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Join Fortune Editors and special guests as we unpack key messages from President Trump’s address at the World Economic Forum and explore how his Administration’s new brand of American Exceptionalism will impact global trade and business. 		 
Mark Penn, Chairman and CEO, Stagwell  
Kellyanne Conway, Former Counselor to U.S. President Donald J. Trump  

In conversation with:  
Diane Brady, Executive Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media, and  
Kamal Ahmed, Executive Editorial Director, Fortune UK and Europe 

POTUS Speech Reaction & Analysis

Conferences

Welcome to Fortune Live from USA House here in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum. I'm executive editorial director Diane Brady. Today's event is actually going to kick off a yearlong initiative for Fortune called America Leads, where we look at innovation with and in the United States as the US celebrates its 250th birthday. We're excited to bring you insights from CEO. Those who are on the front lines of that innovation as well as leaders who are shaping it, we'll hear from Nigel Farage, member of the UK Parliament, Vaz Narasiman, who is CEO of Novartis. Our editor in chief Alison Chantel will sit down with Uber's CEO Dara Khosroshahi. I'll sit down with Robin Vince, CEO of BNY, and we'll be joined by the founder of Bridgewater Associates, Ray Dalio. But next up, and then we Also, of course, let me not forget we're going to have 7 time Grammy winner and singer and songwriter Jon Batiste. Next up we're going to kick off today's event with a live reaction and analysis on President Trump's address. First, let me introduce my colleague Kamal Ahmed, who is the new executive editorial director for Europe for Fortune. So thanks very much, UK and Europe, I should say in deference to where the UK is now, and we're joined today by Mark Penn, chairman and CEO at Stagwell, as well as Kellyanne Conway, KA associates and former counselor to President Trump. So welcome both of you, all three of you, of course. Let me start with just some general reaction to the speech. Obviously it was a big domestic component. We did touch on a lot of the hot button issues. Let's anchor it back to what should the business community be thinking about this, Mark, I'll start with you and then go to you, Kelly. Well, I, I think the first thing was, whew, OK, I mean, everybody thought the US military was gonna land any minute in Greenland, uh, and we were gonna have like combat against Nino, and I think the president, uh, does the magical thing that he always does, which is he raises the stakes. Uh, everyone takes the bait. He takes Greenland from something nobody talks about to a central issue. And then he brings it back down to, you know, basically he made a pitch that what has the US done for NATO and what has NATO done for the US, and fundamentally he said I'd appreciate it if we work out a deal on NATO. He didn't threaten tariffs. He didn't threaten. He took military off the table as though it was on the table ever, but everybody, everybody bet. Uh, and I think second you pretty much heard the State of the Union, right? You pretty much, uh, you know, maybe it'll be the longest State of the Union in history with President Clinton. We used to not want to go like more than an hour this, this. This one, but he pretty much covered his policies. I'll make, you know, one observation. I thought he did a really good job at the beginning summarizing the differences in policy with what he characterized the Democrats and characterized the Europeans. As about government spending, unlimited immigration, foreign imports, and higher energy prices, and what he said was basically he discarded all those policies and believes in basically firing the bureaucrats, said they found better jobs, cutting taxes, cutting regulations, tariffs to rebalance and create domestic incentives, and low energy prices, and he he did a nice job actually outlining those policies. And then I think again I think his central message, what have we done for you? What are you going to do for us? Greenland is a small price to equalize it. Finally, the interesting thing that wasn't there to me Iran. He did not say anything about Iran. Why? I think he's got ships heading to Iran, and this was not the time to say something. I can't believe the 20,000 dead protesters is not a major issue that he's not fully briefed and familiar with, but he chose this not to be the place for that. This is the place where he wants progress on Ukraine. And a signing for the border of peace, and I think that's going to be dealt with later. Kellyanne. Wow, well, Mark said an awful lot that I could have said and would have liked to say, and I agree with most of that, and thank you for having me. Thank you, Fortune, for welcoming me here today. I do agree that the very beginning of the president's speech, probably 10 or 15 minutes in, was a good recap of the first year of his second term, particularly when it comes to domestic economic vitality. I think when the president lays out the facts and figures he's at his best because I would challenge anybody to fact check what he was saying at the beginning. 52 records in the stock market, gas prices below $3.02 dollars in some places, things that really do hit everyday consumers. I know domestically, and this is important for the business community, instead of just gas and groceries as a central focus for affordability and inflation and rising prices. It's also going to be housing and healthcare. Gas and groceries obviously is very vexing and perplexing for many households and families, individuals, and commercial enterprises, but you can kind of figure that out, and many Americans have over the last 5 years. You can't do the same if housing costs went up, rent and mortgage 30% or less over the previous 4 years, if the cost of healthcare is causing so many Americans to do without and making employment decisions based on the benefits being offered, and I think that's a great message for a business in America as well, really international businesses. What was going to happen in 2026. And he said at the very beginning, Besson said it yesterday in two different at a dinner we happened to attend together and here on the stage that we can be 5 to 6% GDP. These numbers are unheard of. They certainly aren't predicted. Forget about the naysayers and the critics and the gloom and doom folks. The president's talking about boom, not doom and gloom. And it's after you've been through what he's been through, it really just it falls on hollow. It sounds very hollow. It sounds very negative. It doesn't mean he doesn't care what other people think and won't take that into account, of course he would. He came here with an olive branch and said, let's work together. I'm showing you an instruction package. Look what we did in one year. We