Vice president of the americas Vice President at cisco. [applause] i was wondering if you would applaud so thank you for that. Good afternoon. Our purpose is to power and inclusive future for all. A Technology BasedSolutions Drive the ability to address critical challenges and communities, power hybrid work, transform infrastructure and cities you to secure the networks that run it all to ensure they can be deployed it takes forward thinking policies that foster innovation and emerging digital technologies. No matter how remote with the networks that bind to the the se channels of communications openness and competition or a world where ai propels us forward and does so responsibly they emerge as foundational pillars shaping our society, economy and governance. To fulfill the potential of this moment right to size investments in government policy and Research Innovation security and procurement should lead the way. At the heart of this critical discourse is the federal Communications Commission and its pivotal role shaping with innovation inclusion and investment are also ensuring the transparency and accountability where the challenges are significant as the opportunity as the fcc has a lot on its plate and knows that this new chapter requires more foresight, collaboration and most of all a balanced approach. To have access to Affordable Service as we work to propel the Program Forward to help the schools and libraries get affordable servicing secure telecommunications and Internet Access and as we work to cement the Global Competitiveness by freeing up spectrum of fostering spectrum sharing and accelerating Research Development the fcc has been and will continue to be a critical partner thats why it is my honor to introduce to the intersect stage the commissioner anna gomez a trailblazer in the Telecommunications Policy world playing pivotal roles in key public sectors and commissioner gomez brings a deeply personal commitment to bridging the Digital Divide in advocating for highspeed broadband accessibility for every person in every community regardless of geography or income. The leadership of the federal level ranges from issues as diverse as Public Safety communications to International Spectrum negotiations. The Technology Challenges facing the United States will you all please join me in providing a warm welcome to the intersect stage commissioner anna gomez . [applause] lets pretend this is your first time in front of an audience of technology professionals. Im sure its not but we love having you here and appreciate. Your arrival was eagerly anticipated might be an understatement. You filled out the commission and are joining a majority of. I want to start because everybody here whether they know it or not has issues before the fcc. Why you assumed this role the role of the fcc and the role that you would play as a commissioner and what your priorities are, tell us what its meant to you coming into this office . Thank you again for having me and i want to point out that ive known you for almost 30 years that ive been and im just delighted to see how well you are doing. I would like to talk about my regulatory philosophy which im still finessing so i have a bit to go but overarching lay, i want to ensure competition drives vibrant innovation for the good of consumers. What that means is ensuring the users in the United States are connected to highspeed broadband and that its affordable and means having beans havingspectrum for new ane services. Ensuring Public Safety has the resources it needs to meet its mission and also that consumers have access to services that make them safe as well. On the media cited means protecting localism and making sure that we have diversity and competition in the media marketplace. I particularly want to make sure that we take all of our actions of keeping in mind how it affects historically underrepresented communities and so thats basically in a package where i come from. Let me ask about a couple of issues that youve mentioned in that framework one is spectrum and another is Affordable Access to broadband, both very much in the news largely through no fault of the commission but through some action or inaction is better to describe and issues ranging from disputes on how much Broadband Connectivity we should have as we take off from the runway and a lot of issues in between that and at a high level, what are some of the things you would like them to Pay Attention to in the spectrum debates and whats coming up at the fcc or what should we be urging congress to do to make sure the spectrum is unlocked for the best uses. Theres been this amazing thirst for spectrum for new and Innovative Services and its not slowing down. If there is a constant search for finding ways to repurpose the spectrum. Theres a lot of Different Services that rely on the spectrum from the normal mobile broadband now to satellites, science issues. I just got back from dubai. I was there for the first week of the confidence where all of the issues were front and center and one of the items because the fact that we are looking at a framework for allocating spectrum and how will be allocated for these particular uses so spectrum is a big deal and im glad you raised to the authority. The pioneered options as a way to efficiently assign spectrum licenses and it is a much faster process in the traditional during a beauty contest between the different license applicants and because the authorization expired and congress hasnt reauthorized it theres a lot of work the commission cannot do in order to prepare for additional spectrum and every day that goes by that we dont have that authority its going to put us further and further behind in terms of new licenses for new services. You mentioned the importance of those two license use of Spectrum Mobile broadband that we all rely on from different providers so i