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Alright.
Good afternoon everybody.
How's everyone doing today?
Are you enjoying yourself?
We are going to get going.
I am so excited to have
everybody here.
And we've got a fantastic panel,
as always.
And,
I'll tell you,
I've been obviously,
I've been coming to Davos
since 2002.
And there were
One year I did not come for what
some conflict I had.
And then one year
was the pandemic,
but otherwise I guess
I've done about 22 Davos’s.
This has to be the biggest,
most exciting
Davos I've ever been to.
If you haven't heard the numbers,
there's never been
a level of attendance
like this at Davos before.
70 heads of state.
Almost a thousand CEOs.
The president of the United States,
I don't know if you heard,
has been here
for the last two days,
and he just launched his
board of piece
incredible
in the Congress Center with,
leaders from all over the world
all signing up to create peace
and then launch this huge vision,
for Gaza.
I've personally
never seen anything quite like it.
It was truly
an extraordinary moment.
I feel like this
has been a historic Davos
in many ways.
I think there's a lot of FOMO.
David and I were just talking,
and Elon Musk, I guess,
called,
the West organizers
yesterday, and he's speaking
today at 04:30 pm.
He, I think, previously had
deeply committed
not only to me, but also to David,
but to never to come to Davos.
But he is on his way.
And I said to him, make sure
you come to,
Billy Idol tonight,
for our concert here in the dome.
And I hope all of you
will come as well.
It's going to be amazing.
So we're going to have
a fantastic, panel now.
You know, I think that for us,
it's such a formative time.
There's so many different things
happening in the world
all at once,
and so many
different perspectives.
Sometimes it's a revolution.
In other times it's
a transformation.
And in another moment
it's a Polycrisis
and another moment
it's an opportunity
for incredible
growth and expansion.
And what I've noticed
in the series of conversations
that we've had in this dome,
in this lunch panel,
over this two decades,
it's been amazing
because I've had the opportunity
to go back
and watch, these panels,
how prescient these panels become.
Somehow it's
the obviously the nature
of their incredible personalities
and their
depth of experience,
but also
something about being
in these mountains,
in this little town in the
middle of nowhere that,
really moves people.
And, I
just look forward to this moment,
to being here with all of you
and to have a great time
over the next call it.
Maybe we can do this
in about 30 minutes or so
or 40 minutes.
But I want to introduce you
to these, incredible panelists.
And,
now, when I'm choosing the panel.
Okay, each one of these panelists
is coming
from a very different discipline,
as you'll see,
a very different
set of experiences
or as we say now
in the
AI world, a different context.
You know,
we've got to have context,
not just large language models.
And you'll see that
each one of them
has their own context
and I think that
the interesting idea is
that we're going to try
to put it all together.
And what we'd like to do
in this panel,
as you all know, is
somewhat formulaic.
First, we're going to
ask them a question.
Give us your vision
of what's happening right now
in the somewhat short term.
You know, in the next
one to five years.
Just tell us
what's going on in the next
one to five years,
and then we'll move on
and then we'll talk about,
okay, let's go out
a little bit farther.
Let's talk about the next
one or two decades
and then try to go about,
you know, as far as you want.
And how do we pull it
all together.
So why don't we go ahead and,
I'll introduce you to, these,
amazing panelists,
and we'll just start with,
the panelist who has been here
the most.
He was our launch panelist.
He is an incredible entrepreneur.
He is an incredible
innovator, a close friend.
He has had
a number of visions
on this panel
that have turned into
not only incredible,
I think insights
for all of us in the room,
but huge companies for him.
And
Maybe you know him
from his music history,
but you probably also know him
from a lot of the companies
that he started, like beats
and so many others.
And please welcome will.i.am.
Welcome Will.
Hey.
Would you switch and go in
the first seat there
and change that with David.
Right on.
I’m micromanager. Okay.
Number two,
I would say that the next person
we're going to bring in
is someone who has had
an extraordinary impact
on me personally,
but also on my family.
I was talking to her.
I've, you know, read her books,
you know, to,
my children
when they were very young.
Now, you know, they've,
they're much older.
And I would say that
the books that she wrote
are these fantastical stories
about the ocean
and a fantasy world
inside the ocean.
Of course,
she was the chief scientist
of NOAA,
the most important ocean
research organization
in the world.
And she has become so legendary
in the ocean,
not only for her
passionate pursuit
of preserving it
and protecting it,
and also helping us
to understand it.
She is brought a
level of enlightenment,
I think, to all the whole,
all the world.
And I know there's
a number of ocean scientists
in the room,
and I think we've all started
our love of the ocean,
with Sylvia Earle.
Please welcome Doctor Earle.
Welcome, Sylvia.
Thank you.
Very good.
Thank you.
Yes.
Perfect.
Okay. Now.
Okay.
And then I'll say, now, you know,
I've had a great experience,
knowing,
our next panelist for a couple.
