tomorrow. i'm kate snow. i'll see you tomorrow on msnbc. from all of us at nbc news, have a great night. >> we couldn't pay rent.

we called it the air bed amid breakfast. >> his empire is now worth more than most hotel chains. >> he took having very ordinary and saw a different way to do it. >> over 50 million people using it. >> you're living large. ♪ >> harry smith hits the road. >> i want to take you for a ride to a future when you stop driving and let the car drive itself. >> are you ready for a robotic revolution and maybe an accident free future. >> car insurance? >> a third of a what it is. >> lawyers who chase car accidents? >> screw them. >> look who's already behind it. plus, the ultimate guide for grads. >> be kind to others. >> from the kids' table. also -- >> we brought out smiles everywhere we went. an intimate look at muhammad ali, personal images rarely seen. >> it totally shows a different side of ali.

♪ those stories and more on assignment. ♪ good evening and welcome to on assignment. i'm lester holt. more americans are arrested for drug violations each year than any other crime 1.5 million people. tonight a man who thinks all those arrests may be adding to the problem. you'll be surprised at what he does for a living. ♪ you don't think the war on drugs is working? >> it's done. it's over. it's lost. we've done it for 60 years, billions of dollars. the result, heroin is cheaper, more available, more people are addicted and more people are dying. >> those words come not from a defense attorney or social worker, but from a career cop.

leonard is chief of police in massachusetts, a working class port town outside boston. what made him reexamine his department's approach to drugs was a wave of heroin overdoses. >> i had just been called at home about the fourth overdose in the city in the first couple months of 2015. i felt like we were failing. >> in the past when your officers would come across someone who had a small amount of drugs for their personal use, they'd get arrested? >> it's illegal to possess heroin. our historic response was arrest. >> but now the chief started wondering -- and he decided to change the conversation. maybe he thought the answer didn't involve arresting everyone. maybe the answer was changing the way police deal with people who are addicted to heroin. >> you start looking around and realize that the other guy who's supposed to be making up policy for that. so i sat down and started typing on facebook. >> what the chief posted was controversial if not out right

shocking. any addict who walks into the police station with the rema remainder of their drug equipment or drugs and asks for help will not be charged. you take the drugs and needles and dispose of that. >> yes. >> and you don't arrest them? >> no. >> even though they have drugs on them which is illegal? >> correct. desperate times call for desperate measures. >> the chief was not expecting to start any kind of national debait. >> keep in mind possession of heroin is a crime. but instead of incarceration, the chief promised addicts a dose of compassion. immediate and guaranteed admission to a detox facility. >> the policeman would say we don't want to arrest you for the crimes you commit. >> we're saying if you continue to arrest and hold accountable for people whose crimes are due

to addiction but don't treat addiction, we don't get anywhere. >> he consulted doctors and insurance providers. he called the program the angel initiati initiative. he banned his officers from using the term junkie and told them they would now be helping addicts get into treatment. >> he was definitely thinking outside the box. we knew we'd be busy. >> his job description suddenly included an elaborate intake process, requiring him to be as much social worker as police officer. >> it's still a form of community police work. so technically it is my job. >> one of the first heroin addicts to show was 24-year-old nathan. >> if i didn't get help that night, i was going to take my own life. >> he walked into the police headquarters in july 2015. >> any time i've gone into a police station it's been through

the back door in handcuffs. it just wasn't like that. they treated me with respect. >> what they did was find him space in a nearby detox center. they've done the same for more than 400 other addicts in the past year. >> no way to tell how many of those people are going to stay off heroin permanently? >> that's not our responsibility. that's a measure in which treatment providers, insurance companies and the medical community have to step up and start doing their part. >> hi. do you have anything available? >> across the country, addict who is want to get clean often wait days or weeks for room in a treatment center. by the time something opens up, many have started using again. >> it just made you want to give up all over again sometimes. >> this woman is cassandra. at 29 she says she's using heroin every day. >> some comes to us, they sit down, we make the calls until we find a place. >> on facebook, it sounds like a great idea.