want to ask about that balance and how you are looking at the need to make sure that innovation we all benefit from ranging from Garage Door Openers and Baby Monitors and everything in between how do you view the role in terms of allocating the license and unlicensed to make sure theres innovation in both areas . We need to find the appropriate balance and they did to take action when it allocated the van which was unprecedented to have that much spectrum allocated and larger bandwidth unlicensed. That was one of the items we did very well at the communication conference that remained for the Wifi Services which is important not just because they are bringing in the next generation of wifi that needs to keep up with of the highbandwidth broadband but also because its so important to maintain for equipment making it lower cost and more deployed so very pleased with the outcome of the good work the delegation did at the wrc. Which is something since the president plucked you from one role where you were heavily involved to another where you are still heavily involved im sure that was particularly pleasing to see that work continue. You also mentioned broadband as part of your portfolio on board at the commission. The news of this week is the potential end of a very Important Program that made affordable broadband available to address that Digital Divide and i think the commissioner has announced that tomorrow is an unfortunate milestone should congress not act between now and tomorrow which is probably unlikely what should we be thinking about the importance of that program and other programs that congress may or may not move forward and what should we be asking congress to do to continue to address the Digital Divide . So glad you raised this question and i do hope that Congress Passes the current a bipartisan bill that has been dropped to provide funding to extend the programs. It provides support to close to 23 million households nationwide all over the country, rural, tribal, everywhere. Of these are folks that qualify under the program and we believe we will run out of funding sometime at which point there will be no more support for these households. Im very concerned about it for some reasons we want to make sure every user is connected. Its so important for participation and society and our economy. Its important for finding a job, applying to college, doing homework, doing remote school, telehealth, seniors. It is central to our lives now that of those who cannot to be connected are going to fall further and further behind. For me though i also want to make it clear there is broad thd effects on the economy because you dont know what kind of innovation youre going to bring from that one student who would not have that connection but somehow is able to create some type of online product that becomes the next, i dont know, google. Also telehealth reduces the cost to medicare and medicaid by 23 . The majority of subscribers are seniors in high costs to serve. For that reason they tend to be higher priced despite the universal Service Goals and we need to make sure that the companies that are providing the services are able to continue to provide the services in addition to spending tens of billions of dollars throughout every corner of america we need to make sure that those are sustainable without subscribers they wont necessarily be sustainable so we are looking at you downstream affect losing the support for 23 million households that could have a significant effect on the economy. It would be good to see Congress Take some action there and a lot of communities i think close to half of the Program Participants are military as well so definitely important for the nation. Want to ask about two other areas important to the Tech Industry that theyve recently stepped back to and one is cybersecurity and the trustmark. I was pleased to participate and we will hear later who convened the group at the white house the fcc and power to to move that forward so tell me about this later security efforts and how important you think those are. Im very excited about the trustmark. If they put out another proposed rulemaking that would create much like the Energy Star Logo that means that it makes standards for cyber hygiene and it also had a qr code to find out more about the manufacturing of the product itself and how secure it is. I think it could become a real Competitive Edge if it is adopted widely innovative consumers actually accept it as something that is trustworthy. Im excited about the industry is excited about the trustmark and i think that it could be a good Publicprivate Partnership between the fcc and manufacturers to lead to better cyber outcomes. Its a voluntary program so what you want is to be Market Driven and to make sure that it succeeds through wide deployment. We look forward to helping support that program and it is as you said a competitive differentiator for companies to use to inform consumers about the care they take with the manufacturing of the deployment of products. The last technology question, not surprisingly given what weve been talking about all day, ai. Weve seen fcc engagement with aia in the headlines this week helping track down a robo call callerwho enabled ei to be usedo spoof the president in a political primary. When you and i were baby lawyers back in the day at. [laughter] i think there are several ways we are looking at ai. Both its benefits and its risks. And in addition to looking at it how it encourages robocalls or can be used for robocalls to mitigate against robocalls and robotech looking for an accessibility point of view lot of work being done with ai and speech recognition the Advisory Council is looking as a working group on ai. The potentials and risks with ai. The chairwoman to announce she circulated and voted to approve a declaratory ruling that artificially or