 Good afternoon. It's a very exciting session. For me, I consider myself as an entrepreneur, even if I'm a social entrepreneur working for the public good. But to have on my side someone who is considered as one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our times, Sergei Brin, who is, as you know, the co-founder and president of Alphabet. I think it's a unique opportunity to exchange some views with you. And I wonder whether I should take my tie off or not. But let me go immediately into the subject. We talk a lot about the Fawcitas Revolution. And I have written a book one year ago. When I look at the contents, I have the feeling such a lot is already outdated. Was considered a year ago science fiction is already reality. So maybe my first question to you is, where do you see the edges and the next frontiers of the Fawcitas Revolution? That's a fantastic question. First of all, let me just tell all of you that you maybe should doubt my answers a little bit. So when I was heading up Google X a few years back, and one little project we had in there, which is now called Google Brain, which was this AI effort. But I didn't pay attention to it at all, to be perfectly honest. And myself having been trained as a computer scientist in the 90s, everybody knew AI didn't work. It's not like people tried it. They tried neural nets. None of them worked out. And this fellow, who was one of our top computer scientists, Jeff Dean, would periodically come up with me and look. The computer made a picture of a cat. And I'd say, OK, that's very nice, Jeff. Go do your thing, whatever. And fast forward a few years. And now, Brain probably touches every single one of our main projects, ranging from search, to photos, to ads, to everything we do. And this kind of revolution in deep nets has been very profound and definitely surprised me, even though I was right in there sitting, like I could throw paper clips at him. It's an incredible time. And it's very hard to forecast what can these things do. We don't really know the limits. And in 100 years, if we imagine ourselves that these can do kind of everything we can imagine and more, it's a hard thing to think through and has really incredible possibilities. But I think it's impossible to forecast accurately. But Sergei, would you see more the positive side? Of course, as an entrepreneur, you have to see the positive side. But do you see also possible risks in all those fancy, if I may use this word, a new means, which we will have at our disposal? I think it definitely requires some thought. And incredibly, and I'm here at Davos, and I'm just shocked at how I feel like the Luddite in the room, everybody's talking about, well, how do we cope with this increased automation here and the jobs displaced and so forth? And I feel like the one like, oh, actually, that's pretty hard to do with a computer. And I kind of know what we're trying to accomplish to make that technology work. And I think a lot of folks here are, I think, correctly forward thinking, taking some of those innovations for granted and then saying, well, what does that mean for society and so forth? I think that's the right thing to do. I think thinking through sort of AIs, the continuing of the automation that we've seen in the past 200 years and how that evolves society and economy and social order, that's the smart thing to do. I don't think it's sort of impossible somehow, but it deserves a lot of thought. You cannot, let me say, stop it. You can channel it. But I want to follow up a little bit about the horizons. We speak about our times now being, let's say, shaped by the digital revolution. Some people would say, when we sit here again, you came over 10 years ago as one of our young global leaders for the first time here. When we sit again together in 10 years, we may much more talk about the biological revolution. And of course, there's a combination of the biological and the digital revolution. Can you explain your thinking in this respect, particularly because I know you are very interested in the medical issues also? Yeah. Well, I think you can approach health from several levels and say, well, the specific things that we are afflicted with, whether it's heart health or cancer or Parkinson's, I'm personally passionate about. And look at the specifics of treatments and understanding of those diseases. You can look at the more, this is a dilemma I have, is I kind of invest in Parkinson's research. Should I be doing that? Or should I be investing in more fundamental research? You've seen what CRISPR, for example, has allowed biologists across all disease categories to use that kind of a tool. And it's just a more general kind of biochemistry innovation. And genomics has obviously brought us a lot of innovation there broadly. But then you could also ask the next question now, leading to what you said about the digital revolution. Well, if we had smarter processing, smarter software, could it unveil patterns and understanding, should we just be working on the machine learning solutions that are broadly going to allow us to do more in biology, but also in other fields in the economy and electronics and astronomy? So it's a whole set of layers. And these lower-level layers, the increased machine learning and so forth, kind of spans the gamut of human endeavors. And therefore, when you invest in those things, you get this multiplied effect. But of course, you still need to do the biology. And then you need to understand the individual diseases. And ultimately, you need to treat individual people. So big data, digital tools, that's a service of medical and biological progress and advancing very fast. But can you imagine that in 10 years when we are sitting here, we have an implant in our brains. And I can immediately feel, because you all will have implants, I can and we measure your brainwaves. And I can immediately tell you how the people react or I can feel how the people react to your answers. Is it imaginable? I think that is imaginable. I think you can imagine that. You can imagine, well, you're going to be sort of transplanted into the internet. So to speak to live forever in a digital realm. You can imagine that you just in your biological incarnation are going to live to be some very long age. I think it is almost impossible to predict. And in fact, the evolution of technology might be inherently chaotic. I mean, it could have been the case a couple of hundred years back if it so happened