could do this together. But Greenland, you said over $200 million you were going to invest. You invested about 1% of that. Um, Europe, I got you to pay the 5% NATO dues, otherwise we wouldn't be in this together as much as we are. That's meant to be for the common economic and military, um, cooperation and also vitality. So let me, if you don't mind, and thank you for that insight. I appreciate it. I want to bring in the view from Europe. I know Kamal, you don't represent the whole continent, of course, and uh there's, but I, I do think that. Clearly one of that that permeated the talk that he just gave. It's something we've been hearing a lot here in Davos. You and I have been speaking with a lot of European CEOs. Give us a sense as to what the reaction would be to this speech. Is this what they expected? I think Mark's absolutely right. This actually took the temperature down, not put it up, and I think, as Mark says, lots of us were expecting it to go down in the way he does. I was here in 2018 when Donald Trump came, came to speak, and he actually spoke again about America first but not America alone, a sentence that he used in this address. I think there's a fundamental issue though, which is maybe difficult to understand from America. As part of the established voice of Europe, and I think we need to be really clear, and we'll hear from Nigel Farage, the leader of reform in the UK after this panel, there isn't just one block of voice from the European Union and from the United Kingdom, there are different voices, but the established voice in Europe is still wedded to a model. For very significant reasons, because it is a model that brought peace to Europe. It involved America and American military strength and economic strength, and it also involved free trade. Free trade to Europeans, or to the established view, means peace. And that is very different from the American approach to tariffs, where tariffs was about income and also didn't have as developed an income tax system until 1913. And so there is a very different language from the European establishment which you've been really hearing. Ursula von der Leyen from Macron. A little less strongly from Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister of the UK, and I think for business leaders it's explaining that different gut response to the idea of your nation's first because we still Remember the language of the first half of the 20th century and the fact that Europe has been at war for many centuries over that line in which NATO and such were formed, but I think what we'll hear from Mr. Farage next is that there is a new drumbeat. Which is much more sympathetic to the journey that the President is on, and I think that one of the clever things about the President, which we don't see much here, we don't see as much of the president in the way that you see him regularly in America, is that he ties it back to everyday what you might call mom and pop politics. He spoke about the restaurants in Washington and there's going to be some new grass planted, and wasn't it great to see, you know, he ties the narrative back to real people, which I think is something that could be a lesson there for many of the European leaders. I love that. And let me, before we go. To Nigel Farage, I want to ask Mark Kellyanne. Let me bring in another leader. Mark Carney spoke about a new world order, the Canadian Prime Minister. If you think the order that the post-World War II order has changed, and certainly on drug prices we were talking about how the rest of the world pays relative to the states, what's the advice you have in In terms of how to be looking at navigating this new world, the one that President Trump laid out, the one that the Europeans are now talking about, and certainly one that we heard yesterday from the Canadian leader. Thoughts as to what that world order looks like and how you grow in it? Well, look, I think the number one thing is that Trump is setting the agenda here at Davos and for the world order. But he's not really setting a discordant world order. He's saying we need to reset the balance. He's saying that, you know, this whole thing about Switzerland and the 41 billion, he said, look, you all have been taking advantage of America. You're going to have to buck it up. And on the drug prices, what he said was, I didn't ask you to pay, you know, 100. Times I want you to pay something higher so that our prices could be lower and that we both win and we all get better drugs, but what he said consistently was not that I want to overturn, take you over. What he said is I want to rebalance the economy, and that was the message. And when I think that some of the politicians overreact and expect to get domestic political reaction by that overreaction, I think they're going to be mistaken. Let me move to Kellyanne. What you have some final thoughts if I had boiled down the theory of the case for the first year, and really Trump too, it's this investing in America. It's his message to countries, companies, cities, individuals, whether it undergirds his tariff and trade policy, clearly the sharpest tool in his well-stocked arsenal, whether it's what he's saying to companies who are coming in, support us on the one big beautiful bill, I'm glad he went beyond no taxes on tips, overtime, Social Security. Everyone knows that what they don't know and love in our polling is the 100% expensing and the deduct. Stability and the factories and facilities and doubling the child tax credit. People like all the benefits in there for employers because they know it benefits them. It benefited in time, the first tax cut and jobs act. One last important thing Dreg important. The one success, and I think moving forward that doesn't get enough credit that we can all be part of is energy. This is probably the. Sort of the under talked about underrated success of the first year we had LNG permits paused that only enriched and empowered Putin to sell power to energy to Europe, including Eastern Europe. The EU is still buying Russian oil. India has gotten a little better. Went from 1% to 22% because it got cheaper. Brazil, India, China still buying Russian oil. That's got to change. I think there's an important Lindsey Graham deal about that made with 85 co-sponsors, very bipartisan. The energy policy stopping the war on fossil fuels. I think replacing ESG and DEI and all of that with good old fashioned USA, stopping the war on fracking, producing again, and encouraging other companies, other countries to produce, but go back to investing in America. It undergirds everything he's saying. OK, great. Listen, this is just a taste, of course, the conversations to be continued, and thank you again for joining us. We have a full afternoon and thank you. Please join me in thanking Kellyanne and Mark, and I will leave you on stage tomorrow for the next interview. Thanks again.

