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>> corporate executives discuss technology, ai and clean energy in washington dc. it is one hour and 40 minutes. ♪ >> good afternoon, welcome to the axios what's next summit. being here, thank you to the team. im might allen, cofounder and this is one of our favorite days. it is like a reunion than we have been having fun together. amazing program today discussing

ai, how policy is changing. >> this gives us insights on business, technology and allows us to go deeper into how we work, play and live our lives. our what's next featured amazing speakers such as hosea andre's producer tim balint -- timb aland, just to name a few. we will hear from another set of amazing leaders.

not one, but two cabinet officials. ai thought leaders such as a laundry nelson. >> it is so fun to look around the room and see so many friends. we call this our crystal ball event. we would like you to check out the hub downstairs. we have a demonstration of virtual reality of electric airplane. i tried in a irobot that sorts through trash. it is called of course, oscar. and i tried out the electric honda compact scooter and the suv. you cannot pack up the suv in

your luggage, but the scooter. . and i was like you could put this in the overhead. and it becomes a battery in the overhead. i'm just going to respond, the scooter has a seat. we are honored to have frank mccoury, such a great pioneer. we are very honored at sxsw last week in austin. they had some great ideas about how we can improve and he is here. he and project liberty are here along with their president. we appreciate you being here. they are going to be signing books in the upstairs lab, so we

appreciate project liberty. thank you very much to you and your team for being here to tell us about reclaiming liberty, humanity and dignity in the digital age. it is a little tough to top, bruce springsteen calls this essential reading for our times. host: just to give you a sense of how the day is going to go, a quick rundown of the afternoon, we will have a short break in the middle of programming, so make it back in time when that is over because we have a full slate of programming after the break. you are welcome to stretch her legs, take a call, get a coffee in the lounge upstairs and if you need to refer to the agenda, it is on the badge that you are wearing or the screen upstairs.

take the short commute upstairs and connect with fellow attendees. thank you so much. host: we would love for you to use the #axios wns, what is next summit. on with the show, chief tech correspondent. [applause] ♪ >> thank you, mike and sara. this is my third time at what's next summit and i am more excited for our first speaker. this is a critical time for society. the advent of technology will reshape things. how it reshapes is yet to be determined and i am excited to

start with a laundry nelson, she co-authored the ai bill of rights during her tenure as director of technology policy. please thank me in -- please join me in welcoming dr. nelson. i want to start off, and the discussion around ai, often when i hear it talked about, i hear it talked about as if it is going to be good or bad. correct me if i'm wrong, but my thinking is it is going to process one's in zeros and whether it is good or bad depends on what we tolerate, incentivize, regulate. some of that thinking is key to your work, but how do you think

about these questions? how do we make sure we have good outcomes? dr. nelson: that is the profound question and it is very powerful technology. it is complicated. there is enchantment about it. these are tools we create and they do not have agency even though people are building ai agents. what they become is up to us. we have to remain in the space of appreciating the work and regulation and education that will create the future we want. so when people say ai will cure cancer and mitigate climate

change, that may be true. what is the case? none of it will just happen. we have the benefit of being early in a moment of a new technology that we can put in place hopefully infrastructure, norms, regulations to have potential good outcomes. if we do this, they are potential. host: it is not like if we use ai, that prevents bad outcomes. i want to rewind to when you were in the white house passing the ai bill of rights. what was the key thing you wanted enshrined? it was not locked. it was the first step. what were you hoping to achieve? dr. nelson: we were taking up work of prior administrations.

the obama administration had done work on ai. policy issues the nation should think about. the trump administration, there was ai legislation passed. there was a national ai act passed. we are going to establish -- use ai and the government and it will be done with democratic values. it will be trustworthy. so the question for us into the biden harris administration was what is it mean to have ai that we tried to make trustworthy. so in the administration we spun out a blueprint. it is not law, not legislation. coming into office in the middle the pandemic, at a time when

there was a lot of distrust about science, government, technology. how do we have a process to engage people in thinking about ai? we put the white house email address and said anyone can write to us. what are the things the american public should ask for or how should we think about ai technology? we talked to school teachers and high school students and experts, local and state government, to get a sense of what they were worried about and get some good business partners and technological experts. what is the best we can do? the subtitle of the bill of rights is making principles into

practices. we should not discriminate. there should be privacy. we were distilling commonsense things and trying to flag the initial things we know we can do, risk assessment, third-party audits of algorithms to flag how we might move ahead. that is what we were trying to accomplish. moving from principles and how you operationalize and research the government. >> when you started on this project, looking at technology, that is something we need to look at. risks. we have these technologies, it is powerful and flawed. talk about what you see.

[indiscernible] what have you found can happen today and people around the world? dr. nelson: we started with something called the ai democracy project, studying the impact of algorithms on elections, democracy and back to the bill of rights, how is it impacting these things? the first study we did was working with election officials, a bipartisan effort. because so many language models give you information that looks right. unless you know specificity about a voting issue, it looks

fine, it sounds great. we had an all day event that had people from society, the secretary of state from nevada. and we tested the chatbots on election information. i appreciate that 25% of americans have used chatbots. to the extent that they are, can they get reliable information? we had experts wait. more than half of them are inaccurate. they were harmful or inaccurate. host: given where the technology is today, and my right to think

-- can you really trust a chatbot with elections? dr. nelson: to me when it says go to www. i can vote, it looks credible. communities were told -- african-american communities, there was no polling site because they could not be found. so we had challenges with the election and the discourse was about offensive content. deliberate disinformation, voice

cloning, and that is a problem that we are seeing. host: the problems you outlined, any maligned actor was given that information, people trying to mess things up, how powerful are the tools? how worried are you that social media posts are legitimate? people are deliberately trying to change them. dr. nelson: it is already happening. if you think about the democratic primary, the cloning of president biden's voice, it is a problem. it happened in the 2016 election.

