• Karina Nguyen left engineering for research after watching Claude get better at coding in a previous role at Anthropic.
• In a recent podcast interview, she said soft skills will remain important even as work changes.
• Nguyen, now at OpenAI, said creativity and emotional intelligence remain some of the hardest things to teach AI.

In a world where certain jobs could one day be rendered obsolete by AI, OpenAI researcher Karina Nguyen said she expects soft skills to endure as highly prized.

She also expects that to be the case in the realm of AI research.

"I just think people in AI field are like — I wish they were a little bit more creative and connecting the dots across different fields," Nguyen said on a recent episode of "Lenny's Podcast."

Nguyen, who previously worked at Anthropic, said that above all else, she expects AI to automate "redundant tasks for people." She added that the models she works with can struggle to grasp skills that often come so naturally to human beings.

"I think it's the dream of any AI research is to automate AI research," Nguyen said. "It's kind of scary, I'd say, which makes me think that people management will stay, you know? It's one of the hardest things to — emotional intelligence, with the models, creativity in itself is one of the hardest things."

At OpenAI, Nguyen said her role is heavy on "management and mentorship," despite originally being passionate about engineering. She said the shift came about during her tenure at Anthropic — after observing Claude's rapidly advancing capabilities, Nguyen came to a realization about her career.

"When I first came to Anthropic, I was like, 'Oh no, I really love front-end engineering,'" Nguyen said. "And then the reason why I switched to research is because I realized, at that time, it's like, 'Oh my god, Claude is getting better at front-end. Claude is getting better at coding.'"

Nguyen and OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Business Insider prior to publication.

"It was kind of this meta realization where it's like, 'Oh my god, the world is actually changing,'" she added.

Nguyen said that models are only improving, becoming increasingly cost-efficient as "small models" prove themselves "smarter than large models." As the costs associated with artificial intelligence drop, Nguyen expects the technology to proliferate even further, unlocking work that she considers to have been previously "bottlenecked by intelligence."

"I'm thinking about healthcare, right?" Nguyen said. "Instead of going to a doctor, I can ask ChatGPT or give ChatGPT a list of symptoms and ask me, 'Would I have a cold, flu, something else?'"

Nguyen said she's been spending "a lot" of time thinking about what her future might look like in a working landscape altered by AI. She said that if the models she's helped build eventually automate her current job, she may spend her time writing "short stories, sci-fi stories, novels," or working as a museum conservator.

"I feel like I have a lot of job options," Nguyen said. "I would love to be a writer, I think. I think that would be super cool."

• The CEOs of Google DeepMind and Anthropic spoke about feeling the weight of responsibilities in a recent interview.
• The executives advocated for the creation of regulatory bodies to oversee AI projects.
• Both AI leaders agree that people should better grasp and prepare for the risks posed by advanced AI.

When asked if he ever worried about "ending up like Robert Oppenheimer," Google DeepMind's CEO Demis Hassabis said that he loses sleep over the idea.

"I worry about those kinds of scenarios all the time. That's why I don't sleep very much," Hassabis said in an interview alongside Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei with The Economist editor in chief Zanny Minton Beddoes.

"I mean, there's a huge amount of responsibility on the people — probably too much — on the people leading this technology," he added.

Hassabis and Amodei agreed that advanced AI could present destructive potential whenever it becomes viable.

"Almost every decision that I make feels like it's kind of balanced on the edge of a knife — like, you know, if we don't build fast enough, then the authoritarian countries could win," Amodei said. "If we build too fast, then the kinds of risks that Demis is talking about and that we've written about a lot, you know, could prevail."

"Either way, I'll feel that it was my fault that, you know, that we didn't make exactly the right decision," the Anthropic CEO added.

Hassabis said that while AI appears "overhyped" in the short term, he worries that the mid-to-long-term consequences remain underappreciated. He promotes a balanced perspective — to recognize the "incredible opportunities" afforded by AI, particularly in the realms of science and medicine, while becoming more keenly aware of the accompanying risks.

"The two big risks that I talk about are bad actors repurposing this general purpose technology for harmful ends — how do we enable the good actors and restrict access to the bad actors?" Hassabis said. "And then, secondly, is the risk from AGI, or agentic systems themselves, getting out of control, or not having the right values or the right goals. And both of those things are critical to get right, and I think the whole world needs to focus on that."

Both Amodei and Hassabis advocated for a governing body to regulate AI projects, with Hassabis pointing to the International Atomic Energy Agency as one potential model.

"Ideally it would be something like the UN, but given the geopolitical complexities, that doesn't seem very possible," Hassabis said. "So, you know, I worry about all the time, and we just try to do at least, on our side, everything we can in the vicinity and influence that we have."

Hassabis views international cooperation as vital.

"My hope is, you know, I've talked a lot in the past about a kind of a CERN for AGI type setup, where basically an international research collaboration on the last sort of few steps that we need to take towards building the first AGIs," Hassabis said.

Both leaders urged a better understanding of the sheer force for change they expect AI to be — and for societies to begin planning accordingly.

"We're on the eve of something that has great challenges, right? It's going to greatly upend the balance of power," Amodei said. "If someone dropped a new country into the world — 10 million people smarter than any human alive today — you know, you'd ask the question, 'What is their intent? What are they actually going to do in the world, particularly if they're able to act autonomously?'"

Anthropic and Google DeepMind did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

"I also agree with Demis that this idea of, you know, governance structures outside ourselves — I think these kinds of decisions are too big for any one person," Amodei said.

• Satya Nadella made a distinction between "knowledge workers" and "knowledge work" in a recent interview.
• The Microsoft CEO said the definition of cognitive labor will evolve as AI grows more powerful.
• He expects knowledge work to be redefined as AI becomes capable of tasks once performed exclusively by humans.

Satya Nadella isn't dancing around it. AI agents are increasingly poised to take on work that once fell solely to human beings.

However, that doesn't mean knowledge work is going away — he simply expects it to evolve.

"When we think about, even, all these agents, the fundamental thing is there's a new work and workflow," Nadella said in an interview with YouTuber Dwarkesh Patel.

"So, the new workflow for me is: I think with AI and work with my colleagues," he added.

As tech companies continue to invest in AI, improving their models and the corresponding applications as quickly as possible, certain jobs are likely to be impacted or become obsolete.

Nadella likened the advent of AI to that of other workplace-altering technologies, using the analogy of a multinational company producing forecasts in the days before "PC, and email, and spreadsheets."

"Faxes went around," Nadella said. "Somebody then got those faxes and then did an interoffice memo that then went around, and people entered numbers, and, you know, then ultimately a forecast came, maybe just in time for the next quarter."

People were eventually able to "take an Excel spreadsheet, put it in email," and "send it around." The fax was largely replaced in the workplace, and the jobs dependent on it meaningfully changed.

"So, the entire forecasting business process changed because the work artifact and the workflow changed," Nadella added. "That is what needs to happen with AI being introduced into knowledge work."

There is no single definition of knowledge work, but it can be generally understood as labor that requires employees to think critically to solve non-routine problems.

Nadella said that the current concept of "cognitive labor" is relatively narrow and will have to expand to include new occupations and tasks. As soon as AI automates one task, he expects humans to invent another.

What we consider to be human-exclusive work today could, in the future, be the domain of a machine, Nadella said — much in the same way that the calculator knocked out the need for mental math, and "computer" once referred to someone whose job it was to manually perform calculations.

"The knowledge work of today could probably be automated," Nadella said. "Who said my life's goal is to triage my email, right? Let an AI agent triage my email. But after having triaged my email, give me a higher-level cognitive labor task of, 'Hey, these are the three drafts I really want you to review.'"

Nadella said that he expects AI agents to require a supervisor — the "knowledge worker" of the future, whether that's a human overseer or a smarter machine.

"So basically, think of it as: There is knowledge work, and there's a knowledge worker, right," Nadella said. "The knowledge work may be done by many, many agents, but you still have a knowledge worker who is dealing with all the knowledge workers. And that, I think, is the interface that one has to build."

• A computer science student at the University of Florida helps train AI through DataAnnotation Tech.
• Riley Willis was drawn to the job after leaving his parents' home and said it supports his lifestyle.
• He said he's careful to be frugal as he otherwise couldn't live off data annotation alone.

Riley Willis sits behind his keyboard for 30 hours a week. When he clocks out on Saturday, he's completed his shifts without speaking with a soul.

Willis is an AI contractor, working in data annotation through a company called DataAnnotation Tech. He said his job is fully remote and he operates asynchronously — with no set boss, no contact with coworkers, and no daily meetings.