The AI revolution has far-reaching implications for how the leaders of large global organizations will communicate with future stakeholders. On the one hand, new technologies will enable executives to reach more audiences—investors, employees, regulators, media—more efficiently than ever and speak to them in their language with a message precisely tailored to their interests and concerns. But those same technologies are  fraught with risk of deep-fakes, fraud, and damage to trust. Similarly, the rapidly advancing capacity businesses, both large and small, to collect, analyze and act on data on the movements of customers and employees is creating huge new opportunities—and ethical hazards. Ambient AI, biometrics and "always‑on" sensing will transform cybersecurity and employee privacy.  Lurking further over the horizon: AQ (the fusion of AI and quantum computing), fusion‑powered energy and off‑planet data centers. What do these shifts mean for ASEAN’s infrastructure ambitions and for leaders trying to build capability, not just cut costs?

Beyond AI Strategy: Digital Clones, Quantum Futures, and the Internet of You

Alphonso David, President, Chief Executive Officer, Global Black Economic Forum Richard Edelman, Chief Executive Officer, Edelman Tensie Whelan, Distinguished Professor of Practice, NYU Stern School of Business Moderator: Phil Wahba, Fortune

Impact Initiative 2024: Recalibrating ESG - Mastering The Message Amidst The Backlash

Photography by Rebecca Greenfield/Fortune

Alphonso David, President, Chief Executive Officer, Global Black Economic Forum, Richard Edelman, Chief Executive Officer, Edelman Tensie Whelan, Distinguished Professor of Practice, NYU Stern School of Business Moderator: Phil Wahba, Fortune

Alphonso David, Global Black Economic Forum, Richard Edelman, Edelman Tensie Whelan, NYU Stern School of Business, Phil Wahba, Fortune

