here is a highlight from a key moment. >> something else i saw firsthand, it wasn't a surprise to me, but the outpouring of love from you, my colleagues. both republican and democrat. i know right after the shooting, we were practicing on the republican side the democrats were practicing too. and my colleague and friend and sometimes archrival in baseball for beckham in new orleans, unfortunately the start of the game too many times, cedric richmond figure out which hospital i was sent to and got there probably the first person there on the scene in his baseball uniform. to check on me. so many others of you, again, both republican and democrat, reached out in ways i can't express the gratitude and how much it means to me, jennifer and her whole family. it really does show the warm side of congress the very few people get to see. >> c-span, powered by cable.

corporate executives discuss the latest developments in technology including artificial intelligence and clean energy, at a recent summit posted by axios in washington, d.c. this is about 45 minutes. good afternoon, welcome to the third annual axios what's next summit . we appreciate all of you for being here, guest joining us virtually and around the world and thank you to the axios events team which has spun up this amazing space and series of events. i am mike allen, cofounder of axios in washington with editor-in-chief sarah. this is one of our favorite days of the year. axios experts are in from around the country. this is like a reunion. we have been having fun together.

an amazing program, it's going to be covering topics from the i to how business is changing, the policies changing. axios tries to get to what matters, what is coming, that is why we love what is next sensibility, tech, media and politics and how they intersect, connect and collide. >> this gives us a chance to gather insights from transformative leaders we're going to hear from today from across policy, business, technology, and allows us to go a little deeper into how they are affecting what is next for how we work, play and live our lives. if you've been here in the past, previous years, our summits have featured amazing leaders and speakers such as renowned shift and humanitarian was a andre. music producer timberland and heads of cbs, gm and you too. just to name a few. sorry for my voice. this year we're going to hear from another emerging set of

amazing leaders we have included two cabinet officials on the stage today. slacks new ceo denise dresser. and ai thought leader, nelson. we call this our crystal ball event. in addition to the great programs here on the main stage, we would love you to check out the innovation hub downstairs, we have demonstration of virtual reality of electric air flight. i tried the ai robot that sorts your trash as you dispose of it. and it's cold of course, oscar, and i also tried out the fully electric honda scooter and

prolog suv. can't really pack up the suv in your luggage but the modal compact oh scooter folds down this small. were going to take a youtube of me on the scooter and i was like, you can put this in the overhead, it turns out the battery is two big the overhead. but the scooter is fun, and i was happy to see a scooter that has a seat. also today we are honored to have frank mccourt here, such a great pioneer, he is at with his book, our biggest bite, which we were honored to debut at sxsw last week. frank is an optimist, has great ideas about how we can improve tech and he is here he and project liberty are here along with our new president, we appreciate you being here, they are going to, frank will be

signing books in the upstairs lounge. we appreciate project liberty and thank you very much to you and your team for being here to tell us more about our biggest fight, reclaiming liberty, humanity and dignity in the digital age. and as blurbs go, it's a little tough to top this bruce springsteen, the boss calls this essential reading, essential readings for our times. >> i have a few logistics for us all to give you a sense of how the day is going to go. to provide you a quick rundown of the afternoon, we are going to have a short break in the middle of the programming today, so be sure to make it back here in time once that's over because we have a full slate of grammy after the break. otherwise, you're welcome to stretch your legs, take a call, get a coffee, whatever you need to do in the lounge upstairs.

if you need to refer to the summit agenda, it is on your badge you are wearing or on the screens upstairs. after the programming concludes, we encourage you to take the short commute upstairs for a reception where you can connect with fellow attendees and enjoyed some bites with us. thank you so much. >> as we post on social media, we would love you to use the hashtag axios w and s, on from the show, chief tech corresponded, ina fried. >>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 ai technology will reshape things.

how it reshapes is yet to be determined and i am excited to start with a alondra nelson she co-authored ,the ai bill of rights during her tenure as director of technology policy. please help 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 ones and 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? and not bad outcomes? >> i'm so glad to be here. i think that is the profound question of our time. it is the case it's a very powerful technology. it is a bunch of zeros and ones but also it's complicated and there's a reason there is a kind of enchantment. we should stipulate that. it's also the case that these are tools we create and they don't have their own agency, even though people are building ai agents. and what they become is up to us, what they are and what they become is up to us. i think we very much have to remain in the space of appreciating that the work we do now and regulation and education, all throughout society, that is going to create the future that we want. so, you know, when people say

ai is going to cure cancer and mitigate climate change and all of these things, all of that may be true, i don't know, they are all questions, but the case to your point, none of it is going to just happen. we have the benefit of being pretty early in a moment of a new technology that we can begin to sort of put in place, hopefully, some of the infrastructure, some of the norms and with the regulations, some of the standards we need to have the potential good outcomes that are still, even if we do some of this or a lot of this, only potentials. >> and both can happen. it's not like if we use ai to achieve some good outcome, that prevents the bad outcome. i want to rewind a bit, when you were in the white house, crafting this ai bill of rights, what were the key things you wanted to make sure got enshrined, obviously it wasn't law,, la was the first

up, but what were you hoping to achieve with that bill of rights? >> we were taking up some of the 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 -- that said things like we are going to 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 so very early on in the administration we spun up a process, as you say, the

blueprint for an ai bill of rights is not lower legislation. we wanted to, particularly coming into office in the middle of a pandemic, at a time when there was quite a lot of distrust about science, government, technology. so, how we have a process in which we could engage people in thinking about questions about ai? so we wrote an op-ed, we put a white house email address at the bottom and said anyone can write to us about this. what are the things the american public should be asking for or how should we be thinking about ai technology in the context of american society? we spent almost one year talking to schoolteachers and high school students and lots of experts. and folks in local and state government. to sort of get a sense of what they needed and what they were worried about. and also to distill from some really good business partners in some instances, and a lot of technological experts, what is the best in class we know we

can do, the subtitle of the ai bill of rights is about making the principles into practice is. the system should be safe and effective. it shouldn't discriminate against you, there should be privacy. we were basically distilling the common sense things people were telling us they wanted and then trying to really flag, what were those initial things we know we can do. we call red teaming broadly. risk assessment, third-party audits of algorithms as a way to flag how we might move ahead. so that is what we were trying to accomplish. moving from lofty principles, but to also sort of have you begin to operationalize and research in industry and government. >> it was kind of a rude awakening i imagine when you started on your latest projects of looking at, where is the technology right now? i think that is an important question. we need to look at the existential risks, we have the set of technologies, it is here, it is powerful, and

flawed. and talk about what you see in the work you have been doing. you been doing some amazing work , what have you found in terms of, what are the impacts that these tools can have today and might have in a year, where not only are americans going to the polls the billion people around the world. >> it's a real challenge. julian i started the summer called the ai democracy project, we are studying in lots of different ways the impacts of algorithms on elections, democracy, and back to the ai rights, on rights. how is it impacting these sets of things? the first that he we did was working with elections officials from red and blue states, a bipartisan effort, so we realized, because so many of the large language models hallucinate and they do so plausibly, to give information that looks right. so unless you know specifically

about a particular voting district or voting law or issue, it looks fine. it sounds great. and so we did we have been calling an all-day event with ai experts, people from civil society, election officials and colleagues are maricopa county, secretary of state from nevada, and we tested the checkbox on basic election information. i do appreciate that i think some of the data says maybe 25% of americans have used chat pods. is not suggesting everyone is using this for election information. but to the extent that they are, can they get valid and reliable information? we had the experts rate the outputs, and we found that more than half are inaccurate. 13% were rated to be biased. in between that they were rated to be harmful. and inaccurate or incomplete. >> and inaccuracies could mean telling you the wrong day, the wrong procedures for voting by mail.