in real life, not everyone's liking it. >> i have no doubt that the chief's intentions are good. he's just going about it the wrong way. >> william fitzpatrick is president of the national district attorney's association. >> it's the prosecutor's job to see who's eligible, who really needs treatment and whether or not they shouldn't be prosecuted. it's not a cop's job to determine whether or not someone gets immunity. >> when was the last time you used any opioid? >> today. >> police, he says, should uphold the law and stop there. >> the chief of police is not the head of social services. if someone walks in and says geez i've got a problem with my temper, i can't stop beating my wife. is the chief going to get that person some type of counselling? >> are you going to stop arresting drunk drivers? >> if a drunk driver presents themselves at the police station and asks for help with their drunk driving, absolutely we'll

help them. if we catch them on the road, absolutely not. it's the same with this program. >> for some, that offer of help isn't enough. when we met cassandra she was turning over her needles and heading for detox. >> i don't want to die and be like the last thing that i remember is she was nothing but a junkie. i don't want to be that person. i just want to be sober. >> she did say that, but one day later she was gone. we found her in a parking lot about 45 minutes away and she was using again. >> right now i'm currently high and i haven't like had to work the street yet. but i'm going to have to tonight to have a place to stay. i don't know what else to do. i'm just lost. >> cassandra, i spoke to you earlier. >> now the sergeant is suddenly forced into a new role from cop to sponsor. >> i've been trying to call her

all day long just trying to reach out to her and make sure she's okay. right now she's at serious risk of overdosing. >> a few days later cassandra was arrested for shoplifting and spent a month in jail. mccastro was there in court when a judge agreed to release her if she went straight into long-term treatment. >> what are you going to do? >> i'm going to the police department as soon as i get there they'll put me right into a program. >> once again, the program met its limits with cassandra. >> i started making phone calls to find her a long-term program for her to go to. and she started becoming a little bit impatient. >> right now i'm doing a lot of things behind the scenes. >> i know. >> to protect you and keep you clean. >> i know. >> don't waste my time. >> i'm not wasting your time. >> unfortunately, she ended up leaving while i was making phone calls to try to get her help. i just felt like in court she kind of played us a little bit to get out. i don't think it's a failure of

the program. i think it's her not wanting the help yet. she's not ready. >> we caught up with her again that same day at a train station. >> the addiction is so strong that it just keeps taking over. it always wins. >> a day later police found her in a restaurant bathroom. she had overdosed. they managed to revive her and later arrested her. this time the judge ordered her held in jail until she entered a court setreatment program. >> you need that hammer of possible incarceration hanging over the individual to make them successfully complete their treatment program. >> 400 people have walked through the doors of the police department with no coercion and chose to enter treatment. >> if you lock people up, you

are at least keeping them out of my house. >> for a short amount of time they may be out of your hair. however, if we treat them for the long-term, then they may become your neighbor or your best friend. >> so stories like cassandra's don't make you think twice about this? >> no. >> even though it didn't work? >> if you're going to accept it as a disease, you're going to accept the relapse is part of it. it's not a perfect program. it's treating the underlying cause of the crime. thank you to my fellow chiefs. >> 100 police departments in 23 states have now adopted elements of the angel initiative. about half of them have the no arrest provision. in march, the chief lobbied the massachusetts legislature to make his idea part of state law. >> this bill helps us to use it without fear that we are doing something illegally. >> since the program started, addiction related crimes have decreased by a third. it's too early to determine how many of the people who turned to

the angel initiative are going to beat their heroin addictions. but nathan may be one of them. after detox, police help. ed him relocate to florida, he says he's been clean for ten months. >> i mean, this is paradise to me. just living a normal life. i never imagined that. >> look at you. honest to god, you look great. >> on a recent visit, nathan stopped by police headquarters. >> we were really pulling for you. you were in a really bad place. >> i owe you my life. i do. like i can't say it enough. my son will have a father, my mom will have a son, my sisters will have a brother. >> nathan's salvation and his gratitude completely floored me

