- Hi, my name is Tanmay, Tanmay Bakshi.
- How old are you? - I'm 19 years old.
I just turned 19 a couple days ago.
- How can you be called a genius so early?
- I personally don't really like to use that word.
- What are some of your biggest accomplishments?
- When I was nine I had my first iOS app published
at the App Store, called tTables
to help kids learn their times tables.
I found this documentary of IBM Watson.
Not sure if you've heard of Watson playing Jeopardy.
So I started messing around with the different IBM Watson
AI services, 'cause they made those public on their cloud,
and I actually found a bug in one of their services
back when I was 11.
- (laughing) That's so funny.
- I've authored four books on the world of technology.
That's something I love to do.
Working on applications all the way from analyzing
your brainwaves to give people the ability
to communicate artificially to working with McDonald's
at IBM right now, using machine-learning
to take your orders in the drive through.
- No wonder you're called a genius.
- I was thinking back what I was doing at those ages.
I was like, "Yeah...
Yeah, I was watching 'That's So Raven' at 12."
- Oh, my goodness. I have so many questions now.
Did you ever feel like you were already different
than other kids, or did people tell you you were different?
- I remember back when I was a kid
and I would go to my friend's house,
I'd be like, "Hmm, what's a fun activity?
We should try writing some code.
I should teach you how to code."
It took me a while to realize that that's not something
that people are generally as interested in as I am.
- I think I did web in high school and coding.
Oh my, goodness. I was so frustrated with all the carets.
It was like, "JavaScripts, no bueno."
- A long time ago I took coding classes,
but I guess I just dropped out because it was really boring.
- And how old are you, Chelsea?
- I'm 11 years old, not to be called a genius. Too young.
- How do you personally define intelligence,
and do you think that it can truly be quantified?
- Intelligence is really hard, if not basically impossible
to quantify into one metric.
Take IQ scores as an example.
They are still used as this way of making people feel
inferior or superior in a way that really doesn't matter.
- I work in a Title I low-income school
and it never paints the full picture of what these kids
are capable of because it doesn't take into account,
did they get breakfast that day?
So I really appreciate your acknowledgement of the fact
that a lot of these metrics that we use can have a lot
of neg negative consequences.
- Absolutely.
- Do you think your childhood was taken away from you?
- I feel like I've been given so much more
that so many other people don't get to have.
It's... Talking to like any one of my other friends,
it's like all of them say that they would love to be
in the position that I'm in, to be totally honest.
And that whole thing is something I don't regret.
And as a matter of fact, what I got in return
is so much more.
I remember this one trip that I had,
I traveled to like five different continents from Toronto,
which is where I live, to Germany, to India,
to The Bahamas, to Australia and back in a week.
And I got to see different students at different schools
in all these different places, and I got to interact
with them, and I got to answer their questions.
And all these experiences are something
that I just would never trade for anything else.
- This might be kind of an awkward question,
so brace yourself.
What's dating like for you?
- I wouldn't know.
Unfortunately, that's not something I've really done yet.
It's not something I've,
for lack of a better way of phrasing it, had the time for.
So I guess we'll find out in a couple years,
maybe we'll have an update. (chuckles)
- Have a wonderful night.
- Thank you. You, too.
Oh and also, if you wanna... One second.
If you ever wanted to connect at some point.
- As a youth or whatever, do you party and stuff?
- It's something that my friends have tried to get me to do.
It's something that I have the opportunity to do.
It's not something that I enjoy very much.
A couple of days ago when I turned 19, my friends threw me
a surprise birthday party, which was really fun.
They got me a cake and on the cake,
they had "Happy birthday" written out,
but printed in Rust code.
And so... (chuckles)
- What is the most annoying misconception people have
about being child genius?
- They assume that I don't do anything "for fun,"
or I lack like social interaction,
or like I don't have friends because of it.
I didn't really regret missing out
on whatever I did miss out on to begin with.
- Well, what do you like to do for fun outside of your job?
- I'd say I love to code.
I do it as a recreational activity, and suddenly people
are like, "Sure, but what do you do for fun?"
(both chuckle)
I love movies and TV shows.
I mean, I remember traditionally SpongeBob
is still my favorite TV show, realistically.
- That's so awesome. (chuckles)
- Do you think that robots will take over?
- Definitely not. Robots are not taking over the world.