given where the technology is today, am i right in thinking that anyone the rents a chap but should actually reroute their election questions some other way and provide -- can you really trust eight chap but with today's generative ai for today's election information? but sadly you cannot. we had teams of people doing the testing and to me, or to someone even working out of election civil society organization, when it says, go to ww w i can vote.org. it looks credible and you go there and think it's good information. these urls didn't exist in some cases. in some instances, communities were told, we asked about a predominately african american community in philadelphia, the result was that the community didn't exist and didn't have a polling site because it can be found. so, we have challenges with elections.

i think a lot of our discourse around it and the conversation is about, you know, about deceptive content. about deliberate disinformation with deepfakes and voice cloning and the sort of things. that is surely a problem and we are already seeing that rise up as a problem. >> that's what i was going to ask, the problems you outlined in that article were mostly the system by itself with no actor was giving bad and reliable misinformation. we had for the last couple election cycles, outside interest. people trying to sow chaos. how powerful are the tools today is engines of this information? how worried are you that we are going to see a flood of social media posts, either just poisoning the information landscape or deliberately trying to change things in one way or another? >> it's already happening. right? we have already seen, if we think about the new hampshire

democratic primary, think about the robo call voice cloning of president biden's voice. it is a problem. we know it has happened in past elections. it happened in the 2016 election for sure. >> but they didn't have these tools. >> the barrier to entry is much lower, it's much easier to either, if it's for the laughs, or aligned actors, it is much easier to do it now. but you compound that with being much easier to use, having more dissemination vehicles with lots of other kinds of social media, and also having the this information piece which is the kind of death by 1000 cuts of tools that actually just don't work. they don't even work for what they claim to be able to do. which is to provide fairly accurate information about the world. so, it is pretty worrisome. think we are right to be worried. we can anticipate all the challenges we will have in the election. i think it is a kind of cyber security of society because these things, we are going to

just have to try to mitigate in place and try to forecast to the extent we can. but it's going to be a constant back and forth dealing with these issues. >> do have a sense where the tech companies are on this? my sense is that leading up to the 2020 election, certainly afterward, there was a lot of focus on election security and integrity in protecting against things. because they knew four years earlier there had been a's efforts. my sense is a lot of the companies have quietly scaled back. the big ones. the facebook's of the world. that is one thing. and then you have the new ai companies, we are very committed, we have four people on our election integrity team. are you worried that the people controlling the technology are devoting enough resources? >> yes. there have been, as we have seen, across the last year, volunteer commitment, also voluntary commitments from the companies around ai and elections in particular. and lots of well-meaning discourse about wanting to be responsible actors.

but we really just cannot afford to messes up. even going back, julia and her team recently went back to some of the chat pots and tested with some of the same questions. and they hadn't been fixed. when we released a report, we went to the companies and said, this is what we found. they said, we had made promises in december and january this wouldn't happen or we fixed it. it's not going to happen again. and it is still a problem. it is a problem for the chat pots, but what we are/the business model, one of the hopes for ai, if we mitigate the risk and get it right, you can build whole worlds on these foundation models. the foundations are creaky. this is not a foundation on which to build an enterprise business ecosystem, any kind of knowledge system if you can't get basic and accurate information. to the extent that things like election information in large language models are being built into things like ai and other

things of various ai systems are being built into microsoft office and things, it's a real challenge. if we want to take it literally the use of the word foundation, the foundation of the ai ecosystem your building, it is creaky and brittle. and it's a real problem for democracy. >> and certainly, people use the chat pots or ai systems to generate information. but the social media layers are where it gets broadcast. we are hearing a lot right now about tiktok. i am curious, what do you think? my sense there is an existential threat. just like ai, there is a bunch of concerns, near-term misinformation bias, discrimination, wealth concentration. and then there is the existential, robots might kill us all. today we have to pay attention to both the have two separate conversations. it feels like there's something similar in social media we have

one conversation about tiktok and the threat that someday the chinese might use this to influence us. but are we not in a moment where all sorts of countries are using the american social media we have? how important is it that we regulate what is happening on facebook and whatever used to be twitter, and all those places in addition to paying attention to tiktok? >> i would slightly quibble and say it's not two different conversations. this is why we are challenging, having a challenge mitigating it. the challenge we face with tiktok, potentially, is who owns the data and where is it going? some of that data, some of the data we are concerned about is being sold by american data broker companies that are not regulated. so the issue i think that really is under all of it is really about data, you think we talk about ai being dual use or

general-purpose use, data and data flows and the data ecosystem, it's the ultimate dual use. and so the data is circulating. you know, if we care about data privacy and we care about not sort of capitalizing on american data, being able to sell it all over the place. even accounting for other expert controls and controls that they you can sell american data to these countries or people in these countries but not those countries. is putting a band-aid on a larger issue which is, we fundamentally need a federal data privacy regulation. we got close last year. that is not going to solve everything, but it will really sort of create a baseline of expectations that would make it far more difficult for some of the concerns that we have, both from malign actors and the day today. >> so we have to do all those things. would you also ban tiktok? >> i think it matters who owns tiktok. and so i think we have to take that quite seriously.

i think we should regulate social media companies. i think we should regulate platforms. that can be done and we still have not done that and some of the issues we're facing right now are because we have not, for nearly a decade, and the sort of basic things. so, let's see. >> i would love to talk to about this for hours. hopefully we will get a chance to talk more. i hope you will continue to be a voice on these issues. thank you so much for what you are doing and for sharing your insights. >> thank you. >> [ applause ] reporter sarah f. introducing senior reporter, sara fischer. >> hello, everyone.

thank you for joining us today. we are so excited to have the chairman of espn, james pitaro, returned to her stage after we last had him on in 2022. a lot has changed since then. espn has announced a plethora of efforts to bring the network into the streaming era . we are here to talk to jimmy about it's innovation. please join me in welcoming, jimmy. jimmy, thank you for doing this. >> hi, everyone. >> let's start with news of the day. there is no shortage of news when it comes to espn. there a ton of reports right now around could be your latest distribution deal. there are reports that that deal is done, a $7.8 billion deal. is there any truth to that?

where is the status? >> i will start by saying college sports, incredibly important to espn, they have been for decades, and that of course includes college football and the college football playoff. am very happy to announce here, now, that we have come to an agreement with the college football playoffs. and we will be extending our partnership for the next six years. so there are two components to this. with the expansion from four to 12 teams, we needed to amend our current deal.'s we have two seasons left in our current deal. so we got that deal done. we got the amendment done. that gave us the ability to broadcast these additional games. so, when you are going from four to 12 teams, you are going from three to 11 games.

