Foundations Session 7: The Long and the Short of It - Lucas Gelfond (in-person)

Just 17% of Americans think AI will have a positive impact on society over the next 207 years. Why, and what can we do about it as technologists?
I think most of our problems emerge from an obsession with short term metrics (”fastest to $100M ARR”), a performance of narrow-minded commercialism, and a turn away from philanthropy. We have always had grifters; their valorization seems like a recent turn.
Beyond any desire for altruism, or to gain public trust, I think these approaches are bad business. Industrialists like Warren Buffet and Jeff Bezos frequently wrote of decisions made at the expense of short term revenue gains to maximize long-term product quality or customer trust, leading to immeasurable future gains. Jerome Kohlberg, a founder of KKR, noted in his farewell speech that "we must all insist on ethical behavior or we will kill the golden goose.” Consideration of these larger factors avoided lots of local maxima that AI diffusion is liable to be stuck in absent a change.
We’ll discuss Bezos’ 2012 letter to Amazon shareholders, and Warren Buffet’s 1983 Chairman’s letter. After the discussion, we’ll screen Ernest Lehman’s 1954 film Executive Suite for a larger group (link here).
(If you wanna come to the remote session instead, click here)