faked of voices using Artificial Intelligence are covered under the telephone Consumer Protection act. They are prohibited without prior consent. This will help ensure consumers are not subject to fraud. And really harassment through these terrible robocalls and robotech strip. In addition there is a lot of talk about looking at it for classroom management. There is a lot of good and interesting uses for Artificial Intelligence that i think we are going to see develop more and more. And of course we need to be careful about the risks and make sure its used responsibly. But how industry can help, for me ive been on a mission to educate myself as much as possible on ai because im not an expert. I just went to a conference this weekend one of the professors said that professors like to say i dont know anything about this, but. [laughter] and i want to stop having to say i dont know anything about this, but. Look forward to helping on the Educational Mission we are so lucky the president picked you to fill this role at the commission please join me in thanking fcc commissioner ana gomez. [applause] [background noises] please welcome claire ceo salesforce ai Global Technology correspondent at alex rios. Hello everyone. Everyone here has been drowning and ai hype for a year now. Its going to save and revolutionize the world at its winter revolutionize the world and kill us all. I dont remind either i want us to stop in some real practical round and how people are practically using a isa maybe kick us off our vulgar thousands of clients what are some of the surprising ways and uses you have seen . What a fascinating time. I feel like its 1998 for ai. We are starting to simple use cases but so much of the potential and some of the risks are still to come. Its her tremendous learning moment for everyone whether youre in the public sector, private sector academe is an exciting time for there is tremendous opportunity for ai to really benefit all kinds of people from around the world and certainly in our country. We are very fortunate to be in a pole position in america when it comes to ai. In terms of what were seeing we are seeingfrom customers andy interesting reverie Enterprise Customer and Small Businesses were hearing everyone start the same question which is how do i trust her generative ai . Both from data privacy and security since as well as ethics as well as understanding this a black box input generates an output given ai and generative ai in particular is not deterministic it is statistical. The same exempt prompt you put in can output Something Different every simple time you ask it. So thats a new paradigm for software its a new paradigm for technology that everyone is going to have to get used to. The number one question is trust. This also happens to be our companys number one value. How we engineer trust into the product and help our customers deploy ai in a safe and secure way that respects their data privacy and security . That is number one. The number two question is companies felt underwhelmed by the earlier investments in the last big trend around the blockk chain and the meta verse. So this time around in the economic environment every ceo what is the Business Case for ai . Brennan, training on the large language of models can get really expensive. There has to be a Business Case in mind with its bright driving productivity increase in the sales out bogus driving efficiency there has to be a Business Case there. And then the third question and its a really big one is how do we drive change . Especially if youre Bigger Company the more employees you have for. Like People Management question you can buy whatever tech you want but you also have to change people and train people get them ready for. You could mail the trust part you got the best data privacy Data Security with ai. You can have the Business Case but then how do you read trained re skill in upscale all of your employees . Thats a very tall order went to the 90s how to teach everybody in your company to use internet. Its very difficult it doesnt happen overnight. It cannot be topdown or bottomup it has to be both but it has to be the Company Enabling a secure environment for employees to test and learn and experiment and get really comfortable with these technologies. Just with email in the 90s. Then its incumbent on individual line managers and employees i cant do the job without learning email without using the internet. The same question is to be asked by every employee every american today in regards to ai for. Theres a lot to unpack there. Maybe it lip service and safety issues weve had some discussions around that already today. What do developers have to have in mind when it comes to safety what are the Top Priorities . And then from the sounds of your answer they dont just have to have safety in mind they have to show that they work. They have to prove to customers they have done that work so what is the best way for developers or this salesforce we dont just have it as a brand. Parks what is that mean . First of all like to think of it in terms of the three ages and the four ds tell people remember the three ages what should ai be . It should be helpful, it should be harmless, it should be honest. Theres all kinds of saying sametechnology buys guard rail e you could build and ill talk more about that in terms of the four ds this is what ai these are the big risks of ai we need to think about again as Technology Builders and providers as well as policymakers. We want to make sure ai were being careful about data leakage and data privacy issue. Then disinformation, discrimination, we have to think about displacement. Some jobs are going to be created some jobs are going to go away. As a society, policymakers, community how do we come together and help society prepare . In terms of how the sales force thanks about managing the four ds in