Well, hi, Richard, thank you for joining us. Um, and, uh, Toy, I'm afraid it's, um, I'm, I love this topic because, um, you know, earlier this year we saw one company after another pushing back on their de I and ESG initiatives and abandoning them. I'm the journalist here so I can name names. You don't have to be as polite but, uh, tractor supply, Harley Davidson, Lowe's Toyota, North America Ford. And I guess I'm, let's just start with, um, why has there been push back, do you think, uh, among the long, uh, a larger part of, um, you know, a big part of corporate America? What, what's behind all this pushback? Is it, is it just political stuff or is, or are there other factors at play? So, um, why don't I start with, uh, with Richard? So I think that companies have been, um, nervous about the politics. I think they took a look at what happened to a certain beer company last summer. Um, and I think they've taken a cue from, um, the idea that they have to be strong with their core customers and what that ignores is the impact on employees and on the other half of the customers and the reality is that, um, companies are easily picked off. If there's going one by one, there's power in numbers. You'll remember this from the Disney case a couple of years ago in Florida where people were opposing, um, piece of dean legislation as a group, Disney decided they weren't gonna do politics and then they waded into it late. Um, and then they were picked off by the Sanders because they were the lone gazelle. So my request to companies is operate collectively agree generally on a set of principles and fight for those any perspectives here. Uh I would say, I, I agree with Richard. Um I think this is a combination of lack of commitment, fear and misinformation and what I mean by that is we all know that corporations are in the business of making profit. And if we look at the concepts of DN I and ESG and we tie them to the core principles that support ESG and DN I revenue generation talent pipeline, uh innovation. For me, it's difficult to see why companies are taking a step back. If they actually understand the data and understand the relationship between ESGDN I talent pipeline, innovation and revenue generation. If they don't understand those connections, then to Richard's point, they're going to kowtow to political pressure. But there's a lot of misinformation out there because the majority of companies are actually supporting ESG and DN I but we have a few companies that are taking steps backwards and relying on the misinformation that I think is going to hinder them moving forward. And I would just add to, to both of these comments that um I think quite a few companies have um misunderstood the materiality of these issues and think of it as a nice to have rather than a must have and something that obviously can be jettisoned at any moment. But the reality is that when these issues are material for a given company, if you're a property and casualty insurance company, and you're not paying attention to climate change, you're not going to be in business. If you are a company that is focused on providing services and you need to hire the best and the brightest and you're not paying attention to what the younger generations want and also to diversifying your um employees. So they actually represent the people that they're selling services to you again, to build on your point about business case, you're not going to be effective as a company. So really understanding the business case behind these, I think is critical. And then finally, I would say um there's a lot of noise, but when you look at the research and we've done a lot of research around consumer purchasing of sustainable products and messaging around with, with Edelman actually, and messaging around environmental sustainability issues. We're now having the field something on social sustainability issues. So we'll be glad to, to share that. But basically, what we see is that consumers state, blue state, um young, old rich, poor, educated, less educated, care about these issues and are purchasing products and services that um uh embed sustainability core to those products, 28% premium on average and CPG growing twice as fast as conventional products, for example, is some of the pushback justified. Um You know, just to play the devil's advocate, I feel like in 2020 companies were falling all over the uh over themselves to quickly adapt. Um uh to, to say, well, we have a, a Chief Diversity Officer, we have this, we have that um it felt like there was a bit of peer pressure going on. And so maybe um some of these programs implemented weren't so solid. So is there, is there uh a a case for why some of the pushback might be justified in your eyes? Well, let's start with you, Richard. So Phil, I think what you observe through data from the trust barometer is by 2 to 1 employees say I'm more likely to work for recommend uh advocate for on social media companies that stand up on business and racial justice as an example. So if you're simply looking through the lens of, of satisfying your employees, um this is a must do. Um Similarly, we see a very substantial percentage of consumers by 2 to 1 who prefer to buy brands that make a case for sustainability. Uh And they want the brands to be equally priced, they want it to be about them, meaning it's better for my life as opposed to just good for society. But you give them those products and you show that you're sourcing sustainably, they will buy your products. So I think the argument moments are very compelling. Um And that there's a lot of evidence to go to the CEO and say stand up to the politicians don't allow them to push you around. This is about business. This is not about purpose, although we found in recent cases this was activist investors as well. So uh to some degree, they probably reflect a bit of a constituency. Um I mean, is, is some of this just uh a correction we're seeing where maybe brands and companies want to go back to where they didn't really have to talk about social issues and politics. Um or uh has that uh horse left the barn and, and it's just