Brainstorm Tech 2024: Welcome
Maryam Banikarim, Managing Director, Fortune Live Media, Andrew Nusca, Fortune, Alyson Shontell, Fortune
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00:00Hey everybody how we doing? Yes I like the energy very good very good. All right
00:06good afternoon and welcome to Fortune Brainstorm Tech 2024. We are so glad
00:11you're here and we are so pleased to be back in Park City for another year of
00:15our annual excuse me Mountain Retreat. Since our very first in 2001
00:20Brainstorm has brought together the smartest people we know to tackle the
00:24world's problems and interrogate the role that technology plays in them.
00:29Veterans of this event know, how many are veterans? Raise your hand. Oh yes I love
00:33it thank you. Veterans of this event know there is nothing like a Fortune
00:38Brainstorm. Each year we host a collective conversation, a dialogue, a
00:42discussion, a democratic exchange of ideas. Everyone invited to attend
00:48Brainstorm is accomplished enough to speak and we encourage you to do so at
00:52every turn especially at our signature roundtable sessions. Let your ideas flow.
00:58And for fans of the TV show The Bear I present the following non-negotiable. An
01:04environment that embraces and encourages razzle-dazzle and the dream weave. All
01:10right anyway there's a lot to talk about this year adversarial artificial
01:14intelligence for one, regulation is another give it up for regulation I'm
01:19just kidding. Robots in the workforce making bets in this economy, our
01:23insatiable hunger for human connection and there's some sort of election this
01:29year? I don't know we'll talk about it later. Anyway at Brainstorm we also host
01:33conversations with whom we call leading thinkers and thinking leaders to spark
01:38discussion among the group and we're gonna do that right here on this stage.
01:41You're in for a real treat this week. The investor Rulof Botta is joining us. The
01:47musician and entrepreneur Aloe Black is on the program. Today you will
01:52hear from Mary Daly the president of the San Francisco Fed. Tomorrow you'll hear
01:57from the CEOs of Grindr, Zoox, Ripple, Runway, Lucid Motors and if you don't
02:03stick around for my Wednesday conversation with Kara Swisher you will
02:06surely regret it. Before I continue I want to introduce you to the woman who
02:11now runs the business of Brainstorm. Some of you have already met her. In addition
02:15to that of Fortune's Most Powerful Women franchise. I first met her at this very
02:19event a decade ago and I'm delighted to now call her a colleague. Please meet
02:23connector, community builder and consummate New Yorker Mariam Bannikarim.
02:35It's so nice to have you all here and I think we need another welcome for Andrew
02:40who's returned to Fortune. There just wasn't enough energy in that for me
02:47Andrew so sorry. I couldn't be more excited to lead Brainstorm Tech and Most
02:52Powerful Women alongside Andrew and the incredibly talented journalists and team
02:56that we have. Now I'm gonna bet that like many of you I was a kid who wanted to
03:02make a difference and I chose to make that difference in the world of business.
03:05And that's what actually makes me interested in this role at Fortune
03:10because Fortune's mission is to change the world by making business better and
03:16for me that's personal. In a world that is filled with rapid innovation, societal
03:23instability and political polarization we have an opportunity and that's why as
03:30I look across this room and I see all you smart powerful people here coming
03:37together to solve some of the big issues of the day I am hopeful. It's great to be
03:43back here. My first Fortune brainstorm was in 2014. I love the energy on stage
03:50and in the tents. If I haven't had a chance to meet you yet at horseback
03:55riding or any of the other events I'll be looking for you at the tent. Over to
03:59you Andrew. Oh thank you. Mariam isn't my only co-conspirator for
04:04brainstorm of course. Each year's program is carefully curated by an ace
04:08team. You know some of them and that includes our co-chairs and I'd like to
04:11introduce them to you now. Please hold your applause till the end if you
04:14don't mind. Please meet Fortune editor-in-chief and chief content
04:17officer Alison Chantel, Fortune tech correspondent Jason Del Rey. Jason where
04:22are you? There we go. And our two multi-hyphenate guest chairs this year
04:26the CEO of Pi and co-founder of Bonobos Andy Dunn. There's Andy. And the founding
04:32partner of Human Ventures and Casa Comos Brands Group Joe Marchese. Joe where are
04:36you? There we go. All right please a round of applause for everybody.