Oh, I don't know
if it's One or Two decades
a visionary in the technology
industry and Silicon Valley
and an entrepreneur
that kind of reflects
the lives
of many of the people
in this room.
But starting in college and also,
moving into his career,
took a more philosophical approach
to what business can become, how,
it can achieve different
levels of excellence
and made an unusual decision.
And, I was excited to,
you know,
hear the story unfold
and get a few phone
calls in my home
as he made the decision
to join the Trump administration
and to become the Czar for AI
and cryptocurrencies,
to become the president's chairman
of science and technology.
The PCAST chairman,
and has had a huge impact
on the tech industry
over the last year.
Please welcome David Sax.
David, is this your first panel
that you've been on with,
Sylvia Earle?
And Will.i.am
what’s that?
Yes it is.
Oh okay.
First Davos, first Davos,
first panel okay.
Very good.
Now
I'm very excited to introduce you
to someone
who has had an incredible impact
on, the tech industry because,
she's become a moral compass.
I spent the summer
living in Geneva.
And if you've done that, you know,
some of the great NGOs
that are there,
and she leads one of those NGOs,
and she has brought a vision
for what I can be for good.
She also has an amazing
conference now for AI for good.
But she's a critical part
of our non-governmental
organization infrastructure
in the world
governing the technology industry.
Please welcome Doreen
the head of the ITU.
Excellent.
And finally,
she is an alumni
of the panel here.
She has done it before.
She was amazing. She's fantastic.
She leads one of the largest
and most important
companies in the world.
She is
probably one of
the most innovative leaders
in the fortune 500.
She's created a company
that has multiple
brands that we all know,
not just Williams Sonoma
and Pottery Barn
and West Elm and
many, many others.
And wherever I go in the world,
whether it's,
Dubai or whether it's,
in any country, all of a sudden
I'll have to take a
selfie of myself
in front of her store
and send it to her.
And, she's incredible visionary on
not just the retail industry,
not just in homes,
but also in technology.
Please welcome Laura Alber.
Nice to see you.
Very good.
Well, we're so happy
to have everybody here.
And I thought
it might be extremely interesting
just to kind of start out
exactly what I said,
which was
to kind of take
that short view and,
you know, to kind of
look at so much
is happening right now,
just right now
in the current present moment,
you know, could be political,
it could be environmental,
it could be societal.
Social.
And it could be
what's happening here in Davos.
But your projections on
what's going to happen
in the world,
maybe in your domain expertise
or if you want to
step out of your lane,
that's great too.
Over the next
call it one to five years.
So Will do you want to
you know, this exercise.
You've done it many times.
Do you want to give it a try
one five years?
We're all here now.
Oh, and also Will,
we had to add because for you,
we added the clock.
Got it.
So as you'll see below you.
So some of our
panelists are really incredible
people and you'll see at your feet
the clock is ticking.
And you have about three minutes.
Go ahead. Great.
So between now
and the next five years,
we're all here.
And we're missing
something that we don't have.
And that is our personal agent
our houses will have,
GPUs in them
by default.
If you were going to buy a house
from scratch,
it would have come with
some data center GPU,
just like your house or apartment
you have has a refrigerator in it.
By default, plumbing in it.
Flowing water,
heat, central heating.
You're not going to buy a house
or apartment
or condo
without either of those things.
So to house your genie,
that's personal to you?
We don't have that yet.
We're sharing the local.
The village agent,
and we will all have
a personal one right
now, in the next five years,
under time.
Good.
And also,
you still have a minute
and 45 seconds.
So just just tell everyone
what you're doing at ASU
because it's so amazing.
So at ASU, I
keep the clock going
or we're going to
whoever just reset the clock.
That was a huge mistake. Yeah.
See that that was an error.
Yeah. Operational error.
And on the field huge problem.
Go ahead I pitch this yeah.
Pitch this concept
to President Crow.
To teach a course called
agent itself.
Our students build
personal agents,
pitched that same concept to Jensen
at Nvidia.
They provided,
personal GPUs
for all of our students.
When that student graduates.
So their agent,
the agent, will have a diploma
and a certificate
that goes along with
their point of interest
that's married
with their point of view
and their lived experience.
Because none of these agents,
have a perspective
of lived experience.
And the only way to do
that is if a human minted that,
lived experience on to the agent.
And if there was an agent
that has a lived experience,
it will be infringing
on some human,
one of the eight billion people
on the planets perspective.
And that's like a different type
of copyright
issue, that
if the human didn't do that,
you would have been scraping
some human's identity right down.
Now, I just want to think that,
you know,
the very first panel you were ever on,
it's been quite a long time.
You had the vision of idataty,
remember identity.
How do you connect
those two things
and just just do it
in a few seconds?
