#Family Bonds Disappearing in the Silicon Valley Tech World: Insights From a Tech Pioneer

Welcome to Bay Area Innovators. I'm your host, Steve Espas. Our innovator today is Hussein Al-Omari. Hussein grew up in Gadara, Jordan, an ancient city and former Roman village. I can see four countries from my home. I used to joke about that I don't have to travel. I can see Lebanon, I can see Syria, which is occupied, Golan Heights. I can see all North Palestine from Jerusalem. So we live in a war zone on the corner. He's part of a family of 15 with 13 siblings, which had a big influence in shaping his family values. Family values, for me, that was most important. At one time, I dropped my job and position. I see absence of family values in the minds of so many of my friends who are in the high tech, who don't care a bit about even having a family. We will talk about his journey to Stanford and the Silicon Valley, where he ended up filing 52 patents and was involved with several Fortune 500 companies, including LSI Logic Corporation as a startup in 1981. I don't want to go after money, just work and ignore my social life and friends and family. I got to work closely with four professors because of the hard work. All those four professors, they lost their wives, they got divorced, and they all got their families separated. It was really a tradeoff between family and between innovation and industry. Technology is way ahead of social life, even of ethics, of legislation. You have engineers who don't know sociology or psychology. They're designing or they're deciding for the world how to live socially. He also worked for Canon, Facebook, and other companies. He also took a different path than other tech entrepreneurs in the Valley, which we will ask him about. Hussein, welcome to our program. Thank you very much. Thanks for hosting me. Glad to have you here. You grew up in the city of Gadara, Jordan, which is a biblical city. It's on the border of several countries. It's a former Roman city, Roman village. Tell us a little bit about how you grew up, your life there, and what the city is about. Well, the town is called Omkess in the modern name. The old name, we call it in Arabic, Gadara. It's mentioned in the New Testament in three of the Gospels called Gadanis, Gadanisis, and Gadara. That's where the name came from, the Gadara, from the New Testament. It's a story where Jesus came to the east of the river and healed a lady from the evil spirit that ran into Lake Galilee. So in my town, I can see four countries from my home. I used to joke about that. I don't have to travel. I can see Lebanon. I can see Syria, which is occupied, Golan Heights. I can see all North Palestine from Jerusalem to Lake Galilee, Qabariyya. From your town? Yes, and I can see Jordan as well. We live in a war zone on the corner. We have the Jordan River and the Aramuk River across there. I spent my childhood actually dreaming of walking to the lake and swim, which is just half an hour walking. But I couldn't because it's occupied. Then it was basically, we had a primitive town at that time, even no electricity at that time. But I still managed to be in the top ten in the country in high school, which was my way out to go study engineering. A family of 13 people. You have 13 siblings. I have five sisters and seven brothers, so we're a total of 13. So what is it like? Probably when I used to speak at school and tell them we're 13, they'd say, oh, you have like 15 schools, 15 places. They didn't know that you're different ages. Some of my nephews and nieces are my age. So we never all sat together because we're different generations. I used to joke that my mom was one year pregnant, one year nursing, basically. But it's fun, actually. I don't believe in having that many now because you should care about quality. If you have children, you should have time for them as well as should have spending on them and care. At that time, it was easy because the mutual responsibility by the neighborhood, by everybody helped each other. The brothers and sisters take care of the younger ones. But now it's so expensive to even have one or two or three. I have three. We have what we call the social warmth, which is different. So you feel the bond with people around and you feel socially that you know everybody in town. You walk in the town, everybody knows you. You know everybody. Different from when you walk, you don't even know your immediate neighbor. How would you say having such a large family shaped your family values? How do you feel about the family? Actually, it teaches a lot because so much… The parenting was not only my parents' duty. It was my big brothers and sisters, especially if you have an older sister in the house. You learn ethics, how to speak properly and not use foul language and so on. So you grow up in the house. You learn ethics. You learn the principle from the older ones. And we all have responsibilities toward each other. Cooperative. In your homework, you're stuck. Somebody will help you and so on. So it really felt… I miss that. I still compensate for it. I make like two or three trips every year going back to Jordan just to be with my brothers and sisters. We remember the times. And my cousins, my high school friends or elementary school friends. We kind of lived both, like my kids and us. We went back after Stanford. We went and lived there for 14 years. So they learned the language. They learned the religion. They learned the social aspect. And we came back. So they got the benefit of