a task that you set it.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
So it's the open flow revolution exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
So open claw really kicked this off. Anthropic now has
claud code, open Ai has OPENINGI codecs, Google has anti gravity.
So these cysts stems tend to start from a perspective
of hey, this is an AI that writes code for you,
but it's pretty clear that this is going to go
(13:10):
on to do much more than just coding, and will
soon do all kinds of information work for you, like
analyzing your finances, sending emails, organizing your calendar, creating documents,
making spreadsheets, writing code, shopping, etc. Etc. And obviously there's
(13:32):
people who are involved in building that technology, but there's
also an element of rewiring yourself to figure out how
to use that technology in a way that makes you
effective of whatever your job is. Now, as AI researchers,
we sit in this mind bending space of using the
(13:53):
technology that I just described to build the technology that
I described. So we use those systems to build those
and that gets a bit kind of meta. But that's
the thing that kind of where I'm experiencing right now.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah, I mean you built something which now has emergent
capabilities that you're trying to understand, So you don't understand
all the capabilities of the thing that you build, which
is mind bending.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
That characteristic has been around for a long time, though,
so I would say for the past ten fifteen years,
perhaps more. We're kind of used to building things that
we don't fully understand. But it's not as scary as
I think most people think it to be because as humans,
I think we're very comfortable with interacting with other humans,
and we don't fully understand other humans, right, So society
(14:45):
works through systems of trust, through communication and so on,
and it's the same with these AI systems. We don't
fully know what they can or cannot do. We understand
the mechanics of it, but we don't know the capabilities.
But one thing that is new is this idea of
self improvement. So in the past, yes, we humans build
(15:06):
systems that did cool things, but we didn't really fully
understand what they were. But now we're in a realm
where we build systems and those systems can continue to
work on themselves. They can continue to change their capabilities.
In fact, we want them to continuously change their capabilities,
so as researchers, our jobs become slightly more like social
(15:27):
scientists almost or like or anthropologists, where you're kind of
measuring and steering the evolution of complex system or a society.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
You've described your own work as creative, I think, and
I know you're also an artist. What can we learn
from your creative process in terms of how you build
and interact with AI systems. What can we extrapolate from
that about the future of human creativity? Right?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Okay, I mean future of human creativity is super So
I can only share my own personal experience. I have
been really struck by how much my job has changed
in the.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Past couple of years.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Careers obviously normally change as you get more senior, but
I'm talking about something different. The nature of the job
has profoundly changed, I would say at least three or
four times in the past three or four years, and
the time span between the changes has only decreased. So,
(16:37):
you know, there was the year before deep learning. Then
there was the time between deep learning and chat GPT
that was about ten years than between chat GPT and
maybe two years ago that was like two or three years.
Then there was a year when you know, the tech
was becoming much more public. Then just since the beginning
(16:59):
of this year with open claw, that's been two or
three months ago, and now the capabilities keep going up
and up each one of these moments. As a practitioner,
as a researcher, I basically had to completely set aside
my previous tool set and pick up a new tool
set in order to continue my job. So imagine if
I was a carpenter or an artist, without exaggeration, it
(17:21):
would be like, you know, putting away all of your
brushes and then moving to photography right as a medium,
That's happened three or four times, and I think that
there is no indication that that's going to stop. I
think as I fully expect my job to transform again
in those ways. I suspect many other professions will feel
(17:42):
this too, with a bit of a time delay. So
we're super aggressively using these ais to redefine our own
jobs in AI, and I suspect other professions will feel
the same.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Yeah, I think many people feel like if I'm not
up to date and using the later suite of AI tools,
I'm ineviator being left behind, which is kind of a
bad feeling. Obviously, you're at Deep Mind, which is basically
building the future, but you're also in a race with Claude,
with Anthropic and with open AI, And so how does
(18:17):
that kind of three way race? What kind of X
factors that add to your work?
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Yeah, Well, one thing is when when you're in a
competitive environment and you're trying to be at the forefront,
you end up working with very immature technologies. So one
key characteristic of my experience of these things is that
I'm constantly working with broken tools. Like, none of these
(18:44):
things work as well as I would want, and it's
partly my job to make them better. I think for
everyone else there's probably a luxury of being slightly further
behind and therefore using more mature versions of these tools.
And to a large extent, my role in this transformation
(19:05):
is to help things progress fast and in the right direction.
But for many people in this room, I think these
are ultimately just tools meant to serve a purpose which
often has you know, social value, or commercial value, or
human value. So I think there should definitely be less
(19:27):
anxiety than say I have, because you know, at the
end of the day, it's just a tool that's going
to serve whatever customer base or client base you already have.
But yeah, the competition is pretty intense, and there is
that intensity I think traditionally has always gotten a little
bit simplified as it comes into the world because there's
(19:51):
one hundred things going on right now. Nobody knows which
one's going to be the right way to go. But eventually,
gradually we will find out what the winning patterns are
and then they will kind of percolate through society in
a much more manageable way, I imagine.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
And where do you fall on debate about you know,
is there something innately human about being able to make
a very moving film or is that just an next
frontier to cross the AI?
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Yeah, I caught the end of that previous conversation. I
think it's super valid. I agree that the AI systems
that we have today are not capable of kind of
creating those emotional connections that I say with a kind
of commercial or products or pragmatic lens. So right now
(20:47):
we have AI artifacts, you know, literally like Gemini three
or you know, mid Journey or whatever, and I agree
that these things are not plugged in to the real
world and are not enough to make that emotional connection.
But if I put on my scientist hat up, I
don't see any fundamental blocker to a future system understanding
(21:14):
the complexities of human emotion and the zeitgeist, as an
earlier speaker mentioned, in order to make those emotional moments happen.
I think that can be done. I don't see any
reason why it's different to solving a mathematical problem, or
writing a piece of poetry that mimics a certain style,
or reading a book and kind of getting the gist
(21:35):
of that book. I think it's doable. There's on this topic.
