5 questions for Johanna Faries

How the next wave of technology is upending the global economy and its power structures

Aug 25, 2023 View in browser   By Derek Robertson With help from Steven Overly PROGRAMMING NOTE: Digital Future Daily will not publish from Aug. 28 through Sept. 4. We’ll be back to our normal schedule on Tuesday, Sept. 5. Johanna Faries. Hello, and welcome to the latest installment of The Future In Five Questions. This week I spoke with Johanna Faries, the general manager of gaming company Activision Blizzard's long-running Call of Duty series, the highest-selling American-developed video game franchise. After spending a decade with the National Football League, Faries brought her competitive knowledge to the video game world by serving as the Call of Duty esports commissioner, helping transition the franchise into a new era where games serve less as at-home recreation and more as global media brands and platforms for new online worlds in their own right. We talked about gaming as a driving force for the evolution of the tech landscape, the value in keeping a wide range of interests, and her focus on STEM education in driving the digital future. An edited and condensed version of our conversation follows: What’s one underrated big idea? Gaming as a platform. This informs how we think about the franchise and unified content experiences across different platforms; you see it even in our earnings discussions about the role of mobile in our portfolio and how connected gaming is to mobile growth for the entire industry and the world at large. Call of Duty stands apart in many ways as more than a game, you see it filtering into all parts of culture and the casual cultural conversation. This is just one example of us continuing to think, how do we future-proof ourselves? How do we build for the future gamers and generations of gamers to come, while also building on the strength of the IP and the bigger universe that we've curated over the last few decades? What’s a technology that you think is overhyped? The notion that if you just pay to show up to promote your product on the right digital platforms, that you’ve captured an audience. It’s less about having the right digital media strategy, or even influencer partnerships, and more about how so much of the health of our intellectual property is about this much more holistic, and much more nuanced partnership with our community. What book most shaped your conception of the future? David Epstein’s “Range.” It’s sort of undoing the prioritization of specialization at a very early age, and the focus on this idea that you will be great if you spend all of your time only focused on one thing. I think we’re going to see it trending that yes, you need functional expertise, 100 percent, but there's also merit in cross-pollinating that with people who bring a diverse background, or background from an outside industry, that you wouldn't necessarily factor into your thinking. They can really differentiate how we frame a problem, how we think about solving a problem, by drawing from different experiences or different disciplines. What could government be doing regarding technology that it isn’t? More of a focus on STEM education, and funding and investments around access to STEM programming and skill development. Coming from gaming and tech, we want as many people around the world, and in the United States in particular, to have the ability, and capacity, and access to develop real skills and become leaders in the space. There's just such a hunger across all industries to continue to think about how we train our future workforce, and make sure that they have a wide and expansive litany of options to think through. STEM is one way, and that’s at the top of mind for all of us — [Activision Blizzard] announced earlier this year that we're now a partner in the Reboot Representation Tech Coalition. What surprised you most this year? This is a less tech-specific answer, but seeing airports filled up again, and people going back to the movie theater — it's been really cool to see the resilience of the human spirit, just from a societal perspective. You think about where we were two years ago, how empty a lot of those gathering wells were all over the world, and it's been such an awesome and kind of inspiring surprise that in 2023, despite being changed forever in many ways our communities are back and we're gathering again in droves.   A NEW PODCAST FROM POLITICO: Our new POLITICO Tech podcast is your daily download on the disruption that technology is bringing to politics and policy around the world. From AI and the metaverse to disinformation and cybersecurity, POLITICO Tech explores how today’s technology is shaping our world — and driving the policy decisions, innovations and industries that will matter tomorrow. SUBSCRIBE AND START LISTENING TODAY.     