borrowing from both cultures. I call them hybrid. I'm a hybrid myself. My mom is Syrian. I'm Jordanian. And their mom is American, Californian. She speaks Arabic fluently. So everything is hybrid. Basically in the family. Bilingual, bicultural. It helps a lot actually when you know languages and cultures and you travel. There's so much you learn that you couldn't learn in school or at home alone. So you moved from the Middle East, from Jordan to the U.S. And you came to the Silicon Valley and Stanford. Tell us about your journey. What did you experience here and how did you get… If you grow up in a town of 2,000 or 3,000 people and your family has 13 kids, dream on going to anywhere to study. So I had to really work hard to get top scores. So I got top scores to study my bachelor and got distinction with honor degree. I went to Cairo because my scholarship was to American University in Beirut. But then there were clashes, so we moved to Cairo. Because there was no electrical engineering in Jordan, so I studied there. I went back. Then I was appointed a TA. Then I got another scholarship from Stanford, which is a school I would never dream of going to, to be accepted or to be able to pay the fees. And I scored, I think, the GRE, the highest in math in the world at that time. I got a letter showing I was the highest in math. So they accepted me and I went to Stanford. Which really was a lot for somebody coming from a village where we made our own toys always. We didn't buy toys. So it made a huge difference for me. I learned so much. I didn't go back right away. I worked in the industry. When I was a student, I worked for LSI Logic at that time. It was a small company. You worked for LSI Logic. Yeah, I definitely want to ask you. So LSI Logic has a special place in my heart. Because not only, I think like you, it was the first company I worked for after graduating. I was there for 10 years. But LSI is really such an incubator. There's people there who became the leaders of many companies. It's like a place where people grow. So what was your experience like being there as a startup? I was a naive person about industry and startups. I was a Stanford student, but who needed money because the scholarship was not enough. I was helping my younger brothers and sisters back home. So I got this call to go help them with timing analysis, which was my PhD. I went there and did well. I used to go twice a week in Milpitas. Everything was farms at that time. All the farms, you know. No 237 and all that stuff. With Will Corrigan, for me, he came from, I think, camera instruments and all that. I was number 15, but I didn't get much equity. I didn't even negotiate much because I didn't know. I was happy to get the salary I got at that time. So I used to call myself rich student and poor employee. I got a brand new car, Toyota Corona at that time. So it was really nice to watch a company grow. I stayed with them five, six years until I finished my PhD. I built the first timing analyzer in the valley, basically, at that time. But there was no guidance to guide me to be something, to start something. I tried to combine social life and business life and professional life for me. I didn't want to go after money, just work and ignore my social life and friends and family. So I kept the balance. When I was at LSI Logic, Corrigan asked me, when do you want to cut a link with Stanford and just dedicate yourself? That's the way I am. I do work because I enjoy it. But I lived a good life. My kids lived like millionaires. We didn't have millions, but we lived good lives. Well, so again, LSI Logic, I know Moshe Gavrilov. He became the CEO of AMD. Brian Hala, CEO of National Semiconductor. And then Jensen Huang. He was with me. He was with you, working as an engineer, as everyone else, right? He was funny because Jim Clark at Stanford was my professor. I used to swim with him. He was divorced at that time because of the engine he built. I worked with him for a few months. Then he had that engine, Silicon Graphics, which was really way ahead of his time, which is computer graphics. I love computer graphics. Then it ended up not doing well. Then Jensen bothered with funding and all that. I think it was $10 million only. Jim Clark made Netscape and Mark Andreessen made $800 million out of it. But Jensen made NVIDIA. So the engine grew to become the heart of AI and everything now, with the graphics needed for that. I've seen all these opportunities and people I've worked with. Did Jensen Huang stand out in any way? Was he just a regular engineer? No, he was always a quiet, calm person. Low profile at that time. Now he speaks. I see him and I get amazed. But at that time, not much. We had the whole building actually. One building was mainly people who came from China. He was in that building. I had good friends with him. He wasn't much into bragging. He's a humble person. But after he got this company, he really grew it patiently to make it one of the biggest players in the world. Especially the last year or two have been tremendously important for his company. Because without it, you can't do all the AI that you can do instantly. It cannot be done without those fast chips. Each one costs like a billion dollars. And the project, 100 million to buy it, but a billion dollars to build it, to design it and test it. And then you moved on to other companies. I moved to Canon. I worked for Canon. Canon opened my eyes to the computer vision and image processing. So I built OCR, optical character recognition. At