Latest / The David Rubenstein Show / Ruth Porat

Transcript

Ruth Porat · The David Rubenstein Show

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: In recent years, one of the most powerful people in
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: the financial and technology worlds has been Ruth Parratt. She
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: served as chief financial officer for Morgan Stanley and then
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: the chief financial officer for Google and Alphabet. She now
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: serves as president and Chief Investment Officer for Alphabet. I
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: sat down with her recently in Davos to talk about
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: what she's going to do in her new position and
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: how she's going to invest more than one hundred billion
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: dollars that Alphabet now has. So we're very pleased to
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: have Ruth Parratt here. Ruth, as you may know, has
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: recently been promoted. She for almost the last decade has
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: been the CFO of Google and Alphabet, and now she
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: still has that title, but she's now also the president
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: and chief Investment officer for Alphabet.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Is that right?
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: I am, And it's great to be here with you.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: So you have three jobs, CFO, President, you get three
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: salaries for that.
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: I think I'm doing okay, okay, So.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Everybody wants to talk to you here because you've got
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: a lot of money. You've got over one hundred million
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: dollars of cash to invest, so people want to see you.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Why do you come to Davos because people are just
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: going to be bombarding you give me money for this
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: or that. Is it really worth the effort to slept
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: all the way here or are you happy to come
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: here and you actually meet people you actually want to see?
• 1:22
  Speaker 4: Well, I've actually been coming here since I ran tech
• 1:24
  Speaker 4: banking at Morgan Stanley back in the nineties and was
• 1:27
  Speaker 4: hunting for fees, and so I think it's sort.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: Of become one stop shopping. You make the trip and.
• 1:32
  Speaker 4: Then you get to see people from Asia and Africa,
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: Middle East, Europe, so it's just that one stop shop.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about your background now that you mentioned it.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Where did you grow up?
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: I grew up. I was born in England, mostly grew.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Up in California, California. Your father was a professor at
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Stanford or something like that.
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: My father actually was a Holocaust refugee.
• 1:52
  Speaker 4: So my father escaped from Vienna right after Krystal Knock
• 1:57
  Speaker 4: and made it to Palestine high school education.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: He ended up in enrolling in the.
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: British Army, fought in the Balla Bella Laman and in
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: the army taught himself physics because he figured if he
• 2:08
  Speaker 4: survived he needed something that somebody valued after the war
• 2:13
  Speaker 4: that actually that work, that plan worked. He ended up
• 2:16
  Speaker 4: getting to England, where I was born, and then eventually
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: got to the United States, who was sponsored by Senator Kennedy.
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: So he spent his whole career at Harvard and then
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: at Stamford. So I mostly grew up in.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: California, California, Okay, So you're in Stanford for a nice area,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Silicon Valley. Why would you want to go to a
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: business school at Wharton? Why did you go across the
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: country to go to business school? And why did you
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: want to go to business school to begin with? Why
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: not be a physicist like your father?
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: Well?
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: I loved Wharton, so I'm not going to give you that.
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: You know, I thought I was going to end up
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: being First of all, I I got married. My husband
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: was a lawyer on Wall Street, so I was commuting.
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: But I thought that I would go into investment. I
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: thought I'd go into consulting, and then I took this
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: amazing merger's accounting class, kind of geeky, and decided I
• 3:00
  Speaker 4: was going to go into mergers and acquisitions.
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: So ended up on the East Coast.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: So she ultimately became the CFO of Morgan Stanley. Okay,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: and many people thought you might go in the government someday,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: and you actually could have been the CEO of Morgan Stanley.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Why would you leave the important world of finance for
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: something less significant like technology?
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Why would you do that?
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: You know, kind of right time, right place, Like when
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: I was the CFO of Morgan Stanley. I started in
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: that position January first, twenty ten, when James Gorman took
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: over as CEO, and I think he's an all star CEO,
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: absolutely amazing, great partner. And when we started, it was
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: twenty ten, so after the financial crisis, but Morgan Stanley
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: was still very challenged. You know, Moody's was going to
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: downgrade the bank at one point. It was it was
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: kind of shaky.