so that is closed. and part two, as i mentioned before, six-year extension. where we maintain the exclusive rights to broadcast this playoff. we are announcing that right now. >> wow. round of applause. >> [ applause ] >> to follow up on that, if it were to expand further from 12 to 14 in 2026 does the steel address that? >> it does. it does expand from 12 to 14 teams. those games will be on our networks. >> and that is roughly $7.8 billion price the, how close to reality is that? >> you know how this works. we don't talk about our fees or average annual value. i will say that from my perspective, a good deal is when both sides are happy. we feel really good about the deal, and we believe the

college football playoff committee feels really good. the commissioners, everyone who is involved feels really good about it. it was a long process. they had to get a lot of their issues resolved among the conferences, et cetera. and they did. and as soon as they did we were ready. because we have been working on our deal for so long, we had things teed up and so as soon as they came back to us and said we are now good, we have alignment among the conferences, among the constituents, it didn't take us long to get our deal done. >> let's follow-up to the other big deal we are waiting on. the nba rights. where does spn stand with that, w nba as well? >> the nba is incredibly important to espn. we are now currently in our exclusive negotiating window. that was part of our current deal. that is part of her current deal. so we are actively engaged with the league.

it is, from our perspective, and incredibly valuable asset, not just to espn, but the entire walt disney company. you all know abc broadcast the finals. we have abc doing regular- season games. it's important to us. we very much want to get this done. we see the league as ascending. it has got a much younger audience than the average sports audience that we see. i actually saw this morning a stat that 56%, this is not confirmed, but i read it this morning, 56% of nba fans are under the age of 44. which is really impressive. so for us, we talk about our priorities at espn and we usually start with audience expansion. and a big commune at their is speaking to attracting a younger audience. so we think the nba can really

help us. >> to that point in audience expansion, how much does the women's sports play part you have katelyn clark bringing momentum. should be expect espn to go big there? >> women's sports a been a priority for decades. long before i got to espn. we take a lot of pride in how we have helped grow this sports, collegiate, professional, w nba we expect will be part of any deal, any renewal. with the nba. and again, going back to my point before on ascension, we are seeing the same thing if not more on the wnba side. there are so many great stories coming with the upcoming draft, clayton clark -- katelyn clark declaring she's going to go pro. we have an original series coming out around women's college basketball. we actually announced yesterday, it's called full- court press. focused on three female collegiate basketball players

and we're going to lunch that in mid-may over two days on abc and then overrun plus. it will be a nice prelude to the wnba draft in brooklyn in mid april. we could not be more excited about women's sports. the next, i guess, asset available is the wnba. but we did, as you know, just renew our deal with the ncaa and we have all the women's collegiate sports championships which we are really excited about. >> and national women's soccer league. >> yes, several months ago we announced a deal and they just kicked off this past saturday. we kicked it off on abc with the kansas city game in the first ever purpose built stadium for women's professional sports.

that was pretty exciting. >> let's quickly pivot to other aspects of espn innovation. you announced a joint venture with discovery and fox to create a standalone sports direct to consumer product. >> yep. >> have a question, or not having fox corp. says he expects over five years 5 million people would sign up for this. if you were to do the math, let's say it's 40 or $50 per month, split amongst the three, it doesn't seem like it's going to be that incremental bottom l what's the point when you are l doing another effort to go direct to sumer? >> first of all, optimality. giving the sports fan more options.

there are, right now, over 50 million non-paid tv households in this country. we believe, we know a big chunk of those are sports fans. the idea is to create a product that speaks to them, that can get them off of the sidelines. number two, i would say this is really about simplicity, ease of access. what we hear about every single day from our sports fans is some frustration in terms of fragmentation, discoverability. we all know. if you're a sports fan, you often need several apps, several usernames and passwords, you have several charges that show up on your credit card. so we took a step back and said is there an opportunity to work together with fox and warner bros. discovery to create an experience where it somewhat centralized and you can fire up your app and have a good more

than just espn has to offer. and then to your point on economics, and you just want to highlight that each of us is pointing out their affiliate rates. while it's a joint venture, we are inventing -- investing in it equally, this is a digital mdpd so we are typically getting paid out from another mvpd. >> and so they are okay with this arrangement? >> i haven't had any conversations with them. our affiliate team is in regular conversation. my understanding is they understand that this is about the customer. this is about identifying a gap. look, just take a step back. our mission is to serve the sports fan anytime, anywhere.

so when we decided that we were going to make espn available direct to consumer and we announced that that's going to come next fall, fall 25, we also said, okay, is there another opportunity to offer a product or a service that is more than espn? we ultimately concluded that yes. that's the joint venture. so holistically, if you look at this from a macro perspective, we are going to remain in the big bundle, cable, satellite, digital mvpd bundle. that will remain a priority for us. that is a business that's a very good to us and will continue to be very good to us. but on the other end of the spectrum is us taking our flagship channel, channels, direct to consumer, and then somewhere in between them, we believe there's an ocean. where you can offer more than espn, but at a price point

below what a digital mvpd charges. >> what are you thinking, $40, $50 a month ? >> we have not yet locked in on a price for that range feels right to me. >> in terms of the flagship opportunity. it seems to me like a lot of the espn momentum is round football. college football, the nfl. how do you prevent this becoming a seasonal subscription were sown comes right ahead with preseason and then cut it off at the super bowl. >> it's a great question. so it's about content, right? and so the joint venture will address a large part of that because it is more, it is just more content for the sports fan and just espn or just fox or just warner bros.

discovery can offer. in the aggregate, it's pretty compelling offering, especially if you look at it through mlb lends, through an nhl lens. it's a pretty compelling mix. and on top of that, look, the studio programming is world- class and in a world of cord cutting where i think no one would have been surprised years ago if our studio ratings were down. our studio ratings are all up and to the right and that is pretty amazing. again, we have 6 to 7% decline in the mvpd universe and you are seeing ratings for get up and first take up into the right, month after month, i think for 19 consecutive months, it may actually be 20, i think it's 19, is up in their

ratings, year-over-year. get up is setting records and is one of the best morning programs, not just sports programs, but morning programs available today. we take a lot of pride in the fact that we have, to your point in terms of -- we have the studio programming and then we have our original film content. >> i want to follow you up on programming. just a quick thing we for we move on the gv. we have reported and others have that the doj is looking at this tv. you have any regulatory concerns about it? >> i can't comment on any regulatory concerns or issues. what i will say is i will reiterate my earlier point, which is that you take a step back. this is a consumer friendly offering. this is about giving the sports they had another option and really simplifying the sports experience for them. >> let's go back to studio programming for a second. obviously, 30 for 30 in the past. what is your commitment to originals, or do you think you are shifting? >> we are not shifting.

we remain committed. if you look at our brand research, 30 for 30 is one of our best performing brands. especially with the younger people. and so, what you are going to see is us continuing to invest in stories that we think move the needle. so if you walk the halls of bristol or los angeles you will hear people talking about bigger and bolder. and so we take a lot of pride in properties like the last dance or the captain with derek jeter or man in the arena with tom brady. we have a documentary series coming out on serena williams. i already mentioned full-court press, which will follow caitlin clark. it's that spirit,'s stories -- stories that we think will really move the needle forward for us. >> and in terms of the town, you have pat mcafee coming in.