that time, it was not something known yet. I got my first patent, I think eight patents. The first time I had patents in the US issued in my name was at Canon. So they got me into that game. And I never went back to hardware and design. At LSI, I did hardware. So that opened my career to image processing. I'm still doing image processing projects and computer vision and all this object recognition of AI imaging, image manipulation, fake, what do you call it, deep fake and all that stuff. Image analysis, I can detect fake images and things. And I can do recognition of text and images. Then I did Arabic OCR. I repeated it at CACS, which is the King Abdul Aziz Institute for Science and Technology in Riyadh. What I built for Canon, I built in Arabic for them. So I got both worlds. Then I got into Japanese companies building programs, 2D barcodes. We didn't have public domain 2D barcodes, QR codes, or data metrics. So I built data metrics and VS code for Veritech at that time. So I built many 2D barcodes, how to read them, how to write them, how to generate them. I'm still in love with and adore, what do you call it, image processing, computer vision. I used to call it the eyes of the computer. Now it is the eyes of the computer. With the latest OpenAI 4.0, you can talk to it. You can throw images. You can describe with voice. Now it really has the senses of the human being. So it's no longer just image processing. Before, we used it to separate text from images, cut text and recognize the letters. Once you recognize it, then you can write it, clear English in a file. Then you can use a translator to convert it to Japanese. So I can send a message in English and they will receive it in Japanese. Now you can actually hear it with the technologies available in OpenAI. Meta has one that converts like 100 languages between them. So actually, my field was really good. But the age, you know, if I was still young, I would do so many things. Because that's the trick, the whole thing, all holding AI together is computer vision, basically. All of it is understanding images. They look around you, they'll tell you, oh, nice haircut. I need a haircut. But they'll tell you, oh, nice jacket, whatever. Or maybe this doesn't match this. They'll offer you, even. That's why NVIDIA is so crucial in the AI space because of the image processing. So now it's more fun. I tell my kids, you guys should get into this area. They're all computer science from UC Santa Cruz, Mass. But I tell them, you should get into this because this is so much fun. The computer sees you, talks to you. It's all actually algorithm. I know what's going on behind. I understand how they do it. It's all understanding the segmentation, the semantic segmentation. They'll break in the image into pictures and people and objects and use libraries and so on. Then they can compare with this generative AI, with the transformers. And they're fast. Like you ask a question two pages, you think a human being would take ten minutes to understand the question. This will immediately start answering you. Now, let me ask you about this. Life in the Silicon Valley, especially for tech entrepreneurs, is pretty stressful. They work maybe seven days a week, especially with startups. They're there all the time and they become, some make it, some don't make it. You took a somewhat different approach where you balance life more with work. Tell us about it. How important was that to you? Because I felt sad. I went to Stanford. I got to work closely with four professors without name. And all of them, because of the hard work, there was the revolution of the VLSI. You know how AI now? Everybody would put VLSI in their resume and their work. And those guys used to sleep on campus. I used to have keys for five different buildings so I can go at night. But I worked from home. LSI gave me a computer from home. But all those four professors, they lost their wives, they got divorced, and they all got their families separated. They work all the time. No, because they work all the time. And it was really a tradeoff between family and between innovation and industry. So I felt sad for what I see. I invited some of them to my house. We ate together and all that. The next time I see them, they're not there. So I didn't want to do that. Actually, the funny thing is that they all still have the same secretaries who work with them, executive secretaries working with them. But the wife could not hang around because there was too much pressure. I'm not here criticizing, but this is the reality of the valley, actually. There was not much social life or family life. You have engineers who don't know sociology or psychology. They're designing or they're deciding for the world how to live socially. You understand? So these guys, they're kids. They're 10, and they know so much algorithm and technology. But they are the ones who designed the algorithm, and they tell you how to live your life and live your lifestyle. And that's pretty sad. I believe all the social studies and all the psychology people should learn AI so they can come and contribute, not leave it for us engineers. I'm a different engineer. I'm a poet. I write poetry, and I'm a linguist also. But many of my friends don't know anything about that. So for family values, for me, that was most important. At one time, I dropped my job and positions. When I got married and had my kids and they started growing up, we went to Jordan for 14 years. We used to come every summer. So the kids are bilingual, and