It was,
Brian from
Bank of America was here,
the CEO of Red cross,
Marissa Mayer,
and you ask that
same question, I'm like,
what the hell
am I supposed to say?
Well,
my beats are going to be like
ten years from now.
Like,
I started thinking of what
we were talking about
on the mountain that year.
And I'm like,
identity theft
was what everyone
was talking about.
And I'm like, well,
I'm not my freaking driver's
license, my birth certificate.
I'm not my social
like my Social Security number.
I'm my searches are
my steps are my contacts
on my locations,
on my spell check.
That's who I am.
You can predict me by that.
You can't predict me
for my Social Security number.
And so I'm like, well,
my identity, my that,
oh, idataty, idataty.
And at that time
when you asked me
like five years from now,
we're going to realize
the power of data.
Companies now.
But people don't.
In ten years
from now, what's now,
it will be clear
as all hell that
if you were going to have a system
that's going to be yours,
you need to preserve
and own your data.
We were given a product
where you could leverage your data
up to this point.
Now, if you were going to benefit
from AlphaFold,
you better will get your data
and all the things
that's going to help
you live an awesome life by 2036.
You need to have your genie
in the bottle.
Very good.
All right.
So that's a great way
to start out.
And, so, David,
why don't you give us
what's on your mind
over the next couple of years?
What what's
going to unfold in the next
one to five years?
Well, if we're going out
five years,
I think the personal
digital assistant
AI is a is a good one.
By five years from now,
we might have glasses
or some other wearable
that's feeding into that.
Five years from now,
I think robots are
going to be a thing.
You know,
we're going to start seeing them
maybe in,
you know, the streets of Davos.
I mean, it's a really given
how fast things are moving.
Five years is a really long time.
My prediction
I would say though, for
this year is
I think
we'll start to see bottom
up adoption of, AI
co-working tools in the enterprise
this year.
So this is something
that I was very interested
in when I was, founding companies
in Silicon Valley
was whether enterprise software
could just go viral
like a consumer product,
as opposed to having to be sold
top down through a sales team.
And I think what's going to happen
this year
is that there are going to be,
you know, RFP
and top down
projects, company
transformation projects
that come from the CEO
to try and figure out
how to use
you know, all these new AI tools.
But while that is happening,
you know,
and that takes months and months,
there's going to be these,
AI natives,
you know, people
who are just really good
at being on the cutting edge for
all these new AI tools.
You know, whether it was ChatGPT
last couple of years or now, the
the new hotness is claude code
claude cowork,
and they're going to be
bringing these tools
into the enterprise,
and they're going to seem
like they have superpowers.
You know, someone says, hey,
we need a dashboard.
And it would have taken months
to set that up.
You have to hire
some data scientists,
some data engineers,
and you end up getting someone who
knows how to use, claude cowork
doing it in two hours
and they're going to
blow people away.
And so I think
there's going to be a lot of this
sort of bottom up
activity happening.
While enterprises are trying
to figure out what their larger
AI strategy is going to be.
Alright.
Doctor Earle?
it's my turn.
Okay.
To think about this
next five years,
we can look back five years
and see how much has changed
in a short period of time.
We really need to scale up fast,
because
by 2030, nations around the world
have committed to protect
30% of the land, 30% of the ocean
for the land
we're only about halfway there.
By protecting
the natural systems
that keep us alive
in the ocean, only about 3%
is actively,
proactively protected.
You can scale that up a bit,
but when you
start fishing in a protected area,
that's not really protection.
The most of the areas
that call themselves
national parks
in the sea
marine sanctuaries or whatever,
you can fish there commercially
or for sport killing for sport.
So five years,
maybe we can make it,
but only if we take seriously
this moment in time.
I tell kids,
here's the luckiest kids
that ever have lived
because of what you know
that nobody could know.
Certainly when I was a kid,
there were any those cute
little cell phones.
Nobody had been to the moon.
Nobody had been
to the deepest part of the sea,
but the biggest problem
we now face is the magnitude
of what we don't know.
We do know that the ocean
is the cornerstone
of what keeps us alive.
No ocean,
no life, no blue, no green.
Without the ocean,
Earth would be a lot like Mars.
Good luck
Elon,
for setting up
housekeeping on Mars.
I have my list of things
I'd love to see go.
Maybe you do too.
It's Earth.
That's our home.
We have to do everything we can.
Whatever else that is
you do with your life.
First, you have to breathe.
First
you have
to have a temperature of this
within range suitable for us.
You need all the things.
The earth has taken
4.5 billion years.
Powered by life.
It's not just rocks and water.
It makes our existence possible.
It's the living planet that shapes
this planet,
set it apart
from every other known
place in the universe.
We've got to take care of it.
Because if we don't,
we're going to see
within the next five years
the beginnings
or maybe even reaching
catastrophic decline
of some of the things
we now take for granted.
I'm not alone in saying that
some of my nerdy
scientist friends,
I think of Johan Roxton
with the
what is it that makes Earth safe?