There's there's a there's a fantastic article that I always
recommend is written by a guy Aaron Hertzman, who works
at Adobe, and it's an article called can Computers Create Art?
And he he concludes that ultimately the point of art
(21:57):
is social is like two entities kind of communicating something
within each other, and we just haven't set up computers
to do social acts yet. They're kind of doing interesting
visual acts, but they're not social acts. If they get
embedded in society to the extend that they're doing that,
I think at that point we will start feeling like
they're doing kind of emotional work.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Ali ISLAMI thank you when we come back a conversation
about the power of technology and media to change culture
(22:41):
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The link is in the podcast episode description box so started,
Thank you, Thank you for being here today. Ali is
(24:06):
obviously building technology which is driving creative industries. You I
think that anybody I'd ever met in my life have
harnessed technology to drive culture. You're the author of a
book called Radio Free Afghanistan. But you've had this remarkable
journey of both using radio, television and most recently WhatsApp
(24:27):
to intervene in culture. But start at the beginning and
your return to Afghanistan after leaving as a boy in
two thousand and two and why radio.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
We went back.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
Because the country had been taken over by the Americans
and the Allies and we thought there was an opportunity
to set up a media business. And we started off
with a radio station because at the time most people
didn't have electricity, They certainly didn't have television sets, and
radio was sort of It's probably perhaps the safest media
(25:01):
platform because you need batteries. Everyone has a radio set.
It's easy to operate, it's cheap to operate, and we
felt it's a simple business we can do on a
part time basis continue to reside in Australia and.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
That wasn't the case.
Speaker 4 (25:18):
And that allowed us them to build TV stations and
other platforms and then move beyond Afghanistan to the rest
of the Middle East, Central Asia, then eventually Africa.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
What was the moment when you realized the radio station
would require you to roofs Afghanistan full time and become
kind of the center of your life.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Well, I think because we had music which people were
not really accustomed to after five years of the Taliban,
and it was literally people showing up at our door
to kill us. And we had this very simple office
and a residential dwelling with no security. And during the
(26:02):
trials we had this thing that let's do this for
a couple of weeks and see how it goes. It spread,
the news spread very quickly, and all of a sudden
I got a call that you have to show up
in Carbles.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
I had to fly back.
Speaker 4 (26:14):
Immediately to meet the president, well to meet everyone, I
mean to get extra security. And there were times actually
I had to call people into the building and to
explain to them what the intention of the radio station
was and why we had music, and why music was important.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
It was actually to calm people down.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
And really that was sort of a it was a
real eye opener in terms of people's reaction to anything new.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
I think it's interesting because radio obviously feels like the
oldest and most boring communication technology there is.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
I mean, it's been around for we call it the
cockroach of the media business. It never dies.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
Well, yeah, I mean I think it's it's but it's
fun because and then of course we learned very very
quickly in terms of you know, how mady can be
an agent of social change, how it can facilitate social change.
But along the way, you're always going to have people
opposed to it for whatever reason. And you know, we've
(27:18):
gone you know, not just Afghanistan. We had a very
you know, successful television network for Iran by satellite.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
We went to Ethiopia.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
We've done similar things in Iraq and Pakistan and India
and along the way. And you know, we have this
mutual friend, Tom Freston, who was one of the co
founders of MTV, and he had a similar experience in
the United States with MTV when he launched. So you're
always going to have to detractors, but it's part of
(27:48):
what you do.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Was there a moment with the radio station where you
realized this is snowball that becomes so much bigger and
more powerful than I ever could have imagined.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Well, you don't really think about it because it's yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
I usually quote my brother used to say that, you know,
I'll always bite more than you can chew than chew
like crazy. So for us, the twenty odd years that
we set up these businesses, we were always too busy
to reflect. It was only when I wrote the book
that I had, you know, I had the opportunity to
reflect on what we what we did.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
And of course this was after the fall of the government,
and then you know, you ask yourself was it for nought?
Was it? Was it worthwhile?
Speaker 4 (28:27):
But nonetheless it had the sort of desired impact that
in terms of shaking this very young country, reconnecting it
to the rest of the world, you know, helping develop
music culture and so forth.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
But it's it never stops.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
I want to come back to that that was it
worth it or did it work?
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Question?
Speaker 1 (28:49):
But before that, I mean, you and I collaborated on
a podcast called Afghan Star about the music game show
that changed the country, which John Legend hosted. Talk about
that television program and what it meant and why so
many people risk their lives to appear on it and
to work on it.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
Well, I mean, of course, because the country had no
music for five or six years, we felt, let's have
a reality talent show and we called it the Afghan
Star and it became very quickly the most successful program
on our network in the country as a matter of fact,
and people voted using texting basically early in the early
(29:31):
days and eventually what's happened so forth, But it really
because all of a sudden everyone felt that they could
become a superstar. So we used to have perhaps some
of the least talented people show up in the studios
wanting to perform. This whole idea of role models, of
heroes of superstars was sort of aarlien to people in
(29:52):
Afghanistan in two thousand and two or two thousand and three,
and this program achieved that.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
But us about this see in herat Airport. I mean,
tell that story from beginning to end. Well, I'm twentieth
ready off for Afghanistan.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
Is that what it is, okay, So we had so
it was an it was a show that we used
to you know, going around this country and and identify,
you know, young talented Afghans and they would the judges
would go, the musicians would go, the production people would go,
and and this very well known cleric who had a
(30:27):
huge following was Adam and that this was not going
to happen in the city of Herad, which borders Iran
on the on the western side of the country, And
they went from from one venue to another, and the
mob would follow these people and they were all the contestants,
the contestants, the judges, the production people, and they were petrified.
So eventually they managed to to shoot the episode at
(30:51):
the airport behind the gates. Nonetheless, they did what they
needed to do, but it showed that and at that
time we had lots of threats and and even attempted
attacks against the performers as well as the judges. So
they're always constantly in hiding. But that's one of the many,
(31:11):
many experiences that our people had to deal with.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
How many seasons did that show run for.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
It ran from two thousand and five till two thousand
and twenty.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
I think you told me once that you were always
too nervous to watch it.
