i need this job.

>> you can think of the executive order into parts brick it directs the federal government itself to figure out how to deploy ai and all of the agencies. creates new executive positions to manage the adoption of ai and for the largest models it also spreads into the private sector. there is a new term called eight dual use foundation model which is sufficiently large and took a long time to train. those models, the prototype for writing regulations to govern

who can use those models and what they can be used for. >> what with the threat of those be? why would we need to regulate them? >> the executive order itself proposes some threats like they could be used for almost wartime actions, biological weapons, teaching people how to build nuclear bombs and then there is more everyday type problems like canon to impersonate somebody's identity? what have side effects or dangerous impacts that affect specific communities. it's actually quite vague and because we are so new in the space of these large models, i don't think we clearly identified what the threat space actually is. the debate between whether the president should have an executive order or congress should take action, it's a very, debate in washington over a number of other things. this is something congress ought to be addressing and they are not..

>> i think it's early for congress to address something because no one knows what loss to write. this is a good prototype because what it proposes is depending on the topic, 90 to 270 days of investing tatian to figure out what regulations could be written and furthermore what laws congress could be recommended to write. >> there is the counterargument that we do not want to be late to regulation. we saw this hands-off attitude 20 years ago was social media in the development of that pick the obama administration saying let's let twitter and facebook grow and we will see what becomes of it. it was very hands off and we were punished in the end. >> that is certainly true but in some ways, we are very lucky that the government took off a hands off approach to the internet itself, imagine the government had said at&t, you are the gatekeepers for what

applications should on the new technology and although we did get facebook, we got a lot of things we like and it's really changed how we approach commerce and how we communicate with each other and a lot of positive ways. all of the innovation was created by new companies that no one thought would exist at the time. >> nobody knew how to regulate because the whole concept was brand-new. i would add to that, if we had regulated the heck out of some of these early companies, we would be thanking canada for the internet. they would have developed it. >> perhaps or we'd be in the position of europe today where there would be no large tech companies or innovation. >> that is true. should the average person care about ai regulation or the lack there of at this point? the average person is not using chat gpt and they might not even know what it is. >> the average person is

probably already interacting with ai today. the biggest area of expansion has been customer service and document processing. almost everyone who has used any app has probably already interacted with ai. it is something where there is a change happening today and we are not going to feel the effect for several years. that effect will be largely invisible. companies that were never created in the first place because they were afraid of the regulatory environment. >> fair enough. we look forward to talking to you in the future about your self driving car technology. i appreciate you coming on and talking about ai in the executive summary of the executive order. john hayes is the founder and ceo of goes to to me. you for being with us here on press:here. we will be right back.

welcome back to press:here . the folks at january ventures ta to 43founders recently about their feelings, feelings about the runway, how long they can make their current funding last, feelings about the ability to raise more money and the ability to hire talent among other things. is a founder and managing partner at january. you do this study once a year, what has changed over the five years on the macro level? what is different? >> as you mentioned, we've done

the survey every year for the past five years. we do it to understand what is happening at the earliest stage with company building, capital formation, overall sentiment, one of our core values at january ventures is to bring transparency and access to venture capital. this study is all about bringing data and transparency to the experience at the earliest stage. we've now done this over five years so we have a longitudinal look at what is going on in the market. one of the most salient things that stood out is that founder sentiment overall is up year over year and it suggests that we might hit rock bottom for that receipt stage and we are seeing optimism in the market about the ability to raise capital and we are also seeing that in our fund, january ventures. q3 was one of our most active quarters and in the past few months we've made five new

investments. the data backs up what we are seeing in the market. we can get into the next ta point which is the divide between male and female founders has never been bigger. men are 50% more likely to feel optimistic about raising capital, female founder sentiment is at a five-year low and women are more likely than ever to like their gender is holding them back. >> only are talking about founders and startups we are talking early seed level, companies that could be one or two people total? >> that is exactly right. we found it january because our experiences made us realize just how narrow the networks in venture capital r. if you have a certain pedigree, background identity, it's much easier to raise capital particularly at the early stage. when you are 1 to 2 people and you have an idea and you

probably don't have revenue and might not have a product. we as a fund focus on this massive opportunity to bring an institutional approach to that earliest checks we back the most ambitious founders regardless of their pedigree or network at the earliest stage. there is a lot of risk in doing that and as we think of who supports founders at the earliest stage, it's funds like ours but also a lot of angels and friends and family in places where it's important to have a network to raise your first dollars. >> he mentioned a majority of founders you talk to rob to mystic but the runways are short. they may find future funding but in this economic situation we are in, the data shows we are doing fine but it's a weird part of venture and tech lately but the runway is short and they will be needing future funding. >> one of the stats that really stood out from last year's survey is that 81% of startups

