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Equity, Access, and Trust Tackling the Toughest Questions in Tech
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00:00This is Nick Thompson, this is not Hans, this is Nick, this is my friend Dan, and this is my
00:09friend Hans.
00:13Have a great meeting.
00:15Thank you, thank you, thank you.
00:18Alright, it is my great pleasure to be here with Dan and Hans.
00:23I saw on the back that Verizon was on the Chiron horizon, which reminded me that when I was typing
00:29up my notes to this conversation, it kept correcting, my iPhone kept correcting Vestberg into Best Beer, which is one
00:36of the finest auto corrections I've ever seen.
00:38Best Beer is a fantastic acronym, but no, Vestberg is my name.
00:42But I think Verizon is a very important name, so when Verizon was invented 20 years ago, it's a combination
00:49of Veritas, which is truth, and Horizon, which is looking into the future.
00:55That's the name Verizon.
00:56That's beautiful.
00:57Yeah, it's beautiful.
00:58That's why when it's translated to Horizon, it's partly right.
01:01It's partly right.
01:03That's marvelous.
01:04Alright, well, let's talk about a lot of stuff.
01:06I want to start with digital inclusion.
01:08Obviously, it's something that's extremely important to both companies.
01:11And so I want to begin the conversation by asking each of you to request something from the audience.
01:18So we have a lot of inventors here.
01:20We have people making devices, people making software, people making chips, people working on AI.
01:25What is the thing that we need invented, the most important thing that we need invented to increase digital inclusion,
01:33increase the number of people who can access technology and benefit from it?
01:37What do you want them to create?
01:38What do you want them to create?
01:41Dan, H, before beauty.
01:43Oh, why, thank you.
01:45That's the beauty in the room.
01:48So I think the thing that we most need to invent is not the technology, because I think technology is
01:57rapidly moving forward.
01:59I think we are just at the beginning of so many advances.
02:04Obviously, everyone's talking about AI, but let's not forget that quantum is right around the corner.
02:10And when you combine quantum with AI, it's going to take all of this to the next level.
02:15So I think things are moving quickly.
02:17I think the cost of compute is going to go down towards zero.
02:21I think the cost of software is going to come down dramatically.
02:24I think what we need is more leaders thinking about the big problems of our day.
02:34I think the thinking about how do we become moral leaders, how do we become leaders that care about much
02:43more than just the bottom line, but what we're trying to accomplish.
02:48And I think that's not an easy thing when you have lots of different constituencies pressuring you.
02:54But if you want to make real change in the world, that takes courage.
02:58All right.
02:58So aspiring CEOs, unicorn founders out here, they want to figure out how to be able to make better ethical
03:04choices.
03:05What is the quick step that they should take?
03:08In terms of their life, in terms of what they learn, in terms of what they read, in terms of
03:11who they follow.
03:13Well, I think you want to think clearly about what your vision is as a company, and then look at
03:20your constituencies and put them in the right order.
03:22Like for me, the most important constituency in PayPal is our employees.
03:28Because if I have the best employees, I'll serve my customers the right way.
03:32I'll satisfy my regulators.
03:34I'll be a part of our communities, and I'll serve over the medium term our shareholders better than anybody else.
03:42So I think you really need to think very hard about who are you serving as a leader, and take
03:49advantage of the technology.
03:50It's all over.
03:51And be creative about it.
03:53But have a moral framework that surrounds what your leadership is about.
03:57That's wonderful.
03:58Hans, what do you want to see invented that will help the progress that we're seeing?
04:02First of all, fantastic to be in Paris, France, Viva Tech, what a great place.
04:07Just busting out there, just fantastic.
04:10It's crazy.
04:10It's a great place.
04:11No, no, fantastic.
04:12Such an amazing event.
04:12I've never been here before.
04:13I have to say this is something special.
04:16So I will start in another angle, but I will come to the answer of what I want.
04:19So I worked with digital inclusion basically in whole my career, being in communication all my career.
04:26So I'll give you a couple of stats, and listen carefully.
04:28It's roughly 7.7 billion people on this earth.
04:314 billion of them are online.
04:35Okay?
04:36That means that roughly 3.6 billion people on this earth are not online.
04:41They don't have access to digital tools.
04:45Of those 3.6 billion people, 3.2 billion people are covered by broadband.
04:54They have broadband, but they don't use it.
04:57So now we come to what is important on this planet, because I think that the 21st century's infrastructure is
05:03mobility, broadband, and cloud.
05:05And anyone that has access to that has the same chance as anybody else, regardless where you're born, where you
05:11come from, and who you are.
05:13So how do we solve that 3.2 billion have broadband, but not use it, and then 400 million that
05:18has no coverage at all?