that electricity evolved a little bit faster compared to internal combustion, that we all would have been driving electric cars today and then somebody would have a new fangled internal combustion thing that would be like, well, that's kind of weird. But history happened to go one way. Maybe there are fundamental inherent reasons for that. But I think when you ask these kinds of questions about the future, what does it mean to be human in the future? What does it mean to be an individual versus society? Kind of where are we going in the long term? I mean, these are deep and powerful and fundamental philosophical questions. But I don't know that we are equipped to answer them. I think it's premature because we don't know yet how technology will look like. But one fear which I have heard is that technology now is and digital technologies mainly have an analytical power. Now we go into a predictive power. And we have seen the first examples. And your company very much involved into it. But since the next step could be to go into a prescriptive mode, which means you do not even have to have elections anymore because you can already predict what predict. And afterwards you can say, why do we need elections? Because we know what the result will be. Can you imagine such a world? Well, you might then further ask, well, why do we need to have elected leaders at all? Because you might as well have all the decisions made. I think that's once again, I mean, you're venturing into, I think, profound questions. We can ask also, what will we actually want? I mean, we have a set of values and desires today that are probably pretty different than before the Industrial Revolution and different still than before the Agrarian Revolution. And we might continue to evolve. And many of us today participate, obviously, all of us probably, in the global economy developing and so forth. Some of us choose to be Buddhist monks and we just seek enlightenment through our spirituality. So I mean, I think people have different ways of evolving and finding meaning in different situations. And it could be that the way we look at it 100 years from now is so different than we look at it today that it's almost unrecognizable for us the thinking, the rationale, and the desires. We wouldn't even be able to translate. I think this is a very, not only interesting, it's a crucial issue. We are looking at technology very often threatening our present thinking, interpretation of how the world evolves. And actually, we probably need new, you use the word meaning, we need new concepts to define what humanity is and what's the purpose of our lives is. And we may go much more again into the direction of, people are afraid of robotization, but it may be humanization which robotization will allow. Would you, this is a very optimistic, let's say, perception which personally I share, but would you agree? Oh, 100%. I mean, I think if you were to go back in time, 10,000 years and you meet somebody out there, working their field, you would say, and they said, well, they probably wouldn't even ask you what do you do. That wouldn't be a meaningful question. But if you would say, well, I'm an economist, it'll be like I plow my field and then we could talk more about whatever it is that you mean you do. I think it is exactly true. I think that if some of the burdens of day to day life that have been increasingly alleviated through technology, through agriculture and so forth, maybe that leaves us free to really think a little bit more deeply about who it is we are and what it is we see. But so it's new technology paradigms need also, I would say a new government, governance paradigm. If I think of the old fashioned, let's say governments see a technological development or regulatory agencies. So it's a parliamentary commission. Finally, regulations come out after five years. This is absolutely not suited anymore to our new technologies. So we need much more agile interaction between business, regulators, civil society and so on. Yeah, I mean, and once again, I've been really blown away this year. As you know, I haven't been to the forum for about eight years. And I think of the level of enlightenment and conversation between politicians and business leaders and social entrepreneurs is incredible to me. And that's the kind of interaction I think that'll breed success. And I think also, I don't forget, in, you know, outside of here, you know, oftentimes it's a very antagonistic relationship between government and business and so forth. And I think that also is very unhealthy. So I think not only, you know, should we try to tackle things more quickly but also in a real collaborative way. I think some of this, let's say, antagonistic view comes because people see particularly the effect on job elimination. And of course, you know, Schumpeter's rule of creative destruction or destructive creation. And people have difficulties to see the jobs of the future. I explain, you will have maybe we are in need of, I don't know, robot polishes or drone dispatchers. But I think there are limited possibilities for such skills. Where do you see skills with you? I mean, I think you, in alphabet, you do not have enough people. I mean, you are permanently looking for people. But where are those jobs coming from and what skills do you particularly emphasize? I think, look, that is a fantastic question. And I think, you know, in the sessions I've attended, you know, everybody's asking that question. I guess I would hope that as some of them, you know, maybe more mundane tasks are alleviated through technology that people find more and more creative and meaningful ways to spend their time. I think, you know, the way you're sort of, the word job specifically, you know, has a lot of implication and a lot of, you know, the way that we might have spent the past couple of generations, like the job means you go to the office like here and you do some things, you have papers, you have an inbox, you have an outbox. And I think so, our mindset is somewhat narrow in that way. And yet we have, you know, jobs that are more creative and thoughtful, you know, take economists, for example, which is, you know, a hard thing to describe to a farmer. Fortunately, I'm an engineer. Yeah, oh, you're an engineer, sorry. Okay, we have some economists here. It is the world economic forum. I think. Not engineering for real. Sorry. Sorry. Engineering is pretty easy to describe, I think, to folks. But