Character.AI

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What if you could talk to Elon Musk? Or have a conversation with Draco Malfoy from Harry Potter? Character.AI lets users chat with everyone from billionaires and celebrities to historical and fictional characters. The online generative AI chatbot uses deep learning algorithms and large language models to engage the user in conversation the way the character it’s mimicking would in real life. Character.AI was founded in 2021 by ex-Google engineers Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, who serve as CEO and president of the startup, respectively. Earlier this year, it raised a $150 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz at a $1 billion valuation. The startup is reportedly in talks to raise more VC funding at a <a class="waffle-rich-text-link" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-28/character-ai-in-early-talks-for-funding-at-more-than-5-billion-valuation">$5 billion valuation</a>, including from their former employer Google, per <a class="waffle-rich-text-link" href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-talks-invest-ai-startup-characterai-sources-2023-11-10/">Reuters</a>. Character.AI is free to use, but users can pay a $9 monthly subscription to skip the virtual queue to talk to characters. The company said its website attracted 100 million monthly visits in the first six months after its launch.

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Do you understand the exact behaviors and characteristics that impact your leadership and success as a COO? In this interactive session, we’ll explore a unique methodology that helps executives perceive and ultimately enhance their organizational influence. Attendees will leave with unprecedented insight into how their own leadership behaviors directly correlate with operational performance outcomes. With data from thousands of executives that have completed her organization’s proprietary assessment, Leadership Circle Global COO Amy Felix-Reese will share the scientifically-proven profile of what qualities make up the most (and the least) effective COOs, and why.

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Gullnaz BAIG, Executive Director, Angsana Council Evi FUELLE, Director, Global Policy, Credo AI Zee Kin YEONG, CEO, Singapore Academy of Law Moderator: Clay CHANDLER,  FORTUNE