three ages we start at the technology layer. Underlies all of our ai. Its features like citations. Do i know where this particular answers coming from . Is it point back to the document and reference the official document that it comes back from. Includes a feature like data masking. You may not want to send into a large language model. How do wheat mask that dataquest arc we have toxicity filters. Within Customer Data as you can imagine there are certain fields of Customer Data that we found ed that tend to introduce bias in its ai models. I could be sons zip code, their gender, or customers have the ability to choose ticket marches Sensitive Data field that gets withheld from what get sent to the large language model. Once the output is generated i have another set of checks through toxicity filters our Research Group has developed. We also take an audit trail every step of the way. What was provided into the model. This a number of features from engineering thats engineered into orenstein public thats a first level. The second is a policy standpoint. Its important to think about how our technologies can be used under put those governors in place into the platform itself. As the underlying but its the policy we choose to build into the product. One is calling a customer of the customers chatting with our policy regardless of which Customers Using that with their customer i have to self identify as ai. The ultimate end customer who is engaging regardless whether its messaging or email they know theyre doing with ai versus a great person. We disallow use of facial recognition theres a lot of bias. As a product policy aspects. Finally our office of ethical technologies and ai have been very proactive in sharing our principles for responsible ai we open source these principles we are trying to teach everyone of our customers and implement that when the product and customer terms of service for. Remind me of a conversation i had this morning. I was chatting with an executive he was saying the ethical aspects one of the elements of ai policy should be driven centrally ai affects every part of your organization you nelson ed central parts rolling out ai and training people. Would you agree with that perspective the ethics are so central they have to come from the top a concert marking people like yourself and with your customers you want the really Senior Executives having that discussion from the beginning for. It ties back to the earlier discussion this ai change management happen topdown . The certain things like Ethical Principles guardrails providing a secure environment like the einstein trust for your employees. That needs to been able topdown by the ceo. Exactly. Nor is it wise for some organizations have blocked degenerative ai entirely just like their organizations in the 90s a block the internet told employees they cannot use the internet because of the risks concerns i dont think thats the right call for most companies and industries it hurts your business competitive longterm. Better is to offer a safe environment provide training and resources employees have to go through the training and take the initiative to actually start using the technologies and a great job descriptions of how they spend their time for. One alaska politics and policy question before we get into workforce and education. We have had a pretty productive discussion in washington over the past year. Genuine people want to be better informed about ai. But we are in the zone of good intentions still. Not a huge amount of action. Unsatisfied with the conversation isnt where its going . Does it work competence of regulated . Ive never worked in washington for a Public Servant i appreciate everybody, all of you are because it is so important is a lot of work thats been going on. As a layperson i have been pleasantly surprised by the level and quality of dialogue i am hearing especially in this country about the opportunities are in some of the risks. One of the areas where i see it as a big opportunity for us this theres a lot of discussion about what not to do what to disallow it. And certainly especially using an updating laws that we have you heard commissioner gomez reference the cbc thats it existing law its a perfect vehicle for making sure the robocalls from ai are forbidden or can consumer opted in for theres a lot of discussion already about what we disallow. Theres an even bigger need an equal need to talk about what new policies we need to create. About what we should be doing. When i think about education, for example, i have young kids in elementary school. I dont know if they are learning the skills that they need to be successful in an ai economy. They are not learning them. That is the point. I do recognize it is difficult. It is statebystate. That is a dialogue that i dont hear enough about, as a citizen, i want to make sure that lawmakers and members of government, that we are really talking about what we should be doing, not just what we should not be doing. Playing president for a day, we are combining forces here. What would you do to inject more ai, or better understanding and skills of ai into the k12 system . We need to do this as adults we need some upscaling. What about the kids . What do they need to have built into their opportunities . Every job will be transformed by ai. For us to help educate the workers of tomorrow, every single person, every child in America Needs to learn how to use ai to be more effective they also need to understand the limitations of ai. It doesnt make up facts. You need to be able to understand footnotes and citations, and doing your homework, and not just taking it as is. Social media was a perfect example saying the algorithms were manipulating our thoughts. That is an awareness that every student in america should go through his understanding, these are just algorithms. This is not