Leadership in the Age of AI with Meta's Dina Powell McCormick

Sure. So, my fellow board member at the time, Peggy Alford, it was really an honor to serve with her. It's an incredible group of people. And I had been serving for about a year and I was really struck in my first few board meetings that Mark would start every board meeting with, 'Here are all the challenges that I'm facing and that the company has,' and was so solicitous of us. And there were a few big initiatives that he had us working on. And I worked particularly close to him when he was recruiting Alex Wang and Nat Friedman to lead our new AI lab. And that was a very important decision for the company, and the fact that he had taken so much time with the board really struck me. And I'm extremely, by the way, proud that team has done a wonderful job. The release of Llama Spark has gone very well and that model is continuing to build on itself and frankly to improve many of our products. But I thought, you want to work with somebody who actually values your background and will actually engage with you. So when he asked me in December at our retreat if I would, you know, come in, I thought long and hard about it and frankly I realized that especially in the next 3 to 5 years, there are a few companies that are going to have a very big impact in the world as we are living through this transformational technology and the transformation of humanity in many ways. And so I joined the company as president and vice chair and I've been very focused on a number of things. We built a division that reports to him, it's called Meta Compute. I co-head it with Daniel Gross and Santosh, our head of global infrastructure, and the idea has really been to bring together the capital, the product, the talent, and the compute that is really needed to realize our ambitions and the ambitions that he has laid out. And that is interesting, because it does draw on a lot of my background and experience, because today this is not a technology that can operate in any silo. Energy is at the center of it, infrastructure, talent and people, but also government. You know, the intersection of government and the private sector has never been more prominent than it is right now. And so, it's sort of been really meaningful to me to have drawn on my experience, proud experience at Goldman Sachs, working with sovereign wealth funds, deputy national security adviser, and chairing the Robin Hood board, because the truth is the government is always going to matter in everything that we do. Capital and capital formation and how we use our balance sheet, potential capital partners will always matter, but how we impact the communities that we are living in and serving and building really matters. And a shout out to the Robin Hood Foundation that taught me so much. I think Rich is here and the team is here and I think of that as time where I learned an enormous amount about how important it is to think first about the communities.

Well, they're very different. You know, I see Bob Steele, Dave McCormick, Joseph Kasputis, those of us who served in the Bush administration, and many of them came from business. And I think Bob would probably say government doesn't operate as efficiently sometimes, and so to actually have had people that had business backgrounds I think made an enormous difference, and I think it makes a difference now, and that was something that I think wasn't always the case. I think you have to learn more than anything how to work on a team. And I know that sounds as simple as it sounds, but I remember the people in government that were the most successful had often come from companies that were partnerships, not necessarily companies where there's one CEO and frankly what they say goes, because there is only one boss in government and you have to learn how to navigate. And I also think just more broadly, there's something we tell our daughters that failure is often the thing that happens right before success. That there's no way you can ever build the chapters of your career that you want without failing, because how else do you learn those lessons? And I think that's something frankly we should talk about more, and particularly talk about more with women.

Well, there's obviously a great deal of anxiety. My husband and I have six daughters between us. We think of them as the AI generation. They are wondering what jobs we're going to get, what is going to happen. And we've been very frank with them. Yeah, the world is changing. But in other moments in human history where there has been this transformation, it has often resulted in a lot of progress. And so the thing that they can do is become as AI literate as they can. You know, one of the things we've been very focused on at Meta is making sure that people are not left behind. Mark has a unique voice. Mark believes that super intelligence is really meant to empower people to reach their ambitions. And we have to be careful that there are a couple of groups that are not using AI. Small business owners are not using it enough in the United States. Only 20% of small business owners are using any kind of AI. There was a study that just came out from Ramp that showed that the 20% who are using AI even in small ways are increasing their market share, are growing their customer base, and are hiring more people. And women are not using it. And women is the second group, and we've done a lot of research on that. Actually, in fact, Sheryl Sandberg came out with a report with Lean In, and it shows that women are using AI dramatically less than men. And when we ask, you know, we try to understand why that is, partly honestly it's probably because it is a bit of a foreign technology, frankly most of the leaders in it are men, and there is anxiety. But I had a little test study the other day. I was meeting with a group of interns, not Meta interns, and I was saying, 'So what are you working on?' And they all said, 'We're working on a big research project.' And I said, 'Are you using AI?' And the men all said, 'Yes, we've already finished our project.' And the women said, 'No, we would never use AI.' And that just struck me. That was such a focus group for me. And I said, 'Well, let me tell you something, young ladies. Using AI is not cheating. It's competing because everyone else is using it.'

