Meredith

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This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

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Meredith | Fortune

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

AI is transforming not just business, but our lives as consumers. Alta is at the forefront of this evolution in fashion, changing how customers shop and style their closets. Founder Jenny Wang joins to give us a demo of how the platform works—alongside Alta investor Meredith Koop, stylist to Michelle Obama.

Introducing Your AI Stylist

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Hi Fortune, this is Jenny from Alta showing you a quick demo of what we've built. Alta is your AI personal stylist. Alta styles you for any occasion, no matter the prompts. Upload your closet, digitize your items, snap, import, and organize what you already own. Try it on your avatar. Visualize any outfit directly on your alter ego. Plan what you're going to wear and keep track of what you've already worn. From celebrity street style to runway couture, see it first on your alter ego. Alta checks the weather, your luggage size, and your itinerary to pack for you. Alta, available on the App Store. Very fun, thank you, everyone. Uh, so Jenny, we just saw a demo of Alta in Action and thank you both for being here. Very excited to have you. Thank you. Many of us probably first saw something like this in the movie Clueless. There's been attempts to kind of bring that to life over the years, but not successfully so far. So why hasn't it existed until now? How did advancements in AI make Alta possible? Yeah and thank you so much for having us, Emma. I think Clueless is definitely an inspiration for Alta, and it's crazy because this year is actually the 30th anniversary of the movie, and I remember reading an article about how that movie was created and how the scene where she's like touching the screen and it's generating the yellow plaid outfit on her was actually a pre-recorded video that they had to time Alicia Silverstone. Touching the screen because obviously 30 years ago touch screens didn't exist and it's amazing to me to see how technology has evolved so rapidly over the last few decades. I actually struggled with this problem every morning I would feel so stressed deciding what to wear. I tried spreadsheets. I tried Apple notes, and I would always forget what I owned. I'd make a tornado in my room every morning. And it's actually kind of a very complex permutation where you have to think about what was what did I wear the last time I saw someone, what's the weather, what's on my calendar what's in the laundry, what are things that go together, what doesn't, what looks out of my body shape, etc. so there's all these factors that go into making this technology possible. And I tried to build this a few years ago. The state of the art in AI a few years ago was neural networks. Today it's the Transformer model which is the T and GBT, and when Ca GBT first came out over 2 years ago, I thought somebody needs to build this. I didn't see anyone else building this, so that's how also got started but fashion is probably one of the most complicated industries to apply AI because unlike a lot of other use cases where, like, for example, a more legal or finance AI, it's probably text in, text out fashion is three dimensional. Like you're wearing this like brown suit that has like structured shoulders and like a certain number of buttons. Mary is a very complicated outfit. I'm not gonna do it justice. And all of these are basically 3 dimensional features that we have to encode into the AI model, so. It's very it's 12 models under the hood. It's very fascinating. Um, Meredith, as we heard, you're a longtime stylist, including to First Lady Michelle Obama. If Alta had existed while you were first styling Mrs. Obama, how would you have used it and how do you use it today? Well, I think, uh, thanks for having me, by the way, um, what I love about Alta, there's several things. First, how I use it for myself, how I can potentially use it for clients, and I think one of the coolest things is the avatars because it really gives you that visualization. I mean, I make lookbooks for many clients, um, not just Michelle, but um, it helps you really visualize the outfit versus just seeing a flat image of clothing. Um, it's also a great way to organize wish lists and what you have in your closet, so I definitely would have used it had I had it in the past, and there's a lot happening in fashion tech right now. AI being deployed in different ways, um, Meredith, when you looked around, why did you invest in all of all the options out there? Well, to me there aren't any other options because Jenny is brilliant and That's really the, the primary reason that I'm involved is because when I met Jenny and knowing her work, her background, her skill, her Genius her intelligence to me I just see her as the reason you know and she's created this amazing platform with the help of her team and. To me that was just, it was a no brainer. Yeah, and we're talking about fashion and it's really fun, but Jenny, you're also a solo female technical founder who's raised I believe 8 figures in funding in AI. What is it like to be a female founder in this kind of next gen AI company era we just heard from another on stage. What were the challenges of building with this very lean team in this kind of new generation of startups? There are definitely very few female founders in AI, especially like technical or solo, and, but I also think it's an advantage in in some ways because many of my peers and former classmates are building things like vector databases and enterprise AI and shopping is a massive industry in fashion. Is an incredible space to be building in and I think when you think about the economic power that women everywhere holds in terms of purchasing decisions in the households, this is a massive opportunity for us and I think it just gives us an advantage and I believe at least half or so of your users are under 20, is that right? Yes, so what have you learned about this next generation that is growing up with AI as the standard? What's table sticks for them? It's really fascinating because when you think about middle schoolers, high schoolers, college students today, they're using ChatGBT to do their homework and it's they're just growing up on this technology. They're talking to their chatbot friends and for us it's been fascinating because before we launched on the App store we were in beta for many months. Most of our power users were. Female executives and lawyers and finance professionals and then after we launched on the app store we just kept them going viral on TikTok and then we drove a lot of user downloads that were students and I think it's the next generation where they're growing up on AI they expect AI to understand them and to understand their personal style and they're just also feeding the AI all of their personal information and that's a huge shift that any I think brands or retailers should be aware of because the. Users are expecting different from the techno differently from the technology tools they use and the way that they interact with AI and it's important to like meet them where they're at and for us it's like they're asking the AI every morning what I wear to school, what do I wear to my 16 year old birthday party at the trampoline