they did not have these tools. so it was easy, even if it was for the laughs, it is easier now. you compound that with more dissemination and other social media and misinformation, the death by 1000 cuts. those do not even work to provide accurate information. we cannot anticipate all challenges. it is a kind of cybersecurity -- these things -- were going to have to try to mitigate to the extent that we can. it will be a constant back and forth.

host: do you have a sense where tech companies are on this? after the 2020 election, there was focus on election security and integrity. a lot of companies have scaled-back the big ones. that is one thing. then you have four people on the elections integrity team, right? are you worried that the people controlling technology are not devoting enough resources? dr. nelson: as we have seen, voluntary commitments from companies around ai and elections and well-meaning discourse about wanting to be responsible. we cannot afford to mess this up and juliet and her team recently

went back to chatbots with the same questions. we went to all the companies and said is what we found. they said we fixed it and it is still a problem. it is a problem for chatbots, but the hope for ai is that you can build whole worlds on these models. foundations are not a foundation on which to build an ecosystem. an election ecosystem. if you can't get basic accurate information. language models are being built into complex ai, ai systems are built into microsoft suite,

office suite. it is a real challenge. if we want to use the foundation model as the foundation of the ecosystem, it is creaky, brittle and a real problem for democracy. host: chatbots generate information. but social media is where it gets broadcast. we've heard a lot about tiktok. i'm curious, with ai, a bunch of concerns, information bias. and robots might kill us all. you gotta have two separate conversations. feels like we're having a conversation about tiktok and the chinese influence on us, but

countries are using american social media. how important is it that we know facebook and what used to be twitter in addition to tiktok? dr. nelson: we are having a challenge mitigating it because the challenge we face with tiktok potentially is who owns the data, where is it going. some of the data we are concerned about is american companies unregulated. the issue under all of it is really about data, we talk about general use. data flows and the ecosystem is the ultimate dual use. data is circulating and if we

care about privacy and not capitalizing on data, even accounting for expert controls, and sell data to these countries, but not those countries, it is putting a band-aid on the larger issue. data privacy regulation. that will not solve everything, but it will create a baseline of expectations making it more difficult for concerns that we have from maligned actors and people. host: so would you also been tiktok? is that not happening -- not helping. it matters who owns tiktok. i was -- i think we should regulate social media companies

and platforms. and that can be done -- we have not done that. some issues are because we have not for decades done these basic things. so let's see. host: i could talk about stuff for hours. i hope you will continue to be a voice and thank you so much for what you do. dr. nelson: thank you. [applause] ♪ host: introducing senior media reporter sarah fisher. >> hello, everyone. thank you for joining us. i'm so excited to have the

chairman returned to our stage after we last had him on in 20. espn launched efforts to bring the network into the streaming era. please join me in welcoming them. host: thank you for doing this. >> great to be here. host: there is no shortage of news when it comes to espn. there are reports around your latest deal. there are reports that the deal is done. is there any truth to that? >> college sports, incredibly important to espn and they have

been for decades. that includes college football and the playoffs. i'm happy to announce here and now that we have come to an agreement with the college football playoffs and extending our partnership for the next six years. there are two components to this. expansion from four to twelve teams, we have two seasons left on our deal. we got the amendment done, that gave us the ability to broadcast additional games. so you're going from three to 11 games. so that is closed.

part two is expansion. we maintain rights to broadcast through the playoffs, we are announcing that now. host: a round of applause. to follow up, does this deal address the expansion? james: it does expand to 14 teams. host: how close is the price tag to reality? james: we do not talk about fees, average value. i will say a good deal is when both sides are happy. we feel good about the deal and everyone involved feels really good. long process, they had to get

issues resolved among conferences etc. and they did. when they did, we were ready because we had been working for so long, as soon as they came back and said we have alignments we got our deal signed. host: where does espn stand with nba and wnba rights? james: the nba is incredibly important and we are in our exclusive negotiating window, that was part of the current deal. that is part of the deal. so we are engaged not just to

espn, but when we broadcast the finals, we have nbc broadcasting games. we want to get this done. we see the league as ascending. a much younger audience, i saw a stat that 56% -- i read that this morning, 56% of nba fans are under the age of 44. we talked about our priorities and we start with audience expansion. a big component is attracting a younger audience. host: how much do women sports play? caitlin clark is bringing a lot

of momentum. should we expect them to go big? james: women sports has been a priority since before i got to espn and we've taken pride in how we have grown sports. the wnba will be a part of any deal. we are seeing the same thing on the wnba side. the draft with caitlin clark declaring she was going to go pro. we have an original series around college basketball. it is called full-court press focused on collegiate basketball

, on nbc and espn plus. it will be nice to have the wba -- w nba brooklyn. we could not be more excited about renewing our deal with ncaa and women's collegiate sports championships. host: in the national women's soccer league. james: yes, we announced the nws l, we kicked it off this past saturday on abc with the kansas city game in the first-ever purpose built stadium for women's professional sports. that was exciting. host: let's pivot to other

aspects of innovation. you announced a joint venture to create direct to consumer products. rupert murdoch expects 5 million people will sign up. if you do the math, 40 or $50 does not seem like it will be incremental. what is the point when you are announcing a second effort. james: it is about giving the consumer more options. there are over 50 million

households and we believe they are sports fans. the idea is to speak to them and get them off the sidelines. number two, this is simplicity. what we hear about from sports fans is frustration in terms of fragmentation. if you are a sports fan you need several apps, usernames and passwords. you have several charges and we said this is our opportunity to work together with fox and warner bros. discovery to create a centralized experience. a good chunk of sports more than just espn has to offer.

