Ann Mather on the Netflix Board, AI, and Working for Steve Jobs | At Barron's

Thank you so much for having me, Andy. It's a real pleasure to be here.

That's a good question. Pretty much using many of those words, I say that I focus on media and tech. I try to add value in as many ways as possible to as many companies that are a good fit for me—usually on the board, but I do advise occasionally as well. I try to bring everything that I've experienced to date in my life to them. I've also had over 20 years of board experience now, so that's been really great.

Ever-changing. I don't think anyone can become complacent and think that they know what's going to be happening. It's one of the things I love about Reed Hastings—he is super focused on, from Netflix—sorry, CEO, now Chair of Netflix—very focused, as are the current CEOs, Ted and Greg, on what's happening next, what the potential threats—competition for eyeballs are. So I think it's this enormous platform involving games—we've started doing games on Netflix—involving dating apps. Arguably Bumble is something of a competitor for the eyeball space that might otherwise be spent on Netflix. People spend time on search, and in some respects that's mildly entertaining. The impact that AI will have on all these things as well—we're on the verge, not quite sure what could happen, but it's super exciting.

I think a little bit of both. I think it's evolving organically, but I think it will potentially affect our lives in a very positive way. I don't think theaters are going to go away completely, but I think they may become a little bit more event-driven, and they've been going that way for a while. I don't really see that changing too much. To be economically sustainable, I don't quite know what will happen with theater chains—potentially they'll become more flexible, potentially we'll start doing different things in there as well. I think just to justify the cost of the real estate, it needs to develop a little bit. I think it's fascinating what Taylor Swift is doing, and I could totally see them becoming more significant venues for live sports events, concerts, summaries of concert tours like Taylor's. I think those are all good things—they add to the drama of being in a large room with a bunch of other people. So I think that's good, and I think the range of entertainment product that we're going to be able to see is going to expand dramatically. AI is a big democratizing force in many ways, in terms of giving the opportunity for people that might not otherwise have had it to put together an entertainment product for way less money, way less resources. Ultimately—I'm not saying we're there yet—but over time I think it could be that.

I don't think that's what will happen. I think it's far more likely that images will be self-generated. I do think the copyright stuff is a challenge, but not so much when it comes to entertainment product. There'll be enough tools to screen for inappropriate usage, and I think there'll be enough people licensing their work.

I think, as I said, there's enough tools to make that fairly manageable—it'll be tested in the courts—but I feel that's something I'm less worried about. I think what's far more likely to happen is that that person in the garage is going to make a really cool movie about the girl next door who's got her own band, who's doing her own thing, because there's no conflict. As we've seen with social media, people like to present themselves in this way. So I think these things are just going to become a little bit more creative. There's going to be more access to developing people's own storylines, to presenting things in a more creative way using AI. I don't really see—there are obviously going to be some people that do things like that, but I don't see that being the main driver of this industry going forward. Instead I see it much more creator-driven, original creator-driven, and promotion of people that would otherwise not have had an opportunity.

Yeah, starting with the most concerned—it's all the obvious stuff. I'm terrified of what can be done negatively, and I do think most of the people in Silicon Valley that I've worked with and talked to—and it's vast, certainly not just Alphabet—are super nervous about the potential for bad and do feel it's something that should be regulated. The most controversial aspect of that, which I really don't want to go into, is whether or not it should be open source. There's a perspective that if it's open source, all hell could break loose—it's really stuff we don't want to mess with. There's another perspective that if it's not open source, we're creating another equivalent of the telecoms where you've got four or five players and it's very frustrating and they hold people to ransom. I'm not completely sure where I come down on either of those sides yet. I think it's an evolving force. I don't know enough about the benefits of open source. I'm veering towards non-open source, but that's more lack of deep knowledge than anything else. So that was the negative. And then in terms of the opportunities, I do see it as a great potential for democratization, for giving skill sets to people that might not otherwise have them. I think as a society we ought to acknowledge that and think deeply about what it means for education. It's all very well to have these things out there, but if people aren't taught how to use them properly and what they can do with them—and I do worry a little bit that right now it's potentially preserved amongst people that don't really need it.

I think it gives everyone a fantastic opportunity to develop their own creative selves and to make things deeply personalized. Obviously, with an app like Bumble, we're super excited. It allows us the potential to create a very personalized profile very easily. AI can find out just a little bit about you and can really work with the minimum—we can make it very easy with prompts. It can help select which photos are most likely to attract the right person. That could be particularly relevant for men's profiles, frankly. There are too many with dead fish that don't necessarily work well.

I think in terms of selecting which photographs—if they're prepared to upload their library and have AI run through the photos available, I certainly feel that the AI is likely to choose a photo that's going to both best represent who they are and represent them in the best light. And people don't always know that, especially frankly.

Yeah, I hear you. I don't think we've actually lost it. I think some of the biggest shows of all time are happening globally with a streamer like Netflix. We might not all watch it as a family at the same time, but I do feel, if anything, we're getting broader and broader wide access to particular shows—and it's not just in one country. The Crown might be as successful in India as it is here. There are lots of other examples—Wednesday, the Adams Family derivative that was on Netflix—fantastic, appeals to teens globally and some of their parents. In my case, I thought it was a really great show. I think at the same time, you still got this factor going on. You've got the opportunity to use theaters for events that aren't necessarily live sporting events—playback of sporting events, opera, a whole bunch of different things—as well as people going off and doing their own thing. I think as a species we do have the need to come together, and I think this opens up more and more opportunities to come together in different ways and yet to also foster individualism as well in a positive way.

