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Somebody asked me the other day about why I’ve had such a successful career, and my answer is ’cause I love maybe. And she had a perplexed face, and then I dug into it. And that is my answer to how I think about technology. This relationship I have with new technologies of maybe has been very powerful. Every time I look at something, I say maybe. I saw Bitcoin in 2013. I said maybe. I bought a couple, I lost them, but I bought them, and it didn’t mean that I thought Bitcoin was going to change the world then, but maybe it might. And there’s been social networks, Vine, Socialcam, Clerk, all sorts of things that people don’t remember. Peach, all these different apps that I spent time on, ’cause it was maybe, and it didn’t manifest in growth but when I said maybe to YouTube eight weeks after YouTube came out, that worked out for me.
I believe the far majority of people in the world, when faced with a new technology, throw up an enormous no sign. No, they don’t want to be on the internet. No, they do not want a pager. No, do they not want a mobile phone. No, do they want a blackberry. No, do they want to switch to iPhone? No, do they want to open a Facebook account? On and on and on and on, and I remind all of you, which is most of you who are watching this, most of the things you say no to, you eventually have to say yes to ’cause it’s how the world works. So no matter how hard you tried to not have a smartphone, ’cause you didn’t want the internet following you around ’cause it was enough that the internet was at home, you now have that.
As a business leader, the reason I think you’re going to learn to embrace maybe is ’cause the market’s not going to give you any choice. Every business leader that obsesses and puts “no” on a pedestal goes out of business eventually. No means you’re not doing anything. It means you’re doing yesterday, and unfortunately, that’s just not how the world works. Tomorrow comes. Kmart in America as a big retailer said no to enough things that allowed Walmart to pass it. Microsoft said no to enough things that let Google happen. And Google said no to enough things that let Facebook happen and on and on and on. And I believe “no” is poison for long-term growth so I highly recommend people get off the “no” train.
I believe with AI, we’re seeing some of the most aggressive “no” ever. Everyone’s like AI is bad. And by the way, there are many things that are bad about AI or potentially bad. The fact that deep fake videos are going to be prevalent all over the internet is bad. The fact that there are videos of me in five years saying a million things I’ve never said and you won’t be able to tell if it’s a real video or not, that’s bad. It’s bad because we’re going to have to reset the world from believing video. For the last 100 years, we believe video. I get that we’re going to have to adjust, but guess what? We always adjust, and so I beg everyone to not just demonize because AI is going to be the technology that saves a lot of people’s lives when finding cancer that the best doctor in the world couldn’t find. Or just like the tractor trailer was demonized ’cause it took people’s jobs from farms, ’cause now a trailer could do it instead of people, what happened was people found new things they could do.
And the reason we as humans continue to advance into more complex forms is because we keep inventing technologies that find and buy us time to be able to do more things. AI is going to be the single technology that enables almost every single person that’s watching this to spend more time with their family before they die. You know how great that is? So yes, I’m obsessed with “maybe,” I believe that people are way too into “no,” and I believe “maybe,” by the way, is not just a good framework for technology. I think it’s a good framework for life.