AI, Quantum Computing, And More.

Automatic captions of the conversation. They can contain errors and do not name who is speaking.

This is the future of the future show. I am your host Matio. What happens when technology evolves faster than our understanding of ourselves? Today's guest, Bruce D. Randall has spent more than 25 years at the front lines of that question, leading teams at Oracle Cloud, AT&T, and multiple startups through waves of digital transformation. As a CEO, COO, strategist, he has helped organization harness AI, cloud, and now quantum computing to drive real innovation. But Bruce also brings something rare to the tech world.

A lifelong practice of meditation and energy awareness. As a Raiki master and author of the upcoming book, The AI human paradox, he explores how consciousness, intelligence, and technology are converging in ways that could redefine what it means to be human. In this conversation, we will dive into the next leap in intelligence, where AI meets quantum computing, where cyber security must adapt to an entirely new thread landscape, and where brain computer interfaces challenge our very sense of identity. Bruce shares why awareness may be one of the most important leadership skill of the 21st century and how we can stay grounded, ethical and human in an era of accelerating change.

So settle in. This is not just a discussion about technology. This is a conversation about consciousness, responsibility, and the future we are all building together. Bruce, thank you so much for being here. It's my pleasure, Matt. Thank you for having me. Bruce, you said quantum computing will reshape how AI learns and makes decision. What early signals do you see uh that this convergence is already happening and how should businesses prepare for it before it's too late? That's a very good question. I [clears throat] I see it happening in areas that may not be all visible to the public or if they are they don't know what they're looking at.

Okay. So, how quantum is going to affect AI? If you look at data right now, we look at flat data. You've got code. It reads the code and it reacts. Okay? Quantum doesn't just look at one side of it. it looks 360 at the data and when you look around 360 at the data you find things that you would never see by looking at flat data. Now that's a simple way of looking at it but it's a good depiction as to what's the difference between standard data and quantum data and currently there are 12 companies working on quantum chips and quantum software for those chips and they're very quiet.

If you don't look for them you don't see them. you don't hear from them, but they're aggressively moving forward, making connections, making partnerships. So, trying to bring awareness to this is one of my goals and trying to get people to understand what's coming whether you see it or not. And how do we stay, you know, in our in our current state which is completely human versus some version of technology and human. In in your upcoming book, the AI human paradox, you explore how uh brain computer interfaces could blur that boundary between human and machine, right?

So in in your view, where should society draw the ethical line between enhancement and identity? Well, you know that [clears throat] there's a thousand answers to that because it's all based on people's opinion. But let me give you what what my thoughts are on that. I think brain computer interface or BCI where they put a chip in somebody's head and it gives them capabilities that they didn't have due to an accident or an illness like that just stop them from operating like a normal human. They can they can do that in various ways whether it's invasive or noninvasive.

And these people can actually take part in in the world better than they could. And an example is the first one that that Neuralink did. Nolan got to work his his chip in his head so that he could think about what he was going to do on the computer and it would do it. And he said, "Sometimes it does it before I think about it, but it always goes to the right place." Okay. Now, because of my work that I've done, I can I can put paper on a pin on my desk and I can make it move around with my mind. And I said, I can do this without a chip and he can do that with the with the computer with a chip.

We're starting to blur the lines as to what we can do on our own and what we can do with the chip and the results are pretty similar. So that's where the blurriness comes in and that's just that's very I mean that's like old news now. Now we're way ahead of that. So where are we going to go is the question. And how can we stay in the human form? It's a matter of just I meditate and that's how I stay centered. But by going in and and getting to know yourself and understand yourself, you can be true to yourself while utilizing the full opportunity of the technology.

That's that's very that's very interesting and it's we could go on that forever. Um, do you believe um, talking about AI um, do you think they can ever achieve awareness or is consciousness something that machines, you know, can simulate but not truly experience the way that we do? Well, right now machines can simulate as best they can and they're not, you [clears throat] know, great at it. But when you start having quantum computers come in that are looking at things in different ways than we've ever looked at them, anything is possible down there.

But you look at the human, we're a frequency being, right? We're we're we're an electronic being and and we can communicate with other people and so forth. I don't see silicon replacing that currently. But when we look at the the speed of technology, I don't know if they can replace that in the future or not. I I tend to doubt it because we're very unique, but I never thought we'd have quantum, right? So, yeah. Yeah, true. Um, Bruce, you you argued that awareness and presence are crucial for responsible innovation, right?