you have no editorial control. one of the things that we hear a lot from espn talent, homegrown talents, is why does pat get to say whatever he wants on his air, where as we have to adhere to these very strict standards. do you worry that people are going to want to come up through espn is homegrown talent to do shows and they'd rather go the other route? is that your plan to bring in more? >> i don't worry about that and i do not hear that personally from our talent. if you look at the opportunities that we provide for our talent, we are a sprawling enterprise and there are so many paths to take when you take -- when you join espn. if you look at some of our younger talent and how they've grown like laura rutledge, malika andrews, they're thriving. we take a lot of pride in developing our talent and

giving them opportunities and i do believe that our talent appreciates the breadth of opportunities that they have at espn. one more thing. just in terms of licensing shows and pat mcafee's show. just take a step back. we all know this. we are in a battle for people's time. it's more competitive than it has ever been and so we have to try new things. we have to experiment, and sometimes that might make some people uncomfortable and i get that. we went into, pat and i talked about this. we went into that relationship knowing that an understanding that but from my perspective, and i will go full-circle here, the audience expansion and speaking to a younger generation. the pat mcafee show is a needle mover with younger people because of the authenticity. i don't think it's just because pat, you know, because there's curse words on the show, i

think it's because the folks on that show, starting with pat, speak authentically and from the heart. >> so in terms of ways to advance the audience, how does espn play into that, and do you have any early indicators of how that partnership is going? >> we are very pleased with it. we launched in mid-november. we just recently launched our 18 state and the tech is very solid. the product road map is very compelling. we chose pen entertainment as our partner because we trust the leadership team. starting with the ceo and then on down. we spent a lot of time in the marketplace speaking with a bunch of different enterprises and we ultimately went with the folks that we felt like were going to deliver. >> but if they couldn't make barstool fans, which are the

most hyper engaged fans on the internet, -- >> we have an advantage in terms of the brand. espn brand is, it's compelling. but it's beyond the brand. it's also the megaphone that we provide. what you are seeing, especially this week as we head into march madness, you are seeing promotion for espn bet across the linear properties, we have a dedicated social media team. they made this a priority and created dedicated panels. it's all going great. it's all far exceeding our expectations. and i think if the pen folks were here, they would say it's exceeding their expectations, too. that said, this is literally the first inning.

and that's an understatement. out of the gate in november, we were very pleased with what we saw for the first few months. >> we just have a minute left so i want to ask you. espn is looking for a strategic partner, potentially to help it usher into the digital age. where do you stand on that search? >> we are in active conversations. we are looking at this through a couple of different lenses and we have talked about this before. you and i have talked about this before but first off, content. we take flagship channels and make them available, direct to consumer, is there a way to augment our content offerings. again, another reason why we looked at the joint venture and took that so seriously. and then lynn's number two, distribution. obviously when we launch flagship direct, we want to make sure we are maximizing the distribution there. >> so am i correct in assuming that a big bet -- tech term may

be a better partner over a league? >> that would be a correct statement in terms how we are thinking about things, yes. >> last but not least, at axios, we like to and things a one fun thing. much of what we're talking about today is around a.i. a.i. is the buzzword for everything. what is espn's plan for implementing a.i.? >> captioning. incredibly important for us to be able to offer captioning for all of our programming. i think last year we had something like 34,000 live events across espn platforms and so we want to be able to offer captioning for the hearing impaired for all those events. so that is one way. another way is text to audio. we, so many of us commute. i spent over two hours in the car when i'm driving to and from bristol, our headquarters, and when we have a lot of longform journalism. for me to tap on listen and get

an audio playback of one of our investigative stories, that's fantastic. the last thing i would say is highlights. we don't know -- we all know that highlights is so important to espn. we have a partnership with a company called wct -- wse sports . >> you jimmy, so much going on in this interview. you have a six year deal, part of it does address the extension in 2026 if that were to happen. in talks about the exclusive nba deal, wnba deal. you're not worried about talent with pat and you say that he brings in younger audiences. 34,000 live events last year. that's pretty outstanding. and then just lastly, you are not giving up on original programming. it's going to be a core part of reducing churn for both the flagship opportunity and the jv. we will see how the regulatory

landscape looks at the jv. jimmy, thank you so much. >> thank you, sarah. appreciate it. >> ♪ ♪ >> please welcome our mo, nicholas johnson. ♪ nicholas: good afternoon please welcome our view from the top moderator, nick johnson. >> it's so great to see you all here. this is our third what's next

summer. it's so exciting to -- so exciting to welcome so many of our readers and subscribers here today we are also super grateful for the partners that helped make it happen. nothing that we do at axios would be possible without our partner some very excited to welcome to our partner for the first view from the top conversation, the kickoff partner today at what's next summit, the cofounder and ceo of zip, larry diamond. welcome back. how are you? welcome. so let's start big picture for lots of folks like me who have like a wallet full of credit cards like that were invented in the 1930s. talk about by now, pay later. >> that's funny. you're talking about the george constanza wallet. how many in the audience have the george wallet? you know, buy now , pay later,

we really see it as the next generation but also neatly, a great one, where frank in the 1950s took a couple of clients out dining and when it came time for the bill, he didn't have his wallet. and most people would just continue life being angrily frustrated but he founded a charge card that lets you pay everything off at the end of next month. i would argue in 74 years we haven't seen much innovation in this space. we've arguably gone backwards, if you look at what's happening in the credit card industry. 50% since the bottom of covid. high interest balance, et cetera. so into buy now, pay later. full retail is in particular that lets you have the direct

relationship with customers. bypassing banks, building loyal customers, and on the consumer side, and allows you to pay back one or two paychecks. it's very simple and easy. it's very -- training wheels for financial literacy. >> you talk before about how the training wheel metaphor is interesting. helping you reach a different universe of consumers, people who are unbanked or financially underserved. talked about how that fits into what your goals are and how you see that as an opportunity? >> i think when you look at the customers, they say up to 50% of americans have now interacted with buy now, pay later products. >> these are people who have not been able to use products. >> these are people who might be emerging credit, could be students. it could also be individuals who might be credit averse. someone actually build that credit profile. and so buy now, pay later is

providing a financially inclusive way to bring people into the industry but it's got really fantastic traits associated with it. this ability to grow over time, show responsible payback. and i like to contract the credit card, which is a fundamentally different structure, where the average balances close to $6000, and i think that could take you 25 years to pay back. it's allowing more people into the community, it's helping them build fantastic traits, and for retail, is really helping them drive the next wave of consumers. >> so tell me where you and zip fit into this? what are you focused on in this area? >> so we are 10 years old. we've been in the states now for about five years. and i think for us, we want to be the trusted financial partner to this next generation. buy now, pay later started in really the gen z and millennial space, which represents 42% of american consumers. it's fanned out and too much more mainstream. we want to be that trusted partner, incredibly customer obsessed. we have every quarter, we will

get a whole range of consumers into the office and around the country. we listen to them, we have the entire company, we hear what's going well, what isn't going well, and we built for them. and we want to become the most customer centric financial services business around. >> is that a bit of a dissolution there? if you could back back to the financially underserved. what is the role or the obligation that financial institutions have in expanding that pool of available credit or access to credit? >> i think what is important for all of us is to never say no to a customer that you don't need to say no to. and we need to go the distance to show that we are trying what we can to understand that consumer. someone could have been divorced many, many years ago, but is in a really strong