we just want to highlight that each of us -- it is a joint venture we are investing in equally. this is a digital -- so we are going to take out of it what we typically get paid from another m.v.p.. host: all of your telecom cable relationships are ok with this? james: our team is in regular conversations. my understanding is they understand this is about the customer, identifying a gap. our mission is to serve sports fans anytime, anywhere. when we decided we were going to

make espn available direct to consumer and the fall, we asked if there was another opportunity and we concluded yes, a joint venture. we are going to remain cable, satellite bundle with youtube tv and hulu live. that will remain a priority. on the other end of this, we believe there is an ocean in between. host: what are you thinking in

terms of the price? james: 40 to 50 had been reported, that range feels right to me. host: a lot of espn momentum is around football. how do you prevent this from becoming a seasonal subscription, where someone comes in in august ahead of preseason and cuts after the super bowl? host: great question. it is about content. james: the joint venture will address part of that because it is more content for the sports fan then espn, fox, warner bros.. in the aggregate, it is compelling if you look at it through an mlb lens, and lens or

college football. it is compelling. on top of that, studio programming is world-class. where i think no one would have been surprised years ago with our ratings were down. studio ratings were up and to the right. that is amazing. when you have a 67% decline in the universe and you see ratings up and to the right month after month. 19 consecutive months, it may be 20 but i think it is 19. it is up in their ratings year-over-year. setting records, one of the best programs available today. we take a lot of pride in the fact that we have studio

programming and digital film content. host: a quick thing before we move on, you are in washington. we've reported that you're looking at tv. do you have regulatory concerns? james: i cannot comment. what i will say is i will reiterate my point, take a step back. this is a consumer friendly offering. this is giving sports fans another option. and simplifying the sports experience. host: let's go back to studio programming. 3430 is in the past. what is your commitment to originals? are you shifting? james: we remain committed. if you look at brand research, it is one of our best performing

brands with young people. so continuing to invest in stories we think move the needle, so if you walk the halls you will hear people talking about bigger and bolder. we take a lot of pride in properties like derek jeter or man in the arena with tom brady. we have a documentary or a series coming out, so already mention full-court press which will follow caitlin clark. it is that spirit, stories that we think will -- will -- will move the needle for us, so you can expect more of that from us. host: you had pat mcafee coming in to license program. you have no editorial control. one of the things we hear a lot is homegrown talent.

why does pat get to say whatever he wants where there are strict standards? do you worry people are not going to want to come up to espn as homegrown talent and they would rather go the other route? james: i do not worry about that or hear that from our talent. if you look at the opportunities we provide, we are a sprawling enterprise and there are many paths to take when you join espn. if you look at younger talent and how they've grown, it is incredible and they are thriving. another good example, we take a lot of pride in developing talent and giving them opportunities and i believe that our talent appreciates the opportunities that they have on espn.

one more thing in terms of producing shows and pat mcafee's show, to take a step back, we are in a battle for people's time. it is more competitive than ever and so, we have to try new things. it's sometimes that might make some people uncomfortable. pat and i went into that relationship understanding that. from my perspective, on expansion, appealing to a younger generation, pat mcafee is a needle mover because of the authenticity. i don't think it is because there are curse words. the folks on the show speak authentically.

host: in terms of the audience, how does that play into it and do you have any idea how the partnership is going? james: we launched in mid-november. we launched our 18th state, north carolina, and tech is solid. the growth map is compelling. we chose head entertainment because we trust the leadership. we spent time in the marketplace with different enterprises and we went with the people we thought would deliver. host: if they could not the most hyper engaged fans converts,

what makes you think this will work? james: we have an advantage, the brand is compelling. but it is beyond the brand. what we provide. what you are seeing this week as we head into march madness, you are seeing a motion from espn across our properties, across digital. we have a social media team, they made this a priority and it is all going great. so far, it is beating expectations. they would say it is exceeding their expectations. this is literally the first inning and that is an understatement. this is a 10 year partnership but in november, we were pleased with what we saw for the first few months. host: we have a minute left, so

espn is looking for a partner. where do you stand on the search? james: we are in active conversations. looking at this through a couple lenses and we talked about this before. first off, content. when we make channels available for the consumer, is there a way to augment offerings? another reason we looked at a joint venture and took it seriously. and then lens number two, distribution. when we launched flagship direct we want to make sure we are maximizing distribution. host: distribution matters to you, a big tech firm might be a better partner? james: that would be correct in terms of how your thinking about things. host: i love to end on a fun

thing, so much of innovation is around ai, it is the buzz word. what are espn's plans? james: starting with action, incredibly important to offer captioning. last year, we had 34,000 live events across espn platforms. and so we want to offer captioning for the hearing impaired for those events. so that is one way. another way is text. so many of us commute. i spent two hours in the car to and from bristol headquarters. we have a lot of longform journalism. for me to get an audio playback of one of our stories is fantastic. the last thing is we all know

highlights are so important. we have a partnership and through ai, they help us generate highlights at scale. host: so much is going on. you renewed your deal, a six-year deal. part of it addresses extension and talks about the wnba. sports are a priority. not worried about talent. you bring in younger audiences. 34,000 live offense is outstanding. lastly, you are not giving up programming, it will be a core part of reducing turn for flagship and jv. we will see what the regulatory landscape looks like. they do so much for joining today. james: appreciate it.

