Cheryl Contee: We Asked for Flying Cars, We Got LLMs Instead | Intelligence at the Frontier 2026

Transcript

You ready? Yes, I'm ready. Thank you so much. It's so great to be here. Thank you so much. I didn't even know the Frontier Tower existed and now I'm so excited and I want to come here every day. So for those of you who are listening to this and you are not in San Francisco, there is something new that's not just Waymo's, okay? That's there's a new thing that you should check out. So who's leading who in the age of AI? That's just an excuse for me to say who's zooming who. That is an Aretha Franklin reference, you're welcome.

I am the co-founder of BrightWorks AI which is all about human-centered AI adoption for mission-driven organizations and also Chain Agent AI which is an alternative to the current LLMs that is eco-friendly, it is data private and data secure for sensitive populations and data and it is trained on the values I think many of us share. So you already heard all about me, all about that I'm easy to find on internet, feel free to find me on the LinkedIn, etc.

So I want to tell you a quick little story about my grandma, okay? Imagine a tinier Cheryl, 3 years old. I was looking for my grandma uh in Baltimore and I wandered down to the basement and in the corner there was a big bucket that had poles and rollers and a like a crank and you know being the observant uh precocious 3-year-old and toddler that I was, I pointed and said, "What's that?" Uh and she said, "Oh baby, that's how we used to wash clothes. That belonged to your great-grandmother who just passed. And just in case, pointing to the washer-dryers, these stop working, we can always go back to that.

We can always do that." Now, imagine that mindset, right? I would posit to you that we are in a similar era as the greatest generation. Where the greatest generation grew up seeing cars and donkeys and horses sharing the streets. Donkeys and horses were an important part of the economy and yes, a lot of donkeys and horses lost their jobs in this transition. >> [laughter] >> But we are living in a very different moment even than them. There are parallels but if you can imagine, you know, it took 36 years for radio to reach 50 million users. It took the internet 7 years, pretty fast,

to reach 50 million users. It took 2 months for chat GPT in 2022 to reach 50 million users. We are just this is moving really fast which means that we have to move fast now. This looked cuter on my screen, just so you know. So, hopefully the deck will be available online. But we are living through something similar as I said as the greatest generation. Of course, you know, not only did they have industrial acceleration as we have, they had electrification, they also had a global war. Yeah? And the rise of new institutions, massive institutions.

We are living through artificial intelligence, yes, AI, but also a snowball of acceleration of clean energy. California is 2/3 clean energy now, Europe is 50% clean energy, Saudi Arabia of all places, before World War III started of course, they said that they were going to be 100% clean energy by 2030. Quantum computing, of course, bioengineering, all of these things are going to combine over the next 10 to 15 years to create a very different world and reality in which we will all be living. That could be exciting. There are positive aspects potentially to this. The system isn't necessarily broken. It has to break in order for

something better to come. So, you all are smart. I'm not going to I'm not going to go Some of the audiences that I talked to, you know, I have been in places where organizations say things like, "Well, here at X organization, we won't be using generative AI or AI at all." And I say, "Oh, baby, sweetie, honey, I don't think you understand what's happening. You have been using AI for the last 10 to 15 years. Moreover, it's been using you. That's called classifier AI. Believe it or not, that's still news to some people, you know, that their spam filters, their spell check, how Instagram knows that you want those shoes and can get them to you in 2 days, right? Of course,

generative AI, AI that can create, moving really fast into agentic AI, AI that can think, plan, and act. So, we are in a revolution. I talked about the industrial revolution, right? Where, you know, the crank, right? What you could accomplish with human muscle or animal muscle, turned into the scale and speed at which you can build things with machines or run things or change things.

I don't know what will be the washer-dryer, the equivalent, the cognitive equivalent of the washer-dryer or the car or the airplane. We're about to find out, though. That makes some people afraid, right? That's the first stage of the revolution. Uh but, there's also inequality, a lot of wealth created for some people, less for others, right? Institutions we can see right now are collapsing before our very eyes. But, this is an opportunity in which we can reinvent those institutions or create new ones as the old ones die because, you know, the question isn't will this change society? Is society changing? No, it's who is going to shape

it and that's you. Everyone I'm talking to you right now is going to be part of deciding what this next future is going to look like. So, why does this feel different? Well, it's happening really fast. It's replicating cognitive labor, of course. It's happening instantaneously everywhere. It's everywhere. Everything everywhere all at once. Yes, the movie, watch it if you haven't. Uh and, you know, that's just another Tuesday, right? Where we're automating thinking. But, let's be honest about the challenges. Yeah, this is not easy.

People are freaking out. They're worried they're going to lose their jobs. They're worried that, you know, some people are moving faster and others are, you know, falling behind. Some people have the resources to catch up and others do not. The laws are not keeping up with, you know, the technology even within organizations. Something like 10% of nonprofits that I talked to or mission-driven organizations have an AI policy, okay? Even just starting there. And often that policy, if they have one, is one paragraph. Because people are tired. A lot is happening all at once, but that does not mean that you can't show up. Leaders show up, right? AI can

not replace you as a leader, as a human being, but it will amplify the leadership that you can bring to the table. And hopefully that's inspiring. Maybe it's a little bit scary, but, you know, if we push past the fear, we can know that we can do what happened in the industrial age. Yes, there was massive innovation and massive inequality all at once. But, just like after the Civil War, just like after World War I and World War II, hopefully after World War III, you know, there will be an opportunity for more freedom, more prosperity, better education, and better health care for more people. That's what happened after

all of those cycles. Hopefully, it will be less traumatic and better. I will also say, you know, we're not necessarily better than people were 100 years ago. Uh I would hope that we have evolved a little bit, but I am optimistic about the bots and the agents. I know there's a lot of dystopia out there. There are people who are like, "Oh, the bots are going to enslave us. Da da da da da. You know, only three people will own everything." But, you know, bots and agents, the chatbots and agents are built on logic, zeros and ones. Yes, they're being trained. Yes, they're being aligned. But, fundamentally, you know, if they're built on logic, racism is not logical. Sexism is not logical.