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. ready to throw all those rules of the road out the window? driverless cars are the future. we've all heard that. what you may not have heard is how profoundly they'll change our lives on and off the road. here's harry smith. ♪ >> i want to take you for a ride to a future where parking lots get turned into parks, where giant auto companies sell rides, not cars, where traffic accidents almost never happen, where thousands of lives will be saved, where you may not even own a car. this future is a lot closer than you think.

and it will happen when you stop driving and let the car drive itself. this is a bmw with sophisticated driver assistance. a number of cars offer it. >> i'll show you how this works. >> consummate car guy jay leno shows us how his tesla works. >> i'm not touching the brake, i'm not touching the steering wheel. you see it slowing down? it senses the truck in front of me. >> yeah. >> legally you're supposed to have your hands on the wheel. >> right. >> my hand is close to wheel. >> cool, no doubt. but we are living on the eve of disruption. why would general motors invest a half billion dollars in ride service lyft? why is toyota partnering with uber? why is chrysler sending minivans to google? from pittsburgh to palo alto, researchers are racing to a driverless future? nissan thinks its simulations

will soon become the raeealizatn of a new age of automobiles. it's not just cars. mercedes has driverless big riggs in nevada. >> meet sebastian. think of him as the godfather of the driverless car. >> five years ago i would run into automotive executives and they would just smile at me. >> you're the crazy guy? >> now the topic is hot. it took a few years but it's sinking in. >> he runs a worldwide learning company. before that he helped google start its driverless car program. >> i believe that the self-driving car drives better than a human being. >> you believe that now? >> yes. instead of my wife, because she urges me have the car take over when you drive because i don't drive as well as my self-driving car. >> the rush to robotic

automobiles began as a glean in they the eye of the pentagon. darpa challenged tech types to build a working driverless car. >> everybody knew it could not be done. and i couldn't explain to myself why it couldn't be done, so we decided to give it a try. >> he was teaching at stanford's artificial intelligence lab. he became part of a team that built a vehicle that drove itself through more than 100 miles of the mohave desert. it won the challenge. the vehicle, now on display at the smithsonian, always draws a crowd. >> to see a robot my students and i built through this incredible challenge and drive 140 miles through the desert and coming back unscratched, it was a life changing event.

>> what did you believe then that you would not have been able to believe before that? >> i believed it was possible. i saw this moment as a complete redefinition of transportation. i could see all of us driving self-driving cars. >> that yomoment was tied to something that happened to him as a teenager. >> when i was 18 i lost a dear friend in a traffic accident. a split second bad decision killed both of them on board. it made me think about the million people every year that die in traffic accidents. but we take it for granted. we don't even ask as a society as a question is this the right thing for us to happen? >> more people have died in car accidents in the history of the united states than in all the wars going back to the history of the revolution. >> brad temple has worked on

building self-driving cars at google. >> it's like curing polio. it's the biggest reason you'll die between five and 35 is a car crash. >> advocates say autonomous cars will take much of the death out of driving. and it won't look a lot different than the way general motors dreamed it would 60 years ago. ♪ >> this is the life. cool comfortable, mind if i smoke this cigar? >> but now that future once imagined is here. people won't drive and cars won't make mistakes, won't drive drunk, won't text, won't fall asleep. >> some people say the goal is to bring us down to zero fa t t fatalities in cars, which would be an amazing cars. i think it will be negative fatalities because there will be people created in cars. >> in the future, you won't even own a car.

you will order rides from an app on your smart phone. as seen in our animation, a vehicle will arrive from a holding lot and take you to work or to school or to grandma's house. >> we're going to see a shift from selling cars to selling rides, which is what uber does, lyft and taxis do. when you see a shift like that, it could be very bad news for some of the big players of the old world of selling cars. >> the ceo of general motors says the car industry will change more in the next five years than it did in the last 50. could it be that selling rides is a better business than building cars? maybe they'll do both. will there be a day when general motors doesn't make cars anymore? they just service and connect and get people from here to there? >> they're having existential crisis at the car companies about that very question. >> there will be a day as

