this is "gps", the global public square. welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria coming to you live from mumbai, india. today on the program. what to look for around the globe in 2024. what will happen in the world's wars. who will win the many major elections this year? how will the most important relationship in the world between washington and beijing evolve? all of that and more with ian bremer and zany minton beddoes. plus, the top economic trends of

the world with ruchir sharma. i also talk to a major player there artificial intelligence, a tech entrepreneur who is not a computer scientist by training but rather a philosopher. what does mustafa suleyman say about fears that a.i. might mean the end of humanity. find out. but first, here is my take. the start of the new year is on a time of optimism. but look at surveys from the past few months and you'll find that strikingly high numbers of americans sometimes around three quarters of those polled, think america is on the wrong track. this profound sense of despair is perplexing because i don't find much objective data to support it.

the u.s. economy grew at an astonishing 5.2% in the third quarter of 2023. the imf expects growth for last year to be 2.1% which is substantially better than other advanced western nations. such as canada, the u.k., and germany. inflation is dropping sharply, real wages are up, and manufacturing employment is experiencing a boom. it is hard to find another country where so many measures are pointing in the right direction. the broader picture is even more positive. as i write in the current issue of foreign affairs, the u.s. has been besting its competitors in various crucial metrics for a while now. the financial times did an analysis of the ways in which american's economy would be

compared with european and in per capita growing, the u.s. has been outperforming for 20 years and has dwarfed the economies of spain, france and italy. america's technology sector dominates the world in a way that no country ever has. the value of the top ten u.s. technology stocks is now greater than the value of the entire stock market of canada, the u.k., france and germany combined. the u.s. is the world's largest producer of oil and gas. larger even than saudi arabia or russia. it has the healthiest demographics of any advanced country and it takes in around 1 million legal immigrants a year which ensures that while europe and japan are expected to slowly sink in population, the u.s. will continue to grow. the world sees what americans do not. a recent pew survey shows that

the u.s. is now viewed more favorably than china in 22 of 24 countries surveyed. when asked who contributes to peace and stability around the world, america or china, the margins are huge in crucialash yarn countries. in japan it is 79 to 14 and in south korea 47 to 13 and in india, 70 to 33 all in washington's favor. i know that many will raise the numerous global crisis, the bloody stalemate in ukraine, the tragic war in gaza, the dangers over taiwan. others will concede the positive points but argue that america's domestic politicals overwhelmed them all. our deeply polarized society will be paralyzed by a court case and a crazy election that will follow and a possible constitutional crisis over the results of that election. all of this is true.

america has serious problems. what nation doesn't. but it has gotten through these kind of crises before. and i am confident it will again. last summer, nikki haley tweeted, do you remember when you were growing up, do you remember how simple life was? how easy it felt? she was of course with donald trump's central message, which is that he will make america great again. so let's go back in time to those heady days. say 50 years ago to 1974. the united states had just suffered the first major military defeat in vietnam. the soviet union was widely thought to be on the offense around the world. the german kchancellor had just resigned after an espionage scandal and spain was in shock of the assassination of the

prime minister by vast terrorists. israel was barely recovering from a near-death experience in yom kippur war. the arab oil embargo triples the price of oil leading to a combination of slow growth and high inflation that was described as stag-flation. domestically, they're still reeling from the riots and forced busing was tearing communities apart. oh, and watergate had a upended the political system. the president of the united states resigned in august of 1974. a first in history. oh, yes, the good old days which life was simpler. the truth is, the united states has the power and capacity to tackle today's crises. perhaps even more so than it had

in the past. but it needs to regain a sense of perspective. and above all, regain confidence in its own enormous strengths. go to cnn.com/fareed to a link to my washington post column this week. and let's get started. what are the biggest global challenges of the year ahead? how will the major wars in ukraine and in the middle east play out? and what about the dozens of upcoming national elections around the world? joining me now is two experts to weigh in on the pressing questions. zanny minton beddoes and ian bremer is from global risk consultancy. zanny, let me start with you and

gaza. it looks awful. is there a real dangerous of escalation and is there a path to this getting better? what would it take to make this get better? >> look, fareed, agree with you, it looks awful. it is awful. i think there is a risk of escalation, clearly when you see what the houthis have been doing, what you see what is going on, on the northern border. when you see the possibility of a israeli preemptive action toward hezbollah, there are a real risk of escalation. my sense is that the major actors are trying very hard to prevent that and i think if you ask me to bet, i think the odds are against it. but it is a real risk and certainly i worry that something could happen on the israeli northern border. but what is very clear, is that the situation right now in gaza cannot continue. it cannot continue. because the loss of life is utterly horrific.

