american politics. [inaudible conversations] recent settlement may have your attention. please take your seat. our program is about to begin.

welcome to the second plenary session of national governors association 2024 winter meeting. now approaching the podium is the executive director of the national governors association bill mcbride. >> thank you. morning everyone. [applause] hope you're having a good morning. i hope you had a great evening. wasn't that session yesterday afternoon just wonderful? that was fantastic, wasn't it? people keep asking me all last night how are you going to top that? i don't know. that's a challenge, right? setting the bar real high. we will get there. anyway, we hope you really enjoyed it, but all of us in the room this morning are aware of emerging advances in artificial intelligence has presented to us and quite array of challenges and opportunities for states and territories over the past year and governments are leading to

develop policies to address rapidly evolving but we are pleased to data technology entrepreneur marc andreessen with us. he's going to delve into this issue further with north dakota, doug burgum and that's in the second part of a program this morning. but first i would like to welcome back to the state are chair, governor spencer cox, is going to introduce our first speaker, an old and dear friend of the national governors association, frank luntz. governor cox. [applause] >> thank you bill. ladies and gentlemen, it's great to see that with assessment. thank you my fellow governors who are joining us, and i'm so excited for what we have on the gender this morning. morning. now before we introduce frank i do want to make, but each you know in front of you you have a copy of this magazine. this is a full addition based on exactly what were talking about

today, the state of disunion in a country. this is a gift to all the. there are some amazing articles by some of the best thinkers in the country today. i'm looking forward as well to the second part of the session with a good friend marc andreessen and talking about ai. look, we have this idea that the internet was going to solve all of our problems and bring us all closer together, and we saw how that turned out. some sure everything is going to go find with ai, but just in case we have some experts are to talk about it. before we do that, as i mentioned yesterday, we have been talking about this disagree better initiative, at the polling trends show how important this is, and one that america is a more partisan than ever and two, the two sides distrust each other more than ever. that lack of trust is incredibly dangerous. yet as image and yesterday the data also show something important that is, that is helpful, this perception gap

that exists between republicans and democrats. we are really not far apart as we think we are. and i just any public opinion trends and what's behind them is critical to solving this polarization crisis before it spirals into a catastrophe. we have just the right person you today to talk to us about that. so you won't who use but i'm going to do some in with your dr. frank luntz is a post incompetent and everyone in politics but particularly for the use of his response focus group technique which is been covered by including on 60 minutes "good morning america" and the front line. he's been service more than 2500 surveys focus group, as this and i'll session from other two dozen countries and six continents and fortune 500 company ceos and for many of you. but here's the thing most interested in frank, by the way he brought his amazing cadets with him today. they have the very best of the bascom were proud to have you with us come thank you for joining us this morning, you guys.

[applause] so frank and i don't know each other well. we've been in the same room and meetings together but exactly two months ago he called me after seeing jared polis and i governor polis and i on face the nation and told me that he did know about our disagree better initiative but that he believes is one of the most important things happen in america right now. he volunteered his own time, his own money to do one of its language of surveys up us understand how to better talk about depolarization and civility. we are so excited to her from frank. we're going to finish this portion and about a half hour and then will move onto the second one but ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming frank luntz. [applause] >> i'm glad you took that photograph. i weight 131 pounds on that day. i weigh 215 now. what a great way to start,,

reminding me that i've gotten fat. governor polis, , governor cox, i'm so grateful to be here. i realize that it's kind of rare for me to be in the space right now. and i do also not want to come come come to recognize, want to recognize president glenn youngkin who sitting right there. there. i thought we would get get a better laugh. [laughing] from now, now i've acknowledged on fat and i told the bad joke. what a great way to get thi whole thing going. i've never had a a more import presentation in my life, and i'm scared and i'm shaking right now. i've had some of the most awesome clients in my 35 years of doing this. i've been able to present to house members, senators, even to president of the united states. nothing is as important as what i do now. my client is democracy. and if you haven't realize what's going on at out there, democracy is failing.

we have forgotten how to talk to each other. we've forgotten how to listen to each other. we have forgotten how to love each other. and i watch this as a pollster and it just gives me a big fat headache. because we're so angry and we accuse each other. and there's one other gentlemen i want to do before i go through this, the data, and that is tim shriver. wonderful family. amazing service to the country. but tennis dedicated his life first to special olympics and now to this special thing we call the united states of america ten, i would not be here if you're not help me out, so tim shriver. [applause] this is not a presentation. this is a conversation, so don't wait for me. and by the way, governor scott, i have to warn you, you're going

to see results onscreen. of all the people who deliver messages on this effort, and there have been 16, 17 governors, we tested them all, no message did better than yours. we will see in a few minutes. i know this about horrible. i have my back to the chairman, which is why my better side, and he only came in third. that's why you can trust it because most people would say the person in charge was the best speaker, the best communicator. he's actually third-best. but here's the good news for you. you beat your wife by one position. >> i don't think that is good news for me, frank. [laughing] >> well, you have to work that out under on your way bac. so the language of respect, and want you to see this because even in putting together this presentation, it was so hard because i was getting so

agitated, so angry as i was reading the data. as bad as it is for people in this room, the worst generation, the generation most likely to be angry, , to be dismissive, to cancel people is not your generation. it is your kids. and that's the problem. and that's why i'm so glad to the west point cadets here, what is so important because i i cn tell you there is one university where there is no cancel culture. there is one university that still treats each other with respect. there was one university that believes in courage, character, sacrifice and service, if that's the cadets from west point over here. [applause] so governor polis got good news for you. i've never gotten any mail from a focus group in my life, other than to yell at me.

this was very special. the more that they learn about this initiative, the more positive they got, , the more hopefully got. we have a high degree of people who believe that this country is headed in the wrong direction than ever before. we have a high degree people who believe that this is a most dis- unified that we've been ever before. and most importantly since you all believe in the american dream, we have for parents who believe the kids going to the worst life than they did than ever before. and so much of that is tied to politics. now here's the good news. the more vocal you get to them, the close of the government gets, the more faith they have an effect it is metith republican independent democrat. this place that you're meeting in right now has failed them, but you haven't. my favorit slide, and take a picture of this, governors come in first. in yourbity to relate to

people. they have more faith, trust, and confidence in governors than any other position. it's close b you are number one. this is what'seay cool about it. republicans choose goverrs more than anyone else. democrats choose their president. but when you tn ask him favorability, democrats most favorable, it's working. you are working. you are succeeding over all in the way that congress is not, and other forms of government is not, so it's very impressive. and as you can see the older that you get, the more favorable you are. so this is the good news. now, most of it is bad from here. so if you scare easy, i suggest this is a part where you escape, because on this point on it is really bad. three out of four americans say they are mad as hell.

i've been tracking this since 1992. 1992. this is the line from the movie network, thank you very much. don't do that again. [laughing] back in 1992, i'm not going to be heckled by a lobbyist. [laughing] the only profession that has lower credibility in america is a pollster. and that's because we do the polls. mad as hell means you can't negotiate. mad as hell means you are not losing. madison out this about speaking. and with 32% are mad as hell, we have a problem. and by the way i encourage you if you have a question or comment jumping as i go through this. it gets even worse. this is the polling data that i care most about. because this is a nightmare. you ask people, are you invested in your country? and two-thirds a yes, which is

not a great number. but then you ask them to use your country is invested in you? and only a third say yes. when you think about the consequences of that, when they think that the country doesn't care about them, doesn't believe in them, doesn't try to lift them up. this is not about government benefits. this is not about welfare or education. it's a belief that their government, that the country doesn't care. and when i saw these numbers i had to stop. i got up and started walking around. because all he i could thinks oh, my god, it really is this bad. i do when he government to forget this number. i hope you take photographs of it. because if your state if your people believe that only a third are invested in them, that's not a crisis. that's actual failure.

