Latest Interviews

Talks at GS – Telling the Human Side of the Refugee Crisis: “This is Home”

Alexandra Shiva, Princess Firyal of Jordan

Princess Feryal of Jordan and filmmaker Alexandra co-produced a documentary that chronicles the lives of four refugee families in Baltimore, specifically juxtaposing a humorous couple against educated professionals to humanize the displacement crisis. The film explores complex themes such as the psychological erosion of dignity among unemployed men, the enduring longing for a homeland, and the critical role of grassroots community integration in fostering stability. Drawing on Princess Feryal's advocacy, the project serves as a catalyst for local mentorship and political engagement, urging audiences to support international refugees while highlighting the disproportionate burden on host nations like Jordan.

Talks at GS – Virginie Morgon: A Global Outlook on the Future of Finance

Virginie Morgon

Virginie Morgan assumes the CEO role at private equity firm Eurasio in March, overseeing a strategic pivot from a France-centric model to a global expansion that prioritizes annual process reinvention and US market integration. Her macroeconomic outlook anticipates strong growth in Europe, China, and the US through 2018, though she flags late 2019 as a potential period of vulnerability. Concurrently, Morgan enforces a rigorous diversity mandate requiring female candidates for every hire and immediate intervention against disrespectful behavior, grounding her leadership in a personal ethic of self-respect and proactive career visibility.

How to stop the ivory trade

Dr Sam Wasser

African elephant populations face imminent extinction due to poaching driven by a $4,000 black market for ivory that funds militant groups like Boko Haram and the Lord's Resistance Army. Scientific forensics confirm that recent large seizures consist almost entirely of newly poached tusks originating from East African hotspots, a trend exacerbated by the 2008 decision to allow limited legal sales which blurred the line between legitimate and illegal stockpiles. While the United States and China have recently implemented near-total or complete bans to stifle demand and lower prices, conservationists argue that closing remaining legal markets, such as those in Britain, is essential to fully eliminate the illicit trade's supply chain.

Sacha Arnoud, Director of Engineering, Waymo - MIT Self-Driving Cars

Sacha Arnoud, Lex

Following its 2017 spin-off from Google, Waymo has accelerated autonomous driving operations by completing over 4 million miles and launching the first public driverless fleet in Phoenix using custom-equipped Chrysler Pacifica vehicles. The company leverages deep learning and Google's TensorFlow infrastructure to process multimodal sensor data from LiDAR, radar, and cameras, enabling robust perception and planning within a closed-loop system of 25,000 simulated cars. Looking forward, Waymo is expanding its operating domain to complex urban environments like San Francisco while refining its technical architecture to prioritize safety and generalization over memorized scenarios.

How did Kosovo become a country?

Slobodan Milosevic, Petric Salimi

Following a brutal 1999 NATO intervention triggered by Serbian crackdowns and the Racak massacre, Kosovo declared independence in 2008 to establish a fragile democracy with a 33% unemployment rate. The nation remains deeply divided along ethnic lines as tens of thousands of Serbs fled, while the remaining minority continues to reject statehood and align with Belgrade. Despite these persistent tensions, both Kosovo and Serbia are pursuing European Union membership, recognizing that resolving their shared violent history is a prerequisite for regional integration.

Navigating Investments from Cryptocurrencies to Blockchain

Suna Said, Mike Novogratz, Charles Noyes, Bill Tai, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss

This panel of cryptocurrency experts defines Bitcoin as a protocol for digital scarcity and decentralized auditing while projecting that institutional derivatives will stabilize market volatility within the next decade. Experts analyze the speculative ICO landscape as a nascent "storytelling stage" and predict that decentralized applications and tokenized identity systems will achieve mass industrial adoption as trust in centralized banking continues to erode. Looking toward long-term displacement of traditional finance, the discussion highlights Bitcoin's potential to replace gold as the primary store of value for digital natives and anticipates a regulatory shift where major economies clarify standards to harness the technology's efficiency.

Ray Kurzweil: Future of Intelligence | MIT 6.S099: Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)

Ray Kurzweil

Futurist and Google Director Ray Kurzweil outlines the convergence of exponential computing, deep learning, and his hierarchical neocortical model to explain the trajectory toward artificial general intelligence and "longevity escape velocity." He details how modern AI systems are evolving from limited pattern recognition to adult-level language comprehension while arguing that automation will drive massive job creation and economic growth rather than permanent unemployment. Despite acknowledging existential risks from advanced biotechnology and AI, Kurzweil maintains that humanity is entering its most peaceful era and will soon merge with technology through brain extenders to transcend biological limitations.

