Ruth Porat
Appearances
Redefiners
Redefiners Rewind: Insights and Takeaways from 2024
The first is that it is imperative for each of us as leaders to identify our greatest source of vulnerability early and fortify against it. For a bank, one of the most important things that one needs is to have liquidity to keep your operations running. moving. It's really liquidity. When you get choked with lack of liquidity, that's what leads to the demise.
Redefiners
Redefiners Rewind: Insights and Takeaways from 2024
And in that moment, in that fall, there was nothing a bank could do to really get that liquidity needed. Whereas six months prior, it would have been easy to do and not very expensive to do so. The second really important lesson is something that Secretary Paulson said to me during the crisis, which is you need to have the will and the means.
Redefiners
Redefiners Rewind: Insights and Takeaways from 2024
And too often by the time you have the will, in other words, the political will, you no longer have the means, the financial means. And I think each of us can think of times as we've been leading where. You delay making the tough call that you need to make. It becomes that much more expensive later and sometimes impossible to even grapple with and handle the magnitude of the issue.
Redefiners
Redefiners Rewind: Insights and Takeaways from 2024
And the third very important one is you need to develop a team, pull together a team that brings in the requisite experience. I keep saying I need two things. I want to have horizontal vision, connect the dots to all of the related issues and And you also want people who have instinct based on experience.
Redefiners
Redefiners Rewind: Insights and Takeaways from 2024
There are really four primary opportunities with AI. First, very exciting, is advancing the frontiers for science. The second is just the economic uplift that's been estimated to be in the trillions globally. The third is really advancing solutions around some of the biggest social issues facing humanity around education, health care, climate. And the fourth is really enhancing cybersecurity.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
So when I was first diagnosed with cancer, it was terrifying. My children at the time were five, seven, and nine. And I just... Wanting to make sure I was there to see them grow up, to be their mom. It was absolutely, absolutely terrifying. And I think that one of the important points to your question is one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in our lifetime.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
40% of Americans will be diagnosed with some form of cancer in their lifetime. And so there are some really important learnings that I've had that I... I really actually like to share with people because I think there's a level of optimism, which when you first hear that awful diagnosis, it's hard to realize that you can have. The first thing is I learned to love the word manageable.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
When I was first diagnosed and realized I needed to go through chemo as well. It was a terrifying concept, but I actually learned that even chemo was manageable. I was one of the lucky ones. I know some people do have reactions to it, but this was 20 years ago and it's only gotten better since then. And the level of care, the quality of care and the success rate is extraordinary.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
The process itself is manageable. The second really important lesson that I learned, and I learned this the second time I was diagnosed with cancer. It felt like at that point, it was this never-ending uphill battle. And I spoke to someone who had cancer a number of times, and he told me a story that...
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
I've repeated frequently because it inspired me so much, which was that when you have cancer on good days, a bird will come to your shoulder. And that bird will say, you may think you're having a good day, but actually you have cancer. And I was assured that over time, the bird would come less frequently. And one day that bird would fly away for good.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
And it was a really important message because when the bird showed up, and it does, anyone who's had cancer, I would bet, has had this freaking bird show up. You know to say, you're not going to be coming back and get out of there. And I want to own my life. I want to enjoy life. And you can. And that was the way I got it. For me, it was really valuable to hide and work. I got joy out of that.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
Everyone has their own way to do it. You can't prejudge. You can't know until you're in the moment. But I would say that level of confidence about the pace of change is something everyone should have. And with AI, the pace of change is nothing short of staggering. The final thing I would say sort of goes back to the way you framed the question.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
Everyone needs to get that diagnosis early because the difference between getting it early and getting it late can be the difference between survival. Anyone who's pushed off getting a checkup, go get a checkup. And what I'm really proud of, again, with AI is some work that our teams did years ago. We can now, with AI,
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
identify, diagnose early stage metastatic breast cancer and other cancers at the highest quality level. And when I called my oncologist and asked if this was as profound as I thought, his comment was the only way to democratize healthcare is with AI. Wow. Because it seems that any patient anywhere on the globe has the same quality read or as I had at Memorial Sloan Kettering.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
And it's an operating leverage for radiologists everywhere. So I look, I think the main thing is with the advances in care, remain optimistic. So many cancers are actually now in that land of manageable. I appreciate not all of them are, and there's a lot of work being done to add to the list. of cancers that are manageable. But for many of us, that bird is the right metaphor. It will fly away.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
