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LinkedIn Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings | Fortune

Emma Burleigh

Even top CEOs check their phones first thing in the morning—these are the apps business executives are reaching for

/2026/01/02/even-top-ceos-check-phones-first-thing-morning-apps-business-executives-reaching-for/

Goldman Sachs CEO says he’d hire someone ‘smart enough’ over the smartest person in the world because ultimately experience trumps brains

/2025/12/22/goldman-sachs-ceo-best-job-candidate-isnt-smartest-person-in-world-hires-just-smart-enough-talent-this-reason-experience-over-book-smart-college-degrees/

Sydney Lake

LinkedIn CEO says it’s ‘outdated’ to have a five-year career plan: It’s a ‘little bit foolish’ considering the pace AI is changing the workplace

/2025/12/18/linkedin-ceo-ryan-roslansky-career-advice-5-year-plan-ai/

Orianna Rosa Royle

Elon Musk and Bill Gates are wrong about AI replacing all jobs. ‘That’s not what we’re seeing,’ LinkedIn exec says—the opposite is happening

/2025/12/05/elon-musk-and-bill-gates-are-wrong-about-ai-imminently-replacing-all-jobs-thats-not-what-were-seeing-linkedin-exec-career-advice-apocalypse-entry-level-jobs-good-news-for-gen-z/

This IBM exec asks job candidates whether they think we are in an AI bubble as a make-or-break interview test—and there’s no right or wrong answer

/2025/12/01/ibm-exec-asks-job-candidates-whether-they-think-we-are-in-an-ai-bubble-as-a-make-or-break-interview-test/

https://fortune.com/2025/12/22/goldman-sachs-ceo-best-job-candidate-isnt-smartest-person-in-world-hires-just-smart-enough-talent-this-reason-experience-over-book-smart-college-degrees/?itm_source=parsely-api

https://fortune.com/2026/01/02/even-top-ceos-check-phones-first-thing-morning-apps-business-executives-reaching-for/?itm_source=parsely-api

LinkedIn CEO says it's 'outdated' to have a five-year career plan: It's a 'little bit foolish' considering the pace AI is changing the workplace

https://fortune.com/2025/12/18/linkedin-ceo-ryan-roslansky-career-advice-5-year-plan-ai/?itm_source=parsely-api

CEO of $8 billion AI company says it’s ‘mind-boggling’ that people think you can work 38 hours a week, have work-life balance, and be successful

https://fortune.com/2025/10/13/ceo-of-8-billion-ai-company-cerebras-andrew-feldman-work-life-balance-founders-entrepreneurs-success-careers-38-hour-workweek/?itm_source=parsely-api

Preston Fore

As degrees get branded worthless, LinkedIn’s just revealed the universities that give Gen Z the best shot at corner office jobs

https://fortune.com/2025/08/13/gen-z-useless-degrees-best-colleges-long-term-career-success-linkedin-list-princeton-duke-upenn-struggling-job-market/?itm_source=parsely-api

https://fortune.com/2025/12/05/elon-musk-and-bill-gates-are-wrong-about-ai-imminently-replacing-all-jobs-thats-not-what-were-seeing-linkedin-exec-career-advice-apocalypse-entry-level-jobs-good-news-for-gen-z/?itm_source=parsely-api

Feon Ang

The way to get middle managers to embrace AI? Invest in people, not technology, first

https://fortune.com/2025/11/07/middle-managers-ai-adoption-linkedin-feon-ang/?itm_source=parsely-api

Lily Mae Lazarus

A CEO was caught hugging his chief people officer during a Coldplay concert—and people are furious

https://fortune.com/2025/07/17/ceo-caught-hugging-coldplay/?itm_source=parsely-api

Nino Paoli

Nestlé is laying off over 16,000 employees under its new CEO—and says a key motivator is 'automation'

https://fortune.com/2025/10/16/nestle-layoffs-job-cuts-philipp-navratil-turnaround-automation/?itm_source=parsely-api

Sara Braun

Duolingo's CEO outlined his plan to become an 'AI-first' company. He didn’t expect the human backlash that followed

https://fortune.com/2025/06/09/duolingo-ceo-surprised-backlash-ai-first-company-announcement/?itm_source=parsely-api

In 2016, Philip Morris International announced a bold new mission: to deliver a “smoke-free future.” Its U.S. division—Philip Morris U.S.—is now leading that charge with a portfolio of smoke-free products, including the widely known nicotine pouch brand ZYN. Yet globally, Philip Morris International continues to sell cigarettes, fueling the very addiction it says it aims to eliminate.
In this episode, Ruth Umoh sits down with Seth Kaufman, chief commercial officer of Philip Morris U.S., to discuss what success looks like for a company trying to move consumers away from cigarettes, the ethical tensions embedded in its business model, and whether a truly smoke-free future is possible.

Can a tobacco giant build a smokefree future? | Next to Lead 

Leadership

From Asia to Africa and the Middle East, bold innovators and visionary leaders are unlocking the next wave of global expansion across emerging markets. Hear from changemakers leveraging financial innovation, digitized supply chains, and global trade networks to accelerate growth. They share a common conviction: the next decade’s economic leap will come from regions often overlooked, and technology, capital, and infrastructure will determine who leads.