"It's perfect for an introvert," he told Business Insider.

Willis said his days consist of "fact-checking" the output of various AI models — but only because that's what he chooses to take on. He said DataAnnotation Tech offers a variety of projects for contract workers to choose from, including teaching artificial intelligence to improve its creative writing and coding skills.

"You are literally going through and you're labeling the information based on a series of criteria that differ between projects," Willis said. "I personally work on a lot of factual stuff, just because I just find the pay-to-effort ratio is nice. So there's a lot of fact-checking responses, making sure the models aren't lying or hallucinating information."

As companies continue the push to improve their AI models, there's been a corresponding spike in demand for data annotators and labelers. Workers in the field spend their time either "generating data for training" or "labeling data for training," Willis said, completing tasks in programming, writing, and research.

Willis said he was drawn to the job when he was looking to move out of his parents' house.

"I wanted a job that wasn't customer service or anything like that," he said. "I was already doing remote school, so I was kind of already comfortable with the remote environment."

When he was onboarded, Willis was making $20 an hour, he said, but now he nets about $25. Hourly rates vary depending on the projects workers take on, and Willis said he'd seen them reach as high as $30.

Despite not taking on a full-time workload, Willis, who is pursuing a bachelor's in computer science through the University of Florida's online program, said he could fully cover his expenses — including tuition and rent in Raleigh, North Carolina.

"I can pay rent, and I can pay my way through college," Willis said. "It's not like I have a lot of spending money in the end, especially if I'm not working 40 hours, full-time kind of stuff, but I have enough where I can live generally."

Willis said his frugal lifestyle allowed him to stretch his pay, adding that he "couldn't support himself" if he were living alone.

"I live poor, honestly," he said. "If I had some extravagant lifestyle — if I went out to, you know, bars and everything and spent a lot online — I probably couldn't do it. But just getting through my day, it completely covers it."

The job does have its drawbacks. Willis said the repetitive nature of the tasks could be "mind-numbing." And unlike a full-time position, Willis gets paid only for the time he's sitting down at his computer actively working on assignments.

"Even in a high-paced job, I feel like, you know, there's paid lunch breaks, stuff like that," he said. "Or, you know, you spend a second or two talking to someone, but you're still on the clock getting paid. With this, you're really not getting paid unless you are doing the work."

Willis said he sometimes spends "six or seven hours" on research but gets paid for only about "five hours of actual work" because of his need to pause occasionally. But Willis said the pros of the job outweigh the cons.

"I will personally say work-life balance is nice, in the sense that, obviously, it's remote and I can work whenever I want," he said. "I can work at 1 o'clock in the morning if I really feel like it."

For someone who's looking for a side hustle to tack on to their full-time role, Willis said working to train AI might be the way to go.

"I think this would be really, really good for someone who has an actual job and is doing this, like, two hours a day," he said. "I think this is really what this kind of setup shines in. If you have an actual full-time job, and you just add the extra hour, hour and a half a day earning an extra $25 to $50 a day, just when you have nothing else to do, is definitely doable."

• Bill Gates told Patrick Collison that younger generations should worry about four things.
• They are the climate crisis, unchecked AI, nuclear war, and the spread of disease.
• Gates said that despite his concerns, he thinks people will be "so much better off" in the future.

Bill Gates says that if he were young again, he'd be afraid of more than just the atom bomb.

"There's, you know, about four or five things that are very scary, and the only one that I really understood and worried about a lot when I was young was nuclear war," Gates said in an interview with Patrick Collison.

Gates, the founder of Microsoft and chair of the Gates Foundation, shared his perspective on the evolving risks facing society.

"Today I think we'd add climate change, bioterrorism/pandemic, and keeping control of AI in some form," Gates said. "So, you know, now we have four footnotes."

Gates also described social polarization as a problem, later adding, "The younger generation has to be very afraid of those things."

This isn't the first time Gates has identified these areas of concern. In a blog post in 2023, Gates said that as his family grew, so did his desire to better the world.

"A grandchild does make you think about how we make sure the future is better — politics, health, climate, etc.," he wrote.

Gates argued that society is suffering from a dearth of intelligence. But he believes AI could present a solution rather than a problem. Though some have warned of AI's cataclysmic potential, Gates thinks it could be harnessed productively.

"We don't have as many medical experts, you know, people who can stay on top of everything, or people who can do math tutoring in the inner city," Gates said. "And we have a shortage of intelligence, and so we use this market system to kind of allocate it. AI, over time — and people can argue about the time frames — will make intelligence essentially free."

Despite the challenges, Gates said he still expects the citizens of the future to be largely better off — if they address the risks.

"Absent not solving some of these big problems, things are going to be so much better off," Gates said. "Alzheimer's, obesity, you know, we'll have a cure for HIV, we will have gotten rid of polio, measles, malaria. The pace of innovation is greater today than ever."

While fear can often act as a paralytic, Gates believes it could be a galvanizing force for younger generations.

"They'll actually, to some degree, exaggerate the likelihood and maybe the impact of some of those things in order to activate people to make sure we steer clear of those things," he said.

• Elon Musk has made a series of predictions across Tesla's most recent earnings calls.
• The Tesla CEO has said 2025 could be a "pivotal" year for the company.
• BI rounded up Musk's predictions for this year, including Optimus robot production and unsupervised FSD.

The way Elon Musk sees it, 2025 could be a major year for Tesla.

Musk has said that this year could be "pivotal" for the EV maker, particularly in terms of autonomous artificial intelligence, an umbrella term under which Musk includes Tesla's humanoid robots and fully self-driving cars.

"In fact, I think it probably will be viewed — '25 — as maybe the most important year in Tesla's history," Musk said during Tesla's quarterly earnings call on January 29. "There is no company in the world that is as good in real-world AI as Tesla."

While Tesla saw some choppy waters in 2024 as it reported its first year-over-year sales decline, Tesla's stock price has gotten a boost in the months since Donald Trump's victory in November. Musk's bet on Trump could also help pave the way to federal approval for fully autonomous vehicles, technology that the Tesla CEO has said is key to its future growth.

Musk, a self-described optimist, has told investors he envisions Tesla eventually being worth multiple trillions in market cap.

"I see a path, I'm not saying it's an easy path, but I see a path of Tesla being the most valuable company in the world by far," Musk said during Tesla's Q4 earnings call. "Not even close, like maybe several times more than — I mean, there is a path where Tesla is worth more than the next top five companies combined."

As of February 14, the top five most valuable companies in the world by market capitalization were Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. Tesla sits at number eight on the list.

So, how does Musk plan on eclipsing his competitors? In short: solving "autonomy."

Thousands of Optimus bots

Musk said the company plans on continuing to home in on "autonomous vehicles and autonomous humanoid robots" in 2025, after laying extensive groundwork last year.

The company has said it's moving onto "building the structure" necessary to produce the tech that Musk has identified as critical.

While Musk said that Tesla's internal goals call for the production of around 10,000 Optimus robots, he recently hedged that the goal is likely unrealistic.

"Will we succeed in building 10,000 exactly by the end of December this year? Probably not, but will we succeed in making several thousand? Yes, I think we will," Musk said on the earnings call. "Will those several thousand Optimus robots be doing useful things by the end of the year? Yes, I'm confident they will do useful things."

Musk said Tesla plans on using the bots internally at Tesla factories to tackle "boring, annoying," and sometimes "dangerous" tasks. The Optimus models in use at Tesla will inform tweaks for "production design 2," Musk added, which he expects to launch in 2026.

When Optimus is finally ready to be sold externally, the bots could eventually cost in the neighborhood of $20,000 to $30,000, Musk has previously estimated.

Currently, increasing the volume of production year-over-year is one of Tesla's foremost goals. Musk said the company is aiming to "ramp up Optimus production faster than maybe anything has ever been ramped."

"It doesn't take very many years before we're making 100 million of these things a year if you go up by, let's say, a factor by 5x per year," he said.

The rollout of Tesla's first robotaxi rides

On the autonomous vehicle front, Musk said he expects 2025 to see the rollout of fully self-driving cars.

"But I think we'll have unsupervised FSD in almost every market this year, limited simply by regulatory issues, not technical capability," Musk said. "And then unsupervised FSD in the US this year, in many cities, but nationwide next year."

Regulatory scrutiny could prove to be an obstacle — Tesla's supervised FSD program has already been subject to regulator scrutiny. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched a probe into the tech in 2024, after reports of four crashes, one resulting in a fatality, in which Tesla's FSD was believed to be engaged.