predicted in the movie irobot where the person who knows how to drive will be the outliar. >> what do you think you're doing? >> i'm driving. >> by hand? >> this mutufuture, this disrup, will it be a harmonic convergence or a cat tas trastr? it depends. you tell me whether or not they're in jep wiopardyjeopardy? body shops. car insurance. >> going to cut to about a third. >> lawyer who is chase car accidents? >> screw them. >> driver's ed teachers? >> might want to look for another job eventually. >> drunks? >> they're going to be able to get wasted and get home safely. they're going to love it. >> just think of it, no more road rage, no more fender benders backing up traffic for miles. robot cars would give us a

substantial part of our lives back, like the 50 billion hours a year we spend behind the wheel be. but beware says amanda of the natural resources defense council, what if we really, really fall in love with driverless cars? >> one of the strange ironies of driverless vehicles is that more people would drive. if they can't move, we haven't really solved any problems. >> think of it as the driverless cars dirty little secret. >> some studies say up to a 200% increase in energy consumption as people move farther from their job, take longer trips and even send everyompty vehicles circling through our urban areas. >> then there's the tricky matter of judgment. can you engineer realtime critical thinking into a machine? >> you could imagine a scenario where the car has to decide in a fraction of a second whether

it's going to impact a pedestrian or bicyclist or whether it's going to stop suddenly in a way that might be damaging to the occupants of the vehicle. how does the car make that decision? >> does the passenger come first or the pedestrian? >> my understanding is that what the google engineers tell you is that they will play out all of these scenarios in advance, sort of preprogram the vehicle to make these decisions. but i think there's still some very important outstanding ethical questions. >> big questions that need big answers. answers being sought by the u.s. secretary of transportation, anthony fox. >> the technology is very close. how close are we to knowing how safe they are? that's the job we hope to begin doing as we issue guidance in the coming weeks moon s and mon >> fox hopes to have the guidelines in place by next month.

from what you've seen and what you're hearing, will they be able to actually perfect the technology enough to put these things on the road? to meet, say, your department's satisfaction? >> i think the day is coming, i really do. >> because in the end of the day, it will be up to you to put a seal of approval on it? >> that's right. >> there's no pressure there. [ laughter ]. >> but there's one more thing. what does jay leno, america's consummate car guy, think of cars that drive themselves? we'll ask, next.

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. one more thing about self-driving cars, despite all their apparent advantages, it's still hard for many of us to fathom letting go of the steering wheel. >> i predict an automobile like this, mustang, like a ferrari, like a lamborghini will become the equivalent of a snowmobile. it's something you use on weekends to have fun. >> jay leno loves cars. he has airplane hangars full of them and hosts jay leno's garage on cnbc. our guess, he'd be no fan of self-driving cars. we were wrong. he's seen how stupid we can be on the road. >> i'm driving once. i look over and this woman has a sweater. she's got it over her head and she's like this. i'm, what are you doing going down the highway?

that person should be in a driverless car. yeah, i don't want her on the road. >> but can we trust cars that drive themselves? >> you get on a plane. there's nobody flying that plane. it's on auto pilot. the pilot is just sitting there. the pilot doesn't do anything. that's a robot. >> the he does get it off the ground. >> and then they lock that door and i have no idea what goes on in there. you're in a flying can with a machine driving you. if you trust it at 30,000 feet, why wouldn't you trust it at three feet? >> if you're still not convin convinced, consider this. >> when we were kids we predicted flying cars, you wouldn't eat a meal, you'd just take a pill. remember all that? nobody ever predicted gps. nobody even thought that was possible. >> human behavior being what it is, maybe machines will be the answer. >> i'm one of those people that believes engineers will save the world. people always fear what's ever new and different.

if you said to someone, a car with no steering wheel, no, i don't want that. suppose the car saw something you didn't see and stopped in time to not hit a kid on a bicycle? yes, i'd like that. >> one less accident, one less fatality. then think of it multiplied by millions. for sebastian, the future can't come soon enough. you told me about your friend who you lost in the car accident and you said i'm going to save a million lives. do you feel like you're fulfilling that dream? >> i think i'm on the way. i think we're making it reality in society. i haven't quite fulfilled it yet because i haven't save add million lives. but i'm confident it's going to happen in the near future. coming up, graduation. one of life's big moments. tonight, some big life advice. >> walking on the beach is not a good idea. >> don't shine a light on your eye. >> from the kids' table. ♪ this isn't just a steak.