Brainstorm AI Singapore 2024: In Search of A Governance Model that works

So this is a, a very rich and complicated topic just like the region itself. Um I want to start maybe if we could just thinking about the opportunities we heard earlier in the discussion about whether uh uh customized largest language models could be devised for Southeast Asia, that there were all kinds of commercial opportunities that would uh fall in line with that. And I'm wondering if the same logic applies to uh governance models. Um What if you have thoughts as to what the, what the advantages might be of being able to come up with some kind of common framework or maybe we can think about what that framework might be uh down the, down the road a bit. But, but just talk about why the region might have an incentive, whether it's commercial or otherwise to kind of band together. Do you want to take the first shot of that? Yeah, sure. Firstly, thank you for having me on this panel. I sit at a unique intersection being the director for and final Council. We sit pretty close to start out various tech companies being from the tech sector ourselves. But at the same time we engage quite regularly with various governments in the region. And I think what we see is in terms of ASEAN integrity. And there being a digital economy per se by 2030 we could be the third largest economy in the world. If we were one country, there is extensive business potential. But the challenges lie in the fact that it's actually very hard to go across border. So the ability for us to leverage on the true potential that is offered by Southeast Asia sometimes hampered by land of say, for example, simple things like business recognition across border, some issues around cross border data flow, cyber security standards. Um Just to introduce a few that I'm quite sure my co panelists will dig into. Um So if we can get a framework together, there is this huge market out there for us and you do see some bigger markets in the region leaning towards protecting their own domestic market by putting up regulatory barriers. So that sometimes gets in the way of developing a regional framework. Really interesting. So and it's, it's an interesting, it's a, a big opportunity is a market, but it's also a big opportunity for from an investment standpoint. Like if you're a VC investor, the ability to be able to invest in a company, a company that operates across an entire region uh versus just in a single market uh is, is huge. And I I like your point about um you know, it, being the third largest economy, it's not only that, it's, it's large. If you think about it in an aggregate, it's also that it's got great demographics, most of the, uh, in individual economies in it and nearly all of them are right now growing at very respectable high growth rates compared to many of the other world's economies. So, if you think about that down the, down the road, it really, it, it kind of adds up you. What, what's your take on it? Yeah, if I could add to the comments you've already made, I think uh at Creta A I, we're working with enterprises that are highly regulated and they are global in scope and they're operating in these markets all over the world. So not only in this region but globally, they're looking for that commonality. How can they create a governance framework that is gonna stand the test of time? That is not a brittle uh market that only works in one jurisdiction or only satisfies particular risk uh requirements. So we're constantly looking for those elements of commonality. And I think that the benefit of that for businesses is building trust over time in different markets with different uh regulators. Uh but also having certainty with which they can operate and continue to operate in the long term. So I think we've seen a lot of commonality um even between things like the EU A I Act and the White House executive order on A I in terms of what the requirements are from enterprises, things like having comprehensive A I governance risk management systems, transparency reporting, some form of public notice impact assessments and A I registry. Things like this are, are sort of the common elements we're already seeing emerge. How about how about you? I know you work carefully with it. Yeah, so I personally have been working in this space of convergence for many years around data policies and A I and what what and the Academy of Law actually has a think tank, the Asian Business Law Institute that does work firmly in this space. I think it is utterly important for us to really take a step back and look at Southeast Asia as a whole, right? We need to understand the maturity of the economies and also the technology, right? And to I think majority of Southeast Asian nations are likely to be deployed and users of A I systems. Now, the good thing is that there is a fairly consistent set of principles around responsible A I, you can point to, for example, the OECD A I principles, right? As a set of principles. Now, how do you take a set of principles like this, bring it into Southeast Asia and achieve two goals? One to make it a lot easier for companies that are trying to bring products and services into Southeast Asia to very quickly localize the same products and make it a lot easier. The second is of course, how to assist companies in Southeast Asia to also adapt to that and grow out and expand beyond Southeast Asia. Uh We, we have actually a very, very useful platform ASEAN, right. And through ASEAN, it is possible to develop uh a, a governance framework for responsible A I modeled after and looking very much like the OECD princip and use that as a mapping standard so that as individual companies develop their own national frameworks, they're able to map into something like that. The ASEAN framework can be moderated, right, to suit the situation for ASEAN, which is largely deployments, right of, of A I system and also to, to adjust it such that it's a lot easier, the companies and the the the governments working in this space really interesting. I think there are several things there that uh have caught my ear. Um One is, you know ASEAN as a, as a framework for this, there have been, there's an ongoing discussion really about how ASEAN might uh kind of work together to come up with a common framework. Um How, how far along do you think that is? And is it uh is it, is it making progress? Where do, where do we stand right now? I mean, obviously, uh people think about the eu and they think of it as being fractious and always arguing and disagreeing and they haven't seen anything until they've seen Southeast