we came back when they wanted to go to college. So I lost, so I had to start all over, and they came back. You get it? You went back for 14 years? I went back. I have a house there. Did you have to reconnect? Reconnect? No. Yes, and they raised the kids stably. My kids were going to good schools, no alcohol, no drugs, no sexuality, and all this stuff. So they focused on studying, and they become top. Now they came back. We used to come every summer so they don't get culture shocks. We used to spend the whole summer here in our school. So they're immune to both cultures and to the negative in both cultures. I'm not saying one culture is better. Each one has the good and bad. Otherwise, I wouldn't have come back. So I came back and put them in the University of California where they got good degrees and good jobs, but they still have the touch. They play their computer games with their cousins back home, and I go like three times a year or whatever. So the idea of seclusion or to be lonely, to be like I'm extrovert, but still in the valley you're an introvert, not by choice. You're an introvert. You're by yourself in a box, and you work, you talk. So I don't want that. I'm open. I talk to neighbors. They don't know you, but they send them food when I make food or make sweets. I try to open up. People are scared at the beginning, but then they start to welcome and appreciate and send us something back. So I like that kind of life where I know the neighborhood around me. I know it's safe. I can come late or leave late. I can leave my family and travel and so on. So this was really the attention. The Silicon Valley relationships were really even for not because I'm a Muslim and Arab, even for American families here. I talked to families. I used to go at Stanford. Every holiday to a hospitality family would host me for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year. I used to run around Foothill Three Mile Race at midnight instead of drinking. So I learned from them. They're sad, too, to see social life being really challenged by technology and where people no longer have the essence of family. There's no something called family room or family lounge, which is shrinking, shrinking, become like two chairs. It used to be huge. So I felt that is really what we missed, that people like I used to joke with my friends at work, they are so close and things. I told them, look, my life starts after I leave work. They said, I go home, I'm lonely. I don't have people to talk to. And, you know, individualism, this is something we're not used to. Individualism where you're focusing yourself. Your relation with others is only dating. I don't want my relation with others to be only with just dating the opposite sex. I want family life. So we try to make up for that by establishing communities, community centers, schools that teach both languages and the curriculum, Islamic centers and so on. Other cultures they have without even religion. Indians have Chinatown, Little Tokyo and so on. So it's important to have these pockets of culture to make up for the missing social warmth where you are cared for by a community and you exchange it. Well, you make a very good point about the social aspect of it. Silicon Valley is very unique, right, because, indeed, you have mostly engineers who create these innovations, these inventions that lead the world in so many ways. And they do not socialize your psychology. Exactly. They're all engineers. And they come from broken families, some of them, many of them. I'm not criticizing, but if you come, you didn't know. You suffered. They have trauma. They have suffering as kids. And they come now and they dictate how I should live my life and all that by community values and all these things. I grew up in a different time. In school, I apply and I fill applications. I look at my son's application to University of California. It's different. Even to put his gender, he had nine choices. If you were to do something different, if you were to start over, what would you do different in your career or in your approach to life? I don't regret, really, how I lived my life. I could have had chances because I was smart. Like I told you, I had the highest GRE in the world in math and I have a distinction without a degree of my life. I could have made something like Johnson. I could have made hundreds of millions and all that. But I looked at my friends who did that. Really, they're not happier. No, they lost wives or kids or things. So I would have done differently. I was, first of all, not to be naive. Nobody advised me. When I integrated with Los Alagos, for example, Will Corrigan and Mitch Bond at that time, VP, they brought me and said, we have to give you some stocks, you're part-time. They offered me 7,500 shares at that time, not much. I could have negotiated a lot more. They told me, you have to pay for them $350. I told them, let me think about it. I'm a villager. I have to think about it. I thought they were fooling me, scamming me. Then he told me, you never had stocks in your life. I told him, sure. Then later I knew what that meant. That could have been a turning point for me to make something, then I do things I like to do. So I would have done, make something quick. I don't want to be like a billionaire, but make something where you can retire that chase and start doing the things you like to do and the life you like to do at a younger age instead of starting it. I wanted my kids to realize that early, but for me, I could have done