it can know continue because israel can't sustain the way it is prosecuting that conflict for many longer. there will be a fam is in -- a famine in gaza. and the economy can't sustain months and months of this scale of mobilization. so you're seeing already, i think, a gradual shift in tactics from the israelis. but that won't be enough to lead to the answer to your last question, which is, is there a possibility of something permanently better coming out of this horrific episode. and i'm a natural optimist as you know. i think that the status quo was clearly dramatically upended on october 7th and i think the strategy that the netanyahu government has of sort of somewhat cynically undermining the palestinian authority in order to ensure that there would be never by progress towards two-state solution has been shattered. i think the sense of israeli

security has been shattered. and out of that, it is possible to vision, if you put your most optimistic hat on, some ingredients for a path forward of two nations living peacefully in that region. because i think you have several things you didn't have after oslo. you have the gulf states in particular seeing what their prosperity, that region's prosperity could look like if you have a more integrated peaceful part of the world. they see what the middle east broadly could be. secondly, you have a u.s. administration that really, really needs peace in the middle east now, particularly in this election year. and so i think the key thing is it can't happen with this israeli government and with the current palestinian leadership. so will in '24, will you see differentize raely leadership that pushes for peace and will you see palestinians leadership able to do that? it is going to be really, really hard and if you look at the polling on both sides, i don't

put a huge amount of probability on it but the path is there. >> fareed, i'll take the other side of that, fareed. first of all, i think a lot of the status quo is holding in the middle east. we had the abram accords and we still do. that is a big deal. you also have the iranian deal that was brokened by the chinese, that is still in place. in some ways it is stronger. higher level direct engagement between the iranians and gulf leadership. the qataris, which has been blockaded and that got fix and the gcc is more coordinated. the status quo that was broken was the unsustainable relationship between israel and the forgotten palestinians becoming nor radicalized and particularly in the group of hamas. and there i -- if it were just one risk, it is a lot of risk. it is true as zanny just said, all of the major states don't want this to escalate and

explode. but there are a lot of organizations that are hard to deter. you've got, of course, the houthis in yemen. you have hamas itself. you have netanyahu knowing that if the war is over, that he's out and probably going to prison. and you also have, of course, the incredible radicalization that is leading to more region con flick, not just in the middle east, but also in europe and the united states. so, i think that there are far too many ways for this to go wrong. i'm not sure which of them are most likely to hit. which of those tail risks over the course of the coming months. but i would bet that a few of them will. so i will take the bet this is going to significantly escalate, unfortunately, in 2024. >> ian, let me quickly ask you, what about biden's strategy which has been to try to hug the israeli's close and pressure them to change tactics. it feels to me like theize

raelies are pocketing the support and resisting any pressure. no other words they are getting rolled, they are getting rolled by bibi netanyahu. >> well, the united states, of course, is israel's closest ally. that is not going to change under any president. but it is true that bibi netanyahu is not trusted or liked by president biden. but this is also been a policy not just by netanyahu, but the war as a policy of the entire war cabinet. it is a policy that is strongly supported by the entire israeli people. so it is true that the united states by being essentially stapled to this war cabinet is in a more isolated position globally than perhaps even the russians were when they invaded ukraine a few years ago which is astonnishingly shocking thing to say gib the violence against jews in israel on october 7th.