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: And I think that he and.
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: We, together the team, led this extraordinary kind of recovery
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: and it got to the point in twenty fifteen where
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: I was ready for the next chapter, and then I
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: got this call.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: Right of Google. It seemed okay, so all right, wade that.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Move before we get the good Well, you were at
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Morgan's Stanley when the great meltdown, the Great Financial Crisis
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: of seven o eight occurred, and it is said that
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: people thought that Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs and everybody
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: else was going to go under. Were you living through
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: that and did you actually think Morgan Stanley was going
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  Speaker 1: to make it at that time?
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  Speaker 3: There were days I did not. It was bad.
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: So I was running financial institutions banking at the time,
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: and probably the most meaningful part of my career was
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: when Hank Paulson called and said, I need advice. I
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: need some bankers here, and so I went and led
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: a team that worked on Fanny Freddy and then AIG
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: and those were very, very challenging days.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: And coming out of it at the we.
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: Did Fanny Freddy and then we did AIG, put them
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: into conservatorship, and I had some Morgan Stanley. John mackwa
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: CEO at the time, and he said, okay, you're in
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: charge of liquidity, figure out liquidity. And of course days
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: before what very much was running out of liquidity, there
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: was no way to get liquidity. In fact, one day
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: we were trying to figure out what to do when
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: I was on the trading floor and I'm like, can
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: we maybe sell the chairs?
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: There were Herman Miller chairs.
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: I thought that might be a solution that was supposed
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: to be funny, but it was actually.
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: Really scary at the time, and so no, it was hard.
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: But we did this whole series of different teams and
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: it worked. You know, MUFG came in, they were an
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: incredible partner. The government came in, we became a Fed
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: regulated bank. But there were some very scary times and
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: a lot of important lessons.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: Okay, so you got that deal done.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Then presumably some headhunter called you up and said you
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: should be the CFO of Google And did you how
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: did you tell John Mack or James Gorman you were
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: going to leave to be the CFO of a tech company?
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: Was that easy to do?
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: So twenty fifteen, Morgan Stanley was in a really good spot.
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: I happened to be with Bill Campbell, an and iconic
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: leader in Silicon Valley. He's been written about as the
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: trillion dollar coach. He coached Steve Jobs, Larry Sergei, Sundar Eric.
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: So it's a privileged with them.
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: And at the time I said, you know, I'm ready
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: for the next chapter, but the one thing I'm not
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: going to do is be CFO again. We spent two
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: hours in his living room and at the end, he said, okay,
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: I heard you clearly not CFO, And I said exactly,
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: and he said, okay.
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: So the best I've got the best idea for CFO of.
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: Google, And of course I immediately said, well, I hadn't
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: thought of that one.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: That one is interesting.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: But did you tell him this would mean you wouldn't
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: be able to work with private equity people as closely
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: as you had been.
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: You know, somewhat. Times hardship in life is worthwhile.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: So what's it like moving from the East Coast, where
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: everything is finance and money, to the West Coast, where
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: everything is technology.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: Did you fit in right away?
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: And did you really know how to use all the
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: computer things that they give you to use?
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  Speaker 3: So it was it was It was pretty fun.
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  Speaker 4: There were plenty of times where I would sit around
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: in meetings and literally I would be googling terms, And
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  Speaker 4: at one meeting, Larry Page actually caught me googling terms
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: and he kind of pointed that out to other people
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: in the room, which was a little embarrassing. But I
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: figured there were some things that I could do that
• 7:06
  Speaker 4: they can do, and so it was a learning curve
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: and my dad always he taught me at a young age,
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: a term that I've used constantly with my teams. He
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: said in his lab at Stanford, if a physicist could
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: not define a quark in under thirty seconds, they didn't
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: know what they were talking about, And so I used
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: the quark test all the time. If somebody's rambling on
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: and on and they can't get to the point, they
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: probably don't know what they're talking about. They failed the
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: quart test. My finance team knows this core test, and
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: at Google I'm working with amazing computer scientists, so they
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: never fail the cork test. They can explain things really clearly,
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: which shoots you up the learning curve.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: But did you understand what they were talking about from
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: the beginning, or did you have a special tutor that's
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: taking technology for deedails I had.