that when I was 35 or 30, and then do what I like to do, regardless of the social pressure, Silicon Valley pressure. If you're not a really high-income person, you can't even live in this area. Teachers can't live in this area. So that's what I would have done differently, focus on that time. I played so much sports. I'm an athletic person. I follow my religion, so the only way to consume my energy was through sports, all kinds of sports, swimming, volleyball, soccer, hiking. And as a kid, I got married late, so I could have done something better at that time. The other thing I would have done, I wouldn't have stayed in electrical engineering. I would have gone to computer science from the beginning because all my life is computer science, but I know electrical engineering. All my degrees are EE, three of them. What else I would have done differently? Maybe get married earlier. My kids can be established when I'm young. I'm still athletic and look young, but I don't advise people to have kids at 40. So these are the things I would have done differently. I used to dream of having one foot here, one foot in Jordan. I have a house, we have a car, furnished. So to have both lives. Let's talk more about the social aspect of the Silicon Valley versus the Middle East or I think even Europe. There's a difference, right? There's a difference here. People are more kind of separated. I have friends from Japan, close friends, and friends from China and from Taiwan, from different parts, Vietnam, and from Romania, Germany. I have many German friends. We always talk about that. They're not as the U.S. They still have heritage and culture that is hundreds of years or thousands back. If the whole country is 200 years old and a collection of immigrants, then it's hard to boil into heritage and culture. Then you hear it's really the best in the world in terms of technology, but that's all you get. A nice, beautiful, I mean, I wouldn't exchange living in California for the world because it's a beautiful area. The ocean five minutes away, 10 minutes away, and I can play anywhere or walk anywhere. But the idea is there is heritage. There is unwritten laws that govern people's lives about social interaction. Now they have, you see these signs in California, Neighborhood Watch. Yes. And there was a joke about a cartoon that says, it's a whole town, a village, you know, the Wizard of Ed, you know. It says speed is controlled by, is monitored by radars and helicopters. So he's asking his uncle, can our city really afford such technology to monitor speed? He said, no, but we can afford such signs. So these signs, Neighborhood Watch, they're signs, but they're not really... They're not really... No. Because they could do anything. People could die sometimes and nobody would know about them. And in my town, I used to fear my neighbor. I can't do the stiffest things in the street, bad things. If I throw a stone that people have, nobody. Because anybody had the right to reprimand me at that time, not only my parents. So we feared all my father's friends or my mom's friends. You get it? So we have the social... Sometimes you get nosy because people really get too nosy into your personal life. That's like something people complain about. I don't want people to know all the details of my life and investigate and ask and all that. It's good to be unknown, but you miss that. So it's good also when you're sick, people call and ask about you bringing your food. So, and taking care of you and all that, you don't fear being alone. You're alone. So this is where you really have to balance. I study algorithms and I teach algorithms and always the divide and conquer and the balance between this and that. This is what we need, what we're missing in this crazy world now. The marriage institution is dying and really it's a challenge for marriage now. And there is, whatever it's called, all these online dating things and people no longer need to have bonds to raise kids together. Raising kids is not like pets. It's a challenge. One, manageable. Two, even three, you need help because you're outnumbered. So you have to have time. If you can't have time, you shouldn't have kids. I believe you shouldn't even get married. If you're not going to have enough time for a kid to... Of course, of course. Don't say, oh, I have work, I have things. I leave everything when my kid wants something. That's how I lived. I could leave anything. And if my wife or my kids, they want something, even my friends, I drop that and give this really priority. That's life. We, actually in our culture, all the culture, this eight till five thing was not known. People wake up, we have a prayer before dawn, before sunrise at dawn. So you pray, you go back to sleep. You go do your work in the farm or wherever, market, you come by noon, you're home. That's it. The rest of the afternoon you can have a little nap and then you can visit people or social or you go to the mosque or the center. So it's not all workaholic life. It's not like your merit, your career. So that's how it used to be. But even the Middle Eastern and Arab countries, Muslim countries, they bothered the system eight till five and five days a week and six days a week. And it's hectic. And people in the winter, they go home at night, like at six o'clock or seven. It's nighttime. It's scary even. So when do you have time to live your life and to go enjoy even the money you make? You may have money, but you don't know what to do with it. So this is what I... I was a rebellious