Yeah, and I conceive with a straight financial hat on—if one's more limited with resources and is concerned about losing subscribers, I could easily see an argument for weekly release. It does keep people glued to you a little bit longer. A company like Netflix, we have such a great breadth of product, and we feel it's a competitive advantage that people can get really immersed in shows as opposed to watching it one week, then maybe the next week when it comes out they're doing something else, they might forget about it. We find it's actually good for the show for people to immerse themselves—it's a completely different watching experience. So I'm in favor, although I frequently question whether we're losing subscribers by just giving it all in one batch. And we are—you're starting to see we are spreading it out. Stranger Things might have a bunch of episodes at one part of the year, and rather than releasing all 12 at one time, we might do six in month three, another six in month seven—something like that. It's an evolving process; depends on the product, depends on what else we've got in the lineup as well, frankly.

I'm sure they are. So fascinating—and it is such a well-run board. It is the most transparent company. That's not to say there's any problem with any of the other companies, but we see at Netflix such a detailed amount of data on what's going on. We have a very thick board memo, and we can drill down to all of the underlying data points. It's tremendously interesting.

I loved it, frankly. Steve—no question—Steve felt he added value by critiquing wherever he could, and I respect that. I don't have a problem with someone who likes to look for as many holes as possible in situations. I think that is where much value is added—to try to look for what could go wrong. Understanding that about Steve, if I had something that I felt was important for Pixar to move forward with—and as CFO I was responsible largely for distribution as well, with Steve—we were distributed by Disney at the time I was CFO. There were many issues at that point in time. Disney was a different operation than it is now, and frankly there were times when we really weren't getting a fair deal. We'd strategize together, but I'd usually work with Steve. I'd put all of my arguments why I wanted to do something on a piece of paper, pre-anticipate what he would say, the holes he would pick, put down some mitigating responses, email him so that he had—I usually emailed him right before dinner. He'd take 6 o'clock to 8 o'clock every night to have dinner with his family, and then at 8:00 he'd call me and we'd go through the list. And usually, if I presented it properly, it was a very smooth and easy call, and we'd get done really quickly. If I tried to have a conversation explaining it, it was difficult—Steve's so fast in the way he responds and the things he thinks of, it can be challenging to get back as quickly as he is getting back to you. So there was a way of working with Steve that I personally loved, but I don't know that everybody got to that.

That's a really interesting question. I don't really think so. I don't want to get into the geopolitics—it's definitely not my field. I do feel, ultimately, there are going to be enough forces at play that—20 years from now—they'll have come together, or whatever the replacement is will have come together. I can see why that seems a ridiculously optimistic perspective at this point in time, but I think it's going to be very hard to completely separate and police all of those. And ultimately, particularly when it comes to the Americas and Europe, I don't think it's what the consumer wants. With the progression of technology, I don't know how long it's going to be absolutely enforceable. In China, we'll see.

It's intriguing. It's brilliant, no question. The impact it's had on commerce, on advertising, on so many different things—I am unsure about how I feel. I'm not a big fan of legislation in this arena, but I would understand if it was decided that it's not good to have. I don't really think it helps society that much other than inspiring creativity in young people—there is something to be said for that. It feels a little less fraught with the negativity that can come with some types of social media. It seems more fun and entertaining, so I can see the potential upsides there. There's something there. I think probably here people would feel more comfortable if there was a better understanding of the underlying technology and how it relates to whatever's going on in China, and potentially ultimately some controls on what the feed is doing.

Yeah, I think education is the key, and I don't think we do a brilliant job on that. It's tough to know how to improve. I think being very, very open about how manipulated people are on the web—and always will be—is important. I think that's okay. The world has been manipulated by advertising for a long time now. It's more subtle on the web, particularly when it comes to young people. So I don't think we're there yet. I think limiting the amount or the things that young people can watch is frankly a good idea. I do feel we don't do a great job at protecting them. I'm supportive and mildly optimistic about the potential for AI to help filter out some of those things. As far as enabling—I think they're pretty good about accessing anything that gives them the dopamine hit. They're constantly on social media-type options that people have spent a lot of time crafting to be very attractive. I wish we spent a bit more time as a society trying to use those techniques to apply across broader academic subjects. I think there's a lot of room to improve the way we teach.

You're too kind, by the way.

Well, it's a good question. I've always just wanted to do the absolute best I can, be the absolute best I can. I think it started with that—try to do things that are actually interesting and fun to do. Media obviously fits that very easily—very accessible, stimulating. At the time that I entered media, it was a little bit nepotistic, so to come in on a meritocracy-type basis, it was really full of opportunity because the competition wasn't that tough, frankly. I think that's changed now, but that helped me enormously. Being very driven, being very open to going and just taking whatever was the next best step, constantly trying to maximize my choices moving forward, and not sticking around when things became static, frankly, as well. I think you need to know when to move.

Thank you, Andy. It was great talking.