but it is where biden is today. it is a significant electoral risk in the you and also a weakness for him on the international stage. >> zany, i've got a very brief time but i want to quickly ask you about zelenskyy and your interview. he seemed, in your interview, he seemed very frustrated. very quickly, is there -- is there a path forward -- for ukraine to resist russia? it does feel like the russians are gaining ground? >> yeah. he was very frustrated. he senses that people -- that fla narrative shifted in the west and pushing against that but mostly frustrated by the lack of assistance, the aid being held up both in the u.s. and the european aid and his argument was very, very clear. he said, you know, if you are not helping ukraine, your helping yourselves and this is particularly at europe and he

called putin an animal who senses weakness and if you allowed putin to win in ukraine, it would be much, much worse, a risk for the rest and that argument at moment isn't landing, i think, and that is what really is the underpinning of his sense of frustration which was very real. so yes, it is a tough year for ukraine. >> agree. agree. >> stay with us. next i will ask our two guests what story in 2024 they are watching most closely. that when we come back.

and we're back here on "gps" with zanny minton beddoes and ian bremer. ian, was is the biggest story you're looking at in 2024? maybe another way of putting it is what is your biggest worry? s. >> clearly, the united states and this electoral season and all of us are worried that the u.s. democracy is nowhere near as robust as the economy that you were talking about in the opening, fareed. but i'll tell you, irrespective of who wins, we need to recognize that all of 2024 very likely to be so much more divided. once trump gets the nomination, which is overwhelmingly likely in the next couple of months. the republican party is going to

line up behind him. and the media. and the money. and as a consequence of that, his policy pronouncems will have a lot more importance. so this entire year, before we get to november, before we get to inauguration in january and before we start talking about contested illegitimate elections and the politicization around that, you're going to have a year that is much more polarized with implications that is under-appreciated from people around the world right now. >> zanny, you guys had an editorial tough on joe biden. the democrats are sleep walking into disaster. explain what you mean. >> well you've just had from ian what is at stake this year. and the bulwark against donald trump returning to the white house is an 81-year-old who is showing his age, who is the most unpopular -- has the lowest approval ratings of any modern president. that is not a great position to be in for the democrats.

and you know, you know most americans do not want these two people to be running. most, many democrats don't want biden to be running. when he first came in, there was a sense that he would be a one-term president. after '22, after the midterms, something changed and there was a clear sense that he's decided that he wanted to do it again. and we argue that not only for noble reasons. i think there is some in the party, some complacency and cowardice and let them to sleep walk to this position which is not a position a party wants to be or any in the world wants. that the consequences of donald trump potentially returning to the white house are, you know, terrible in so many ways and you don't need to think that it is sort of end of american democracy, although i think it will cause real problems. even without that, it will cause tremendous problems for the u.s. and internationally. and i think it is by far the biggest shadow over a year, which in itself as you i think

have mentioned before, fareed, this is a year where over half of the population of the world lives in countries that are having elections. more than 70 countries are going to the polls. really big ones. eight of the ten most populous countries. but hanging over all of that, is the u.s. election. if you're in beijing, if you're in deli, in the middle east or bibi netanyahu, if you're putin, you are looking at this election and rooting for one particular outcome and that is going to be an extraordinary year and that is going to dominate everything that we think about and for the administration, for the democratic party to get itself into this position, i think it is just a really, really unfortunate place to be and that is why weigh came out to strong. don't get me wrong. joe biden has been a good president. he's a noble public servant going to do a lot of good things but people are worried about his age. he's 81 years old and that worry is only going to continue.

everyone knows someone in their 80s and knows what is lookly to happen. >> i want to be very clear. if you're a democracy and you have an election where a former president has tried to subvert, to steal the previous electoral outcome, the election should be first and foremost about that. and it is not. and the reason for that is because the legitimacy of the u.s. political system and institutions have deeply eroted. that is the fundamental problem here. >> ian, i don't disagree with that. >> i went -- no, let's -- let me just get a quick sense from you, zanny, taiwan, is this election likely to lead to conflict? is there -- what are the stakes here, with 30 seconds? >> taiwan, no. it will be not in the short-term. there will be more tension if the dpp candidate, the

independent candidate wins but it will not lead to conflict. but i could quickly respond to ian. i don't disagree. of course that is the most issue, but that is not what many american voters think is the most important issue and that is what is so alarming. >> all right. we are going to have to close there. we'll have you back to evaluate whether it all worked as you said. next on gps, we'll try to understand the big economic trends of 2024. what could we expect to happen with inflation and all kinds of things that affect your bank balance. ruchir sharma will explain it all when we come back.

