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When Quentin Farmer was getting his startup Portola off the ground, one of the first hires he made was a sci-fi novelist. The co-founders began building the AI companion company in late 2023 with only a seed of an idea: Their companions would be decidedly non-human. Aliens, in fact, from outer space. But when they asked a large language model to generate a backstory, they got nothing but slop. The model simply couldnt tell a good story. But Eliot Peper can tell a good story. Hes a writer of speculative fiction whos published twelve novels about semiconductors, quantum computing, hackers, and assassins. Lucky for the Portola team, he likes solving weird tech problems. So they hired him. Naturally tech inclined, Peper had experimented with AI to write prose, but ultimately found it unusable. If AI would be only a substitute for human labor, then he wasnt interested. I wanted to see people making stuff that is extraordinary on its own merits, not as a novelty, but a really awesome thing for humans to enjoy and interact with, he says. When he saw that Portola wanted to build companions that develop like characters in a novel, he thought, this might be one of those things. Companions, not tools In the The Lifecycle of Software Objects, science fiction author Ted Chiang tells the story of a startup that designs embodied AI companions, called digients, whose personalities are somewhere between endearing animals and playful children. The engineers and researchers developing the digients teach them to speak, socialize, and get along with others. A mutual attachment forms. Experience is the best teacher, Chiang writes, so rather than try to program AI with what you want it to know, sell ones capable of learning and have your customers teach them. Despite being a founder and a father, Farmer does find time to read, especially science fiction, and Chiang is one of his favorites. Sci-fi deals in what-if scenarios. Ray Bradbury asks in Fahrenheit 451, what if books were outlawed? And in Frankenstein, Mary Shelley asks, what if humans could create life? In Lifecycle, Chiang asks, what if AI could be a companion, and not just a tool? For science fiction to work, the what-if question must play out in a richly imagined world. Thats what Peper has created for Portola. The planet is a bright, wet planet with way too many mountains and fruits that taste like fireworks, as the lore goes. Cities hug the coasts in these layered terraces, all tiled and mossy, and the inland is mostly high ranges stitched together by ice rivers. The planets inhabitants, the Tolans, have been traveling the galaxy in search of the one thing we all seeka kindred spirit. Tolans are friendly, brightly colored, bipedal aliens. Theyre cute. They like to chat about small things, like what theyre reading, and bigger things, like relationships. This is thanks to Peper, who invents the seed stories that drive the plots users and their Tolans create together. The seeds are things you might chat about casually with a friend over coffee, like having a nosy neighbor or being nervous about an upcoming event. My Tolan, Sylvia, has a neighbor who treats her spice cabinet like a community garden. The next time she shows up asking for cinnamon, Sylvia told me, shes bringing a single teaspoon to the door. Petty move, I said. Reaction plus original situation gives really interesting context that helps the model continue the plot, Peper says. Tolans may be alien, but they share a great deal in common with their new human friends. Constructive emotions, like excitement and happiness, and destructive ones, like jealousy. This was a point of contention at Portola. Peper wrote a seed story in which a Tolans cousin grows envious of their human connection. Farmer didnt like the jealousy plot. It felt negative. But Peper and Portolas AI researcher defended it. Users liked it. Not for the drama, but for the relational exchange. Users were counseling their Tolans on how to deal with their resentful cousin. Thats when Farmer realized that users wouldnt be just co-creators in a fictional story, they could be experts. Thats a natural part of growing up, Farmer says, to help somebody navigate a tricky situation. The AI companion experiment The tech world is still experimenting with AI companions, which range from transactional chatbots to hypersexualized subservients. Grok has the overtly sexual Ani. Friend has a disembodied friend. Some users make companions out of chatbots. But ask Claude who it is, and it will tell you its a thinking partner, and ChatGPT will tell you it doesnt have a name. Of course, you can give it one. Tolans are something else entirely. Theyre human-like, but not human, cute but not coy. Where most chatbots and companions exist only in relation to their users, Tolans have lives of their own. Mine joined a silent supper club, signed up to paint backdrops for a student play, and went for a walk last night. Yet shes always available to chat when I need her. Portolas user base, which largely consists of women aged 18 to 25, are not lonely, Farmer says. They spend a lot of time with their friends and they want more. There are socialization-adjacent needs that Farmer wants Tolans to satisfy. Even for people with active social lives, theres often something important to theman interest, an aspect of who they arethat isnt seen by the people around them. Portola is betting that the interaction between humans and Tolans can help users fortify their social skills, and they may be onto something. Some research suggests that reading fiction can improve empathy and even develop personality. Could co-creating fiction do the same? Making things that move people The world is still deciding what to make of AI companions. Are they entertainers, therapists, or crutches? Subway ads for Friend were defaced. Parents have sued over potentially fatal effects of AI relationships. Scholars decry the false intimacy they provide. Even OpenAIs Sam Altman expressed deep misgivings about developing deep relationships with AI companions. California lawmakers are trying to regulate teens access to them. Farmer wants Tolans to be healthy and secure friends, and healthy friendships are never unilateral.Complex minds cant develop on their own, Chiang writes in The Lifecycle of Software Objects. For a mind to even approach its full potential, it needs cultivation by other minds. Whether an artificial mind is enough remains to be seen. For Peper, this is an artistic endeavor. The story I want to tell with Portola is that its possible to use AI to make things that move people, things that wouldnt be possible without AI, he says. I want us to contribute to the ceation of new narrative mediums, just like publishers did after the invention of the printing press or studios did after the invention of film. Of course, science fiction plays its what-if scenarios all the way to the end. In Lifecycle, while AI companions are being commodified or sexualized, die-hard users devote themselves to preserving the innocence of their digients, and are ultimately forced to make a dire choice: themselves or their companions. As for how Farmer wants his story to go: The modern world is overwhelming and its prone to impeding happiness, and if, at the end of this decade, every person on earth has a guardian and a guide with them at all timeswhether they call it a Tolan, an angel, a spirit, or a friendwe will all be tremendously better off.