Still, Musk said that the technology itself is there, with thousands of Teslas are already "operating autonomously" with unsupervised FSD at its California factory in Fremont. He added that Teslas will be driving "in the wild" with no oversight in Austin by June, with California to follow by the end of the year.

"So, what I'm saying is this is not some far-off mythical situation," he said. "It's literally five, six months away, five months away kind of thing."

Musk acknowledged that he's been promising FSD for a long time, but said he's now confident that Tesla can deliver.

"Some of these things I've said for quite a long time, and I know people have said, 'Well, Elon, the boy who cried like a wolf like several times,'" Musk said. "But I'm telling you, there's a damn wolf this time and you can drive it. In fact, it could drive you. It's a self-driving wolf."

A less-expensive Tesla

Musk has said 2025 will also see a cheaper Tesla finally hit the market. He's previously said a more affordable model could cost around $25,000 dollars, which would make it the first sub-$30,000 Tesla.

"We are still on track to launch a more affordable model in the first half of 2025 and will continue to expand our lineup from there," said Vaibhav Taneja, Tesla's CFO, on the company's most recent earnings call.

Last year, Tesla sales dipped amid a wider EV slowdown and increased competition, particularly from Chinese rival BYD, which has a $9,500 EV available for purchase.

Regardless of Musk's bigger-picture focus on autonomy, the majority of Tesla's profits still come from EV sales, which a cheaper model could help boost.

The lower-cost vehicle could be built on Tesla's "next-generation" vehicle platform, with the same manufacturing lines pumping out both Tesla's $25,000 vehicle and upcoming Cybercab robotaxi.

It's less clear what the lower-cost vehicle will look like, as Musk has previously said Tesla doesn't plan to simply launch a version of the Cybercab with a steering wheel and pedals.

• Sam Altman recently told students that the age of "outrunning AI" is over.
• They should develop new skills to compete in a changing world, the OpenAI CEO added.
• OpenAI's CPO said to ask yourself when doing something new: "Is there a way that AI could help me do this faster?"

Sam Altman says it isn't a matter of if AI is going to outpace humans, but when.

"You will not outrun the AI on raw horsepower," Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, said in a Q&A session alongside OpenAI CPO Kevin Weil earlier this month with students at the University of Tokyo. "That's over. That's probably over this year."

So what's a human to do?

Weil, who has previously worked at Facebook and Instagram, said the sooner students start integrating AI into their daily lives, the better prepared they'll be when it crops up in future professions.

"To me, the lesson in there, the thing to take away now, is just start using these tools," the chief product officer said. "Start incorporating them into the way that you work, into the way that you study. When you're doing something new, ask yourself, 'Is there a way that AI could help me do this faster?'"

Altman said that if students are worried, they should try thinking about it differently.

"I think that the wrong way to think about it is just like — this thing is going to happen, and like it's going to beat us at everything," Altman said. "What will happen is, it'll be like step-by-step evolving together, and what we do will be unimaginable to people that used to have to work without this technology."

Altman told the students that trying to best AI in terms of pure skill is like trying to "outrun the calculator" at arithmetic.

"Are you going to be better at the AI at math, or a better programmer than the AI on its own, or better at physics?" Altman said. "The answer is no, you will not be better at any of those things. And so specific skills — you'll be able to do things with AI that no one could do before, and there'll be new ways to work with it."

In Altman's vision of the future, AI is so far advanced that everyone has access to the equivalent of "the best, most competent company on Earth." To compete in that cutting-edge world, Altman recommended the students in attendance develop new skills to help them leverage AI to their advantage.

"The skills that you need in that world are figuring out what people want, sort of creative vision, quick adaptability, resilience as everything is changing around you, and the sort of learning how to work with these tools to do way more than people could without it," Altman said.

When students do enter the workforce, Weil said they could benefit from keeping AI in mind. The best-positioned companies are those that see the technology as a potential boost, rather than a competitor, he added.

"If you're building something, and you're nervous about our next model release because it might be able to do the thing that you're doing, that's not a good place to be," Weil said. "But if you're building something and you can't wait for our next model release, because you're just at the edge of capabilities and our next model release that'll be that much smarter is going to make your product amazing, that's a good place to be."

OpenAI, which generates revenue from selling access to its AI models to companies as well as consumers, was valued at $157 billion in October — making it one of the world's most valuable startups. The company launched its first AI agent, Operator, to subscribers paying $200 a month for a ChatGPT Pro subscription in January.

Also in January, Altman wrote a blog post predicting the entry of the first "AI agents" into the workforce by 2025, programs that could "materially change the output of companies."

On Sunday, Altman published a new blog post titled "Three Observations," where he invited the reader to think of an AI agent as a "real-but-relatively-junior virtual coworker."

"Now imagine 1,000 of them. Or 1 million of them," Altman wrote. "Now imagine such agents in every field of knowledge work."

• US shoppers said they've received higher shipping-related fees after Trump's new tariffs on Chinese goods went into effect.
• Trump ordered the end of the de minimis exemption, long used by Shein and Temu to avoid import fees.
• However, a follow-up executive order signed by Trump on Friday paused the ending of the de minimis exemption.

President Donald Trump has pressed pause on an earlier executive order to end an exemption used by Chinese e-commerce giants Shein and Temu to avoid import fees.

Meanwhile, some Americans have received messages from companies and shipping firms this week asking them to pay additional fees in order to receive the packages they had previously ordered. Some of the shoppers shared screenshots of the messages and their purchase receipts with Business Insider.

Melissa Covarrubias, a San Diego-based influencer, paid additional fees of over $100 on an order shipped through DHL. Covarrubias told BI the added costs felt like "another way to squeeze more money from everyday consumers."

President Trump initially signed an executive order on Saturday to implement new tariffs on imported goods from China, Canada, and Mexico and ended the de minimis exemption. However, he later announced the tariffs on Canada and Mexico would be paused for a month, and on Friday issued a temporary pause on the removal of the de minimis exemption through another executive order.

Section 321, also known as de minimis, let importers avoid paying duty and tax on shipments valued under $800 that were headed directly to US customers.

Some US consumers have taken to social media in the last week to share examples of being charged outstanding duty fees on imported orders from China.

Covarrubias said she placed an order with Australian-based athleisure brand Crop Shop Boutique through DHL's delivery service, which initially cost $305. She paid the original price for her order and was later asked to pay a "duty payment" of $115.91.

"CSB assured customers that they would either cover 50% of the tariffs or provide a gift card for the same amount," she said. "Since my package had already arrived in San Diego, I paid the full tariff fee of $115.91, and CSB later refunded me half. While I appreciate the partial reimbursement, the high duty fees make me hesitant to shop with them again."

CSB's website says that its suppliers and manufacturers are located in China and Turkey, and that its shipments come from its warehouse in Queensland, Australia. A spokesperson for CSB did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"DHL Express has a standardized set of fees and handling charges that apply for the customs clearance process," a DHL spokesperson said. "These fees are in addition to government taxes and duties. Charges vary by shipment and are listed on our website. Shipments under the de minimis threshold are exempt."

Cristina Adams, a beauty and lifestyle influencer, said she had a similar experience, waiting on a pair of frames from Lensmart en route from China.

Adams said that after she paid for her order — $14.95 for the frames and an extra $21.95 for expedited shipping — she received an email from DHL requesting a duty payment of $18.82.

"I did end up paying the fee to receive my package, as it was something very necessary," Adams said. "But I feel like this is unfair, as I already paid an additional fee to receive the package already."

Adams said the "inconvenience" would make her more conscious of where she's buying from, going forwards. Covarrubias said she also plans to make changes to her shopping habits.

"Moving forward, I'm going to be more mindful of where I shop," Covarrubias said. "Malls and local stores often carry the same items at higher prices, and I'd rather not pay a premium for something I can get elsewhere for less."

Covarrubias said that, in an effort to cut down on spending, she also canceled her Amazon account.

"At the end of the day, we never truly know what's ahead — whether it's more economic changes, inflation, or new policies that make it even harder for the average person to afford quality products," she said.

• Intense pressure from Chinese rivals drove innovation at Uber, cofounder Travis Kalanick said in a recent podcast episode.
• He said competitors copied what Uber rolled out at dizzying speeds.
• Eventually, persistent copying led to genuine creativity, he said, allowing China to out-innovate some US companies.

In the thick of the 2010s, Uber was waging "all-out war" in China.

Travis Kalanick, Uber's cofounder who resigned in 2017, said that the sheer speed at which Uber's Chinese competitors copied the company's innovations was maddening.

And the way he sees it, that relentless approach eventually gave way to true innovation — the kind of ingenuity recently displayed by Chinese AI startup DeepSeek that sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley.

