summary — Saddakni & Co.

- We'll open it up to Q and A at the end for about 15 minutes. Please either put your questions in the chat or raise your hand and we'll call on you and then we'll do a rapid fire wrap up at the end. This is not being recorded, so please feel free to ask your vulnerable questions and our panel will do their best to answer them.

I am delighted to introduce you to three chief members and three real powerhouses in the AI area. They're really true experts and I hope that you all link in with everyone here and get to know them outside of this board conversation as well. First we have Tanya Long. She is the Chief AI Sherpa for Quantum Pro Advisory.

We're also joined by Lori Mazer. She is the CEO and founder of Synthetivity and then also Sasha Wallinger. She's the founder and CEO of Blockchart Style Lab and I'd like to have each of our panelists say a little bit about their background and introduce themselves to you. So first start with Tanya.

Dana, thank you. It's so wonderful to be here. Everyone, all my chief sisters, hello. Thanks for joining us so late at night from the East Coast and even from London. I'm Tanya Long after 25 wonderful years in tech. I wrote a book on AI about a hundred days ago. It's been a hundred fast days that book is AI and the new Oz.

It's a book for leaders. It's actually not a tech guide. I tried to step away from the technology and talk to leadership because AI as we're gonna see tonight with Lori and Sasha is a very cross functional conversation for us to be successful at moving into the future. So really thrilled to spend time with you guys.

I'm not gonna talk about my bio. You can go to LinkedIn for that. A lot of us have probably seen each other there already. So I'm gonna turn it over. I think, can I move it on to Lori? Is that okay, Dana? Sounds good to go. All right, perfect. Lori. Hello everyone. It's so nice to see your lovely faces.

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Hello Debra who is one of my original boot camp students. I wanna say that I wouldn't have a business if it weren't for chief. About, I think nine months ago I put out a call to chief women asking if anybody was interested in AI and 300 of you showed up to take my first classes. And I said, well, if I learned anything in business it's that's how you know you have one.

So I've been teaching generative AI for the past nine months to corporate executives like yourself, many chief women. And like Tanya, I have a book that is coming out in March. It is called Temperature, Creativity and the Age of AI. It's a bit of a memoir of how I have come to understand how humans and machines create and what machines might have to teach us about human creativity.

And I will drop all of my, this is where you can find me things into the chat if you want to follow up with me later.

- Thank you, Lori. All right, now up Sasha.

- Yeah, so nice to join my co-panelist and Dana. Thank you again so much for welcoming us tonight. I think it's really appropriate that we're having this conversation around AI. I happened into the emerging tech space holistically as a former chief marketing officer who was a global growth expert at brands like Nike Brand Jordan, H&M, Sorrel's that were opening up and eventually putting the cool in corporate.

So that's really what I do and that's really what I specialize in. And that led in 2018 to founding Blockchain Style Lab where I've been building the connection between the virtual and physical products, strategies, and ways to connect with the consumer audience on behalf of brand.

And that's what I just adore about the opportunity around AI. I've done this frankly because I was mostly the only woman at the table who wasn't a technologist that was interpreting the technology on behalf of brands for so many years. And I felt like there was such a need to educate my fellow chief sisters, just women in general and the future chief leaders of tomorrow around how AI is not only something to build a hype around or educate oneself around but it is extraordinarily profitable.

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And as Dana you mentioned there's some really great data points around that. The market of segment growth potential that is happening just in our very feet, footwork underneath our feet. So I am passionate about not only educating and developing a strategy but really thinking about the financial and the profit that can be held through this amazing talk that we'll have tonight.

So thank you for welcoming me I'm not writing, well, actually, I should say I'm top secret writing a book, but it's not out yet, so I'm just here to share my knowledge.

- Thank you so much, Sasha. So you can see we have three true experts in the AI area, and we could probably spend four hours with them tonight and all week just talking about this topic, but we only have a short period of time. So I'm gonna queue up the first question to Tanya. Tanya, in your work with various boards, what conversations are top of mind related to AI?

- The biggest conversation really is talent. I think boards are privately, they're worried about their own talent. Do they know enough about AI to govern? It's so new and for a lot of board members, they're not familiar with the latest conversations on AI. So I think they worry privately, they don't talk about it a lot, unless it's with people in their inner circle, they worry about knowing how to make those decisions.

They also worry about their C-suite and do those people know enough. And then more broadly, how we're gonna repurpose 40% is the latest number of the workforce is going to basically reskill as we and Lori, you know this number well, but 40% of the workforce is gonna reskill and repurpose as in the next 18 months.