Speaker 4 (31:28):
Yes, yes, I mean it was always because every time
they had the eventually we did it in house, which
was easier, but we used to do it than rent
a studio or do it in a hotel, and there
would be always a group of people protesting, and there
was always a lot of security.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Why, I mean, why did you and your team take
the risk?
Speaker 3 (31:55):
That's a good question. I mean, I don't know. I
think that's ultimate.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
You have to ask what the what your consumers, what
the audience demands. It was a popular program, you know,
and and and you know, we talk about the Iran
in terms of the support of the government, and we
talk about Afghanistans for the Taliban usually, you know, and
certainly in Afghanistan eighty five ninety percent of the population
(32:21):
supported music entertainment programs. They wanted to have fun, they
wanted to have entertainment. But the ten percent of fifteen
percent they have guns, They're powerful, they're determined. So there's
always this sort of tug of war between the conservative
elements and you know, the ordinary public.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
I mean, there's this big question of does culture change society,
right and it looked for a long time. When you
brought radio and television to Afghanistania, there's extraordinary engagement that
in a sense you and the people of Afghanistan had
given birth to a new Afghanistan. And then, of course
the Taliban returned, and you mentioned questioning after that what
(33:10):
in fact you achieved. But I mean, as you look
at it today, is it a fire that you kindled.
There's embers now, but that will rise again. Or the
guns and politics in the end have the power to
quash culture.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
Well, I think when I wrote the book, because I
thought that that's it, that's the end.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
But you know, we continue.
Speaker 4 (33:32):
Obviously we have our programming is restricted in the sense
that we can't have music and we can't have soap operas.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
But the country has changed.
Speaker 4 (33:43):
The majority of Afghanis were not born when the Taliban
were in power in the nineteen nineties. The median ages
eighteen and people use VPNs or people have satellite technology.
You can't, you know, the genie's out of the bottle,
and I think you can't. I mean technology allow people
now to get what they want.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
Talk about deciding to continue with your operations after the
Taliban returned what is the reality for your female journalists
and anchors in Afghanistan today?
Speaker 3 (34:15):
Well, they continue.
Speaker 4 (34:16):
I mean we as a matter of fact, we have
more female employees in our newsroom today than we did
in twenty twenty one. They have to work where surgical
masks to you know, to appear on television, but they could.
They're on the field, they're gon't ask questions, they have
TV programs, you know, they continue doing the good work
(34:40):
that they did before the fall of the government. What's
interesting is that this new Afghanistan is also changing the Taliban.
The Taliban have returned to a new, changed Afghanistan and
they have to adjust. And you have to remember that
Taliban fighters are also quite young. They're in their early twenties.
They use WhatsApp, they use technology, they're on Facebook. The
(35:02):
sort of content they consume maybe different. But now in
the cities in charge, the new Afghanistan is also changing them.
But I think it was important for us to remain
in the country because I think it's very difficult to
report on facts, it's very difficult to continue to champion
with its women's rights or human rights from the outside.
(35:23):
And I think there's also this this I think I
realized after two decades that you have to you have
to evolve from within. I think imposing changes from the
outside there's always going to be a short term remedy.
And I think a country needs to evolve from within.
(35:45):
And I think it's upon you know, people like us
and other Afghans to change the country from within, I think,
and that change is going to be sustainable ultimately.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
You won a major award in December of this year
for two educational programs that you've led, one using radio
in Gaza for the children's education there and another using
WhatsApp and AI driven WhatsApp courses for education Afghanistan.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
Yeah, so we thought, well, we've got all these TV networks.
We've got six or seven TV networks, we've got two
radio networks, you know, twenty or thirty online platforms. We thought,
why not use the inventory that we have to design
education programs. As a matter of fact, it was in
London I had lunch with Malala and she said, you know.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
We'd work with you.
Speaker 4 (36:32):
So we created this pilot and we had had some
experience during COVID and we failed because it was difficult
to design television education programs. So we brought in a
bunch of experts and we've created these courses which sit
across all the platforms online, on TV, on radio. It's
called synth which means class. Initially we did biology, chemistry, physics,
(36:57):
and mathematics and we've got the subjects, but we're focused
on the ten million students, in particular six million kids
from the age from grades seven to twelve. And you
have to remember girls cannot go to school, so and
these programs have been unitsf calls it perhaps the most
(37:18):
successful education program.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
That they have globally.
Speaker 4 (37:22):
But we do it at scale, so five million kids
watch these programs on a weekly basis, and we've done
based an inline assessment of these kids with NYU in
seven provinces, eighteen hundred households, two and a half thousand kids,
and the difference in terms of kids who watch the
programs and kids who don't watch the programs range from
(37:43):
forty percent to one hundred and thirty percent. If they
get reminders and if they get tutored on WhatsApp, it's
a two hundred percent improvement.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
So it's about a person tuting on WhatsApp or AI
and WhatsApp.
Speaker 4 (37:55):
Well, initially it was a bunch of students tutoring girl
on WhatsApp. But now we have a WhatsApp WhatsApp Ai chatbot.
It's a chatbot AI chatbot that sits within WhatsApp because
it's easier, and we have turned fifty thousand kids that
use it, two hundred fifty thousand kids that use it,
but tens of millions of queries and messages going back
(38:19):
and forth. But the difference is between failing and learning.
So it's it's it's not a solution, it's not you know,
it goes certainly the other school, but it's it's a
bridge between you know, a time when we have education
and a time when hopefully we'll have education for girls.
But at least in the in the entrum they're learning,
(38:42):
which I think is very important for us as Afghans
and and and you know, of course we were sort
of one of the pioneers to use television and radio
in the way that we use it today. We also
took that know how for Gaza and Palaeside, but because
people don't have access to mobile phones and television, we're
(39:05):
using a radio program and we built in psychosocial programming
and so forth. Messaging as well as educating these younger kids.