"There's no way I could express the frenetic intensity of copying that they would do on everything that we would roll out in China," Kalanick said on a recent episode of the "All-In Podcast." "And it was so epically intense that I basically had a massive amount of respect for their ability to copy what we did."

In 2016, the company was in a fierce battle for market share with Chinese rideshare rival Didi Chuxing, to which Uber would later sell its China operations in 2016. But before DiDi absorbed Uber's China business, the pressure to outpace each other created a veritable arms race.

"I just couldn't believe it. We would do real hard work, make it, we'd dial it, and it would be epic and it would be awesome," Kalanick said. "We'd roll it out, and then like two weeks later — boom! They've got it. A week later — boom! They've got it. And, of course, I used that to drive our team."

The competition pushed Kalanick to recruit "over 400 Chinese nationals," which he said created a sort of subculture within Uber's Silicon Valley office.

"We had a whole floor for the China growth team and it was primarily Chinese Nationals," Kalanick said. "We had billboards on the 101 in Silicon Valley in Chinese — Uber billboards to join our team in Chinese — to serve the homeland, right? It was like an all-out war. It was really epic."

Eventually, Kalanick said, that furious pace of development — and getting used to working at that speed — gave way to innovation.

"What happens is, when you get really, really good at copying, and that time gets tighter, and tighter, and tighter, and tighter, and tighter, you eventually run out of things to copy," Kalanick said. "And then it flips to creativity and innovation."

In some cases, Kalanick said that Chinese companies are now getting ahead of their American counterparts.

"But as they exercise that muscle, it gets better, and better, and better," Kalanick said. "So, if you want to know about the future of food, like online food delivery, you don't go to New York City — you go to Shanghai."

In part, Chinese companies are well-positioned to take advantage of circumstances that are unique to their country, Kalanick said.

"You know, they're taking advantage of their economics on labor and things like this," Kalanick said. "It wouldn't exactly work that way here, but a lot of the innovation you will see coming out on Uber Eats or DoorDash — like the stuff that's coming out now — is stuff that existed three years ago, four years ago in China. Maybe longer."

CloudKitchens and DiDi Chuxing did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

At some point along the way, Chinese businesses went from lagging behind to setting the bar on innovative features, Kalanick said.

"Eventually you cross that threshold of copying, and you're innovating, and then you're leading," Kalanick said. "And I think we see that in a whole bunch of different places."

• TSMC's founder spoke about how the company secured Apple's business in a rare podcast interview.
• Morris Chang said it was TSMC's reputation with customers that helped them beat Intel for an iPhone contract.
• The founder said he "bet" the company on the Apple deal, but felt it was a winning wager.

The chip business is fiercely competitive. So what's it like to negotiate a contract with Apple, one of the biggest customers in town?

Morris Chang, the 93-year-old founder of chipmaking giant TSMC, recently gave a rare interview where he gave a behind-the-scenes look at how he navigated a landmark deal to manufacture iPhone chips.

It began with an unexpected dinner, lots of listening, and a compromise of sorts.

In the early days of the smartphone revolution, Chang said TSMC was positioned in exactly the right place at the right time.

"I quoted Shakespeare in my autobiography," Chang said on a recent episode of "Acquired." "That there's a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at its flood, leads on to fortune. I decided that this was — 28 nanometers — was going to be our tide."

The release of TSMC's 28-nanometer chips in 2011 came at the perfect moment, Chang said, with the company poised to take advantage of smartphone developers' growing need for semiconductor technology.

However, while Chang said he had thought for years about how to land Apple's business, the company had its own preferred way of doing business.

"Apple is a very close-mouthed company," Chang said. "If you try to talk to them, if you offer, you know, your service, they will just tell you to go away. They will come to see you when they are ready. That's what I knew about Apple, even then. And I know the same thing now."

Around that time, an opportunity presented itself in the form of an unexpected dinner with Jeff Williams, Apple's operations boss, at Chang's own home. Chang said Williams got right to laying out the framework for a potential deal for TSMC to make iPhone chips.

"Foundry our wafers, something like that. Pretty straightforward," Chang recalled Williams telling him. "I listened. That night, I think Jeff talked maybe 80% and I talked 20%."

However, there was a twist — Apple wanted TSMC to produce a 20-nanometer chip, which Chang viewed as a step back from the 16-nanometer chip he viewed as the natural next step in TSMC's foundry development.

"Now, that was a surprise to me," Chang said. "And, frankly, it was also a disappointment, because the progression after 28 was going to be 16."

"A half step is a detour," the founder added.

Williams offered TSMC a 40% gross margin, Chang said. The TSMC founder said he believed Apple was trying to be generous with the offer, but TSMC had already achieved 45% gross margins.

Chang said he kept quiet about that element of the proposal, deciding the dinner was not the right time to open up a negotiation over pricing.

Ultimately, Chang said TSMC decided to produce only half of the supply of chips Apple was asking for. After relaying his offer, Chang said Williams called to put negotiations on pause while Apple entered into talks with Intel, who at the time made chips for Apple's Mac computers.

Still, Chang said he wasn't "all that worried" because he felt TSMC better fit the criteria that Apple was searching for in a supplier.

"Technology — at that time we thought we were almost at par with Intel," Chang said. "Almost. In fact, I thought we were at par with Intel. Manufacturing, I thought we were better than Intel. And customer trust, we thought that our customers trusted us more than Intel's customers trusted Intel. "

Eventually, Chang said he heard some good news from Tim Cook himself while getting lunch with him at Apple's cafeteria and carrying their food trays up to his office.

"He told me there's nothing to worry about because Intel just does not know how to be a foundry," Chang said. "That's a very short but very satisfactory answer to me."

Chang said that he believes it was TSMC's reputation for addressing customers' every concern that gave it a leg up.

"I think Tim meant that the customer asks a lot of things," Chang said. "We have learned to respond to every request. Some of them were crazy, some of them were irrational — but we responded to each request courteously. Which we do."

"I knew a lot of Intel's customer customers in Taiwan, you know, all the PC makers are Intel's customers — none of them liked Intel," he added. "Intel always acted like they were the only guy."

Intel and Apple did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment prior to publication. A spokesperson for TSMC declined to comment.

Borrowing billions, Chang's gamble on investing in 20-nanometer foundries ultimately paid off, he said.

"I bet the company, but I didn't think I would lose," Chang said.

After a final meeting with Williams sealed the deal, Chang said he told the Apple executive that they should celebrate at a 3-star restaurant.

"Jeff jokingly said, 'If you didn't like the pricing we probably would be going to a McDonald's,'" Chang said.

Fast forward to today, and Apple is one of TSMC's biggest customers, manufacturing many of the tech giant's custom-designed chips for the iPhone, Mac, and iPad.

Last year, TSMC started producing custom A16 chips for Apple at one of its Phoenix factories, two years after now-CEO Tim Cook said Apple would begin using US-made chips for the first time in almost a decade.

• Several firms have rolled back DEI efforts amid pressure from conservative groups and the White House.
• Some CEOs have voiced their support or defended the diversity programs at their companies.
• Deutsche Bank's CEO is the latest bank executive to defend DEI initiatives.

The list of CEOs who are publicly backing their companies' DEI policies is growing.

Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing is the latest, joining JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs' David Solomon in publicly defending DEI programs amid wider external criticism of diversity initiatives from conservative activists and President Donald Trump's new administration.

One of Trump's first executive orders placed federal DEI staffers on administrative leave as work began to dismantle their departments.

The pullback on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the private sector began before Trump took office. A slew of companies — including Meta, Walmart, and McDonald's — either reduced or ended their own DEI initiatives. Some had been targeted by conservative activist groups.

However, amid the tensions around DEI, some executives are taking a public stance in support of their firms' policies.

Deutsche Bank

In a Frankfurt press conference on Thursday, Sewing said his company was "firmly behind" its DEI programs, calling them "integral" to its strategy.

"Quite honestly, I know what diversity has brought us on the management board at the top reporting level," Sewing said. "That's why we are strong supporters of these programs."

If the legality of DEI programs should ever change, the bank might reevaluate its stance, he added.

"But in terms of our basic attitude, in terms of our mindset, both issues — whether it's diversity policy, inclusion, or sustainability — are an integral part of Deutsche Bank's strategy," he said.

JPMorgan

Dimon was defiant in the face of apparent targeting from activist shareholders over the company's DEI programs.

"Bring them on," he told CNBC on January 22. "We are going to continue to reach out to the Black community, the Hispanic community, the LGBT community, the veterans community."