park where we're eating pizza? What do I wear asking a guy like at like guy like to prom after school at the library like these are the sorts of queries that we need to service for that next generation. So interesting. Meredith styling is such an art, and as we just heard as well, the work he did with Mrs. Obama is literally the subject of like a beautiful new book that's coming out. So in general, how do you feel about AI coming into this space? Like what is the role of human stylists and the creativity that they bring in the AI era? Well, so I think there's a lot of different points on that. So for me, I am a stylist. I've been doing this for many years. It is an art, it is a craft, it is something that I have experience in, so. From my perspective, from my profession, it's a tool that I can use. I also think for the average person or any woman or man or any person out there having this in lieu of having a professional stylist because 99.9999999% of people are not gonna have a professional stylist working with them every day. It's a great tool. It's a great tool even if you did have a professional stylist just to have this to know what's in your closet, generating outfits and ideas for you. Every day is useful for everyone so yeah um we've been hearing from some retail CEOs this morning. What are the ways that you know obviously this is a consumer product but what are the ways that big companies, retailers, big brands should be thinking about this technology? How could it apply to them? It's a great question. LVMH is one of our investors, so I talked to them about this topic. Going back to what we mentioned before, I think the best shopping experience comes from the most personalized data and the most personalized data comes from any sort of consumer AI experience where you can in natural language or an image be able to express what you want right now if you and I were to go to a standard ecom website and we type in something like white dress for Wimbledon, we will. Likely get the same results, but on an AI platform those results should be personalized and re-ranked based on what the AI knows about you, the fact that like maybe you don't like to show off your arms or that you prefer to wear certain cuts of pants with certain sorts of shoes. These are the nuances that a sort of AI platform that has memory can learn over time and increase the level of personalization. And I think the Avatar is also my favorite feature. I like generate them every day. It's really fun to see like they're almost like little mini use um of yourself wearing your clothes and to also visualize what a potential purchase looks like on your body with things that you already own like what does this potential cowboy boot look like with these jeans that I already have is, I think it removes a lot of the mental barrier to making a purchase decision. And you mentioned some of your investors. What's the ultimate kind of revenue strategy here right now? A lot of your users are under 20. I imagine they're not paying that much money to use Alta, so how will this work eventually? It's a great question and I have always believed that if you build a product that people spend hours on every day and they're sharing uh their personal information in order to get more personalized recommendations and examples of this are TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. there are many ways to monetize in terms of our personal road map. There is going to be an affiliate purchase like strategy and revenue from there, but. We are thinking about other ideas from ranging from advertising to more premium features, for example, one thing we want to build is 3 dimensional video avatars and from an inference cost perspective that's very expensive AI to deliver but it is something that consumers, I believe, will pay for. Do you see, um, kind of the big tech players in AI trying to launch their own version of this? Obviously, Google has Google Shopping, like, what can they do? What can't they do? Yeah we've had a lot of outreach. And I think a big tech perspective you're already seeing it like I saw Walmart stock jumped a lot yesterday from the OpenAI partnership. There's a new era of agentic commerce we can check out on platform on any of these AI tools from Perplexity to attach to beauty. I think those work for most purchases outside of fashion because fashion and also beauty is, is so personalized and we also wanna create not just a utilitarian tool for shopping but a very. Fun and aspirational experience where it's fun to share outfits with friends on the platform. It's fun to generate your your own avatar and like cool backgrounds and we that that's what we're seeing in our own data and then I think the the other point here is the fact that. You want to use a platform that you feel like is getting better the more that you use it. That is the magic of AI like it's reinforcement learning with human feedback. And when you are telling all the things like I will not wear red sweaters with blue jeans or whatever, like on on Sundays I go to church and I need a dress that is that goes beyond my knees. These are personal preferences in natural language that you can feed an AI that will learn over time. How would you both suggest that the women in this room use also, I mean, I imagine we have some people who love fashion and find it to be a really amazing form of self-expression, some people who just want to figure out what to wear every day without thinking about it and find it stressful, and a lot of women who are, you know, in big jobs presenting who they are, making deals, want to feel powerful. How can Alta help them? I, I would say it's for everyone and it really, to some of what Jenny is saying, it engages with you the way you engage with it, and I think you need to use it consistently and often to get the best results. Um, so, Really, if you're into fashion, if you're not into fashion, if you would like the convenience or you relish in the experience, it doesn't matter. It's, it's for everyone. There's nothing about it that would preclude someone that isn't particularly interested in fashion. It's just about Using it starting getting your closet on the platform so you can start working with it and generating the outfits and seeing it and and enjoying it on some level. Yeah. Meredith, any examples that come to mind of a way that Alta has influenced something that you've been styling for yourself or for someone else um compared to what you might have come up with on your own if you weren't using it? Well, I mean, I helped sort of build it with Jenny, so I, I mean my imagination is kind of broad. If you, if we're using also we're getting the experience of working with you, but it, but I think really coming back to the avatars and that piece of it, it's just it is, it has this utility and it's also fun like I love that. I love that you can build these avatars you can put them together and share with people. I just think that's one of the coolest features. Because I remember when we started you would show me the lookbooks that you put together for your clients and you would have to download the image you have to remove the image like put them a little collages on the PowerPoint and now you can just generate it on their avatar so we got a peek into both of your brains if we use the platform. Awesome. Well thank you both so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you Emma. Thank you.