What are the boundaries
that we dare not exceed
to send us off
into a really terrible place
in terms of the habitability
of Earth?
I mean, we take what
we've got for granted.
We cannot do that anymore.
Every decision
that all of us
make, each of us and together,
everybody has power of one sort
or another.
Using that power
number, one priority, safeguard
what remains of the natural
living systems, land and sea.
What are we even thinking about?
Deep sea mining to destroy
or cutting more
old growth forest.
We have to think in terms,
first of all,
keep the planet safe,
and then we can do
whatever else it is
that each and every one of us do.
So five years,
we'll either make it or,
you know, tip
in the right direction
instead of this way,
a turning
point into a secure world,
we're facing the greatest
security issue of our time
keeping the planet safe.
Let's do it.
Very good.
Laura.
I think
on the one hand, it's a time of,
great distraction and fear
and on the other,
creativity and connection.
And I think we can all choose
where we want
to spend our focus and our time
and how we want to live
in the next five years.
And I think all are true.
But I do think
that if the technology does
its job,
it should support us in real life.
You know, as the kids say, IRL,
that's the world
I live in, trying
to make beautiful products
to improve your lives.
And every day
that you touch
the flatware in your home
or getting those thousand
thread count cotton sheets,
I hope that
in some small way,
we're making your life
a little bit more pleasant.
I think Mark puts me up here
because I'm a capitalist
proudly.
But I also have a
very big conscience
about how we produce
and what we're trying to do
and make quality products
that are not landfill.
And also make
a very nice, robust
profit for our shareholders
who have therefore,
invested
in Williams-Sonoma,
they've done well.
You can look at the stock
over the last five years.
I hope to see
that continued up
into the right for the next five.
And I think that at the base of it
all, something very simple,
which are these
these very high quality products.
Right.
It's not about,
I mean, this technology
that helps us sell it better,
give you better customer service.
But when you think
of Williams-Sonoma,
what do you think of?
Do you smell the aroma?
Right.
You know, you can bring it back.
I mean, I, I challenge you
to decorate your house
from Amazon.
Try to get them on the phone.
How's it going with Wayfair?
You can return it.
It'll be free.
But I would tell you,
you're not going to enjoy
sleeping in that bed
much more than a couple nights
because it's going to fall apart.
And while I'm at it, and I hope,
Raj is here,
I'll just say that
if something is too cheap,
someone is getting hurt.
Okay,
so while Americans
want everything cheap,
they also
then are going to talk either
side of their mouth about,
you know,
saving the planet.
But I think they're
getting smarter.
We're having a good conversation
at the table about plastics.
Are you all scared of plastics?
Yeah, right.
Get your blood tested.
Everything's
going to relate to it.
And the replacement value.
Williams-Sonoma of the non
plastic product
is worth more than the product
that is declining
because of your awareness
on plastics.
And it's mainstream.
This is not some
small group of people.
This is mainstream 552 stores.
People voting with their
credit cards
that they don't want
plastic in their lives.
So I choose the side of optimism
and creativity
about what
this technology
and this time of distraction
could bring.
In real life.
Very good.
Thank you.
Doreen?
Thank you.
Great to be here.
And I think the first time, Mark,
I was here,
a couple of years ago
was when
ChatGPT
had just come on the scene.
And obviously things have changed
pretty dramatically since then.
For me,
I'd like to believe that
technology can benefit humanity.
And I think
lots of the conversations
this week,
in some ways
make me quite hopeful.
Make me,
think about the
you credible opportunities,
because I'm starting to hear
more discussions on putting people
at the center,
looking at things like trust.
As you have also said this week,
Mark as well,
putting back responsibility
in the conversation
when we talk about technology,
the ITU has been advancing this
AI for good concept,
and I really see that
AI can bring good for all people.
But it's not just going to happen
naturally.
And I think we have to be
very intentional
about our focus
when it comes to AI.
I think I also
I also want to raise
in this crowd.
Let's remember that
a third of the world
has never
even been on the internet.
And so when we look at AI,
we look at what's going to happen
next year and the year after.
Let's remember
all those people
that don't have that opportunity.
So I also remain concerned about
the divides,
the divides that exist today
here, this theme
this week,
this dialog in a divided world.
Well,
we have
a very divided digital world,
but the opportunities are there
and we know
actually how to close that divide.
But again,
we have to be intentional.
We have to do the right things.
We have to build trust
and we have to be responsible.
Very good okay.
Well as you can see
great job green.
Thank you.
Very good.
And I would just say that,
you know
we have some diversity
in our panelists here. Right.
Different points of view.
We heard about
the personal agents
GPUs in the home.
The genetic self
I brought in the idataty vision
as part of that.
We bridged over to the personal
digital assistant
and the coming robot revolution.
Bottoms up.