person. I told my kids, forgive me, but I really lived the social. I said, no, don't regret a bit of it. We loved the way you did it and you took us, we learned, we came back. And they're bothering my style too. And the same thing with my wife. She loved the car. So that's kind of what brought us together. But we both, like, we didn't want to be married to money or to career or to companies. Companies don't like that. I worked for a company. Even at that time, they didn't hire single married people. Believe me. Now they're gone. They can't sue me. But they would hire mostly single people. Even Ed Johns and Jim Crawford, if you remember those people, they were all single. All of them. Mitch Bond, all these people. Because you can stay longer and you work longer at that time. And then the invention came of having your laundry and your restaurants and all that. So you sleep over, you know. It was Jim Clark who invented that time to have sleep over so you didn't have to go home. And I worked for friends. I don't want to name them. Startup helping them. I would be meeting with them after work till 9, 10, 11. And his wife would call every half an hour and he'll tell her, I'll be home soon. I'll be home in half an hour. And he would five times if he would call, I'll be home in half an hour. These things, look, I'm a perfectionist in my life, but also in my personality, ENTJ, I'm an analyst. I analyze people. I watch people. All this doesn't pass by my head just easily. It all clicks and all gets there. So I watch and I see. I wouldn't want to even be married if that's the way it is. And I imagine myself in her situation. Then I realize, like, wow, this is somebody telling you I'll be home in half an hour that doesn't show up in four hours, five hours. And every day. We used to meet twice a week. I was helping him in a startup company. And then I saw plenty of stuff I didn't want. Even if he gave me millions, I don't want that. I'd rather have a clean life. I'm not an alcoholic, no drugs, no smoking, because of religion, also lifestyle. But also I enjoy life. I do clean things. My Brazilian friend at Stanford, you don't drink? How can you celebrate? Look, celebration doesn't mean violation. I can enjoy life. I celebrate. I really be happy. And I can drive home safely. I'm sober. You can drive home. So what I'm trying to tell you is that we really have to balance. We have to catch up. Technology is way ahead of social life, even of ethics, of legislation. You can't even have enough laws to punish people who are doing hacking, who are doing fake videos, who are doing deepfake and fake audio and all this stuff, pornography, forced on children, what do you call it? Enforced sex and all that on children. It's all on the net. You can't fight that because legislations are way behind, because laws are so lacking freedom and so on. There's a limit for freedom. So technology is way ahead. And we're suffering because we're trying to catch up. And the people who are putting the social teachings and social community, like Mark Zuckerberg called them community, so they are not actually qualified to put laws and put social bonds, put social rules for society and for the kids. You need to step up for those sociology and what you call psychology people, people who have, this is science. It's just like AI. Sociology is science. I read some. I'm not expert, but I know enough. I read psychology. I'm not expert, but I know enough to appreciate what they know, to appreciate that they're more qualified than me in setting up the system. You're not every product that makes you a bot should be produced. You should ban products if they cause harm to humanity. You understand? I get really emotional into this because I see the damage. I see the damage. I know how to protect my phone, my computer. I protect my kids and family. I taught them. But I have friends who call. They're hacked. They work because they don't know. So I have- So I think these values are really commendable. Of course. I see your passion and how important it is. Yes, because I get annoyed. I get maybe a loud voice and speak up because I feel there is so much responsibility on those people to bring other people to get them involved. You shouldn't hire me just because I have A.I. or I have engineering. You should hire more sociology people, psychology people who are known to be good, like an expert, and make A.I. easier to use. The new open A.I. actually with the new edition is much easier to use. I can teach somebody in one day how to use it than before when it was command line and programming. Speaking of balancing technology with social life and all this, A.I. again is so big right now. You're an expert on A.I. There's so much praise on A.I. However, we have to look at the other side as well, right? If A.I. gets into the hands of criminals, that's dangerous, right? How do you think we can balance this whole speed that the A.I. is moving? Well, the evildoers or the criminals, well, they're faster into adopting A.I. than governments, government regulations and laws and legislation. Until now, they're struggling in Europe to put laws, and U.S. is behind even in that in Europe, to put laws to ban spreading pornography pictures of people without their permission or copying, you know, the re-voice, copy their voice or copy their... From like two, three seconds, they can copy your voice, make you say anything they want without even you there. They can take a few pictures of you. They can make a whole video of you or invent a new