Talks at GS –Jonathan Haidt: The Psychology of Partisanship & Ethical Leadership

Jonathan Haidt, Tanya Cushman

Jonathan Haidt examines the drivers of modern political polarization, the evolutionary roots of moral intuition, and the declining resilience of students raised in hyper-protective environments. He argues that social and institutional design must shift from relying on individual character to implementing systemic "nudges" and inclusive frameworks that foster anti-fragility. Ultimately, while historical trends suggest long-term optimism, Haidt calls for immediate vigilance in repairing polarized institutions to prevent a trajectory of mutual hatred.

MIT AGI: Building machines that see, learn, and think like people (Josh Tenenbaum)

Josh Tenenbaum

Josh Tenenbaum and the Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines argue that current deep learning systems are limited specialized tools that fail to replicate human general intelligence due to a lack of common sense and world modeling. To achieve true Artificial General Intelligence, the proposal advocates for a reverse-engineering approach that integrates cognitive science with engineering to build probabilistic programs capable of "programming" internal models of physics and psychology. This methodology aims to bridge the gap between industry's data-driven pattern recognition and the foundational, low-data learning mechanisms observed in human infants.

Winter sports are facing many challenges. Can they survive?

Rising temperatures and shifting consumer preferences are driving a decline in traditional European winter sports markets, threatening resorts that rely heavily on natural snow. In response, the industry is pivoting toward energy-intensive artificial snowmaking and seeking growth in Asia, where markets in China and South Korea are expanding despite their own climate challenges. This adaptation strategy aims to preserve mountain economies and secure future participation, though it risks increasing costs for consumers and creating a feedback loop that further accelerates environmental degradation.

Startup Investor School Preview with Geoff Ralston

Geoff Ralston, Craig Cannon

The inaugural Investor School offers a four-day hybrid course at Y Combinator's Mountain View headquarters and via live stream to train accredited individuals in the mechanics of angel investing. Led by experienced mentors, the curriculum covers deal structures, founder assessment, and portfolio management while leveraging historical case studies to teach risk mitigation and effective capital allocation. Participants gain practical insights into navigating modern funding landscapes, with applications now open to a targeted audience seeking to diversify the investor ranks and contribute capital to early-stage startups.

MIT AGI: Artificial General Intelligence

MIT's 6S099 course adopts an engineering-first methodology to construct intelligent systems, explicitly prioritizing mechanistic understanding over speculative futurism to address the critical gap between current AI capabilities and human-level intelligence. The curriculum features a roster of industry and academic leaders, including Andrej Karpathy, Ilya Sutskever, and Josh Tenenbaum, who dissect fundamental challenges in deep learning, cognitive modeling, and biological versus artificial network efficiency. Students actively engage with these themes through rigorous projects such as the "Ethical Car" simulation and "DreamVision," while supplementary sessions explore the legal, ethical, and scientific implications of autonomous weapons, emotion generation, and rapid few-shot learning.

The Autonomy Ecosystem: Finance (5 of 8)

Frank Chen

The transition from private gas-powered vehicles to electric autonomous fleets will redirect capital from consumer markets toward fleet operators, fundamentally shifting insurance and financing models from B2C to B2B structures. Forecasts suggest that while Level 5 autonomy could prevent 95% of accidents and enable fleet self-insurance, it simultaneously threatens to eliminate the $740 billion used car market and disrupt a $14.4 billion annual advertising sector reliant on vehicle sales. Beyond ownership changes, the lifecycle of these vehicles introduces new utility opportunities through battery repurposing for grid storage while recycling raw materials into new manufacturing cycles.

The Autonomy Ecosystem: Energy (4 of 8)

Frank Chen

The global energy sector is navigating a dual transition toward electric, self-driving fleets while conflicting forecasts from the IEA, Bloomberg, and major oil firms debate the timing of peak petroleum demand. Meeting this shift would require adding roughly 468 gigawatts of generation capacity and constructing new charging infrastructure, all while overcoming critical supply constraints in cobalt sourcing from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Strategic responses include capital investments in battery manufacturing, the development of alternative chemistries by researchers like Professor John Goodenough, and alliances between automakers and traditional dealers to redefine fleet service models.

The Autonomy Ecosystem: The Value Chain (3 of 8)

Frank Chen

The automotive industry is shifting from individual gas-powered ownership to fleet-operated electric and autonomous systems, reconfiguring value chains to prioritize operator loyalty over traditional vehicle branding. This transformation drives the rise of specialized vehicle designs and a manufacturing landscape where electronics and software now constitute up to half of production costs, displacing legacy focus on materials like metal and glass. As legacy automakers compete with Silicon Valley and Chinese entrants, the market faces a critical strategic battle over software architecture and full-stack integration to dominate future fleet logistics.