Life did not begin easily for Sergey Brin. In 1979, in the face of rising anti-Semitism, and at the tender age of six, he and his family were forced to flee their home in the USSR. Sergei struggled leaving his homeland behind for the United States, but it was there, while studying for his PhD at Stanford University, that he met Larry Page, and together the pair founded Google inc. Today he is counted as the twelfth wealthiest individual on the planet. In this conversation, Brin discloses his thoughts on leadership, entrepreneurism and the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The Future

Asked where he thought the future frontiers and edges may be of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Brin begins by clarifying that, “You should doubt my answers a bit.” He reveals that, having been trained as a computer scientist back in the nineties, when everybody “knew AI didn’t work”, he had doubted its capabilities.

With this in mind, Brin says that he is uncertain as to precisely where the future, and particularly the development of AI, may take us. “The effect of neural net[work]s has been profound and it’s very hard to forecast,” he says. “What can these things do? We don’t really know the limits.” “I think it’s impossible to forecast accurately.”

Brin did say however that the advent of AI alters fundamental questions about the relative values of research. Taking the example of health, he says “I think you can approach [it] from several levels, what are the specific things we’re afflicted things, heart, cancer, parkinson's and look at the specific treatment in those diseases.” “or should I invest in more fundamental research like CRISPR (DNA)?”

For Brin though, there is now a potentially more fundamental technology. “If we had smarter software could they notice more fundamental patterns?” he asks. “Should we be working on machine learning?”

Brin admits though that he is uncertain how the advent of AI could affect what it means to be human. “If you were to go back in time 10,000 years and meet someone in a field, they probably wouldn't even ask you what do you do, it wouldn’t be a meaningful question,” he explains. “You say 'I’m an economist' and they would have no idea what you meant.” According to Brin the nature of what it is to be human has changed so much within this time that it is now simply impossible to conceive what it was to be human then. The future for him is equally opaque.

Globalization in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Speaking of young people, Brin says that “in some ways their life is much easier than [my] life might have been at that stage.” He cites easier travel, communication, mobile phones as examples. “There are a lot of affordances, conveniences that make it easy,” he explains.

Nevertheless he says that there are in some ways greater challenges facing today’s youth. “There is a global stage. That makes it hard,” he says. “If I was at school and on the math team I was only compared against other kids at school. These kids, especially the ambitious ones are on a world stage.” “They want to be best in the world, and that’s a tall order.”

Despite those problems, Brin has a message of encouragement for those people. “I would encourage young folks to take chances and pursue their dreams,” he says. “And try to silence out the voices who say there are a thousand start ups trying to do the ‘self riding bicycles’ or whatever they’re doing.” “I think you should have fun and not be so weighed down by the weight of expectations but I think this global network, one of the downsides is that it reinforces that weight.”

On Success

“I’m very lucky to have been in Silicon Valley and Silicon Valley is very lucky to have benefitted from the microprocessor boom” Brin says. Still, it is not solely the microprocessor to which he attributes the extraordinary success. “'Give it a shot', that mentality permeates Silicon Valley and that is one of its huge strengths,” he says.

Whatever else though, Brin believes that it is important for companies to give back. “You cannot think narrowly 'oh this is your business maximise earnings' and not care what’s going on around you,” he says. “Companies cannot purely be profit motivated.”