05:21Think about this.
05:22The challenge is threefold.
05:24Accessibility to the technology, affordability to the technology, and usability.
05:30The accessibility is almost done.
05:33Okay?
05:33It's 400 million people on earth that's not connected, that doesn't have coverage.
05:36We need to work on those.
05:38We need innovative solutions for the last mile, power, energy solutions, in order to cover them so they have broadband.
05:45The 3.2 billion, that's the real challenge, is affordability and usability they need.
05:52Afford to have the service, the device.
05:55More important, they need applications that are societal, meaning financial inclusion.
06:02They can do banking on the phone.
06:04They need education, so they can do digital education.
06:08They need healthcare applications that they can do digitally.
06:11So it doesn't matter that you have a hospital or a school close by you, because parts of this world
06:16will never build it like where I'm born.
06:19I have five minutes to the school, ten minutes to the hospital.
06:21If we're going to have an inclusive world, we need to use the digital tool.
06:25So with innovation and entrepreneurship here, the focus has to be on doing applications that are societal,
06:33that can actually bring everyone on this earth, both making it cheaper to use mobility broadband and cloud,
06:41and secondly, applications that is actually suited for including the society.
06:47And I think it couldn't be a better place to be.
06:49I mean, Viva Tech, here's all the entrepreneurs thinking about these solutions.
06:52And it's so staggering numbers, I just go back to it, that it's 3.2 billion on earth that are
06:58covered by broadband but are not using it.
07:00That's why we need you guys.
07:02We need the innovation on top of that.
07:04So what is an example of an invention that came that you weren't expecting, you couldn't have predicted,
07:09but then there's an application and, oh my gosh, this really helps solve the problem.
07:13Yeah, so digital ID and then mobile payments.
07:18Suddenly you can have a bank account even though you have not a bank close by you.
07:22You can transfer money, seamless, all that is enormous for people having a work, getting money and having trust in
07:30the system
07:30because those type of things is important but usually are barriers between countries here
07:36and Dan can probably speak about the hour about it.
07:38But ultimately, those type of tools, or we all know during COVID, remote learning,
07:45the ones that didn't have a school to go to or being able to have digital access, they couldn't even
07:49study.
07:51In the future, you need to be able to do that regardless of where you are and it comes back.
07:55The 21st century's infrastructure is mobility, broadband and cloud and we need to enable it and we need to work
08:02with it
08:02and I do that basically every day because this is a life mission.
08:06Dan, can I ask you about China because when we talk about digital inclusion, we talk about bringing the world
08:11together,
08:11there's been lots of progress but there's one thing that's been going quite wrong
08:15which is the bifurcation or the split of the world into a western tech ecosphere and an eastern tech ecosphere
08:20and it only seems to be getting worse.
08:23In fact, my entire government is fully aligned on increasing the split.
08:27What kind of business, you do business outside of China, allowing people in China to use PayPal to buy stuff,
08:33you allow Chinese merchants to sell.
08:35What are the prospects that this divide between the east and the west will improve?
08:41What are the prospects that it will just get worse?
08:46Well, I think it's a massively important question for us.
08:51I mean, the U.S. and China are two superpowers.
09:00They have economies and technologies that rely on each other
09:05and I think there are many different realms that we need to think about.
09:11There's the political realm that you were just talking about
09:14but I think also there's the business realm that we work in
09:19and I think as business leaders, we need to work with our political leaders
09:25to show just how important the connection between those two countries are.
09:30I mean, we facilitate a lot of cross-border commerce
09:35between consumers outside of China and businesses inside of China, small businesses
09:41and increasingly vice versa.
09:45I think the more you can have ties amongst businesses,
09:50the better it increases the chances that we have more productive political relations between our countries
09:59and so I think as businesses, we play an incredibly important role in influencing politics,
10:06in influencing the way that our political leaders think about the world
10:11and we have a responsibility there.
10:14I think that all of us would agree that the decoupling of China and U.S.
10:20is in no one's best interest
10:22and so I think we will compete.
10:26Sure, countries compete against each other
10:28but working as best we can together, respecting IP, respecting all those kinds of things,
10:36that is a responsibility that we as business leaders have.
10:40I mean, being a business leader these days is not easy, right?
10:44It is not easy.
10:45There's a lot of things that we are in the middle of
10:50but I don't think we can abdicate our responsibility to create a world that is closer
10:56and a more just world, as Hans was saying.
10:59Actually, Hans, let me ask you a question about the last bit that Dan just said.
11:01You know, being a business leader is hard, it's complicated,
11:04there are all kinds of different responsibilities.
11:05You both are heavily involved in social issues and on committees.