Fast Tracking Growth in Emerging Markets

Conferences

Welcome. All right, well, we're here to talk about emerging markets, and I think it's only appropriate that we start with you, Mohammed. Um, we're here in Saudi Arabia, obviously, and you have a startup that has been named by LinkedIn as one of the most successful startups, multiple years in a row. Um, tell us a little bit about your company and what is it about starting it here that made it so successful? Yeah, absolutely. It's a pleasure to be here. Um, our company called Silk with a Q, which is inspired by the Silk Road, and the idea here is to integrate a global network with the marketplaces within local markets. And we were one of the early that built a local B2B marketplace that helped. Manufacture and marginalized SMEs businesses that's called SAI. And what excites us about this is when we look at the big the problem in terms of financial exclusion in emerging markets almost kind of 5.7 trillion so we focus on building the first layer of commerce and we chose Saudi because there are tons of tailwinds when it comes to e-invoicing, Vision 2030, Expo that is magnetic to a lot of supplier manufacturer. So we thought one of the biggest question we ask ourselves, we talked to our community is why now, and I think it's the best time to build here in Riyadh. So that is why we started and why we think why now is critical for us to build that new trade layer. That is fully integrated to the local market and has that liquidity to make it scale and grow beyond limits. Yeah, and Muni, I know that you had a big announcement recently that JPMorgan was investing an additional $30 million into your business Bidvest. That's a huge deal for any entrepreneur. Tell us how that relationship came about. Did they find you? Did you find them? Um, thank you. So, so JP Morgan has been a long-term investor, um, in Midwest. Uh, we're listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, and in fact, more than 50% of our shareholders are offshore. Um, so we've got a fantastic offshore interest in South Africa and offshore interest in the group, and that's been Fantastic. And, and they're long term shareholders and it's not just them. Westwood, that's based in Boston is a big shareholder, Lazard Asset Management is a big shareholder. Um, so we do have a number of your more large asset managers that see value, that are happy with the return and that are happy with the growth story um of the best. Fantastic. And let's see, one of your, um, roles now is to bring more investment into Bangladesh. I wonder how's it going and what's your pitch? What's the elevator pitch? Well, elevator pitch, I'm not sure can stick. I just want to take a step back and And zoom out. This morning we heard about tectonic shifts and changes in the global order. The IMF released a report last week that showed the global uncertainty, according to their index, is twice as high as the most recent peak during COVID and 4 or 5 times as high as a decade ago. Um, and there are various components to that was the deglobalization. Uh, digitalization, decarbonization, demographics, um, uh, with all of these, what do we do as a country? We look at what our natural national endowments are and how can we lean into these global vectors of change. For us, um, it's really our people. We are probably, well, we are certainly the most densely populated country in the world, 175 million people. Um, a third of the size of Thailand, but the population of Russia and Canada combined. Young people 25 years of age or so. So in terms of how we may recognize that here in Saudi Arabia, uh, our crude oil. is our young people, but we need refineries so that we're able to find applications for various grades of skills and education. So that is really the place where we need to invest and that's also the resource that we are willing to share with the rest of the world because the rest of the world by and large is aging. I can tell you later how we're actually doing it, but I'll stop there. Well, Mohammed, speaking of, you know, successful founders and startup culture, what do you think differentiates a successful founder in this part of the world versus maybe in Silicon Valley or some other capital? Well, I think founders globally are kind of consistent in terms of being obsessed with the problem and uh solving something that is big and aspiring. I think when it comes to different geography, it's about understanding localization, innovation according to the market, to the norm, and to the tradition. But what unify entrepreneur globally is going after massive daring market. When you look at, for example, in Saudi. 90% of the businesses in Saudi are SMEs, yet they receive only 9% of the lending from the bank. So it's a massive kind of gap, and the challenges goes greater when you go to other emerging markets. So it's a massive market been lingering for decades. So we think that's what excites talent, what excites community to go build around that. So, I think one is tackling bigger problem, tackling something that daring that cultivate the culture. And then I think what differentiates here, I think it's a younger generation and you speaking to a lot of investors. We have backers from globally, Peter Thiel fund and others, and we have local funds like PIF investing in us. I think one of the key elements here is there are tons of tailwinds. You see open banking happens, so you have that full transparency. You have e-invoicing that has been adopted by all. So a lot of kind of capability make that infrastructure fragile. So you have young generation. Big disrupted kind of market, massive tailwind and a massive appetite from a global investor. So, I think just understanding the problem. Being obsessed with them and kind of learn from a global kind of landscape, but apply innovation to solve local problems. Differently sure and Mpumi, when you're looking at different we were talking about um you know a company that you've invested in that does uh the you know things in restrooms like the soap dispensers and the paper towels um what are you looking for in terms of this is a business I think can grow this is something I wanna be involved with. Yeah, so I mean our philosophy is around business models that fit a particular