Dear Executive Communication Colleague,

 

• What leaders are saying, and how they’re sounding:

 

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said artificial intelligence will be able to pass human tests in five years, Reuters reports. "If I gave an AI ... every single test that you can possibly imagine, you make that list of tests and put it in front of the computer science industry, and I'm guessing in five years’ time, we'll do well on every single one," Huang said at an economic forum at Stanford University Friday. Huang also commented on the need to build more “fabs”—plants that produce chips—but maybe not as many as some anticipate. "We're going to need more fabs. However, remember that we're also improving the algorithms and the processing of [AI] tremendously over time," Huang said; so each chip will do more. "It's not as if the efficiency of computing is what it is today, and therefore the demand is this much. I'm improving computing by a million times over 10 years."

 

Last week Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman announced he is leaving, to be replaced by former SVP of AI Sridhar Ramaswamy, Fortune reports. “We didn’t have to” make the leadership change, Slootman said. “We did it because we wanted to … With the onslaught of generative AI, Snowflake needs hard-driving technologists to navigate the challenges the new world represents.” Asked whether he worried employees would leave in his wake, Slootman said no: “This is not a personal cult.”

 

• The more-or-less perennial Associated Press story about the making of the State of the Union Address came out yesterday, featuring the kinds of quotes that sound insightful to everyone but professional speechwriters. The AP did report that the president spent the weekend at Camp David, and was expected to stay through Tuesday, perhaps preparing particularly rigorously on his delivery. “This year, of course, is an election year. It also comes as there’s much more chatter about his age,” said former President Clinton speechwriter Michael Waldman in the AP piece. “People are really going to be scrutinizing him for how he delivers the speech, as much as what he says.”

 

• Op-ed consultant Jake Meth isn’t worried about ChatGPT usurping his work; instead, he’s frustrated that it can’t help him with it. “At this point, ChatGPT is not even close to being able to write a good op-ed pitch,” Meth wrote last week in his newsletter Pitches Get Stitches. “I understand that I might look biased, given that my company uses a highly tailored, personalized approach for producing great opinion articles,” wrote Meth, who runs the op-ed consultancy Opinioned. “But I was only looking for efficiencies, not a workaround. And I can tell you that when it comes to op-eds, AI isn’t even making you more efficient.” In the piece, Meth walks readers through a failed attempt to solicit ChatGPT’s help with an op-ed pitch.

 

• One month from this morning, a group of your exec comms colleagues will gather around a table in the belly of Southwest Airlines’ headquarters for two days of intensive idea-sharing and problem-solving (and the occasional belly laugh, with the only other people in the world who truly understand). A few seats remain. Register now, to join us.

 

David Murray, Executive Director