but what we're doing works well. as you just heard, the new year is a huge one for politics around the globe. as the economists notes, about half of the world's population will vote this year. including the world's three most popular democracies, the united states, india and indonesia. so what else will we see around the world in the years to come? joining me now is ruchir sharma,

the chairman of rockefeller international, a financial advisory firm and the founder of break out capital and investment firm focused on emerging markets and of course a very prolific writer and columnist for the f.t. richard, we've heard about the many, many elections that are taking place. the share of global population with the opportunity to vote is at a kind of all-time high. and that is remarkable. but you point out that 20 years ago, 70% of incumbents would win the elections. and now, it is 30%. what do you think is going on? >> yeah, so this is global data. we looked at 50 democracies around the world and it is incredible how many are losing. even the u.s. is there. if you look at the first approval ratings of residents in the last 20, 30 years, they tend to wither away as they approach

the end of the first term. so there is a lot of negativity amplified possibly by social media, and in terms of what is going on. so the implication is that we have all -- the number of elections but most incumbents are likely to lose. so when we do this, this year, i think we're likely to see a lot of new faces around the world. so it used to be that having the public office, the visibility, that helped. that used to be the case globally. 70% would win elections and now it is such a major disadvantage, that in india, it is global now. >> and that is the one place that seems to be bucking the trend. >> exactly. >> but tell me, because you have so many unpopular incumbents, bidenez approval ratings look terrible except when you compare them to macron or justin

trudeau. they're all doing badly. you say that means they're going to spend a lot. but this can he spend a lot? are we in a different world about deficits? >> so one of my big trends of 2024 is this epic clash in the making between politician and investors. the incentive to do so now is even much more because of the approval ratings. i looked at the approval ratings of leaders around the world and across democracies, the approval rating is close to an all-time low. it is not just a biden problem, it is a universal problem. what is the implication. they want to spend more but already run very large deficit newsing go the location. the u.s. had a deficit of about 3% of gdp for much of the last decade. the deficit now is 6% of gdp and likely to be that way. and i think that is going to be

there, whether countries from south africa or mexico, everywhere the deficits have shot up. so politicians try to spend more. you're going to have people in the bond market, the vigilantes are they are known, sort of revolt against this. you're saying you have so many supply at us, we want higher interest rates and that has implications for everybody. so currently we're celebrating the fact that the state has stopped his interest rate hikes and they have come down but if you get these vigilantes focus away from inflation to deficits, you're likely to see long-term interest rates come down or in fact go up on the back of the all of the spending plans. >> i want to ask about a specific country and that is china. that is the biggest puzzle has been china, fastest growing country and the history of the world has stalled. and you opponent out that china seemed like it was going to overtake the u.s., it was at 76%

of the u.s. economy, closing in on 100%. and it is now started declining. it is now down to 66%. do you think china recovered substantially in 2024? it is hard to see that. because the long-term challenges in china, demo graphics for the first time, the population is shrinking, the deficits are higher than the united states even though the per capita income is much lower. so it is a heavily inundated country and then you have xi jinping who wanted to make the country more fortified and less big beneficiary of globalization which is what lifted china. and here is the real problem, which is that they go on printing gdp growth numbers show thatting the -- showing that the economy is growing at 5%. the reality is that it is not growing at 5%. what the companies are earning or what their revenues are, but the charade continues.

a lot of western academics and other china watchers believe they are growing at 5% so why do anything. but they claim they are at 5%, but they're not going at 5% and they're not taking any major action to try to rescue the economy to keep the charade on. >> and people have said this often, the end of the tech boom, bubble, call it what you will, but you think tech is in for some kind of a downturn. explain. >> it is already been happening. if you look at 2023, the a.i. wave came in and swept the world and the seven largest stocks in the u.s. did very well. the magnificent seven. but outside of that, the tech sector is only sector in the united states to have lost jobs. so 70,000 jobs were lost in the tech seccor. where the u.s. economy added nearly 3 million jobs and my point is that the a.i. wave will also subside as people figure out how do we make money out of

this and i think it is a trouble spot for the coming year. >> always a pleasure to hear from you, we'll do this again. next on "gps", artificial intelligence will change the world even if it doesn't change the job market right now. but the pressing question is, can humans stay in control of a.i.? i asked a top a.i. entrepreneur, mustafa suleyman, about the opportunities and the risks when we come back.