a reality now for companies, I think that there are certain issues which you must talk to your employees about and there are other issues you should talk more broadly about. So the ones to your employees only should be gun rights or election rights or abortion rights or things that are inherently more political, but things that have to do with your company, um whether it's who you hire what you pay them, where you source things like this, that's every bit the company's business. And the key part of this is that business is 2 to 1 more trusted than government to get stuff done. And, and that's why there's such an emphasis on, on business as the lead in this. And of course, business doesn't want to be politicized and, and jumped on by, by politicians as activists, but you're not being activist, you're actually um helping to make change and change is what's going to enable society to succeed. Yeah, it's, we're in a weird moment because I remember in both 2016 and 2020 getting countless pr emails from companies saying we're gonna give our employees um um half the day off to go vote and we're gonna encourage them to go do canvassing, et cetera. I haven't gotten a single email about that this time and I'm just wondering if these companies are like, yeah, you all know how to go vote. We're gonna stay out of this one. But uh a quick, a quick phone for, for Richard. Um and y'all can jump into it, the reputational risk to companies that back off because I, I can't help but think if you're an employee or an investor or a customer and you've heard a brand saying certain things for a number of years now, then all of a sudden they say, yeah, we're done with all that. Um We're just gonna focus on our, our core business. Um, does that hurt the credibility long term, uh, with those constituencies? And what's the risk to the company? Well, I think you see in the Disney case, that's exactly what happened. I mean, you, you, you saw the company, we're not gonna do politics, then they go into the case, then they're whip sawed by the governor. Then they react by saying, oh, you know, we, we, we'll reconsider. I mean, companies need to have a certain set of values that they stand, stand for and stand with. And it's, it's an urgent matter of delivering on what you promise. Trust drives growth and action earns trust. You've gotta do things in order to get trust. Um, a question for specifically, well, more directed for Alfonso is the fearless fund. Maybe you can just tell people what happened there and what are the repercussions do you think? Sure. And, and I, I wanna follow up on what Richard said as well. Um I think that often we're asking the wrong questions. What I mean by that is why aren't we asking why the majority of people in the C suite happen to be white men? Why is that not the right question to be asking? Why aren't we asking why companies decided to adopt ESG and DN I without actually tying it to performance? Those should be the questions we should be asking as opposed to. Why is the company taking a step back from DN I? Right because the reason why DN I and ESG exist is because people of color and women have been shut off from opportunities that they're qualified for. And I think we have to sort of shift and change the narrative as we talk about these issues because it still is a problem that women are not leading most of the fortune 500 companies 10%. And in fact, we only have two black women think about that. Why is that not the right question in this moment. And that's what I think we should be talking about, which leads me to the Fearless Fund. Um Fearless Fund was started by two black women and they were looking to uh get investments for their company and they couldn't find any investors. Uh Many people know about venture capitalism. So there's $288 billion that's allocated each year in the venture capital space and up to $288 billion only 0.036% goes to black women less than 1% to all black people. So they decided to start their own company. They created a venture capital firm as well as a charitable organization and they started investing in black owned and women owned and minority owned companies and they also created a charitable organization to provide grants. They were sued last year right here in the 11th circuit uh in the district court at first. And the argument is that by providing grants to women of color, you violate federal law, which is absurd when you think about the disparity that exists. But that was the argument. Uh So we litigated the case and we won at the district court arguing one that charitable organizations have a first amendment right to issue grants consistent with their missions. Think about Uni the United Way or think of Ford Foundation, any of the foundations that exist. And we won the case was appealed to the 11th circuit and two of three judges concluded that the plaintiffs had a likelihood of success on the merits. So the case went back to the district court and we had an opportunity to either litigate the case or resolve it. And we recently resolved the case, I think to the benefit, not only of the fearless fund but to every other charitable organization out there or every organization that wants to invest in Black and Brown entrepreneurs. And the settlement essentially says that the program that they sued under was ending anyway. So they wouldn't continue that program. But the settlement doesn't apply to any of their grants, any of their programs, any of their mentorship programs. It doesn't apply to anything that they do. And we were strategically and I think uh mindful that if we litigated this case all the way up to the US Supreme Court, it may be a different result given the current composition of the court. So ultimately, I think this is a great result for them and a great result for anyone who is interested in equity investments moving forward. Um And sorry, go ahead, Richard. Can I just pile on a little one thing we found in a, in a very recent study we did in uh September about uh employees in relationship to corporations is a huge mass class divide within the corporation. In other words, the people who work