being an economist is not like that easy to describe. And it's not that we need five billion economists. But the point is that I think if you sort of continue that trajectory, you do see more and more people that have been freed up over the past couple of hundred years to do work that is, you know, more kind of thinking about things or creating things, you know, seeking aesthetics, whether it is in an intellectual domain or a purely artistic domain. And I would hope to see that trend continue. And I would hope that the world would find, you know, an opportunity. This is where I think education becomes very important. And I think broad education. But as, you know, some of these jobs are displaced, giving people the opportunity to get educated from the point of view of having actually the education resources, the financial wherewithal to be able to pursue that. Like, you know, you don't wanna be studying Shakespeare and going hungry or something like that. And being somewhat open-minded, giving people a chance to develop different skills that aren't necessarily, you know, okay, we have 5,000 needs for this exact kind of thing today. Because probably the thing that you want exactly 5,000 of today is a thing that also is more realistically automatable. So I think it's important for people to be able to have freedom to study, financial opportunity to study. And to get meaning. I think in addition to, you know, work being an important way that, you know, we exchange money and whatnot, people find profound meaning in their day-to-day jobs. And I think that's another important thing for us to preserve. Okay, I would say this is the key, let's say, message for me, or hope that we can move from jobs which are meaningless much more to meaningful tasks. And so maybe in the social area, in the cultural area. And that will be the underlying concept for a more humanized society. But I also agree with you, we need, we shouldn't look at individual jobs now, where do we need 5,000 jobs more and so on. So key is the reformation of the whole educational system, which is completely outdated. Would you agree? I think there are several systems that we have in place that I think for a lot of understandable reasons, you know, they just have so much inertia they lag behind, education is one. And healthcare honestly is another, and I don't mean healthcare in the sense of finding the biological roots of disease. I mean, you know, sort of healthcare systems of hospitals and, you know, maybe insurance, be it national or employer or whatnot. And, you know, these systems are just so deeply embedded from an infrastructure point of view, from a sort of governance point of view and so forth. They're very hard to transform and to update to today's needs. But I think that is a challenge that we should seek to overcome. And within education, I mean, I just think everyone should have access to education. And I'm talking about obviously sort of primary education and secondary and university. And, you know, for that matter, postgraduate work. I mean, those things don't really, those things are extraordinarily expensive today for kind of artifacts of the infrastructure we assume we need like big buildings and, you know, fancy classrooms and things like that. I don't think those things are necessary. I mean, it's fine to have those for some folks, but education should be universally accessible. Yeah. When I look at, I mean, it's incredible the success of your company. And when I look at Silicon Valley in general, the success is mainly related also to a platform approach. And it's a new management concept. And of course, many people envy you because you are in this area where you have this exponential growth potential. And this creates also some, not only envies, also some, how shall I say, it's more than envy. It's aversion against the Silicon Valley model because you can grow so fast. What would be your response? I think, look, I think, first of all, I'm very lucky to have been in Silicon Valley and Silicon Valley is very lucky to have been able to benefit from, you know, the semiconductor boom and then software and now internet and mobile. I mean, I think it's, there's a huge amount of luck there, but the luck also comes from taking many shots. You know, so many failures. You know, if I told you all the dumb things that I did, you know, we'd have to have much longer session. And the successes, you know, they often are chance. I mean, I mentioned the Google Brain work that they were just off in the corner. It's like, okay, fine, just do your thing. Our, you know, Verily, which is our subsidiary that does a wide range of healthcare innovation now, really started with this glucose sensing contact lens project. And that was another one where I said, this fellow Babak and Brian Otis who were working on it, you know, and they wanted to put a computer in a contact lens. And I was like, you know what, that sounds crazy, but you know, you go do your crazy thing. You know, you can only have a couple of people work on it. I'm not going to give you a lot of resources. But you know, sure, if you put a computer in contact lens, good for you. And yet here they are, you know, a few years later and they're, you know, running, you know, they're doing serious studies now. They have a big partnership with Novartis and Alcon. And they are hopefully going to bring those to market alongside with a bunch of other projects that that has spawned. And I didn't know anything about that. And I never would have predicted or guessed that. I think we're just lucky to have the environment that tolerates, you know, making lots of risky bets and tolerating the failures that inevitably result. And it needs courage. I mean, I could ask you as a question. I'm very often asked, starting the phone with two people. Some journalists ask me, media people ask me, did you ever imagine what is coming out? Could you ever imagine what came out of your original entrepreneurial first steps? No, I could not possibly have imagined. But, you know, and I don't know what you're thinking was behind the form. But I remember when I was really thinking deeply about this, and this was sort of a graduate student project at Stanford. And I talked to my advisors, like, you know, should I really do this entrepreneurial thing? And, you know, it might not work out. And I can just finish my PhD. And he said, you know, why not? Go for it. And then if it doesn't work out, you come back, you finish your