actor. They don't need you. I'm talking about people who work in Hollywood. They're losing it because they can copy them. So what I see, A.I. is really, it's a nice thing. It's an excellent thing. You have the whole world at your fingers of information. It's not really intelligent. It's the whole world in your information, and you have access to it fast, and it understands you. But the abuse is so far, all the abuse comes before people are smart enough to protect themselves. So now so many casualties, so many people get to commit suicide because some video was published about them which is not real, you know, and we know cases where people distributed videos of somebody which was not real. It was deepfake, and you cannot tell it with the naked eye. You have to use A.I. to challenge A.I. So I believe the chase should not be money alone, should not be competing all the day how much video is worth and Apple is worth and Facebook and Microsoft, but should also, and they are now trying to force them to have community, what do you call it, responsible by building apartments, building housing, to make it affordable for society, but that's not what you need. I don't need a house. I need you to protect me socially. I need a border around my ethics, not around my house, to protect me from this evil doer, like Google was told to have to build, Apple building Cupertino, Google Mountain View, and so on, and they made a really nice town to provide housing for cheap, but I need more. I need you to do a lot more than that to protect the layman, to protect a lot of people who don't study technology, not to be easily praised for WhatsApp hacking or for Facebook hacking and so on, and all their private life is exposed and then ransom malware, you pay money or we don't get your files back, and so on. So I believe there's so much responsibility. These companies, they have trillions of money. There are many companies now past the trillion, Apple and Nvidia, and so they need to put part of that money, slash it and put that to protect, and also laws. You have to punish, put punishment on people who really commit and violate, not just say in the name of freedom, just make it loose, because evil, AI is very capable. It's in the hands of the expert evil people who can really go from their homes in some country, they can hack the world. You have to protect these people. It shouldn't be left for my personal conscience. I'm conscious of my time. Like I teach at Michigan College and De Anza, computer science, and every quarter or two, I have to attend a two-hour session about protection from spam, and scam, and email wanted, and so on. But I built more from my experience. That should be done in every company, in every house, and on television. It should not be the focus on just how high the stock value is. It should not be. But I should see more startups. I want to see more startups started by women. I don't see many startups started by women. Because they're more into protecting the family. You know, in the history of humans, it used to be the woman who really protect the house and the children, and the guy would go and hunt, and she would choose even who the husband is. That was a thousand years ago. We need to go back there. They're more actually into protecting the values, the women, than the men. So we should see more startups of them doing things that protect the family. In a way, they shouldn't have been just dedicated to protecting the family, but at least they'll be more conscious. Back to a few thousand years ago, Stone Age. You know, some of the birds, the female would build a house and go look for a mate, a husband, who fits, who can raise these children. Women used to do that. And now, after the Industrial Revolution, they lost that. It's all the men who decide everything. I'm not like a feminist, but I'm saying the reality is that I see absence of family values in the minds of so many of my friends who are in the high tech, who don't care a bit about even having a family or having kids. You know, every week or two, I can get somebody else. You know, I can go, yeah, so I can go on this application or this application. so this is what we need. We need more companies, more startups, and then more also laws, more legislation to protect people and to care more about society. We're not just a bunch of robots living. You can do whatever you want. You can eat or drink whatever you want and practice whatever you want. That's my freedom. And don't force me. Only things really that don't make sense, you know, because you have money, you know, and you have the media and so on. The media has a big role they can play, but I believe in politically correct. I'm trying to be politically correct, but sometimes we push things too far. We fight even ethics and family values in the name of being politically correct. Sometimes you take one in a million, one percent or one in a million to a new sacrifice. You sacrifice the benefit of the whole society for the benefit of a lot. Like in our laws and our religion, like the benefit of the majority overrules the benefit of the individual, you know, because this benefits, like if there's a road that has to go through your house, they'll give you a different house and knock it down because that's for the convenience of the society. That's what we need in the Valley. I'm not a critic. I live here. I'm American, and I'm Jordanian, and I raise my kids here, and I brought them back. I trust to raise them here better than to raise them in New England. But, come on, we