How can leaders cultivate that quality in in these fastmoving tech organizations driven by cost and urgency? Well, cost and urgency are usually the [clears throat] drivers because everybody has to make money and and they need it done yesterday. But if you're if you're not in AI right now, you've got to pick something that is low risk that you can get value out of and then build from that. And every company's different. If they are in AI, they have to make sure that they have a long-term plan because they may start on one platform but get stuck and have to replplatform which is very expensive.

That's why the long term is needed on that so when you start you can keep going without the big expenses. And of course get your team involved in it and make sure they understand it because when it comes to AI more heads are better than one because you need to be as accurate as you can moving forward. Um you advise a company building zero trust cyber security designed to resist quantum attacks. Correct. This is this is very very important right now. Can you explain what makes quantum computing such a threat threat to today's uh encryption and how zero trust changes the defensive game?

Sure. Currently, you've got cyber security which is they're all built built on software platforms and they're always looking to patch them and stay ahead of of the hacks. Okay. And that's been ever since we've we've had software. When we look at quantum, quantum has the ability to look at data on all sides and come up with other alternatives that standard computers couldn't to try and break into things and crack things and to get into companies. Now, you can put quantum technology in your current platform, but it's built to have it's built or it's going to have holes in it.

It's going to have risks in it and better soft. You have to stay ahead of the good software to get through it. What we have is a new technology. It's it's not built on the old type of software. It's a different technology. We have we have two government contracts. We have contracts with some very large corporations going through right now. This is nothing like what's on the market today. And the reason it can it can it can guard against quantum is because the technology will guard against all attacks, not just the standard attacks that they've seen.

And you see some zero zero tolerance software out there. It's spotty, but it doesn't cover everything. And that's really the difference at a high level and that's why we we haven't launched yet and we still and we have some significant orders coming in because the technology really speaks for itself. Having worked at Oracle, AT&T and multiple startups, what differentiates leaders who integrate AI successfully from those who struggle? Is it mindset? Is it structure? Is it something deeper? You know, it's a it's a little bit of all of that because the leaders are different and the companies are different.

But [clears throat] what I find that that companies that have good teams tend to do better than leaders that just want to lead themselves and have everybody follow. And that, you know, that works for a while, but long term it generally has some problems. So the leaders that listen and really understand and are willing to take the team with them are going to do better than the leaders that don't. And you know we we all know they're both out there. So it's really about um that old adage of uh you know the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats and the wrong people off the bus and just getting it's people first.

Right. Always right. It is people first because people people actually make the decisions and the more they learn they can think in different ways than computers can. Yeah. Yeah. I 100% I agree. Um as neurochnology becomes more accessible to some but not to others. Do you see sort of a a sci-fi type of cognitive divide? Um and how might we prevent that enhancement technology from deepening inequality? I see that as a potential happening. I I hope we don't get there, but I see it as a potential. And I give an example because during the first press conference that that Nurink had, they said, "If you're healthy and you can afford it, you too can have a chip.

That means it's it's commercialized to those that can afford." And I draw a picture of when you have two people that are in a company and they both have chips and they can communicate telemetrically and so forth and there's a problem and then you get all the normal people that don't have chips. These two people will work at a higher pace at a higher at a higher speed and come up with solutions before the rest of the people, you know, get to that point. So you've got that divide that's that's in a company setting. And how do you guard against that?

You can't because once it's done, it's done. So, we have to have controls on it at some point or guidance on it a little bit more than we have right now. Um because right now we're do as much as we can as fast as we can and you need to register your AI if you have a billion bits and you have to take good notes on what you're doing which is detailed but it's a little nebulous. So, we just need to we're at stage one. we need to go to stage two just to protect the people from where this could go. Um yeah it so many movies come to mind.

Um do you think do you think governments are having these discussions right now? I think uh I think individually governments are having the discussions. I think the tech companies are talking amongst themselves and having more fruitful discussions than the governments are. um you know you've got I mean Europe has always been better with you know with guidance such as GDPR and so forth before any other countries but we just need to it really is up to the companies first to stay within ethical guidelines which I think most of them or all of them are doing right now but we don't know about the ones we don't know about right and that's that's the only concern about anything else it's what you don't know about that can hurt [clears throat] Yeah.