PhD, which I'm still planning on doing. But anyway, you know, there's like no big deal. Just give it a shot. And I think that that mentality permeates Silicon Valley. And I think that's one of the strengths that, you know, there's really not much that's not viewed so negatively to try something, even if it doesn't work out. No. When you look back now to this history, and you have a, I would say, many young people listening to you here or via digital transmission, what would you out of your own experience give us an advice to those young people who everybody sees you as a role model and wants to imitate you? What would you tell them as a key learning of your own? You know, I think young people, you know, in some ways, their life is much easier than, you know, sort of my life might have been at that stage. Just, you know, for, I think, all of us, you know, having before whatever, traveling to Switzerland to be a big stressful thing, how do you get in touch with people before mobile phones, arrange your travel, figure out how to exchange your currency. You know, there are many things, you know, we can whip our phones out and look up anything and figure out how to get somewhere. There are a lot of affordances that are such conveniences today that make it easy. But there is also a global stage that makes it hard, actually, you know, because if when I was in school and I was on the math team or whatever, I was just compared to other kids in the school. And I did quite well against them, you know, and I found myself, yeah, I'm good at that, I'm good at that. I think I find younger folks today are their measures of themselves are always, especially, you know, the ambitious ones are on this global stage. So I'd say, well, you know, I have to be number one in the world at this or that. And I'm like, you know, that's a really tall order. And I think it can be discouraging in a way, because if, you know, the folks say, well, you know, I'm number 1,000 in the world at this game, which in my world would have been an enormous achievement, because that means like you were definitely the best in your city and your state and whatnot. But it's hard, and I think, you know, there's a little bit of discouragement. So, you know, I would encourage young folks to, you know, take chances and pursue their dreams and, you know, try to silence out kind of the voices that say, well, actually there are like a thousand startups trying to do whatever, self-riding bicycles or whatever it is they happen to be doing. And I think the key is to have fun in your startup and not from the beginning on to think of the IPO, which may bring you a billion sets to keep. And that was certainly your motivation to make it a success. Yeah, I mean, I certainly had no dreams of such economic success. And I think you're exactly right. I think you should have fun and not be so weighed down by the weight of expectations that I think sort of this global network, unfortunately, one of the downsides, I think it creates that weight. We are coming to an end of this fascinating discussion, but my last question would be, I came from a luncheon and we had a discussion. We said, or the conclusion was, we can address the issues which we have to confront in the world, not just in the rational ways. The world in some way has to digest this tremendous speed of change, complexity of change, which creates an emotional turmoil. So we have to respond much more also with values and not just with rational answers. And what would be your values? What are your driving values, Sergi? Well, first of all, I think that's a very good question and an amazing question. And not having been in Davos in eight years or so, I'm kind of even confused in a good way because all these business executives and CEOs and everybody, everybody's wondering, well, how are people gonna find purpose? And what about all these refugees? What about income inequality? I kind of feel like I'm a burning man, but almost except we're all wearing clothes. But I think it's a wonderful thing. So I think for whatever weird reason, maybe it's because we're kind of San Francisco hippies, but Google has always had this a little bit of that kind of social responsibility view. Also inspired by the way by Salesforce, Mark Benioff and his philanthropic work as part of the company. I think you're phrasing it exactly correctly. I think it can't be the case that companies such as ours are just purely profit motivated. Sort of you can't just take Adam Smith. Well, apparently I've learned here that Adam Smith's earlier work was actually much more touchy-feely than the Waltham nations, but you can't just think about narrowly, oh, this is your business. You're just going to maximize earnings. It doesn't matter what else is going on around you. And I think the leaders here, from what I can tell, are broadly, broadly concerned about the climate change or wealth inequality or this issue of job creation, all of those things. And so it seems to me that companies are taking those things seriously and we ought to be and maybe there's some greater way to write about that and vibe that and kind of the principles of company formation. Because I don't think sort of, if you look at the laws and the regulations and SEC kind of rules, technically, you're meant to be purely profit seeking and that's not really a reasonable position to take. So yeah, it's a great opportunity to, to unfortunate opportunity because I would like to have much more time to conclude this session. And what you just said is particularly with, let's say some Silicon Valley companies like yours, people see those companies having tremendous power and I was recently together with a prime minister of quite a important country who told me there are three or four powers left in the world. One is US, one is China and one is alphabet. So you have, you have this, let's say image of a very powerful organization. And I think this session was very important because it showed us that behind those organizations are people who are not detached from the world. People who ask themselves still questions. They do not now necessarily make everything possible to reign over the world, no. So some people who have questions, who have doubts, who, in your case I may say so, who are modest. So I think this session was very important and I thank you for sharing and sharing with us not only your ideas but your personality. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Good session.