So talent is the big conversation and how we're gonna manage all those changes. Next in line, I'd say is regulatory. Those changes are onerous and they're not just domestic here in the US. Anybody that ships or receives product from outside the US borders those regulatory changes are onerous and it's not just a one-time thing.

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I think it's gonna be, well, we all know, it's gonna grow and change and morph dramatically. So how people put those cadences and processes in place is a pretty dramatic concern because every company, I said this in a podcast about a week ago, even if you're a bakery, you're gonna need to have cadences for how AI will affect and impact you.

And we've just not been in that mindset but I think everyone is gonna need to become more process oriented to be thinking about how incoming things affect how their business grows and have cadences for reviewing that regularly. New to the conversation in the last, I'd say two months is the ROI of AI.

I was at Microsoft all day last Wednesday for some M&A activity workshop discussions and it's starting to come around now. Everybody thought AI was gonna be a big cash cow and the valuations are looking like 1.5 on some of these deals. And people were thinking 10X, 10X. And it's not a 10X world.

And on the spend side too, AI spend is very expensive. So boards are worried that AI is not the big panacea we're gonna save lots of money and we're gonna make lots of money. It is going to be valuable but I think it's a longer horizon for us to have the big monetary benefits. So ROI on AI is a big board discussion trying to get a little more realistic on when that's gonna happen.

Public perception is on board's minds. Public perception, especially for public boards affects stock price in a big way and the public has been a lot less forgiving than I had hoped. I still get trolled. And it's just, it's been a hard sell. And so depending on what your product is, depending on, jeez, it's just what you do and then concerns about what your company might even do procedurally and how being good with your data or being good with your hiring practices and being caught doing things that aren't malicious or intentional but the headlines make for stock downturns.

09:34

So boards are definitely concerned more than I think they were even 18 months ago about clean practices with AI not leading to business issues. Then weirdly, down my list of personal board issues is the whole innovation thing. They leave that to their product and technology team.

But clearly, how innovation will work with AI is on their minds. And then, you roll all this together, and the board's real job -- the long-term big strategy picture -- is a much more complex game than it has ever been. AI has made it a very challenging equation. It's no longer a cookie cutter routine set of board meetings like it used to be.

It's really complicated, their roles. And it's more challenging than ever. Thank you, Tanya. That was insightful. And I saw a lot of people in the audience writing down. So you hit upon a lot of top-of-mind issues, for sure. I'll ask Sasha and Lori if they want to just jump in with any additional thoughts here.

Lori, do you want to go first? I will just add on to these issues about regulatory. The issue of copyright has been a huge issue. It's been such a big issue that the U. S. Copyright Office actually opened up a public comment period that ended on October 31. It's one of the first times we've seen really a crowdsourcing of innovation and ideas before we see regulation.

And I think it's going to be a while before we actually see any rules about copyright beyond just that you can't copyright images. And so I think for any company that has assets, whether those are your marketing assets or what you're putting out into the marketplace, really taking a position on that and the positions are either asked for permission or asked for forgiveness.

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And that's the strategy. And so I think we're seeing companies fall on both side of the line there. I think both my co-panels were pretty comprehensive, but I would just add simply that the culture of the board that is navigating these waters is really fascinating to watch being taken on this journey.

And I think you're gonna learn a lot about the fabric of those that you're serving with and their capacity for innovating and their capacity for asking the questions that are super important around IP and profit and also strategy and planning that is happening where we used to think that this was the future, however it's happening right now.

So the nimbleness and the indexability for your board to be able to act quickly and act conscientiously and act with safety and security in mind, those are some of the conversations I'm witnessing at this point.

- Sasha, thank you so much.

- Well, you know, I have muscle memory for this. That's what I'm realizing. There's no one who has the seniority to look to to say, well, Frank, have we handled this in the past? Because it's brand new for everyone. There's really no, there's no history that serves us.

- Yes, well, and then I'm just gonna add, that's the beauty of when you look at an authority in AI, it's you and I, there's not an authority in AI. I think that makes it very difficult to govern to have different standards in place. And we're kind of all working ad hoc. So I'll give it back to you Dana, but I think it's a really interesting conversation.

- You know, it's fascinating. We could spend hours and hours and you touched upon the culture of the board. So if any of you are sitting board members or aspiring board members, how the board decides and what they think about the transformation, even the timing of the transformation is gonna be key.

It reminds me of the digital age where we had Blockbuster. Remember, I used to go into a Blockbuster retail store and buy a DVD or rent it. And then Netflix came along and it streams digital. And Blockbuster missed the boat. They passed up on the opportunity to buy Netflix for I think $50 million and became defunct, bankrupt $5 billion company defunct because its board and its management team didn't see the transformation happen or they didn't think it was gonna happen that quickly.

