Good morning.
Coins2Day’s Brainstorm A.I. Conference got underway in San Francisco yesterday, providing dramatic testimony about the advances in A.I. Technology that have been made in the last year. (If you haven’t been following those advances, check out this piece on Open AI’s new chatbot or play with its sibling, Dall-E, which makes images from text.)
Some excerpts from the conference:
“We think A.I. Is the largest platform shift since electricity and the internet. And we think it’s actually more dramatic than that…that it will ignite innovation across the world. About four years ago, we refreshed our strategy, and we actually framed A.I. As the core element of that strategy…It’s not a side gig.”
— Sasan Goodarzi, CEO, Intuit
“I don’t think that A.I. And machine learning is the solution to every problem. It really comes back to the core of asking: ‘What is the business problem I’m trying to solve? What is the product problem I’m trying to solve.’ And being really clear on that.”
— Yael Garten, director of A.I., Apple
“I think our whole society right now is having this conversation of stakeholder economy in addition to shareholder economy. And I think [A.I.] Needs to be part of the same conversation, because in this process of creating and deploying A.I., it’ll impact all of our lives, and it is really important that we include all the stakeholders of this technology in the design process.”
—Fei-Fei Li, co-director, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI
“This may surprise people, but I think you’ll find that many of us embrace regulation, because we’re going to have to be thoughtful about ‘When is it appropriate to use these technologies?’ How do we put them out into the world so that we don’t throttle them, but make sure we’re using them in the most useful ways, the most appropriate ways, with sufficient oversight and thought.”
— James Manyika, senior vice president, technology and society, Google
“There is more A.I. In Snapchat on your phone than there is in all of U.S. DOD (Department of Defense) combined.”
— Brian Schimpf, CEO, Anduril Industries
“Today, we routinely train A.I. Systems on 50 data points or 100 data points. Data-centric A.I. Is a key technology that begins to work on these much smaller data sets. It democratizes access to A.I.”
—Andrew Ng, CEO, Landing AI
You can watch today’s sessions at the conference here. Other news below. And here’s your fun fact for the day: 16 former PepsiCo executives are now Coins2Day 500 CEOs. How did the snack company become a factory for CEO talent? Phil Wahba dives in here.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
[email protected]
TOP NEWS
Slack CEO
In what he termed a “weird coincidence,” Stewart Butterfield has announced his resignation as Slack CEO just days after Bret Taylor announced his departure as co-CEO of Slack parent Salesforce. Butterfield told staffers (in a Slack message, obviously) that he was “not going to do anything entrepreneurial.” He will be replaced by current VP Lidiane Jones. As Coins2Day’s Kylie Robison writes: “The string of departures raises more questions about Salesforce’s senior management team and its plans to groom a potential successor to founder and CEO Marc Benioff. Coins2Day
Neuralink probe
Federal authorities are reportedly investigating Elon Musk’s Neuralink over potential animal-welfare violations. The brain-chip company has killed around 1,500 animals in the course of its research and some staffers have complained about rushed testing causing unnecessary risks for the animals, Reuters reported. Reuters
Train promotion
The CEO of the airline KLM has encouraged passengers to take the train rather than flying, where it makes sense to do so because of the lower carbon emissions. Marjan Rintel was a rail boss before she took over at the Dutch flag carrier in July. Her suggestion comes in the context of several European countries, including the Netherlands, moving to discourage air travel for relatively short journeys. Financial Times
AROUND THE WATERCOOLER
Elon Musk might have kicked Kanye West off Twitter, but the Anti-Defamation League says the CEO needs ‘clear policies, not personal intervention’, by Alena Botros
Photos on Twitter appear to show Caroline Ellison in New York City, prompting speculation of FTX-linked plea deal, by Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez
America is so bad at vacation that only one other country is worse—and it’s Micronesia, by Alena Botros
Starbucks has rolled out a new tipping system and customers are freaking out, by Prarthana Prakash
Biden crowned world energy czar as diplomacy triumphs over Putin’s tantrums, by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.
This is the web version of CEO Daily, a newsletter of must-read insights from Coins2Day CEO Alan Murray. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.
