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Marissa Mayer has long been an inspiration to innovative women working to break gender barriers in the male-dominated technology industry.
After graduating from Stanford University, Mayer joined Google in 1999 when the online search giant was still a startup and went on to design breakthrough products such as Gmail. She left Google in 2012 to become Yahoo’s chief executive, but failed to turn around the declining internet pioneer. But Mayer still managed to triple Yahoo’s stock price and create more than $30 billion in shareholder wealth before selling the company’s online business to Verizon Communications in 2017.
Mayer, 48, now runs an AI startup called Sunshine with Enrique Muñoz Torres, a former Google and Yahoo colleague, out of offices in Palo Al, Calif. The office was Facebook’s first headquarters in Silicon Valley. She recently sat down for an interview.
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ask: Sunshine is using artificial intelligence to manage contacts on its mobile app. Isn’t this a relatively simple task for complex technology?
A: Our view of the company is that there are many mundane tasks that get in the way of our work. This is true for a lot of things: contacts, calendars, schedules, all these different components create a lot of friction. We believe that by applying artificial intelligence—even not necessarily in cutting-edge ways—you can both solve valuable problems and give people their time. You can also build their confidence in artificial intelligence.
ask: So how does the Sunshine app work? Now that it’s free, how will you make money?
A: After you install it on your iPhone or Android phone, we’ll look at your contacts. You can then connect it to your email and we’ll double check if we can identify the signature block and who you’re communicating with back and forth. If it looks like you’re actually having a conversation, we’ll add that person to your contacts. If you like the way we handle your contacts, for $4.99 a month we can go to places like LinkedIn and add content you might not have added yourself.
ask: What are some of the things that worry you as artificial intelligence emerges?
A: It’s a very powerful technology, and whenever you have powerful technology, things can go wrong. Their power is impressive, but they also bring a whole new level of security concerns. My concerns are different than some people who worry about things like artificial intelligence overlords. My thought is that we are starting to get closer to technology approaching human intelligence.
When you have a machine that’s almost as smart as a human, the likelihood that humans will eventually be fooled into thinking it’s real – that it’s not a machine – is much higher. That’s really the biggest risk when people can’t tell what’s real and what’s real because machine intelligence is now close to human intelligence.
ask: How do you think the tech industry is doing at hiring and promoting women into leadership roles?
A: There has been progress and there has been retreat. I think the representation of women in vice president and director level leadership is getting better across companies. So, it feels like things are improving. Probably not as fast as I’d like, but a step in the right direction.
ask: Shortly after you became CEO of Yahoo, you ordered many of your employees who were working from home to start coming into the office regularly. Has the pandemic reshaped your perspective on the office/home work dynamic?
A: I wasn’t trying to make a broad statement about work-from-home policies at the time. I’m just blatantly honest. The company is in trouble and has been in trouble for a long time. This is a turning point. About 1% of (Yahoo’s) employees have official work-from-home status, but when I got there, 10% of employees could work from home informally if they wanted to. They don’t have a great setup, and their productivity proves it.
I think it’s really hard to join a completely remote organization because the concept of culture is lost – like how to develop management, leadership, vision, the ability to align people around the product and planning around what you want to build .
ask: Are you still following Yahoo news?
A: I do follow Yahoo. As the saying goes, once you work there you bleed purple (the color of the company’s old logo), and I certainly did. I’m really proud of the people who are still there and also the people who have left and gone on to do great things throughout the industry. I still feel very connected to them.
Which companies are already using AI and where they plan to do so in the near future
Which companies are already using AI and what they plan to do in the near future
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