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it may improve overall function and cognition. and may slow the worsening of symptoms for a while. vo: namenda xr doesn't change how the disease progresses. it shouldn't be taken by anyone allergic to memantine, or who's had a bad reaction to namenda xr or its ingredients. before starting treatment, tell their doctor if they have, or ever had, a seizure disorder, difficulty passing urine, liver, kidney or bladder problems, and about medications they're taking. certain medications, changes in diet, or medical conditions may affect the amount of namenda xr in the body and may increase side effects. the most common side effects are headache, diarrhea, and dizziness. he's always been my everything. now i am giving back. ask their doctor about once-daily namenda xr and learn about a free trial offer at namendaxr.com. it's commencement season. graduates everywhere are getting lots of lofty advice on life, happiness, success. but the wisest words of all just might come from the kids table.

>> you're about to enter the most uncertain and thrilling period of your lives. >> who do you want to be? >> listen to that voice that tells you what you could do. ♪ >> you can go to places that you like to go. i would like to go to the pizza place. >> when you're trying to find a job, take a job that you want to do and not that other people want you to do. >> if it's like raining, then it's a rainstorm. you have to stay inside. >> after dinner i wanted a piece of candy. and like they wouldn't let me have a piece of candy. >> you have to stick with it. you have to be persistent. >> and i started yelling at them and they should have gave me the piece of candy. >> you should be kind to others. >> do not forget the people who helped you. ♪

>> don't get mad at your husband if you ever marry. >> walking on the beach is not a good idea. crabs might pinch your feet. [ laughter ]. >> you all have to figure out how to balance success, happiness and ambition. >> you shouldn't climb on tables. >> don't jump off a cliff. >> do not take other people's medicines. >> you should never rob, you should never like murder someone. >> when you see things that are broken and you will see things that are broken, go fix them. >> if you accidentally broke something on purpose, you would say sorry. >> don't shine a light on your eye. >> did you try it before? >> yep, i've tried it before. >> congratulations, class of

2016. [ cheers and applause ] ♪ [ laughter ] coming up, you stand back and you go whoa, what did we do? he's the guy who inflated three air mattresses into a $25 billion company. the spare room to riches story behind airbnb. for effortless shiny wow nails! so you can step out with that amopé confidence and shine on! the electronic nail care system from amopé. find it in the footcare aisle. we're in the middle most nights, this is the potty. so we added tide rescue to the wash. it cleans super deep down where detergent just doesn't. daddy, i've got to go potty!

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next, a story of how to become a billionaire. start with three air mattresses, rent out a room in your home and end up with a business bigger than most hotel chains. tonight the man behind it all shares his play book for success. he's also about to share his fortune. ♪ >> this is going to be really cool. >> he's just 34 years old. already a billionaire three times over. >> you want to play guitar? >> he's the ultimate change-chanchange game-changer. but you might not have heard his name. brian chesky is the guy who runs and cofounded the home sharing website airbnb.

>> were you surprised at highow quickly this concept grew? >> yes. i never even heard the word entrepreneur growing up. to me the story of brian chesky is the story of the american dream. >> "new york times" columnist and cnbc anchor says he's a visionary. >> he has revolutionized the hospitality world, tourism, real estate and trust, the way we trust each other. >> airbnb connects strangers, both owners and renters for short-term stays. owners post pictures and descriptions of their properties which could be spare bedrooms or entire homes. one attraction for renters is that the rates are usually lower than hotels. >> we didn't invent the idea of somebody staying in someone else's home. i think we created a simple way with trust to connect people all over the world globally at a