Goldman Sachs

Solomon said that while he'd heard of shareholder proposals, he hadn't yet reviewed them.

"We're advising our clients. They think about these things," Solomon said in a separate interview with CNBC on January 22. "They think about decarbonization, they think about climate transition. They think about their businesses, how they find talent, the diversity of the talent they find all over the world."

Goldman Sachs' stated inclusion goals are geared toward funneling more women into leadership positions, making "progress towards racial equity," and ensuring diversity both among its vendors and in its boardroom.

Cisco

In an interview with Axios on January 22, Chuck Robbins, the CEO of Cisco, said that a diverse workforce being better was an inarguable fact.

"I think the pendulum swings a little wide in both directions. And for us, it's about finding the equilibrium," Robbins said, adding: "You cannot argue with the fact that a diverse workforce is better."

Robbins added that DEI was being discussed as "single issue" but that he believed it's far more complex.

"And in reality, it's made up of 150 different things, and maybe seven of them got a little out of hand," he said. "I think those six or seven things are going to get solved, and then you're going to be left with common sense."

Costco

Costco has been clear about its support for DEI, even as it faces mounting pressure from conservative groups to walk back its policies.

Nearly all of Costco's shareholders rejected a proposal by the National Center for Public Policy Research last week that was similar to the one received by JPMorgan. It would have required Costco to issue a report on the legal and financial risks of DEI policies.

"The overwhelming support of our shareholders' vote really puts an answer to that question," Costco CEO Ron Vachris said.

Costco's board has also previously issued statements reaffirming the company's dedication to DEI.

"Our commitment to an enterprise rooted in respect and inclusion is appropriate and necessary," the board wrote in December.

The company continues to face scrutiny for its policies, as 19 Republican attorneys general sent a letter to Vachris urging him to end what they called "divisive and discriminatory DEI practices."

• Executives are increasingly fielding analyst questions about the business impact of DeepSeek.
• Business Insider is keeping a running tally of CEOs who have talked about DeepSeek on earnings calls.
• In spite of the market disruption, the early outlook is generally optimistic about the tech.

If there was a bingo card for company earnings calls this quarter, DeepSeek would deserve its own square.

Stock market surprises have a way of echoing through subsequent earnings calls, and the impact of DeepSeek is reverberating on Wall Street.

On recent analyst calls, executives have increasingly fielded questions about the Chinese AI upstart and what its more cost-effective model means for their businesses.

The name DeepSeek was mentioned in at least nine earnings calls last week, according to an AlphaSense search, with only a single mention prior to the company's bombshell announcement about its AI models. That number has grown as major tech companies including Alphabet, AMD, Palantir, and Amazon report their earnings.

But in spite of the market disruption that saw wild swings in Big Tech share prices, the early outlook is generally optimistic about the tech.

Here's what business leaders are telling analysts:

Airbnb

Airbnb's CEO, Brian Chesky, said AI and low-cost models like DeepSeek will have a "profound impact on travel."

In a fourth-quarter earnings call on February 13, Chesky said that it will use AI to improve its customer service and transform Airbnb's search engine into a "travel and living concierge."

"I think it's a really exciting time in the space because you've seen like with DeepSeek and more competition with models is models are getting cheaper or nearly free, they're getting faster, and they're getting more intelligent and for all this purpose, starting to get commoditized," he said to investors.

He added that the best platforms and applications moving forward would be those that "most accrue the value from AI," and Airbnb would be the travel platform that does that.

ARM

DeepSeek is "great for the industry," said Rene Haas, the CEO of ARM, on the chipmaker's February 5 earnings call.

"It drives efficiency, it lowers the cost. And by doing that, it expands the demand for overall compute. So, just from a general standpoint, it's a good thing," he said.

Haas referenced the controversy over how DeepSeek created its latest model — OpenAI is investigating whether the company trained on the Microsoft-backed company's technology. Haas called DeepSeek's approach "creative."

He also compared the product to Grace Blackwell architecture, highlighting that while Nvidia's product is "wonderful," it couldn't go in a cellphone, earbuds, or other smaller electronics that ARM targets.

"When you think about the application to ARM, given the fact that AI workloads will need to run everywhere and lower-cost inference, a more efficient inference makes it easier to run these applications in areas where power is constrained," Haas said.

AMD

Lisa Su, the CEO of AMD, said DeepSeek is driving innovation that's "good for AI adoption" in an earnings call on February 4.

"The fact that there are new ways to bring about training and inference capabilities with less infrastructure actually is a good thing, because it allows us to continue to deploy AI compute and broader application space and more adoption," Su said.

She added that AMD is a "big believer" in open source.

"And from that standpoint, having open source models, looking at the rate and pace of adoption there, I think, is pretty amazing," Su said. "And that is how we expect things to go."

Google

Google's CEO Sundar Pichai said in an earnings call on February 4 that DeepSeek had done "very good work."

"Look, I think there's been a lot of observations on DeepSeek. First of all, I think a tremendous team," he said to investors. "I think they've done very, very good work."

He said that for Google, it had "always been obvious" that frontier models could be made to be more efficient over time.

But he downplayed DeepSeek's threat, saying that he thinks Google's Gemini model is the "Pareto frontier of cost, performance, and latency."

He added that Google's recent 2.0 Flash Thinking models are "some of the most efficient models out there, including comparing to DeepSeek's V3 and R1."

Palantir Technologies

Shyam Sankar, CTO of Palantir Technologies, fielded a question about DeepSeek during the company's earnings call on February 3. He said DeepSeek demonstrated that AI models are "commoditizing."

"But I think the real lesson, the more profound one, is that we are at war with China," Sankar said, adding, "We are in an AI arms race."

He also criticized the explanation that "the Chinese just copy and we're the only innovators," an apparent reference to reports that DeepSeek may have copied OpenAI.

He said the engineering in DeepSeek's R1 model was "exquisite" and that "the optimizations that they've done are really impressive."

"We have to wake up with the respect for our adversary and realize that we are competing," Sankar said, adding, "We have to realize that the AI race is winner take all."

"The time to mobilize has come," he said.

Apple

An analyst asked Apple CEO Tim Cook for his perspective on the "DeepSeek situation" during the company's quarterly earnings call on January 30.

"In general, I think innovation that drives efficiency is a good thing," Cook said. "That's what you see in that model."

The CEO said he thought the company's "tight integration of silicon and software" would continue to serve them well.

"From a CapEx point of view, we've always taken a very prudent, deliberative approach to our expenditure, and we continue to leverage a hybrid model, which I think continues to serve as well," Cook said, referring to Apple's AI strategy.

Meta

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged DeepSeek as a "new competitor" during an earnings call on January 29. An investor asked him about the competitive dynamic in the open-source field.

"In light of some of the recent news, you know, the new competitor, DeepSeek from China, I think it's also one of the things that we're talking about, is there's going to be an open-source standard globally, and I think for our own national advantage, it's important that it's an American standard," Zuckerberg said to investors.

He added that the emergence of DeepSeek has "only strengthened our conviction that this is the right thing for us to be focused on."

Later in the call, he said that DeepSeek did "a number of novel things" to train its model fast and cheaply, which Meta was "still digesting." He added that DeepSeek has made advances that Meta hopes to implement in its systems.

Microsoft

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella mentioned DeepSeek twice in his prepared remarks during an earnings call on January 29.

He said that the Copilot+ PC laptops, which Microsoft has called the "fastest, most intelligent Windows PCs ever built," would soon be able to run DeepSeek's R1 distilled models locally.

When asked about DeepSeek by an investor, he said, "I think DeepSeek has had some real innovations. And that is some of the things that even OpenAI found in o1."

IBM

IBM's CEO Arvind Krishna fielded a DeepSeek question during an earnings call on January 29.

When asked about what implications DeepSeek could have for IBM or the industry at large, Krishna said, "Look, DeepSeek, I think, was a point of validation."

"We have been very vocal for about a year that smaller models and more reasonable training times are going to be essential for enterprise deployment of large language models," he said.

The tech giant's chief added that IBM has been going "down that journey" itself "for more than a year" and that it has seen "as much as 30 times reduction in inference costs" with those approaches.

"As other people begin to follow that route, we think that this is incredibly good for our enterprise clients," Krishna said.

AT&T

AT&T CEO John Stankey said the newer, lower-cost AI "is going to open up and facilitate new applications and business models."

"This is a seminal technology cycle," Stankey said on January 27 of generative AI. "It's going to be every bit as big as the founding of the Internet when it's all said and done."