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And now Netflix is, you know, I think either market leader at least ubiquitous in that space and Blockbuster is no more. So culture, additivity, nimbleness, engagement, education, it's all important, not only for your corporate role, but for the boards as well. Or I'm gonna shift over to the second question and I'm gonna ask Lori this question.

There's a lot to understand about AI at the board level. It's really a brave new world. We just talked about that. How can boards reshape the decision making process? What is the strategic game? Just talk a little bit about that.

- Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you are one of the big tech companies, you have to be strategic. But if you're anybody else being strategic right now It's extremely difficult. And part of the reason it's so difficult is that we've moved out of a product world. I think, you know, all of us who grew up in this technology era are used to having products released.

First, they were released on floppy disks and then they were released as cloud products and big enterprise applications. And we are just seeing something totally different with AI that really has nothing to do with AI specifically but has to do with this moment in time. And so I compare it to, you know, when we saw Microsoft Excel be released, right?

You got a full package of features. You could add things up, you could multiply them. There were tons of formulas, right? And you had to learn that software package. Right now, what we're seeing is every day is AI breaking news. And so it's as if, you know, if we were Microsoft Excel, like this week we're announcing that you can add numbers.

Next week we're announcing that you can sum a column. And so, you know, I, this is my world. This is like all of our worlds. I'm overwhelmed, right? I'm overwhelmed with how much there is to process. And I want to let everybody know that you can take your time, right? And at the board level, what we want to be able to do is to really get away from the noise and to be able to start thinking longterm.

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So I would give kind of like three strategies for boards. I think one is establish a safe playground, right? Where your company can experiment and support those initiatives at the operating level. Number two would be just really focus on what your value proposition is independent of the tools, right?

To the extent that AI can help you do something you already wanted to do, or can offer an innovative feature, great. But just beware of AI wrappers because we're in a big red ocean right now, like now everybody can make a GPT, right? It's like now all of a sudden everybody is going to be able to create an app.

And that's awesome. And then it's also like just a lot, right? It's a lot of junk food out there. And then I think the third thing is just there's no first mover advantage anymore, right? And the game can change at any moment in time, right? So Anthropic was looking really good. They came out with a very large token which basically means it can read like a very, very long book.

They had all kinds of safe protections and AI just knocked them out of the game in one fell swoop. I'm not counting them out, but I'm just saying like this is the way the game is going to get played.

- Thank you, Lori. Well, and that leads me to a question about value creation. So Sasha, what are the short and long-term value creation possibilities for AI? What does the future look like? How can boards validate and measure ROI? Anything else that you want to add in this area?

- Yeah, and I think in some ways I just noticed Barbara's question around the risks. I think the future is in somewhat dependent upon the risks that we ascertain now to develop a sense of where we can go with the future. Because I do agree Lori that there's quite, Wild West that's occurring.

I am in San Francisco Bay area, so I'm right near Silicon Valley and it is a Wild West. However, I love that climate. I mean, I'm a futurist, so that's the climate in which I thrive in. But bringing that back to a board where I need to use my really smart business strategy, finance, operations, technology, HR growth, compliance risk, or ESGDI Minds, that doesn't beget a lot of necessity to go haywire, right?

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So I think the future with AI is going to probably look a little less sexy than it does right now where anything's up to our creative whim. I think it's going to be around data. I mean, when you think about the simplicity of data and how it maps into AI, what a lot of the web free space that I've cut my teeth in and the emerging technology equals for us and the transition from web one, which was getting up online, to web two where we had social media and it felt like our data was our own and yet it wasn't.

Now we're in this web three mode and actually some say web four space where AI is one of the planets that is the whole constellation of the web three tools and technology, including gaming, avatars, what have you. You can utilize AI to inform and create a variety of these different integration points.

However, it's dependent upon both the data that you put in, the data that you develop and ask for from different supply chain or even individual.

- So, how do you manage the information that you have in the future?

- Well, I think I'm going to go back to the question, how do you manage the information that you have in the future? So, how do you manage the information that you have in the future? So, how do you manage the information that you have in the future? So, how do you manage the information that you have in the future?

So, how do you manage the information that you have in the future? So, how do you manage the information that you have in the future? So, how do you manage the information that you have in the future? So, how do you manage the information that you have in the future? So, how do you manage the information that you have in the future?

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23:14

So, how do you manage the information that you have in the future? So, how do you manage the information And then we've had our own domestic policies, particularly out of California, and then a lot of states have taken the California law and used it as some baselines for individual states.