Asia right, much more complex, diverse region and harder to, to come together. So where, where do we stand? I mean, I don't know how many of you here are technologist or from the sector, you know how fast technology develops and then you've worked and interacted with governments. I was from the public sector, um government, public sector don't move that quickly. And with A I particularly the break net speed at which different companies are racing to get ahead and get towards AGI governments are never gonna keep up, let alone a multilateral institution like Asian. So you need a framework but you also very quickly need to develop meaningful public, private partnerships. Um And that can help forward the goal. Um So, so that I'm going to pause back because I can talk and toy about this. No, that's really critical and it's interesting, I mean, Singapore story definitely uh underscores that, but either of you have kind of thoughts about how far along we are in terms of discussions about a framework. Well, so, so iiii I, I'm a glass half full kind of person, right? Yeah. So because I I look at it from the perspective is that from the perspective that number one ASEAN is not like the eu the way we are put together is very different. So we can't expect the cohesiveness, cohesiveness of eu in terms of policy making. Second, imagine if we didn't have ASEAN, right? So while there's a lot that can be said for moving faster for this kind of organization of Association of nations. This is the speed that everyone's comfortable with. It's better than not having something. But I would say um for A I governance is probably is likely to take the same kind of pathway that ASEAN took for data protection. Just imagine back in 2016, the ASEAN Ministers for Tele Telecommunications adopted a set of data protection principles for ASEAN progressively over the years, they built out the data management framework model contractual clauses to assist in the cross border transfer of personal data. It takes time, but we've concerted efforts, uh things can be developed. Now, these are still voluntary frameworks. They are not binding on the government, but at least they exist and once they exist and it's put out by an organization like ASEAN, there is a bit of impetus to say let's make use of them and let's try to be coherent. I can imagine that for A I, the same path might be taken as well. I think the first step has already been taken. The uh the the responsible A I framework has been, has been set out, right? So I think we can expect more of this down the road, but a lot of work still needs to be done by us in the room, right? As business owners to, to really reinforce that message as we are talking to policymakers and governments to say that look ASEAN put up something, right? Can we just make sure that when you introduce national policies be as coherent as possible? Right? Use it as a mapping standard because it helps businesses make sure that their internal compliance program is easy to manage. It makes it a lot easier to deploy products and services across Southeast Asia. So I don't claim to be an expert on, on kind of the ASEAN discussions about this, But I was struck to notice that there was a kind of big delegation of folks from the Eu who trooped to Southeast Asia last year and tried to persuade everyone to, you know, let's link up, let's have a common standard for, for both our markets, not just one market and to adopt our kind of uh GDPR uh framework and then it'll be easier for companies and it makes a lot of sense, but the response was not very enthusiastic from Southeast Asia. And surprisingly, what the Southeast Asian said is actually, we're very suspicious of over regulation because we're afraid that we're going to miss out on some of some of the benefits of, of innovation and these technologies will pass us by. Um So should we be discouraged by that or in a way, can we be encouraged by it? If we think that at least in that regard, all these countries seem to have sort of a common outlook, there seemed to be something resembling a consensus on that, do you have any thoughts about that? Um, I'll jump in but I would love to hear from my colleague here too. Um, we, we're sort of a mix a hybrid region. Right. We're very diverse. Um, we, we love each other yet. At the same time, we're always looking over our shoulder and wondering what our neighbors are doing. Um, so our model has always tended to be a hybrid of both regulate when we need to regulate or we want to regulate and regulation tend to come fast and quick here. We always need to keep a sense of the pulse. Um But at the same time, we like to keep an ecosystem, eh that's open to innovation, to test things out. And we like that because what you see happening in the eu is regulation comes up pretty quickly and to a certain extent it stifles innovation. So how do you do this balance? And I like what's happening in Thailand, I like what's happening in Singapore where governments are reaching out and thinking about how do I partner up with the private sector to think about meaningful applications of A I and I agree with my panels here in Southeast Asia, we're at the stage of application, not necessarily building up the technology from ground up per se. So governments really need to think about what makes sense for my country and to ensure that the infrastructure available in the country supports the application. So, for example, in Thailand, Thailand 4.0 for example, looks at industry application of A I and you know how they're gunning for a lot of investments in Thailand and making use of A I to automate certain technology, certain part of their manufacturing is putting them ahead of the game. Yeah, Thailand is kind of streets ahead of almost everyone in the region in terms of adopting solar. Yeah, but also in terms of data centers, for example, like Malaysia is gunning for tier three data centers to make sure that cyber security integrity, electricity availability supports the ecosystem. And similarly, in Singapore, we lifted our moratorium in late 2023 but plays very high standards for the next generation of data centers that's opening up. So really government's role here is to partner up with private sector and to ensure that the ecosystem supports innovation and development of enterprise. So I want to dig a little more deeply into that because I, I think there's there's a lot to unpack there. But uh do you have a thought about it? I I think just building on what you were talking about uh clay with the campaign for from the eu to sort of um do something similar around A I here in the