♪ >> please welcome our moderator, nicholas johnson. ♪ nicholas: good afternoon, everybody. im nick johnson, the publisher of axios. this is our third summit, a huge tent pole, so exciting to

welcome many readers and subscribers today. we are grateful for the partners who make it happen. nothing we do would be possible without our partners. i am excited to welcome our kickoff partner today, co-founder's ceo, welcome back. you are next. how are you, welcome home. so let's start big picture. for lots of folks like me who have a wallet full of credit cards in the 1930's, talk about buy now pay later. guest: the george could stanza wallet. how many in the audience have the wallet? what we see as the next generation of innovation in the

credit card space in financial services, the example we use is a great one. where in 1950 they took a couple of clients out dining and when it came time for the bill, he did not have his wallet. people would be frustrated, but he found a charge card that lets you payoff everything. 74 years, we have not seen much innovation and value has gone backwards if we look at the credit card industry, up 55% since covid. high interest balances etc. so enter by now, pay later. it does two things. for retailers, it allows them to have a direct relationship with customers. bypassing banks, building loyal customers. on the consumer side, it allows you to have paychecks, it is

easy. nicholas: you talked about the training wheels metaphor. a different universe of consumers. talk about how that fits into your goals? larry: when you look at the customers, they say 50% of americans have interacted with by now pay later. nicholas: people who might not get credit cards. larry: students, individuals who were credit adverse. so by now pay later is providing a way to bring people into the industry with fantastic trades. the ability to grow, show responsible payback. i like to contrast the credit

card which has a different structure where the balance is close to $6,000 and 25 years to pay back, it is allowing more people, helping to build trades and for retail it is driving the next wave of consumers. nicholas: tell me your hopes and dreams and what you are focused on? larry: we've been in the states for about five years. and i think for us, we want a financial partner. by now and pay later started in really the gen z and millennials which represents 42% of american consumers. it has turned much more mainstream. there is a trusted partner, we are customer obsessed. every quarter we get a range of consumers around the country. we listen to them, we have the

company dialed in to hear what is going well, what is not going well and we have become a customer centric financial services business. nicholas: if you could run it back to the underserved, what is the obligation to institutions like yours and expanding the pool of available credit for access? larry: what is important is never say no to a customer. we need to go the distance to show that we are doing what we can to understand that consumer. someone who has been divorced many years ago but is now in a strong position, look at the cash flow. let's provide the literacy that we do not believe has been there.

banks are sitting on so much data. delve into the data and they can provide products and services. nicholas: is the idea of bringing a technological startup, understanding and a nuanced way all the data so you can reach customers? larry: we've seen a proliferation, it started online in e-commerce. that little widget on the product detail page disrupted online retail and is disrupting financial services because banks recognize this is the entry product for the customers of tomorrow. being at that check out in distributed banking where your meeting the customer where they are, you have data you can look at.

nicholas: you mentioned it is better for both sides because the retailer knows what is happening in the customer instead of a piece of plastic in the middle. i mean i can touch it. larry: when i moved to the states, my wife said where is your physical card? i come from a family where everything is digital. one of our first customers was going for the check out in december prior to christmas to buy a bicycle. she had three choices. a credit card and high interest pay, a debit card which meant she was eating into savings or buy now, pay later.

the flexibility allows her to be in control. nicholas: what is the direction of the industry going? larry: we want to reach out to all customers so we are investing in decisioning, underwriting. not just credit scores, but transactional data. we can really understand where the customer is that. we want to be the partner of our customers. it is not just paying over one or two months, it is multiple months. the other thing is has payments become invisible, as parents, as we buy gifts for our children,

they think there is endless money behind it invisible wallet. it is incumbent to go the distance to put control in the hands of customers. nicholas: how do we do that? so that it is becoming seamless and effortless. education, control, the red behavior. we reward customers by helping them build a financial profile. nicholas: axios sara said one fun thing. so tell me the craziest thing you've heard of someone buying? larry: we have seen the wwe championship belt, power ranger helmets. the example a couple of years ago was correlation between

diapers and clay stations. together. when you look at it it connects with the customers. young adults growing up or someone in gen x with a child late in life. but it is an interesting trend. nicholas: i sympathize. thank you for being here. thank you for making the time today. stick around, the conversations continue. larry: thank you so much. >> introducing axios senior business reporter hope king. ♪ >> hey. hello, everyone and welcome to our next summit -- what's next

summit. how many use slack? thank you for participating. well, i bring it up obviously because our next guest is the ceo of slack and her first website -- we had the cofounder here to talk about all the changes happening in the workplace. culture, behavior amid the pandemic and now there is another set of factors driven by ai that are changing how we work. that is going to be part of the conversation. so much more to talk about in terms of culture and how we build it online. join me in welcoming the ceo. ♪ host: welcome. guest: thank you, it is good to be here. >> this is her first live

appearance, so we are thrilled you would join us. before we get started, some serious questions. what does your slack profile picture look like? >> it is boring compared to what you said. mine is me and a basic picture of me, but i express myself with emojis and that is where it comes to life. and a professional photo. a white suit, i am recovering from a cold so i'm going to talk as loud as i can. mine is a still of the moment when michelle yeoh handed it over. host: what is the most used reaction for you? if i hovered? denise: one is let's go.

that is something. and then i really like when i see someone's eyes. i did not see how many people raise their hands, almost everybody. there is something psychological when i see someone's eyes when they are eating something. i'm big on the eyes. hope: my. is always gray, not green, not white. i keep it that way because i'm always online. why do i need to be green? should i be turning my light green more often? denise: it is personal preference. it is about setting your own boundaries. it is making sure you give employees freedom to disconnect if they need to.

if you're the kind of person who was always on, that is your preference. hope: these questions sound trivial but they're not. this is the way we show up to work. i worked for a bank, i had a cubicle, i decorated it. now i do this in a digital world's. how do you build products that help companies build culture in this small format? denise: when slack was started, the mission was to make work simple, pleasant and more productive. and bring joy and delight. that is part of the teeth those today. work happens on slack. what i deeply think about is what is the consumer experience that we want while were doing the important work which is

sometimes not exciting. we need to be kind of lets go and get it done. think about little moments and the prompt is there and it says once upon a time. the idea being with someone is telling a story, a moment of whimsy to have culture and have fun in what you're doing. we think about how to create fun, joy, delight, make it simple, pleasant and productive. on productivity, it is about giving everyone tools to be effective to reduce noise. we've done my favorite, is anyone using ketchup? you have to check it out. it is exactly as it sounds. hopefully you are not on slack in the meeting, but when you leave you may have missed something. the idea is to go to catch up,