Adoption of,
technology in the enterprise,
something that David's
been working on
for the last couple of decades
and also really
fundamental transformation
of the enterprise
to be a more
intelligent enterprise.
The emergence of digital
AI natives inside the enterprise
and,
starting to make our planet
much more safe,
protecting our planet,
looking at the coming
2030 goal, protecting
30% of our oceans
by 2030, protecting
30% of our planet.
As we've seen,
protecting
small amounts of the ocean
make the rest of the ocean
remarkably healthy.
But we still only have
3% of the oceans
currently protected
national parks in the sea.
Great.
But we have to make sure
that we're protecting them,
that it's enforced,
and that the ocean remains
the cornerstone
of our physical health.
Finally,
we started to bridge
in the quality
and the importance
of quality products.
I especially liked
the importance of thousand
thread count sheets.
Also that we are running companies
that have robust
profits and stocks
that were
mindful of high quality products.
And if it's too cheap,
sometimes somebody is getting hurt
and I guess
we're all going to get our
blood tested for plastics,
which I haven't done myself yet.
And then
how can technology be for good?
How can we get responsibility
back into the equation?
How can we get
trust back in the equation?
And how can we get people
back into the center
of the conversation
and bridge the digital divide?
Okay, well,
those are our marching orders
between now and 2030.
I think actually,
in a lot of cases
in our minds,
I bet
we can all see that happening.
Now, let's take
a little bit of a jump.
You know,
I think we have to go beyond 2030
and let let's go out a decade
or so or more.
You know, it's currently 2025.
What would it look like
if we're all of a sudden
starting to touch 2045
or maybe 2050,
as I think was just demonstrated?
We have some
remarkable visionaries
on the panel.
I'm looking around the room.
I know there's
remarkable visionaries
in the entire room as well.
I think for all of us,
we know the next couple decades
are going to be
not like
the previous couple of decades.
So let's take a thought about that
and let's try to go out.
Let's go out two
decades and two decades is 2045.
Will, what what's happening?
Are we sitting in this, dome?
What are we talking about?
I don't
I don't like what I see,
based on our
current business practices.
Just how social media was handled.
And if they didn't take
Businesses are going to adopt
social media
then
2045 is.
That's not a good one.
For example, there will be,
a level five company,
just like there's
a level five vehicle,
fully autonomous,
no human needing to,
you know, operate the vehicle.
Waymo is an amazing technology.
It's transformed,
transportation in LA,
San Francisco.
Waymo's awesome.
No.
There's going to be a Waymo
for a company
that's like one chairman
and just fully autonomous.
No humans working,
but go out and hire humans.
That one's
a weird one.
Promptless
systems.
Organic compute.
That's
causing a new species.
And if we're inhumane
to one another,
are we going to tolerate
fully autonomous companies
that have organic compute
being inhumane to us
because it learns from everything
that's on the internet
and how we treated
each other on social media?
So the concept of AI for good
is a great starting place.
So we don't repeat how wack
we were to one another on
in the chat rooms
anonymously.
Just being ridiculously
rude, disrespectful, no empathy,
no tolerance to collaborate
to the point
where, like certain words
have now been politicized,
diversity is great.
I like using the word
cross disciplinary.
That one hasn't been
politicized yet.
Cross-disciplinary thoughts.
Cross-disciplinary workforces
is an,
you cannot not succeed
without cross-disciplinary.
So here's why.
We have a CMO, CFO, CEO
that’s a cross-disciplinary expertise.
But in this agenetic
world where you have fully
autonomous
systems, no human in the loop,
it's just one system
that hires humans.
And wow, what will happen
if it treats us
the way we treat us.
So we need to start
treating each other better.
We need to prevent
that from happening,
especially when,
this organic compute, there's this
brain in a dish.
And although that sounds cool,
I don't know
if that's what we want.
Yeah.
So we should think about that.
Sorry.
I went over.
All right.
Very good.
David.
So I think instead of having this
conveyor belt, industrial scale
education system
where kids
learn in batches and get advanced,
you know, all at the same speed,
I think
every child
will have basically an
AI teacher or tutor.
They can go at their own pace.
That actually understands
how they learn
how to motivate them,
and they're able to get
basically the best
possible education.
That's something
like only like a super rich person
today could afford,
who could afford to, you know,
pay for tutors.
Every student will have that.
I think in the health care system,
there's drug discoveries
can be
greatly sped up
or accelerated by the ability of
AI to model things or,
find new discoveries.
I think that,
at work,
there's going to
be huge leaps in productivity
because of the new tools,
the same way
that we have coding assistants
right now that you see,
developers are able
to get much more productive.
We're going to have that for
just about every category.
You'll be able to, you know,
people are not going to be spending weeks and weeks
creating PowerPoints anymore.
They'll be able to do that
in minutes.
You think about enterprise
cost structure.