11:09What is the difference between being a CEO of an American company
11:12versus a European company right now in tech?
11:16None?
11:17Nothing.
11:18The same work, same challenges, a little bit larger if you're in the U.S.
11:22Everything is on massive scale.
11:25No, I think as a leader, I think it's the same thing.
11:29I think that he said it, Dan said it perfectly.
11:32You need to actually manage all your constituencies,
11:34regardless of region or into employees, customers, shareholders, society.
11:40If you do that and don't sort of start negotiating between them,
11:45ultimately that's the outcome you have.
11:48There are, of course, cultural differences,
11:51but I don't think it's made a difference to be a CEO of Europe
11:55or a CEO of a large tech company in the United States.
11:58For me, it's the same.
11:59I mean, I was a CEO of Ericsson before, now I'm a CEO of Verizon.
12:03I see the challenges being fairly similar.
12:06Dan, can I go back to your framework of the constituencies?
12:09So your argument is that you serve your employees first, right?
12:12You have a hierarchy.
12:13Employees first, then customers, then shareholders, then society.
12:16Give me an example from your tenure at PayPal
12:19where the interests of the employees were orthogonal
12:23or different from the interests of your customers
12:25and how you decided that choice.
12:28I don't think they're orthogonal.
12:30What I will say...
12:30We're slightly different.
12:32Yeah.
12:33What I will say and what has surprised me in general
12:37is that those of us who operate in a capitalistic market,
12:46U.S. and others...
12:49Europe?
12:50Europe.
12:51I mean, obviously, most of a lot of the Western world.
12:58It doesn't work for all segments of the population.
13:02I mean, we thought that by paying our employees at or above market
13:10that they would be financially healthy.
13:15That's not the case.
13:16For like almost 30% or 40% of our employees,
13:20when we surveyed them, they were struggling to make ends meet
13:23even though we were paying them at the market rate.
13:26And so I think, you know, then you've got to figure out what are you going to do.
13:30Like, how do you figure out what is something that keeps somebody financially secure?
13:35Because if you do that, your attrition goes down.
13:38If your attrition goes down, then you're better able to serve customers,
13:42less training, less new people answering questions.
13:46And so I actually think serving customers and serving employees go hand in hand.
13:51It's a little like the question like,
13:54are you a profit-oriented company or are you a purpose-oriented company?
14:00I think that's a ridiculous question because I do think that profit and purpose go hand in hand.
14:04And if you have a purpose as a company, you attract the very best employees.
14:10And if you have the very best employees, you will serve customers better.
14:14And if you serve customers better, your shareholders over time are better served as well.
14:19But that makes a ton of sense in boom times, right?
14:22You can raise your employees and 30% of them are not having enough after taxes.
14:26You can raise it substantially.
14:28In tough times, or let's say PayPal was not making profits,
14:30suddenly the trade-offs become quite a bit harder.
14:33How do you balance, Hans, how do you balance this in tough times?
14:36I'll give you two examples where I have actually put one stakeholder in front of the others.
14:41I mean, during COVID, the first week or the second week,
14:44I decided we're not going to let anybody go in Verizon during COVID.
14:49We wanted to show them that we had a safe place for them during that.
14:52So during two and a half years, we didn't let anybody go.
14:55That is a decision that my shareholders might think that was stupid of you.
14:58But we thought it was right.
15:00The other decision we took was, hey, we're not going to disconnect any customers during COVID
15:05because it's so essential.
15:07Two decisions, shareholders might say, wow, that was not the best decision.
15:12Long term, it's the right decision.
15:14The customer is going to be more loyal.
15:16My employees hopefully are going to love the company.
15:18And they're going to deliver better for our shareholders ultimately.
15:21So you need to constantly have the purpose in front of what you want to do in the long term.
15:26Even though you can feel like Dan and I are doing sometimes,
15:29we put one stakeholder in front of the other.
15:31But it's in the sole plan to reach the purpose that all the stakeholders
15:36are actually going to benefit by end of the line.
15:39You cannot negotiate and say, I'm now going to take a smart move here in COVID.
15:43So, hey, we don't have equally much business.
15:45So we disconnect customers that can't pay or something like that.
15:48Hey, it's just going to bite you over time.
15:51Let's talk a little bit about AI for a minute.
15:53And particularly, there's an element of AI where I feel like you both might have,
15:56I mean, obviously, you have lots of large thoughts about AI.
15:59You mentioned the confluence of AI and quantum.
16:01One of the biggest debates in the U.S. and Europe is how to regulate AI, right?
16:05And how do you regulate it in such a way that you put safety controls,
16:09but so you also don't lock in a couple of incumbents.