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: Actually run tech Banking into Google Public, so I had
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: a little sneak preview.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: So today for people who are not experts on Google
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: and Google Search, Larry Page really developed the page system
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: I guess was called, and it was unique. But when
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: he came to get the initial money in Silicon Valley,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: people said, well, there's plenty of search engines out here.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: They're like twelve or thirteen search engine companies, and so
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: people didn't think it was anything so unique.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: What turned out to be.
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  Speaker 1: So unique about the page system that it made Google
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: such a powerful company.
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  Speaker 4: I actually remember those days because I was one of
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: the people who said, why do we need It was
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: actually the eighth search engine? Why do you need the
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: eight search engine? And I was at Morgan Stanley at
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: the time nineteen ninety eight running banking, and our research analyst,
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: Mary Meeker and iconic analyst, pulled her team together and said,
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: you know what, Let's do a test. Let's look at
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: all the search engines. Let's do queries and see speed
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: and relevance of response. And I think she may have
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: started with that eight search engine question as well, but
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: it quickly rose to the top.
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  Speaker 3: And that has been the ethos all along.
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: We still to this day have more than one hundred
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: product innovations every quarter. The whole idea is continue challenging
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: ourselves about how to make the product better, more relevant, faster.
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: And what's extraordinary sitting where we are today is how
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: searches evolve. So back then it was ten blue links.
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  Speaker 4: Whoever's old enough in this room to remember ten blue links,
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: That's what it was.
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: And then it went to.
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: Image search, voice search, and now multimodal search. If I
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: want your tie, I can take a picture of your tie,
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: and then I can just I can lens it, and
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: I can find a place to buy your tie. So
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: this whole evolution of search just keeps extending the runway
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: for a search.
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: So it's very different obviously today than it was.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: I suppose I do a Google search on something. Maybe
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: I shouldn't be doing a Google search on or.
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: Something not that you ever do.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't do that, but I just theoretically can somebody
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: from Google, an officer like you look up what I've searched.
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: No, you cannot, absolutely, yeah, protected right or protected.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: Even if the government comes along.
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: We do not look at what you search. Can go
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: into incognitumo, but we do not look at what you search.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: So the company a long time was spelled was called Google,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: and Google used to be spelled differently. Why did they
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: spell Google that way as opposed their way it was
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: originally spelled, which was e L. Did they not know
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: that was spelled differently?
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: Well, there are a couple of stories around this.
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: So one of the stories that I think is true
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: and fun is that one of the early venture checks
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: actually wrote it that way, so they went with it.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, so why did Google is the brand name that's
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: working very well, companies making a lot of money and
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: so forth, But why did you need to go to alphabet?
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: And who came up with that name?
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: So Larry and Sergei had a vision about kind of
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: the next iteration, and there were a lot of different
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: things that they were investing in, the whole spirit of
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: which is you want to make sure you're investing for
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: long term, investing for the future. And in the earliest days,
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: what they did is they created something called X. It
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: was the moonshot factory within Google Google X, and it
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: gave birth to things like Gmail, I mean made it
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: was really relevant for all of the type of innovation
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: that came out of Google. And by twenty fifteen, their
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: view was, we want to be able to avoid distraction
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: on Google. Let Google do what it's going to do
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: and create another set of businesses that the founders could
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: focus on and really nurture growth outside of it. And
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: so the word is you would know better than anyone
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: is alphabets, and so you put the two together, and
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: that was the goal.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: So it used to be.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: When Google was started, you had what was called twenty
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: percent time, So for twenty percent of your time, you
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: could do.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: Whatever you wanted.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Theoretically it might be helpful at a company, but it
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: wasn't supposed to be necessarily, so you still have twenty
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: percent time or they go away.