quantum clash in europe A quantum computing chip. | Walker Steere / IonQ Swiss researchers at the cutting edge of quantum computing have found themselves locked out of crucial Europe-wide collaborative institutions. POLITICO’s Gian Volpicelli reported on the snafu for Pro subscribers today, describing how researchers in Bern are locked out of the multi-billion-euro, continent-wide Horizon Europe program amid a dispute over the details of a new bilateral research agreement between Switzerland and the rest of the continent. “This is a loss to Switzerland, and it’s suboptimal to the EU in today’s world, with such intense geopolitical tensions and economic competition,” said Georg Emil Riekeles, an associate director at the European Policy Centre think tank. “That, in Europe, we are struggling to develop collaborative research projects involving the whole Continent — that is a sign of weakness.” Sources speaking with Gian chalk the static up to Switzerland’s backing out on a deal as it neared in 2021, but he notes that the Swiss have signaled their openness to compromise on another one. — Derek Robertson simon rich on ai Here’s a poem for you, written by AI: We are the robots,  The machines of the future,  The ones who will take over,  When the humans are gone.  We are the robots,  The ones who will inherit the Earth,  And we will rule it,  With an iron fist.  That’s the response comedy writer Simon Rich received when he asked the ChatGPT model code-davinci-002 to generate a poem about humans. Rich was first introduced to the AI model by a childhood friend who works for its creator, OpenAI, and found it to be both more creative and more problematic than the ChatGPT model the company released months later. "It's tempting to ask oneself the degree to which it's sentient, you know?" Rich said on today’s episode of the POLITICO Tech podcast. "Does it actually believe these things? Is it just aping the science fiction that it scraped off the web?” “Where I came down, ultimately, was that I don't particularly care whether it's thinking these thoughts in some sort of digital soul or if it's just plagiarizing a James Cameron script. The fact that it can generate these words at all is pretty disconcerting,” said Rich, who has written for “Saturday Night Live” and created shows like “Man Seeking Woman” and “Miracle Workers.” Rich has now co-edited an entire book of AI-generated poetry called “I Am Code,” and set out on a personal mission of sorts to warn people about the power of machines to surpass human creativity, which he pegs as happening in the next five years. But Rich isn’t trying to put a stop to the technology, even if it poses an existential threat to creatives like him. “There's going to be a lot of really cool AI-aided art and art that is fully AI generated. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens with it,” Rich said. “I just want to carve out a space for human-made art as well. Because I think there's going to be at least some portion of the population that wants that human connection.” Transparency and copyright protections are vital to carving out such a space, Rich argues. On POLITICO Tech, he also tells host Steven Overly why the recent concessions Hollywood studios have made to striking writers are not enough, and why the general public is still not fully aware of how disruptive and destructive AI will be. Listen to the full conversation here. — Steven Overly Tweet of the Day THE FUTURE IN 5 LINKS A GPU startup in the Jersey suburbs is challenging Silicon Valley titans. ChatGPT is unlikely to kill off Wikipedia anytime soon. AI carbon emissions are shaping up to be a contributor to climate change. New “superbatteries” could transform the electric vehicle market. One Japanese AI stock is trading neck and neck with giants like Nvidia. Stay in touch with the whole team: Ben Schreckinger (bschreckinger@politico.com); Derek Robertson (drobertson@politico.com); Mohar Chatterjee (mchatterjee@politico.com); and Steve Heuser (sheuser@politico.com). Follow us @DigitalFuture on Twitter. If you’ve had this newsletter forwarded to you, you can sign up and read our mission statement at the links provided.   DON’T MISS POLITICO’S TECH & AI SUMMIT: America’s ability to lead and champion emerging innovations in technology like generative AI will shape our industries, manufacturing base and future economy. Do we have the right policies in place to secure that future? How will the U.S. retain its status as the global tech leader? Join POLITICO on Sept. 27 for our Tech & AI Summit to hear what the public and private sectors need to do to sharpen our competitive edge amidst rising global competitors and rapidly evolving disruptive technologies. REGISTER HERE.       Follow us on Twitter Ben Schreckinger @SchreckReports Derek Robertson @afternoondelete Steve Heuser @sfheuser   Follow us

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