And of course the reach is much, you know, it's
more like one hundred and sixty or one hundred and
seventy thousand kids on a weekly basis, but the impact
has been significant. So it's it's a template that we
(39:26):
can potentially take to other places around the world in
terms of educating kids.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
So just to close final question for you, I mean,
how have you taken all these platform technologies radio, television,
WhatsApp and harness them to drive culture? And you know
what can all of us here today learn from that?
Speaker 4 (39:46):
Well, I mean essentially, we're a content company and you
have to create good content, right whether it's education programs
or soap operas or reality TV, and you have to
be platform agnostics. So we will use whether that we
have at our disposal in terms of delivering.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
What we develop.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
And we have good creative people and we've succeeded in
Ethiopia and South Asia, in the Middle East and of
course Afghana sun which is our home country, which is
important to us.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
So thank you, thanks us.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
For text stuff. I'm os Valosian. This episode was produced
by Eliza Dennis and Melissa Slaughter. He was executive produced
by me Julian Nutter and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and
Katrina Norvel for iHeart Podcasts. Jack Intertley makes this episode,
and Kyle Murdoch wrote our theme song. Please do rate
and review the podcast wherever you listen.
Welcome to tech stuff. I'm os Valoshin. Today we're bringing
you two conversations that I had last week at an
event hosted by quilt dot Ai. And it was a
pretty cool experience for me because the conversations took place
on stage at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Back
in eighteen twenty one, they dissected a mummy on the
exact stage where I was speaking. Fifteen scientists attached the
(00:39):
Institution of one Nobel Prizes, and not less than ten
chemical elements were discovered here, including sodium and potassium. So
I was in ridiculously good company, and I was there
to interview two contemporary visionaries. The first is Ali Islami.
He is a distinguished research scientist at Google's Deep Mind
who built the prototype for is an ai search. Would
(01:01):
be fair to say his work has changed the front
page of the Internet.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
I see my role as being one of a surfer,
where I have to be leaning just enough into the
future to kind of make forward progress, but not too
far that I fall into.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Like the this.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
The second conversation I had was with Sad Masni, CEO
of Mobi Group. He created the first privately owned radio
and TV stations in Afghanistan and built media networks in Iran, Iraq, Ethiopia,
and India, and he continues to harness platform technologies like radio,
TV and WhatsApp to drive culture in fascinating and powerful ways.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Initially was a bunch of students tutoring girls on WhatsApp.
Now we have a WhatsApp AI chatbot and we have
turned fifty thousand kids that use it. It's a bridge
between a time when we have education and a time
hopefully we'll have education for girls.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
I hope you'll enjoy both conversations. So you might not
know Ali's name, but you likely know his work because Ali,
you built the prototype at DeepMind that became AI search
at Google.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Yeah, so if you've used Google Search, you will have
seen something called AI mode where you can kind of
have a conversation with AI about the thing you're searching for.
That started off about two years ago I think now
where we had Gemini, which was our LLM, and you
may not remember, but back then these ais they weren't
(02:33):
really connected to the Internet, so you could ask them questions,
but you couldn't ask them about local restaurants or recent news. So, yeah,
we built this prototype that we called neural Google, as
in like, how can we make Google like a neural network?
And we connected Gemini to Google Search and that has
now been rolled out and many people have used it. Yeah,
(02:57):
so I was involved in kind of creating that.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Yeah, I mean it's kind of amazing because also for
anyone here who's ever been turned down from a job,
you were turned down for your first job at Google,
and you went on to basically redesign the core product, right, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Forgot about that. That was a long long time ago. Yeah.
So I I fell in love with computing when I
was a teenager, like playing video games like so many
other people, and learned how to code when I was
in my teens and went on to actually study AI
during my undergrad which was super uncommon back then. So
(03:33):
in two thousand and five, I did an undergrad in AI,
and yeah, I applied to work at Google, and due
to my nationality I'm from Iran, I was told that,
you know, there were some restrictions Terranians working at Google.
That didn't work out, so I went on worked at
a games company. Then I worked at Then I did
a PhD, worked at Microsoft, and in twenty fourteen fifteen
(03:54):
joined Google again. Thankfully the rules had changed or they
didn't realize. I don't know what happened.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
But one of the things, I mean, growing up in Iran,
this is a conference about AI and creativity. I mean,
it wasn't AI, but in your bedroom you were you know,
you were building websites for powerboat owners in Florida. In
a sense, you were using technology to travel the world
and to create alternative worlds for yourself as a child.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah, I mean that was one of the things that
I found super attractive as a teenager. You know, I
was in Iran on my computer and through the internet.
It felt really like I was flying around right. I
could be in any conversation anywhere in the world. I
made friends with people from all across the world. There
(04:39):
was a guy I became friends with, Trevor. He actually
messaged me just last week out of the blue, and
him and I we would make websites, we would get
find clients, and I never met him. I still haven't
met him. This is like more than twenty years on now,
and it felt like a superpower and writing software even
(05:01):
back then, I could feel like it was a superpower
because I didn't have to get permission from anyone. You
didn't need material resources even as a child. Basically, as
long as your brain could work, you could do whatever
you wanted, and that's how everything kicked off.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
You mentioned that you sort of started your career or
your study of AI when it was very unpopular field.