If I can add one thing, I'm so sorry. You two are going through a large club that we have. Yeah, we're not alone. When I went through it the first time and I was bald and had a mastectomy and I've never actually talked about that publicly before. And working in a bank with basically only men, it was not something I wanted to talk about.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
But I found that when I did, the outpouring of support and care was about the best medicine that I could have. And I think that to your point, Clark, yeah, everybody wants to ring that bell with you. And it does fortify everybody.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
So I think the most important thing is each of us needs to invest for long-term growth because if you're not investing for long-term growth, you're sowing the seeds of your own destruction. And so you need to aggressively invest. And sometimes you're taking bigger bets than others, but you need to be very clear-eyed and stack rank what are the biggest priorities,
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
Where can you deprecate, free up resources to self-fund the most important priorities? And that needs to be a rigorous process in every area across one's portfolio. And for us, it starts with search. The search experience continues to evolve. You see it now with AI overviews, everything we're doing, enhancing what is the user experience? How do you access information?
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
And youth, for example, we're very quick to move to like, it's all about voice and it's, you know, increased, it's about video. So it continues to evolve. We need to be evolving the product to stay ahead of where we need to be. We're investing for long-term growth because technology, If you wait until you get to that point, which as a banker, I saw too many companies do.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
And then they're like, now what do I do? If you're not investing early, you're sowing the seeds of your own destruction. And it is very exciting within the portfolio to see what are some of the efforts that we've been nurturing for years and you're now experiencing firsthand. You know, the number two tourist attraction in San Francisco today is Waymo, self-driving cars.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
And for anyone who comes out, you need to pop in one because it truly is an extraordinary experience. That's been years in the making. And now you're increasingly seeing it in cities across the United States. But again, it starts with identify the highest priorities, identify what you can free up to fund those highest priorities, self-funding part of what the growth is across one's portfolio.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
everywhere are saying they want to be part of this digital transformation. They see the economic uplift that's available with the proper application of AI across industries. They see the opportunity to address education, to address healthcare, to address agriculture. And so their question is, how do we become part of this? How do we become an attractive place for investment?
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
And I keep coming back to what I visually think of as a triangle, which is Google idiosyncratically has products and services that enable people everywhere to have the same quality access to information and markets that we do sitting here in the Bay Area or you do in New York. That's the suite of Google products and services that we're very proud of.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
But to your question, the only way to access that is if there are investments in technical infrastructure, second part of the triangle. And if you have a population that is educated, that has the skills, that is digitally proficient, digitally skilled. And so that's the triangle, solutions, infrastructure, and really investments in a resilient workforce with the digital skilling that's needed.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
That's what we look to provide as we go into any market, any country with whom we're working.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
The opportunity with technology is profound for every country. 85% of economic growth over the last 80 years is attributable to technology. And so the most important thing as we're sitting here today is to identify how collectively we can benefit from the upside while protecting against mitigating the downside risks.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
We need to be clear-eyed about the art of the possible and fortifying to make sure that we're being responsible, collectively responsible in everything we can do. I've already spoken about the upside. It's profound. Whether it's advancing science, it's the trillions in economic uplift, it's around healthcare, it's around education. The upside is clear.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
And the concern to your question about downside risk is enormous. appropriate, important, and we're very focused on it. And so I think it's our obligation to work constructively with regulators when they ask any of the questions or looking at any of the issues around workforce transition or energy utilization content to make sure that we're operating on a solid foundation.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
We need to constructively engage. And I found the same thing when I was in financial services. As they were looking to implement changes coming out of the financial crisis,
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
Those who were in banks who were putting country first, trying to understand what are some of the issues around implementation became valuable partners to people in the regulatory world who are trying to understand how to land something that enables the upside benefit without the downside risk.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
And so it's imperative to be constructively engaging, responsibly putting the problem solving first in order to get this done. Upside downside, right?