so you can see some numbers, 70% of our democracy is under threat. almost two-thirds believe there's more that divides us than unites us. and half believe there could be violence in 2024. if i could get on my knees and he knew i could get back up again, i would actually do it to save you how important this is. i've done 2000 surveys in my life. i've done over 1000 focus groups, you've probably seen them on tv. i've never been more frightened in my life and i can't see how to present is to show my respect for you and to basically beg you that you are the answer. we know what the problem is, enjoy the answer. let me show you how worse, how much worse it has actually gotten. half of americans will not state the point of view because they are afraid of being punished. not just look down upon but actually punished. and more than a third path that

this happened multiple times, look at below that numbe two-thirds of young people have stopped using their freedom of speech. that's a failure. do you realize how awful our universities are right now? i'm looking around and i know it's going on in pennsylvania, the universe of pennsylvania, up at harvard, stanford, schools across the country. the kids are afraid. and it seems like nothing is happening. it seems like no one is protecting them. this is a number that shows you have that it's got it's not just been. one-third of cut somebody up to him could ask you guys, there's no cameras back there. i'm going to ask you, how many of you, the honest with me now, how many of you stop talking to someone because you found their politics offensive? raise your hands. i appreciate the honesty.

look at that number. it's awful. and it's happening in our own families. 43% of the public stop talking to a parent, a mother, a child. i don't want to use bad language because you'rerom utah. [laughing] i nd help. can a governor to what is a better phrase for shit show that will not turn tm off? [laughing] >> rank, we call those farm words. they are okay. [laughing] >> okay. i do the jokes here. [laughing] so let's get to numbers, 83% is a country mortified that in time in my lifetime. if you see the numbers below, on age, among those 555 and older who remember the cities burning

in the 1960 can remember the protests on vietnam. 92% say people over age 65 say it's more divided than ever before. if this isn't evidence that we have to resolve this, i don't know what is. some want to start to do language with you, and i welcome you to take photographs if you want to. the two words that matter most, divided and toxic. i want you to note that partisan is almost at the bottom. this is no longer about politics. this is now about life itself. i disagree with how you live. i disagree with how you look. i disagree with what you say. i disagree with everything but is that just disagree. i hate you for being different. that's what this -- gets a republican or democrat. it's not liberal, conservative. it's the we are as people. and by the with the most powerful word of all is that we are dehumanizing people. i know you've had this fight in

colorado. you probably had in most states. so here's my phrase for you and, in fact, i hope the governors of the purchase of it in this will deliver a message, will give this a try. our country crossroads. they see this intersection right now. we have to do something for things get worse. too much distance between friends, neighbors, coworkers and even family because it's all of us around us reject the status quo, we must begin by listening and i was shocked at how powerful listening has become, but it's not listening. it's understanding. and asked the people who sit in the back over there who have interest in putting pressure on the people in the front of this room, understanding is what americans are seeking. they will not yell if they think you understand them.

so we asked them the question that this initiative. 8% are hostile. 65% are supportive. you can't g safety 5% for any initiative anymore. and only% are negative. either way, look at the parties. among democrats only 3% have a negative reaction. among republicans 12%. and now i'm about to get myself done in. so i will talk to the here because you're going to hatee and you are going to hate me, and you're going to hate me. oh, god. this is not a bipartisan problem. there are plenty of people on the left who yell and are disrespectful, but the people who oppose this, the people who seek to stand up and shout, more from the right than from the left.

the people who are so disruptive and hostile are more likely than to be republican than the art democrat. i don't know how to handle this because i don't want to shoot myself. but i can't stay quiet anymore. and i asked the republicans in this room to search your souls and to recognize that the level of toxicity of the language within to many in the gop has gone overboard. and some of you know this from their legislatures. some of you know this from your activists. this is not getting democrats a pass. baking the republican to stand up and speak out and say enough is enough -- begging -- please. what's the biggest problem? it's not the soft stuff. it's about results. they believe things are not

getting done. and i will say to you that the number one priority for your voters, and meaningful, measurable track record of success, and results. that's the phrase the looking for. i know a few of your seeking reelection right now. that's the phrase the want from you more than anything else. i meaningful, measurable track record of success and the problem is they don't see it when this anger cause a stuff not to happen in the best example of that is the immigration legislation right here in washington. the public has said fix the border. three months ago we had an agreement. and now we don't because of politics. that's what the public hates so much. so let's do language. i will stop. has any governor got any question? am i dead to you? [laughing]

i keep waiting for some to step up behind me and just pop me. you guys have to save me over here. it's why you're sitting in the second row. so here's the language behind it. here's your phrase. everything in this works, i'm not going to take it to all of it. imagine it's the most powerful word in the english language. if you ask people to imagine democracy at its best, they would support this initiative five to one, six to one. a united united states is going to be taken by three or fou of you who realize what a powerful statement that is, to reunite the united states of america is exactly what your constituents are looking for. you'll see that in a moment. it's not just about listening. it's listening with an open mind. that phrase really does matter. the fact that you have made up your mind, the fact that you're listening. i want to understand when you

use that language, i want to understand, explain it. a g the right to oppose pick a geisha the right, right to disagree. the fact that you're trying to understand allows you to say no, we have a different point of view. that's how you disagree better. a couple more from up here. it's fact-based, not evidence-based. how many of you in this room are lawyers, raise your hand. if you're a lawyer raise your hand. get the hell out. [laughing] by the way the guy who last the loudest is the biggest lawyer in the room. it is, you protest. there's evidence for the prosecution. there's evidence for the defense. we argue over evidence, but we don't argue over fact. you take up backbench approach to anything, the public is much more likely to trust you and follow you. and if there's any of the phrase that doesn't work nearly as well.

the last phrase, healthy, honest, respectful conversations and discussions, that is the sentence, governor, but everything else i should lead the website. healthy, because we all believe that we need a healthy environment, we need a healthy school, healthy families. honest because we're tied the people lying to us. respect the because that's the highest value. conversations and discussions, that's the best price possible for this. in terms of the want you to stop saying something, it's not on empathy. it's not about empathy and is not even about listening. it is about understanding. it's not about consensus. it is about common ground and partisan and polarized doesn't actually matter to people divided and toxic does. one other set. cooperation and compromise is good. but listening with an open mind allows you to disagree better. i urging you because i've been to your website as i put together the survey.

take a look at what works and take a look at what doesn't. a couple more of these. look at that dehumanizing. that's your challenge. that's actually what this is all about in the end is we can't dehumanize each other anymore. you talk about dignity index. brilliant. ten, the whole process getting people to think about how they can committed, not only brilliant, it's absolutely necessary in getting a better discourse. the reason why is we have to stop dehumanizing each other. another example. i told you about united united states america get everything up telling you has been tested. on the budget should the focus groups in one minute. this is not my point of view. this is what the public says. this is your phrase, you have 30 seconds. for those who think it's important that will reach across the outcome to build to talk to democrats and republicans at the same time, this is how to do it.

these words work no matter how left you are, them on how right you are, young, old, new england, california, doesn't matter. ways to work together side-by-side is visual in your communication. the other thing is you're looking for perspectives and points of views rather than values or opinions or beliefs, a perspective and what if you is what the public wants to know from you. and i think this one is really important. it is about civility and is even about kindness. it is not respect and open-mindedness. so let me go to the -- i'm going to show you a couple of ads your governor scott this when you yoe going to recognize. the blue line of democrats in the red like red like the s come the yellow line is into bits. the higher the lines climb the more favorable response.

we talk all of your messages, 16 of them, and these are the ones that did best and i will show you why. ♪ ♪ ♪ when you face a disagreement you can bring your points. never too late to be kind. >> why was at message so powerful to you spoke with the

term disagree better resonate with me because it is something that is so missing today because most people seem to want to stay in a perpetual state of outrage as if they enjoy being there. always angry, always looking for reason to cancel or argue with somebody. and that message in that ad shows that it's okay to listen, it's okay to say hey, we can agree to disagree. we can still go have a drink. we can still be friends. i think about when ronald reagan was president and speaker was tip o'neill. they got along and things got done. that doesn't happen anymore. >> why was at message off the charts for you? >> empathy. i think the country could use a big dose of empathy. and that's basically what he was describing, was just having more compassion for other peoples points of views. i don't understand why we can't

disagree. there's nothing wrong with disagreeing with your neighbor. my next-door neighbors are the most wonderful people and have the exact opposite viewpoints of me. >> rather than empathy, it's understanding. i want to give you a challenge. i can elect anyone if you. i can reelect anyone if you and you can give no negative pledge and i know how to do it. i know that there's no way you're going to say yes, because you are all used to negative as i consoled to tell you you have to tear down your opponent. you don't have to anymore. there is a path. let me show you another example ♪ bennet. >> nothing really great comes of negativity set to take a breath, take a pause, can have the responsible of ourselves to be better listeners and say okay, an attitude necessarily agree with us of the present let's respect each other as individuals make sure they have a point of view voice. who knows why they had that opinion. let's hear it.