criteria, right? So we're looking for businesses that are asset light. We're looking for businesses that have recurring income. We're looking for businesses that are inherently defensive in their nature. So we watch a lot around how those businesses um perform through COVID, how did they perform through a financial crisis, etc. so that we can assess the extent of the defensiveness. Uh, and then we've got financial metrics that we're looking for. So we're looking for high margin, high return, high cash generated businesses. That's, that's generally what we're looking for. Um, and so at the moment, um, 30% of our operations are outside of South Africa. We're building a large global hygiene business. Uh, we're #2 in the world at the moment. Um, and so we're looking for those types of, types of assets, um, to consolidate kind of globally. But more importantly, outside of the business model, we're looking for the best management teams in the world because ultimately, how You run a successful business is through people. And so even in our due diligence process, even if we take all the other metrics, if we don't take the people one, we will walk away. So we acquire the best management teams who happen to do what we do. Yeah. Speaking of people, I know that you've said that sometimes people will leave your company, but then they come right back and to, to talk a little bit about creating a culture that people want to come back to you. Yeah, I think not only to live and come back, but when we started, I think Si we said how can we create a wave that people live and build company, build ecosystem, find, and when you go to a bigger problem, there are a lot of nuances can be built around that kind of ecosystem. So we have an ESO with a lot of our employees who have they have an equity within the within the company, giving them that exit and capability to go build their own company. So we take a ride and actually creating that an alumni network. A lot of people actually come in as a potential entrepreneur. So we think they're gonna come through that curve, learn, understand how to apply it and have that capability to go. So within that ESO we're giving them that segue to go build bigger impact. So that is the focus is not just to cultivate the best talent. But also equip them to go build kind of the next venture that disrupt within the same ecosystem, yeah, and potentially you could partner with them in the future. Let's see, I know we have actually two former investment bankers on our panel, both you and Mohammed. What did those years teach you that's now helping you in your current role? I think I want to go back to Bangladesh because since this is becoming a bit of an infomercial, I need to. I need to do my bit. So first of all, I'll take names that are in the public domain. I have letters of commendation from Chevron, MetLife. Uh, young one, the makers of North Face jackets on just how remarkable and action oriented the business and investment climate in Bangladesh has become in the last year or so. Mohammad, I believe you've also gotten yourselves involved in there as well. And the reason for this is, let's be very clear, we, uh, there is now complete consensus that we need to We need a master key to unlock a master door for all the economic aspirations of the country. The master door is private investment, foreign direct investment in particular. And the master key is government reforms. Unless government is agile and responsive and ready for the world order that we described earlier on, um, we're going to be found flat-footed. And so that's why there's a tremendous amount of actual, um, you know, on the ground action-oriented reforms that we're undertaking. And I would invite everyone to come and test it. It is informed, of course, by my background in investment banking because I know what it looks like, having run global emerging markets for a global investment bank, what it looks like from the other side of the table, so I can trace your journey. And the investor experience, and I would encourage everyone to come and test it. Is there one deal that you sort of seems like a model that you would like to repeat? You dropped a couple of names, but is there one deal that comes to mind? I think it's a rather than pick a favorite, I think what I would say is I'll pick a template, and the template is we now have a souped up refined, streamlined investment development authority. Which has been merged with our Economic zones Authority. I run an interministerial investment coordination committee that meets roughly once a month with the governor of the central bank, the, the head of customs and Inland Revenue, the port authorities, etc. and we just make sure that nothing gets stuck in the interministerial system. And that in itself has been able to, uh, has allowed us to convert what is an interest into an actual investment in record time. Yeah. Mpumi, we had a whole panel on Africa earlier today, um, but I wonder if you can just tell us a little bit about Africa's growth story and what are some of the drivers that you think are going to be important in the next 5 to 10 years. Yeah, I mean, I, I listened to the panel, so, so I know what the content was about. And, and, and the point that I'd like to make one point so that that's the only thing that's really, that's really remembered. I think that the um disconnect when we have a conversation around the continent um is that we disproportionately focus on a conversation around risk. Versus a conversation around value, return, etc. So when we talk about opportunities in developed markets, we talk about market proxies, indices, we talk about value creation. We talk about risk, but more how it has been de-risked, right? We, we talk differently. Um, yes, when we switch to our conversation about the African continent, risk perception becomes the big thing. And I think we need to change the discourse when we talk about the African continent. Lastly, I think I'd like to say when you talk about the African continent, look at businesses on the continent and what they have achieved, and let that be your proxy. If I use Bidves as an example, um, we've been around for 37 years. In 2016, we were in 34 countries across the world. We listed our international operations separately