That is one of the misconceptions I love to address.
- Good, good. Yeah.
Whew.
- I don't blame anybody for having those misconceptions.
- Do you think you have strict parents?
- No, because if you look at the things they've let me do,
it's incredibly unconventional.
My entire family is so supportive of the stuff that I do.
- Parental support is so important.
- We'll trust you enough.
We'll put in the effort to let you be homeschooled.
And then when I wanted to start working at IBM,
they're like, "You know what, sure.
Maybe don't go to university," because so many of my mentors
were like, "You wouldn't really gain much from it."
And now it's really fascinating because I'm like a professor
at the University of Winnipeg and at a university in Tokyo,
and I get to teach artificial intelligence
and machine-learning, so--
- College is overrated.
(both laugh)
- Do you always assume
that you're the smartest person in the room?
- Definitely not.
I actually currently also work at IBM,
and a lot of the time I'll be in meetings with people
who have been working on products for decades.
- I think it's honestly probably good that you don't.
- Do people question your intelligence
because you're so young?
- There's still going to be some people
that at first are like, "Wait, what?
Why? Why are we hiring a 17 year old?"
I remember some folks that had worked with me before
were sort of fighting for the whole,
"No, he does know what he is talking about.
He does have that expertise."
- Do you think that your label as a genius means
that you contribute more to society?
- I think we all contribute in different ways.
It depends on your definition of an impact,
or what value really is to you.
- Please, teach me how to code.
- Honestly, absolutely.
I help my friends out all the the time.
So honestly, I'm happy to do so.
Feel free to reach out to me.
- That teacher I had last time did not work for me.
- Since you started working so young,
you could retire really young, potentially.
Is this something you look forward to?
- And this is actually a question that one of my friends
asked me a little while ago.
She said, "I'm pretty sure if we gave you two options,
it's either you continue doing what you normally do
for a month or you get to go on a really fun vacation,
but there's no tech at all for that month.
You'd probably just keep doing what you do."
And I was like, "Yeah, absolutely."
I'm still gonna keep doing the stuff that I love to do,
because it's honestly really fun for me.
I want to keep doing it.
- Are there any other facets of your existence
you feel don't get as much attention?
- One personality trait that I have
that maybe people don't realize,
and I think that's what leads to quite a few
of the questions that they ask me, is the fact
that I'm naturally just a really curious person.
If I am given a topic on pretty much anything,
I love delving deep into it regardless of what it's about.
And same thing with tech, and because I'm also so passionate
about it along with that natural curiosity,
I end up gaining a lot of experience doing it.
- Are you set for life financially,
because you started working so young in tech?
(both chuckle)
- You can kind of tell which software developers are
in the field just for money.
But anyway, that's a different thing.
I've never done the work that I do for the money.
The vast majority of my apps are free.
Almost all the code that I write is open source,
except for obviously proprietary stuff
for a company, like at IBM.
And so I've always done it with the goal and the ambition
of helping other people as much as I can.
Some people say that Google is paying me somewhere
between a couple thousand
to a couple million dollars a month.
Some people say that I'm already worth, like,
I think I saw the largest estimate was like
$230 something million.
I don't know where they're getting these numbers from.
All I can say is that they're definitely not accurate.
Google does not pay me. I do not work for them.
- Do you think that your work will be world-changing?
- You can change the world just by having an impact
on a few people.
More specifically, actually, one of my goals
is to reach out to and help at least a hundred thousand
aspiring beginners, really help them learn how to code,
help them innovate with code.
And so that definitely is something
that I wanna work towards.
That's what I'm striving for.
- I'm very impressed by you.
And we should be friends, to be honest. (laughs)
- Hey, nice to meet you. - Josh. Nice to meet you.
- Not what I had in my mind.
(Tanmay laughs)
- [Tanmay] what did you have in mind?
- Maybe like a tie and like a tuxedo.
- Super funny story.
Back in kindergarten, I wanted to use the computer
in our class, but my teacher was like,
"It doesn't work. You can't use it."
And so I was like, "Okay, can I take a look at it?"
Everything's a mess.
These are like really old computers, tons of cables.
Spent a couple minutes and I realized
that the power cable wasn't plugged in.
My teacher shouts to my mom that, "Hey, you're son,
he's gonna be talented with tech when he's older."