Marissa Mayer on the AI revolution and why she wants to clean up your contacts

SEASON 3, EPISODE 1

MARISSA MAYER ON THE AI REVOLUTION AND WHY SHE WANT STO CLEAN UP YOUR CONTACTS

Marissa Mayer is one of the most successful and influential women in tech. As employee #20 at Google, she played a lead role in building the iconic products we use every day, like Google Search, Gmail, AdWords, and Google Maps. As President and CEO at Yahoo, she learned important lessons on leadership, growth, and engagement. Now, she's in a role she’s never had before: founder. As the Co-Founder and CEO of Sunshine, Marissa is focused on cleaning up our contacts and making us happier by improving our relationships -- with a little help from artificial intelligence. Marissa joins us to share how she’s seen AI evolve from her days as a Stanford student researching AI to now -- and why we might be on the eve of another technological revolution. She reflects on her experience in scaling and risk-taking at Google and always putting the user first. And, she discusses her long-term vision for Sunshine, why we should take a cautious view on AI regulation, and why search still has a long way to go.

“I like to work on everyday problems. And when we looked around, we were like, everyone's contacts are a mess! Everyone ends up putting off getting together with a group of friends or doing a trip with someone just because the organizational friction is so hard. What we want to do is start to take some of those mundane everyday tasks that can benefit from a little bit of more advanced technology and see what we can achieve there.”

Marissa Mayer Co-Founder & CEO, Sunshine

Reasons why Marissa considers herself an AI optimist (and her response to AI pessimists)
The value of following human-centered principles when experimenting with AI
Why, with AI innovation advancing so quickly and unpredictably, regulating it requires a collaborative partnership between industry and government
A brief history lesson of the evolution of artificial intelligence -- from John McCarthy’s first coining the term in the mid-1950s, to AI optimism in the late 1960s and early 1970s, to the “winter of AI,” to today’s exciting era of generative AI, where LLMs like ChatGPT are demonstrating AI's newfound ability to be expressive

Why “more screen time is a non-goal” at Sunshine, and how its suite of products -- including Sunshine Contacts and Sunshine Birthdays -- works to free up your time, not take more of it
Why contact management and organization is foundational to Sunshine’s long-term growth strategy
Why the tech industry needs to continue to push on including new voices, perspectives, and diversity in order to drive progress, inform new products, and create better outcomes

MARISSA MAYER ON THE AI REVOLUTION AND WHY SHE WANTS TO CLEAN UP YOUR CONTACTS

MARISSA MAYER ON THE AI REVOLUTION AND WHY SHE WANT STO CLEAN UP YOUR CONTACTS

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE TO LEARN:

NEVER MISS AN EPISODE