and today that business called Bitcorp is double the market cap of its parent company, right? We are again rebuilding um that international footprint. We're now 30% offshore. All of this is being built off a balance sheet from an African business that's what Africa can give you. Amazing and it was interesting when you were speaking earlier you said uh one of the things you're looking for is defensive, something that can survive a recession or a global pandemic. Um, tell us a little bit more about that approach because I feel like we hear so much about growth, growth, growth, growth, growth, but you have a different perspective. Yeah, so I mean and and it's, it's people actually don't realize that. It's the more below the line, um, kind of business models that aren't fancy, um, where they just will continue giving you growth. um, and, and I mean, the business model that we were talking about specifically was washroom services. And if, if I use that as an example, it's the, it's the soap dispensers, the paper dispensers, the air freshener, it's the stuff that you don't think about when you walk into a washroom. But you expect to be there. So the reality is that even when there's a tariff wall, there's going to be soap in the washroom. Even when there's an economic downturn, you still need toilet paper in the washroom. And so it's those kind of very basic simple business models actually that at times continue to just exist regardless of what happens in the world and how changes kind of take place. Yeah. um. Moving back to your startup, um, I think, uh, one of the things you've decided is to try and grow into a decacorn instead of do an IPO. Tell us a little bit about that calculus. Yeah, I think just to add on the point of, I think not only about growth but building that durability and Kind of a few years ago I stumble on one of the kind of the podcasts and it was like build a phoenix that can survive 100 years rather than a unicorn. So for me as well as how can we build that durability? How can we build something that is lasting rather than focus on probably the next probably couple of years and the focus for us is. We have a problem and I've spoken to different founders globally solving the same problem, and I realized that we have a unified broken unit which is SMEs is inexpensive to serve by classical legacy system and to require better velocity, a lightweight asset, and we looked at company globally how can we build that coalition and that's why we created silk and we have now a company in Bangladesh called ShopOp served more than Half a million kind of uh businesses we partner with a company like Mastercard to get an inclusion to a lot of women driven businesses that contributing to the Bangladeshi market. The same thing here in Saudi we're kind of empowering around a billion real internal financing to the small businesses that is nano to to bigger merchants. I think one of the bigger problem we focus on is something called kind of a data desert is. A lot of this client is invisible to the bank and clear to the bank, and we're trying to solve that and I think with the age of AI that will kind of give us that. Scalability will give us that efficient growth as we go, so. I think initially we started with an obsession to solve something that A problem for me, for my colleagues, and we're coming back from like, I used to work with Karim, the first unicorn in the region. I helped them launch a lot of markets and I've seen. You need to build something that is scalable and something that creates that ripple effect. So we solved it for us initially, how to solve that supply chain. Then the dream got bigger. How can we solve that society? But then we realized that probably a problem exists for the global south and how can we build a bigger kind of unification. And I think we got that multiplier effect. The more we learn from Saudi, we feed into Bangladesh to feed into India and other markets. The system is get better and attract better talent, and we create that kind of lasting impact. Yeah, Lay, I know speaking of AI, you've expressed some caution about AI. There are things that worry you. If you could just give us a few words of hope and, you know. Well, what I really, really like about the stories I'm hearing here. is that we're talking about the use case and the impact and the people you're serving who are underserved at the moment, um, as opposed to here's a shiny new piece of technology. Let's take it to Unicorn and then Decacon and off we go. That I think that world has has destroyed so much value in recent worlds, recent years. So I'm very glad we're talking here about real people and real jobs and real enterprise. Um, the thing about emerging markets is that if we can get the governance piece right, I keep on coming back to that as the, the master key, because if you can't get it right, it becomes the, the master not in the noose if you like. But if we can get it right, Emerging markets, countries like Bangladesh have, we know what the potential is. We're so behind our potential. We can harness technologies and management techniques and the learnings that we just heard about and really use that for our fast tracking. Growth, which is the title of our session, we can really do that because we are so far behind our frontier. It's much more difficult for some of the countries that are already at the frontier and they're only looking at efficiency drives as opposed to growing the pie. I can't believe that brings us to the end. I'm going to think of you whenever I wash my hands in the restroom. Thank you all. I'm going to use a lot of soap, a lot of towels. Thank you guys so much for joining us. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Have you ever had a busy day and said to yourself, “I wish there were two of me”? Delphi Cofounder and CEO Dara Ladjevardian has made that fantasy into a reality. Inspired by his desire to converse with his grandfather and benefit from his wisdom after a stroke, Ladjevardian set to work on creating code that captures and scales the mind of any individual. In this must-see session, he’ll explain his process and demo the technology’s practical use cases for corporate executives—ending with an interview with the digital twin of Fortune’s own Diane Brady. 