>> daniel, please go ahead. >> i just think part of being a great leader and a great communicator one of the most important things is being a great listener. and i think anybody is a busy yelling their point of view that nobody is listening to what everybody has to say. that's one of the things that's trying to bring us together is the foundation of the station was based on this agreement of the stuff in well with disagreeing but we have to come to some kind of agreement will be can both get some kind of think we bought. >> why was it so powerful to you? >> it was so powerful to me because i have to have surgery to have a tumor removed from my neck. i lost my voice for a couple of months. and when that happens, you are forced to listen. and i've tried to talk to other people about you can't, you can be listening if you are always forming an argument or replying to some before the finish speaking. out of respect. >> that's beautiful, we appreciate your participation

and i particularly appreciate the sacrifice you're making to be here. >> and event someone struggle in a focus group. he was really hurting and i kept offering, i said i will pay you, i will pay you double. he didn't want to go. he wanted to sit and give his points of view because it matter to him that much that he struggled in how he spoke. i've never had these responses before. when i say do this a more important to me than any other presentation, it's because they told me this is more important than anything they've ever done. and they didn't care whether they were republican or democrat perkins act the next person who speaks that was why they like him so much. they couldn't tell whether he was republican or democrat and they appreciated that. >> hi. i'm spencer cox, governor of

utah and chairman of the national governors association. you and i probably disagree on a few things. and that's okay. it's actually good for us but it's way too easy to let our differences become toxic. our country is deeply divided. most americans are tired of the division. disagreeing better, not disagreement last, is the answer. when we engage in healthy, honest dialogue, we avoid demonizing others and we are more likely to find solutions. >> why was the spencer cox at so favorable to you? >> it was favorable because i felt like it was very engaging, almost like he had a resting spot, a sense of optimism. and i did know who he was. so for me he was a blank slate. he could've been a republican, a, and independent. i didn't know i do like the fact i didn't know what his party affiliation was.

>> why was it so positive for you? >> i just feel like particularly like i'm from nashville and it's kind of a blue seed in a state of writ. everyone used to get along very well at functions and i like city versus state, it's gotten so people can't even talk. and so to be able to discuss things that are important to our city nudges a country not be able to talk, i would like to see more of that. >> what's great about this focus group is at so many of you, the represent your voters, your constituents. one more video to show you. i wish your wife with your to see this because she came up with an amazing line that is really powerful. >> we have to make a change. we can't continue down this path. we don't want to lead a hopeless and sad and divided world for our children. and i think it's incumbent upon all of us to work together to solve these divides and solve

these problems, come together to make that happen because we owe it to the next generation to leave this place better than we found it. >> the leave this place than we found it, was one of the most powerful statements of everything that you looked at in terms of your reaction. can he get a few of you to explain why that phrase matters so much to you? anybody. >> yeah, i feel like her overall message reminds us of our own community, that we are human, that at the end of the any politicians goal is to improve our lives as humans. we focus on that central message regardless of the approach that we can come whether we republican or democrat, independent pickup into the date the goal is to make life better for humans. that's what she kind of underscored. >> okay. i don't know, does this have any impact? i i hope you have a couple of questions. i've got five minutes to answer

them. i'm hoping i get through. i don't know if my delivery helped or hurt. but i know how important this is. i'm hoping that you take this seriously because i i people y focus groups who were crying as we went through this process and i've never had that happen before. i've had yelling and screaming. but it's been on that. it's now cheers for a country that they feel like they have lost and they feel like they've lost it for their own children and for the next generation. and that will cause a parent to cry. can answer anything from the governors? [applause] okay. i think i have failed. anything from anybody? governor. >> first of all i want to welcome from a home state our cadets at west point, really proud to the leadership your short already a at a young ag. frank, this is inspiring.

i would love to live in the world we don't have to worry about about the negative ads that are misrepresenting our character, our votes, our positions, our values. how do you run positive to counter that when people are more likely to believe the negative about politicians? do you ever envision a world where we can all be victorious without what is been so ingrained in our democracy, which is point out the flaws of our opponents in in a very ne way? >> three ways. first is that word imagineer i don't if i can go backwards, but i will supply the complete powerpoint. this is a selection of the information. that word imagineer as people in your case in your ask people to imagine a state, the system. what could we be? what could we achieve? what could be accomplished when we're all working together side-by-side mode up our sleeves to get it done? they actually see it.

you ask him to imagine it, they will want it. that's step number one. step number two is can we do better than this? it's for the incumbent to actually say rather than tearing each other down, rather than tearing each other apart, there is a better approach. americans don't want more. don't get confused by all the advertising that you see in the commercials and all that. we don't want more. that's quantity. we want better. that's quality. and if you are promoting a better approach, a decision-making process, that takes you two-thirds of the way there. but then the third part which is what we don't do is we never say i understand. we never say i did it. so i know you got republicans in your statement to the hard time. instead of dismissing them, disagree better requires you to say i understand. i don't agree but i understand.

now let's see where we can go from here. it is, and is that empathy and is not compassion, and it's not kind to is. when you recognize them that way, they may not treat you any better, and the public vote, i know new york. [laughing] it's like every time i could new york i get mugged, just intellectually i get mugged by new yorkers. who here is some new york? i'm going to kick your ass. [laughing] completely uncalled for. but everyone listening to the conversation, will listen to you and will reject your critics. i'm not trying to win over my opponents. and trying to win the people who make the decision who represent us, that's why say to you it actually is possible to disagree emotionally and passionately, and win the argument.

because those three steps. anything else i can answer? >> frank, i'm just curious, does that general discontent, it's not pessimism, result in higher or lower voter participation? just to get your feel for that. and then another comet is, is that mostly anti-incumbent as opposed -- another comment -- just general you know, general reputation of the whole political process? how do you see that? >> it has increased turnout because people think their entire lives are at stake. young people vote because they are voting on issues of abortion and guns. older people vote because they are voting on the issue of character and work ethic. everyone participates they

participate in such a negative way that to me turnout is not the judge of whether this is working. it's the public reaction to what is being done. 80% hate congress. the majority of americans dislike both our presidential candidates. 70% don't want either of them. and yet that's what they think they are getting. the opposite of love isn't hate. it's indifference. and my fear is that people actually say the hell with it all, i don't care anymore. and my greatest fear of all is that they convinced their kids to feel the same way. when young people stop participating, that's when you know you've lost your democracy. and your second question was? >> it was basically whether this -- you kind entered it right now. whether this is against incumbents.