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: Well, it was actually a little more structured than that.
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: The goal was if you had some great engineering idea
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: and you wanted to launch a new product, you could
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: do it in one of two ways.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: You could leave or you could be told.
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: You know what, in twenty percent of your time, why
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: don't you go experiment with this and see if.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: You can grow it.
• 11:54
  Speaker 4: So rather than having great ideas constantly leaving, the view
• 11:58
  Speaker 4: as let's nurture the talent, let's give people these growth opportunities,
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: let's give it a go. And so that's what the
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: twenty percent time was.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: Any twenty percent time product ever get to the market.
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: Well, a Gmail is not an inconsequential billions of users.
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: Google Brain came out of that. It's our core part
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: of our AI business, and then we've continued to evolve it,
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: so it moved over to become ax.
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: Weymo came out of it.
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: So there's quite quite a bit and quite a bit
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: of features and applications.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: Think of waymo. Are we going to have driverless cars
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: in our lifetime?
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: Well, I welcome everybody to come to San Francisco because
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: you can actually hail a way Moo in San Francisco,
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: hop in it and get where you want to go.
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: And it's pretty remarkable.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: Have you done that?
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: Absolutely brilliant safe.
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: It's so safe that the most fascinating part is within
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: about fifteen seconds people are bored because it's so safe there,
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: like they.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Realize, you know, we don't need a helmet or in
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: the nuget's safe?
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: Do you need a helmet with many drivers on the road.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: So for a young woman that's watching this or a
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: young man, and what are the recommendations you'd have to
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: get ahead? And the finance world technology we're is it
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: be smarter than other people, be nicer than the other people,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: be harder working.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: What is it that takes to be successful?
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: Well, there's no substitute for hard work, because the hard
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: work actually gets you smarter enough the learning curve faster.
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: So most certainly that's one of them. I think the
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: other I've already said chart your career work for somebody
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: who's going to take a risk on you and give
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: you runway. But very importantly, we need to do that
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: for someone. So at one point, when I was asked
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: to run technology equity capital markets on the equity trading floor,
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: a senior partner called me into his office and he said,
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: I will be your I will be your air cover.
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: All the guys that were going to sell you use
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: these military terms. There a lot of military guys, but
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: it was a good one. I will be your air cover.
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: I think you will soar, but if you stumble, I'm
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: here to be your air cover. I think everyone needs
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: air cover, and I think we all need to.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: Be air cover.
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: And the other is keep learning and keep growing. And
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: when you're plateauing, my line was what's my highest and
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: best use and don't do it on a specific timeline,
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: but keep evolving and if you go to the right people,
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: they'll keep opening doors and take those doors.
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: And then finally, use your voice.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: You have a challenge that many people would like to
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: have but they don't have, which is you've got over
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: one hundred billion dollars of cash, and so are you
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: going to invest that in private equity firms, or are
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: you going to do new technology? What are you going
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: to do with one hundred billion dollars more than one
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: hundred billion dollars of cash? And you know, have you
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: thought about that? You have people coming up to you
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: all the time with great ideas for that cash.
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: We do as you would imagine. So, look, we're continuing
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: to invest in the business. There's a lot of extraordinary
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: upside in the business. And then we do make investments
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: and acquisitions, so do all of our peers. There's a
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: lot that's exciting going on in the world, and so
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: we're looking across the board. Starts within the business, then
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: it goes to investments and acquisitions, then obviously return to
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: capital through a not in consequential share repurchase program.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about artificial intelligence.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Artificial intelligence has gotten a lot of publicity in the
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: last year or so, and open ai has got an
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: enormous amount of it, and they have an affiliation with
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: another technology company.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: I can't remember the name of it. I've heard that
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: another one.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: But do you have your own kind of open ai
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: company or do you do it all internally? And what
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: do you do to compete with open ai? And this
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: other technology company.