Meredith Kopit Levien, President and CEO, The New York Times Company Sonal Shah, Chief Executive Officer, The Texas Tribune Moderator: Ruth Umoh, FORTUNE

MPW Summit 2023: The News Leaders

According to an Oxford University study this year, just 22% of the top editors at global news outlets were women. That's despite the fact that 40% of the journalists in the top 12 major news markets, I'd say including all the journalists in this room are women. These are definitely statistics that we need to move the needle on. But fortunately, there are bright spots uh especially in this country. The study shows that in the United States, 44% of the top editors are women, including the editor in chief of fortune. Our next guests are some of the women forging the way in media and journalism breaking barriers as they helm news organizations where they have power, influence and reach and they are in the top jobs at a pretty challenging time in the media landscape. The industry is transforming as it works to harness new technologies. Keep up with shifting consumer habits and hold up high standards of journalism in a rather politically divided society. MEREDITH Kopit Levine is president and CEO of the New York Times Company and we're also pleased to add that she is on this year's list of the most powerful women in business. And Sanel Shaw is CEO of the Texas Tribune. They join us for a conversation with my colleague, Ruth Uo. Please join me in welcoming them to the stage. Delighted to have you my fellow newswoman. This is the panel I've been looking forward to all week. Um So thank you so much for joining us and welcome to NPW. So happy to be here. I just want to say if I always felt the way I felt when I was in a room full of women leaders, life would be perfect. I know it's so much more comfortable, isn't it? Yeah, let's jump right in until about a month ago. All of the major U STV news organizations were led or co led by women. Two of those women, Kim Godwin of ABC News and Rashida Jones of MS NBC were supposed to be here. Unfortunately, they couldn't because of the break in situation in Israel, which is completely understandable in the corner office. We obviously have the two of you women at time, Inc, we have Jeff Ss here at Fortune. We have Chantel. I'm curious, does having a woman at the top of a news organization change its output, change its coverage area. What are your thoughts? I'm so glad you're, you're starting there. And I want to say Kim Godwin and Rashida are extraordinary and every, I'm the CEO of the Times, I'm not the editor. I can tell you everyone in journalism is working around the clock right now to cover the, um, the situation in Israel. So, um, they're here spirit and we'll try and hold it up for them too. Um, I don't, I'll, I'll give you my perspective at the times and I suspect. So now you'll share this, I don't think you can be, um, a news organization endeavoring to serve, you know, we, we serve 10 to 15 million people every day. You come directly to the New York Times 50 to 100 million every week. I don't think we can be that at our best if we are not as diverse as the population to whom we are trying to give understanding hard stuff. So I think um it is incumbent on every leader of every organization and maybe especially news organizations to see that the whole team top to bottom reflects the diversity of lived experience, race, gender, ideology of the world around them. I I can only add to uh everything MEREDITH saying I live in Texas, right? So uh 40% Hispanic, 15% black, 7% Asian. Just to re remind everybody here, 15% black means we are the largest black population of any state in the United States. And so when you in in sheer numbers and size, remembering that when we cover the state, we think about our newsroom reflecting what the state looks like. We think about that every single day. How are we getting the stories. Where are we getting from? Who are we sourcing from, who are we connecting to and remembering that? And so when leading, you're always thinking about who's going out there, how are they thinking about it again? I'm not the editor in chief, but we're always asking these questions. So the newsroom from everything from technology side to the, you know, the audience development needs to be reflective of the audiences. We, we're trying to serve. Can, can I add one more beat? Um when I got to the New York Times, um shortly after I was there, not right at the beginning, but I'm there 10 years. Shortly after I got there, there was a period of time, maybe a year and a half where I was the only woman on the executive team, pretty big, executive team of the New York Times and all the religion I have about why no one should ever be the only um sort of comes from that period. And I want to tell you today, half the executive team of the New York Times, which is, is business and news um are women and more than half of the newsroom, mast head and desk heads are running the journalism, running the coverage, running the report are women. I wanna talk business. Uh Both of you have led the charge and are leading the charge in transforming your respective companies into more than just print news operations and into modern digital news operations, uh videos, podcasts, social channels, et cetera. One of the biggest challenges of running a multi platform news organization. Um I mean, you can see the biggest challenge, I think unfolding in real time right now. And the the there are two things. The first one I'll describe is just the enormity of the change, not the process of reporting and editing so much. Although that, that changes too, but the pursuit of truth is basically the immutable thing, wherever it may lead, the thing that is changing dramatically and probably presents the biggest challenge to every news organization is the scale at which we expect people to find an experience that the multiplicity of format in which we expect them to find an experience of the fact that, you know, so much of what we used to do was the once a day kind of polished record of history that a couple of million people read. And now you've got tens of millions on some days or, or weeks, hundreds of millions of people expecting you to be able to give them understanding um in, in, you know, the most fair way possible in the palm of their hand in near real time in every conceivable format. And that just