Also: Disney's new directors, OpenAI's woman problem, inside Gary Gensler's SEC.
Good morning.
This year’s Fortune Global Forum in Abu Dhabi took place at a moment—or perhaps in an era—of enormous uncertainty for business. The rapid transformations driven by artificial intelligence ranked at the top of the list. Investor Ray Dalio spoke to the group about the economic uncertainty caused by unwinding an “insanely free-money environment.” Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair took the group on a tour of global geopolitics, noting that “it’s a bit depressing at the moment, looking around the world.” And with COP 28 just two days and a short drive away, numerous speakers expressed concern about how far the world is from meeting its climate goals. “Business is moving at a much faster pace,” said Halla Tomasdottir, CEO of The B Team, “but not fast enough.”
Yet I came away from the three days of business discussions with a renewed sense of optimism. The twin challenges of technology and climate, in particular, seem to be creating an unprecedented opportunity for business to do what it does best—solve real problems in pursuit of both purpose and profit. That was particularly evident in many of the conversations around climate. Here’s what Tarek Sultan, the CEO of Agility Logistics, had to say at a lunch session on Wednesday:
“There has been a sea change in how we approach climate. We’ve gone from having a plan that is ‘cute’ to one where there is a profit incentive… We start to see a convergence of profit and sustainability together. It makes it go faster.”
David Gitlin, CEO of Carrier, put it this way:
“Prosperity goes hand in hand with sustainability.”
At our dinner in Dubai last night, two CEOs who are investing billions of dollars to develop green hydrogen energy—Andres Gluski of AES and Marco Alverà of TES—offered hope for decarbonizing some of the economy’s most carbon-intensive industries. Here’s Alverà:
“Jules Verne…wrote 150 years ago that one day the world will be powered by the infinite energy contained in water. This is exactly what he meant. H2 is at the heart of every fuel we use, every hydrocarbon—if it’s coal, if it’s oil, if it’s diesel, if it’s natural gas. It’s all a combination of hydrogen atoms with some form of carbon….So it’s nothing new. It’s pure, infinite energy that you can make from water anywhere, everywhere, all at once.”
The most troubling conversations were those around geopolitical issues, with wars in Europe and the Middle East that show no clear path to resolution. Dalio noted similarities to the period before World War II. Blair said lasting peace in the Middle East “has got to be based on two things. The Israelis have got to have security. And the Palestinians have got to have hope.
But Blair ended his comments, and closed the conference, on this note:
“If you take a step out of the day-to-day and the current problems, and you look at the broad sweep of history, humanity makes progress.”
More coverage from the conference here. Other news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
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Disney adds directors
Walt Disney has added Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman and former Sky CEO Jeremy Darroch as new directors as the entertainment giant faces the threat of two shareholder challenges—one from Nelson Peltz's Trian Fund and another from ValueAct, a fund known for its low-key activism. Wall Street Journal
OpenAI's woman problem
OpenAI's new leadership—reinstated CEO Sam Altman and its new three-member board—is all male. The makeup reflects the AI industry's diversity problem, its regression back toward a hard-nosed culture, and OpenAI's rejection of the caution espoused by its female former directors. Top women in the field say they wouldn't join the board if asked. “I wouldn’t touch that board with a ten-foot pole,” says Sasha Luccioni, an AI ethics researcher at HuggingFace. Wired
Inside Gary Gensler's SEC
SEC chair Gary Gensler has become one of Washington's most recognizable figures with his hard-charging pursuit of corporate climate disclosures and crackdown on crypto scammers. In a new profile, Fortune's Leo Schwartz and Jeff John Roberts examine how Gensler’s over-the-top intensity could ultimately backfire. Fortune
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Yes SF Names Top Innovators Fourteen Top Innovators named in “Yes SF, Urban Sustainability Challenge,” the first location-based UpLink challenge supported by Deloitte, the World Economic Forum, Salesforce and 20+ collaborators. Innovator solutions will help revitalize San Francisco, making it a more sustainable place to live and work. Read more
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