region as they did prior to GDPR, I think that uh where enterprises are, are trying to do something different is looking beyond concepts like being a good steward of the data and thinking about how A I systems interact with each other and the unique risks related to A I. And for that reason, there's a little bit different approach taken to the regulatory aspect. So the EU has the ability to be united in its enforcement of the EU A I act, which I think is a big differentiating factor for why they're, you've got to have a much more kind of consensus approach here. Just, just one little agenda for that trade mission you mentioned, right? So while they came and as you mentioned, they wanted to no evangelized GDPR, there wasn't any pick up, right? But what came out of that, what came out of that was actually a joint effort between the European Commission, right, and ASEAN. And they came together and they did a mapping of the standard contractual clauses and model contractual clauses that came out of ASEAN standard contractual clauses that came out of eu because they recognize that trade needs to carry on between these two regions. So let's have some effort to try and match and make it a lot easier for businesses. So while there's a recognition that maybe some of these policies are not entirely suitable, but there is a recognition that trade needs to flow, data needs to flow. And is that kind of spirit I think that we need to encourage and I want to leave some time to take some questions from the floor. If anybody's got burning queries, put your hand up and wave at us and we'll, we'll recognize you. Um You mentioned the sort of things that uh many of these, these Southeast Asian nations have in common in terms of what they're looking for is a regulatory framework. But of course, there are individual, you know, specific issues that relate to A I that often kind of put them at odds against each other. Uh Data centers is one, you know, as soon as the moratorium happened in Singapore, uh all the operators rushed across to Johor instead of, you know, in Indonesia started putting up data centers there until there were more data centers across the border than they were here. And then the government went. Hm, maybe this is not what we want. So that's a kind of a friend of his example. The other one that's fascinating to me and I don't know, maybe none of you want to comment on this, but I spend a little bit of time looking in the Philippines and the Philippines is very ambivalent about, about A I because of the job uh uh implications, right? You've got a very big uh population of people who are employed, working at these call centers. And that's probably going to be one of the first places where companies are going to figure out that they can roll out uh you know, interactive chat bots with generative A I. And so they're much less enthusiastic about how, how do you see that is that, are there similar tensions in other, other economies as well? And are those insurmountable or there's a, there's a really good research piece done by Trisha Linkedin where, where they kind of did a study on the extent to which A I was gonna disrupt the employment of an individual or this place or augment or it's completely non applicable? Right. And this study was done on Indonesia. So for the bulk of the population A I would augment has the potential to augment. So what government, since this panel is about government and governance, what governments need to start thinking about is how do I support my workforce in thinking about how to effectively leverage A I? And similarly, for enterprises, we actually did a research on A I and the BPO sector in the Philippines. And yes, there's a potential for massive displacement of the workforce. And so it's about how quickly can they go further up in the, in the packing order of sale sets, right. Um So, so it's a challenge, what you do see happening in Southeast Asia is still in that stage where we're figuring out adoption of A I. So we've got a bit of breathing space here for governments to think about how to effectively manage this. I think even beyond the comments you made, um thinking about how A I can supplement the existing workforce or better enable people to do even more beyond what they are currently doing. Um and the integral part of that is designing A I in a responsible and trustworthy way. If an enterprise is able to accurately see who is using A I as a company and how using it, they can actually maximize the benefits of things like turn of A I understanding and sharing prompts amongst employees. So that, you know, this is how my enterprise is using it. This is what's working for my employees. This is what's not working and putting your own guard rails around it, I think is a really important part to it, augmenting the workforce as opposed to replacing. So a lot of this is it creates communication challenges and responsibilities, not just for companies, employers but also for for our government to say, oh look, this is going to be net positive for all of us. There are going to be some winners and losers. But trust us, we're going to do what we can to try to adjust and adjudicate that get people the skills they need. Yeah, that's hard. That's hard to do. Well, I'm going to just add to say that. Well, I can't speak for Philippines and call center. I am quite involved in Singapore and legal sector and legal sector is one of those that expected, expected to be disrupted by especially generative A I. But I think it all falls on us wherever we are to actually take the bull by the horns, right? So the Academy of Law has articulated a four pronged approach to this. Number one, we actually need to just grapple with this and find ways to teach our lawyers, not only to use A I, but also to teach them differently. Because A I tools are going to make their way into tools that will help them become more productive and tools that their clients are going to use. We need to work with solution providers to get A I solutions into the market so that they are using it, right? And of course for us, right, we also want to make sure that the lawyers learn how to do things like pro engineering, right? And of course our own products and services, we need to also use A I to enhance our feature set. So it's really up to us where we are seated to try and get something done, right? And not just wait for the disruption to happen, but let's try and get ahead of that. Sounds like some, some thorny challenges that is unfortunately all the time that we have. But please join me in thanking our panelists for a really fascinating discussion.