2023 was the year that artificial intelligence burst into public consciousness. stoking the imaginations of many, and the fears of many others. in 2024, goldman sachs said jenive a.i. will move from an excitement phase to a deployment phase. and in the next ten years, could raise global gdp by as much as 7%. i was delighted to be able to sit down with a fascinating and brilliant entrepreneur who has been at the forefront of a.i.

for more than a decade. mustafa suleyman was a co-founder of deep mind, his most recent venture is in flexion a.i., which he cofounded in 2022. the company's first product is a chat bot that acts like a personal assistance and offers friendly advice and even companionship. his terrific new book is called "the coming wave, technology, power and the 21st century's greatest dilemma." i spoke with him recently. >> pleasure to have you on. >> thanks for having me. >> you're an unusual tech a.i. scientist and you don't come from a techie background. >> i'll a philosopher by training. i did philosophy at oxford and dropped out to start a charity. i'm a serial entrepreneur. so i love synthesising ideas and

making big bets about the future and being a translator interlockutor to put things together. >> what gets you interested in artificial intelligence. >> i've always been obsessed with the idea that tools and invention are going to make us more capable as a species and that is been the history of human civilization. we've invented things in order to make our lives easier and happier and healthier. and from a kind of social impact perspective, that is the ground offering of science. you know, if we look back over the centuries, our lives have gotten radically better and that is raeal cause to be optimistic. this engine of discovery and creation is fundament to who we are as a species. our curiosity drives us to create and do more with less and that is actually what drew me to a.i. in the first place. >> so most people understand, get the a.i. to do something

specific. let's say look at a legal document and find all of the cases that relate to -- or look at an x-ray and compared to others, does this one have cancerous cells, help us understand jenner aive a. ki. to think and go beyond that and in more complex and creative ways that human beings might be able to. >> think of it as two sides of the aim a.i. coin. for the last decade we've been focused on classification. how could we train networks to identify patterns in data. and it is done that so well, that it could transcribe speech for example, or it could understand understand the content of images and that is the classification revolution. the flip side of that is if the a.i. now understanding the difference between cats and dogs and zebras and in an image, you

could say generate me a new example of a zebra never seen with the color purple and with bright blue wings, for example. because it understands those concepts well enough from having seen the historical patterns. now the third phase of a.i. that is coming is interactive a.i. now you that could have an a.i. generate a new example, it could present that to a human for feedback and learn from the human and carry out new tasks in time it will learn to use tools, right. so it will be able to make phone calls to other humans on your behalf. >> let me just get an example out to people so they understand. creck me if i'm wrong, but you are saying you should be able to have an a.i. that you say to your phone, can you do the following for me, two weeks from now i want to take a trip to london, you could get me a ticket, book me a hotel and i wan to go to this restaurant, make me the reservation and i

also need these three books, you could order them? and the a.i. will then take care of it all, right? >> exactly. think of a.i. in the future as personal assistance. everybody is going to have a conversational interface, which not just represents you and is there to support, but could teach you. it is going to help you day-to-day to be better at your job, to, you know, make important life decisions when you're thinking about whether to relocate to a different city, or whether it might be time to put yourelerly parents into a karen h -- into a care home or an operation you are thinking about. >> and that is emotional intelligence. we've often thought that the a.i. will do the analytic part. but human beings have this special thing, emotional intelligence and e.q., social skills. you're saying that the a.i. could have all of that as well?

>> that is exactly right. we have developed at any must company inflection, pi, which stands for personal intelligence and conditioned it to be good emotional intelligence. it is a great listener. it is very even-handed. it presents both sides of an argument. it asks you great questions. it tries to remember what you've said in the past. it will often paraphrase what you've said in order to make you feel heard. so these sort of elements of empathy are actually quite learnable by the a.i. and will be incredibly valuable to many people to have the comfortable and support of a friend in your pocket. i think people underrate how significant that is in the world. not all of us have a supportive parent, or a husband or a wife or child or friend to help you get through difficult times. and now that is going to be widely available to hundred dollars of millions of people over next few years.