it is simple. swipe left, swipe through your messages to create a culture of productivity and joy. hope: what advice do you give about how to stand out better in a digital only environment? especially for workers, people who are green light and white light. denise: slack is a platform where work happens. it is messaging, collaboration, but there is workflow and automation. it becomes an operating system and that is something people do not always know. there is so much that happens. i think about the right context for the right job. who are you communicating with? and it is using the

i like to record clips. because sometimes i feel like someone to get the essence. these are short videos, if you don't know what they are, you can either write, text or do a clip or huddle someone. i think about that and sometimes when i know in communicating to a person, it is how you tailor your conversation to the right audience, the right behavior, the right kind of modality. i can find plenty of ways to show up and use that right modality. hope: slack is one tool we all use in our day-to-day. according to a study in the harvard business review, they analyzed the average worker and found that most of us are switching from app to app, website to website, to to to have nearly 1200 times a day. this is the work of doing work. is the promise of generative ai

that we will get rid of some of the back-and-forth commutes, since we are not communing to the office? denise: this context switching israel. we are in a world where we have never had more messages, more information coming at us, at one time. that's also an opportunity. when i think about the way our users use slack, not only is generative ai a big unlock, but i also think about applications. what our users are able to do in slack is on average, they are obscuring 50 or so applications, because they are bringing workday, salesforce, all of that work into a platform. so they can approve and do the work right in the flow of work. it does reduce that cognitive load. that you think about approvals and automation. our customers are using so many automation, 35% time reduction in doing the work of work, when you drive automation in the platform. but then, generative ai is where

we are all excited with people who do work every day, the power of being able to drive productivity around simple things which we will show in a moment. summarization of threads and channels, searching, those are two areas that create opportunity to unlock with generative ai in a more trusted way. hope: we have a little video we will show. actually, walk us through what we are seeing right now. hope: let me set the stage for what we did. we created slack ai, it is native in slack. you turn it on immediately, i will show you in a minute, no trace, and you are able to in the flow of work do things today like search and summarization. it is different because you are not leaving slack and going to a copilot or something else, you are doing it in the flow of work. none of the data leaves, it's right in your profile, so you have immediate impact and it's

showing a business outcome. let me show you what that is. what you are first looking at is a channel summary project. we just hit this little sparkle button. what it did is actually summarized the last seven days of texts. i am going to do it one more time. natural learn which -- link which searching. get the record to where the channel actually happened. i'm going to do that one more time if it can roll. that was search. maybe we're not, can we do it one more time? it's fast. what you saw was simply in slack, when you going to a channel or thread, you just click on that sparkle button and it summarizes the conversation, the content, same thing for threads. it is so intuitive in the flow of work. we have had customers in pilot in uber using it with him at his benefit.

beyond that, customers are building custom ai applications right within slack. 13,000 applications have been built in the last year. it represents incredible obvious productivity in my mind. hope: a lot of us i think are productive enough. so, how much more should we be? i can't think of the marginal additive benefit of this stuff in context of how much more we can actually get done. denise: here is how i think about it. i started in the role four-ish months ago and there was a lot to get up to speed on, as we all know. for me, it was not about how much more, but how much better could i do it? i used it as the ceo immediately and had it in pilot for me, but i figured out what is the five-your product strategy, the decisions we made our didn't make, and why? what is happening with the

culture, what are things we are wrestling with? it isn't that we are doing more, we are doing it in a smarter way helping people really get context. you mentioned culture. thing about the employees that come to a new organization, and understand how a company works. here is a funny example of doing what i could've done more, but maybe didn't need to. when it started, one thing that is important and part of our what he thought that salesforce and slack, is storytelling. the best way to talk about what a product can or can't do is telling a story of somebody else who has had that type of benefit. it is a true story of changing the paradigm. i was getting on a call with a customer, the ceo of a large hospitality organization. truth be told, i was running behind and had a lot going on. i didn't have any stories top of mind. as i got into the google meet, i thought oh my god, i'm showing up and i don't have any stories about other hospitality

companies, what the outcomes are at slack. and i very quickly used slack ai to search other customers in that industry. not only got that, but got the story summarized. often you can find information but you are being brought new documents. if you read that and on and on. i am probably embarrassed to say before he got on the call, i had the story and information in front of me. what i am thinking about is different ways in which we work, and also working better. i don't want to do that all the time but you get the point. hope: it sounds like cramming to me. but your schedule is full. you talked about the customers. how do customers sign up, what is the fewest number of people who can sign up for this? denise: customers are able to license it. i can certainly license it through the existing license, they added on to slack. so far, customers have been loving it. we have had customers that want

to try it as well. we have had trials of the product, i mentioned uber and spot on have been doing that and seeing real benefits. that is our commitment. we want to make sure, that's why we started with summarization and search. those are the main pain points and we want customers to see real value. hope: ai is expensive. nvidia has one of their new chips is 30 to $40,000 per unit, you guys are investing in ai, how much is trickling down to the customer and is not going to cause inflation to go back up? denise: i'm not a limit, so i can predict that. the real proof is in the value. when you think about slack being a platform for work, now it is an anti-powered

early innings, too. hope: are there specific youtube channels or newsletters like ai plus, for example? denise: i just read and i'm very curious. hope: when we talk about the future of slack, as you said,

you're not counting the days. how big has slack grown in terms of employees and customers? denise: we don't talk about the number of customers as we are part of salesforce. we have a significant amount of customers globally. and across all industries. most of our information is not disclosed. hope: you have insight into the way the global workforces are changing, and the excitement, nervousness and anxiousness employees have heard you recently conducted a survey of 10,000 desk workers and one in four now have at least tried ai? denise: one in four have tried ai, as i mentioned, 80% already feel that productivity. that speaks to how you learn and get up to speed. that embodies it, the option and acceleration of adoption for generative ai, is unprecedented. we are learning from our