There was the kind of long AI winter where nobody
really believed it would happen. And I think you referenced
you didn't believe in your lifetime that you may never
see AI be able to distinguish between a cat and
a dog in your lifetime. Safe to say it can now,
(05:36):
But with your doubts about whether the field would actually
take off, what made you want to pursue it before
it was the hottest thing in the world.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Yeah, I mean, honestly, I think there was definitely a
bit of luck involved. So during those early years I
learned how to code fairly proficiently, and by the time
I came to go to university to study I loved
technology and computer science enough to know I wanted to
be in that field. But it felt like I wouldn't
(06:06):
be learning much new things if I just went on
to study computer science. So I looked around and I
thought to myself, Okay, what could I study, which is
like computer science but is beyond computer science and artificial
intelligence felt really interesting because it had computer science, but
it also had philosophy, It had theory of mind, it
(06:27):
had a bit of neuroscience, and I thought that that
might be a fun thing to spend, you know, a
couple of years thinking about. But the analogy I make
is back then it felt like studying teleportation feels to
us today. It's like cool idea in theory, but we've
(06:48):
never seen anything like teleportation. Probably it's not going to happen,
but yeah, sure, if you want to go and study that,
go ahead. So that's what AI felt like when I started,
and even and even when I did my PhD, I
genuinely didn't think that I would have a career in
this field. It felt like an intellectual curiosity.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
So what changed.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Well, actually, during my PhD there was this kind of
sequence of scientific breakthroughs that people at the time called
deep learning. We don't use that word so much anymore,
but deep learning, which is basically a statistical technique, came
to the fore and people started realizing that this thing
(07:30):
has legs, and very gradually, but at the same time
very rapidly, people who were in the know kind of
for the first time in fifty sixty years, started thinking, oh,
hang on a second, it feels like we've cracked how
we might be able to make progress in this field.
(07:50):
And that was when I kind of switched from oh,
this is kind of a fun thing to do, but realistically,
I'm going to go and do startup, So are going
to work in a bank or something, to oh, hang on,
I happen to be within the group of like three
hundred and four hundred people in the world who know
what this thing is about and what its potential is.
(08:12):
And so yeah, towards the end of my pH she
was pretty clear that this is going to be big,
and so I decided to stay. I did a post
TALC and then going school.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
I mean, do you it's interesting you mentioned like twenty
years ago it would have been like, say, I'm going
to study teleportation. And curiously, if you agree with my
kind of hypothesis in my introductory remarks about this idea
that if the Royal Institution founders could see what's happening today,
their minds would be completely blown. And yet there's this
cultural feeling of despair or darkness.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yeah, totally. I mean I am The topic of my
PhD was computer vision specifically, so it's how do we
get computers to see the meaning in images? Right, That's
one way of defining it. So when I look at
the scene, I can understand that I'm in a circle
the room and there's people. I understand the context. Even
(09:04):
ten years ago, if you were to show this photo
to a computer, the most I could say is that
this pixel has read. This pixel is black. But otherwise
it was basically mis drive. It was a mystery to
the computer itself. And yeah, as I mentioned to you earlier,
I as an expert in the field, I genuinely didn't
(09:24):
think that we would make meaningful progress on this problem
in my lifetime. I felt so out of reach because
we had no clue how to proceed. And even to me,
if you had, if you were to show me what
we can do today ten years ago, I ninety nine
percent would not have believed.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
You would have said, this is like impossible. So you,
I mean, you sit in many ways at the cold
face of the future. What are you seeing your when
you're working in deep mind, when you're interacting with AI,
when you're building it. What are you seeing the rest
of us should know?
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Right, Well, Well, one thing that's really changed is ten
years ago, when we were doing research, it really felt
like it was separate from the real world. So, you know,
when friends or family would ask me, what are you
working on? What do you see that we should know about?
(10:20):
I would be describing something that, you know, wordly abstract.
It was abstract, it was in the lab, and you know,
maybe I could point to research paper that they could
go and read and so on. One thing that's changed
is that the research that happens in AI today gets
turned into products very very rapidly. So the kind of
(10:43):
the stuff that you use when you go to Google
or Open AI or Anthropic or whoever else is actually
very very close to the frontier of what's possible anywhere
in the world. So in that sense, pretty much what
you're experiencing is what we're experiencing.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Having said that, except you know how to interrogate in
a way that we don't, right.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah, perhaps, And also I spend a lot of time
actually using this stuff. Most people might be using it
to the extent that it helps their personaliz their careers,
But it's my job to interrogate it, as you were saying.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
And I think that's an important point because when we
talked before this, you mentioned that for the last couple
of years you viewed yourself as a builder, and now
you've described the feeling as of surfing.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Right, yeah, I mean, I think the surfing has been
around for a long time actually, So what I mean
by surfing is that the sea is tumultuous and there's
waves of innovation that come. And I see my role
as being one of a surfer, where I have to
be leaning just enough into the future to kind of
(11:47):
make forward progress, but not too far that I fall
into the abyss, and so so much of the job
is to keep track of what's going on and to
push just a little bit. And going back to your
earlier question, I think you know, most people in the audience,
I'm sure, have used chat bots and image generators and
(12:07):
so on, and that's something that we're familiar with. Earlier
we heard about agentic commerce and agentic kind of chat experiences.
I think one thing that perhaps is less familiar for
wider audience is these people still use the word agentic
(12:29):
for them, but it's a slightly different concept where an
AI is actually in control of a full computer, and
it acts on your behalf with your credentials, possibly for
hours or days on a task that you set it.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
So it's the open flow revolution exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
So open claw really kicked this off. Anthropic now has
claud code, open Ai has OPENINGI codecs, Google has anti gravity.
So these cysts stems tend to start from a perspective
of hey, this is an AI that writes code for you,
but it's pretty clear that this is going to go
(13:10):
on to do much more than just coding, and will
soon do all kinds of information work for you, like
analyzing your finances, sending emails, organizing your calendar, creating documents,
making spreadsheets, writing code, shopping, etc. Etc. And obviously there's
(13:32):
people who are involved in building that technology, but there's
also an element of rewiring yourself to figure out how
to use that technology in a way that makes you
effective of whatever your job is. Now, as AI researchers,
we sit in this mind bending space of using the
(13:53):
technology that I just described to build the technology that
I described. So we use those systems to build those
and that gets a bit kind of meta. But that's
the thing that kind of where I'm experiencing right now.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah, I mean you built something which now has emergent
capabilities that you're trying to understand, So you don't understand
all the capabilities of the thing that you build, which
is mind bending.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
That characteristic has been around for a long time, though,
so I would say for the past ten fifteen years,
perhaps more. We're kind of used to building things that
we don't fully understand. But it's not as scary as
I think most people think it to be because as humans,
I think we're very comfortable with interacting with other humans,
and we don't fully understand other humans, right, So society
(14:45):
works through systems of trust, through communication and so on,
and it's the same with these AI systems. We don't
fully know what they can or cannot do. We understand
the mechanics of it, but we don't know the capabilities.