>> it's the whole system. it's the lobbyists, the special interest groups, it's the media. it's, it's all of it. we are supposed to be the greatest country on the face of the earth, and you know many of you believe that. the problem is there are increasing number of americans who don't and i and concern. by the way, i know marc andreessen is coming in momentarily. the greatest threat is ai. the greatest threat, might not know everything up, is social media. are you going to kill me? [laughing] >> ai's time has,. [laughing] >> yes. i look forward to to in runng this place because it's funny as hell. >> but you were supposed to protect me. everyone, thank you very much for listening. i appreciate it very much. thank you. [applause]

>> the slideshows available to governors and that will be delivered privately directly to governors. >> yes. thank you very much. >> i hope the ai presentation is more upbeat because aren't we all depressed right now? but i think with frank's words would use a glimmer of hope, some of the language that i know we feel, i feel, spencer feels now with the analytical piece going the best way to express some of those concepts. i certainly photographed some of those language and i know that they can that will be available to people soon but let's give frank luntz another round of applause. [applause] >> for the next part of the session will focus on another deep, topic of momentous change

and that's the field of artificial intelligence. it's having a profound impact on our world, the workplace are lies, of course politics. with the great opportunities of ai also, many great challenges. we have no doubt we of the very best potential speaker on this topic. i i want to introduce our moderator first is one of our great governors with tremendous background in i.t. and computing are moderately north dakota governor doug burgum. many of you know him as a presidential candidate. welcome may be a few of you known as a presidential candidate. [laughing] but we'll known as a as a terrific beating governor with a strong background in i.t. before the election in 2016 he helped launch great plains software, launch it from a small startup company in 1983 to an award-winning tech firm that was acquired by microsoft in 2001.

he will be moderating the conversation with software pioneer marc andreessen come the brilliant mind behind netscape, a true trailblazer. today marc will dive into fasten world of artificial intelligence. his take ai isn't just sci-fi, it's a reality and is here to supercharge our lives. actually a i wrote that the kite by staff right one but it went on to chatgpt and say how should i introduce marc andreessen to the group of governors? its console serving as how comes back, its first mistake was a one would you say that ai, marc andreessen believes that ai is here to save our world. but that was coming from ai so it's a little suspect. but nevertheless, we could not have a more thoughtful leader in this area to help make sure that we as governors are up to speed with what we should know them both from the state services perspective but also from the broader cultural, political,

economic perspective. without further ado please join me in welcoming governor doug burgum and marc andreessen. [applause] ♪ ♪ ♪ >> well, on behalf of the national governors association, marc, i want to say thank you for spending time with us today. thank you, for the wonderful introduction. people don't know, i am doug burgum, based on -- [laughing] based on that intro. this is marc. we are going to have a lively discussion today, this'll be fun. i'm honored of course, , you grw up in technology, this is like getting a chance to sit down with one of your superheroes, someone who truly transformed

the industry and has made indifference. i mean there are very few people of build as many copies, create as much shareholder value and to build products that have literally been used by billions of people, and so it's a special honor, particularly at this time when ai is touching every one of the jobs that each of these governors is doing. but kick it off. we know where the ending is, this incredible think the let's go back to the beginning. new lisbon wisconsin a tell about 1700 people is where you started. i know when you are going up the offset your classmates and that's the guy that's going to change the world. tell us a little about that. >> personal and was not that big. 1309. population 1309, not including the cows. although that's an open question is whether they to those in there. so world wisconsin, public-school. agriculture farming, commuted.

and by the way the portuguese insight. nobody ever did find out how the town got its name. >> on a delight it was named after lisbon ohio, also famous. >> there we go. we couldn't -- >> we don't know what lisbon was named for. could've been named after lisbon north dakota. >> exactly. >> was a computer in your high school when you're going up? >> there was not for a while. this is right on the cusp of the pc revolution. we were not seen it yet. we started getting computers in high school we end up with a small computer lab and that kind of got, waited the appetite. there were home computer in those days that were very expensive, 200, 300 of home computers and you put them up to your tv set and recorded programs on a cassette player and maybe they would load the next time you put the cassette in.

>> did you have a radioshack. >> i did. radioshack and great american enterprise radioshack. the trs 80 was the model name, called the trash 80, and fantastic you can buy refurbished versions of those on ebay. they are fun to play with. >> did you have a future that inspired you early on, or were you -- i know later in your curricular teaching the teachers, back in new lisbon was a salute to encourage you to get in the computer that the first and? >> we had a young teacher came in, and newly minted teacher come ms. blackstone and she came in and was a whiz and super into the stuff. >> and then did you have a career counselor that said hey, here's the college you should go to and is a thing called computer science? how does that all people where you ended up at a state university? >> where i grew up people didn't leave the town. it was sort of assume. if you were going to try to venture out to go to the

university of wisconsin, very well-developed system appetite. usually one of the smaller campuses. i grew up about in north and central wisconsin about an hour north of medicine. madison was not part of wisconsin, like madison was called crazy. you don't go there. of course the top campus look at the neighboring states a look at minnesota come almost went to minnesota and look at illinois. the literally have particularly strong technology and engineering program. i literally, i always liked computers my career planning process will literally lined the u.s. news and world report magazine that with all the college rankings. there was a box at the pump that had starting salaries by bachelor degrees. a new it was only a bachelor what is out there. i wanted to get to work. starting salary, and electrical entry was at the top of the list.

$40,000 starting salary at the time or something. i said okay that's it. in a country illinois and a realized i do not want to deal with wires or circuit boards at all and switched to computers and was very happy after that. >> while you were there, that's the work that led to mosaic. was that pure accident or was the other classmates were working with you that decided they wanted to go to party instead of becoming a billion or? how did the whole thing happen when you're working on that early project? and did you see the potential of where that could take us? and how was, again, the kid from new lisbon the one who saw the potential? >> i got very lucky. i went to university illinois urbana-champaign at a critical time. i knew this but didn't understand the forms impot until i got there and which is the was a federal government program at the time called, well one was called nsf, national

science foundation, , basically internet, sort of the creation of the modern internet find it in the '80s and '90s. something of a a national supercomputer program where the federal government funded four national commuting centers at state universities. basically just picked, the government picked four colleges basically unlike dumped money on the to build incredible computer labs, computer complex including his great civic commuters the cost like $29 a pop. this is, there were so large, this was in early '90s, the computers were so physically large that you would build the building for the computer. we had one building on campus have been billed for supercomputer at the shelter of the building got built in the computer got lowered by crane into the central core of the building. ..

>> and so my big struggle after sort of being dropped in the middle of that. it was fascinating because we had high speed internet connection before anybody else did, all of these super computers and incredible labs and then we just-- and then they weird the campus so there was broadband all over the campus and everybody was on e-mail. it was like getting a glimpse of the future. the assumption was you would use these tools while at school or doing research and when you would graduate and leave and in the real world and stop using all of this stuff. so, a bunch of us actually got funded to basically build software to make it easier for

people to use at school and in research, but also, we then made it available to everybody on the outside. so, yeah. >> and give the time frame so people understand where this period was when were you flourishing in the bubble. 1989 to 1994. the other thing about that, an amazing bubble, amazing experience. people here probable remember between '89 and '94, two other things were happening, severe recession and time forgot and people don't think about it, but it was a scarring experience at the time for the country. i remember it distinctly and it was a foreshadowing in a lot of ways, it led to ross perot, and people think that he could have won had things gone differently. the experts, media, everybody believed, including, you know, i even bought into it, that basically was japan was fully

at that point and figured out how to have the globally dominant technology and was going to dominate everything, and that i went into college thinking i would have to speak japanese for the technology. and the economic boom kicked in and japan stalled out. the japanese stock market last week just actually returned to the high that it hit in 1993. and so, it was believed it was going to take over the world and literally had a 30-year sag and you know, they're not still not out of it. they still have issues and only gotten back to the 1993 levels, but that narrative was so strong and incredibly demoralizing at the time. 30 years later, talking how similar not completely the same, but similar the china narrative has been over the

last decade and i'm skeptical of the china narrative as the japanese one. >> we'll get to that at the end. and japan has 800,000 more deaths than births every year, so in the next 20 years they're expected as a country to shrink by 16 million people and it's tough to grow an economy when-- and grow work force and all of those things when you've got that demographic tree where you've got more people retired out of the work force than you have coming into the work force. >> it's a huge problem for obvious fiscal reasons, a small number of young people can't pay for a large number of old people. it doesn't work and i think it's around the terms of national vitality. something came out of the japanese spirit at some point and i think that had a lot to do with it. and then look, you look at the u.s. like we're experiencing-- we're experiencing the native population of the u.s., birth