means enormous change to the people doing the work of bearing witness and translating that to understanding and all like the freshest example is sometime between Saturday night when Hamas attacked Israel until yesterday, we had produced more than 50 um, videos, visual investigations, um, visual graphics to give people an understanding of what happened and where there are dozens of people on the ground for the New York Times from all of our, you know, all the major national and global news organizations there now. But, you know, they're not just writing 900 word text articles, they are, you know, showing you, they are getting you understanding by, in some cases, shooting themselves at a scene and describing what's, what's happening. There's a long time New York Times columnist who's an expert in all things. Um Europe and Middle East named Roger Cohen. Roger Cohen is probably in his sixties. He landed in Tel Aviv, I think yesterday. And the first thing he did was make a tiktok that he is in, you know, describing what it was like to be walking on the streets of Tel Aviv. And I would say just I could give you hundreds of examples like that. The, the enormity of change that has already happened to the report. Um is there and I think even more change is yet to come. We'll soon look to the future, but same question. Yeah. So I run just a background. Texas Tribune is a nonprofit newsroom. It is the largest nonprofit newsroom in the country. Uh We're the largest nonprofit newsroom running a statewide newsroom. So our challenges are twofold. So one part is everything that MEREDITH just said, right? A journalist can no longer is no longer just writing an 840 story. They're thinking about Tik Tok, they're thinking about going TV, they're thinking about radio. So what, what we had trained for and what the world is asking for are two different things. So how do we train journalists differently to think about their job differently and from a nonprofit space? Do we partner with places like N PR and PBS and other places? Like where does that look like? Because you don't, you can't do it all yourself? But how do you think about that? So that's changing and technology is just changing every day. Audiences are finding us in different places and we segment it by age, right? Some people, we're digital, only, some people read it on their laptop and on a screen, others just get it through Google News and others get it through Tik Tok and that those preferences are constantly changing. So understanding where people are finding you, but more importantly, building trust with them. So they keep coming back to you is actually the bigger challenge that we all have to work with and understanding that is not a one time thing, it's changing daily. You look at it monthly, then you look at it, you know, annually and like, what did we learn in this, that we have to be prepared for? So we have to be way more agile today than we've ever been before. And it's not as simple as you produced a great product. The product is great journalism. It's that where are people reading you, finding you and how are they staying engaged with you? Because in the absence of it, it's more polarization and more misinformation. So let's talk about polarization, misinformation. Uh trustworthy, rigorous journalism is obviously the bulwark of democracy uh especially as we approach, what I'm sure will be yet another contentious and fraught election cycle. MEREDITH. what were the key learnings from the 2020 elections? And how will that inform in your times approach to 2024? And then I have a related question for you. Um I would actually go back to, um well, let, let me say a headline thing first, which is the answer to almost every challenge at the New York Times um is more journalism, do more, more journalism. And I would go back to 2016. And I would say, um so much of what we learned um after the election of 2016 was, um we want more journalism, we want more reporters in more places getting to more voters from more angles. Um you know, looking at things like and this is something I would say we have substantially more of today post even 2020. Then we have then more people covering more religious communities in this country and how that intersects with politics from places that are not New York or Washington or California, but other, other parts of the country. So just more boots on the ground and more people out in the country talking to voters and trying to understand it. The second thing I'll say about covering the election, this is a moment where, you know, the two leading candidates are quite well known, like maybe obvious thing to say. But so, so much more can be done about how will they govern? What would a next Trump administration look like Jonathan Swan, one of our killer political reporters. He's amazing came from axios, did this piece over the summer and what does the next Trump administration look like in terms of what happens to all the agencies, what happens to these institutions of government that intersect with the presidency? But, you know, potentially in some profoundly different ways. So you should imagine that's an angle and then I'll just say 2020 election week, New York Times, I believe had the largest audience we've ever had for anything. And you know, COVID was giant, but in terms of um like a next level and we, we were able to bring that audience to the destination, to the app, to the home page, to the website and hold them there. And I think hold many people for a complete experience of an election unfolding in real time. So that maybe cable news is amazing, but maybe you didn't have to turn on cable news, you didn't have to go to twit or you could actually get that complete experience in real time at the New York Times. And you should imagine that is a huge part of what we're trying to do for an election or anything, even for the, the war between Israel and Hamas right now, anything that's happening in real time, we want to be able to hold you and give you perspective on the whole thing as a destination. So I'm curious to hear your experience because obviously you service all of Texas, but you're headquartered in Austin, which is this tiny blue dot in a sea of red. So going back to saying, you know, trust is so important and fundamental. How do you, how do you go about uh obtaining that? Yeah, I mean, that's something we