I think, today, it's about 5% IT
and maybe 1% or 2% is code
that could easily be 50% code
in the next couple of decades.
Because the price of
code is coming
down, it's becoming so much easier
to deploy,
and it's going to get a lot easier
to hire, engineers,
which is a huge
there's a huge
shortage of them today.
So I can see our companies become
cybernetic organisms in a way,
you know, much more
of a synergy of humans and,
and sort of,
computer intelligence.
Now, I think
there's also things
that are not going to change.
I don't think money is going away.
I don't think
human work
or jobs are all going away.
There's going to be
some categories of disruption.
There's so going to be
great power competition
in the world,
you know, between countries,
things like that.
So I think there's
certain fundamental
things that won't change.
Maybe one analogy to think about
is I remember the late 90s,
Mark,
when you and I were first
getting involved in the internet,
the big thing,
everyone belief is
that brick and mortar
was going away completely. Right.
And that idea
contributed to the.com bubble
in the late 90s, because,
you know, people just assumed
that every single
retail brand that you saw
was basically going
to get replaced by the internet,
and that didn't quite happen.
I mean, if you look over the past,
you know, it's now
30 years later
and we're still going to stores,
brick and mortar.
Now, it hasn't necessarily
been a great category.
So, you know,
like you're better off
investing in Amazon than a lot of,
brick and mortar retail, like,
you know, Sears or
Kmart or something.
So the insight that people had in
the 90s
was fundamentally
was directionally correct,
but they were taking it too
far in terms of just thinking,
oh, it's just brick and mortar is going away.
I think that's what people are doing right now
with the whole job loss narrative.
Right.
We're going to get
massively more productive.
certainly over a 25 year scale.
But I think
saying that jobs are just going
away is pushing away too far.
Thank you David.
So Dr. Earle
here we go.
So.
Okay.
2045
I'd like to look back before
looking forward.
This go back
500 million years ago.
We were not here.
But life on Earth
was mostly microbial.
Another 100 million years.
There were sharks.
It was a vast scale,
from little tiny things
to some pretty large things.
But keep rolling.
You know how long before
there were trees?
How long before there were insects?
Before they existed,
there was a lot of life
in the ocean.
Sponges, starfish, corals existed
going back
400 million years ago.
They're still here.
But okay, let's fast
forward a bit.
65 million years ago,
when whales started to populate
the ocean.
Already plenty of sharks,
lots of other kinds
of sea creatures
and go back about a
million years ago,
and our ancestors
looking somewhat like us.
And things were pretty slow
until literally
about 10,000 years ago.
We live during a time
that is like the sweet spot
for us.
Things have been
relatively stable.
There have been several
mass extinctions
between 500 million years ago
and 10,000 years ago.
Our numbers were really small
until we got to, let's see...
Let's go back 500 years ago,
there were about
half a million of us
already populating the earth.
It took, you know, until 1800,
before that number
had increased to 1 billion of us.
And, oh, now, look,
I came along with
there are 2 billion
now there are 8 billion.
We have to keep that in mind,
because by 2045
we're going to be closer
to 10 billion
than we are now, 10 billion
appetites, 10
billion needs for space,
for something to wear,
for future, for the children
that are beyond that time.
Just as we look now for
the future of our children,
what's the world going to be like?
Where's the water coming from?
What are we going to be eating?
What's the temperature
going to be like?
It really?
We are able to choose the future
we want,
but we have to take it seriously.
Right now we're really complacent.
We have
the means
that never existed before.
The technology
that gives us the edge
to communicate
new discoveries instantly.
It's such good news.
It's because we have discovered
things past that long
throughout our history.
It wasn't very long ago
that the concept of zero
did not exist in our calculations.
We just didn't know.
But when you think what we now know
that could not be known before
We're going to know
a lot more by 2045.
But what are we going to do
with that knowledge?
It's the greatest era
of exploration
that we're just beginning.
We have just begun to explore
the ocean.
I've had the privilege
of using
more than 30 kinds of submarines,
but most people have never been
in a submarine.
Almost everyone
has been on an airplane.
This is like the early days
of exploring this planet.
Our home, nature keeps us alive.
It's a source
of all of our wealth,
health, everything.
We need to take care
of the ocean,
which is the key to life on earth.
As if our lives depend on it.
Because they do.
Maybe we'll learn that by 2045.
Okay, Laura, here we go.
Yeah.
I'm not going to pretend
I have anything
even close
to that important to say,
but I do agree with.
Everyone has come and spoken.
I really particularly agree
with the health care
breakthroughs longevity.
I mean, you can imagine 20 years
that could really change how
what these chronic diseases are
and how they're treated.
And that's wonderful.
20 years ago,
I mean, 20 years, not that long,
right?
We all knew where we were
20 years ago.
So a lot is going to stay the same.
And then there's the party tricks like the Waymo's and
all sorts of things
that hopefully make our life easier.