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But privacy compliance and data security is the second bucket that I would say companies should start to focus on because that component is gonna become a stronghold for what's expected out of the president's executive orders for how we treat AI data. Third category, bias and fairness, lots and lots of stuff around the outputs of AI, efforts AI activity and any bias or any prejudice or bias predictive decisioning that happens out of AI activity that is perceived as unfair, will not be treated kindly.

So I think we're gonna have to be very sensitive to those of us who have tools and processes that are enabled by AI and how those tools interact with humans and decisions that affect humans. And then the last category is around transparency and accountability. So and by that, it's being transparent around content that's generated by AI, written content.

We talked about the copyrighting, Lori clearly in the artistic side, visuals that are created by AI, anything created or delivered enabled by AI technologies, we're gonna need to be very clear how that was generated. So those are four buckets out of the executive order. The more we know what's coming and we structure our work, our teams and our companies and our products to be ready for that, we'll be ahead of the curve.

I think more broadly understanding our regulatory touchpoints and being ahead of our own processes and it's kind of what I said earlier, I'm on a recurring basis. For some companies that will be monthly, for some it will be quarterly, but how are the laws changing? And who's doing that for me?

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Is it my legal counsel? Is it my products team? Is it my CPA that I'm paying a fee to advise me with a subscription service on a recurring basis? I don't care who, but somebody needs to be watching on your behalf to let you know what are the regulatory changes that affect your company?

So being aware and mindful of what affects your company, I think is one of the most broadly important things every company needs to be doing so that they are not caught flat-footed when these changes occur.

- Thank you, Tanya, that was very informative. And we can go into detail, probably another board services meeting in terms of the executive order and the details. There's so much here. We could have probably a three, four part series on this if people like the content and you want to go in more deeply.

I'm going to tip the next question to Lori. Lori is a leading voice on AI education. She's steeped in that, that's what she does. She blends tech expertise with innovative insights. And I'd like to know from Lori about the human side of AI, potential positive side of AI, how to create a safe environment, governance structure, strategy game, any other thoughts there?

- Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think that many people might have heard of AI agents or the idea that AI can operate by itself, but we aren't there yet. Now, I don't know if we're going to be there in six months or six years, but for right now, the way these AI systems are designed is really a human machine interaction.

It's a conversation and those conversations can happen in many different ways. But I think the most important thing to realize is, you know, while it is a great leveler, and there was a great study that was done by the Boston Consulting Group that showed that people can complete 12% more tasks, 25% more quickly, 40% higher quality, right?

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So there are significant gains to be had. Those gains are done by being what Ethan Mullic calls a cyborg, right? By collaborating with AI and using it. And I tell people to think about a 50/50 principle. You know, how many people like to be in control, right? How many boards like to be in control?

I'm not in control, right? With AI, some of the beauty of it is the 50% that you are not in control. These are what we call chaos machines. And that's what makes them creative, right? That's also what makes people in companies creative. And we need to think about how we both allow that creativity and avoid corruption, right?

'Cause those are two sides of the same coin. So I think in terms of education, what I highly recommend is that companies create a culture of safe experimentation, agile experimentation. And the way that you can do that is that for the most part, most AI applications have a toggle where you can turn off the training of the large language model or the diffusion model.

It will either be called private mode or it will be called stealth mode. And some of those have a price tag to them. And some of those require an enterprise version of the applications. So I would make sure you're doing that. Number two is you wanna make sure that you are anonymizing data, right?

So everybody wants to query their own data and I would highly recommend everybody try building their own GPT. You can do it in a Sunday. But don't do it with information that's hyper protected with information that has legal privacy. Play with it with information that you would feel comfortable making public and putting on the internet because that essentially is what you're doing.

Now, training the model has both a good and a bad side to it. On one hand, training the model means your information is public. On the other hand, you're participating in the evolution of these models. And what that means is this is human reinforced learning, right? The humans are important in the learning process and they're important in terms of combating bias.

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So one of the things that came up at ChiefX which I was so excited to hear is that it's important that we all as women non binary folks, the BIPOC community participate and don't shy away because we are so concerned about ethics but rather step in and use it as our opportunity to start shaping the ethics of the system.

Thank you, Lori. That's a call to action to everybody on the call tonight, right? So you can either shy away, you can join the conversation, get educated, or you can be proactive and try to shape the future of AI. And it's here for us to take, whichever path is for you. All right, I'm gonna have Sasha answer this next question.

Sasha is a leading voice across the Web 3 space. It includes AI. She's pioneered many projects that unite the future of fashion, sustainability and emerging technologies. So Sasha, what global initiatives monitoring AI governance such as the UN advisory board on AI, do you think are critical for our audience and boards to keep top of mind?