financial position. let's look at the cash flow of that particular customer. let's help nurture them and provide the financial literacy that we don't believe has been there since, you know, since opening up bank accounts. and i think the banks in particular obviously, there's so much data that if we just delve into the data and really understand, they can provide wonderful products and services for these customers. >> is the idea of bringing a more technological start up approach to it, which you are talking about, understanding and a more nuanced way all this data that exists so you can reach more customers. >> i think that's why we seen such a proliferation of this. it started online in e- commerce. and it's quite remarkable. that little widget on the product detail page when you are buying a sweater for your dog disrupted online retail. and then disrupted on the channel retail and is now disrupting financial services because banks recognize that this is, so the credit card, the entry product for the customer of tomorrow. being at that check out in the sort of decentralized world of

distributed banking we are meeting the customer where she is, now all the sudden, there's this data that you can actually look at and make a decisive decision. >> the big thing you mentioned before, it's better for both sides of the transaction because both the retailer knows what's happening here instead of, and the customers are here instead of where the pieces of plastic sitting in the middle. >> it's sitting in the george constanza wallet. when i moved to the states and i moved to the office in chelsea, my wife said to me, where is your physical card? because i come from australia where everything is entirely digital. one of our first customers, was going to the checkout in december, and she was looking to purchase a bicycle, her first bicycle for her son and she had three choices. the credit card, which is risen involving, high interest, paying back the average balance

were paying back buy now, pay later over one or two paychecks, pay over the cycle. that flex ability allows her to be in control. we are at the what next summer, so it's appropriate to -- what is next for buy now, pay later? >> for zip, we want to reach out to all customers , understand them. so we are investing a lot in our decision, our understanding. not just in fight go and credit scores, but what's going into transactional data. we can mine the data and understand where the customer is and bring them onto the platform. another big pieces we want to

be that budgeting partner to our customers, and so it's not just, you know, paying one or two months, it's paying over multiple months, as well. and i think the other piece is as payments become invisible, the example we spoke about earlier today is, as parents, and as we tap in by gifts, this is endless amount of money sitting behind this endless amount of -- wallet. to go the distance to put control back in the hands of customers. so how do we do that? how do we build that into the ux of our products and services? even though it's becoming seamless and effortless, >> there's an education behind that. the sexual understanding of what's behind it. >> education, controls, game of find the right behavior. -- before we -- we like to end on one fun thing. i'm asking a fun thing. tell me the craziest, wackiest thing. >> look, we've seen www. -- wwe -- was correlation

between diapers and playstation. okay? diapers and playstation. >> how do these things go together? i don't know. >> this is a young family, young adults growing up. it was really -- >> navigating the video game system and an infant in the house. i sympathize for them. larry, thank you so much. thank you, for making today possible. >> around. the conversations continue. thank you so much. introducingr business reporter hope king. ♪ >> hey. >> introducing axios senior reporter, hope kate.

>> thank you so much for joining us. how many of you use slack? this is an audience participation question, so thank you for participating. i bring it up obviously because our next guest is the ceo of slack and for our very next summer, to talk about the changes that were happening in workplace culture, behavior, amid the pandemic and now there is another set of factors driven by, of course, generative a.i. that's also changing how we work. that's going to be part of the conversation. it's not going to be everything. we have so much more to understand and how we actually build it now on the line. so please join me in welcoming to the stage the ceo of slack, denise dresser.

welcome. >> thank you. >> this is very special for us because this is denise's first live event as a ceo. >> i'm thrilled to be here. >> some various, serious questions. what is your slack profile picture. >> it's very boring. mine is me in a pretty basic picture of me but i really do express myself with emojis. i would say that's where comes alive. >> is a professional photo? >> it's a professional photo. i'm in a white suit. you know. i am recovering from a cold so i'm not -- i'm going to talk as loud as i can. >> you are fine. >> i don't look that much different from how i looked right now. >> mine is a still of a moment when michelle -- i'm a big meme or -- memer in my profile.

>> is probably one of two things. one is let's go. i say let's go and make it happen. and the other one is just kind of silly and it will tell you a lot about me. i like when i see someone's eyes on something that i have sent. i don't see how many peoples raise their hands. >> almost everybody. >> there's something psychological when i see someone's eyes. when i see they are reading it, they are acting it. i use the eyes a lot. >> i'm big on the eyes. last question. -- my.is always great. it's not green, it's just, i keep it that way because i'm always online. why do i need to be green, so how do you feel about that? should i be turning my light on green more often? >> i think it's really personal preference.

i think that it is about how you want to set your own boundaries. i even think about this with my own work, making sure that you give employees the freedom to disconnect as they need to, scheduling sent things later, but if that works for you, that's your preference. that's how i think about it. >> they sound trivial, but they are not. this is the new way that we show up to work. i used to work for a bank, had a cubicle, i decorated it, i wouldn't know who to avoid the water cooler and in the digital world, i feel like this is how we are building culture. how do you think about building products that help companies build culture in the small, digital formats? >> we think digitally about it. and you mentioned stuart coming up. when slack was started, the mission was to make work simple, pleasant, and more productive. that is still part of the ethos today, is work

happens on slack. we are going to talk about this, we talked about this backstage, but what i deeply think about is what is that consumer experience that we all want to have while we are doing the work which, let's face it, it's not that exciting and we need to get it done and we need to let it get done. so we think about it deeply and we think about the little moments, if you are on a canvas and the prompt is there and it says once upon a time. the idea of when someone is writing and telling them the story, you give them a moment to whimsy to actually have culture and have fun in what you are doing. we think about, number one, how to create fun, joy, delight, making things simple and more productive, but on the idea of productivity, it's also about making sure that you give everyone the tools to actually be effective in the platform to reduce the noise and some new enhancements have done that. one, which is my favorite, is anyone using catch up? you have to it's exactly as it

sounds. hopefully you're not on slack in this meeting, but when you leave, you will have missed some things and so the idea of being able to go to your phone, go right to catch up, simple. you swipe right, you swipe left, you move through messages. you created culture of productivity, and a little bit of joy. >> what advice would you give to managers employees -- and employees in a digital only -- if you are fully digital company and especially for workers who, again, for some people who are green light and white light. >> i think it's a bit of everybody evolving in understanding the purpose of what they are doing. work happens, on slack. it really is work. it is messaging, it is collaboration, but there is workflow and there's automation. it becomes a command center and an operating system in my mind. they think message, channel, and all the fun, but there's so much that happens.

