Gideon Lichfield

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” wrote Joan Didion. Stories are the oldest social technology there is. They are the way we make sense of the world and tell the world how to make sense of us. They are social glue that holds friends, tribes, nations, religions, and organizations together. They are how we learn from the past and how we imagine the future—and, crucially, how we persuade other people to help us build the future we see. As a journalist of nearly 30 years who helped build one publication from scratch and has led two others, Gideon Lichfield is consummately both a storyteller and a leader, and in this talk he shares how he came to his key insight: that leadership, at its core, is storytelling. Through a series of (what else?) stories ranging from his time reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to leading MIT Technology Review through the Covid-19 pandemic, he explains how to craft a story that helps your team understand their place in your vision and then weave that story into acts of leadership both large and small.

Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Bard, Dall-E, and MidJourney have taken the world by storm in a matter of months and are being heralded as the biggest technological revolution since the internet—or possibly even bigger. How do you keep up with the daily flood of information about new applications and new concerns, let alone make sense of what they mean for you and your business? Hear from someone whose job is to do exactly that: Gideon Lichfield, the former editor-in-chief of WIRED magazine and the MIT Technology Review. After a career spent reporting on business, politics, science, technology and culture in more than 30 countries, Lichfield is supremely well placed to talk about all the ways in which new technology can interact with and redefine society. Starting with a clear and simple introduction to what makes these new AI models different from their predecessors, he’ll talk about their powers and their limitations, which industries stand to benefit the most, how and when to try them out in your own business, and how to safeguard against the risks of using them unwisely. He’ll help you think clearly and without hype about where these models’ potential is transformative versus merely incremental, address perennial questions like whether AI will replace human workers and how far it can mimic human creativity. He’ll run through the common fears about AI, from algorithmic discrimination to the wholesale destruction of humanity, and explain why they’re controversial and how to think about them with a clear head. Finally, he’ll address the question in the back of everyone’s mind: will AI eventually become sentient and truly intelligent, and what do we do when it does?