 SUSIE GHARIB: David, thank you so much for joining us. Your company, PGIM, is part of Prudential Financial, the huge insurance company. But many people don't know much about it. So tell us a little bit about what PGIM does. DAVID HUNT: PGIM is the 10th largest asset manager in the world. We manage $1.4 trillion, that's with a T, assets. And we do it across all of the major asset classes. In addition to public fixed income and public equities, we also are the second largest real estate investor in the world. And we have a very large private credit business. In fact, we're the third largest alternative player in the world. So we have a really broad scale of asset classes. In addition, we play very much as a global asset manager. We operate more than 30 offices across 16 countries, and we operate our business very much to serve both institutional and retail customers right around the globe. SUSIE GHARIB: Well, during the pandemic these past six months, you've been writing and talking a lot about the importance of stakeholder capitalism. And you say that one of the silver linings during this dark time is that many companies are stepping up and addressing the interests of their employees, and their customers, their communities that they serve, not just their shareholders. What are some of the changes that you can see? DAVID HUNT: Well, I think one of the really encouraging changes has been the level of investment and care that people have taken with their employees. I think you've seen company CEOs right across America, and indeed, in Europe as well, making sure that through this, their employees are well taken care of, that they have the tools that they need. They've stepped up in a fairly big way on education and helping people get settled in to work from home. And that investment in employee, they haven't viewed as an expense, but they've viewed that as a sign of future productivity in their employees. And I think that's very promising indeed. SUSIE GHARIB: So what else has surprised you as you look back at what some of these companies have been doing these past few months? DAVID HUNT: I've been really pleased to see the level of giving back into local communities that's happened. If I just take Prudential as an example, we've always been a major player in Newark, which has been our hometown for 140 years. But really with the pandemic, we have stepped up in a very big way from everything from contributing masks and protective equipment to actually upping our funding of a lot of minority owned and other businesses in the area. And many other companies have done the same. And I think it's been very heartwarming to see the care that people have taken in their communities. SUSIE GHARIB: Well, I was interested to learn that well before coronavirus hit, PGIM had already been supporting the communities that it serves. How did this all come about? Was this something that evolved naturally or was it intentional, something that you made happen? DAVID HUNT: I think it's been very intentional. It's a very important part of the character and culture of Prudential and of PGIM. The notion of service and the notion of giving back and that we really are here as part of a larger social fabric is very much how we think of ourselves. And so this is not new, but I would say that it's caused us to step up our level of engagement. And I think that that's been very positive. SUSIE GHARIB: Well, actually it seems that there is an expectation these days from employees and also from the public for business leaders to speak up and address social issues. Do you think that the job of CEO has changed? Do you have a moral responsibility to address these social issues? DAVID HUNT: Susie, I'm really glad you raised that, because I think that the expectation has changed. If I look at many of our clients, and many of them are big public pension plans, corporate plans, they're very interested in what our stance is on issues of diversity, issues around climate change, issues around governance. They're very interested in how we employ ESG technology to evaluate investments. And I think that this is a journey that they've been on for a while. But I think it's taken an enormous step forward now with the pandemic. And I expect that will continue. And personally, I welcome that. I think that that will lead to companies that have a broader set of stakeholders in how they actually govern themselves. SUSIE GHARIB: One of these days, the pandemic will come to an end. What's your prediction about the business community's commitment to being a good corporate citizen? Is this a short-term thing or a long-term commitment? DAVID HUNT: So I really do believe, I mean, again, we invest in companies for the long term. And companies that really do have a purpose and companies that do serve a broad range of stakeholders, in general, do better for their shareholders over the long term. And so I believe more and more companies will discover that through this pandemic. And I am very optimistic that the changes we've seen more recently will actually become part of the new normal as we come back out of this pandemic. SUSIE GHARIB: David, looking ahead, let's say two to three years from now, what meaningful changes would you like to see when it comes to the topics that we've been talking about? DAVID HUNT: So I think that the recent focus by many CEOs on social equality has been really, really important. And I have been very pleased to see the broad range of CEOs speaking out very openly and very publicly on taking an anti-racist stance. For ourselves, I'll just give you one specific example. We have for a long time had a very productive emerging managers program, where we invest in small asset managers that are largely minority owned. And these are very talented people who have very good investment track records but aren't getting large enough really to be on an institutional platform. And we work with them in kind of an accelerator fashion to get them to the point where they can get access. And, of course, when we invest in them, that provides a bit of a halo effect as well. And we've been really pleased at the success we've had in helping build more minority firms in asset management, which we desperately need. SUSIE GHARIB: David, that is impressive. And on top of that, it's a good example of your leadership during the nearly 10 years that you've been the CEO of PGIM. And I'm sure that during that time, you really haven't faced a leadership challenge like this global pandemic crisis. In what ways would you say that this crisis has changed or evolved the way you lead the company? DAVID HUNT: I think that the requirement on leaders in this last six months has been very different than normal. So often, we focus on strategic thinking, on some of the harder skills that we're all brought up to believe are critical for CEOs. But I would have said that in the last six months, motivation, empathy, compassion, and resiliency are probably much more. And if I think about how I'm spending my time, it's really with our employees and with our clients listening, making sure that I understand what they're going through, and providing as much support as I can to people who are in, no question, very unusual and difficult circumstances. 