Stankey added that new breakthroughs like DeepSeek that use less processing capacity, consume less power, work more effectively in particular domains, or can be run on local devices instead of in the cloud will ultimately lead to new applications and business models.

"We're all going to have to stay on our game to make sure we use it effectively so none of us are in a disadvantaged position relative to our competitors on cost-structure effectiveness," he said.

Corning

Wendell Weeks, CEO of glassmaker Corning, which produces fiber optics that are increasingly critical in high-speed networking, said the technical community has been watching DeepSeek for the last few months.

"What's super important to understand is that we need dramatic improvement in training and inference cost to make GenAI into a highly sustainable business model, and more importantly, the productivity driver that we all hope it will be," he said.

"All of us in the space are counting on many more innovations to come," he continued, adding that AI models of the future will continue to need improvements in computation and communication technologies.

Flex

Revathi Advaithi, CEO of mid-cap datacenter company Flex, acknowledged "a lot of noise this week," but said DeepSeek itself doesn't represent anything new in terms of demand for AI infrastructure.

"At the end of the day, compute density is still a big deal," she said. "We think lower cost in applications like DeepSeek is a good thing for the industry as a whole because it's going to drive a stronger growth in terms of the market itself."

In addition, Advaithi said lower barriers to entry could spur more widespread innovation in AI, driving additional demand for infrastructure providers like Flex.

"We haven't seen enough growth from non-Mag Seven companies and we'll start to see a lot more of that," she said. "It actually accelerates the move towards AI."

Amazon

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said on Thursday that leaders at the company "were impressed with what DeepSeek has done."

Different AI models will challenge and pass each other when it comes to capabilities, he said on Amazon's earnings call.

"Different customers are going to use different models for different types of workloads," Jassy said. "You're going to provide as many leading frontier models as possible for customers to choose from."

He also said that DeepSeek's cheaper costs aren't a problem for the industry. When technologies become less expensive, some people say "that somehow it's going to lead to less total spend in technology," he said.

"We have never seen that to be the case," Jassy added.

• Nvidia's CEO spoke in a recent interview about his expectations for the future.
• Jensen Huang said the age of human robotics and the "application science of AI" was coming.
• Huang said that if he were still a student, the "first thing" he'd do is learn AI.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has a vision for the future — and some advice for the generations that will have to navigate it.

In a recently released interview on Cleo Abram's "Huge Conversations," recorded on January 7, Huang said he expected massive leaps in what he called "human robotics" within the next half decade and a broadening in the applications of artificial intelligence.

Multiple companies across both the US and China, among other countries, are working to launch and scale the production of humanoid robots for use in manufacturing and consumer applications.

"The last 10 years was really about the science of AI," the Nvidia cofounder said. "The next 10 years, we're going to have plenty of science of AI, but the next 10 years is going to be the application science of AI. The fundamental science versus the application science."

AI will become pervasive, Huang said, weaving its way into nearly every industry.

"The applied research, the application side of AI now becomes: How can I apply AI to digital biology?" Huang said. "How can I apply AI to climate technology? How can I apply AI to agriculture, to fishery, to robotics, to transportation, optimizing logistics? How can I apply AI to, you know, teaching?"

Huang's advice to future generations is simple: Learn how to use the technology in its various forms, including how to craft smart prompts.

"If I were a student today, the first thing I would do is to learn AI," Huang said. "How do I learn to interact with ChatGPT, how do I learn to interact with Gemini Pro, and how do I learn to interact with Grok? Learning how to interact with AI is not unlike being someone who is really good at asking questions."

Huang, who is 61, said his generation had to ask: "How do we use computers to do our jobs better?" He said the next generation should be asking: "How can I use AI to do my job better?"

Meta's Mark Zuckerberg has echoed the sentiments when asked what students should study, citing the experience of one of his daughters, who used Meta AI to illustrate a story she was writing.

"I think the most important thing is just, like, learning how to think critically and learning values when you're young," Zuckerberg said in an interview with Bloomberg's Emily Chang.

Huang took the idea further, posing a question: What if people had round-the-clock access to skills they'd never developed?

The Nvidia CEO pondered what would happen, for instance, if someone had a software programmer in their pocket to take their "seed of an idea" and allow that person to gain access to a "prototype" without knowing how to manufacture it.

"How would that change my life, and how would that change my opportunity?" Huang said. "And, you know, what does it free me to be able to do and so on, so forth?"

To fully grasp the scope of the AI frontier, people just need to see it for themselves and how the technology has "lowered a barrier of knowledge," Huang said.

"If I put a computer in front of somebody and they've never used a computer, there is no chance they're going to learn that computer in a day," he added.

"And yet with ChatGPT, if you don't know how to use it, all you have to do is type in, 'I don't know how to use ChatGPT; tell me,' and it would come back and give you some examples," he said. "The amazing thing about intelligence is it'll help you along the way and make you superhuman along the way."

• Drew Houston, the CEO of Dropbox, said he changed his approach to mental health after navigating a challenging time.
• He said a combination of self-knowledge and a support system helped him regain his focus.
• The CEO advises founders to avoid burnout and develop coping mechanisms so that challenges don't lead to suffering.

A decade ago, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston learned a valuable lesson about the importance of mental health.

It was 2015, a challenging time for the startup. Morale was low, he said, so low that even the CEO didn't feel like wearing the company's merch.

It had been years since, according to Houston, Steve Jobs vowed to kill Dropbox with iCloud after the Dropbox CEO declined his acquisition offer, and the startup faced competition from all sides. Major companies like Google and Microsoft, along with a collection of smaller startups, scrambled for a piece of the file-sharing and storage pie.

"You're just in this situation — you've started this company, it's been super successful, and then suddenly, you know, your employees don't want to wear your T-shirt anymore," Houston said on a recent episode of "Lenny's Podcast." "And, frankly, you don't even want to wear your T-shirt anymore."

Houston said Dropbox was also facing internal challenges at the time, including struggling to hire the personnel and build the infrastructure necessary to support its growth. The company also faced backlash from some within the company.

"I'd start to hear kind of a louder set of critics inside and outside the company," Houston said. "And I'd been thinking for a long time, 'Man, we're really fighting wars on all these very disparate fronts.'"

Going from a company that seemingly "could do no wrong" to one that "could do no right" took a mental toll, Houston said. His identity had become "fused" with his company, the CEO said — and his emotions tied up in its performance.

"It's pretty tough when everybody's looking to you as the founder and CEO, looking for quick fixes and answers, and also just wondering, 'How the hell did you get us in this situation?'" Houston said.

Burnout among startup founders is common, though it's not always openly discussed. OpenAI's Sam Altman once said he worked so hard on building his first startup that he developed scurvy.

To break out of that cycle of negative feedback, Houston said he turned inwards. Picking up a meditation practice, along with leaning on his founder friends and mentors, helped him stop seeing challenges as always negative.

"Most of the entrepreneurs that are my heroes had various periods of wandering in the desert," Houston said. "Those things, instead of just being problems, were probably the crucible that forged who they became."

The CEO said mindfulness also allowed him to escape the myopic day-to-day view of putting out fires as they came up, and address larger questions about Dropbox's focus.

"I was too busy firing to aim," Houston said. "And then I thought I would do my aiming on vacations and things like that, but no. I really need to get off the treadmill now and then, and make space to address some of these bigger questions."

A big part of resetting Dropbox's approach — which Houston said is now focused on streamlining productivity — was taking full accountability for the struggles the company was facing.

"I could look at this and say, 'Oh, Microsoft is mean,' or 'Google was mean,' or 'Apple was mean,' but I drove the ship towards these rocks." Houston said. "That's the downside of being a founder, a CEO. You can't blame the last guy."

Armed with increased self-awareness, Houston said he worked to snap himself out of a funk by taking an unflinching look at his own strengths and weaknesses. It changed the way he communicated with his employees and helped him think more clearly about what he wanted to produce, the CEO said.

"First it's getting out of this delusional state where you think you're great, just sort of splashing cold water on everyone," he said. If the last thing customers have seen from the company in recent years is a price increase, then 'What the hell are we doing?" Houston said.

Three years later, Dropbox went public. Today, the company has a market cap of around $9.5 billion.

Houston also had some words of advice for founders about protecting against burnout.

"I think burnout is the biggest thing that will sort of kill you," he said. "And so that's why I think these coping methods and getting your own head right is important. But if you do that, it's also this amazing experience."

"Challenge is not optional," he added. "You're going to be challenged, but the suffering is optional."

• CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said he expects AVs to run parallel to human Uber drivers for the next decade.
• He said that after 10 years of such a hybrid rideshare system, "things may be different."
• Uber has partnered with various autonomous vehicle companies, including Waymo, to offer self-driving rides.

What happens to the millions of Uber drivers when autonomous vehicles, or robotaxis, become the norm?

Uber's CEO said its human drivers won't be replaced anytime soon.

"You know, I don't think you are going to feel anything as it relates in the next five years," said chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi during a recent appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box" from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

"So, for example, in San Francisco, our business continues to grow and Waymo is growing — just the overall envelope of the business is growing faster," he said, referencing the self-driving car division of Google's parent company, Alphabet. Uber partnered with Waymo in 2023 and provides access to self-driving rides in some cities through its app.

Though Uber plans to increase the number of AVs in its ride-hailing fleet, Khosrowshahi said that the integration will proceed slowly, at least for the coming decade.

"I think we will operate in a hybrid network," the Uber CEO said. "A combination, you know. By far predominantly human drivers, and then some AVs feathering in over the next 10 years."

After that, though, things are more murky, he suggested.

"Ten years from now, things may be different," Khosrowshahi said. "But between now and 10 years from now, the humans are going to have plenty of work, and AVs are going to work their way into the system."

Uber sold its self-driving car unit to Aurora amid financial struggles during the pandemic as it pushed for its overall business to turn a profit. The sale came more than a year after one of Uber's self-driving vehicles was involved in a fatal pedestrian crash, for which the safety driver who was in the car was ruled responsible.

Today, Uber relies on partnerships with autonomous vehicle makers, including Waymo, in a handful of US cities such as Atlanta and Austin. The company also invested in the British firm Wayve, as an extension to its $1 billion Series C funding round.

He has also said the company would "love" to partner with Tesla on its upcoming Cybercab robotaxi to make it available through the Uber app, though neither Tesla nor Musk has given any public indication that it's looking to do so.

Khosrowshahi said the broader development of autonomous vehicles is moving along at incredible speeds in the industry, and he expects the technology itself to be ready for what he calls "primetime" between "now and two years from now." But the commercialization of AVs, he said, is another matter entirely.

"The commercialization of AVs is going to take much longer," Khosrowshahi said. "The building materials, the cost of the sensors, the cars, et cetera, is too high right now."

Uber's partnerships with auto developers will help grease the wheels on AV integration, Khosrowshahi said.

"And we think that our partnering with AV developers will speed up that commercialization because we can bring them a lot more business much faster, we have fleet operations in cities in which we operate," the Uber CEO said.

Uber did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment from Business Insider.

When the technology truly becomes more ubiquitous, Khosrowshahi believes it'll transform transportation for the better.

"This is a technology that's going to hit primetime, and it's going to make for safer streets for passengers," the Uber CEO said.

• There's no single definition for artificial general intelligence.
• Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, previously predicted that "powerful AI" could arrive by 2026.
• Amodei recently told CNBC that AGI was more of a "marketing term."

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei seems confident that we're rapidly approaching a new technology threshold — the creation of AI systems that are "better" than humans at most things.

He's just not willing to pin the buzzy term "AGI," or artificial general intelligence, on it.

"AGI has never been a well-defined term, for me," Amodei said on a recent appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box." "I've always thought of it as a marketing term. But, you know, the way I think about it is, at some point, we're going to get to AI systems that are better than almost all humans at almost all tasks."

AGI is top of mind for various tech leaders, with many predicting that the technology is rapidly approaching viability.

The issue is there is no widely agreed-upon definition of AGI, much less a concrete timeline for reaching it.

In general, many describe it as a form of AI that can meet or exceed human capabilities. In Amodei's case, he said he preferred to think about future advanced AI systems as a "country of geniuses in a data center."

"It's a sort of evocative phrase for all the power and all the positive things, and, you know, all of the potential negative things," Amodei said. "That's the thing I think we're quite likely to get in the next two or three years."

Amodei previously wrote an essay on the subject of AGI, which he prefers to call "powerful AI." In it, he laid out a series of parameters for the technology, including being "smarter than a Nobel Prize winner across most relevant fields." In the same piece, he predicted it could arrive by 2026.

After a decade in the AI field, Amodei said he was more confident than ever about such a timeline.

"Throughout the 10 years that I've been working in this field, I've always said, 'You know, I don't know for sure, this is the direction it seems like it's going in, we could be getting to very powerful or human level systems,'" Amodei said.

"I still think there's uncertainty, I think it's important to be humble, but over the last six months, I would say that uncertainty, for me, has decreased a great deal," he said.

As for recent concerns about the practicality of continued scaling of AI models, Amodei said he wasn't worried. He said that there had been only "five or six" times throughout his career in AI in which the tech appeared to be hitting a wall and that "something slightly different" was always invented that allowed for continued progress.

"The scaling of AI, it feels like this river," Amodei said. "That, you know, every once in a while it runs into a stone, but it'll — it always finds a way to go around."

• Alpine Investors CEO Graham Weaver teaches at Stanford, where he helps students determine a career path.
• He uses something he calls the "genie framework" to guide them.
• Weaver said in a recent podcast interview that interest and persistence are the keys to success.

Alpine Investors founder and CEO Graham Weaver often finds himself teaching the students of his Stanford class about more than just strategies for growing a business.

The private equity CEO said that students frequently come to him not with questions about business but about life — specifically, what to do with theirs.

Weaver said on a recent episode of "Lenny's Podcast" that he often prescribes a series of exercises that previously helped give him clarity on his own goals. Chief among them is asking yourself the "genie question."

Weaver said a typical meeting on the topic consists of a student laying out possible career paths and talking through the pros and cons of each.

Weaver said he often watches as students consider option A, which they see as more practical, and try to talk themselves out of option B, something that they have their hearts set on.

"First, I try to let them realize that their real energy is for B. Just let them feel that, and understand that," Weaver said. "And then secondly, I try to figure out — what are the limiting beliefs they have? What are the fears? What are the obstacles?"

His students are often held back by external pressures, whether that be a desire for stability, or simply a fear of failure, he said. They then end up pursuing what they think they should, rather than what they want to.

Getting locked into a career for which you have no enthusiasm leads to a life lived on autopilot, the CEO said. Rushing through a familiar daily routine, with no time to consider what you're doing or whether you even want to be doing it, can lead to an increased degree of anxiety and friction, he added.

"But then once I kind of got into the path of the thing that I was excited about, that's when I really felt my energy change dramatically," Weaver said. "And I developed almost like a superpower in that thing, because, you know, I had more energy. I was willing to work longer, I was willing to do it."

He instructs participants to imagine a genie grants them a boon — guaranteed success in whatever career they dedicate themselves to.

"If that were true, and you had that genie blessing you with that wish, what would you wish for?" Weaver said. "And then the students come up with an answer that's really close to their heart. And it's the thing they would do, absent the fear of failure. And then the second part of the exercise is — that's what you should do."

Weaver said he understands that there can be limitations, often manifesting in financial needs. To help demystify them, he recommends writing problems down instead of actively ruminating on any limitations, thereby reducing hurdles to a series of manageable steps.

"When you get it down on paper, it will almost immediately strip that limiting belief of a lot of its power, and a lot of its scariness," Weaver said. "Because now it's just something like, for example, 'How would I fund this?' So, the second thing is that a lot of that scariness becomes just a to-do item."

But Weaver says success isn't just about overcoming fear. The main variable in Weaver's "formula" is time. He's found that people's expectations are often skewed in favor of an unrealistic immediacy.

"You have to go in at the beginning with that mindset and the structural ability to stay at it for a long period of time," Weaver said. "So the missing ingredient in most of the people that fail is time."

Without patience and grit, he said, his own success would instead be a museum of failures. Weaver's philosophy is that pursuing improvement is always uncomfortable.

"The first move is negative to getting in shape, the first move is negative to get out of a bad relationship, to get into a career you want to be in," Weaver said.

We only get one life, Weaver said. He thinks it's best to start making the most of it as soon as possible — before "not now" becomes "not ever."

"Take the time to really figure out and answer the question, 'What does a wonderful, amazing, incredible life look like?'" Weaver said. "And just get as clear as you possibly can on that."

• Jeff Bezos sorts decisions into two categories — those you can walk back, and those you can't.
• The concept of "one-way door" and "two-way door" decisions is meant to help big companies move quickly.
• AWS CEO Matt Garman recently talked on a podcast about the decision-making framework.

Have you ever wondered how Amazon calculates risky decisions? Founder Jeff Bezos famously simplified the process by sorting decisions into two camps — one-way doors, and two-way doors.