scale that has never been seen before. >> airbnb now has more than 2 million listings in this 191 countries. the company gets a cut of each rental and is worth more than almost every giant hotel chain. warren buffet witshes he came u with the idea. >> brian took something very ordinary, lodging. and he saw a different way to do it. >> brian chesky grew up in a suburb of albany new york, he was a star hockey player and an artist. his parents debra and robert are retired social workers. they're still surprised at the path their son took. >> honestly, this is the last thing we would have thought of. >> he was very much into art and sports at a very young age. got him a drawing board, sketch pads. he just kept drawing and doing all that type of stuff. >> that led him to the rhode

island school of design where chesky showed off a bit of a cheeky streak, dancing to billie jean at graduation. after college he ended up in san francisco, nearly broke when he as his roommate had a eureka moment. >> we couldn't pay rent. we realized we have extra space. why don't we provide a house for designers who didn't have extra beds. it was only a way to host these three people that one weekend. this was a recreation of the original apartment that joe and i started the airbnb in that very first weekend in october of 2007. almost every little piece has been created. >> this was the original crash pad? >> this was the original place. one of the couches in this room was the one that they stayed on. >> so you had couches and an air mattress. >> yes.

>> in many ways that was the bedrock of the whole idea? >> that first weekend -- i did not predict three people living with you, it takes like a year or two-year relationship and it contracts it into a matter of days. >> you're sharing the kitchen, the bathroom. >> by doing that, you get to know somebody really quickly. you become extremely close. we were waving good-bye and immediately thought if people knew or could experience what we just experienced this could be an idea that would spread around the world. >> the roommates quickly realized they'd stumbled on a concept for a whole new business. starting with a simple website, chesky and his roommate and a third partner recruited others to rent their places. week by week, year by year, the listings grew from one city and one country to another. what do you know now that you didn't know when you started? >> i think a lot of people when

you start a company they think it's all about having an idea. when you run a company, you realize you need to have an idea like every hour. >> maybe his best idea was to ask for advice. hi sought out luminaries like mark zuckerberg and warren buffet. >> we talked for hours and hours. i love talking to a guy like brian. i learned something. he's enthusiastic about his business like i'm enthusiastic about mine. >> in the nine years since airbnb started chesky has become a titan in what's called the sharing economy. that includes companies like uber and wework. >> thank you everyone for coming today. >> but chesky and airbnb's success has not been without growing pains. >> i don't want to dissuade you of the view that there are questions about this business model, because there are. the idea that there are homes,

apartments and other pieces of real estate that were never supposed to be rented that now are. how did the neighbors feel about that? that's what we feel. >> it's ri rironic in your homey there was a ballot essentially aimed at placing restrictions. the san francisco measure targeting airbnb was defeated. but criticism continues. this past week, tv ads sponsored by a group of housing advocates and the hotel industry alleged racism in the airbnb booking process. >> i am a black woman. i get declined all the time on airbnb. >> new york city public advocate leticia james is a critic. >> they need to issue a zero tolerance policy for

discrimination. >> airbnb announced on thursday it is undergoing a review to make sure everyone is treated fairly. chesky tweeted that discrimination and racism have no place on airbnb. there have been other complaints about safety, breaking zoning laws and not enough vetting of owners and guest. >> how does the organization make sure that everyone's okay? >> the foundation of this is really having a real identity. one of the core ideas we had is there's no strangers on airbnb, there's no anonymity. we have this program called verified id where we ask you -- and this is continually set for rolling out -- we ask you to put on record a copy of your government id. >> and there are other issues. >> unfortunately airbnb is taking too many affordable housing units off the market. >> it's your contention that some of the places that airbnb has on the market would

otherwise be available for rent? >> it is illegal to rent out an apartment for less than 30 days. but unfortunately a significant number of individuals are using sites as airbnb to rent out their apartments that otherwise could be used for affordable housing in new york city. >> are you undermining the rental market in some of these communities, places where the demand exceeds the supply? >> i mean, i think we have a very primary view, which is that we want to be part of solutions in cities, not part of a problem. so we only want people to share homes they live in. i believe in the city even if there is a kind of rental contraction, if people are renting the homes they live in, then by definition they're not taking homes off the market and in fact helping them stay in their homes. >> the reality, critics say, is that thousands of new york apartments on airbnb are not owner occupied. yet to untold numbers of people making extra money, chesky is a life safer. >> i think he's provided a great