GET READY TO MEET YOUR DIGITAL TWIN

So, so he, who here has actually thought to themselves, I wish I could clone myself. Anyone, come on, we're all busy. You definitely multiple meetings. I wish, I always wish I had one. Well, now we're in a world where that's no longer a fantasy, and to introduce myself, my name is Darla Gevar, and I'm the co-founder and CEO of Delphi, and we allow people to create a digital version of themselves to scale their impact and their time. And in this world where every person potentially has a digital mind, you can connect with a top expert in the world in any subject. You can potentially connect with your great grandparents and maybe your great grandkids can connect with you. But before I get into the implications of this world and how people are using this technology, let me tell you a bit about how I got here. In 2014, I was gifted a book called How to Create a Mind by Ray Kurzweil, and you know Kurzweil? Legend. He was very much ahead of his time, but in this book, he says that one day if we had a technology that could serve as a pattern recognizer for language, you could recreate the human mind. I remember that six years later in 2021, I had started my first company. It was called Friday. It was a company that leveraged LOMs to allow you to buy anything with a text, and I was a solo founder at the time. And many of you guys know the first time you start a company it's very lonely and isolating. Everyone's telling you different advice. You don't know who to listen to, but at the time I was reading a book about my grandfather who was one of the most successful businessmen in Iran before the revolution. He had 30,000 employees at his peak, got put on the hit list by the Ayatollah, and he had to escape, and he came to this country with nothing and was able to rebuild his life back for our family. And he was a legend. He was someone that I really wanted to be able to get advice from and ask, what would you do in my situation? This wasn't a question that a book could answer, and he had had a stroke two years prior, so I couldn't ask him directly myself. But I did realize that these LLMs that I was using to build this first startup, they were pattern recognizers, pattern recognizers for language, and I could actually use them in the way Ray Kurzweil suggested to recreate my grandfather's mind. And that's exactly what I did. I created a digital version of him that I could talk to and ask for advice. And that startup got acquired, but that experience just got me really thinking about how we learn from other people and how you can read a book or watch a YouTube video or listen to a podcast, but most of the ways we access knowledge today are passive unless you have a lot of money or unless you can afford to be in a room like this, which most people don't have. And the problem is time. The most unique asset each one of us has is our mind, and up until now, the way you express your mind has a cap. You can only be in one place at one time. And since the beginning of time we've constantly innovated on ways to scale our mind whether it was cave paintings, to the printing press, to the radio. Traditional media allows us to reach millions of people, but it lacks the personalization of conversation, and that's why you hire teams. You try to train teams in your ways of thinking so that you can scale your knowledge in this interactive way, but it loses the essence of who you are. So the question that we had is, what if you could have a new source of media that combines the scalability of traditional media and the personalization of bidirectional conversation. And so we started Delphire. Delphi lets you create a digital version of your mind so that you can have that one on one experience across time zones, across geographic barriers, across languages so that your mind is uncapped. And to tell you a little bit how it works, you pretty much connect your data sources from your email, your social media, your notes, and we create this representation of your mind, and this isn't just where you work or who you know, but how you think about things because that's what makes you unique, your decision making process. That's really what you want to scale. And from there, people can chat with you, call you, and even FaceTime you, which we'll see in a little bit. And before I jump into the use cases, let me tell you a little bit of the, of the why now. Obviously, AI is now affordable. When I built the clone of my grandfather, it was 10,000 times more expensive and it just continues to get cheaper. Consumer demands for how they consume content is changing rapidly. TikTok and Reels lowering attention spans. Younger generations are not reading books as much. They're not going through courses. There's a desire for a more immediate gratification form of learning from someone else. And the last thing is we are currently in an abundance era, and what do I mean by that? The beginning of the internet was an abundance era, dot com era. You had so many dot-coms and Wikipedia pages and blogs, and the creator economy was actually a response to that. Whenever there is an era of abundance, the pendulum usually swings towards a desire for trust and curation. So right now information is abundant and when information is abundant, the bottleneck is not access to information, but rather access to curation and trust. And I think we're seeing that pendulum thing right now. People are over the honeymoon phase, they're getting over the honeymoon phase of AI. So let me tell you about how people are actually using this technology in the business world. One is at the top of the funnel. You want to pick my brain. I don't want to give you my email, but you can talk to my Delphi. And it can answer all the questions and it knows the kinds of people that I want to have in-person meetings with, so it's going to let me know if we should hop on a call, and we have people using this as a replacement of their personal website, their LinkedIn profile, their resume. Then we have the middle of the funnel 24/7 access to an executive or the CEO as a form of customer support. And why is that any different than just a generic customer support chatbot? Well, I think there's an interesting email from Mark Zuckerberg to Peter Thiel where he talks about how his reputation with millennials and Gen Z is very important. And fast forward you see him with the perm and the chain and you know looking very cool. That's all very calculated. He knows that people connect with people, not nameless entities. So we see a lot of the CEOs using Delphi as customer support, building parasocial relationships with their customers, leading to higher NPS. The third is internal. As a company scales, the thing that really breaks is company culture and alignment of decision making. So we have many CEOs and executives scaling themselves so that any new hire who on boards into the company has access to a version of the executives so they can know how to make decisions and how to do things the right way. We have CEOs scaling the highest caliber salespeople in their organization to make their knowledge available to other salespeople so that everyone can get that kind of mentorship and management. And then we all know a big problem is tribal knowledge when you have someone who leaves the company and they take their knowledge with them. Well, now you can turn their mind into an asset that stays in the company, so whoever replaces them can catch up to speed a lot faster. And then you can use data from those conversation analytics to see where in the company you need to focus on. And the last use case is we have people making multi-seven figures in revenue selling