in the factories have a fundamentally different view of trust and institutions than the top quartile. And it's twice as large a gap in trust and institutions as in the general population. So it's 32 points versus 18 points. And it's all to do with a lack of economic optimism, a lack of belief in the system, a lack of sense of hope for the future. That's our job. We've got to show people a way forward that capitalism is working for them and not just for shareholders and key to this is sustainability, making sure that they're reskill and upskilled and that and that they don't have to be worried about A i killing their jobs. They've seen this play before on globalization and they don't want it to repeat itself. So go ahead. I was gonna, yeah, so I just want to add to a couple of points here, you know, you asked earlier, why has this gone off the rails? How can companies bring this back? Right. How can they stand up on this. So I think one big mistake um that companies have made is to focus on ESG as a strategy ESG was always just meant to be a system of metrics to measure performance against sustainability. It does not include profitability, sustainability does to your point about performance. So it's just an acronym and it doesn't actually mean anything and yet it became a performative um approach by a lot of companies to say yes, I'm reporting on ESG, here's a bunch of metrics. What you should also know is that the ESG reporting metrics are all process and output based metrics. In other words, do you have AD E I policy? Oh, good for you. You have AD E I policy. What does that actually result in? What is the outcome of that DE I policy? No idea. That's not what the reporting standard tracks. What we're hearing right now from a lot of companies is that they're saying we need to invest in all this reporting and disclosure, which they are required to do, but they're also saying, and that means we're no longer going to execute in what world can you execute? I mean, can you not execute and report on something only on a world where the reporting metrics are not real and where you're not actually driving change, right? So the reason why this is all really important and material to companies, they need to be focusing in on those issues. And let's just talk about the business case from an environmental perspective since we've heard about it from the de I perspective, operational efficiency. Holy grail of many companies, right? And manufacturing, et cetera. Think about how companies think about pollution and waste. They think of it as a compliance issue. Actually, you're buying more than you need to pay, to dispose of what's left over. That is an operational inefficiency we saw for one automotive company $235 million net annually as a result of their waste management strategies, which they did not know because they were not tracking it and because finances track avoided costs, which is a huge part of um benefits coming from sustainability. So my, my key takeaway here is that companies need to get a lot better at embedding sustainability de I social and environmental spending into their core business strategy tied to those issues that are really material and, and build out that business case so they can persuade activist investors. Um regulators, crazy people that this is all you know, makes sense, right? Because it does. And because as we've heard from both Richard Alfonso and Phil, this is where this generation is going. My daughter would not never go work for a company where there wasn't a strong de e focus and I think that that's gonna, that is really true for a lot of this younger generation. So anyway, so in, in uh our remaining time uh question uh will we see more corporations drop out or was this a little fad? Um, and, and basically deep down the way forward as, um, maybe just they'll, they will maintain and refine their ESG and D I, um, approaches because that's just where reality is going. I mean, should we expect more in the exodus or are we done? I mean, here, so my two cents on this is, these issues are not going away. So, you know, Florida can pretend there's no such thing as climate change. But in fact, there is right. Um you know, uh uh people can pretend that they don't need a diverse employee base, but in fact, they do. So this is where I think that companies will need to take on these topics and build them into their business strategy. OK, I agree. I think this is not going away and I think we will see more companies potentially take a step back. But let's remember that more than 83% of the companies based on a recent study are still supporting DN and ESG. And let's make sure that the narrative of the minority is not driving the narrative for the majority, right? And the last word for you, Richard, what do you think more to come? I think the smart company will set goals that can be achieved and be very tangible in the benefits to the corporation and to society because by not doing what they say, they're gonna do, they're all hat, no cattle. And that's exactly the worst place that companies can be in because they're so easy to pick off. Um For politicians, do your job, make it work and make it a positive for um your business. So, on that note, please join me in, thanking our three panelists and Richard for joining us from New York. Thank you.

Critics have ridiculed the 21-year-old’s new product, called “Friend”—an A.I.-powered, always-listening necklace that chats with you through text messages—throughout its development. But his view of Friend as a project, rather than a real device for which he is asking investors from companies like Sequoia Capital to help fund, allows him to not take the criticism personally.

Creator of 'Creepy' AI Friend Necklace Says It's 'Like God'

Avi Schiffman, CEO of Friend and the promotional video for his AI necklace product

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Critics have ridiculed the 21-year-old’s new product, called “Friend”—an A.I.-powered, always-listening necklace that chats with you through text messages—throughout its development.

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