- Thank you, Denny. I think it's a really interesting question. I'd love to share like a couple case studies of AI usages but I'll just for the audience socialize the UN earlier this year, I don't recall exactly the months that earlier this year put forth a call for a high level advisory board on artificial intelligence.

So I'm sure you can connect the dots we're all smart chiefs to understand what that looks like for the future of global relations, the implications of AI across a variety of different channels. My team and colleagues put forth a paper I'm happy to share it in the link or something but of an evolutionary model of AI governance.

I think the undertaking and exercise in so doing was to be able to establish exactly where we begin and I think as we've already talked about tonight, there's so many different points of departure. There's so many different spaces only just if you examine the supply chain or the different transparency models and the different sources of data incoming and influx that are really critical to play into the whole structure of how we're again prioritizing AI and Danny, you mentioned Web 3 as I just explained.

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What I see Web 3 as is this whole, again universe of opportunity for us as we emerge as a digital culture as we continue to innovate and really socialize a lot of the tools like gaming, avatars, even AI that many people have been using for quite some time but we're repurposing or re-understanding how they factor in to our day-to-day and how the evolution of technology is coming into play.

So a couple of examples of what I've seen and what I've been lucky enough to take part in One was Project G*RAW, the denim company, where they actually did an AI design in the futuristic denim collection. Now what that looked like was an AI assistant in their actual creative development.

So they're allowing some collaboration, another tenet of a web 3 space into this creativity and designing process, interpreting, utilizing some mid-journey or dally guided tool that I'm not exactly sure exactly that they utilize specifically, but again, Lori, as you just said, playing and experimenting, but for a tangible yield and for a tangible product that then they can have some real-time testing around.

Another really interesting case study is NARS who's been so fantastically forward thinking in this whole area and in this space and with their AI infrastructure, what they did was develop actual avatars who were going to be the spokes women of one of their new collections. However, what they did was for a Sephora activation, a large scale activation, they utilize these avatars in holographic form via different tools and technologies driven by AI to come quote unquote to life and be able to be portaled in basically to an in real life moment.

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So linking the physical and virtual, the AI avatars would then quote unquote talk to the guests at this event via actors. So again, the possibilities are really endless and there's a theater, there's an engagement, there's a cooperation that's occurring and you're potentially not seeing this as just AI or technology, but it's just getting a little bit closer to your consumer and audience.

And I can see organizations like L'Oreal Beauty Brand but also fashion spaces. There's quite a bit of impetus to get closer in virtual form to brands and consumers. And then you see like a Prada case study where they actually did AI photo shoot, I think many people have seen campaigns and such they're driven via AI.

And then the last example is just the Spotify which maybe we've all used and not even known it but a new AI DJ. So I think there's a lot of interesting work that's coming forth from a consumer goods and retail space, but also from a global governance where you're looking at protecting from military and different parts and parcels of communications that are really important to have as you Tonya, you re-emphasize security and safety around.

The big concern at this point and we really should then have continual conversations, we should all be having continual conversations is around the intellectual property and the maintenance of that sacred entity that really is up for creativity and collaboration and cooperation as we get into this web three ethos, you know, being able to be discussed, but also there's this power to being able to hand over a level of that creativity and re-imagination to global audiences and consumers to be able to experiment with.

So as someone great once said with great power comes great responsibility, I think that's the climate in which we are right now.

- Thank you Sasha, that's so fascinating and I can't imagine in six years where we're gonna be, right? It's just, we can't even imagine it, so thank you. It's a really exciting glimpse into the future. All right, rapid fire, this is gonna go to all three panelists, this is gonna be our last formal question before I open it up to the audience for live Q and A.

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What are the most common misconceptions about AI that you encounter at the executive level? They'll just rapid fire Tonya then Lori then Sasha.

- That it's gonna make us a lot of money immediately. Thank you.

- You're immune, Lori.

- There's just a misunderstanding about what AI is. We've had discriminative AI, the classification system, the predictive analytics for a long time, generative is new. So just understanding the difference and how they can both be utilized.

- Thank you.

- Is that it will be led by white men?

- Excellent, thank you so much. All right, now we're gonna have about 10 minutes or so of Q and A. So if you have a live question for the speakers, raise your hand or I'm gonna also go into the chat. I think there were some questions in the chat that I can read while we're waiting for the questions to come up.

So Andrea asked, what is driving AI valuations down? Costs are so high and the revenues are so low. I hate that it's that simple, but it is.

