CEO On The Future Of The Four Technological Superpowers Of The World

We're here at the World Economic Forum at Davos outside the Microsoft Cafe. I'm thrilled to be here with Pat Gelsinger, the VMware CEO. Thank you for joining me. Thank you, Sarah. Great to be able to join you here. What a picturesque location and looking forward to a good conversation with you today. So you wrote about the four technologies that are going to be more transformative in the next 20 years than any individual nation. Can you tell me what those four are? Yeah, I call them the four superpowers of tech today. One is cloud, you know, this idea of unlimited capacity. Really, we can compute anything, right? Mobile, unlimited reach. You know, literally half the population of the planet is now accessible, right? IoT, you know, crossing the physical to the digital world and really allowing telemetry, automation, and control to just about everything. And then finally, AI, right, the ability to bring intelligence to everything. And those four together really are reinforcing each other. You know, in many regards, you know, AI wouldn't have been possible without cloud, this ability to compute at scale. And, you know, where are we going to be able to interact with people? Well, we're going to be able to do it through the mobile devices and they give us more data that we can improve our analytics. So it really is a reinforcing spiral of those four superpowers coming together. And is there any reason that blockchain didn't make the list? You know, I think if I was looking at it, you know, if I was a financial services guy, blockchain would be on my list. I think at this point, you know, and I almost think about blockchain like I think about public-private key encryption 20 years ago. It was really a breakthrough for a certain aspect. And maybe next year when we're here, that one will be on my list as well. But I think in a lot of ways, it ends up being really reinforcing of those four superpowers. And when you look at the four superpowers of tech, which one do you think is going to have the biggest impact on humanity in the next 20 years? You know, in many respects, you know, again, all of them working together. But the one I think that actually, you know, really has the opportunity to maybe lift more of humanity than any other is mobility. And, you know, imagine you're a poor farmer in Africa, right? All of a sudden, that mobile phone gives you access to markets, gives you access to weather, gives you access to information on the modern techniques that are going on in the world, maybe financial services. You know, it becomes entirely transformative. And for instance, one of our partners that we've worked with, they're called Node Africa. They're doing exactly that. And literally, you hear these heartwarming stories of a poor farmer who's taken over his father's plot. And now he's 30 to 40% more profitable as a result of just bringing a mobile phone into that environment. And of course, on the back end, it's many of those superpowers are coming together to deliver those new capabilities. And is the same true for the one, which one do you think will have the most economic impact? Or do you think that that's a different superpower? Yeah, you know, I think if anything, clearly, you know, I mean, we view cloud as this unlimited capacity. And, you know, literally, anybody can build anything on it. And I think today, clearly from the one, the social impact today, and clearly here at Davos, right? You know, like every other conversation is an AI conversation. What's the impact on your workforce? What's the impact on, you know, my job? What's the impact on the social policies as well? So that one clearly, if any, today, and here at Davos this year, is sort of the center of what people are talking about. And how does VMware fit into all of these superpowers? What are you most excited about that VMware is doing in these spaces? Yeah, well, you know, in many respects, you know, our core virtualization, you know, VMware, virtual machine software, that's our name and our heritage, is part of every cloud. You know, so in many respects, I view us as, you know, cloud wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for VMware. And now we've reached and we're securing, connecting, and managing the mobile devices that businesses use to connect to the cloud. We're also now stretching that to be able to reach to IoT and be able to, you know, if you have, you know, imagine that, you know, you're a city commissioner, right? And you're saying, hey, we're going to have smart streets and smart cities as well. Are they going to be secure? Are they going to be managed? Hey, that's what we're doing to bring IoT into those environments. And of course, we're putting AI into all of our products as well as making sure AI runs on it. So in many regards, you know, we play a role in all four of the superpowers. And maybe our heritage is more in the cloud space than any other. And when you, what would be your response to people like Elon Musk who are worried about AI threatening humanity? I just disagree. You know, I think his perspective is wrong. I think it's a little bit of, you know, fear mongering in that respect. I do think that, you know, we have this enormous opportunity. And I think we as technologists to shape technology for good. Technology is largely neutral, right? You know, the printing press, right? You know, was it Bibles or Playboy? You know, every technology has the good and bad aspects to it. And I think AI will be the same way. And, you know, as it gets applied to different industries, you know, they have their natural cycles of social and regulatory adoption associated with them, respectively. I think overall, the technical community needs to be playing a bigger role. And I think this idea of shaping technology for good, you know, like I said, you know, being a U.S. citizen, I meet with senators and representatives. These are largely good people who don't understand what technology is. And it's our duty to show up, work with them, and help to shape the policies in the future so that it is a force for good. We really see many of these superpowers, literally extremism, you know, poverty, education, healthcare. You know, these are the underlying technologies that are enabling breakthroughs in those areas to, I think, in many respects, tackle the greatest threats to humanity today. And I'm thrilled to be part of that. And before I lose you, can you tell me what got you interested in technology? Well, you know, I'm from a farming family. And, you know, a farming community, the East Coast, the Pennsylvania. You know, my dad was number nine of ten kids. So, and grandpa had helped number, son number one, two, and son-in-law, you know, got down to my dad and he says, we have enough farms. Just work with your brothers. Had my dad had his own farm, I'd be a farmer today, right? Because I liked working with my dad. He was, you know, I liked, you know, the farming life. So somewhat it was almost an accident, right? And Intel came recruiting and it was a free trip to California. And boy, you know, hey, I'm 18 years old, never been on an airplane. Sign me up, but I'm not moving. You know, they're crazy out there. And became early at Intel in technology, became CTO for Intel. It's really been, you know, a Cinderella career in that spec. And, you know, even, you know, now 38 years into the technology industry, I'll just say I was fired up about tech and how we truly can shape humanity, improve the quality of life for every human on the planet. And it's just been a privilege to come from, you know, a very rural backwater farming community and now being on a stage like World Economic Forum and speaking about the superpowers of technology. You know, it's like pinch me, wake me up. You know, it's almost like a dream 38 years later. And if you have any advice for people that want to get into this space and what kind of people are you looking for to hire for VMI? Yeah, well, two different aspects to that, Sarah. You know, one is everybody needs to be a technologist going forward. And I sort of joke in the past, you know, we said, hey, if you're going to school, you need to learn read, write and arithmetic. In the future, it's read, write code and arithmetic. Because literally technology is becoming part of everything. You know, if you're, you know, in a marketing role, hey, you know, you want to know some chance analysis and you want to be able to analyze data and so on. That sounds like computer science to me. Imagine you're in finance, right? Guess what? You know, you're running spreadsheets, you're running, you know, different analytic analysis. Sounds like technology to me. You know, every industry and really this is what I call tech is breaking out of tech and it's coming into every business is becoming a technology business and every aspect of every business is becoming a technology business. So, I really see it's, you know, everybody needs to become more technologically aware as we move forward. Now, clearly in our space, you know, we're out for, you know, people who write the best code on the planet. You know, we're out, you know, people who really want to do these disruptive, innovative, impossible things as we say. You know, before we get started, it's seen as impossible. When we're done, it's seen as commonplace because we've made it capable that everybody is taking advantage of us. We're looking for the best and brightest people who are passionate, you know, who live our corporate values, who want to do good things, but also do them the right way, you know, be involved in their communities and really people who are world changers.