You Can Turn Your Fear Into a Superpower | AI Expert/Yogi | Manuj AggarwalAg

Episode notes

From $2/Day Factory Worker To AI PioneerManuj Aggarwal went from making two dollars a day in a small Indian factory to building AI systems praised by President Obama and backed by the Gates Foundation. Today, he’s warning that a coming wave of AI will either be the greatest opportunity of our lives—or a tsunami that buries us. In this conversation, Manuj shares how he dropped out of college, got into drugs, and was forced to work in his father’s factory before discovering computers and ranking seventh in all of India in his programming exams. He walks through his early move to Canada, getting laid off multiple times during the dot-com bust, and the moment he realized there is no such thing as job security. We dig into Degree Compass, an AI system that helped reduce college dropout rates by recommending courses the way Netflix recommends shows—and why that work caught the attention of President Obama and Bill Gates. From there, Manuj explains why AI’s real danger isn’t just job loss, but the subtle way it overwhelms our nervous systems, raises anxiety, and quietly shapes how we think.