think about a lot which is 254 counties in Texas. Uh They are not the same, it's not Houston, Dallas Austin, right? And you have to think about what does the rest of Texas look like. So we have actually uh reporters across the state. Uh while Austin is our headquarters, we have people in Lubbock, we have people in the Permian Basin. We have, we're raising money to put someone in the Rio Grande Valley, which is in, in South Texas. We have people in East Texas, we have people in Dallas and Houston, San Antonio. We think it's important to be where the communities are because it's not just as simple as reporting what's happening in Texas. It's reporting, you know, how do people perceive Texas from where they are? And what happens for us, for example, is we can talk about, for example, Roe V Wade or we can give you a story of all of the maternal health clinics closing down in East Texas. So where are people going to get their health care? Today's story about a young woman who had to carry her babies to term and that the real impact on her life because she was not allowed to get an abortion, a medical abortion to actually make it work and what it meant to her and her family. When you can tell the real life story of real life Texans and what they're going to policy starts to become a real thing. It's not just something we write about and what the statehouse is doing. We're starting to write about what people are actually going through and farmers have no water, we can talk about climate in a whole different way. So being in those communities really matters to us, we also do not do editorials and we don't do opinions and we don't do endorsements because we know to build trust in Texas, we have to give people the facts of where they are and let them make those interpretations because that trust is really important for us and local news. I just want to bring it down to local aspect of news, which is what we think about local news is where trust is built at a day to day. So we have to make sure we're there locally. I, I just wanna add a beat to that. Um Something like a third of all the working journalists in the United States have lost their job in the last decade. Most of that is at the more of that is at the local level than anywhere else. You can draw a direct line from that to the increasing sort of fracturing and polarization of the country. Uh social media is in some ways, a competitor to traditional news. Uh It can certainly be an inhibitor as we've seen on X, formally known as Twitter. How do you grapple with that and compete for eyeballs on the internet on mobile? I'll say just a couple of things first, you know, social media in the last 10, 15, 20 years, even as long as it's been here has played an important role in helping get our journalism to more people. Um At the same time, I would say we feel very strongly at the New York Times. It is not a substitute for the idea that news is best experienced, we believe by consumer in one or a handful of relationships with news organizations and that relationship I think is best sort of manifest by going to the destination of a news organization and seeing the fullness of an unfolding event in context. And I would point you to what's going on right now between Israel and Hamas or the war in Ukraine or, you know, the unfolding of the, um, the taking down the, the speaker a couple of weeks ago, you don't just come to the New York Times and see sort of one story or one perspective, an 800 word article or a video or an opinion piece, you see it all presented in a way that is meant to give you the fullness of as much as you can absorb, as efficiently as you can absorb it to, to understanding on that topic. And I think social media never did that, right. And um what it lacked, you know, when you, and again, there are some positive things about social media in terms of amplifying the content, but to have a complete experience of news and get to understanding, I think that's best done at a destination, I'll say one more thing, which is one of the things, you know, independent journalism, um I think is insufficiently understood and appreciated in the country and in the world. And the idea that you would get your news, um get your independent journalism from something that is inherently an echo chamber is not good for society if that's the only, only way to get it. And before long before Twitter, now X changed ownership, we actually asserted New York Times newsroom leadership asked our journalists to consider spending less time on Twitter because just like we think the reader shouldn't be in an echo chamber. The journalist shouldn't be in an echo chamber either. And I think that's had a positive, I want to end with this question if we may, because I definitely want to get this in the media industry over the last decade has seen tectonic shifts. It certainly beholden to platforms like Facebook, like Google, uh which, which, which are almost gatekeepers for who has access to information, how it's disseminated. Um We've seen kind of the defination of advertising. And so it's an industry that's really in flux at this point. How do you maintain agility and, and what are you bracing for as you look down the horizon? I just wanna, I think it's important to recognize what the media and stream and what the platforms do when they change their algorithm. It has a dramatic impact on journalists, right? Because, you know, meta changing their platform has dropped the readership of journalism by 50%. So just to keep that in mind, like we're constantly paying attention to when those things are happening. And I think what, what MEREDITH has done extraordinarily well, at the New York Times, what we think about all the time is like we're the multiple places. So we're not dependent on any one source. We, we do events, we do everything from tiktok to all of social media platforms, but also directly connecting to people through the places where they're getting connected. But I think that is that is probably the most critical thing is that we're not dependent on any one source. Our version of that have to be 10 seconds. We want to be in the direct relationship business. Come play wordle which tens of millions of people do. You're going to find that however, and then maybe you'll read a news story or do a crossword puzzle. Thank you so much, ladies. Such a pleasure chatting with you.