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: So we've had We've been infusing product at Google with
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: AI for more than a decade. In fact, billions of
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: people today are benefiting from AI across our products. It's
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: benefiting what you see in search, in maps, and commerce
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: and YouTube. You know, I just mentioned multimodal search, the
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: ability to search with your camera, when you search for
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: your kids and photos, that's AI. So AI has continued
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: to be a way to enhance what the product experiences.
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: And we've done that historically through two groups within Google.
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: One Google Brain I already mentioned, and the other is
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: deep Mind, an extraordinary acquisition back years ago led by
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: an extraordinary entrepreneur, Demesistatus, And we've put the two together
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: last year, which has been really exciting. And so we
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: are building on that foundation that has been an experience
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: for the last decade.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: What's the excitement of work in technology in the Silicon Valley?
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Is it even more exciting than working in finance? Or
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: not quite as exciting?
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: But okay, it's hard to believe it's more exciting, ed.
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: I mean, we're living in the most extraordinary time with AI.
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: Bill Gates just said that I completely agree. Engineers who've
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: been at Google since inception are saying that this is
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: the most exciting time in computer science in our lifetime,
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: which always strikes me as profound because Google's done okay,
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: And what's extraordinary about it really goes to building on
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: this decade of innovative work in AI. And so where
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: are we now.
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: We're at the What we're doing.
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: Is we're addressing some of the most profound social challenge
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: is with AI in ways that are transformative. So to
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: give you an a couple of examples, I think that
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: one of the extraordinary places for all of us, and
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: we've heard a lot about it.
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: Here over lunch, is healthcare. And part of the reason is.
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: It's the ability with AI to aggregate so much data
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: that you can actually have a level of diagnosis that
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: is better than what specialists can do. So one example
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: breast cancer. Back in twenty fifteen, Google had a breakthrough
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: in detection early detection of metastatic breast cancer. One in
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: seven women will be diagnosed with breast cancer. I was
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: one of those. I've had breast cancer twice, so when
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: I heard about this, I did the only rational thing.
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: I called my oncologist at Memorial Slung Kettering, and I
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: said is this really as important as I hope? And
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: he said unequivocally, because only with AI can we democratize healthcare.
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: It's the only way that oncologists everywhere, radiologists everywhere, all
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: of the medical profession has the ability to leverage the
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: insight that AI will give you through scans, reviewing a
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: million scans. We're doing the same in other forms of cancer.
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: We're doing it with something called diabetic retinopathy blindness cause
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: through diabetes, which can be prevented if diagnosed early enough.
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: And so I think that when you look at the
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: impact of a this is what motivates our engineers. We're
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: seeing in healthcare, we're seeing in education, We're seeing it.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: With food scarcity.
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: You can improve crop yields by looking at pest issues,
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: in forming. We're looking at so many different ways that
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: AI can make a difference on the most profound issues.
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: One last one, because it's you asked, am I excited
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: about it? Yes, It's better than even finance, climate change,
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: you know, SOS crisis alerts extraordinary. We've seen the impact
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: of buyers and flooding, two hundred and fifty million people
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: a year affected by flooding. But with AI, we can
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: predict and r with seven days. Notice where the waterflows
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: will be to get people out of harm's way. So
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: this is not science fiction. This is here today.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: On climate change to be realistic about it.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: These are things that you think that AI can really
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: make us make more readily, make us able to solve
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: climate change. Is at your point you think we can.
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: Well, there's both adaptation and mitigation.
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: So around climate change we have a whole other set
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: of efforts going on. So, for example, one of the
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: major sources of emissions is what you see right out
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: the window here start stop from cars. We have something
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: called Project green Light which streamlines that so you don't
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: have the start stops. We have something else that looks
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: at planes. Major source of carbon footprint are contrails, what
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: many of us think are the beautiful white plumes off
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: the back. You can adjust flight patterns and reduce carbon footprint.