16:12You're both in heavily regulated industries.
16:15Tell me the lessons that you've learned that could be helpful for regulators.
16:19because they could really screw it up right now.
16:26Dan, I can start a little bit.
16:28I mean, we probably have the largest direct-to-consumer business in the United States,
16:33some 130 million consumers, 10,000 stores.
16:38Every day, sort of, we have so much massive data.
16:40I think that AI serves very many purposes for us to be more efficient, delivered to our customers.
16:47But it has to be that you are actually having generators that are set for that type of topic.
16:52I mean, you cannot ask a question in our generators, what do you think about Hans Vesper,
16:56and you'll get an answer.
16:58But you can get the information, how do I serve my customer better?
17:01Yeah.
17:02That's how we use AI today.
17:04I mean, it suddenly became a hype six months ago when somebody started talking about that.
17:08Many of large tech companies have been using AI for a long, long time.
17:12I have generators in basically how do I optimize my network.
17:16I mean, I have one of the largest networks in the world.
17:19So, of course, we have done that.
17:21I think when it comes to regulation, the hard thing with regulation and technology is technology has always moved faster
17:27than regulation.
17:27So, it has to be light touch, and ultimately it has to come back to leaders like me and Dan
17:33that you actually are responsible with the technology you have.
17:36I mean, there are many technologies we're dealing with every day that can be dangerous if they are used wrongly.
17:42I think that you need a responsible leader, and we need to be accountable for it.
17:46Then a light sort of regulation is fair and should be, but if it becomes too detailed, it's impossible to
17:55use technology
17:56because technology will move so fast, so when the regulation is done, you have already moved 10 years ahead with
18:02the technology.
18:03So, I think it has to be a combination of responsible use of AI and a light touch regulation, as
18:11we have on any technology today.
18:12Dan, do you agree?
18:16Heavier regulation.
18:20So, I think the issue with AI right now is we're in several races that are going on.
18:29You've got races between companies, some of the largest companies, where we're all thinking about how do we use unique
18:38data sets to create competitive advantage.
18:41You've got races between countries, because AI is such a crucial element of economic and military success going forward.
18:57And so, I don't think you are going to slow down AI.
19:01I think that, and AI is moving so quickly, it's just every week or two, it gets faster.
19:12And actually, as I look into the future, it's going to get way faster, especially as we overlay other technologies
19:20on top of it.
19:22I do agree with Hans in that I think AI can obviously create massive benefits for society and for companies.
19:32I also, though, very much worry about some of the potential scenarios of AI.
19:41I mean, AI learns from the sum cumulative total of our experiences.
19:49And I would say that we as humans are flawed in many ways as well.
19:59We have different objective functions that go on.
20:02We think about, you know, certain things that we think are paramount.
20:07But, you know, a decade later, we look back and go, that wasn't paramount.
20:11This actually was much more important.
20:14And so, I think we really need to have a regulatory framework that is quite tight around this.
20:24Now, how we do that is very difficult because Hans is exactly right.
20:30I mean, I look at financial services and payments.
20:34Boy, I feel sorry for the regulators in that because it is moving so quickly and so fast.
20:40And so many things are conflated from blockchain to CBDCs to stable coins to cryptocurrency to new rails of the
20:50network to digital ID.
20:52I mean, you name it, it's very hard to keep up with it.
20:56AI is going to be even harder.
20:59But I truly believe if we're not careful with it, it could have unintended consequences.
21:07And, you know, Hans and I are quite familiar with the industry.
21:11We talk to everybody in it.
21:13And I'd say most people who are deep into it worry about, you can call it either edge cases or
21:23kind of the fundamental technology.
21:26But I do think we really need to think about something almost like a nuclear framework around it.
21:35I think it's that important.
21:36We're out of time.
21:37We got to a pretty deep and dark place at the end.
21:39But, Dan, one last thing.
21:41You're retiring at the end of the year.
21:44You're mere 65 years old.
21:45Maurice is still going at 81.
21:47Will you spend the next year working on this regulatory framework once you retire?
21:52Seems like a good thing for you to do.
21:54That's interesting.
21:55What are you going to do?
21:56Nicky, yeah.
21:57Thank you for asking me that in front of my wife, who's right here, who also is wondering what the
22:03answer to that question will be.
22:05And I won't reveal it here at Viva Tech.
22:08I just would like to say, based on his last answer, I think we know what Dan should do next
22:12year.
22:13Thank you so much, Hans.
22:13Thank you so much, Dan.
22:14It's great to be on stage with you.
22:15Thank you.
22:17That was really great.
22:19Thank you so much.
22:20Thank you so much.
22:21Thank you.
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