had less than a year of runway something like a doomsday stat. what we found was this year 85% have less than 12 months of runway but what is different this year is early-stage startups, have actually taken a lot of steps to cucosts and extend runways which is in contrast to last year. what we have seen is even though runways are short, founders have taken steps including hiring less, cutting on software spend especially on go to market software to expend or extend the runway. the reality is early-stage startups have short runways. they do not have a lot of levers to pull. they may not have revenue and they have small teams and cost basis. the runways are short but early- stage founders are taking this moment seriously and battening down the hatches to make sure that where they can they can

extend runway. >> i cannot really say were in a financial crisis but during the most recent crisis we saw a lot of layoffs and we are seeing some now. we got a lot of founders out of the layoffs. people who always wanted to start their own company and then did. you're not seeing that quite as much recently. >> we were surprised by the stats. we found only 4% of the respondents said a laugh contributed to them bounding a company. as we think about this, it might be too early to see the impact of layoffs. what we saw in the last 12 to 18 months is there were generous severance packages and people might be taking their time to figure out what is next. we might see a wave of founders come out of that but i also think a lot of people are risk- averse right now. the macro economic environment is not causing a lot of people to go out and take more risk. also, the profile of someone who is a tech operator can be

quite different than somebody who is a great founder. it remains to be seen how much of a bump we will get from the layoffs so far were not seeing it. >> he mentioned the difference between men and women feeling confident. not necessarily do they get funding but do they feel confident about getting the funding. i thought that would've at least changed for the positive to some degree and you are trying to make that change? >> this was a sobering data point. it is when we feel that's really important to put forward because in the wake of the me too movement and george floyd, there was a lot of talk in venture capital about getting more dollars to female founders and founders of color. there was a lot of talk but a lot of it was pretty superficial. we've seen women still receive just 2% of venture capital

dollars. the funding to black founders found that it fell 45% year- over-year. there is still a lot of work to be done. for our fund we see a lot of opportunity to lean in and invest in these founders. part of what we are hoping this survey will do is start as a conversation starter for the industry. while the data is sobering we would like to turn around and think about the solutions to support early- stage founders and remove action as they build. some things that come out of th, is paly what we heard from founders, we need better on-ramps to venture networks, we cannot just rely on the warm intro and that's a big piece of what we do at january. we need greater transparency to demystify the ventures, what capital formation looks like but also transparency between the vc and the founders of where they are in the process.

i think the last thing is building community. in january we provide three types of capital, financial capital, social capital and emotional capital. financial capital is a commodity and what we provide in any venture fund provides. what we see in the sentiment piece is there is really a need for community between founders, a community that recognizes the advantages and strengths of founders with a diverse background and experience. >> i'm glad we got the conversation started here. jen is the founder and managing partner at january. i appreciate you being here. they are out at their fifth annual early-stage sentiment report. thank you. press:here will be back in just a minute.

welcome back. ceo of roblox told his employees they had a choice.

they can come back to the office or accept a severance package. i know dave, he's been on the program and he's a nice guy. he was asking them to come back five days a week, just three and he's given them three months to decide but he told his workers, while am confident we will get to the point where virtual workspaces are as engaging collaborative and productive as physical spaces, we are not there yet. they need to come back to collaborate. we have a consultant that helps companies attract talent and he disagrees with dave's ultimatum. i think there are probably more of these ultimatums ahead ceos to their workers. >> i think you are right. this is just another in a wave of ultimatums that have been happening for the last two years. i think they've largely been without teeth or effective as office occupancy measured by card swipes has remained at

about 50% the last two years and it seems to be holding steady. it will be a very interesting to see if dave's mandate rings people back to the office. my point of view on this is if your goal is to foster an environment of creativity and collaboration to drive innovation, a heavy-handed mandate where your livelihood is at jeopardy, back to the office or it's your job is not really the best way to stoke the innovative fires. >> we saw this, the thing that will be taught in business courses years to come is grinder, the dating app, it has an office and software developers and the ceo said come back or else and remind us what happened there. >> in that case within two weeks they lost 50% of the entire company gave notice and many of those that gave notice were critical members of the engineering and product veltman team and as a result they