Meredith Whittaker, President, Signal In conversation with: Roy Bahat, Bloomberg Beta

Brainstorm Tech 2023: Pushing for Privacy

So tracking users as they make their way across the web and uses of personal data that are not always clear ethical. These are some of the issues that have eroded everyday people's trust in tech Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Twitter, companies smaller and larger have all faced their share of scrutiny from regulators and users over how well they protect data and how they use what they collect. So today, we are thrilled to host MEREDITH Whitaker who has long criticized Big Tech for its occasional maybe not its occasional axis and lack of visibility from within the industry. In terms of protecting that data. MEREDITH worked for Google for over a day, holding its top managers to account and even organizing some of the Google Walkouts, powerful protests that demanded more transparency, accountability and respect for user privacy. MEREDITH currently serves as the president of Signal, an open source encrypted messaging app that offers strong protection of users privacy and data. It's also a favorite of journalists. So when you have scoops, you call it some signal, she's also the co founder of AI now Institute, a research institute dedicated to exploring the social implications of AI and advocating for ethical development and deployment. MEREDITH will be interviewed by the head of Bloomberg Beta Roy Bahat. And it's worth taking a second to say that Roy has been an invaluable advisor to our brainstorm tech program. He has served as co chair and so we really truly appreciate his input and expertise. And so here we are for an interview. Please welcome MEREDITH Whitaker and Roy Bahat. Thank you. All right. So signal, just curious how many people here in the audience have used signal within the last week, let's say, OK, great. Me too. Um Used by tens of millions of people. I know you don't do numbers many, many million, 100 million downloads on Android. It used by the most elite government officials to keep secrets. Criminals. Look, we don't collect user data so you don't know. OK, funded by a founder of whatsapp and, and, and donations. But originally, so why should somebody use signal? Well, people should use signal because they want two parties in their conversation, the person they're talking to and themselves, they don't want three. Well, and so, but hold on. That's the same thing WhatsApp says, right? I see signs on the billboard saying you want your conversation secure and to end encrypted. It is the same thing. WhatsApp says, WhatsApp uses the signal protocol to encrypt and protect the contents of your messages. So what you're saying, what whatsapp doesn't do is protect the metadata. So information about who you are, who you're talking to your group, text your contact lists and other, you know, extremely important information. I think there's a quote from James Clapper that said metadata gets you 80% of the waste and knowing what you need to know. So we need to recognize it's a whole package. We're also not owned by meta, which I think is a pretty important detail. Who are you owned by? We are a nonprofit. There's a Signal Foundation is solely dedicated to stewarding the Signal LLC which develops the app and I am effectively president of both. But under the, and one of the things that struck me about it was how many employees, roughly three or four dozen, something like that. A little over 40 right? And so that's a pretty small number of people to run something used by as many people as it's used. It's a very elite team, but we are punching way above our weight, right? We're not a tech company, we're a small organization with one, you know, clear focus. And so you worked at Google for a long time, you know, you work closely with Meta when you see the enormous numbers of people that work for these companies. Are they making mistakes, do they just have too many people? No, I mean, it's incredibly difficult to develop high availability software that works the way that people expect it to work, right? But we're also not, we're not a media broadcast company, we're not, you know, we don't have a policy team all over the world. We're really focused on, you know, developing, deploying and maintaining truly private communications apps in a world that is, you know, has never been more surveilled. Right. Right. So I'm going to ask about that in a second and let's talk about some of the privacy policy, one more question about the organization, which is when you were at Google, you were one of the organizers of the Google Walkout. And so you had, I think the perspective of an employee in that and now you're the boss. Yeah. How does that change your perspective on things if your, if your employees were unionized or organized, how would you feel? How is it different being the boss? I, you know, I would say go for it and do it smart. Don't be silly about this. This is very serious. We're, you know, geopolitically critical core infrastructure, you know, we're not messing around, but that's really not my business. It great. OK. So let's talk about some of the policies and privacy in particular because you've been on a world tour talking about privacy. I'm going to articulate a naive view that you can disabuse me of the naive view is we're fine on privacy. The, you know, eu at GDP and California has a privacy law and even meta has an end to end encrypted app. So we're going to be OK, but literally no one says that. Right. I don't know. A lot of consumers say it because they seem not to care, they'll click through a user agreement. They care about their friends knowing if they were texting somebody, they shouldn't be knowing. But do they care about a big tech company knowing? It's not as clear, this is not a matter of individual choice. So I think what has happened over the, you know, handful of decades in which the surveillance business model has interpolated our core infrastructure to the point that we're surveilled to an extent, we don't have a sense of is that that choice has been made for us. You know, we can't get a job without having an account on different platforms. It is a flag in certain sort of algorithmic profiling software. If you don't have a social media account that's considered suspicious, right? You can't go to work and do your job oftentimes without being surveilled. So we're talking about sort of socially significant infrastructure that if you wanted to opt out truly, if you cared enough to do something, you're living