But one thing that is new is this idea of
self improvement. So in the past, yes, we humans build
(15:06):
systems that did cool things, but we didn't really fully
understand what they were. But now we're in a realm
where we build systems and those systems can continue to
work on themselves. They can continue to change their capabilities.
In fact, we want them to continuously change their capabilities,
so as researchers, our jobs become slightly more like social
(15:27):
scientists almost or like or anthropologists, where you're kind of
measuring and steering the evolution of complex system or a society.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
You've described your own work as creative, I think, and
I know you're also an artist. What can we learn
from your creative process in terms of how you build
and interact with AI systems. What can we extrapolate from
that about the future of human creativity? Right?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Okay, I mean future of human creativity is super So
I can only share my own personal experience. I have
been really struck by how much my job has changed
in the.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Past couple of years.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Careers obviously normally change as you get more senior, but
I'm talking about something different. The nature of the job
has profoundly changed, I would say at least three or
four times in the past three or four years, and
the time span between the changes has only decreased. So,
(16:37):
you know, there was the year before deep learning. Then
there was the time between deep learning and chat GPT
that was about ten years than between chat GPT and
maybe two years ago that was like two or three years.
Then there was a year when you know, the tech
was becoming much more public. Then just since the beginning
(16:59):
of this year with open claw, that's been two or
three months ago, and now the capabilities keep going up
and up each one of these moments. As a practitioner,
as a researcher, I basically had to completely set aside
my previous tool set and pick up a new tool
set in order to continue my job. So imagine if
I was a carpenter or an artist, without exaggeration, it
(17:21):
would be like, you know, putting away all of your
brushes and then moving to photography right as a medium,
That's happened three or four times, and I think that
there is no indication that that's going to stop. I
think as I fully expect my job to transform again
in those ways. I suspect many other professions will feel
(17:42):
this too, with a bit of a time delay. So
we're super aggressively using these ais to redefine our own
jobs in AI, and I suspect other professions will feel
the same.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Yeah, I think many people feel like if I'm not
up to date and using the later suite of AI tools,
I'm ineviator being left behind, which is kind of a
bad feeling. Obviously, you're at Deep Mind, which is basically
building the future, but you're also in a race with Claude,
with Anthropic and with open AI, And so how does
(18:17):
that kind of three way race? What kind of X
factors that add to your work?
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Yeah, Well, one thing is when when you're in a
competitive environment and you're trying to be at the forefront,
you end up working with very immature technologies. So one
key characteristic of my experience of these things is that
I'm constantly working with broken tools. Like, none of these
(18:44):
things work as well as I would want, and it's
partly my job to make them better. I think for
everyone else there's probably a luxury of being slightly further
behind and therefore using more mature versions of these tools.
And to a large extent, my role in this transformation
(19:05):
is to help things progress fast and in the right direction.
But for many people in this room, I think these
are ultimately just tools meant to serve a purpose which
often has you know, social value, or commercial value, or
human value. So I think there should definitely be less
(19:27):
anxiety than say I have, because you know, at the
end of the day, it's just a tool that's going
to serve whatever customer base or client base you already have.
But yeah, the competition is pretty intense, and there is
that intensity I think traditionally has always gotten a little
bit simplified as it comes into the world because there's
(19:51):
one hundred things going on right now. Nobody knows which
one's going to be the right way to go. But eventually,
gradually we will find out what the winning patterns are
and then they will kind of percolate through society in
a much more manageable way, I imagine.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
And where do you fall on debate about you know,
is there something innately human about being able to make
a very moving film or is that just an next
frontier to cross the AI?
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Yeah, I caught the end of that previous conversation. I
think it's super valid. I agree that the AI systems
that we have today are not capable of kind of
creating those emotional connections that I say with a kind
of commercial or products or pragmatic lens. So right now
(20:47):
we have AI artifacts, you know, literally like Gemini three
or you know, mid Journey or whatever, and I agree
that these things are not plugged in to the real
world and are not enough to make that emotional connection.
But if I put on my scientist hat up, I
don't see any fundamental blocker to a future system understanding
(21:14):
the complexities of human emotion and the zeitgeist, as an
earlier speaker mentioned, in order to make those emotional moments happen.
I think that can be done. I don't see any
reason why it's different to solving a mathematical problem, or
writing a piece of poetry that mimics a certain style,
or reading a book and kind of getting the gist
(21:35):
of that book. I think it's doable. There's on this topic.
There's there's a there's a fantastic article that I always
recommend is written by a guy Aaron Hertzman, who works
at Adobe, and it's an article called can Computers Create Art?
And he he concludes that ultimately the point of art
(21:57):
is social is like two entities kind of communicating something
within each other, and we just haven't set up computers
to do social acts yet. They're kind of doing interesting
visual acts, but they're not social acts. If they get
embedded in society to the extend that they're doing that,
I think at that point we will start feeling like
they're doing kind of emotional work.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Ali ISLAMI thank you when we come back a conversation
about the power of technology and media to change culture
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Thank you, Thank you for being here today. Ali is
(24:06):
obviously building technology which is driving creative industries. You I
think that anybody I'd ever met in my life have
harnessed technology to drive culture. You're the author of a
book called Radio Free Afghanistan. But you've had this remarkable
journey of both using radio, television and most recently WhatsApp
(24:27):
to intervene in culture. But start at the beginning and
your return to Afghanistan after leaving as a boy in
two thousand and two and why radio.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
We went back.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
Because the country had been taken over by the Americans
and the Allies and we thought there was an opportunity
to set up a media business. And we started off
with a radio station because at the time most people
didn't have electricity, They certainly didn't have television sets, and
radio was sort of It's probably perhaps the safest media
(25:01):
platform because you need batteries. Everyone has a radio set.