encountered service disruption issues so it affect the customers and business quite profoundly. they have circled the wagons since then so it's tough to say what the effect has been long- term but they imagine they are trying to figure out what their next move is going to be. >> the other way to do it, they tried to seduce everyone back to the office and built a bar, they tried to go the other way. >> they did. the number i saw invested was north of $200 million in real estate trying to reimagine the office to bring people back. i think that was a bit misguided and it failed to recognize the real concerns and perspectives and needs of employees and why they don't want to come back to the traditional 9-to-5 construct. waving shiny things at them like we saw in the tech boom of 2000s, free mills and beanbags

and a bar seeking come have a craft cocktail, while you collaborate with your teammates does not address the real needs of these people. the pandemic served as an inflection point and people realized people had an unsustainable relationship with work. two and three hour commutes and in silicon valley it's not 9-to- 5, it's 8-9. we sell rising levels of burnout, mental health issues and growing attrition. it wasn't until the pandemic and we settled into the new normal that we realized why are we doing this? we spent 20 years developing zoom and slack cloud computing, we can do most if not all of our work as knowledge workers from home so why are we making these sacrifices to our personal health, family time when we can take this commute hours back in particular and reapply those two other things.

also be just as productive at home and happier and more engaged. i continue to be confounded by the argument from ceos that work from home is not as productive. >> depends on the industry. we in the television news industry had to work from home like everyone else and to this day i'm astounded we got a newscast on the air with everybody sitting in their children's bedrooms. when we came back to the office which we are back in the office , generally speaking it's easier . in a newsroom environment, you are yelling over the cubicle to communicate walking over to cbs's desk to make sure the messages give back and forth. i think in high-tech, the loan engineer working on a project, there's no reason she should not be at home. >> that's right.

>> caveat everything i said is very much focused on knowledge and tech workers. obviously if you're an emergency room nurse or a chef or a bartender, you enter that profession fully embracing the idea you would have a workplace essential to the delivery of your labor. in recent years, we've seen a move from cubicles which i detested when i first came out of school. for a period of time we moved away from cubicles to open spaces filled with desks and while it looked really cool in a photo, in practice it's highly a productive and incredibly distracting. it does not encourage collaboration. everybody has noise canceling headphones on. the conference rooms are packed with individuals, not people collaborating, people hiding from the noise to get work done. if 90% of your work is sitting

at a desk and writing code or product requirements are marking documents, it is not really make sense that you would face a commute, come in and sit in a noisy environment that is suboptimal to your productivity. >> the pandemic did change the workplace, you are clearly right. changed it in the same sense that it is not going to go back to how it was. your job is to give advice to leaders, what is your advice to leaders? >> if you look at the numbers, it's only 10 to 13% of people that do not want to return to the office. they want to work fully remotely. a large percentage would like to work in a hybrid fashion but the pandemic served as a moment for us to rethink the 9:00 to 5:00 construct that is an artifact of the industrial revolution. i think we learned in the pandemic that we need to rethink what we are using our time in

the office for to be purposeful and optimize around collaboration so they really ought to engage with their employees and figure out what their needs and concerns are. we put our time and office together it should be planned around large meetings requiring a lot of participation, many to many collaboration. learning and training, mentor ship and career development thinks. come to the office for specific things that require in-person collaboration to really work for everything else, work from wherever you want as long as you are getting your job done. let's reimagine the workplace and design it for collaboration and group activities and let's enable flexibility for our employees to work where they are most productive and when we are designing the new workplace and policies, let's engage our

employees. i think one of the reasons why there has been such a stalemate between employees and ceos return to office is there heavy- handed thoughtless mandates. you are coming back 9-to-5 or else on the states. why don't you do a survey to find out why is there such resistance? people are getting an extra hour with their kid in the morning because they don't have to do that commute anymore. maybe we are just those hours so we can come in at 10:00 and maybe we leave at 4:00 so we can be at home when the kids get home. the other thing, ceos in silicon valley on average make about 300 times the average employee, that the 300% is 300 times, it is a remarkable disparity in wealth and lifestyle so it might be easy for the ceos to forget what it's like to be a two child family and a spouse you're supporting in the bay area on a 150 k versus a team of nannies and private schools and all the

things that come with that. no criticism, you made it got you've got a huge responsibility running a big public tech company and you should be rewarded let's not lose our empathy and forget with the day-to-day is like for our employees and try to design for that. >> wise words. thank you. henry is the president of essential dx, thank you for joining us this morning. press:here will be right back.

that is our show for this week, thanks to my guess and think were making as part of your sunday morning.

"comunidad del valle." i'm damian trujillo. we're back and we're with you until the end of the year here on nbc bay area your "comunidad del valle." well, we have another exciting show. we're honoring native-american heritage month with some danza azteca at the end of the show, but we also--there is an urgent call for more latino doctors. that's today on your "comunidad del valle."