what i think about is the right context for the right job. what are you doing? who are you communicating with? thinking with the appropriate behavior is just like you do, and i think using the platform as a way to express your own personality digitally is just another thing. i like to record clips because sometimes i feel like i want someone to get the essence of what -- >> these are short videos. >> yes. you can either write, text, or you can huddle with someone and i think about that and i think sometimes when i'm communicating to a certain person, it's kind of how you tell your conversation to the right person, the right effort, the right kind of modality. slack gives you plenty of ways to do that and show how -- how you show up. >> so slack is the one tool that we use every day. according to the harvard business review, they analyze the average worker in that most of us are switching our office from app to app, website to website, tap to tap, nearly 1200 times a day, and this is a

toggling thing. this is the work of doing work. is the promise of generative a.i. that we will get rid of some of the back-and-forth commutes since we are not commuting to the office? >> is absolutely a huge unlocked but i would even backup from there. this context switching is real. we've never had more messages, more information coming at us at one time but that's also an opportunity. and so when i think about the way that our users use slack, not only is generative a.i. a big unlock, which we are going to talk about in a minute but i also talk about applications. our users are able to do is on

average, they are obscuring 50 or so applications because they are bringing work, the rain coopers, they're bringing salesforce. they're bringing all that work into the platform so that they can improve and do the work right in the flow of work. and so it does reduce that cognitive load and then you think about approvals and automation, the customers are using so many automation. 35% time reduction in doing the work of work when you drive automation. in the platform, but then, as you said, generative a.i. is where i think we are all very excited as people who do work every day. the power of being able to drive productivity around simple things, which we are going to show in a moment, but summarization of threads and channels, searching. those are two areas that really great opportunity to unlock with generative a.i.

in a more trusted way. >> let's talk about that we have a little video we are going to show. we will watch it. well, now watch -- walk it through us now. >> we just set the stage for what we did. slack a.i. is noted native in slack and when you think about it, you turn it on immediately, turning on immediately, no training and you're able to actually, in the flow of work, do things today like search and summarization. is different because you aren't leading 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 near slack profile so you have an immediate impact and it showing you the business outcome. so now, let me show you what that is. so what you are first looking at is you're actually looking at a channel summary project and we just hit this little sparkle button and what it did is actually summarize the last seven days of text and i'm going to do one more time. this is searching. natural language search, right in slack so you can ask a question and get the information right there with reference to where the channel actually happened. i'm actually going to go into that one more time if it can roll. and then maybe we are not. let's see. can we do one more time? it's fast. so it's fast. it's very fast.

and so what you saw was simply in slack if you going to a channel or a thread, you just click on that sparkle button and it summarizes the conversation, the content, and the same thing for threads. it's so intuitive, we've had customers in pilate spot on with tremendous benefit and then beyond that, customers are building their own custom a.i. applications right within slack. 13,000 applications have been built in the last year so i think it represents incredible i mean obvious productivity in my mind. >> i mean a lot of us, are productive enough. i don't know how much more productive we can squeeze out of this. so how much more should we, i mean i just can't think of the marginal, additive benefit of this stuff in context of like how much more we connection get done. >> so here's how i think about it. so i started in a role four-ish months ago. and there was quite a lot to get up to speed on it as we all know. and so for me, it wasn't about how much more, but how much better could i do it. and so i found things like, i used it immediately and i had it in pilate for me but what has been the five your product

strategy? one of the decision that we made or didn't make and why? what is happening with the culture, what are some of the things we are wrestling. it's not that we are doing more, we are doing it in a smarter way, i think in helping people really have context. you mention culture, think about new employees that come to an organization in slack and think about the way they really understand culture and understand how a company works and here's a funny example of maybe doing less of what i could've done more but maybe i need to when i started one of the things i think is very important and certainly part of our eat those at salesforce and slack is storytelling. the best way to talk about what a product can or can't do is by telling a story of somebody else who's had that type of benefit and i was getting, and i'm embarrassed to tell you this but it's a true story of changing the paradigm. i was getting on a call with a customer. it was the ceo of a large hospitality organization and,

truth be told, i was running behind and i had a lot going on and i didn't have any stories top of mind and as i got into the google meet, i would oh my god. how is it possible that i'm showing up and don't have any other stories about hospitality companies. how they are using it, and a very quickly use slack a.i. just to search other customers. other companies in that industry and not only got that, but got the story summarize. often, you can find information but you're really just being brought to new documents and you got to read the document on and on and on before i'm proud yet embarrassed to say, before he got him on the call, i have the stories and i had the information. i had it right there in front of me. what i'm thinking about is different ways in which we work and also working better. now i don't want to do that all the time. >> >> working back to back but your schedule is full. it about some of the customers.

how do companies sign up for this? >> yeah, customers are able to license it. they can certainly license it to the existing license. the added onto slack. and so far, customers have really been loving it. we have a lot of customers that want to try it, as well. so we've had trials of the product, as i mentioned, philanthropic, spotify. they been seeing real benefits and that's our commitment, we want to make sure and that's why we started. we summarization and search which is, those of the main pain points and we want customers to see real value. >> one of the things about a.i. is is expensive and nvidia just announced one of their new chips is 30,000, $40,000. you guys are investigating a.i. how much is that you're going down to the customer. is that going to cause inflation to go back up? >> i'm not an economist i can predict that. i think the feedback for the product has been the real proof in the value. actually taking,

and when you think about slack being a platform for work, now it's in a high-powered platform for work and all of this knowledge, your data, your conversations, your applications, everything that you done can now be taken to the next level with a.i., and that is really a future and so far, for us, the pricing and, you know, the feedback has been really strong and we are frankly just getting started. i only should your couple things. what you doing specifically to upscale your cell phone -- your self on a.i.? >> we are reading, we are listening to customers, we are trying, i think. it's really an interesting static. i think 42% of individual knowledge workers feel that there is promise already and they want to get started with generative a.i. 80% of them feel that there's productivity and i think that comes from trying. it comes from trying it, trying, experimenting and really having an open mind but honestly, there's so much happening every single day and it's hard to keep up with and i honestly think we are still in the early innings, too. i mean i think we are still in the early innings. >> i think i was thinking are there youtube channels that you like to watch. like a.i. plus for example? >> i use i certainly use, for helping and i just read in a

very -- >> so when we talk about the, i guess the future of slack, too, as you say, you're not counting the days, it's like 120 or something. how big has a grown? >> we don't talk about the number of employees now. as were part of salesforce, but we have a significant amount of customers globally and across all industries and most of our employees are now part of salesforce so we don't discuss it. and i also bring upscale. >> it's important that people know -- the way that global workforces are changing and excitement but nervousness and anxiousness that employees have, you recently conducted a survey of 10,000 desk workers and one for now have at least tried a.i. >> yes. >> tell us more about that. >> celerity feel that productivity and it also speaks

to the extent. but you mention, how do you learn and how to get up to speed. i think that really embodies it. the adoption, the acceleration for generative a.i. is really unprecedented and i think that we are learning from our customers as we go and what they want next and continue to evolve but i think it's really, it is incredible what it can do. we are starting in a way that's drastic. this is something in my first 120 days or so. we may not have those exact days, nobody quote me there, but what we heard from executives is this is not a fad. it's clear, it's here, everybody is going in this direction, but what i really like this time around, when i think about a technology evolution is that trust is at

the center of it. how can we do this in a trusted manner and organization and learn from that and be thoughtful. you didn't see this, actually, in the scroll, but we have citations, and everything that you see coming up, and exley tells you where the data came from and you can go back and read that article. so part of our mission is to make sure that we are not doing some sort of magic science. this is truly your data. it secured, it's trusted, and you know where comes from because it needs to deliver outcomes. it certainly needs to be trusted. that's something i -- >> and we have a couple of fun questions. i will choose this one first. people have mixed feelings about the period like when you are texting somebody. what does a period mean to you? is it an angry statement, or is it just a period? >> i use periods to my kids. to show there's good grammar. i don't understand half the words they use to me. >> what's the craziest slack feature you been asked to create? >> oh, gosh. craziest slack feature. i heard a rumor you want an avatar. >> yeah. >> it's not crazy, but i think it's really fun and it's creative. i mean, users just, they really , they don't ask for crazy, i