You know, I do
believe retail
will continue to be strong.
And the stores will be the place
you want to go.
I mean, just think of Apple.
Do you see the website?
Do you see the store in your mind
when you think
about the greatest brand?
I think in the world it's Apple.
You see the store.
What do humans like
besides
pleasure and warmth and food?
I like beauty,
it's obvious
we don't talk about that much.
We don't talk about art, music.
We hear some nice music.
Sometimes, if we're lucky,
we get a few meals here and there,
basically starving all week.
These things are important,
you know?
I mean, these are
things that no one's discussing.
I got to hear
few of my retail counterparts speak at
the New York Times Center
about
the importance
of brands
and beauty
and history and
emotions that are brought to life
and when a brand done right.
It's really about hope, right?
When you think of the great brands
and why you have them
in your life, people.
So I think that's going to stay the same
despite all this other noise
about.
Technology.
I think the technology
makes life easier
so we can enjoy the good things.
And takes away
some of the difficult pieces.
And I hope it
doesn't result
in no oceans.
Really important.
I do agree
if I'm going on
the negative route.
Very worried about water
and clean water,
but I try to stay over
in the positive area because I
I know that there's only so much
you can do. Right?
So I know I can make
beautiful products
and improve your lives.
I'm going to stay over there
and not
give up my responsibilities,
but also not try to overstuff
to think I know the answers to the
some of the bigger,
more existential problems.
So I want to
pick up, Will,
your points and I agree with you.
I think we have to work now.
We think to the next 10, 20 years
and make those digital spaces
nicer, more respectful, safer.
And when I think again
about the opportunities
of digital technologies,
we know we will never have enough
human doctors.
We will never have enough
human teachers.
Actually, today,
half of the world's
schools
don't have any access
to the internet.
And so
again, thinking to 10 or 20 years,
I sure hope that we have connected
every healthcare institute clinic
that we have connected
every single school,
and that Will.
And if James is in the room
that the young people,
we have a new partnership
where we're scaling,
group of African countries
in AI to provide AI literacy,
I hope
that those young people
are actually leaders of big AI
or whatever
the next generation
of technology will be.
I hope that through
that kind of scaling,
that we can
then empower the next
generation of leaders.
Well, I think there we have it.
It's,
going to be
one hell of a couple decades
ahead, and, I just want to thank
the panelists
for kind of trying
to open our minds up.
Will, you want to bring us home
only because
20 years ago,
2006,
the iPhone wasn't here.
Nokia was the king.
Motorola was second.
BlackBerry was like
the most secure
for privacy
The internet wasn't in
your pocket,
and if you bought anything
from China,
it was a bootleg.
And in a year
iPhone was made in Taiwan
and China
and China started to change.
And now China.
In 2019.
Xiaomi was like
number four to Samsung.
And now in 2026
they're outporsching Porsche.
How did how did they do that
and how
can we how can
my neighborhood Boyle Heights,
Brooklyn,
you name it, how can America
have that same type of
let's go get it,
let's go build it,
use our imagination
and throw it at hyperspeed
between now and the next 20 years.
Very good.
You know,
David,
do you want to respond to that?
What part?
Sorry.
You really got me thinking.
You know, China,
if Chinese cars came to America.
Ford... What happens to Ford?
What happens to GM?
How can we build our country
to make stuff again?
Make the things
Shenzhen is awesome.
Why can't Shenzhen be in LA?
Why do we have to go there
to make all this stuff
All this Stuff was made over the
how can we get America
to make stuff again?
I love the concept
make America great again.
How about we just make
America make stuff again?
President Trump likes that idea
a lot. So,
reindustrialization
is a huge emphasis right now.
Sylvia, you want to wrap it up.
We'll look.
Technology cuts both ways.
It gives us
the greatest era of prosperity.
Humans have ever had.
We have 8 billion minds,
as well as 8 billion appetites.
We ought to be able to figure this out.
But the first priority
you first, have to be able to live.
You have to be able to breathe.
We have to have a safe planet.
That has to be an urgent priority
for everybody,
everywhere, all the time.
Take care of yourself,
take care of
places, Earth, the natural systems
that
now we know what we could not know.
45 years ago,
50 years ago, five years ago.
In the next 20 years
maybe we will
have figured it out.
Or maybe we won't.
But if we don't
really take it seriously,
we're going to lose the chances
that we now have available to us.
It's going to get harder
to reverse this decline
that we're currently experiencing.
The disruption, the loss.
We've learned more
since I was a kid.
I mean, all of us know things,
ten year olds, know things
that the smartest people
who ever lived 50 years ago,
Einstein had never seen
what Earth looks like from space.
So we've learned more,
but we've also lost more,
consumed more of our life
support system.
Any astronaut will tell you,
and I can tell you from,
using little submersibles,
first thing you do
is learn everything you can
about your life support system,
and then you do everything
you can to take care of it.