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
I think it's such an important question because, as I said, we're privileged to be living in this amazing time in history with AI. And it does require each of us to radically rethink all elements of our business because what you don't want to do is be at the back end of something that is evolving. It is easier to prevent than to fix. It is easier to be ahead of the curve than trying to catch up.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
So to give you two examples, one of the ones I get really excited about, and a lot of this is through Google Cloud and the work that they do with their partners. One example is with logistics leaders across a whole host of different areas. They've come to us and said, how can we optimize? are routes. And that saves them money. It saves them time.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
And in many instances, what they're also saying is, thank you. It's also addressing our carbon footprint and some of the goals that we've set for ourselves there. And I'll give you one in the public sector, which I really like. In the state of Minnesota, we were asked to do some work with the public sector where they wanted to better provision services to their constituents.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
And initially, they said they wanted to be able to do that in four primary languages. I hadn't even realized there were four primary languages that would be critical there. There were. But after a number of months, they came back and said, actually, we want to extend it by another 26 languages. The ability with Google Translate, whether you're in the public sector or the private sector,
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
Well, my career at Morgan Stanley, I think, was invigorating in part because I moved around a lot throughout my time there. My view was that as the world changed, new opportunities arose, and I wanted to be open to those. In fact, the key phrase that I used throughout my career is, what's my highest and best use? And that did open doors that I didn't know existed.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
To meet people where they want to be met in their own language is so easy with AI. And so, again, each one of us has opportunities, whether it's how you interact with customers or how you manage your expense line so you can invest more for long-term growth. There are a host of opportunities that are relevant for every industry. You have to radically rethink what you're doing.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
Probably Maps and YouTube, both for music to start my day and pump it up the right way and for amazing podcasts.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
Probably, I'd probably want to be a concert pianist. What motivates you the most? Feeling like I'm having an impact, doing something valuable, learning. My father, probably in many respects, I turn back to something that he always said as I was growing up. He said, education is a passport to freedom. It's a passport for life.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
And he was a Holocaust refugee, made it to the United States years after the war. I was born in England and loved this country. In his final days, he talked about the risk of coming to this country. So I think that the opportunity to do things that make a difference, to me, that's the most inspiring.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
You know, it builds off of what I just said about my dad. It's addressing the opportunity gap. Everyone deserves the opportunity to have a shot at the best life they can lead. And there are many paths to that. I think the umbrella would be around opportunity. And so probably the most important is around education and skills to thrive in the world in which we live.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
Well, the book I just finished reading was Maniac. And I read it because the author is such an extraordinary author. And his first book I read was When We Cease to Understand the World. So I immediately went right into the next one. And importantly, it traces the life of an extraordinary physicist, von Neumann. And then it ends with our colleague, Demis Hassabis, in the final chapter.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
So everyone at Google has to read that book.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
I started in mergers and acquisitions and thought that was the only thing I would ever want to do. But as the world changed, I then ended up taking on leadership of a private equity coverage group and technology, financial institutions, eventually leading to the role as CFO at Morgan Stanley. And it was an incredible opportunity. opportunity and privilege to be CFO at that time.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
Well, when I entered my career, it didn't occur to me I would be a C-suite leader and I had never thought about it. I think that people who plan to deliberately miss things along the way and that what actually opened the door for me to be here was the fact that I wasn't rigid in my thinking and I didn't have a clear plan. My plan was just to continue growing and learning and having an impact.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
It goes back to an earlier answer when I said the most important thing for me is to keep asking, what's your highest and best use? And if you keep addressing that question, what's your highest and best use, and you don't have blinders on, you will find that leaders eventually say, wow, if you did X and Y and A and B, you can probably do something else as well.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