time with their mind. Sounds crazy, but people make. 8 figures in revenue selling a book or selling a course. This is just an interactive piece of content that people pay for to learn in an interactive way. So those are the four main use cases we see today and obviously there's a lot of fears around AI I'm going to address those fears head on. You might say, what happens to my data. As we know, a lot of these big AI companies are raising at enormous rounds on the promise that they're going to train models on your data to build bigger and bigger models. With Delphi, we believe AI is best when it's in the hands of the individual, so you own your data, not used to train any external models. Number 2 is probably the most common. What if it says something bad? When when we started the company, many of the fears we had, and we worked with a lot of celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tony Robbins, Jay Shetty. What if someone takes a screenshot and sends it to the Daily Mail and there's a hit piece on me? Well, luckily fixing hallucination and guardrails was the first thing we had to do at the company. And so there's two ways you might want something like this. Either it only answers questions directly that it has the data on, or you want it to give it a little bit more leeway where it can reason on new situations. An example of that would be if I were to ask my grandfather's clone. How would you think about starting an AI company? He's never spoken about AI in his life, but he started an oil business in the mid-twentieth century in Iran, which was relatively uncertain, and he could apply that reasoning of dealing with uncertainty to an entirely new situation. So those are some of the fears I will address, and I think we'll have time for Q&A at the end, but I thought we'd bring up a digital mind of our very own Dianne Brady to ask some questions. I'm gonna ask a question first. I don't know, maybe you are the digital self. We don't have to. Um, so there's my digital self. I see her coming up. I don't see her. Is she up there? One second, I'll check. I'm not sure what you mean. Are you asking about someone specific? Let me know, and I'll do my best to help. All right, while we're waiting for her to go on stage. I guess the last fear I wanted to address is what if this makes me seem inauthentic. And I think the goal, there she is. The goal of this technology is that it's not deceptive, and I'll pause and Diane, hey, we're here speaking at the Fortune CO summit about AI. Any words of wisdom on how we could keep up to date with this rapidly changing technology. Well, first off, Dara, I'd say don't worry about seeming inauthentic. The key is transparency, being up front about how you're using AI and why. People respect honesty, and it's when you try to hide things that trust erodes. As for keeping up with AI, I'd suggest focusing on the practical applications that matter most to your business. It's easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer pace of change, but the real value lies in understanding how this technology can solve specific problems or create opportunities. And don't forget to lean on experts whether it's your team, industry peers, or forums like this summit. What's your biggest concern about AI right now? That's for me? You know, um, I think one of my concerns, of course, this is Diane Brady, the real Dianne Brady, and, uh, and I'm curious about how replaceable I am. Diane, what do you see when you look in the mirror? When I look in the mirror, I see someone who's curious, driven, and maybe a little too caffeinated at times. I think it's about seeing the layers, journalist, leader, mom, friend, and knowing they all shape how I show up in the world. What about you? What do you see? Uh, something a little different. You know, I'm curious. I've been asked to ask any Thing, I'm going to ask if you have any memories of your childhood because I'm curious just how wide. Well, if you've been given the green light to ask anything, go big. What's the one question you've always wanted to ask someone but never had the chance? Or if you're feeling philosophical, what's the one thing you'd want to know about the future? Let's hear it. That's a very good question. Um, I think one thing I'd like to know about the future is, where do you think you can add value where the real Dianne Brady cannot? Is that stumping you, Diane? Maybe it's muted. Maybe, oh, I see it is muted. Yeah, it is muted. So you know, one thing I found with this, I think I can absolutely add value for the real Diane. The goal here is to extend her voice, amplify her insights, and help her connect with more people in meaningful ways. It's not about replacing her but complimenting her work like a digital assistant with her personality and perspective. What do you think would be the most valuable way for me to do that? I suppose that email and perhaps having people ask me questions. It's interesting this exercise, when I first engaged with this, I found the digital self to be a little humorless, and it made me realize I need to upgrade my LinkedIn profile because I kept spouting these things back at myself where I was like, really, content connections, conversation, but this is, I find this to be a much deeper version. Diane, um, what are you working on right now that you say, oh, let me just, should I go historically? So, uh, Diane, you've written about, uh, Donald Trump and tariffs. Talk a little bit about what some of the issues. What are some of the issues business leaders I'm not sure I caught that. Are you asking about something specific? Let me know and I'll jump in. Um, tell us, tell us a little bit about what business leaders are thinking about tariffs right now from what you've written. Parents are a huge focus for business leaders because they're often the ones juggling the most work, family, and everything in between, flexibility has. Diane, I think we asked about tariffs. What's your opinion on tariffs right now? Let me look. Tariffs are a tricky subject. They're often sold as a way to protect domestic industries, but the reality is they usually end up being a tax on consumers. For example, I've pointed out before that tariffs imposed on imports are paid by you. As consumers through higher costs, not by foreign governments like China. It's a blunt tool that can backfire, especially in a globalized economy. What's your take? Do you think they're effective? To be continued later, these are these are difficult subjects. So Diane, thank you for your time. And, and thank you Dara for creating a version of myself that I think is interesting. I look forward to more conversations. Please join me in thanking um Darra Lavarianarian and um. And obviously more to be you can call my digital self, ask her all kinds of questions. I found it a fascinating exercise. So thank you for doing this. I got to get to know you before I met you. Well, and, and let's, uh, let's hope I was worth meeting. So thank you very much, um, and so, uh. I found that fascinating and a little disconcerting. I don't know about you, but that was. So do we have any runners in the crowd? Raise your hand if you actually like to run or hike. There you go. There's one couple in the back. Um, I'm really interested in this next session part of our, um, we are speaking to somebody who's been in the COO role now in a COO role, Dan Sheridan of Brooks Running. It is the brand. I think that runners think about Dara also was in the COO role during an incredible time of transition for both the company and the industry. He will be joined in conversation with senior writer and serious runner Phil Waba and Joy. Thanks very much, everybody.