customers as we go and what they want next. in continuing to evolve. it is incredible what it can do. we are starting in a way that is drastic. my first 120 days, i may not have those days right, so nobody quote me, but we heard from executives this is not a fad. it's clear, it is here, everybody going in this direction. but what i really like this time around when i think about technology evolution is trust is at the center of it. how can we do this in a trusted manner and learn from that and be thoughtful, so if you didn't see this in the scroll, but we have citations in everything you see coming up, it tells you where the data came from india can go back and read that article. part of our mission is to make sure we are not doing some sort of magic science. this is truly your data, it is secure, trusted, and you know where it comes from because it needs to deliver outcomes but it certainly needs to be trusted. that is something i heard from

every executive. hope: in our last year meeting moments, we have a couple of fun questions. i'll choose this one first. people have mixed feelings about the period when you are texting somebody, what is a period mean to you, an angry statement or just a period? denise: i use period with my kids to show than there is good grammar and there is still grammar to be had around here. i don't understand half of the words they use. hope: what is the craziest feature you have been asked to create? denise: oh gosh, craziest slack feature. i heard a room or you want an avatar. i think it is really fun and creative. users, they don't ask for crazy, actually we have a fan base that is absolutely in love with slack. you have to pry it out of their hands. one customer had a gofundme to fund slack because they were

going to a new place. there is more passion. i wouldn't necessarily say crazy. hope: i would personally like some walk-up music when i joined slack. [laughter] denise: have you seen the huddled music? hope: no. denise: you can have your huddle music, just making it fun. hope: denise, thank you for joining us. [applause] ♪

>> welcoming back nicholas johnson. nicholas: good to be back here. another huge thanks to our partners who have made today possible. big thanks to constellation, who has sponsored this portion of our afternoon, so i'm excited to welcome constellation's executive vice president and chief strategy officer. kathleen, welcome to axios. how are you? this is a timely conversation in that we are talking about all these cool things that run on electricity. we should talk for a second about where the hell all this will come from. give us a sense from your vantage point, how to navigate this explosion in ai, and online devices and all these things that need a strong grid that is

both reliable and safe and sustainable? kathleen: if you think about what's next, this is the what's next of all what's next's. growth in demand we will see from electric cars and in general the electrification of the economy, and add to that what we know is coming in terms of growth from the digital economy. we are going to see low growth, or customer demand growth, more than we have seen in the last 15 years. it has been essentially flat, as we have found ways to use electricity more efficiently, we have not had increased demand for last 15 years, as we look out the next 15, that is the big question as we decarbonize the grid, how are we going to find resources that empower this demand? i think the good news is we have seen across both the administration and some of the

large corporate buyers, a strong desire to address this problem. and the problem is we need to get sources of clean energy that can run when customers need them. they need to be located where the customers are. we heard jimmy from espn say in the sports business they want to meet what sports fans want, when and wherever they wanted. electricity is the ultimate, it needs to be when and wherever people want it for whatever they wanted for. most of the world doesn't have the benefit of the reliability we have here, we need to maintain it as we decarbonize. nicholas: you mentioned government is a stakeholder, we have had massive climate and infrastructure legislation, talking about that kind of discussion. denise: there is no question the bipartisan infra structure log got started an explosion in clean energy in the u.s. that is absolutely essential for the reasons we just gust. in order for those laws to come into their full potential,

obviously, we need to address things like permitting and siting of both generation and transmission. one thing i would say is still outstanding is how we decarbonize the industrial sector. it didn't get as much funding in those two big pieces of legislation, but it is a order of omissions between -- quarter of emissions between aviation, steelmaking, all those technologies that need fuel available all the time. that's where clean hydrogen comes in. it was included in the inflation reduction act, but we're waiting for rules to determine how much of the clean hydrogen economy we will be able to grow in the u.s. that's a really important piece of decarbonization that we haven't been able to find. nicholas: earlier in the conversation about the ira, it was the law is great but, there was so much about permitting, these rules that are still waiting.

the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. can we talk about nuclear as a power source. it is a what's next technology, how does that fit into this what's next mix? kathleen: consolation's largest producer of clean energy across the u.s., we may 10%, it is largest company you have never heard of. the big reason for that is we operate 25 to 30 -- in addition to wind, solar and other forms of electricity. maintaining the existing fleet of reactors is a bang you can do that is most impactful for the economy read given how much of the nations clean energy comes from nuclear, 50% of clean energy. at the same time, the new reactor designs that are being offered by companies from the smallest startup to general electric, are very promising. and the incentives for them to come onto the grid are okay, but i think they come is bit -- the

gap is between policies that are looking to bring offshore wind and other renewable energy, and are not supporting the new reactors to the same extent. that gap needs to be addressed. nicholas: what is driving interest in new startups, like these new designs coming on? how do people view nuclear as a what's next type of technology? kathleen: the thing that is different the last couple of years is that nuclear has become the popular it thing. it has always been the climate solution people didn't appreciate, but now people realize the value of a clean megawatt in this economy, one that is clean and there when customers needed. these plants run 95% of the time, not dependent on the wind, sun or the weather. that is driving people to become more favorably inclined towards nuclear and to look for ways to add new nuclear to the grid. nicholas: this speaks to what you said earlier about being always there. if the lights flicker, people will not be happy, with nuclear

something that is consistent, it can be dialed up and down as needed. what else needs to happen? is that an implementation policy standpoint, investment, what needs to keep that progress moving? kathleen: the policies that say i will procure x amount of offer wind instead of x amount of carbon free generation. that is the transition we need to have in order for the policies in place now to provide incentive for people to purchase and sign long-term contracts with new developers. the other thing we need to do is make sure the existing fleet, the nuclear write letter or a commission, authorizes these plants with a finite license, and all of them are capable of running to an additional 20-year term, which would get them to 80 years. we are causally putting new equipment in every year, so they are kind of like new machines, but there needs to be a policy

incentive for those license extensions to happen. nicholas: i love doing events in washington because you assemble people in the room who either know very much about this, or think they do, or write the policy, or think they read the policy, the advice you would give is that the policy is not updated enough to keep up with upgrading the old technology. what would be the one take away you hope policymakers take? kathleen: foot for the outcome, not the preferred technology or company. if you want to reduce carbon, then set goals that incentivize carbon free generation. not segregating different types. nicholas: do you think you like getting that message or keep hammering away? kathleen: going back to the of ministration and some of the larger tech firms, they have started to put out procurements for hourly carbon free energy. they are saying, regardless of artist about i wanted to be carbon free and to be there every hour, and matched up with a consumption i am actually taking from the grid.