in a cabin in the woods with no contact with people. Right? So again, we're talking about a collective issue and I think people care very, very deeply, but what they don't have is agency to do anything about it in most cases, which is why you've been focused on working with governments. It sounds like, well, it's why I've been focused on making it clear to governments in this moment that it's incredibly important not to undermine, end to end encryption, which is the technology we have that can actually guarantee private communications. If you don't have another way to see, we see with some governments, I mean, France proposed or enacted a law, you tell us that would allow the government to turn on your camera remotely and they're claiming law enforcement as a reason why they need a back door. And so what is, what's the right way to think about it? Well, look like there's a long history to this. And I don't, you know, we're not going to get those in power to abandon their pursuit of information, asymmetry as a tool of power. And that's what surveillance gives them, right? Like that throughout history, we can look at like the history of the 16th century statistics that were used for population control. We can, you know, move forward, we can look at proto surveillance technology, the hollow you can't tax unless you know who they are. I mean, there are some valid and unless you know what they have, right? Like you can't define who you get to tax unless you start having borders and enumerating. Is that right? You know, it's fairly straightforward, but this is not a new impulse with networks computation. This is a long history, network computation has metastasized to an extent. I don't think we can conceptualize very clearly, but it remains true that we still need a way to communicate privately. And so which governments are you paying the closest attention by the US of what they do in the UK? While you explain why if folks have questions, we'll come around and do questions. But by the UK, usually people are not shaking in their boots at the UK S surveillance. If you've worked in tech for a while, um, they're a bit tricky and the Five Eyes Agreement makes it very difficult to sort of understand how that's going to. But the UK has a bill called the online safety bill. This is one of those like omnibus tech regulations that become a Christmas tree for everyone's special little pet tech regulatory project. It's not all bad, but it's very, very messy. And there's one provision clause 101 that would give Ofcom, who is their independent competition and Telecom regulator, the power to mandate that everyone in the UK install what they're calling approved technology that would scan your messages before they're encrypted before they're sent so effectively mass surveillance of everyone's communication. That's then, you know, we don't have the specs but the technological prototypes that have been forwarded are laughable and deeply insecure. I would signal. No, wait, wait, wait, let me, let me because I, you know, I got to complete the thought. So they're laughable and insecure and what's happening is not only is the UK proposing this power for Ofcom, that's Well, along the way, you have governments around the world who don't want to be the first to implement this type of precedent setting of surveillance, looking to the UK as a sort of templates, liberal democracy as the sort of permission set. So the precedent was set here, we in Uganda are now going to implement this to say, detect people talking about LGBT Q resources and you know, under the law that has now passed murder them because being gay is punishable by death in Uganda. This is really serious of stuff. And I do feel like the sort of futuristic haze that everyone has been in for a year or so around AI and these sort of big questions has let this sneak up on us and there's a real need for tech leaders and others who get the stakes of this technology to speak up. Like if you all have Rishi soak on your signal messages and can drop him a DM, please do because I do think it's that serious would signal be legal under that UK regime. How about the messages even be scammed? They would order us to implement it. We would not and we would there would be because there is no secret back door at signal despite what well everything in signal is open so you can see for yourself. But you know, audit after audit Infotech researcher after Infotech researcher has combed through signal and when they find, you know, a small issue. They tell us we improve it. But it is this is, this is technology used around the world that has been validated repeatedly as truly secure. So it sounds like what you see your role as and correct me if it's wrong is you're trying to stop that first domino of a socially acceptable regime, implementing some form of surveillance that you find unacceptable. I wear many hats as one of us. OK. Yeah, one of those hats. And so let's talk about who you've made common cause with because if I think about companies have been accused of surveillance as a business model, you hear meta, I mean meta is the core of the others. OK? And yet you've made common cause with them. No, no, no, no, no, no. What's common cause? What do you mean by common cause? We have a issue convergence. There's two circles, the diagram is not two circles, there's a little narrow sliver in the middle where we do agree. What is that? Sliver? Whatsapp uses the signal protocol to encrypt the contents of messages. Meta is moving to apply the signal calls to messenger messages in Facebook. This protects people and their privacy. We have a case right now in Nebraska where a mother has been now convicted of a felony that will, you know, she'll serve at least two years in prison for helping her daughter access criminalized reproductive care right after dogs pass, she's not going to prison. And why did that happen? How did that happen? What evidence established her guilt. That was Facebook turning over meta, the DMS between the mother and daughter, neither meta wants that nor signal is that I don't care what Meta wants. I know what is right and what is right is we don't let one massive corporation with very little oversight determine the surveillance society we live in, in collapse with governments, right? We're talking, you know what happens when a librarian in Florida hands a book that is banned to a child, right? Are we scanning those messages? Like this is very close at hand and it's not a gang like so I don't know if this is a common cause or not. I don't know if