have to really be open. We have to work on that. I've seen enough in my trip over the last 40 years in the Valley that where we really missed. I've been like this, by the way, conscious about these things all my life, but nobody would listen. I would always say, you have to do this. Who cares? It's individual because they care about how much money, how much I can go and have fun. Believe me, I could talk to some of my friends. They all need therapy. They all take medicine to be able to sleep. You don't believe how many people out there, they need therapy or they're taking antidepressants. I don't want to tell you 70% or 60%, but I know people who shouldn't be there because I thought they were happy. They have a lot of nice houses and villas and swimming pool and jacuzzi and sauna in the house and big yards and things like that. I had the impression they were happy. Then he tells me how many medications they can just be able to sleep. Wow. Then I feel, I put my head down like a rock. I sleep right away. Four hours is enough for me. I wake up, but when I see people struggling with medication just to cope with life, to avoid suicide, to avoid killing partners, to avoid being abusive to their children. I'm talking about yours, everywhere, even my country. This is where we are now. We are chasing things. We don't know what happens. We're chasing things on the expense of other things. I know people who say, we don't want to get married. I really, I don't blame them. I actually respect them because I know they know what they want and why they do what. If they hear me, they know who they are. Because I've seen the opposite. You bring somebody to life, you're accountable for that person. I used to joke, I used to be invited to all high schools around here and churches to speak on Middle East and Islam like every year, all the surrounding schools. I used to joke that you don't need, you need a license to have a cat. My wife has two cats. You need a license to have a dog. But you don't need a license to have a kid. That's sad. You understand? Anybody can have a kid with no license. But you can't have a cat from the shelter without signing. We have black paper this much just to get the cats from my wife. We have 200 cats, but we have to fill so much paper and visits to doctors and things. But nobody asks you for that, to have a kid. You understand the difference? Yeah, I like animals. I'm a pro animal, but humans come first. Hussein, thank you so much for your time. Any concluding thoughts? Any advice to young people who are starting their careers in the Silicon Valley? First of all, I wish for peace in the world. We have so much aggression around the world. I hope that will end. We'll use all AI and technology to stop it. Wars are affecting AI and all this stuff, because politicians get involved and all that, and they ruin things. But for the young generation, do what you like to do, but also be realistic. Make sure it feeds you. Be independent financially, whether men or women. You should be able to become independent financially and become secure, whether inheritance, or whether a startup company, whether a good job. You should learn. With AI, everybody should learn. You don't have to switch majors. You should learn how to use AI to improve your field and to excel in your field. You're not going to lose your job if you do that. So everybody should learn how to use it. Like if you are into fashion, for example, you should learn how to use AI, which is really fast and amazing at that, how to use it to make my selection of fashion easier and matching and all that. If you are into drawing and things like that. So what is my advice to them? You should pick up before it's too late and pick up and learn how to do things. And don't chase money. You should make enough money to live a decent life, but also care for values and care for promises you give to people in marriage or relationship. They're not robots, computer. You change computer every year. You shouldn't change your partner every year. That's what I believe stability is so important if you want to have kids. If you can't provide that stability, don't. Because kids will suffer traumas, eventually get translated into a lot of psychological disorders and mental disorders, into therapy and medication. So I wish kids will do things with guidance. You should always consult with adults who are, you see them as stable people. Stable, not rich. Rich alone doesn't do it. People joke, there are a lot of things more important than money in this life. Like what? Like more money. But that's not the case. You should have enough to be content. Contention, believe me, it's in the heart. Nobody can buy you to be content, to be pleased, to have serenity in your life, to be like at peace. I say I'm at peace because I didn't transgress against anybody. I didn't curse anybody. I helped people. So I sleep comfortably. I didn't let down my kids or my wife. So you should live that life and balance with your job. That's what I would advise the new generation. And it's difficult, but if everybody's crazy doesn't give you a license to be crazy, you should wade your way through this jungle. Hussein, thank you so much for your time and your insights. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for watching another episode of the Bay Area Innovators. If you have a suggestion for a guest that you would like to see on our show, we would love to hear from you. Please send us a message at sfbayatepochtimes.com Thank you and see you next time.