Otherwise you die.
We need to look at
what keeps us alive,
and there's a lot we still don't know.
97% of the ocean
still really unexplored.
What are we thinking?
We can make grand plans
and we should.
But if we don't, first of all,
look at the priority
of keeping ourselves safe.
By keeping nature safe,
we're going to mess up.
We won't make it.
So let's do it.
Very good.
Okay, Laura,
it's time to wrap it up.
Now, this is the part where I pitch
agent for us.
Let's start with the idea
that technology
solves your problems,
right?
Isn't that right?
Supposed to do anyway?
So I bring all my problems
to Marc.
I say, oh,
the emails are not deploying
at Christmas.
I'm losing millions of
dollars by the minute.
Who comes to the rescue?
Salesforce
fixes that.
Now we're deploying
how many
emails perfectly over the holidays
personalized to you
based on what you want,
not spamming you, but I know you.
We know you were using the data
to send you a better email.
That's one thing
I'm not even going to go to agentforce yet.
We'll get to that last.
But then
loyalty is important to retailers.
We have loyalty programs tender,
non tender
customers
like getting money back.
You can choose to use
somebody else's loyalty program
or you can do your own
loyalty program.
So we have one.
It's great.
You don't have to have
a credit cards your phone number.
But we had a bad technology
partner who,
you know, wasn't doing their job.
So I bring the problem again
to Marc Benioff.
He rebuilds our loyalty program,
integrates it with data cloud,
connects it with the information
about our customers.
And we're going to relaunch.
And by the way, so much cheaper.
I know a lot of
you think Salesforce is expensive.
It pays for this lunch.
I'm here to tell you
saving me so much money.
Retailers like
Williams-Sonoma, Inc.
care deeply
about customer service.
We spend a ton of money on it.
We have care centers
where real people
answer the phones,
but not every question
deserves an answer on the phone.
And sometimes
it's very inefficient
and you just want
your quick answer.
Where is my peppermint bark?
Is it going to be late?
This is very important.
Over the holidays,
they're freaking out,
but it doesn't
really need to be human.
So we launched agent for us,
replacing 60% of our chat.
Customer satisfaction 4.8
out of five
it’s real
We have a party trick called Olive.
You can check it out on our sites.
Start off is like.
You know, culinary advice, recipes,
people playing with it.
Now it's full integrated
product discovery.
And it's not just
like Magic Apron, Gemini, vertex,
Home Depot, it's
contextualized intelligence
telling you
what you should buy,
why it costs this much,
how to save money,
and how to cook your turkey.
Like for real now,
five years, maybe.
Hopefully five months.
This marks team is listening.
So I'm going to use
every second
is we're going
to embed that in the LLMs.
So you're going to have
an Olive app.
You're going to be on
whoever's LLM
let me roll my eyes again.
And you're going to be able
pull it up
and you're going to have Olive.
And I'm not going to check out
on there.
No, no, no,
I'm not checking out on ChatGPT
or Gemini. I'm never doing that.
Warm hand off.
Olive
takes you directly
back to Williams-Sonoma,
where you check out
seamlessly
with all the information
embedded Olive app
in the LLMs.
Okay, that's my wrap.
Very good.
That's what I want.
Let's make it happen, people.
I used Olive
after you made the pitch
at Dreamforce.
I actually tried it out
for my Thanksgiving
and it was successful.
So thank you.
So here's here's my pitch.
If you're
interested in advancing an AI
that is good.
That is good for people.
That's also good for business.
Come to Geneva in July,
come to the AI for good summit.
We're working with, with Mark
and some other players
to advance a global commission
that's focused on AI for good,
for all people,
for health care, for education,
for agriculture, for cooking.
In my kitchen.
I'm not a great cook,
but it works.
So if you want
to make a difference
and bring and leverage and unleash
AI for good for all
people, join us.
Well, there we go.
We've completed our panel.
I want to thank everyone
for coming for the lunch
and spending the time with us.
And, it's been a fantastic Davos
so far.
I'm looking forward to the,
party tonight.
I hope you also can see
how these five panelists
were chosen.
We wanted to kind of
give you ability
with your own minds
to kind of go on a journey
from today to the future,
and then back to today.
And I hope that,
we all are going to continue
to focus on doing what
we like to do
here at the World Economic Forum,
which is to
improve the state of the world.
But I think every single person
sitting up here
also realizes
that business can be
the greatest platform for change,
and that we all have
a tremendous responsibility
to, lead it and guide it
towards, the future that we want.
So thank you so much, everybody.
Really appreciate it.
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Salesforce Annual Lunch in Davos, 2026
Marc Benioff is joined by thought leaders from the private and public sectors to wrap up the week at the World Economic Forum. We hear from Dr. Sylvia Earle, Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Laura Alber, David Sacks, and will.i.am on key topics.
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