It's easy to operate, it's cheap to operate, and we
felt it's a simple business we can do on a
part time basis continue to reside in Australia and.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
That wasn't the case.
Speaker 4 (25:18):
And that allowed us them to build TV stations and
other platforms and then move beyond Afghanistan to the rest
of the Middle East, Central Asia, then eventually Africa.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
What was the moment when you realized the radio station
would require you to roofs Afghanistan full time and become
kind of the center of your life.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Well, I think because we had music which people were
not really accustomed to after five years of the Taliban,
and it was literally people showing up at our door
to kill us. And we had this very simple office
and a residential dwelling with no security. And during the
(26:02):
trials we had this thing that let's do this for
a couple of weeks and see how it goes. It spread,
the news spread very quickly, and all of a sudden
I got a call that you have to show up
in Carbles.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
I had to fly back.
Speaker 4 (26:14):
Immediately to meet the president, well to meet everyone, I
mean to get extra security. And there were times actually
I had to call people into the building and to
explain to them what the intention of the radio station
was and why we had music, and why music was important.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
It was actually to calm people down.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
And really that was sort of a it was a
real eye opener in terms of people's reaction to anything new.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
I think it's interesting because radio obviously feels like the
oldest and most boring communication technology there is.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
I mean, it's been around for we call it the
cockroach of the media business. It never dies.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
Well, yeah, I mean I think it's it's but it's
fun because and then of course we learned very very
quickly in terms of you know, how mady can be
an agent of social change, how it can facilitate social change.
But along the way, you're always going to have people
opposed to it for whatever reason. And you know, we've
(27:18):
gone you know, not just Afghanistan. We had a very
you know, successful television network for Iran by satellite.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
We went to Ethiopia.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
We've done similar things in Iraq and Pakistan and India
and along the way. And you know, we have this
mutual friend, Tom Freston, who was one of the co
founders of MTV, and he had a similar experience in
the United States with MTV when he launched. So you're
always going to have to detractors, but it's part of
(27:48):
what you do.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Was there a moment with the radio station where you
realized this is snowball that becomes so much bigger and
more powerful than I ever could have imagined.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Well, you don't really think about it because it's yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
I usually quote my brother used to say that, you know,
I'll always bite more than you can chew than chew
like crazy. So for us, the twenty odd years that
we set up these businesses, we were always too busy
to reflect. It was only when I wrote the book
that I had, you know, I had the opportunity to
reflect on what we what we did.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
And of course this was after the fall of the government,
and then you know, you ask yourself was it for nought?
Was it? Was it worthwhile?
Speaker 4 (28:27):
But nonetheless it had the sort of desired impact that
in terms of shaking this very young country, reconnecting it
to the rest of the world, you know, helping develop
music culture and so forth.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
But it's it never stops.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
I want to come back to that that was it
worth it or did it work?
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Question?
Speaker 1 (28:49):
But before that, I mean, you and I collaborated on
a podcast called Afghan Star about the music game show
that changed the country, which John Legend hosted. Talk about
that television program and what it meant and why so
many people risk their lives to appear on it and
to work on it.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
Well, I mean, of course, because the country had no
music for five or six years, we felt, let's have
a reality talent show and we called it the Afghan
Star and it became very quickly the most successful program
on our network in the country as a matter of fact,
and people voted using texting basically early in the early
(29:31):
days and eventually what's happened so forth, But it really
because all of a sudden everyone felt that they could
become a superstar. So we used to have perhaps some
of the least talented people show up in the studios
wanting to perform. This whole idea of role models, of
heroes of superstars was sort of aarlien to people in
(29:52):
Afghanistan in two thousand and two or two thousand and three,
and this program achieved that.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
But us about this see in herat Airport. I mean,
tell that story from beginning to end. Well, I'm twentieth
ready off for Afghanistan.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
Is that what it is, okay, So we had so
it was an it was a show that we used
to you know, going around this country and and identify,
you know, young talented Afghans and they would the judges
would go, the musicians would go, the production people would go,
and and this very well known cleric who had a
(30:27):
huge following was Adam and that this was not going
to happen in the city of Herad, which borders Iran
on the on the western side of the country, And
they went from from one venue to another, and the
mob would follow these people and they were all the contestants,
the contestants, the judges, the production people, and they were petrified.
So eventually they managed to to shoot the episode at
(30:51):
the airport behind the gates. Nonetheless, they did what they
needed to do, but it showed that and at that
time we had lots of threats and and even attempted
attacks against the performers as well as the judges. So
they're always constantly in hiding. But that's one of the many,
(31:11):
many experiences that our people had to deal with.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
How many seasons did that show run for.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
It ran from two thousand and five till two thousand
and twenty.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
I think you told me once that you were always
too nervous to watch it.
Speaker 4 (31:28):
Yes, yes, I mean it was always because every time
they had the eventually we did it in house, which
was easier, but we used to do it than rent
a studio or do it in a hotel, and there
would be always a group of people protesting, and there
was always a lot of security.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Why, I mean, why did you and your team take
the risk?
Speaker 3 (31:55):
That's a good question. I mean, I don't know. I
think that's ultimate.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
You have to ask what the what your consumers, what
the audience demands. It was a popular program, you know,
and and and you know, we talk about the Iran
in terms of the support of the government, and we
talk about Afghanistans for the Taliban usually, you know, and
certainly in Afghanistan eighty five ninety percent of the population
(32:21):
supported music entertainment programs. They wanted to have fun, they
wanted to have entertainment. But the ten percent of fifteen
percent they have guns, They're powerful, they're determined. So there's
always this sort of tug of war between the conservative
elements and you know, the ordinary public.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
I mean, there's this big question of does culture change society,
right and it looked for a long time. When you
brought radio and television to Afghanistania, there's extraordinary engagement that
in a sense you and the people of Afghanistan had
given birth to a new Afghanistan. And then, of course
the Taliban returned, and you mentioned questioning after that what
(33:10):
in fact you achieved. But I mean, as you look
at it today, is it a fire that you kindled.