those policies will drive clean energy where we need it. that will keep reliability where it needs to be. nicholas: with that goal of being zero carbon, let the energy providers figure out the mix that achieves that? kathleen: with a least cost way. nicholas: we are about to get the hook here again. i want to end on one fund thing. i can't resist asking it. we have been talking about nuclear energy. tell me one fun, interesting thing you have seen happen with spent nuclear fuel. [laughter] kathleen: well, after i planed to my colleagues what a social media influencer is, i introduced the fact that we had a social media influencer, a sign/tech guy who has millions of subscribers on youtube say i want to visit one of the dry storage canisters, and one of our illinois stations. and after eight months of him working through the department of energy, ultimately coming to us, he came onto the site.

he taped a 20-minute segment on how safe the spent fuel is, and he wanted to be right up next to one of the canisters, so he could kiss it while he looked at the camera. that was a new one for us. [laughter] we have seen a lot of interest in nuclear power. miss america last year there was an engineering student out of wisconsin. the worlds are colliding here. miss america is a nuclear engineer. she will come work for us. nicholas: for those with kids on tiktok, keep an eye out for the next hot trend, it is kissing nuclear canisters. you heard it here first. thank you to constellation to sponsoring today. stick around, we will be right back. [applause] ♪ >> welcoming back to the stage

ina. >> even in today's digital era it can be hard to access benefits from the government. many of you have tried to access those as a consumer. some of you ashley planned these systems. our next guest on the platform aims to combat this issue. he may be familiar for founding an inferential program and is now the head of moms first, which advocates for paid leave policies. the new platform paid leave ai helps parents apply for paid leave using ai to simple the process. please welcome her. >> i want to continue the

conversation we started today around the idea that we have this bucket of new ai technologies. whether they make our lives better or worse, harder or easier, is kind of up to us. i want to start with the specific project you were doing. ai in some ways is a natural extension, you had the marshall plan for moms, really trying to say there is some structural problems and let's work on it. why is that what you started with? before, tell us why, how does it work and i think we have is like video too that we will roll. >> paid leave dot ai, you go on the website, you are introduced to it right here. it is simple. you get started and can ask any question. yet few prompts. imagine if you are pregnant and you can't walk into your employer's office and ask about benefits because you are terrified you will get fired. you probably enter this experience anxious. it gives you prompts of things

you may want to ask or consider. it's in every single language, which is critical, i live in new york city. we have an incredibly diverse communities every possible languages there. you walk away knowing three things. am i eligible for paid leave, how much money will i get, and it gives an action plan of what to do next. >> every language. you don't have a million volunteers translating. that is one of the benefits you get from ai, the large liquid models are really good at translating. >> i think it makes it more exclusive -- inclusive for people where english isn't your first language. >> to get benefits, you have to follow the rules pretty strictly. you can't trust it for election information. part of the way you address this is where you use ai and don't in terms of making sure it is not hallucinating when it comes to the information you need. reshma: ai is only as good as we are. the thing about paid leave.ai is

a concentrated it is separated goes to the new york state paid leave law. we trained the ai not to go out and pull information from any other source. so, it is limited. its ability to have hallucinations is pretty much none. we put in privacy protections. you can feel secure when you are essentially using it. going back to your question of why this? as you mentioned, i started an organization called girls who code. so i sit at the center of thinking about technology and access, as well as on a mission, to make sure we packed paid leave in affordable childcare. the united states is the only industrialized nation that does not have paid leave. one out of four women go back to work two weeks after having a baby. we are also a country that has the most educated workforce of women with the least amount of labor market participation.

that's because we don't have paid leave and childcare. we don't have a structural support. as i have conversations about ai, i am on a university board, and am very involved in girls who code, so much of the conversations were about risk, safety concerns, mitigating risk and safety. we weren't thinking about how do we use ai to solve really big problems. as i sit there every day thinking about how we pack paid leave in our country and get it to being number 13 on the list to three, uptake of this benefit matters. in the 10 states that offer paid leave, uptake can be as low as 2% of people that are eligible so what happens is if there is not an uptick in states that have paid leave, people in congress are like, do i need to put federal dollars into legislation when the states that have it, people are using it anyway? i really thought, this is a great example of what generative

ai can actually solve. the government sucks at customer service. right, it's like you want to make it tougher for me to get benefits. well, ai can actually change that. this website, we have done a ton of focus groups with customers saying was it easy for you, and they are like, absolutely. ina: i want to dive into what we can learn from that in a second, but there is a double-edged sword, which is uptick is low, but i expect a lot of governments would not be ready to handle it if overnight, uptake was really high. how much have conversations that shall have conversations gone when you are dealing with agencies that may not be incentivized to see those uptick numbers go up? reshma: we are in the process of scaling with openai. sam altman was a huge advocate and when i called him seven months ago like i have an idea, he was like, i love it and

connected me to the team. we have been talking about what is the interaction with government, public sector use cases of generative ai? exactly right, if we do a really good job, it is going to have a sizable impact on the budget. uptake as low as 10%, and then you use gen ai, and was up to 50, 60, 70%, not only for paid leave but snap, it happened for medicaid, every single benefit that is out there. again, government sucks at customer service and makes it really hard for poor people to put money in their pockets that their taxpayer ahlers of oregon to. you are going to invite me john -- taxpayer dollars have already gone to. you will talk to me about how easy was it for me to get these meetings, this data? the handful of states that we picked to go deeper in to take on this.

