Pictured is Marissa Mayer, former CEO of Yahoo and founder of artificial intelligence startup Sunshine. AP diagram
Marissa Mayer has long been an inspiration to innovative women striving to break through gender barriers in the male-dominated technology industry.
After graduating from Stanford University, Mayer joined Google in 1999, when the Internet search giant was still a startup, and went on to help design groundbreaking products such as Gmail. She left her Google job in 2012 to become CEO of Yahoo, but her efforts to turn around the fading Internet pioneer failed. But Mayer still managed to triple Yahoo's stock price and create more than $30 billion in shareholder wealth, and in 2017 she sold the company's online business to Verizon Communications.
Mayer, 48, now runs an artificial intelligence startup called Sunshine with Enrique Muñoz Torres, a former colleague at Google and Yahoo. The company is based in Palo Alto, California, which was Facebook's original headquarters in Silicon Valley. She recently gave an interview to The Associated Press.
Q: Sunshine uses AI to manage contacts on its mobile app. Despite the advanced technology, it's a relatively easy task.
A: Our thesis for companies is that there are a lot of mundane tasks that just get in the way. This applies to many things. All these different components like contacts, calendars, schedules, etc. take a lot of effort. We believe that by applying AI, we can solve valuable problems and give people time back, even if it's not necessarily cutting-edge. You can also build trust in AI.
Q: So how does the Sunshine app work? Since it's free, how do you make money from it?
A: Once installed on your iPhone or Android smartphone, it will look up your contacts. Then, when you connect it to your email, it will check again and again to see if it recognizes the signature block and the person you are communicating with. If it looks like you're actually having a conversation, add that person to your contacts. If you like how we handle your contacts, for $4.99 a month, you can access places like LinkedIn to add information you didn't add yourself.
Q: What are you worried about with the advent of AI?
A: This is a very powerful technology, and using powerful technology can cause problems. Its power is amazing, but it also brings safety concerns to a whole new level. My concerns are somewhat different than some people who are worried about AI overlords and so on. In my case, we are just beginning to approach technology that approaches human intelligence.
When we have a machine that has almost the same intelligence as a human, it increases the possibility that humans will be fooled into thinking that it is real, and therefore not a machine. The biggest risk is when machine intelligence approaches human intelligence so much that some people can't tell what's real and what's not.
Q: How do you think the tech industry is doing when it comes to recruiting and promoting women in leadership roles?
A: There have been advances and setbacks. I think the percentage of women in leadership positions at the VP and director level is improving across all companies. So I feel like things are improving. Probably not as fast as I would like, but it's a step in the right direction.
Q: Shortly after I became CEO of Yahoo, I ordered many employees who had been working from home to come into the office on a regular basis. Has the pandemic changed the way you think about working in the office or from home?
A: At the time, I had no intention of making sweeping statements about the work-from-home policy. I was just being blatantly honest. The company was in trouble and had been in trouble for a long time. That was a turnaround. About 1% of employees (at Yahoo!) were officially eligible to work from home, but when I joined the company, 10% of employees were informally working from home whenever they wanted. Ta. And while they didn't have a great setup, their productivity showed it.
I think it's really hard to join a fully remote organization. Because you lose the concept of culture: management, leadership, vision, the ability to align people around the product, how to plan around what you're trying to build. .
Q: Do you still follow what's happening on Yahoo?
A: I follow Yahoo. People say that working there makes you look purple (the color of the company's old logo), and I really agree. I'm really proud of the people who are still there and I'm really proud of the people who left and went on to do great things across the industry. I still feel very connected to them.