There's embers now, but that will rise again. Or the
guns and politics in the end have the power to
quash culture.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
Well, I think when I wrote the book, because I
thought that that's it, that's the end.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
But you know, we continue.
Speaker 4 (33:32):
Obviously we have our programming is restricted in the sense
that we can't have music and we can't have soap operas.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
But the country has changed.
Speaker 4 (33:43):
The majority of Afghanis were not born when the Taliban
were in power in the nineteen nineties. The median ages
eighteen and people use VPNs or people have satellite technology.
You can't, you know, the genie's out of the bottle,
and I think you can't. I mean technology allow people
now to get what they want.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
Talk about deciding to continue with your operations after the
Taliban returned what is the reality for your female journalists
and anchors in Afghanistan today?
Speaker 3 (34:15):
Well, they continue.
Speaker 4 (34:16):
I mean we as a matter of fact, we have
more female employees in our newsroom today than we did
in twenty twenty one. They have to work where surgical
masks to you know, to appear on television, but they could.
They're on the field, they're gon't ask questions, they have
TV programs, you know, they continue doing the good work
(34:40):
that they did before the fall of the government. What's
interesting is that this new Afghanistan is also changing the Taliban.
The Taliban have returned to a new, changed Afghanistan and
they have to adjust. And you have to remember that
Taliban fighters are also quite young. They're in their early twenties.
They use WhatsApp, they use technology, they're on Facebook. The
(35:02):
sort of content they consume maybe different. But now in
the cities in charge, the new Afghanistan is also changing them.
But I think it was important for us to remain
in the country because I think it's very difficult to
report on facts, it's very difficult to continue to champion
with its women's rights or human rights from the outside.
(35:23):
And I think there's also this this I think I
realized after two decades that you have to you have
to evolve from within. I think imposing changes from the
outside there's always going to be a short term remedy.
And I think a country needs to evolve from within.
(35:45):
And I think it's upon you know, people like us
and other Afghans to change the country from within, I think,
and that change is going to be sustainable ultimately.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
You won a major award in December of this year
for two educational programs that you've led, one using radio
in Gaza for the children's education there and another using
WhatsApp and AI driven WhatsApp courses for education Afghanistan.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
Yeah, so we thought, well, we've got all these TV networks.
We've got six or seven TV networks, we've got two
radio networks, you know, twenty or thirty online platforms. We thought,
why not use the inventory that we have to design
education programs. As a matter of fact, it was in
London I had lunch with Malala and she said, you know.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
We'd work with you.
Speaker 4 (36:32):
So we created this pilot and we had had some
experience during COVID and we failed because it was difficult
to design television education programs. So we brought in a
bunch of experts and we've created these courses which sit
across all the platforms online, on TV, on radio. It's
called synth which means class. Initially we did biology, chemistry, physics,
(36:57):
and mathematics and we've got the subjects, but we're focused
on the ten million students, in particular six million kids
from the age from grades seven to twelve. And you
have to remember girls cannot go to school, so and
these programs have been unitsf calls it perhaps the most
(37:18):
successful education program.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
That they have globally.
Speaker 4 (37:22):
But we do it at scale, so five million kids
watch these programs on a weekly basis, and we've done
based an inline assessment of these kids with NYU in
seven provinces, eighteen hundred households, two and a half thousand kids,
and the difference in terms of kids who watch the
programs and kids who don't watch the programs range from
(37:43):
forty percent to one hundred and thirty percent. If they
get reminders and if they get tutored on WhatsApp, it's
a two hundred percent improvement.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
So it's about a person tuting on WhatsApp or AI
and WhatsApp.
Speaker 4 (37:55):
Well, initially it was a bunch of students tutoring girl
on WhatsApp. But now we have a WhatsApp WhatsApp Ai chatbot.
It's a chatbot AI chatbot that sits within WhatsApp because
it's easier, and we have turned fifty thousand kids that
use it, two hundred fifty thousand kids that use it,
but tens of millions of queries and messages going back
(38:19):
and forth. But the difference is between failing and learning.
So it's it's it's not a solution, it's not you know,
it goes certainly the other school, but it's it's a
bridge between you know, a time when we have education
and a time when hopefully we'll have education for girls.
But at least in the in the entrum they're learning,
(38:42):
which I think is very important for us as Afghans
and and and you know, of course we were sort
of one of the pioneers to use television and radio
in the way that we use it today. We also
took that know how for Gaza and Palaeside, but because
people don't have access to mobile phones and television, we're
(39:05):
using a radio program and we built in psychosocial programming
and so forth. Messaging as well as educating these younger kids.
And of course the reach is much, you know, it's
more like one hundred and sixty or one hundred and
seventy thousand kids on a weekly basis, but the impact
has been significant. So it's it's a template that we
(39:26):
can potentially take to other places around the world in
terms of educating kids.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
So just to close final question for you, I mean,
how have you taken all these platform technologies radio, television,
WhatsApp and harness them to drive culture? And you know
what can all of us here today learn from that?
Speaker 4 (39:46):
Well, I mean essentially, we're a content company and you
have to create good content, right whether it's education programs
or soap operas or reality TV, and you have to
be platform agnostics. So we will use whether that we
have at our disposal in terms of delivering.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
What we develop.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
And we have good creative people and we've succeeded in
Ethiopia and South Asia, in the Middle East and of
course Afghana sun which is our home country, which is
important to us.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
So thank you, thanks us.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
For text stuff. I'm os Valosian. This episode was produced
by Eliza Dennis and Melissa Slaughter. He was executive produced
by me Julian Nutter and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and
Katrina Norvel for iHeart Podcasts. Jack Intertley makes this episode,
and Kyle Murdoch wrote our theme song. Please do rate
and review the podcast wherever you listen.
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