Microsoft’s chief privacy officer—and a former commissioner for the U.S.  government agency responsible for protecting online privacy—discusses AI  regulation, how digital safety and tech uniquely impact the lives of women and  children, and the role her company is playing in the global adoption of responsible AI. 

Training AI to Play By The Rules

Hello everybody. OK, so Julie, what are the whole uh range of other things that you do? Lots and lots of things. So privacy, responsible AI, digital safety data governance, it's sort of the whole suite of sounds super, super easy. It's really easy, yeah, yeah, great. OK, so, um, let's let's get into it, uh, lots of very hefty topics, um, I know you recently you're, you're always attending policy, privacy, um. Conferences, but there was one in Venice you were at recently in DC um what what's top of mind at these events right now? So what's fascinating in terms of what's going on right now is there seems to be a consensus that is developing among global regulators, not just in Europe, not just in the United States, but in Asia and elsewhere, which is regulation is deeply important and it's the same. Time regulators need to make sure that there will be innovation. So there's a lot of discussion right now about how do we ensure that we are enabling innovation while protecting fundamental rights and also how do we make sure that startups and small and medium enterprises can navigate the regulatory space? We've heard a lot earlier in Conference about how difficult it can be for those kinds of entities. So regulators are looking at simplification. They're looking at harmonizing across all of these different domains, and they're really looking to drive and enable innovation, and that's actually quite refreshing seeing that now. You've been on both sides, right? Also, you've spent some time on the government side, yes, which do you like better? No, I'm just joking. I um yes, yes, yeah, sure, that's a good answer. um OK, let's uh talk about safety. You spend a lot of time thinking again from from both perspectives from your previous, um, you know, previous career as well, um, as your current one about safety when it comes to AI and and technology more broadly, uh, when it comes to kids, yeah. Do you, what do you think about most? What's most critical, and I'm curious to hear also from the point of view of the corporate side of of your role today. What is companies, uh, you know, role versus the government. Sure, so governments around the world are really focused on kids right now in a way that we haven't actually seen in quite some time. Um, so and the focus is really around social media and the impact on kids, and you're seeing globally outside of the United States the adoption of laws that companies really do need to pay attention to and are paying attention to. And the reason why I say outside of the United States is there's this little thing, the First Amendment, that sort of has. Tied up some of the laws that are that the governments are trying to adopt that said, from a company perspective, what we need to make sure is that we provide parents, moms, dads with the tools so that they can help their kids navigate this space and also can protect their kids from whatever content they're able to control. It's a challenging space because at the same time you want to enable kids to learn about a digital technology. You want them to engage because this is their future digital technology. So there's a balance that needs to be struck, and I think that a lot of jurisdictions are doing that and a lot of governments, so a lot of governments are doing. that and companies are really trying to enable that kind of balance. So if you go back a ways I know you brought up social media and some of the risks and concerns there but um we saw regulators um trying to to catch up when it came to social media, when it came to mobile to those technological transformations. Do you feel like with the advent of AI, um, there's a little bit more of a preemptive thought being given to some of the potential issues? There was absolutely and I'd say, you know, particularly around the EU AI Act and some other very immersive comprehensive laws dealing with AI, the governments were saying, look, we missed the boat on social media, so we need to get out in front. We need to regulate. And I think there's now a recognition that there's a need to take an examination, really take a step back. This is by governments that are saying let's make sure that these laws can be implemented by companies across the spectrum. We want to enable startups. We want to enable innovation, and so I think that that is what is starting this initiative that you're seeing around what I talked about before. Simplification, harmonization, so it isn't so complicated going from privacy to responsible AI to digital safety. Let's bring them together in a way that will work a little bit better for the small and medium enterprises, but it did begin, I think you're right, when governments thought, gee, I think we missed the boat on social media. Do, do you feel like the um this kind of these opposing forces, um, because on the one hand. Obviously there's this AI arms race, um, you can't slow down progress. I know there was in in the US this sort of movement to like take a six month pause on AI progress which is not gonna happen um but you know on the one hand you have that right? you've got. At this this push to keep advancing and um and and there is this race going on on the other hand so many potential issues that are being thought through um how do you thread that needle like these are opposing forces. What are the different approaches to making sure that on the company level by the way that you can move forward, that you're not falling behind and at the same time you're being thoughtful? Yeah, I think that that's really important, especially for companies. I think it's really important that you know even before you. Start looking at regulations and whether and how you're going to comply to really create principles that that you as a company stand for. So at Microsoft, and I don't, we're not the only ones, but we were very early. You're a big one. We're a big one. We're big. Anybody heard of Microsoft in here? We