have to say we have a fan base that absolutely in love with slack. you have to pry it out of their hands. one had a gofundme to actually fund slack and i think there's more passion. i would necessarily -- >> and on that end, i want walk on music. >> have you seen the huddle music? >> oh, yes, actually i have. >> you have your huddle music. just making it fun. >> i love it. denise, thank you so much. >> ws

johnson. >> ♪ ♪ >> welcome back, nicholas johnston. >> hey, it's great to be back here, another huge thanks to our partners who have made today possible and another big things to consolation, who has sponsored this portion of our afternoon. very excited to welcome to the stage constellations -- kathleen. 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 so we should talk to someone about where the hell all this is coming from. so how to navigate like this

explosion in ain they need a strong grid that's both reliable and sustainable. >> yeah, if you think about what's next, this is the what's next of all what's next. the growth in demand that we are going to -- eat heat pumps and the electrification of the economy. and we add to that what we know is coming in terms of growth from the digital economy. we are going to see load growth or customer demand growth in more than we have seen in the last -- is essentially flat as we find ways to use electricity

more efficiently. we have not had an increase in demand in the last 15 years and then we look at the next 15, that's the big question as we are trying to de-carbonized the grid and electrify the economy. how are we going to find new sources of electricity that can power this demand? >> i hope you have an answer. >> well, i think the good news is we have seen across 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, and they need to be where customers need them. we heard jimmy say that in the sports business they need to meet what sports fans when and whenever they wanted. the electricity is the ultimate. it needs to be wherever and whenever they wanted. most of the world doesn't have the benefit of reliability. we need to maintain that as we d carbon ice. -- tell me how that fits in to that kind of discussion. >> there's no question that the inflation reduction act really have jumpstarted -- and that is

absolutely essential for the reasons we just discussed. 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 are going to carbon ice -- de-carbonize the industrial sector. it is sort of a quarter of emissions between agriculture shipping, steelmaking, aviation, all of those sorts of technologies that need a fuel. that's for clean hydrogen comes in. it's an opportunity that was included in the inflation reduction act but we are still sort of waiting for rules to determine how much of the clean hydrogen economy we are going to be able to grow in the u.s. and that is really an important piece of de-carbonize that hasn't happened. >> like the law was great, it jumped over a lot of stuff, but. been there so much about

permitting about these rules that are waiting. so i think echoing that. there's a lot to be desired. can we talk a little bit about nuclear as a power source? is definitely a what's next type of technology. i was that evolving? how does that go into the next mix? >> so consolation's largest producer of clean energy. so the largest company you never heard of. but and we, the big reason for that is we operate 25 nuclear reactors in addition to wind, solar, hydrogen, and other forms of electricity. so maintaining the existing fleet of reactors is sort of the thing that you can do that's most impactful for the economy, given how much of nations clean energy come at the same time, the new reactors that are being offered 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 the gap there is between policies that are looking to bring on offshore wind and other types of role energy and are not supporting the new reactors to the same extent. that is a gap that needs to get address. >> what you think is driving the interest in these new startups? these new designs coming on? how do people view nuclear as a what's next type of technology? >> the thing that's different in the last couple of years is nuclear has sort of become the popular it thing. it's always been, the climate solution that people sort of didn't appreciate, but now people are starting to realize the value of a clean, firm megawatt in this economy, one that is clean and there when customers needed as -- not dependent on wind or the sun or the weather. that is what i think is driving people to become more they were leading -- >> it fits more into what you

said earlier about it being always there. if the lights flicker, people are not always going to be happy. with nuclear, is something that's consistent and can be dialed up and down as needed where it fits into that. what else needs to happen? is that an implementation policy standpoint? is that an investment standpoint? >> i think the policies that are choosing technologies and saying okay, i'm going to procure x amount of offshore wind. instead of procuring x amount of carbon free generation. that's the sort of transition that i think 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

seeks a life extension. the nuclear regulatory 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 up to 80 years. we are constantly putting new equipment into them every year and so they are kind of like new machines, but again, there needs to be a policy incentive for those license extensions to happen. >> so i love doing these events in washington because you assemble people in the room who either know very much about this or think they know a lot about it and either write the policy or think they write the policy. the advice that it sounds like you would give to them is the policy hasn't been updated enough for the upgrading of the old. will be the one take away that you hope that they would hold? >> solve for the outcome, not the preferred technology or company. if you want to reduce carbon, then set goals that incentivize carbon free generation without segregating between different types. >> you think people are getting that message? >> i think, again, going back to the administration and some of the larger tech firms, they have started to put out procurements for hourly carbon free energy. they are saying i want to buy, regardless of where it is, i wanted to be there every hour

and matched up with the consumption that i am actually taking from the grid. those are the kind of -- that will drive clean energy where we need it and thus will keep the viability where it needs to be. >> and with that goal of being zero carbon, let the energy providers what the mix that achieves that. >> do it in the least cost way. >> we are about to get the hook here again. i want to end on one fun thing. this is the leading question. but i can't resist asking. we've been talking about nuclear energy. tell me one, fun, interesting thing you've seen happen with spent nuclear fuel. >> well, so, after i explained to my colleagues what a social media influencer is, introduce the fact that we had a social media influencer, a science tech guy who has millions of subscribers on youtube, come to

us and say i want to come visit one of the dry cask storage canisters at one of our illinois stations and after eight months of him working through the department of energy and ultimately coming to us, he came onto this site, heat taped a 20 minute segment on how safe this spent fuel is, and he wanted to be right up next to one of the canisters so he could kiss it will be look to the canada -- camera. that was a new one for us. we've seen a lot of interest in nuclear power, miss america, lasher, was a nuclear engineering student out of wisconsin, grace, you know, the worlds are colliding here. miss america is a nuclear engineer, is going to come work for us and we are happy to have her. >> so for those of you with kids, keep up with the next hot trend. you heard it here first. kathleen, thanks much for being with us. stick around, we will be right back. >> welcoming back to the e ina

>> welcome back to the stage, ina freed. >> so they can still be hard to access benefits from the government as many of y'all know, many of y'all have tried to access it as a consumer, some of you actually plan this system. our next guest platform aims to combat this issue. many of you may be familiar with this, and is now the head of moms first, which works to advocate for paid leave policies. their new platform, aims to help new parents apply for paid leave to help signify the process. so joining us from new york, please welcome -- so glad you

are here. >> b here. so i want to continue the conversation that we have started today around the idea that we have this bucket of new a.i. technologies and whether they make our lives better or worse, harder or easier, is kind of up to us, but i want to start with a specific project you are doing. paidleave.ai, in some ways, is a natural extension of, you know, you have the marshall plan for moms. really trying to say, there some structural problems and let's work on it. why was that what you started with, and maybe actually before we come before you tell us why, how does it work? >> grade. so i think you go on the website -- so you are introduced to it right here and it's really simple. you get started and you can ask any question. we give you some prompts to right? imagine if you're pregnant and

you can't walk into your employer's office and ask a question about what your benefits are. you are terrified that you will get fired. see you probably enter this experience anxious. so gives you, you know, gives you prompts of things you may want to consider. it's in every single language, which is critical, i live in new york city, we have a -- and incredibly diverse -- am i eligible for paid leave, how much money am i going to get, and it gives you an action plan of what you need to do next. >> you mentioned >> absolutely. and i think it makes them inclusive. people who english is not their first language. >> but i was the, in order to get benefits, you have to follow the rules, dr. nelson was talking about, you can't trust it for election information, hardaway you address this is where you would use a.i.