in declines and china, china has hit a demographic cliff and shrinking and in 30 years, china is going to be overwhelmingly senior citizens unless something changes. this is the profound problems of our time that is extremely hard to come to grips with. in a lot of ways the prosperity of-- people hit a certain level of income, they are more interested in living lives. >> and to be clear, i have an 8-year-old, i love it. i highly, highly, highly recommend having kids to be clear, strongly on that side of things. >> while we're on that your 8-year-old, jj, i understand he's got a new interest of study. >> we're home schooling our 8-year-old and my goal has been to have the ultimate warrior monk or warrior scholar and he

does mixed martial arts three times a week which i love and super into math and computers and referring to, he's just started quantum physics, so his science teacher the true title, how to explain quantum physics to your dog and jj thinks it's the most exciting thing he's seen. and so he's learning. he's going to win all the physics competitions or the mma competitions not sure which. >> or both. >> i think that governors have the first action item from the q & a, how to teach quantum physics for your dog is required reading going forward. so back to your school mosaic, you're working on a project. tell us the leap that led to netscape and sort of opened the

internet to everyone. >> the challenge of the '90s, the government was funding the backbone. business on the internet was illegal and nsf, public funding for the internet backbone, they had an acceptable use policy, a nice term for things you couldn't do. you couldn't do transactions, it wasn't allowed, couldn't send money and a general problem of access, most people were not at the university of illinois and most were not on the campus to have access to this. and there was a group that was funded as part of this to make the internet more useful. and so, a bunch of us started this original renegade project mosaic and it was official and that was the first browser that a lot of people used and we built tools around that to make the web work and then we reached a point, so-- mosaic started to take off in 1993 and the internet started to spread pan people figured

out, home businesses started to connect and the government was on the verge of listing a up so you'd be able to start doing a business and we passed a million users in mosaic in the summer of '93 and it was starting to go and i was the customer support rep and so i was the guy reading the-- in between reading cody was-- writing code, i was writing e-mails, and got some sleep at some point. and we applied for a grant for the customer desk for the internet and they turned us town. by the way, they reasonably said, no, that's not the job of the national science foundation, to do customer support. you guys need to figure out something else. so i have that e-mail. >> i knew that people using this and we released a code under a sort of open source license that says you can use the code for anything you want as long as it's not commercial. if it's commercial you need to call us and get a special approval and we're under the

serious rules and we never really had-- never knew what we were going to do with it, we knew we had to say that and i have the e-mailbox of the incoming commercial requests and people e-mailing, can i give you money for official licenses to do other things. when people were offering lightning-- i'm slow, but not that slow and a light bulb went off, there might be a business here. and a bunch of us moved to california and formed a company netscape and soaked up that business. we were-- big lesson. we were greeted with a wall of skepticism. this is crazy, silly. everybody knows that the internet is not for business, and ordinary people are not going to use this, the tech bubble, it's crazy, but turned out people liked it, so-- >> well, and all of that shaped your thinking a little bit because of the people being so

wrong about so many things, and now, you know, leaping forward, you had an incredibly successful exit, 4.2 billion, sold netscape to aol and then started a successful firm and hot startups touching all aspects with ai and served on the board of hewlett packard with 10 years and that's a name that everybody would know, as you know the way that the market caps are, ne look at brand names and not market caps, hewlett pack $30 billion market cap and you're on the board of meta parent company of facebook, and four times that of hewlett packard. this is how fast it's changed and of course, we've got to-- i think it wasn't that long ago that no one thought they'd have a $1 trillion market cap company and now the dow and

everything is driven by apple, google, microsoft, these multi-trillion dollar companies that are happening. so, you've seen so much change in your lifetime. you've seep-- seen the personal computer, the internet, you helped create, and the cell phone which exploded and now ai. over the arc of that, you have described yourself, you've taken this amazing, wonderful, beautiful contrarian view about being optimistic about technology, wrote a manifest about being a techno optimist that's probably been one of the most widely read thought pieces that's come out of this industry in my lifetime. so maybe just share a little about the thesis and how you got there and-- because again, all of these events you've been able to witness firsthand have shaped your thinking. >> so several things, so, it's worth spending a moment on americans, the role of america in all of this. nvidia, american chip company based in california started

about 30 years ago, and one of the original vc's is still on the board. the taiwanese-american in the company is still on the board. there was a company that later fell on hard time, had a long road, 20-year journey of struggle. they did well, but a continuous fight to stay in business and to grow. and then you know, they really just caught in the last 10 years, their technology road map turned out to be prescient and the 3d graphic wave and ai wave as a result of their hard work. and passed $2 trillion market cap on the u.s. stock market. that company now is a larger market cap than the entire public stock market of germany, right. so, one american company is bigger than the entire german

industry. that's just one and we have several of those, now we have apple, i think i forget the comparison, but these individual companies, you know, like one is bigger than the market cap of germany, another is bigger than the market cap of france, another is bigger than the market cap of japan. it's remarkable happens when the companies run and look, america is just like putting these things-- the only two building companies to this level of scale is basically us and china. europe used to. if you looked at a ranked market cap listing of tech companies globally 30 years ago, europe was a pretty high percentage of them and i think on the top 50 now, it's down to one. so europe has decided they just don't want this. you know, european bureaucrats, there's big story couple years ago, we basically can no longer be the world leader of technology and now we decided we'll be the world leaderen of

managing technology. >> and if-- sweden has a very dynamic and fertile entrepreneurship environment and it's part of the-- it's up against this wall of repression from the eu, just absolutely does not want this stuff to happen. and then as a consequence, of course, european economic growth is much lower and they have all kinds of internal problems as a result. i mean, as an example, it's hard to pay for a modern military if you don't have the growing economy and the tax base so they're in their own advice on that. the american success stories here are absolutely spectacular and of course, that's a huge credit to the people who built the companies and a huge credit to the system that we all have that, you know, that this is possible. you know, techno operatetism, i identify as a techno optimist, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years ago that would have been a

noncontroversial statement, everybody would have said tech is wonderful and fantastic, and economic growth and fantastic. and you know, it's become i would say very fashionable in the last decade in particular to go dark and negative and the by the way, the two political sides, you know, kind of have different-- they both have negative views on tech, they're negative for different reasons, but they're both negative and of course, i would say look, like the fact is that tech has become central. tech has become so central to how society functions of course, it's going to end up embroiled in politics and who can look at the impact on society and to explain what we're doing and why it's good and frankly, largely failed to do that over the last couple of decades and so, you know, a lot of this is our fault, but you know, the narrative has become very negative. i think it is worth though at least considering the positive side, which is what i try to layout in my essay. of course, the positive thing

on technology is-- technology is the lever on the world lets us escape from manual labor, misery and quality, and we aspire to from our family and descendents and the modern american life style the benefit of 200 years of industrial revelation. so it's every day, the something is now five million people a day are sort of connected to electric power grid globally, still. got that rate and it's everything, access to clean water. access to energy, access to the internet, access to job opportunities, access to education. technology is the lever that we use to make the world better. from an economic standpoint, tech is the central driver of economic growth, because tech is the driver of productivity growth and the most fundamental way the economy works is, you can either year after year be

putting in the same inputs and same outputs, in which case you don't grow because you just have hard constraints you don't grow or apply technology and each year put out more output for less input and they call that productivity growth. we live in a time where everybody believe that tech disruption is high, but productivity growth is at historic lows and the economy is not changing fast. in fact, the economy since the introduction of the economy has changed less quickly, productivity growth has been lower nan the three decades before the computer. which is bizarre reverse phenomenon from kind of what you would think. so, the sort of downward spiral that you can get into if you have low productivity growth, you have no economic-- low economic growth. if you don't have sense of that, the future, a parent, young kids, young person coming up what am i going to do to

make my life better, better than my parents, it doesn't exist because you have no growth. you're going to evolve to zero sum politics, then it's dog-eat-dog, something taken from somebody else. the rise of populism on the left and right as a result of we're just not growing the way we should. our society is stagnant and our economy is too stagnant and the only way to grow faster is to apply more technology. the only way to get more output is with new information. we have all of these incredible new technologies that we can use, basically the global technology battle is down to us and china. there's no reason on earth we shouldn't be able to win that. no reason our economy shouldn't be able to grow enormously in the next 30 years, we have to decide whether we want that to happen and we're in a psychological state where it's