The concept, intended to help a big company categorize decisions and move quickly, appears to be alive and well within Amazon four years after Bezos announced he was stepping down as CEO.

Matt Garman, the CEO of Amazon Web Services, broke down how he applies Bezos's decision-making model on a recent episode of The Verge's "Decoder" podcast.

"Well, part of my job is to make the one-way door decisions," Garman said. "So I think that framework is, it's a useful one to think about. And just to clarify, in case you're not aware of it, largely that's how you go fast. You try to define what those decisions are."

Bezos has previously said that a common pitfall for companies is employing a "one-size-fits-all" model — sacrificing speed by not knowing what to run up the flagpole, and when. Ideally, two-way-door decisions require minimal executive oversight, if any.

Garman agrees.

"You want the people that are owning those teams at the edges of the organization that really own those products to make important decisions because they know best about their product," Garman said. "But they're also decisions that could be undone if we decide that it wasn't the right thing to do."

Garman said he's rarely the expert on any particular subject AWS is working on — and doesn't try to pretend otherwise, instead devoting time to absorbing their views.

"And so I make sure that I listen and leave space for those experts who spend all of their days thinking about that to weigh in as to how they've come up with their recommendation, how they think about what we should do," Garman said.

The cloud services CEO also asks questions. Garman said he sees his "non-expert" point of view as essential to the decision-making process, as a zoomed-out focus can help him bridge knowledge gaps between one area of the business and another.

"I try to make sure that, as an organization, we've connected those dots and then ask the right sets of questions," Garman said.

Garman said his role leading AWS, ultimately, is to keep things moving by handing down the final word. After all — speed is of the essence.

"And then if there's a tiebreaker decision I'll have to do it so that we can move fast," Garman said. "I think the place we don't want to be in is to sit there and just debate forever. At some point, you need a tiebreaker decision, and that's what I view my job as doing as well."

• The Supreme Court ruled to uphold a TikTok ban — and several apps are vying for its crown.
• Sister app Lemon8 has soared in popularity but is likely to get the ax, too.
• Meta, YouTube, and Snapchat have competed in short-form video for years, and RedNote recently attracted US users.

As TikTok inches toward potential extinction in the US, creators are trying to transition viewers to other platforms, while some viewers are already in a state of mourning.

The app is set to be yanked from US app stores on January 19, after the Supreme Court ruled to uphold a law on Friday forcing China-based ByteDance to divest its ownership of Tiktok or face a ban.

If the app goes dark, US users will have to look elsewhere for a short-form video fix. TikTok's ethos and community are unique, but competing formats exist on the world's biggest social-media apps, and are also offered by emerging competitors.

Here's who is — and who's not — in the running.

Meta, YouTube, and Snapchat have been competing in short-form video for years

Data shows that new apps often struggle to gain long-term traction when they have well-established rivals. And Meta, YouTube, and Snapchat have all been competing in the short-form space for years.

Meta launched Instagram Reels in 2020 to great success — even chipping away at TikTok usage, according to two studies from last year. Analysts predict Meta will be the biggest winner if TikTok goes dark in the US.

YouTube, the original video giant, added short-form video in 2021, which has paid off handsomely. More recently, the Google-owned platform has used the prospect of a ban as a selling point for its ad team.

Snapchat, for its part, launched a TikTok counterpart called Spotlight in 2020, offering payouts to get creators to post.

Meanwhile, LinkedIn has more recently targeted TikTok by encouraging influencers to post short-form content. Some have told Business Insider that they've seen engagement boosts as a result.

Chinese app Rednote has seen a surge in popularity

Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, another Chinese social app — which functions like Instagram and TikTok but with more commerce features — has recently surged in popularity, with some TikTok users learning Mandarin to make the transition.

It could, however, also be subject to the same divest-or-ban law as TikTok if the US government chose to target it.

Downloads have spiked for Texas-based Clapper

Clapper, a Texas-based challenger, was founded in 2020, when the idea of a Tiktok ban was first tossed around by the Trump administration.

The app at one point reached third place in the free iPhone app download charts, with Clapper seeing an uptick in downloads whenever the news of a Tiktok ban again makes headlines.

Triller has long positioned itself as a TikTok rival

Triller has long sought to position itself as an alternative to TikTok — and currently offers a tool to help creators save their videos.

Triller has gone through a series of strategy shifts over the years. After several false starts, it went public late last year through a reverse merger with a Hong Kong-based company called AGBA Group Holding Limited.

It recently hired former TikTok product head Sean Kim to run its video app, as well as several other subsidiaries.

Apps like Whatnot could fill a shopping void

TikTok helped social shopping break through in the US in a major way in 2024. The app drove $100 million in US sales on Black Friday alone, for example.

It's not the only one in the space, however. Some of its competitors include Flip and Complex Shop, formerly known as NTWRK. Flip, which raised $144 million last April at a $1 billion valuation, according to Bloomberg, launched in 2019 and enables users to post short, shoppable reviews.

Whatnot also made headlines after closing a $265 million funding round earlier this month at a $5 billion valuation. The app hosts livestreams across categories like fashion, collectibles, and storage unit finds.

TikTok's sister app, Lemon8, would likely get the ax too

TikTok sister app, Lemon8, has soared to the top of the app charts in recent weeks. Lemon8 is reminiscent of Pinterest and contains a mix of photos and videos.

However, given that the law specifically mentions ByteDance, the parent company of the two apps, Lemon8 would likely be banned along with TikTok.

Christopher Krepich, the communications director for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, previously told Forbes the bill would ban Lemon8 unless ByteDance divested.

• Doug McMillon, the CEO of Walmart, shared some insight into his reading habits.
• His book list covers a wide range of interests — from managerial strategies to developments in tech.
• Here are 10 books that McMillon read in the last year, and the one he said impacted him the most.

While their calendars are often chock-full of meetings, some CEOs still find the time to read for pleasure — or to dive deep into a particular topic. Business leaders have long shared their picks for books that helped inform their strategies, both personally and professionally.

Doug McMillon, Walmart's CEO, posted his usual end-of-year roundup, listing 10 of the books that shaped his 2024.

"It was most impactful reading Sam's book again," he said. "Every time I read it, I pick up new ideas and am reminded of why our culture is so successful."

This time, a few more titles on AI made the cut, with three recent books on the subject included in the list.

Here are the authors McMillon has been reading, with a brief summary of what each book has to offer.

"How to Know a Person" by David Brooks

David Brooks' 2023 "How to Know a Person" draws from the world of psychology to help readers better understand how to connect with those around them.

"Just the Good Stuff" by Jim VandeHei

This book, published last year, looks to offer a practical guide to achieving success in life and career by pulling from Axios and Politico cofounder Jim VandeHei's own experiences with journalism and entrepreneurship.

"Financial Literacy For All" by John Hope Bryant

Bryant, who served on the President's Advisory Council on Financial Literacy, aims to provide anyone looking to build strong financial foundations with an accessible guide to reaching their goals.

"Genesis" by Henry Kissinger, Craig Mundie, and Eric Schmidt

"Genesis," co-written by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, explores the potential benefits and repercussions that could result from the evolution of AI and debates how the technology could interact with humanity in the long-run.

"Co-Intelligence" by Ethan Mollick

"Co-Intelligence," authored by Wharton associate professor and co-director of AI labs, Ethan Mollick, encourages readers to engage with AI in a productive way — not by replacing human skill, but augmenting it. The book examines how people might be able to benefit from AI and learn to use it to their advantage.

"Competing in the Age of AI" by Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani

In their artificial intelligence-focused book, Iansiti and Lakhani provide a framework for competing in the evolving age of AI by examining the structures of what they call "AI-centric organizations."

"How Stella Saved the Farm" by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble

This book, published in 2010, is about a troubled farm threatened by bankruptcy and competition and serves as a parable to deliver a lesson on innovation.

"Collaborative Disruption" by Tom Muccio

"Collaborative Disruption: The Walmart and P&G Partnership That Changed Retail Forever" explores, from an insider's perspective, how the relationship between Walmart and Procter & Gamble profoundly affected the retail industry.

"The Wisdom of the Bullfrog" by Adm. William McRaven

"The Wisdom of the Bullfrog" draws from Adm. McRaven's extensive military career to impart the reader with fundamental lessons in leadership.

"Made in America" by Sam Walton with John Huey

Written by Walmart's founder, Sam Walton, "Made in America" was McMillon's most "impactful" read of the year, the CEO said.

Walton's autobiography, published in 1992, tells the story of Walmart's rise to become a retail giant.

McMillon said he gleans "new ideas" from every read.