Well, I mean first, you know, you asked me about why I took on this role and there's a really interesting story that I think is not as fully told. Mark is one of the last founders of the Magnificent 7 and yet I think the top 15 people have been there with him for 20 years. So you have this mix of a risk-taking innovating founder with a very stable leadership team and very stable long-serving board. You have a very strong balance sheet, revenue that is growing every year, and frankly our AI that's improving our products. And so I think we start with being very proud of our position today. Three and a half billion people are on the Meta platform every day. Three and a half billion people. If you think about WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and Threads, and I frankly feel that sometimes more when I'm traveling, when I'm in Latin America, you know, for example, in Brazil, 100% of small and medium-sized enterprise owners use WhatsApp to actually run their businesses. In Saudi Arabia, almost 100% of female entrepreneurs use WhatsApp to do that. And I see Carolyn Everson there, and she used to be one of the people that shouted this out the most. And this is not just advertising. This is actually using WhatsApp to your customer threads to think about long-term planning, etc. So I think we feel, you know, proud, and I think we are really proud of the new AI team and the model that has just come out that frankly exceeded expectations, and these models build on themselves of course, but I think beyond models, beyond products, I think success is that we really achieve what Mark has often talked about, which is that this technology is really meant to empower human beings, not machines.

Yeah, no, I mean, this is personal to me. I have six daughters, so I completely recognize what a challenge this is. I would say we don't disagree. I mean, we disagree with those verdicts and are appealing them. We are very focused on this issue every day, and Peggy and I are on a committee that really is just focused on how we make sure this platform is safe, and we're extremely proud of the teen accounts that we have where parents have control over what their children are seeing, and we've been, you know, pretty sure that the way to tackle these issues is to empower parents and guardians.

Well, we see a lot of this at Meta Compute very specifically. You know, the numbers are almost hard to fathom. Over the next several years, there will be $10 trillion of capital that is needed, 250 gigawatts of power, and millions and millions and millions of positions and new talent that is needed. And so there's, you know, no success if it's not a group sport and a team sport. So what you're seeing with energy companies, with amazing companies like ones like Bruce Flatt in Brookfield, you know, what is so rewarding I think for us to see is how much we're working with partners in such a strategic way. What is the best way to think about this infrastructure site, what is the best power, what is the best capital in every single one of those sites, and what is the best way to invest in the workforce of America. You know, the thing that someone said is that we are living right now through another industrial revolution. And in the ways that we have come together as a country in important times, we should be thinking of this that way, too. During World War II, America came together to literally physically build the arsenal that defeated tyranny in the world. And we should empower a new generation of American heroes to come together and to be part of that future. And we talk about it kind of in a way that we're very proud of, that the future is for everyone.

Of course. And when we went to the White House with a group of our peers and we signed the ratepayer pledge, we were already doing a lot of that work, but I think it was important to tell the story that when we are in those cities, we actually not only pay for our own electricity, we invest in the grid, which actually ultimately results in often making electricity costs less. But it's important that we have to tell our story. We actually have to be talking about the kinds of investments that we're making in those communities, the kinds of jobs that we're hoping will come as a result. How many new small business owners will actually start new businesses? I was really honored to see that they came and got tickets. They are extraordinary New Yorkers who have businesses. I've had the privilege of knowing them for over 12 years through the 10,000 Small Businesses program. And, you know, I just have to say their voices really matter in this debate, too, as important as thinking about all job transition. And then frankly, data really matters. The latest job reports that came out shows that there are more openings for white collar jobs today than there have been in 5 years. So that doesn't mean we need to not... we must be sensitive to the anxiety and care about how we are talking about these issues. But I think getting the facts right really matters because I think one thing we all know is that it's pretty important for America to lead, for America's ingenuity and innovation to lead in this race. It means America's values will be spread around the world, and it means most importantly that our economic and national security will be secure.

Well, I've certainly read those stories and seen some lawmakers now start to investigate them. I don't have, you know, any firsthand knowledge, but maybe to flip it around is if you were an American competitor today, what would you do? This is exactly what you would do. You would try to slow down this innovation, this advancement. You would try to find a way, whatever the means are, whether it's what you're describing or other things, because frankly I think other countries right now at least see that we have the best entrepreneurs, that we have an energy dominance that is growing, that we have extraordinary infrastructure and talent, and frankly a very stable capital market. And so you would want to try to figure out how to slow America down.