service. >> nebraska homemaker carrie and her husband rent out this spare room above their garage for $75 a night to help pay for their daughter's college tuition. >> it provides extra income that we normally wouldn't have. >> brian chesky's latest market may surprise you. cuba. we met up at an airbnb in havana. >> i've never been to another place like this before. >> reality check time. >> yeah. >> former hockey playing kid, grew up outside albany in cuba. part of a presidential trip touting a multibillion dollar company in a communist country. how does that feel? >> you put it that way. it's very surreal for me to be here. i never imagined growing up ever traveling to cuba, let alone having a platform where we have over 4,000 homes here. so it's just incredibly humbling and gratifying for me. >> amidst the vintage cars and a

skyline essentially unchanged since 1958, chesky is pushing the future fast forward. you do battle in san francisco, your hometown. yet you come here and you're blossoming. >> absolutely. >> this is your fastest growing market. how is that? >> havana is growing faster than new york was at its age one year in. >> in havana chesky and airbnb were held up as shining examples of american sbentrepreneur shipy president obama himself. >> what's the valuation now? >> quite a lot. >> don't be shy. >> 25 billion. >> with a b? >> are you competing with hotels or are there people who would stay in this gorgeous house here and take this trip because they can stay in this house? >> i think that, you know, for us to win, first of all, i don't think anybody has to lose. >> so you can peacefully coexist with hotels? everybody thrives? >> i believe we can.

it's a multitrillion dollar industry. hotels are doing better than ever since we started airbnb. i think they're going to continue to do well. >> but of course airbnb can offer a few settings a hotel chain can't. among unique listings recently, in california a mushroom dome. in paris, a chance to stay in the catacombs. and in amsterdam, an entire grounded klm airliner was for rent. with all of airbnb's success, chesky's personal net worth is estimated at $3.3 billion. just this week he and his cofounders signed up for the giving pledge, once again following the guidance of warren buffet. >> the giving pledge asks people to pledge morally not legally very wealthy people will give away at least half of their money if not in their lifetime

then at death. what they can do can be huge. >> for now at least chesky is one of the richest young people on the planet. he and his girlfriend travel the world together. so i had to ask -- when you travel do you stay with an airbnb host? >> of course. i just came back from tokyo. we did a week vacation. >> do they know who you are? >> i try not to tell them who i am because i want to see the experience that other guests are getting. i don't want to get a special experience. sometimes they figure it out. >> coming up, a fighter and a father. >> i said, hey champ, can i get a picture of you with laila? >> remembering muhammad ali. rn h back:

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. ♪ finally tonight, an intimate look at muhammad ali. michael gaffeney was ali's personal photographer in the '70s. now he shares some rarely seen images with us. ♪ >> he was the most known and popular person in the world at the time that i was a photographer for him. people related to him. they loved to see him. he brought out smiles everywhere we went. when he fought, he lost the fight. he was resolute in regaining the championship. that is probably one of the most significant pictures i took of him, because that shows the true spirit of a champion. i said, hey champ, can i get a picture of you with laila? and he said sure. and so he knelt down on the

floor and was just -- just -- just holding her. and to me, it's one of my favorite photographs because it totally shows a different side of ali, a father. ♪ he was a relentless warrior in the ring. he was never knocked out. he was knocked down. but he also showed a great will to survive fights and get up. he said, a champion has to have the skill and the will. but the will must be stronger than the skill. and that was something that he carried through his whole life. ♪ >> we'll have more coverage of muhammad ali tomorrow on today, including a live interview with

his daughter laila. and i'll see you tomorrow on nbc nightly news. i'm lester holt. thanks for joining us. ♪ - to be the best is to compete against the best. - it's so much more than physical. it's mental, and it's in your heart. - ♪ hope when the crowd screams out ♪ ♪ they're screaming your name - "american ninja warrior" means challenging what's impossible. - i've lived my whole entire life proving people wrong, and i'm not about to stop now. - ♪ hope when your moment comes ♪ ♪ you'll say ♪ i ♪ i did it all ♪ i ♪ i did it all