>> next on "gps", what are the steps toward actually regulating a.i. we'll be back with the author and entrepreneur mustafa suleyman.

we now know that artificial intelligence will bring us a wealth of benefits and many challenges, too. the question remains how could the world come together to regulate and contain it? i asked author and long time a.i. entrepreneur mustafa suleyman. >> how do we stay in charge. and in the limit, it is definitely possible that we may not be in charge. and we have to confront that reality. that is not what we want. we don't want a.i. that have autonomy in our world. they shouldn't have rights, as some people have proposed. we don't want new digital z citizens hanging out in our society. >> so people understand technically, is it possible, as simple as saying, at the end of the day, you could always have a kill switch and you could pull the plug.

or is it more complicated than that? >> yes. it is going to be possible to do that. i believe. if we focus on it as a research community, as a group of governing actors and the creator of the technology in the open source and the private companies. we have to make that a priority. we have overcome huge sciencistic and engineering feats to contain nuke power to get the best out of aviation and not have planes fall out of the sky all of the time. to regulate cars and make sure that everybody is training to drive a car and there are airbags and wind screens and vehicle emissions and traffic lights and these are important moments in the history of the development of our technology. where we've really paid attention. and this is another one of those moments. the good news is, that over the last decade, as the models have gotten bigger, they've actually got easier to control. there are fewer hallucinations

than there have ever been. fewer biases than there have ever been. and everything that we add to the training runs, we see they make fewer mistakes and easier to control and take instruction more closely so the real question is whose instruction and what instruction. what the behavior policy that we're asking these a.i.s to at here today and would is verifying that the a.i. is behaving within the boundary constraints set for it? >> tell me, when you look at the future of a.i., do you worry about something that henne kissinger and harry schmidt has written about, that human beings will be in a position of not understanding the world any more, that, you know, before the enlightenment, we didn't understand the world and we would attribute anything we didn't understand to divine forces, if the sun rose, because

the sun god moved his chariot across the sky. we'll be in a situation where the a.i. will tell us, this is the answer, this is -- this person has cancer. but we won't be able to understand because the level of computation and analysis will be so much greater. what kind of position does that place human beings in? where we're returning to our preenlightened self-when we looked up to god and now we look up to this black box called a.i. but in both cases, we're believing not actually understanding. >> it is a great point. and it is a real risk. and we can't rest on belief. we have to rest on reason. belief is a dangerous path to being able to justify actions on the basis of things that we can't interpret. at the same time, we are all behaviorists today. we are observing outputs. i don't really understand what

is going on inside of your mind. i rely on the things that you say and do to verify that you could repeatedly act c consistently with your only set of values. and that is actually how we form trust in society today. we don't form trust by interrogating the precise causal explanation of your own data patterns based on your past personal history. now, i'm not saying that we shouldn't hold a.i. to even higher standards than ourselves, because clearly we're all in agreement that we don't want to be, you know, disintermediated from our position as top of the food chain in our species and in civilization today. but at the same time, we have to be realistic about the benefits. take health care for example. these models are performing an incredible role in being able to detect disease at human level performance across the board. an radiology scans for chest

x-rays and mammograms and for acute injury or sepsis and blinding eye diseases and the cost of producing a world class diagnosis and the proposed treatment pathway is about to plummet to zero marginal cost. it is going to be essentially free in the next decade. to provide an absolutely world class diagnosis. that is going to transform health care for billions and billions of people. and we're going to see the same trajectory in education and in the development of food and synthetic materials and we'll see the same trajectory for decision-making and entrepreneurship across the board. so the benefits are really incredible. the challenge is how could we mitigate the down sides. >> mustafa, this is a terrific book and what a fascinating conversation. thank you. >> thank you, it is been fun. >> thanks for being part of my

program and thanks for mumbai for hosting us and making today's show possible. i will see you nexext week fror new w york.

i think he's having a midlife crisis i'm not. you got us t-mobile home internet lite. after a week of streaming they knocked us down... ...to dial up speeds. like from the 90s. great times. all i can do say is that my life is pre-- i like watching the puddles gather rain. -hey, your mom and i procreated to that song. oh, ew! i think you've said enough. why don't we just switch to xfinity like everyone else? then you would know what year it was. i know what year it is.