Israel Start-Up Nation and AI

Hello everyone, and welcome to the new episode of the podcast "Yalla: Learning Hebrew with Steph." I'm Steph, and today I want to talk about something a little different that's close to my own life. Today we're going to talk about how artificial intelligence — "artificial intelligence" — is changing the world. We'll talk about technology, start-ups, and how Israel became the Start-Up Nation, which is a big topic right now. I chose this topic because I work in high-tech as a data scientist. That means I work with data and artificial intelligence every day. Alon, my husband, also works in high-tech and uses AI all the time. So at home we talk a lot about these topics. I wanted to learn — and teach myself — the vocabulary connected to this subject. And I can't think of a better way to do that than to make this podcast and learn together. So let's start with the big picture — why is Israel called the Start-Up Nation? Israel is a small country; it has only 10 million residents — that's fewer than the number of people living in London! But despite that, it has a huge number of start-ups, more than any other country relative to its size. A start-up is a small, new company that tries to develop something new, usually with technology. Notice that the word "start-up" is the same word as in English. In Hebrew, when people talk about technology and high-tech, they use a lot of words from English. You'll hear some of them in this episode. For example, the word "technologia" (technology) is also borrowed from English. In everyday life you probably use Israeli technology, even if you don't realise it. For example, the navigation app Waze, the website-building platform Wix, and much more. The world of technology in Israel is called "high-tech" — another word from English — and it's very common. For example, if someone asks, "Where do you work?", the answer is often "I work in high-tech" — especially in Tel Aviv. So let's move on to why there are so many start-ups and technology companies in Israel. First of all, many of these companies start in the army. As you probably know, in Israel almost everyone goes to the army at age 18. The skills (meyumanuyot) they learn are determined by the army unit they serve in. Some of the units are very technical — for example, 8200 and the Talpiot Programme. In these units, young people learn things like computer science (mada'ey ha-machshev) and cyber security — and all of it at a high level. During this time they also deal with complex, real-world situations, overcome great pressure and risk, and sometimes even have to risk their lives. After they're discharged from the army at age 21 or 22, they have very important, sought-after skills: they've gained real experience using and developing technology, and they're used to high-pressure situations. On top of that, they can solve hard problems, and they become good friends with other people who went through the same thing. This story is very common in Israel: two friends from the army decide to build a company together. What's interesting is that the translation of "company" in Hebrew is "chevra," and the root ch.b.r gives us the words "chaver" (friend) and "chaverim" (friends). That fits this story nicely. Another reason Israel has the reputation of the Start-Up Nation is that the government invests heavily in high-tech. The government encourages investors from abroad to come and invest their money in Israeli companies. Today companies like Google, Meta and Intel are opening research centres in Israel. The combination of government support and skilled people creates an environment where ideas and start-ups grow fast. Another word borrowed from English is "exit." An exit is when a big company buys a start-up, or when the start-up enters the stock market (shuk ha-menayot). In recent years there have been very big exits in Israel — for example, Google bought Waze for 1.3 billion dollars, Intel bought the Israeli company Mobileye for 15 billion dollars, and recently Google bought Wiz — the cyber-security company — for 32 billion dollars, which was the biggest exit in Israeli history. So let's talk about artificial intelligence — as I said, it means "artificial intelligence." The word "bina" means "wisdom" or "understanding," and "melachutit" means "artificial" or "man-made." In the last two years, artificial intelligence has become the biggest topic in the world. Not surprisingly, Israel is one of its biggest users. There's an article from the AI company Anthropic that says Israel ranks first in the world for use of the AI tool Claude Code — almost twice as much as the country in second place. Like every new technology, artificial intelligence has advantages and disadvantages. Let's talk about them. Let's start with the advantages. One advantage is that AI helps people do things faster. It can write, summarise, translate and answer questions in a few seconds. For small start-ups this is very significant. With AI, a small number of people can do a lot — so you don't always need many people in a company. Artificial intelligence helps people learn. It can explain complex topics simply, it has patience, and it can explain an answer until you understand it. And of course, for language learners, AI helps you understand things better and practise more easily. But as always, there are disadvantages too. The first disadvantage is that artificial intelligence isn't always right. Sometimes it gives us answers with great confidence, but they're actually wrong — so we have to check the information it gives us. The next disadvantage is that it's causing many people to lose their jobs. Many people are afraid that AI will do their work for them and they won't be needed anymore. This is something I think about a lot, because I work with code and data, and I have to use AI in my work for every task I do. Another disadvantage is that when we use AI for everything, we don't have to think about all sorts of things — and what will slowly happen is that we'll forget how to do them ourselves. So all in all, AI doesn't have to be good or bad. It very much depends on how we use it. That's all for today's episode. I really hope you enjoyed it and learned something new about the Start-Up Nation. As always, you can find the words from the podcast — with examples and the transcript in both English and Hebrew — on my website. I'd love to hear if you liked this episode, especially if you work in high-tech. You can post a message on my website or comment here on the podcast. I'll put a link to my website in the podcast description. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the podcast "Yalla — Learning Hebrew with Steph," and until next time — take care and keep learning.