are, we are big and because we're big and because we provide so much infrastructure to the governments and companies around the world, we really take these responsibilities pretty seriously and so what we had to do early early on before any AI laws were adopted, we created internal standards and that's where you as a company can say. Are we living up to our north star? What is our north star when it comes to making sure that we're trusted and we're trustworthy in terms of the AI that we're providing? And so we had a standard. We developed teams that would test against that standard. The standard included things like ensuring privacy, ensuring security. Security ensuring safety and fairness and making sure that the AI was inclusive, especially when it comes to accessibility issues. So those are pretty big requirements and we had teams that would make sure that we were abiding by that. We tested it was a very robust internal system. And we also published our standards so people could see it, so transparency was a big part of this too, and I think that that's the kind of responsibility that a company like Microsoft owes to our customers, which are also some very big companies and small and medium enterprises and startups, and what we also owe to our public sector customers as well. By the way, are you, are you surprised by the pace of Adoption. I mean, OpenAI's chat GPT, which Microsoft has a stake in, amassed 100 million users, subscribers within two months of its launch, fastest growing app ever. Did that surprise you? You've seen these other, you know, you've been a part of these other technological transformations. I have been. So when I was a commissioner of the US Federal Trade Commission, which, which was my last government role. Um, we used to see a lot of tech technological advances, and we felt like we were always behind. Now the pace of innovation is just accelerated. What used to take years to get out now takes months, and you know, regulators are trying to keep up. They're doing, you know, not a bad job in my view. And what we're seeing in companies. It is just to go to a point you made earlier, a real desire to be ahead, to be leaders, and also to make sure that it is safe and trusted, and that is a big job right now. But it is, but yes, things are moving incredibly quickly. Um, I wanna ask you also about the role of AI in productivity and in the impact, uh, to the workforce, um, and we talked a little bit about that yesterday as well and some of the opportunities, um, there's also uh a potential downside, right? There's a lot of concerns about what it does to jobs, um, you know, I think, I think we talk about it. A lot of like the superpower for employees which it absolutely can be. Can you talk a little bit about just how you look at the impact on the job force, the workforce, you know, both internally and externally, and how does that factor into how you think about the growth? Yeah, I think it's, it's really important to Understand that like here at this conference we have amazing people, amazing women who have been able to do incredible things with AI that I you know, listening to all of these panels I've just been blown away, um, that's a technical term for like really it's been awesome, um, and. At the same time I think it's important to think about the suite of of what's going to be happening particularly to women in the workforce as we go forward and that doesn't necessarily involve this cohort of women but sort of all women so what we are gonna. See is there jobs that are going to be augmented by AI they're going to be improved, you know, medical jobs of people who are in medicine, people who are in research, people who are doing pharmaceuticals, even the financial community. AI generative AI is just going to help them zoom ahead. There are those kinds of jobs we can think of as AI augmenting those roles, and then there are going to be jobs that are going to be disrupted. And you know that's going to be creative. We are, we know about that from what's what's happening in Hollywood. um we are also going to see that in administrative roles. We will see that in some sort of analytic roles, but not all of them. And as it turns out, so, uh, LinkedIn published some data and it got it out on International Women's Day. It turns out that women are going to be more impacted because they are, they take more and aspire to more of the jobs that will be disrupted than augmented and so what that means is it's really important for governments. And for companies to focus on how we can help women now get ready for that so that they just don't lose their jobs and then like they've got no place to go. So what does that mean? It means that we heard a lot about skilling uh over the last couple of days we absolutely need to focus on women in particular who are gonna need skilling and the jobs that that will be disrupted to help them get to that next level. There's also other things that companies can do, I think, to help with this in addition to skilling, and I should just note really quickly, Microsoft has already trained and skilled for AI about 100,000 people in Saudi and millions in just here, just here in Saudi Arabia, millions around the world, and by the end of this year we will hit about 160,000 in Saudi Arabia. Yeah, yeah, it's a big, but it's our responsibility, right? This is something that we can really help with and we partner with the government, we partner with our customers. It's really important to do skilling, but the other thing that companies can do super quick is you can, they can focus on their culture inside their companies to really drive AI training and all of that, and they can change the way they look at new new candidates for jobs. Think about the skills that people have, not their past experience. If you focus on skills, what you'll do is you'll increase by 13% the number of women that are considered for jobs globally. Well, um, Julie, I feel like we only scratched the surface, but as we said, really hefty topics, hopefully you'll be back, and it will be me interviewing you and not a bot or a humanoid, you know, robot so it will definitely be you, but thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you.

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