04:44We also had extra help this year. This year we established what we call our
04:50brain trust. It's literally called that. An advisory board drawn from this very
04:55community. We wanted to hear your voices more powerfully. So we're so grateful for
04:59their guidance. The members of the brain trust along the way and I'm gonna
05:03list them now. A special thanks to Eric Brynjolfsson, Terry Burns, Jill Greenberg
05:14Chase, Lucy Guo, Brooke Hammerling, Lena Kvotchko, TJ Parker, Raj Seshadri, Laila
05:30Chetikov and Ken Washington. A round of applause for all of them please.
05:39So we want to also acknowledge our partners for this event right. Without
05:46their continued support and contribution this wouldn't be possible.
05:50Salesforce our premier partner, Lenovo, New York Stock Exchange, Qualtrics and
05:57Threshold and of course our sponsor KPMG. Thank you for helping make
06:02brainstorm what it is and making it come to life. Finally I want to take a moment
06:06and do a shout out to our fortune founders forum. I got a chance to meet
06:11some of them last night. They're an incredibly special cohort of early-stage
06:15entrepreneurs that you will want to meet and we've invited them to join us here
06:19in Park City. They're rising stars who are solving some very big problems and
06:24you'll be thrilled to welcome them I am sure. So please look for them they
06:28actually have a lanyard that makes them a little bit more obvious. So want to
06:32take it from here? Yes thank you Miriam. All right this morning we kicked off the
06:37day with a range, that's a mountain pun folks, of activities set against the
06:43glorious natural backdrop that is Utah. Show of hands how many people broke a
06:47sweat this morning? Yes me too. I love it. Thank you. That's right we hiked, we
06:54whitewater rafted, we fly fished, we even bobsledded. All right folks who
07:00were alive in the 90s say it with me. Feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme, get on
07:04up it's... thank you. Sanka. An important reminder about that actually um we are
07:13at altitude in case you haven't noticed so please drink lots of water all the
07:17way through the event. We have water stations pretty much all over the place
07:21if you need any. Before we dive into the program I want to bring up our editor
07:25in chief Alison Chantel for a few words. Come on up Alison. Thanks Andrew and I
07:36just wanted to say a big thank you to all of you for being here with us today.
07:39So Fortune's mission for 95 years has been to be the arbiter of truth and
07:44high-quality journalism for global leaders. It's never been harder for any
07:49of us to do our jobs than it is right now and so I think that mission of
07:52journalism is ever ever more important especially as we're looking ahead at
07:56what AI will do to the proliferation of things like it'll bring a lot of great
08:00change it will also bring a lot of misinformation, a lot of lack of trust. So
08:03I think it is ever more important for all of us to gather in settings like
08:06this. I know your time is so valuable. The work we're doing as journalists is
08:10valuable too. I think the danger zone is when none of us want to talk anymore. I
08:14see that all over my social media feeds. It is so important for us all to be
08:18together in this environment sharing ideas, challenging ideas, growing together,
08:22making sure that the truth comes to light in really responsible ways. So
08:26we're investing in bringing people like Andrew Nuska back into our newsroom.
08:29We're producing our next issue of the magazine coming up. You're gonna see a
08:33couple of speakers here this week who will be featured in the next issue but
08:36we're continuing to bring the high-quality journalism you need to run
08:40your companies to the best of your abilities and please keep talking to our
08:42journalists. Please seek them out because it is so important for the communication
08:45to not stop. So thank you and enjoy brainstorm tech.
08:52you