And that's why doors then kept opening. And I didn't take all of the doors. You have to know yourself and know when to say no. But it's also important to have that debate with people you trust and respect who are thinking out for you, not just for the expedient problem they have, so you know when to turn down a door and when to take the door. That's what I would say is the most important.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
Just keep learning and being open to new ideas.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
It was right after the financial crisis, still coming out of the financial crisis in 2010 when James Gorman took on as CEO. And it was still pretty rough back in 2010 coming out of the financial crisis. And I think we did a lot of really important work over the years to put Morgan Stanley in a very strong position. And I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to work with him as closely as we did.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
But by 2015, my question that I always ask in my career, what's my highest and best use? And I had a wonderful conversation with somebody by the name of Bill Campbell. He was written up in a book called The Trillion Dollar Coach because he had actually coached Steve Jobs and Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, and others.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
And so I had this wonderful conversation with him where I asked that question, how to think about my next chapter. And he actually was the one who said, after a long conversation, the obvious answer for him was Google, CFO of Google. And my reaction had been, I don't want to be a CFO again. But when he said Google, the reaction Clark just had, I kind of... Of course.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
And I had actually worked on the IPO of Google, admired Google immensely, and so jumped when that opportunity arose. And it's been quite a run.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
In certain respects, it was very easy. I'd grown up out here in Silicon Valley. My father was a physicist at Stanford. I had run the technology banking group, capital markets group, worked on a lot of the IPOs through the late 90s. And so it was familiar. And as I said, having taken Google public, many elements of it were familiar. The apparel was very different. That was my first question.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
Jeans and hoodies was different. But other than that, it's really this question about how do you just keep asking what's the art of the possible was an important part for me and really the allure, the magnet to come out here.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
I find that I... go back to lessons from the financial crisis over and over again. And during the financial crisis, just for context, I was working very closely with the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve through all aspects from the housing crisis, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, all the way through to AIG at the back end.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
It's probably one of the most meaningful times in my career, working so closely with Secretary Paulson and Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Fed, obviously at the time. And those lessons were searing. And and critically important for me.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
What struck me when I got to Google is that I was asked to take people through what actually happened during the financial crisis and what lessons did I think were most relevant. And when I was first asked it, it seemed odd because Google had only lived through sunny days and I was trying to see how relevant those lessons were. And it struck me
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
Importantly to your question, these lessons are relevant in good times and in bad. And I keep coming back to three key messages, three key lessons. The first is that it is imperative for each of us as leaders to identify our greatest source of vulnerability early and fortify against it.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
For a bank, one of the most important things that one needs is to have liquidity to keep your operations running. moving. It's really liquidity. When you get choked with lack of liquidity, that's what leads to the demise. And in that moment, in that fall, there was nothing a bank could do to really get that liquidity needed.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
Whereas six months prior, it would have been easy to do and not very expensive to do so. The second really important lesson is something that Secretary Paulson said to me during the crisis, which is you need to have the will and the means. And too often by the time you have the will, in other words, the political will, you no longer have the means, the financial means.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
And I think each of us can think of times as we've been leading where you delay making the tough call that you need to make. It becomes that much more expensive later and sometimes impossible to even grapple with and handle the magnitude of the issue. And the third very important one is you need to develop a team, pull together a team that brings in the requisite experience.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
I keep saying, I need two things. I want to have horizontal vision, connect the dots to all of the related issues. And you also want people who have instinct based on experience. And again, in the moment, you can't do that.