No. And and and one could argue that the geopolitical situation uh it's creating sort of an arms race where do governments even have the right incentives or motivations in place today, right? I mean, or are they seeking to like, okay, how can I take this to my advantage and maybe have an army of people that, you know, I don't know. I I I know I I get too paranoid if I go down that rabbit hole, but why not, right? Well, it's an AI global race and it's countries against countries as far as AI because AI gives you an advantage that we didn't have before.

And you know, nobody knows how that's going because it's very secret, but that's essentially what's going on in the background. Yeah. Let's change gears for a little bit. Uh you've been raiki master for decades. How do you reconcile the seemingly opposing worlds of energy healing AI systems? Do they have a common thread uh in how they influence human consciousness? Well, they they can have a common thread and oftent times when you go out, you see people in lines looking at their phones instead of looking around and talking to people.

Yeah. That's kind of that's kind of how it starts because we're in our own world and we don't we don't communicate as much as we used to. That can go that can continue. But what I do being a a meditation person and a raiki master is I stay centered to who I am and I allow technology to help me but not to overtake me. Right? Because it's technology can be like an addiction. You can you can have AI in your house, in your car, on your phone, and everything, and you can rely on it. And there was a study done and that said that people that have a an IQ of of X and lower, if they rely on AI, they're they're going to become less smart.

And the higher IQ's people can be higher can be increased intelligence because they tend to keep it separate versus the other tends to just acquies to it. Now that's not a that's not a huge study but it's an indicator that says there may be something here and we should all take a look at it for ourselves to see if it's overtaking us or if we're managing that. Yeah, that's a very interesting study. Um, it's a scary one, Black Mirror type one, but but very but at the same time sort of logical. I can see that happening.

Um, so many people feel overwhelmed right now by AI space of change. So from both a technical and human standpoint, what do you think individuals and organizations can do right now to stay adaptive and grounded? One of the things I think they can do is they can un understand AI better. And a year ago, I decided to take a class at MIT on data science so I could understand the back end of it. And once you understand the back end of AI, it's all numbers and and math. Yeah. And and that's not how the brain thinks, right?

We're electrical. We have we have intelligence. So the two the two can compete against each other, but the AI doesn't have the chance to win unless you're doing a huge math problem, right? When it comes to the big decisions, the humans win. So as long as that stays the way it is, you we need to be able to use AI but not let it overtake us. Don't rely on it too much. Yeah. Yeah. Um it it it sort of uh I I always go back to science fiction, right? It sort of goes by to back to how do we trust our own intuition and our own reasoning and our own cognition process of you know looking at problems, understanding the problems and then thinking about solutions and using AI as a helper during that process but not to substitute our thinking during that process.

Right? I was I I had a conversation with a a fellow um that that had a you know uh was talking about AI and cognition and and he said AI is in a way changing the way that we think because you know uh if we if if if AI is doing all the reasoning all the definition of the problem the the the thinking about the problem and the coming up with solutions and we don't put any of our thinking into it then if we keep being lazy in that way it's just we are not like you said we not reasoning ourselves and we are not advancing and we are just becoming more and more dependent on a system that is many times right but might be completely wrong.

That's right. And those that have used AI or the large language models know that when you ask for data and you get data and then I ask is anything in here not true and they say oh yeah and I ask for truthful data and they say oh yeah this this is made up but I'm like well if it's made up why did you give it to me as truthful? I mean these are the things we need to be careful of because AI is not always right. Yeah. Yeah. Um so let's get a little bit futuristic. If we fast forward 20 years, what do you hope the relationship between humans and intelligent machines looks like and what's at stake if we get it wrong?

[clears throat] Well, I hope that we we have a symbiotic relationship with AI and and quantum and so forth as we move forward because if we do that, our future is very bright and we can do things better than we could have done them without it. So it it enables us to do better and it's supposed to be an enabler. Okay. If we get it wrong, depends on the degree, but if we get it wrong, maybe we're not doing as much as we could or doing it as well as we could and that's the difference. So we need to stay centered and we need to give AI to give us the data and for us to make the decisions which is the best.

And I think if we do that, which I think we're doing right now, we should do okay. And the more centered you are as a person and you get the gut instincts, the better decisions you're going to make. I love it. I hope that's the case as well. Uh Bruce, this has been an amazing conversation. Thank you for taking the time. Um I hope that we can stay in touch and maybe do another episode sometime again in the future. Certainly we can. And and Mattio, I I appreciate that and thank you for having me on.