Throughout history, rapid technological changes have driven the economy, spawning new industries and re-shaping old ones. We’ve long been told that artificial intelligence and other technological advances generally create more jobs than they eliminate. Is this time different? Who stands to benefit from the latest advances in generative A.I., and who stands to lose? And, most importantly, who should decide what the A.I.-future looks like? While the public and our policy- makers dither over how to regulate artificial intelligence, the industry is racing ahead, leaving a handful of tech entrepreneurs and billionaires to design our future as they make decisions based on maximizing their profits. Drawing on her work as a financial analyst and a journalist covering technology and politics at The New Yorker and beyond, Kolhatkar will outline what business leaders and citizens need to know in order to create the future that we all want.

For the last forty years, businesses have been pressured by activist investors and others to focus on quarterly earnings and short-term stock price performance above all else—but at what cost? Across industries, courageous business leaders are re-considering whether short-termism should play such an outsized role in their decisions. Drawing on her previous career as a hedge fund analyst and years covering corporate America, Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Washington at The New Yorker, Bloomberg and beyond, Kolhatkar will discuss the ways that putting short term profits ahead of longer-term goals endangers companies, governments and societies, and share lessons from entrepreneurs and C.E.O.’s who are fighting back and finding success by doing hard things and putting their most ambitious agendas first.

Kolhatkar began her career as a risk-arbitrage analyst at a small hedge fund—a role she had not planned or trained for and had to learn on the fly. Five years later, when she made the switch to reporting and writing, she had to learn a new industry all over again. In both cases, her lack of familiarity with the customs and norms of finance and media proved to be an advantage; she was able to approach her new roles as an anthropologist would, studying the people and the culture with fresh eyes, making it possible to see things that others who were steeped in the industry couldn’t. Drawing on her career as a hedge fund analyst and years covering corporate America, Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Washington at The New Yorker, Bloomberg and beyond, Kolhatkar will discuss the ways that approaching challenges with the perspective of an outsider-anthropologist can help one see new and enlightening ways to move forward in business and in life.