that is not hallucinating when it comes the information you need. >> the reality is, a.i. is only as good as we are. the thing about we train the a.i. pull that information so it's limited. for the ability to have those is pretty much none. privacy protections there. you can feel secure when you're essentially using it. going back to your question of like why this? i spent my life building 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 that we pass 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 -- with the least amount of labor market participation we don't have the structural supports. so as i said in these conversations on the university board, as well as a very involved in girls who code, so much of the -- the risk. safety concerns, -- how to use a.i. to solve really big problems? and as i sit there and think about how we -- number 13 on the list and number three, uptake of this benefit matters and edit the 10 -- uptick can be as low as 2% of people that are eligible. and so what happens is -- people in congress are like, do i really need to put federal dollars into federal legislation when the states,

people are using it anyway. cur service. right, it's like you want to make it tougher for me to get benefits. well, ai can actually change that. this website, the government sucks at customer service. it's dolike you want to make it tougher for me to get benefits. a.i. can change that and this website, we've done a ton of focus gets with the customers after the use the site, was it easier for you? >> this kind of a double edge handle it if it was high. how the conversations gone when you are dealing with agencies that may not be incentivized to see those uptick numbers go up?>> we are in the process of scaling it. when i called seven months ago

and said i have an idea, they connected me to the team and this is something we've been talking about. what is the interaction with government and you are exactly right. if we do a really good job, you know, it will have a sizable impact on their budget. like uptick is as low as 10% and you use generative ai and it not only happens for paid leave but for medicaid and every single benefit that's out there and it makes it hard for poor people to put money in their pockets that their taxpayer dollars have gone to. you can invite me back in june and we can talk about how easy was it me to get these meetings and how have a handful of

states that we picked to go deeper and to take this on and make generative ai get the services they deserve. but the customer service question is an easy question and something we can spend our time talking about. but i want to talk about some of the lessons in terms of who the ai uses are targeted at. it could be used to cure cancer or to work on drug discovery or to deal with climate things, but i also suspect it will be used by companies that can make more money. how do we make these good uses happen, and what special considerations do we need? some people accessing paid leave and a whole lot accessing s.n.a.p might not have the technical expertise.>> this is

why say we need aspirational ai . you think about -- two examples of this how technology and our interaction with technology when it came out had a huge impact on inequality. the world's first programmer was a woman. and in the 1990s, you had -- you walked into any gaming camp it was half boys and half girls. then it became lucrative to become a computer scientist. and suddenly you saw barbie dolls that said i hate math, let's go shopping. and not only do i not want to be this, i don't want to be friends with him. we turned girls off. and you went from having parity to having nearly 19%.

and a lot of angry men. essentially if you think about -- if we return to the 1990s and instead of in my law school class we didn't ban computers, remember that? or using google at our jobs, instead we thought about how i actually get every single girl, every single immigrant and person of color, i give them access and how to get them to make sure we learn how to code. where would we be today? we are about to make the same exact mistake with ai. by introducing fear by turning girls and people of color off. you see it -- we already have a gender disparity in who is used chatgpt and who is not. because refocusing the conversation on the wrong things. instead of inspiring a generation to come up with 20

different ideas and making sure that every single kid in america has a chatgpt license so they can build and innovate, that's the conversation we should be having. >> i know you try to focus on the positive and closing gaps. how much do you think about the way that these technologies can be used to harm the same groups are trying to serve. for example, you try to help people get paid leave. you mentioned an employee might not want to disclose to their employer that they are pregnant until the right time. ai is a powerful tool to predict user intent. you can say, what city am i most likely to lose workers. that's geographic. it's not where the outcome -- it is bias, but biased against everyone in dallas or wherever they figure out is most likely delete. but it could also point out which groups are most likely to

become pregnant. if there also incorporated, seemed to me to be problematic.>> there are risks and i will understate that, but the reality is is i want to make sure that we don't replicate the past in freezing out voices that we need. and so i think that's the opportunity for us. we've seen this example, think about -- it took so long for lyfts and uber app to say a few faced sexual harassment or discrimination, press this button. if we were sitting around the table when we first created that prototype, that would've been the first thing we would've told them to do.

>> it always seems to matter who's around the table. yes, we have some amazing women who pioneered ai, but many of them have left the big company to criticize the process. do we have enough women and people of color in the rooms -- how do we make it so if we cannot close those gaps immediately, the companies are getting the outside input that would make it obvious?>> we are rolling out numerous amount of programs and we have a commitment to making sure that we have equality equity in terms of who has access to ai and we taught over half 1 billion kids and i'm out there every day talking about access and the importance of equality and who has exposure to this technology and who does not. i want make sure, i would be on

stage talking about risk and safety and privacy, but i want to use -- and there are important people out there doing that, now there needs to be a generation talking about what we can build and how we can solve covid and make sure we ensure equal access to these tools so everyone can build -- so we are able to take this apart and play and to build. that's how we built the ai for tomorrow. >> what would you build if you are not building axios summit? >> we were talking about this today. uk announced an innovation fund on climate. i would like to see our government do more of that to bring this challenge to social entrepreneurs to use government resources to start climate, education.

and we talked about the work being done on closing the disparity gap. i the sun and public school in 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, it can accelerate and diminish those gaps faster. and we need to make sure we experiment with that we are funding people. i have incredible entrepreneurs like a woman working on a company that will close the unpaid labor gap. there are so many problems that are out there that generative ai can fix. >> we have very little time left, but i know you're looking at the positives. what structural things is most in the way of this work. if you could change one structural element to make the

work you're doing easier, what would it be?>> i was fortunate that i had an idea and i was able to email sam altman and he connected me to a development team. there are people out there that have ideas. so making sure there are resources out there whether it's philanthropic or government , that we are putting the emphasis on encouraging social entrepreneurs to think about how they can use generative ai for good and not just to be a bumper sticker or talking point. but we put real dollars and commitment out there. every week i have a group where i meet and these are the questions -- these are the things that we learned. this is what i learned it now. there needs to be more opportunities for social entrepreneurs and more encouragement to use generative ai to do good.

>> thank you so much. we are out of time. before we go, we are coming up to our break. check out the exhibits. have a cup of coffee, but please listen for the five minute warning and i will tell you to come back. please come back and i will be back with homeland security secretary mayo chris after the break.

>> something else i saw firsthand was not a surprise to

me. was the outpouring of love from you. republican and democrat. right after the shooting, we were practicing on the republican side and the democrats were practicing. and my friend and sometimes archrival, unfortunately the start of the game too many times, cedric richmond figure out what hospital i was there and got there and probably the first person on the scene to check on me. so many others, republican and democrat reached out in ways i cannot express the gratitude of how much it means to me and her whole family. it shows the warm side of congress that very few people get to see.