truth because i see it on the internet. This is not truth because they i tells me so. I should have a healthy level of skepticism. It is like ai literacy as an extension of digital literacy. Its not just like to learn how to code there are softer skills that people need. You also need to learn how to code. One is, how can i use ai to be more effective . Instead of banning chatgpt for essay writing, how do we teach them how to use it and still be a critical thinker . It is similar to in the 1990s, when spreadsheets were invented, you dont not teach students how to use spreadsheets. They have to understand how the macros are formulated. That understand the underlying math. The same goes for ai. Understanding the downsides of ai, and when not to trust it, and i am a big believer that every person, every child in America Needs to learn how to code. It is as important as reading and math. One minor challenge on that point. I would not dispute that coding is useful. One of the big leaps of forward with the generative ai tool is the natural language processing. More people that dont have those skills have a way to ask for things to be created or delivered through ai. I am wondering how your thoughts are going through with coding. What about us as adults . What we expect to change in our jobs over the next few years . Its been a thin natural language interfaces of ai do democratize who have access to it. It is like to understanding the underlying mechanisms. Even if every student is not directly coding, its important for them to understand what is under the hood and what and how they are getting the answers. Going back to the spreadsheet or the graphing calendar. Thinking of the workforce more specifically, i am not someone that things there will be massive job displacement. I think some jobs will go and there will be massive task displacement. Elements of our jobs will change. We will have to organize them through ai. In the best case scenario, that will each was doing higher value work. We know that is not how globalization worked out or how the internet did things with like journalism. Do you have any insights about the professions they think will be affected first or where you see people already moving to the higher value work . I have many thoughts on this. We dont know what we dont know. I will share an example. For many years, the conventional wisdom, even in the Technology Industry was that if you are creative, you will be safe from ai. What were seeing now is ai is really good at generating images and video. That movie, anything, everywhere, all at once won multiple oscar awards. They use generative ai to reduce most of the special effects in that movie. That movie, traditionally would have had 1000 people working on special effects. They accomplish that with seven people due to ai. We are not always able to accurately predict where will impact aware one. We had to be prepared and keep an open mind to continuously check in. I am seeing a lot of reasons for optimism. I will share one of my favorite temples. An Early Customer that we partnered with and i worked closely with to develop the generative ai products is gucci. In november, 2021, there was a delegation that visited me and several others from milan. We are meeting at the Salesforce Tower in san francisco. It was one of the first meetings post covid. We were nervous about meeting again. They had an issue with so Many Companies during covid, hiring enough staff for Client Services. A lot of people wanted to work from home. They did not want to be in the contact center. We focused our discussion on, how do we address the client demand for wanting to get Customer Support, given the labor shortage . It was at that meeting that the chief scientist at salesforce, a former stanford ai professor talked about the Large Language Models that he and his team had been developing. This was a year before chatgpt was released. It was such a big idea. The customer was so forward leaning, they said lets experiment. Lets try it out and see if it works. We have been working together over the last 2. 5 years. The amazing thing is, just learning from Client Service advisors on how to provide this generative ai in a way that helps address the menial tasks. When a customer calls in and has a question, especially if you are a newly hired service advisor, rather than having to scramble to look up the answer up with the client on hold, generative ai can automate that and provide the answer right there. That advisor can focus on the client and deepening the relationship. We found a something amazing. In addition to reducing the amount of time to address the four russians, it empowered the Client Service advisors to become sellers and brand storytellers. That is due to the ai augmenting them at every step. His may do they need a lot of handholding . They are notoriously controlling, they are not big experimenters. Did it take a long time to get than they are . To make it was a lot of learning. You are right, luxury brands, it is important to get your brand perfect. You cant have it a bit off. They ai, where to put guardrails in and we had to keep testing and verify. We worked with expert client experts first. Once the issues were gone, we scaled it up to everybody else. It is amazing that this team of Customer Support representatives reinvented their careers. Now they are doing the best work of their careers. Now they are not just limited to Customer Support, they are brand storytellers. They are in sales. It reminds me of the movie, the matrix, when he decides to learn kung fu. He is augmented with that skill. That is how i felt, seeing some of these advisors at work. Nobody taught them how to sell. Nobody taught them how to be a brand storyteller. With the ai helping them, all the sudden they can unlock this incredible potential. They did not have to take a pill that did not want to take