this is a trick question. What I'm talking about is this is the right thing to do. And if we have to, you know, if perilous times call into being strange coalitions so be it. Yeah. No, it's not a trick question. Yeah. Well that here, OK. I don't even know what the fuck would you? OK. We've got a couple more minutes here and so if folks have questions, I invite them to chime in. But now I just wanna ask you, looking ahead, you've been warning about these dangers for a long time. Uh has anything that's unfolded in the last few years surprised you in terms of how encryption privacy ai I mean, you've been a vocal critic of whether it's even possible to have privacy and ai, at the same time. Yeah, I don't think you can. I, I don't, I don't know, like, I, you know, I go to bed thinking about this, I wake up thinking about this. I'm very, like, intellectually engaged with these topics. So I don't know if surprise is the right descriptor. But I do think the way that the anti encryption sort of regulatory agenda sort of snuck in around 2018 has been a bit alarming to me, right? So in 2015, we had Apple and the showdown with the FBI around San Bernardino. And there was a, you know, there was a moment of, I would say, you know, from my perspective, victory there where it was clear like, you know, it was established, you cannot create a back door that only the good guys can go through. This is mathematically impossible to weaken security and not undermine the security of our core communications, core infrastructures, etcetera. And then 2018, you started seeing this being sort of floated under other banners. And you know what I think has happened in a sense is you have this sort of ai hype and magical thinking where a lot of people with, you know, a lot of self interest in many cases are claiming that artificial intelligence can do magical things, terminators, that kind of thing, its sentences, it will surpass humans. And so there is a suspension of disbelief around what technology can do. And that has bled into the encryption debate such that we're now undermining the very clear arguments that were made in 2015. And before around the, you know, factual impossibility of breaking encryption just for the good guys and people are now, you know, advertising ai based technologies or others that they effectively claim can conduct mass surveillance privately. All right, we got one minute left. I am going to ask my trick question. I've been a signal user for a long time in the last few years. All I can really remember in terms of new features is stories which I know are useful in other countries and the elimination of SMS on Android. What can the users expect in terms of how the signal app will get better? Yeah. Well, you know, we're a small team and maintaining and ensuring the robustness of the app is its own job. So, you know, we're not looking to be like Microsoft Word. We don't want a bunch of feature blows so our engineers can like meet their OK. R we don't work that way, but we are we on user names which will allow people to contact each other without sharing a phone number anonymously. That kind of thing, which is important, particularly in countries where you have to register personal information to get. Is that new news or something you've announced before? Asking for the journal? I haven't announced that before. Yeah, I mean, we don't, you know, I'm up here to talk substance. I don't have like a flashy give. No, of course, we're talking about teachers in the future. All right. Thank you for courageous stances and for sharing it here. Thanks everybody and to be continued. Thank you.

Here's the thing about dating apps in 2019, [ NOISE ] no one is writing love letters and getting to know one another on the dating apps. Anyone who does that, it is a red flag, and they should be deleted immediately. It's really surfacey. The exchanges are quick. Usually within three to five days of going back and forth, the two people are In the scheduling process. The conversation for a lack of a better word is really shallow. I've [ UNKNOWN ] as a dating expert and a dating app goes [ UNKNOWN ]. I work 12 hours day and I often I don't stop. This is non stop. So when I'm involved, no one ever knows, that there was any help or someone doing the work. The services I have available, Perfect Profile, Dating Diagnosis, Dating Diagnosis Plus, and The Whole Shabang. Perfect Profile $ 300, Dating Diagnosis $ 600, Dating Diagnosis Plus 1500 for the first month every month after if the client wants to stay on with the coaching. It's a thousand a month and the whole shebang is 2, 000 a month the whole shebang a client will come to me and we'll start from the bottom up. We will build a profile. I will do the dating diagnosis piece. See what they've been doing. What's working. What's not working? We'll go back and forth. Make sure their profiles perfect. I will get them set up on the correct application. And now I'm gonna go in for hte client as the client. And I will start typing a message in and I will take it until it's 99 % until it's either right to be asked out or the client has been asked out at which point it will turn over and say you're up for scheduling. Jesse asked me to do a profile makeover. And his original profile was actually pretty decent. But the first problem was that his first shot was a group shot, and so it's really unclear who he is. So that was the first thing that I changed and I replaced it with this great picture. And in all these pictures, you can see his face, he's smiling, you can tell he's funny, he's got a good sense of humor. He looks attractive, that someone would want to engage with him. And then the profile itself, I actually think that it was a good start. He just needed a teeny bit more information so that the other user can use this as a cheat sheet to engage in conversation. The conversations where there's enough material to chat about. Those are the ones that feel good. They're more likely to move forward. And there's a higher likelihood of that converting to a date. It is such a rewarding job. I get to help people and being in a partnership and having a support system in life. It's up there with good health and employment. And even if that person isn't found on my clock, at least I'm giving a single the skills to move forward and not miss an opportunity with old maladaptive dating app behaviors. And to use the adaptive skills that they can actually meet someone. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

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