- Okay, that's great, thank you. Rachel asked, what do you make of the coalition formed earlier this year to petition a full stop to AI development? So, I think the people leading that coalition, one of whom I think was Elon Musk, now have their own AI, right? So I think, and again, this is a little bit of over indexing of white men in the development of AI and also over indexing of women in ethics.

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So we need a bit of cross pollination there but I think a lot of it was just game playing in order for people to get their own advantage.

- Thank you. All right, Melissa Centura asked, are you seeing AI giving companies competitive advantage and/or driving market share? I think from a marketing perspective, at this point, that's where I'm seeing the basis of it, and I think because they're celebrating. We saw, it was META, who just put forward their different avatars, celebrity avatars, they got a little rise and that just from a curiosity perspective.

And I'm thinking that there's going to be a little bit more at CES at the beginning of the new year. We'll see some data points of how some campaigns have come forward. I haven't seen any groundbreaking statistics because it's super early, and I think a lot of people got going on AI from a height factor at the middle towards the beginning of this year, 2023.

So I don't think that there's a ton of data points, and frankly, it's, as in any new technology, very difficult to measure what things look like. However, what I would certainly look for is, where some metaverse teams were stood up, maybe 2021, 2022, we're seeing a lot of different AI teams getting stood up at organizations, not simply within somebody having an expertise on board level, but from a chief level executive team, as well as even consumer insights and research and development.

I think that's a data point that I would look to from a trend analysis. And then I think another aspect of, six factors, let's say, is that we're having these types of global conversations because it isn't, I'm imagining a lot of us are US or UK based, but this is not just a North America, European, UK conversation.

This is a global interchange that we need to be having. So the ability to convey these types of conversations and look for data points from across the world, fear is super important, and it will help lead towards those success factors as well. I think AI is going to be table stakes.

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I think right now it is early, but I think companies without it in another 12 months, people are going to be asking, "What the heck?" When people either type in online or call in, and those features aren't there that other companies have, that Delta is going to be really obvious, and I think it's going to be, those companies are going to be lost, especially if they're larger enterprises.

Yeah, and I will say one of the things that happened immediately after the declaration of the executive order was that the government opened up a call for AI fellows to solve government problems, right? So we're seeing this even at the clujiest of levels, right? Mm-hmm. That's fascinating, Lori.

All right, Barbara, I don't know if this was answered, but Barbara Spitzer asked, "What are the top three risks boards need to keep their eye on?" We touched upon that throughout the conversation, but does anybody want to answer specifically, top three risk sports need to know about.

I think public perception is the huge unknown, right? For me, you can watch your numbers, you can forecast your numbers and what's happening with expenses. Those are more predictable, but the whole public turning because of events that occur elsewhere and that butterfly effect, that's the one that in the conversations that I'm in, people are worried about because of the lack of predictability.

Thank you.

- What do you guys think?

- I'm gonna say, while we're all overwhelmed and focused on AI right now, keep your eye on quantum mechanics.

- Oh, I'm all about quantum, that's why I named my company Quantum Group. Absolutely.

- Because I think one of the biggest both opportunities and major security risks is what will happen with quantum. And it crosses both blockchain and embeddings and privacy within AI. So, I think this is to me, this is bigger risk than AI. So, the question is, how can we solve problems in a much more complex way?

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- To be clear, I think quantum will compete with AI for resources and that's going to be our next phase of struggle, corporately, is do we fund AI projects or do we fund requirements for quantum? It's going to be another Y2K, for those of us who are old enough to have gone through the Y2K processes back in '98, '99 getting ready for those, it's going to be another security phase.

So, it's going to be, do we uplift our innovation or I don't think we're going to have a choice, when we break quantum, China has, we're going to, but China's invested 15 billion to crack quantum before we do and China China owns about 27% of the back end of all the private VPNs out there, we can't afford for them to find it before, find the key before we do.

So, it's pretty scary and so I think we're going to have that competitive, here we are with AI having low returns, it's pretty compelling what's coming down the road, I think in the next 18 months.

- Thank you. All right, Erin, I know you had your hand up, Erin McCauley, do you want to unmute and ask your question?

- Oh yeah, sure. I had asked the question about giving AI constitutions to be able to work against and I was actually thinking about it more as, yes, there's some things in terms of compliance and standards, but I actually wonder what role boards will play in sort of the development of a unique constitution, kind of like values or operating models or practices that you have in a business, but applied to AI, if that makes sense.

47:12

- I was gonna hand that to you Dana. I think you're navigating these waters a little bit. I'd love to invite you. I think we've had conversations and I'd really love if you don't mind. I think it's important for you to share a little bit of where you've gone with this.

