Also: Slack CEO, Neuralink probe, and train promotion.
Good morning.
Fortune’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 Fortune 500 CEOs. How did the snack company become a factory for CEO talent? Phil Wahba dives in here.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
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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 Fortune’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. Fortune
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
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Leading in a downturn to build value There has been much discussion of a coming economic downturn, but rather than guess what might happen, executives can focus on leading and developing a business resilience strategy, regardless of the challenges ahead. Read More
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Where the U.S. housing market goes next Join Fortune writer Lance Lambert and Zonda chief economist Ali Wolf as they break down the latest in the U.S. housing market on Twitter spaces Dec. 5 at 2pm EST. Set a reminder ⏰ |
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