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: So the short answer is yes, and it's happening today.
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: It's not a hope for science fiction.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: You've been public about your breast cancer. You've talked about it,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: written about it, and so worth why did you go
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: public about it? Many women say they don't want it
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: to be known that they might have breast cancer. Maybe
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: that's right or wrong, But why were you so willing
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: to be public about it?
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: It is a really personal thing. And when I was
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: first diagnosed, I didn't want to talk about it. I
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: was at a bank one a few women. You know,
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: I was bald, and it's like, it's not what you want.
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: To talk about.
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: But I got to the point where I realized, in
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: this day and age, if you get the right care,
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: actually these diseases are manageable, and the scariest part is
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: not knowing. And so to me, it was important to
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: actually make it clear this is manageable, you can.
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: Get through it, and to actually be a resource for people.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: So for many women, you're a role model. You have
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: a successful career in finance and technology. You were on
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: your first husband.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: Right yeah, yeah, and hanging on hanging on right. So
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: and you have three kids, and so you've done it all.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: You've had it all your you know, have a successful career,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: successful marriage, healthy, happy kids. Can you tell us something
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: that doesn't make us so feel jealous about you? Because
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: you're I mean here, you know everybody can't be as
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: good as you, So make us feel that everything isn't
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: perfect for you? Leaving aside the breast cancer, so that
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: everybody else doesn't feel like they're not going to be
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: able to live up to your standards.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: Oh man, other than other Thandians. Look, I think that.
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: One of the most important lessons I learned early in
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: my career. You know, as a woman in banking, there
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: weren't many of us. It wasn't the easiest environment. There
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: were a lot of men I've now gently decided to
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: call blockheads, but you know, they were worse than blockheads,
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: and they made it difficult, and you learned to be resilient.
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: The one thing is I was going to outlast them,
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: and that would be the joy that came from it.
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: Unfortunately, there are obviously a lot.
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: Of extraordinary men at Morgan Stanley. There weren't enough senior
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: women in the day, and there are more now. And
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: so I learned to chart my career. I went to
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: people who would take a risk on me, and I said,
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: what's my highest and best use? And they opened doors
• 22:10
  Speaker 4: that I didn't know existed. And to me, that's the
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: most important is those hard day's bad lessons. I just
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: chalk them up to being lessons, so I don't actually
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: record them.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: So what do you do when you're not working on technology,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: being a wife, being a mother, You have a tennis player,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: or you're a golfer. What do you do for relaxation
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: the content you have time for relaxation, Well, I.
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: Kind of merge things because there's nothing more joyful to
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: me than going on hikes with my kids or bike
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: rides with my kids, and so it's you.
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: Know, it's a lot of that.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: Are your parents alive now?
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: They are not?
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: And did they live to see your success before they
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: passed away?
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: They did.
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: My mom, actually, when I was a young kid, said
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: she was a psychologist, and she said what's really important
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: for women is have your own identity and a career
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: outside of them home.
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: She told me that when I was eight, my little
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: sister was six.
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: For some reasons, he thought that's the time you need
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: to send that message.
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: So I'm grateful to her for that message.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Your father did he ever say this is better than
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: being a physicist what you're doing.
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: My dad was pretty remarkable, you know.
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: The tale end of that story about his journey from
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: no high school education to a PhD in a career
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: at Stanford is he said education is your passport for
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: freedom and so the only point he impressed on us
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: over and over was really focus on education, keep opening doors,
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: and take risks. If he didn't take the risk he
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: took to get himself out of Austria to teach himself physics,
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: he wouldn't have made it. And he was so grateful
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: to get to the United States. So if there's anything else,
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: it was that the life that he never expected he
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: would have, and then to have a family.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to hear more of my interviews. You
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: wherever you listen.