Ableism, homophobia, none of those things are logical. No one would look at the systems that we've built right now who is built on just logic or mostly logic and say, "Oh yeah, no, this is looks good. This is set up exactly the most optimal way for the most people." Right? What if the robots and the agents and the chats are actually going to help us? We can't assume that. So, we should build the equity in because otherwise there is the risk we will scale exclusion in a way that is bigger and faster than ever before.

So, there is an opportunity here, as I mentioned, you know, with all of these technologies combined, what if we had personalized education? What if we had personalized medicine? Uh the prior speaker was just talking about a dude, I think, in Australia who created DNA sequenced his dog, created a an a custom mRNA vaccine to cure his dog's cancer. He drove 10 hours to get that shot into his dog. Now, first, that is a man who loves his dog, okay? Let's Let's give it up for that, right? But yes, right? That is a man who really, really loves his dog. But what if we did that for people?

That's a cool idea. >> [laughter] >> That's a That's an idea, you know, that hopefully whose time will come in my lifetime. But, you know, we're already producing more than anyone ever has in terms of the American GDP, you know, but that the fruits of that productivity are not shared, right? Very evenly. So, we're going to have to come up with some new economic models. It's clear that this dog won't hunt. These current systems are not built for purpose if the purpose is the general well-being of the average citizen.

Hopefully, abundant clean energy, where we move past oil, is going to help us move there and unleash more human potential. In this moment, we can't wait for, you know, Congress to act or parliaments to act. We cannot be afraid to experiment. We can't decide like, oh, we're going to Why don't we just wait and see what happens, right? We have to invest now. You cannot treat tech as optional. I know I'm preaching to the choir here, uh but if we hesitate, someone else is going to define the future. If you're not at the table, you're what's for dinner yeah?

So, what does ethical leadership look like in this moment? For one thing, if you're in the C-suite or you're on a board of directors, or you have one of those in your lives, those people need to know what AI is. They don't need to do all of the things that everyone is doing in the organization with AI, but they have to have some basic knowledge, right? So that they can help lead and guide adoption. People need guardrails. There are a lot of people waiting for someone to tell them what to do. They are waiting for someone to hand them an AI policy.

No one wants to get fired for using AI. Most people are trying to use AI to be better at their jobs, but you have to give them some guardrails. We are in a cycle of hyper-rapid innovation, which means we have to do rapid pilots and build, measure, learn in real time. We need to be transparent about how we're using AI within our stakeholders and community so that we can learn from each other and get better, faster. I don't need to tell you that this isn't about tools, right? This is about power distribution at the end of the day, and this moment is so much bigger than the technology that AI represents.

So I'm going to start to wrap up, but uh briefly I will say, you know, there's a lot of movies and TV shows about how AI might destroy all of our lives and civilization as we know it. And, you know, if we keep telling ourselves that story, we are going to build that. We will build systems that oppress ourselves and others. If we tell a leadership story, right? If we tell a story about stepping into the gap and making decisions that benefit more people more of the time, we can build systems for the leaders that we are, for the builders that we are, for the creators we are, and the leaders, builders, and creators to come.

The Industrial Revolution mechanized muscle. The intellect The Intellectual Revolution is mechanizing cognitive power, right? This revolution has to, just like the the last revolution, it has to inject human values. Otherwise, it will not fulfill its its promise. And that's our job. That's each one of your jobs. So, I was hoping for flying cars. I'm pretty sure someone back in the year 1955 was hoping for flying cars.

Uh flying cars would have been great. Uh and those might still happen. But in the meantime, this is way bigger than that, what we're about to live through. And the future is being negotiated as we speak. We should be at the table negotiating that. Each one of us can play that role. Thank you so much. Woo! Thank you so much, Cheryl. Real quick question. What is the one thing that in all your discussions with nonprofits and organizations, what's the one thing you see that leaders are doing right when it comes to the way they approach AI?

What's that common pattern that you see? Yeah, what I am seeing I will say philanthropic leaders are really stepping up, which is nice. I'm working actually with a lot of you know, like Dr. Bronner's, GoFundMe, you know, a lot of different foundations who are saying, you know, we understand that people are freaking out and are scared and aren't sure what to do and are waiting for someone to tell them what to do. We are going to provide resources, convenings, trainings, you know, money for technology, right? For for redevelopment. So, that's something positive that I'm seeing where, you know, there are people who you know, have different networks, different resources and are saying, you know what, we want to help lift all these boats.

>> What I love about is that all those companies were just like everyday companies and products that we use, you know? So, it actually is pretty hopeful to see that the conversation is expanding beyond just like frontier models, frontier labs, you know, hyperscalers and the traditional kind of Silicon Valley companies. So, thank you for being a voice in that. My pleasure. We all have a role to play. We all have an opportunity to be a leader in this time. Just like we all have an opportunity to vibe code. We sure do. So, with that, with leaders vibe coding, we're going to take you into the break for 10 minutes. I want to make sure we welcome the next set of speakers. I'm sorry, what?

Oh, I'm sorry, lunch. I was wrong. It's going to be lunch for an hour. So, thank you so much, Cheryl. Please find Cheryl as she moves off the stage and you can I know there's already a bunch of people wanting to talk to Cheryl. >> [music] [music]