Wisdom in fragments

We don't trust human beings to do things without being audited, and we're now getting AI to do those very same things without the same checks and balances.

Dean of Cornell University's Blavatnik School of Engineering

Because these systems don't see the world the way we do, they can extrapolate things in novel and unexpected ways that we haven't identified. Systems like Deep Mind's AlphaGo are not beating humans at games through speed and brute force, they're discovering new ways to play which we never conceived.

Dean of Cornell University's Blavatnik School of Engineering

While people have been worried about AI being embedded in humanoid robots from the science fiction world, our lives have been shaped and influenced by AI which makes tens of billions of decisions each day about what we see, and how we communicate.

Dean of Cornell University's Blavatnik School of Engineering

There's a delicate balance between making sure our values are encoded in these technologies as they come out- and not constraining them so much that we lose the technological race to other nations who don't hold our values.

Dean of Cornell University's Blavatnik School of Engineering

AI has been an area of technology for many decades, but the advances of the past five-years show us why this is one of the major technology events of the last several centuries. We haven't really had a technology like AI in the history of technological development – the closest analogy would be the movable type printing press, which came to the fore at the beginning of the enlightenment, some five hundred years ago.

Dean of Cornell University's Blavatnik School of Engineering

We didn't want to be the best shipper of plastic, nor the best streaming technology, we positioned ourselves as a great place to find stories. We could make that true in the DVD world and the digital world through things like our taste-engine meaning that whether the product came in the post or through a wire, customers saw it as the same.

Co-Founder of Netflix & Streaming Pioneer

The people who were there at the beginning may not be the people who are scalable... As a founder, one of the hardest things you ever may need to do is take someone into your office who was there from the beginning... but who you now recognise doesn't have the skills for the next chapter of the business' journey.

Co-Founder of Netflix & Streaming Pioneer

The layers of compliance that appear in companies are basically what the company does to protect itself against bad judgement. They build guardrails. At Netflix, we decided to flip that around – rather than building systems to protect ourselves from bad decisions, we built systems of judgement, systems that are optimised for the people who have good judgement.

Co-Founder of Netflix & Streaming Pioneer

Culture is not aspirational, it's observational. It's not something you and your co-founders sit down, dream-up, put into PowerPoint, and create some posters from, for the break-out room. Culture, simply, is how you behave and how you treat your co-founders, employees, and customers.

Co-Founder of Netflix & Streaming Pioneer

The right idea is one that fascinates you, that you can't get out of your mind, that's a puzzle you want to solve. The path from a raw idea to success is a long one- full of frustration, dead-ends.... If you don't have something that genuinely fascinates you, you're going to give-up long before the point you finally stumble on the thing that works.

Co-Founder of Netflix & Streaming Pioneer

We have engineered a world where going into leadership or public office creates huge worry. That's a problem as it means that the people who go forward for these roles are those for whom power is the reward, not doing the work.

Political scientist & author specializing in authoritarianism and democracy

There's an innate tendency in human-beings to sort ourselves by how much we want power. Some of us don't want it at all, some of us are absolutely obsessed with it. The interaction between the individual and the system is therefore critical.

Political scientist & author specializing in authoritarianism and democracy

Our brains are adapted to pick leaders based on characteristics that are no longer adaptive, or necessary today. In times of crisis for example, we are wired to gravitate towards strong men – strong males who are overconfident and speak of solutions in simplistic terms. That's what historically it took to survive.

Political scientist & author specializing in authoritarianism and democracy

Digital media has allowed a complete bypass of those structures – there's less control around power – and people can amass huge followings for totally irrational reasons. Social media has broken the stranglehold that hierarchy often has in organisations for better and for worse.

Political scientist & author specializing in authoritarianism and democracy

So many of our systems of power are reliant on people putting themselves forward and guess what- people who are power-hungry will put themselves forward for positions of power. We need to seek out people not just rely on self-selection. We need to headhunt people who have demonstrated leadership capability and integrity rather than just relying on those who speak well or who are members of the right 'club.'

Political scientist & author specializing in authoritarianism and democracy

We have to create systems that make people think twice before they behave badly. People need to credibly believe that there will be consequences to their actions if caught in random stings. If you are in a position where you are uniquely able to wield power- politics, police, corporate leadership- you should be randomly subject to attempts to see if you behave badly when offered the opportunity to do so.

Political scientist & author specializing in authoritarianism and democracy