David Hunt says the notion of service and giving back is part of the character and culture of the company.

PGIM CEO: Our business operates as part of a "larger social fabric"

Leadership

David Hunt says giving back is part of the company culture.

PGIM CEO: We operate as part of a "larger social fabric"

[ MUSIC ] Gaming is the number one form of entertainment in the world. We've surpassed the revenue of the movies and TV and music. I think we're at about $ 130 billion as an industry. It's a very core motivation that video games fulfill. So I've been at Electronic Arts for close to 24 years, and I've had the privilege of having many roles at the company. And and we bring games such as EA Sports battlefield, the [ UNKNOWN ] Plants vs Zombies to life and it's just a real privilege to Work at this organization, and we exist to inspire the world to play, and when you are in the business of inspiring the world, it means the world, and you need to ensure that you have diverse and inclusive content for everyone to play, and for everyone to connect with I have actually always been a gamer, from board games to my computer lab. I used to beg my parents for family game nights every week. There were years, about ten years ago where I would often go in as a male aviator because I played a lot of MMO. I played a lot of online Mind games and going on as a women I would get targeted at times. So I'm about two or three years ago I created an employee resource group called women's Ultimate Team. It was really meant to create a sense of community and a sense of belonging for women in our organization. And we had heard Geena Davis speak at a conference and through her Institute For gender diversity in media, we were incredibly inspired to think about how we could apply this idea to gaming. And so we quickly went to work and started the process of this. And what the process is, it's a framework. Of questions and guidelines around characters how they're represented in our games? Are the characters heroes, are they villains, are they victims? How the dialogue is written? Is there bias in the dialogue? How game modes are created. And so our teams go through this process and evaluate, are we being diverse and inclusive and are we being intentional about how we're bringing our content into into the world? Oftentimes our ERGs all come together and represent underrepresented groups. And we have 1 % loss for Hispanic and Latina's, we have a black and African American group called beat. [ MUSIC ] We just put a game out called Need for Speed Heat, takes place in a city that's very Miami ESK, and we wanted really rich flavours of Hispanic and Latino community represented. So we have a so most yogi and we had them review clothes and language and colors of cars. And so we were very specific on that group. And of course, there's intersectionality and our women's energy participated as well. But we were really focused on ensuring that we represented this community in a way that we wanted to In a way that it was relevant and resonated with them. [ MUSIC ] I hope that representation expands our audience. It's like, I mean, again, in certain categories and genre there's certainly a higher male portion of players. And so, I'm hoping that we can also help. Players think differently about it. I think that having inclusive and diverse characters or diverse characters people see themselves in games and are more open to actually playing them and experiencing them. And I just have to believe that the more diverse our players are, that the better that will get, that the better that will be [ MUSIC ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Characters for Everyone: EA's Resourceful Approach to Making Games More Inclusive

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The company is using employee groups to review games.

EA's Resourceful Approach to Making Games More Inclusive

Head of Worldwide Studios, Laura Miele, reveals how the company is using Employee Resource Groups to review games.

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