Redefiners
Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
And so that's why this notion of having the strength of a team that is enabling you to think ahead, build the strength that one needs, fortify ahead of time is critically needed in good times and bad. And I certainly saw that as we were leading on a lot of the growth that's been so exciting here at Google, but also going through some of the tougher times like COVID.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
So those would be the three lessons I take from it.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
I think the most important is to be authentic to what you know and be honest with oneself about what you still have to learn. So I'll give you an example. I just mentioned that during the financial crisis, I had been leading the financial institutions group at Morgan Stanley, responsible for banks and insurance companies. But the most important part of that experience was the work with U.S.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
Treasury with Hank Paulson and Chairman Bernanke. Out of that, I was asked to become CFO of Morgan Stanley. And when I moved into that role, notwithstanding the fact that I had been at Morgan Stanley for several decades, I'd been on the investment banking side, the advisory side. I really didn't know the sales and trading side at the level of depth that I knew I would at a certain point in time.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
And so my first series of meetings with investors, I actually anchored more on what's the regulatory environment coming out of this financial crisis. Because I knew I had a differentiated set of insights there that would be valuable, that would help contextualize the types of investments that we were making at Morgan Stanley to fortify ourselves.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
And it really established, I think, a credibility because I was anchoring on things that I knew well. maybe even in a differentiated sense, as distinct from trying to pretend I knew everything about the business at one time. Another example is when I was asked to run the financial institutions group at Morgan Stanley. And this actually brings together your first question and this most recent one.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
My initial reaction was there was no way I was going to do that. Really? It was too boring. Like I spent my entire career avoiding anything boring. I worked in technology, you know, kind of private equity. And somebody I respected greatly said, you got to trust me on this. Financial institutions is just like technology, ballpark 20-something percent of the global economy, multi-sector.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
We have banks, insurance asset managers, and technology. When I was running it, we had hardware, software, semis, internet. And so I did. I said, I'll take it on. And he wanted to do something helpful to open doors for me in the first meeting. So we set up my first meeting covering this new industry with Larry Fink. I'm thinking, okay, this is not going to end well.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
Extraordinary leader of an asset management firm. I know nothing about asset management. But what I did know was I knew about technology because I'd run the technology banking business at Morgan Stanley. And Larry has always been a leader in technology.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
And so my view was if I spoke to him about BlackRock Solutions rather than other parts of the business, we would be able to go deeper than most of the bankers who covered financial institutions and it would establish a base upon which we could build over time. And so again, go to what you know idiosyncratically well. It has credibility and authenticity.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
You can be differentiated and you will fill out the rest over time.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
I think it's an exciting question at this moment in time, because I do believe that we are extraordinarily fortunate to be living in this time with AI and the implications for society. And the way we talk about it at Google, there are really four primary opportunities with AI. First, very exciting, is advancing the frontiers for science.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
The second is just the economic uplift that's been estimated to be in the trillions globally. The third is really advancing solutions around some of the biggest social issues facing humanity around education, healthcare, climate. And the fourth is really enhancing cybersecurity. And two examples may best help get at your question.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
You know, at Google, one of the many things I'm proud of is what we've done with Google Translate. And over the last 20 years, our teams have been working to expand the number of languages included within Google Translate. They're now 260 languages. In the last six months alone, the team added 110 of that 260. In other words, it's been a vertical lift.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
We added 500 million people on the planet can now access information in their own language. But that vertical lift is important because if you're not at the front end of change, how do you catch up when something's under a vertical lift? The second, which starts to get even more closely to your question, is really the work that was done by Google DeepMind to deliver something called Alpha Folds.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
And I'm so proud of my colleagues, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, who were awarded the Nobel Prize for AlphaFold. What AlphaFold does is it predicts protein structures. They went on a path to predict the protein structure for all proteins. So they have now predicted for more than 200 million proteins.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
What's important about that is that it is being described as the single greatest contribution to drug discovery in our lifetime. And without AI applied to predicting protein structures, we're talking about millions of scientists' years to try and reach this. In other words, not in our lifetime.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
And to me, what is so profound about this is the way Demis Asavas thought about it when he embarked on the journey. And so many people said to him, how can this be possible? And his answer was, why not?
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
And I think the importance with AI, and it starts to get to your question more directly, is each one of us needs to radically rethink what is in the art of the possible, just as he did with AlphaFold. And that's true with how do you connect with customers? What's operating efficiency? What are risk analytics? How does a public sector leader better communicate with constituents?
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
What is the art of the possible is fundamentally changed. And so when I think about the type of people that are imperative. It's always been people with a growth mindset who want to learn, who push themselves. And that is true now with a sense of urgency because you just go back to this Google Translate and the vertical lift is what we're seeing in so many areas.
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Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat
So you want to move with speed and think broadly about what is the art of the possible.