an open question. >> i'm just going to interject on something a minute ago without making-- may come across as a political statement, but it's an economic statement you accurately said that growth comes from increases in productivity. there's another way you can fool yourself you think you have growth, if print money, and inject into the economy, a growth in product. and we could say we've got all of this fiscal spending and bugetary spending to tricking people we've solved our economic problems, but you're focused on the underline productivity gain. >> can i say one thing. one thing in my manifesto, whether people are on the left or right they should want economic growth. on the right, free market and opportunity and on the left, economic growth is what generates the tax base to pay for the programs. if you want to increase social spending, the way to get it a

faster growing economy and there for more tax revenue. this ought to be a bipartisan issue. by the way, many times in the past that this has been a bipartisan issue. in the '90s, it was and everybody knew this was the right path and it's sitting there waiting for us to pick up. >> and let's take this a bridge an ai. >> if you think about the big gains of productivity, you think about america and 200 year growth path that's taken us to the largest economy in the world and now producing these at-scale global companies, but some of in began with the industrial revolution, the agricultural revolution. i mean, i look at what we've done-- in agriculture we're producing with the same inputs versus outputs have grown 100 fold in the last century in terms of labor and the percentage of people that work in agriculture in this country has gone from 20% down to like 1%. i mean, so it's huge gains that have happened. are we at the cusp of another

major revelation different by ai. in your and our lifetime, every company has been transformed by technology. now something more powerful, adopted at a faster rate than the cell phones, internet or personal computers. is the ai revelation going to open a window for productivity or regulate ourselves in such a way, we keep having this slower growth than we should be achieving? >> yeah, so we really ought to have a huge economic boom and growth boom coming out of ai and hopefully i'll spend a fair amount of time talking about that. it ought to happen. everybody in my world thinks the next few decades could be extraordinary. i think the back drop i provide to it is what you describe is like the shifting space of companies in our world and again, this has been a historic strength of the american system. at least in tech industry

historically. if it's on the edge and doing important and valuable and new and embracing new trends, it tends to grow fast and creating jobs. if it falls behind, down it goes. that leads to dramatic headlines, once great companies that fallen on bad times or layoffs and bankruptcy and those are bad in the moment. one of the reason our system works so well and generates incredible companies because both labor and capital do reallocate to the new opportunities. they don't get stuck in companies in the pass which have basically governor monopoly and stagnant forever. both the people and money migrates to the new companies. we have the marvellous system-- capitolism works the best in the u.s. certainly the best out

of the countries. and some incumbent companies are not going to be able to keep up with this, but we will have other world companies that form and do this. you know, ai itself, i think the reason to be optimistic about the downstream consequences is basically, it's a-- the way to think about it, it's a -- in one way, it's the latest after series of ways of new technology that we've seen play out and you've mentioned main frame, mobile, cloud fast, we've had all of these ways of technology the last 30 years that powered a lot of the american economy and technology. ai is another one of those so it's embraced by silicon valley as the 6th, 7th, 8th, big platform in the last few decades so we'll try to transform the industry. beyond that, it's potentially broadening out the usefulness of the computer and everybody

has had this experience and the one thing to know about computers, they're really not good at dealing with people. traditional computers. the classic thing, you tell the computer what to do and it's your fault, you didn't tell is the right thing, didn't press the right buttons or enter the computer code the right way. the computers until now have been hyper literal machines and the good news is they can do math at high speeds, but you certainly can't talk to them, right, and look, great companies tried to solve this problem, you know, with things like alexa and siri the last decade and how people use alexa and siri, you can talk to it a little bit and not that much and confused very easily. what we just got to work in the last few years is basically a kind of computer, ai, that basically is able to deal with human beings in a way that human beings are much more comfortable with. so, you see this when you use these products, but i can talk to them in english, it speaks

to me in english. and by the way, i can talk in a different language and chat gpt are trained on english, but by default know the other languages and they're trained on the internet and there's lots of consent on every language in on the internet. and they're getting very good at voices so the voices and voice recognition is getting good so computers in the future physically talk to, my 8-year-old has a prototype toy from a start-up in the valley called rock and it's a little stuffed animal with a little voice box and wi-fi radio in it and lets him talk, it lets him talk verbally to basically chat gpt on the back end and the musician grime's voice saying, it's a cute teddy bear. as a parent you can find the prompt and define in the parent and app decide how it's going to pact and give it a personality or it's allowed to

talk about certain things and not other things so i literally activated so i could talk to him about the quantum physics and now it can talk to him about. >> he's eight and when chat gp t began, i set it up on his laptop and this is like introducing ai and he's going to have a tutor with him his entire life and answer every question and great for education and development and rolled it out. jj you type in a question and it will answer the question and he looked at me, like, yeah, no, this is like amazing, like the biggest breakthrough, and this is amazing. he says what else is a computer for if you can't ask it questions and have it answer the questions. duh, that got me a complete eye roll. and i did impress him i told him i know mr. beast, which i do, the youtube star.

that impressed him, but chat gpt not at all. you see the same thing with revolution of self-driving cars which continues to move along and computers are getting good at driving cars which means that computers are getting good at understanding the national environment. they're getting very good how to stay out of accidents, learning how to function among people. and so, we just-- we have the chance to have computers much more naturalistic and fit into our lives and the number of ways they can be used is going to expand dramatically. by the way, robots is next up, there's been a long awaited dream. you watched science fiction shows, humans and robots packing your suitcase and making coffee all of these things. we've never been remotely close to get that working and i think in the next decade the opportunity is here. it's if from a quality of life standpoint i think are great

and these industries ought to be gigantic, the level of job creation and growth ought to be cosmic if besides that's what we want. >> let's talk about the role of governors for a minute. and tick through quickly. if we talk about governors in north dakota, four things to think about it ai. first one, all of your operating leaders that run government and apply technology to make it better, faster, more efficient, more responsive to the citizens. so that's number one, which is just a pure automation play take 20% of the work happening in state government and automate it and it goes away, don't need people to do that. off site, got done with the legislative session, after we met last spring, two days on ai. we didn't get the fte's we wanted and the budget we wanted. great, here is the deal. each of you have got a now, an

assistant which we found available that will sit alongside of each one of your current team members. it speaks 26 languages and can code. it's free, it doesn't need a cube, works 24 hours a day and never goes on vacation and we just need to teach you how to be able to use that, that assistant to be able to do that work and getting-- you know, run a thing where we've done a pilot program, we had people applied, to make an academy, they split into teams and silos of government and we picked eight pilots that we're driving, driving through on the stuff to take the ideas from the leaders how we can, from our extended leadership team about 160 leaders how can we start driving that automation play. that's table stakes to get started on that. and the next part of automation is augmenttation, how do we take it and take an existing job that's not going to go away, how do you make it more purposeful and all of us are competing for talent and we

have to have meaningful purposeful jobs that people want to do not just rote things. and some governors are rolling out regulations and we have a regulatory thing to think about, that's a piece there. something that's bigger all of us fund education and health care, the biggest parts of your budget. every industry is going to get blown up by ai. health care is going to get completely blown up by ai. the whole legal system by ai and education is, now as your 8-year-old yawned in discovery, but now we have discovery, anyplace, anytime, anywhere, you can get the information back from that and that we know that's been coming, but now that's here. how is it going to affect the private sector industries that we all fund and then the last thing is, is you know, which we touched on a little bit global competitiveness. each of us are always competing with each other with jobs, talent, capital to come to our state, but part of the competition, who is going to be

able to have the framework, the education system producing the work force, the human capital that actually understands this. those are kind of four things that we've thought about that we think we need to think about as governors, but what advice would you have for these governors as they step into the whole world of ai specifically as a governor touching these, all the aspects that they have to do. >> maybe we could touch these one at a time. so, yeah, yeah, so we're of course, like the customer service, there's a lot of-- turns out very, very funny. it turns out everybody always-- all the science fiction authors thought robots would figure it out first, cleaning your toilet, making your coffee. those are hard problems and we haven't solved that. but robots are really good at answering e-mails, right, and we also have robots good at writing e-mails and anybody in a job in a white collar setting