and to really make generative ai do a better job of giving citizens what they deserve. ina: that uptake question is one week is been the whole time talking about. but i also want to talk about some of the lessons that have broader implications in terms of who these ai uses are targeted at, again, ai could be use to cure cancer. it could be used to work on drug discovery and climate things, but i suspect without a lot of intervention, it will mostly be used by companies that can afford lots of compute cycles to make more money. how do we actually make these good uses happen and what special considerations do we need? again, i imagine some of the people accessing paid leave, and a whole lot of the people accessing snap and other things, might not have the technical expertise. reshma: you have got to learn from the past. this is why i say we need aspirational ai, not just ethical ai.

two examples of this about how technology, you know, our interaction with technology when it first came out had a huge impact on inequality. we forget that the world's first programmer was a woman, ada lovelace. in the 1990's you had gender parity in tech. any campus in america it was have boys, half girls. in the 90's it became lucrative to be a computer scientist the apple computer came out and you saw barbie dolls that said i hate mac, let's go shopping instead. these are revenge of the nerves and little girls looked at that image and said not only do i not want to be him, i don't want to be friends with them. we turned girls off. and he went from having parity in tech to barely having 18 to 19%. ina: angry men. reshma: and a lot of angry men. if you return back to the

1990's, and instead of banning computers, or band using google at our jobs, instead we thought about how do i actually get every single girl, every single poor person, every anger macgowan -- every immigrant, person of color, access to broadband? how do i get them to make sure we learn how to code? where would we be today? we are about to make the same mistake with ai. by introducing fear you are turning girls and people of color off. you already see it. we already have a gender disparity in who uses chatgpt, we have a racial disparity in who uses it and who doesn't, because we are focusing the conversation on the wrong things. instead of inspiring a generation to come up with 20 different ideas of making sure every kid has a chatgpt

license so they can innovate. that's the conversation we should be having right now, period. ina: you try to focus on the positive on closing gaps, how much do you think about the way these technologies can harm the same groups you are trying to serve? for example, trying to help people get paid leave, you mentioned an employee may not want to disclose they are pregnant until the right time. ai is also a powerful tool to predict user intent. you can say what city might most likely to lose workers for? that is a geographic one, not necessarily one where it is biased, but it is biased against everyone in columbus, or dallas, or whomever they figure out is most likely to leave. that same technology could also point out which groups are most likely to become pregnant. which workers are most likely to leave.

if they are also incorporated, they seem to be quite problematic. reshma: there is definitely fears and risks and i will not understate that. what i want to do is make sure we don't replicate the past in freezing out voices that we need, women who are talking about these issues, because they have had experience with it. that is the opportunity for us. we have seen this, for example, think about lyft and uber. it took so long for lyft and uber to put a button on the app that said if you have a sexual harassment or discrimination, press this button. if you and i were sitting around the table when we first rated that prototype, that would've been the first thing we told him to do. ina: that was my next question. it always matters who are around

around the table when products are being designed. in terms of repeating the state from the past, we have some amazing women who pioneered ai, but so many have left pioneering ai to criticize the process. do we have enough women and people of color in the room? how do we make it so that if we can't close those gaps immediately, the companies are really getting the outside input that would make it obvious? reshma: we are exactly tackling this and rolling out a numerous umoja programs. we have a commitment to making sure we have a quality in equity, in terms of who has access to ai. we taught over half a billion kids to code. i am out there every single day talking about access and the importance of equality and who has exposure to this technology and who doesn't. we have to be vigilant about it. i can be on stage talking about risk and safety and ethics --

privacy, and there are really important people out there doing that, now there needs to be a generation talking about what we can build. how we can solve climate and cancer, how we can actually make sure we ensure equal access to tools so everyone can build chatgpt, which is really fun. so we are able to tinker and take apart, and play, and to build, that's how we build the ai for tomorrow. ina: what would you build if you were not building paid leave? reshma: there was interest, the u.k. just announced an innovation fund on climate. i want to see our government do more of that to make this challenge out to a social entrepreneurs. to use government resources to get people to start. climate education. we talked about the incredible work he is doing on closing the

disparity gap. i have a sign in public school. most public schools have taken a hit in terms of math and reading because of the pandemic. when you have your own individual ai tutor, that can accelerate, and to diminish those gaps faster. and we need to make sure we're experimenting with that. and we're finding people doing that work. i have a lot of incredible entrepreneurs like mila, she is working on a company that will be closing the unpaid labor gap in relationships. there is no money problems out there that generative ai can help tackle and fix. ina: we have very little time left. i like looking at the positives, but i want to say, what structural thing is standing the most in the way of some of this work? if you could change one structural element of our society to make your work easier, what would it be? reshma: i was fortunate that i was able to have an idea and

email sam altman and he connected me to a development team. and amazing funders. there is a lot of people that have ideas like paid leave. making there is resources, whether that is philanthropic, government resources. that we're actually putting the impetus on encouraging social entrepreneurs to think about how they can use generative ai for good. for it not to just be a bumper sticker or talking point, but that we have actually put real dollars and commitment out there. we are doing that moms first. every week i have a or brining the social entrepreneurs and say this is how i built paid leave. these is what i have learned now. there needs to be more opportunities for social entrepreneurs. more encouragement for entrepreneurs to use generative ai to do good. ina: thanks so much. we are out of time. before any of us go, we are

coming up to a break. check out the exhibits. you can go upstairs, have a cup of coffee, but please do listen for the five-minute warning. that will tell you to come back. you can choose your own adventure for the break, but please do come back. i will be back with homeland security secretary mayorkas after the break. ♪ >> c-span's "washington journal", our live forum involving you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics and public policy. from washington, d.c. and across the country. thursday morning, elizabeth from

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