- I almost think it's a decision for every company and every board to take on itself in terms of its risk tolerance, its use of resources, its vision of how their company is using AI, competitive threats, where it's going, their future growth opportunities because I don't think it's one size fits all honestly.

And I think governance is key. I think you need an infrastructure within every company and the board should mandate that there's at least some governance for AI but I don't think it could be right sized for any company. I think it's really unique.

- Erin, hopefully that answers the question. And if anybody else is at attendee and is an expert in this area, just unmute and please feel free to answer as well.

- Yeah, I think where I was starting to go with it is, how might we, so I'm a chief people officer, so I think about it from the people aspect and the values of the company, and rather than applying a generic AI to a problem that you're trying to solve, now all of a sudden if you think of AI as an extension of humans, like what kind of practices or values do we want to make sure that the AI is mimicking in accordance with how we want to be as humans within our company?

- Yeah, I think it's really important, and Dan, I hiked it to you 'cause I know you're doing the SG work and I know that there's quite a bit of synergy. I started in sustainability and got my hands dirty in that space from the supply chain, and here we are, where sustainability, social responsibility we're all under the hub of people and how we treat individuals.

49:12

So I think it's a really critical learning that we had bringing sustainability, social responsibility into infrastructures, and then now, as I love how you expressed it, that we're treating technology as people, I mean, I think that's the conversation that boards needs that when I mentioned culture, they need to agree upon because everybody's gonna come to those conversations with very different mindsets and that's important to hold space for, because like the workforce, everybody's coming with very different mindsets.

So there's, as Dan, I agree with you Dan, there's not one right answer, but we're gonna have to set up something, I mentioned sustainability because I set up the standards for how we're talking about it before it was green, eco, social responsibility, sustainability, now ESG, all these terms that we That we're once very posh and new and even unexplored, we now have criteria for.

So here we are at the beginning of this common discussion. We're gonna have to have that conversation and you heard about quantum, I can always wax the web about web three. There will be some cream from this technology fetish that we're having at this moment that will rise to the surface.

When we make those cultural decisions as boards, communities, that will beget how we begin to develop criteria that both fits with our culture, works with our bottom line, dives deep into the product development and the communication of that both internally, very importantly, we didn't talk about internal communications, but that's really important as well as externally.

So I think those are just some, and I'm sorry because it's not an answer, but it's towards the answer and anyways, I hope that helps. Obviously I feel very passionate about it. One last thought for me, and then I'm gonna turn it back over to Jessica to ask her question, but most companies have a code of conduct, they have employee handbooks, they have compliance mechanisms, they have some general infrastructure and codes that they live by and some of the ethics, the wisdom and AI summit information that you're talking about may already be embedded in those foundational documents in terms of how people are treated, code of conduct, et cetera.

51:30

So maybe that's the answer, I don't know, but I think it's gonna be, every company deciding for itself what's AI usage policy says, how it rolls up into code of conduct, how it rolls up into the employee handbook and how not only does the management team govern that, but then the board govern the management team that's the governing body of the infrastructure.

- I wanna just check on before we move on that we I think are going to see the rise of unions among knowledge workers. I think this is something that we haven't seen outside of government entities. I think the two strikes that we just witnessed with the writer's guild and the screen actors guild being resolved were both about AI and kind of following the terms of those agreements because everyone is afraid of losing their job and that threat is real.

So I think that's one of the things boards need to watch out for and be proactive and making sure that they're addressing that before the unionization starts to come.

- Thank you, Lori. I've got five minutes left to do two questions and a wrap up. So Jessica, quickly to you, quick answer and then we'll do Rashmi and then we'll do a close. Jessica.

- I'm guessing I'm the Jessica you're calling on.

- Yeah.

- No, thank you ladies for taking the time and I'll make it quick. One of the things I'm seeing in the face of AI is just quite simply overwhelmed and that it moves so quickly and then you find yourself with people who are experts and in the land of the blind, the one-eyed or king.

So my challenge and I think that of others is who do you listen to or what should we be looking out for to spot when you could have people who are more bluster than substance. What are the guidance you could give us?

- Yeah. Okay, and then I have boba. Do you want some boba?

- I can answer that just because I'm not an author in this topic, so I'll be ecumenical. And I did say something earlier, I don't know if you caught it, but the only expert right now is you. It really is, and there's a lot of different conversations that are occurring, but as we're talking about, you're the only person who knows your business, your necessity for AI, and I'm saying you in the personal, but also you as an organization, you as a board of directors.

53:53

It's just too wild west at this point to say, this is the authority on AI. Now we mentioned the UN is developing different global boards, there's a lot of different industry organizations that are coming to the fold, but I think that you know your business best and therefore you know, I mean, I think on chief recently, there were some people who were wondering what certification they should get from what university and all these different things.