and looking at the e-mailbox and a depressing feeling to process through this. we have a different kind of tool and a lot of companies that are working on this right now, but a different kind of tool basically processing through white collar work. as you said there, the dream on this ought to be that the jobs, the computer is the assistant on these things and i actually think the term ai, people you referred to artificial intelligence you could think as augmented intelligence, basically the turbo boost for the, especially the human white collar worker so, yeah, the ability to either augment the worker, more leverage to pros is you through insurance claims to applications to complaints, whatever. i think the private sector is going to hit this hard and that's already started and so there's for sure a big opportunity there. which one should we do, what should we do next? >> skip regulatory and leave that to the end and talk about

the health care and education and that disruption happening there. >> on education, so, thumbnail sketch. every student from here on out ought to have an ai tutor, teacher, helper that knows them and is able to answer questions and meet them at their level for any topic they're studying, math, english, anything else and by the way, similarly every person ought to have an ai doctor on call 24/7 endlessly patient and tolerant and know everything about your medical treatment and coaching you on life style issues. and the lawyer, every person ought to have an ai lawyer on tap for everything they struggle it and how they deal with the government or how they deal with big companies and put people toe to toe when you're on the phone with united or something trying to get a refund you've got an ai lawyer with you helping you do it. so, you know, those are the kind of major, i think, quality of life things that are coming.

spend a moment on education because this is actually a very kind of profound kind of thing inside education. so, you know, there's education reform movements forever, especially the last 40, 50 years a lot of us have been dissatisfied with the results out of the education system at various levels and there have been lots of fran philanthropists and reformers, teachers and administrators who tried to improve educational outcomes. and basically if you look at the entire history of that over the last 40, 50 years, the net result is basically nothing works, so you're pouring more money and results don't improve. they don't improve. and one of the big foundations that works on education did a retroe retrospective and nothing changed. a general level of depression in that world. so it turns out there is one known way to systematically improve education outcomes and it's something very well-studied in the education

research literature. the bloom effect. a guy bloom figured it out and sometimes called the two sigma effect which i'll describe. it's a repeatable way-- >> it's called two sigma because taking students at 50th percentile in outcomes and moving into the 99% and two standard deviations and works every time you apply it and turn the crank and do is and turns out outcome. turns out it's one-to-one tutoring. if you have a student and teacher, one-on-one, and a feedback loop where the student is, the zone of proximal development. the student -- you want this, the tutor knows exactly where the student needs to be dialed in and each new topic is hard enough to require challenge, but not so hard that the student can't do it. if the student is bright, they can go at a faster pace and if

they're struggling. you don't have a challenge with a teacher of 30 has where you're dealing with the distribution of student and you're optimizing, if you go back in history aristocratic education and royal education was always based on tutoring. alexander the great was tutored by aristotle. we're not all going to have aristotle and he took over the world. you have the amazing historic success cases. and then of course, but obvious question, if this works so well why don't we do it because it's i am possibly not affordable. there's no way you could go from a student-teacher ratio one-to-one you'd blow up the technology unless you have ai. we have the technology for the first time to give every student this kind of tutor ap i think the answer is some sort of blended thing where you have teachers and you have classroom and group activities for sure, but also the thing where the student and an ai tutor should

be in a full relationship. by the way the ai tutor is not just working with the student, but with the parents, the teacher to optimize the outcome for the students. we know that would work. we know that, we know specifically we know that wealthy families are going to do this. you know, there are companies doing this. it's becoming something, people in silicon valley are focused on and so there is the potential to reinvent the education system in a way that will move out dramatically. and so that's the kind of opportunity that we're sitting on. again, there's a choice question here whether we want that. and you know, everybody's going to say we want that at siri or practice, but that's what's sitting in front of us. >> i'm going to -- we'll go to questions from the governors and close out on the end regulation versus and national security how they're related. one thing on health care one thing with ai is a massive acceleration for prototyping for drug development.

one the things that governors should think about if you've got pension funds, expanded life span. and closing the defined benefit program. it's going to be unaffordable when you kid you hire at 25 to go into state government is going to live to be 100 because entire disease classes that we deal with today that we spend trillions of dollars on will be gone by the time they're 70 or 80, those will be fixed and end up with a serious demographic issue just with longer life spans and states will all be going bankrupt on pension funds if they don't figure out how to get into defined contribution inthan defined benefits. and the-- >> and medical -- the thing about ai doctors, today everybody has the experience you go to the doctor and you have like a 15 minute window and they spent the entire time

asking you questions in your file because they didn't have time to read it and the appointment is over. you go back a year. >> rich people have concierge medical, they have a doctor that knows you to keep up and the remote experience is not like that. number two, existing health care is 100% reactive. by the time you show up in the doctor's office, you have diabetes, 10, 20 years of compounding problems and the doctor is trying to fix the thing that's wrong with you, instead of optimizing your health and more and more of our medical issues and spending are geared toward downstream hit effects, obesity, depression, nutrition, smoking and alcohol and so forth. and so, again, you want to close your eyes and imagine everyone having an ai doctor 24/7 more than happy to talk to you at length whatever is worrying you, is able to help you coach you on the life style issues that lead to better health in the future and intervene early when there's a

problem and again, working in concert with human doctors and in concert with professionals and hospitals, but again, there's dramatic upgrade. basically to get what rich people have concierge medicine. it's right there. we know we can do this if we want it. >> we've got some folks have indicated interest in questions. we'll go to governor glen jung youngkin. >> thank you, marc, thank you for your time and expertise with us. virginia, as we were talking about earlier today, has extraordinary rapid growth in technology underpinned by our marketing in the data industry and cyber security. so we as a state were watching washington go very slow on artificial intelligence and last year, undertook an effort very much governor like yours, and spent many months digging

in deep, extensive research and came out with a very similar set of objectives. objectives really targeted how can we provide better service and embrace ai, how can we incorporate artificial intelligence and advanced machine learning into our law enforcement capabilities. how can we embrace innovation and experimentation in education. we also added a whole side of citizen protection and particularly around data protection, where decisions need to stop and where human being needs to step in, how do we protect our children from advanced algorithms, predatory use of ai, and i was hoping you could comment a bit on that side, where there is clearly this unlimited opportunity that this technology presents, but also there are concerns and

risks and how do we balance that to make sure that we're not losing the arms race, but also protecting the people that we're charged to protect? >> yeah, so, start with, be super clear, every new technologies has up sides and downsides and this goes to the invention of fire, harnessing of fire, to warm the village and scare off predators, and it can be used to burn down the other village and kill everybody. the shovel, hit somebody overthe head. the automobile, run them over. you talked through the history of technology, nuclear, the movie oppenheimer did a great job with this, and you can have zero emissions, power plants, like california used to have, like france has. and have zero emission energy. there's a double-sided kind of aspect to all of these things.

it's the nature of doing things in the world. there's really two-- so of course, there's going to be regulatory implications to this from the downside, they need to be mitigated. fundamentally two different regulatory approaches how to deal with the technology. one is to regulate technologies themselves and proposeals on ai. a lot of that regulating what can go into chips, how they buy chip, regulating software, who can download software, who can use it, write it, that's one approach and the other approach is regulating the uses, or regulating bad uses, so that approach says, okay, if ai is going to make it easier for somebody to plan a bank robberies, turns out bank robberies are illegal, we'll use the authorities on that front for that risk. or invasion of consumer privacy or medical, whatever you want, medical fraud is illegal,

whatever the downside cases, those are this things are already illegal. the good thing in this country we have a robust system of laws and regulations already today so basically even for most or all of the downside scenarios i lear people talk about, the intelligence capabilities, dealing with things at the global level, and i think it's far more both effective to regulate the uses because you're addressing the actual issues and it preserves the underlying fundamental opportunity and positive cases of not fundamentally choking off the technology itself, but that's a decision we're going to have to make and we'll touch on china, but i would say i have pretty schizophrenic discussions in d.c. on this topic because i have a fair number of conversations with people who are like, okay, this technology inspect new and scary and we have to stop it, regulate it, figure out some way to tightly control or con train it. slow everything down if not stall it completely, kind of on

tuesday and come back on thursday, well, china is building it so we have to win and we have to race as fast as possible and we have to build this out and make sure that american companies are as aggressive as possible and america has to do this as aggressive as possible because we have to beat china. it's a downstream issue, governor, what you identified. at the end of the day we are going to have to decide, where we, as a country in new technologies to win them or live in a world which we're not -- we're so used to america being technology dominant, which is economically dominant and militarily. >> and we have to face some challenges and we have to figure out how to win and the enterprise win and the american people win while dealing with down side cases. >> next to the governor, someone else who has spent his career in software before he became a governor.

>> thank you for this conversation. so we've been experimenting with artificial intelligence in montana. put a bunch of our regulations for chat gpt in business and rewrite at the high school graduation left. because that's not the level it's written at right now and i want to follow up on two things, particularly excited about the ai doctor and ai tutor in education and my question is, how far are we in time frame away from deployment at scale in those two areas? >> so i think there's a two-part kind of thing there. one is, is the technology reliable? so we're not quite there yet on reliability, and you kind of-- you may have read stories about this where the way the systems work, if they're configured in certain ways, there's like super genius and if they know the answer to something, they'll tell you the answer and the problem where if they don't know the answer, they'll make

it up. and lawyers have been in trouble because they filed legal briefs from chat gpt and the settings they would hallucinate and citations to cases that don't exist and judges do not find this to be entertaining. the consequences are quite severe, but there's a whole generation of startsups figuring out how to harness the systems so that doesn't happen. the same thing in medical fields and education. there's work that we're doing as an industry and i would say we're couple of years out from the reliability that we need so we're working on that. the other side of it is, again, back to the question, do we want this. which, lawyers are licensed by the state, by the bar associations, by the governors and can there be such a thing as an ai lawyer? legally, certainly not today. doctors are licensed, you know, even if the machine can pass, you know, medical school, all the curricula and the tests. >> which it has.

>> which it has. the current-- so the truth is, chat gpt4 and equivalent today like in 90, i don't know, 90-some percent, it's just me not making an absolute claim for everybody, but as an individual, it's a better doctor 97% of the time than any human doctor you're going to talk to because it knows everything that's been written about every medical topic and current by definition of everything and analyze a hume amount of data, certainly a better diagnosis today than most human doctors. >> so, this is like-- from that standpoint, this is very close, we've closed the gap and built the systems that are reliable and you have the question, can an ai be a doctor? and answer once again, no, it's completely not allowed and so, you know, okay, so then there will be some man machine partnership to work in conjunction with a human doctor with the health care system with a hospital change, with medicare, how does that work?

big open questions there. >> things to figure out. >> the same thing on education, like, it's easy for me to sit up here and say we're going to reform the education system for one-to-one ai, and there are large organizations that have large vested interests in, a big societal thing, big fundamental societal questions in front of us. >> we're going to jump from montana to wyoming. and governor mark cornyn has a question. >> thank you. i appreciate the conversation. this past summer i was at a cnbc summit and they were talking about ai remarkably and one of the commentators said is it important we have libraries anymore because we are going to have access to all information everywhere? on its face it was kind after interesting concept, but what

concerned me with our way finding skills with gps and everything. the question, how do we find a critical way of evaluating if you're doing a tutor, what that education is looking like and proceeds. >> i was having trouble hearing. >> saying how would you evaluate the tutor going forward? maybe say it again, mark, at the end. >> the critical aspect of, it's an ai tutor, turn it over to your child wherever that goes, it goes. >> so, i have-- described for the kid that he talks to. i go on my phone and it has the questions and answers and i can access now and see what it's saying and i can see that and watch every step of that and i think the exact same thing can apply where both parents and human teachers and administrators and auditors, whatever you want, human beings can be eyes on this.

by the way, i think for a lot of parents that would be a big difference what they have today where they have no idea what's happening in the classroom and if what's happening in the classroom is good, that's great. if it's not. today they have no way of seeing it. i tell you, i think a lot of parents are fairly surprised by what they saw when their kids went to zoom school four years ago, it's like school attendance has never recovered from attendance. and some were shocked and alarmed by what they saw. the fact it was on video, it was the first time they got to see inside the classroom. the question you ask is important and the answer, this technology ought to make it more transparent and give parents a much bigger role. >> we're out of time so i apologize. and i get the chair's prerogative, i get to ask the last question. >> okay, you get the last question and i'm going to close. fire away. >> mark, great to see you again. thank you for being here with us. can you just touch on, and i know you kind of have, there's an interesting thing happening

this week with a new ai, google's ai, a lot of controversy over kind of what we're putting in. i think this goes a little to mark's question as well and then doug, we'll let you wrap up. >> so this is the thing with google imagine generator which has been controversial and it's really entertaining what's happened because they-- so people discovered, it's simply flat-out refuse toss make pictures of white people so people on one side of the political spectrum got this, and they want today cover this, but-- makes all nazis black, stormtroopers in germany in 1941, they're all of color i was told that was not actually the case. and i'm told actually hitler was not pro diversity. so maybe it's important to reflect that if people are studying world war ii. so literally the headline of the new york time was that headline, google is making up

black nazis. and so, it's like, okay, what's going on. basically what's going on there, there's been this dramatic shift in now new technology gets built. 30 years ago, when i started and when you were doing your work, you know, we built products like the word processor and web browser and word processor never argued what you were typing, it let you type whatever you want. phone calls, at&t was never on the line with you, arguing with you or trying 0 convince you were wrong about some topic. the way the ai systems are built better or for worse is alignment, they call it alignment with human values, what the ai companies have, they have teams that basically are attempting to train the ai to conform with some viewpoint. by the way, you probably want that, right? that's to some extent because you don't want the ai-- a lot of people are not going to want a completely uncontrolled ai in their lives or their kids' lives that says crazy things or indulging conversations, and ways that

can go wrong. for a lot of systems people use, you'll probably want a level of guardrails, but every company that's in the ai business has to decide. what are the human values that it's going to align against, and then ai is going to be the way that we deal with computers in the future, the way that we deal with a lot of things in our lives in the future so how the systems work and what biases they have or what things that they're allowed-- they think they're allowed to talk about or talk you out of, you know, or convince you of. these are going to be very, very important questions. you know, the team at google who is doing this, i mean, i know they have the best of intent they just-- they trained it in a specific way and now inside that company they're now recalibrating and figuring out how to adjust that, and you know, this will be a big issue in the industry. this cuts directly into your roles and into the roles of federal government, the companies are under tremendous pressure to have the technology work certain ways and a lot of

political lobbying taking place in that front in these companies. so this will remain a live issue. i think it's good that happened, i think this surfaced what i think is actually an important issue. >> thank you, spencer, for that question. to wrap it up, two things, give a quick shoutout to small towns, greg brockton from north dakota, population 300, one of the co-founders of open ai, went to rough rider high school, and they did have computers in high school and fun to see. i want to thank all the of the questions and the government and -- for the governors, and shaping the world, not only shaping the world, but spending time with us. i'll close and minutes before we walked up here i asked chat gpt or bing co-pilot to write a poem for you because not only does it write, transfers

e-mails, but and i know that bill lee is working on this because they're trying to protect it in nashville, which is a huge, now they have nor musicians and more people in the music industry in tennessee than any other state and working on legislation to protect song writers and intellectual property because this stuff can write songs and poems, to close out created a poem in seconds, only giving you the first line and the last, five verses long. code weaver, in the recommend of the zeros and ones where dreams take forms stands a luminary, a weaver of digital storms. mark andresen, a titan that shaped our world lifting it higher. when the dot-com bubble bursts, leaving dust, anded andreesen good firm, in code we trust.

>> that was hysterical, that was fantastic. >> thank you, governor, and thank you, marc, a great conversation, i'm sure that will begin. this concludes the plenary session and governors gather for lunch and invite our other guests to lunch in the liberty foy outside and look forward to seeing everybody at 2:45. >> this was great. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]