I think we need to be really smart about how we look into AI, just like we look into like an MBA program, what would have you, that's be catered towards what exactly your undertaking is in this capacity and what you're going to put it to, put the uses, you know, are you going to optimize efficiencies?

Are you going to develop a brand, develop, you know, brand campaigns and do the flashy stuff? Like Lori mentioned, are you going to utilize it to take the role of the creative people in your organization, hopefully not, but you know, what is it that you're going to implement AI for?

And then you go into the space and understand both who and what are doing the most close to what you need them to be doing. You know, I think the choir in the chat is really important to understand, you know, Google and all these people are developing standing up tools. Again, I wanna really emphasize for those of us that are in this space and then remember this, we are in the my space time right now of this.

So there's gonna be a lot of leaders and there are gonna be a lot of next gen leaders. And I think actually I always go to young people. They're the ones to watch. So when I work in web streaming gaming and such, I look to the Roblox ecosystem, the 12 to 17 year old gamers that talk to me about the trends in forecasting and then implement that.

So frankly, if you have a younger person in your household, get a rapport with them and see who they're listening to, who they're tracking with and who they want to learn more about and why. And I think those are departure points. So that's a very, you know, very nice setting.

55:54

- Thank you Sasha, that was insightful. All right, Rashmi, 30 second question and answer.

- Can I respond to Jessica?

- Sure, we have one minute though to do a wrap up as well.

- That's okay, but I think it's important Jessica to hear an additional perspective. And Jessica, you've got to lead too. I mean, you've got, 'cause I don't think it's about just listening to someone else's bluster, author or no. Anybody can be right about by the way. My recommendation is that everybody get engaged with AI.

AI is very hands on. Everybody has to be involved. And my recommendation to get past the overwhelm, I ask everyone, please subscribe to one newsletter, just one. I've got two or three recommendations, three very different styles of depth, but I'll send them to you, but pick one and look at it two or three times a week just to get yourself familiar pick one that you like 'cause you've got to know for you to make your own choices and getting engaged.

And that's, we need leaders identifying their path and then leading their folks into AI.

- Thank you, Tanya. Very important call to action for everybody on the call to take action and to educate yourself and to read about it and be a leader and proactive. All right, Rashmi, last question for you and then we'll do a 30 second wrap up.

- More a comment than a question. Number one, a comment that this panel is it reflective of how AI should be? It's not one person's prerogative, it's not the tech prerogative, it's broader than that. So thank you for reflecting that in the panel. Number two, just very specific to boards, what I'm seeing from my personal experience is bringing together of community of practices or community of excellence is where, it's people that are experts in their particular spaces coming together to see where can there be interactions and maybe productivity improvement or revenue generation keeping in mind all the quality and regulatory and that's how we're doing it, especially in like the medical device community.

58:09

I do want to also kind of temper this with AI is not, like AI is the buzzword of today, but it's been like in the medical community, we've been using neural networks and image processing for decades, so did we in automotive and in computer vision for pedestrian detection and things like that.

So there is underlying innovations and technology that has been worked on for decades before what we are seeing. I think the massive option at a consumer level is what is leading to this level of interest, which is fantastic, that's how technology moves. But I also wanted to bring the perspective of that community of practice and thank you for reflecting that on the panel today, Dana.

- Thank you Rashmi, that was a really good wrap up as well. All right, thank you so much. We are at the top of the hour. I'm gonna ask each speaker just to give one final thought. Tanya.

- Oh, thanks. Sorry. I think what Rashmi just ended with is so perfect, I couldn't actually top it. It is about being cross functional. It is about seeing multiple perspectives and it is about bringing everyone to the table. AI is not one way, it is so many ways. It is quantum, Lori.

AI is quantum and we are a reflection of that. So thank you all for being here and sticking through this. Lori.

- Would you pull that milk and--

- I would say just stay curious. I think that's the best way to be about this technology. Thank you, Sasha.

- I welcome women to inform the future of AI. I really want to see a future that's full of chief voices who are building it. I love seeing you guys dive in, whatever access point feels natural, authentic and real to you. I look forward to seeing what you create.

- Thank you so much. Our speakers are here because they're experts. Link in with them. If you need education for your company, for yourself, make sure you go to their websites and see how they can help you with consultancy or educational workshops. They really are experts that they're here to help.

1:00:25

I hope you enjoyed the panel. Having us tonight and have a wonderful week. So thank you so much and we'll be in touch soon through the chief app and LinkedIn. Thank you everybody.