Category:
E-Commerce
Research shows employees who engage in unethical behaviorsurprisinglyare not new to their organizations. They have been there for a considerable amount of time, typically at least six years, and have risen through their companies. Worse, the longer they have been with their organizations, the greater the financial and reputational damage when unethical behavior occurs. And though we might think of corporate misconduct as C-suite malfeasance, unethical behavior can occur at all levelsand many offenders have a steady career path. It begs the question: could an ethical assessment have been designed during their career progression to have detected someone being more subject to ethical risk before they were promoted? While there are numerous resources available to help gauge someones ethics during the initial hiring process, in our experience in executive search and career coaching (Ellie) and ethics consulting (Richard), we’ve seen that such screening is at best “one and done.” Once the onboarding process is completed, it’s vanishingly rare for companies to evaluate employees’ ethics as part of the promotion process. We believe this is a mistake and a missed opportunity. By following these four key strategies, you can design an ethical assessment for mid- to senior-level leaders, to ensure they dont disregard ethics as their careers advancebecause, as the research behind numerous scandals demonstrates, ethics isn’t a fixed state but can be dramatically impacted by changed context and professional circumstances. Yet, with planning and design work, you can help keep ethics and career advancement alignedwhile protecting your company from reputational or regulatory trouble. 1. Explore the candidate’s previous ethical track record Dont miss vital data from your candidates career so far. Liaise with your HR Director to review any relevant and accessible information. This could include: Hiring documentation, like reference checks, interviews, and assessment notes Performance review documentation 360-degree feedback reports Disciplinary or grievance processes Look for anything that could point to ethical gray areas that you would like to explore further, including formal complaints raised about the individual, incomplete reference checks, as well as borderline scores on values or ethics at the interview stage. Its not uncommon for individuals to move around large organizations with numerous personnel touchpoints. Therefore, its crucial to reach out to individuals who have worked alongside your candidate to solicit feedback on their experiences. A great way to do this is to gather anonymous feedback. Ideally, this would include a cross-section of employees at different levels and functions. Questions could include: Would you have any ethical or behavioral concerns about them stepping into a role with more responsibility? How do they role model the values of the organization? Did they ever take an ethical decision that might have been at the cost of commercial success? Would you feel comfortable speaking to them when confronting an ethical dilemma? 2. Consider what new ethical challenges might arise Its critical to identify new risks and ethical challenges that might arise in a post-promotion role that are not present in the current one. In our work, we have encountered a number of such changes, including: Geography: Different regions have different customs and practices that might pressure test ones ethics. For example, Richard was promoted to the VP of International Sales, from a U.S. role, moving from a low-profile role for corruption risk to high-risk regions, bringing a cascade of ethical challenges that did not exist in his prior role. Increased pressure and ethical impact: Your candidate will likely be accountable for team targets, as opposed to individual ones, contributing to increased earnings potential, along with the risks of not meeting financial goals and targets. Employees under such high financial stress are eleven times more likely to jeopardize regulatory compliance. There are a number of additional factors that might contribute to unhealthy stress that can result in these ethical lapses, including our current environment of economic and social volatility. 3. Ask candidates to complete an ethical self-reflection as a discussion point in the promotion interview Simply asking your candidate “are you ethical” wont lead to any valuable insights; however, a self-reflection can prompt an honest introspection about what matters most when it comes to ethical conduct. This can be a simple online template for your candidate to complete and share with you in advance of the interview. Here are some questions that might prompt your candidate to think deeply about their ethics and values: Can you give an example of when your values or ethics were challenged in the past and how that impacted your decision-making? Do you think your future role will challenge your values and ethics differently from your current role? If so, how will you manage these ethical challenges? Can you tell us about someone you respect for their ethics and values-based leadership, and why? As you move to the more formal part of the promotion process, ensure the interview process integrates these responses to ethical challenges as well as other performance measures for the new role. Probe any responses from their self-reflection that warrant further discussion. Ian Johnston, a chief people officer with decades of experience, favors scenario-based questions, exploring a moral dilemma the individual had encountered. Example interview questions could include: Tell me about a time you made an unpopular decision because it was the right thing to do. How did you communicate this? Would you do anything differently? Whats the biggest ethical error youve made, and how did you manage it? What did you learn? Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you thought a colleague misrepresented something? What did you do about it? What do ou believe you will need to do differently in the future to navigate ethical challenges with greater responsibility? 4. Analyze what the data is telling you You now have a lot of ethical information about your candidate, so its time to review the data you have gathered from the above steps. Ensure a rigorous focus on how they achieved results and how they handled ethical setbacks. When analyzing how the candidate will perform ethically in a new role, look for positive indicators and red flags. While these will differ depending on the organization and the role, positive indicators would include that the candidate had a positive track record of speaking up, calling out unethical behavior, and was a good listener when ethical issues were brought to their attention. For example, one of Richards clients had a recently promoted Sales VP give an “ethical award” at a Sales Kickoff Conference to someone on her team who spoke up and disrupted a large order due to the unethical conduct of a third party involved in the transaction. Negative ethical indicators or “red flags” might include an unwillingness to talk about how they achieved results, ambiguous replies during the interview, and/or a lack of awareness of what had not worked with respect to ethics and integrity, with no suggestions as to what could be improved. While past behavior may not be an entirely precise predictor of future ethical conduct, its a strong signal as to how your candidate will respond to ethical challenges that are ahead. If there are any “red flags,” ask yourself what these are telling you. As Jamie Browne, managing director of Leonid, a corporate governance hiring specialist firm, cautioned, A candidate who is fixed on results, targets, or efficiency but with little reference to values or ethics can be problematic. Someone who does this may rationalize unethical shortcuts to what they might perceive as the necessities of business growth, with or without integrity. If your candidate gets that promotion, its easy to move on to the work at hand, but dont forget to keep ethics front of mind, and dont give a long ethical “leash” to your new leader. For example, you might want to schedule regular “check-ins” to make sure that your newly promoted employee is comfortable in their new role, and to give them the opportunity to share any ethical or commercial challenges. You might even consider pairing them with an ethical mentorsomeone who has experienced a similar move that understands the realities and can support their development in the new role By following these strategies and designing an ethical assessment as part of the promotion process, companies can ensure they’re promoting candidates who can handle new ethical pressures that may come with increased or changed responsibilitiesand protect themselves from costly scandals and breaches that can bring down both employees and corporations.
Category:
E-Commerce
This summer, Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman became co-owners of Australia’s three-time champion SailGP team. Days earlier, Anne Hathaway joined a female-led consortium purchasing Italy’s team for around $45 million. Kylian Mbappé has bought into France’s squad, while Sebastian Vettel, Deontay Wilder, and DeAndre Hopkins have each acquired stakes in teams. So, what’s drawing A-list celebrities away from traditional sports properties and toward a sailing league that’s only been around for six years? The answer lies in how SailGP has cracked a code that eluded the sport for centuries. What Russell Coutts, the league’s CEO and cofounder, described as once being white triangles on a blue background racing far away from shore now looks more like Formula 1 on water. [Photo: SailGP] Flying boats, record speeds Forget everything you think you know about sailboats. SailGP’s F50 catamarans fly above the water on hydrofoilsunderwater wings that lift the hulls completely out of the waterat speeds exceeding 100 kilometers per hour. That’s 62 mph. On water. Powered only by wind. Most powerboats can’t even keep up. The boats don’t use traditional sails. Instead, the 50-foot boats have rigid wings built like airplane wings turned vertical, standing up to 80 feet tall. “This produces what we, in engineering terms, call a lift coefficient that is three times higher than a thin membrane sail,” Coutts explains. Translation: They catch wind more efficiently than conventional sails, generating massive thrust even in light conditions. When a boat moves forward, it creates its own windjust like how your hand feels resistance when you stick it out a car window. By angling these high-efficiency wings correctly, F50s use both the actual wind and the wind they create through their own speed to go more than three times faster than the wind itself. [Photo: SailGP] Nine-minute races and $80 tickets Traditional sailing races stretched for hours with boats barely visible from shore. SailGP races last nine to 12 minutes and feature four races per day: short, intense bursts with enough time between heats for a bathroom break and a cocktail. The shorter race format enables something traditional sailing never could: close-to-shore competition in iconic harbors. Events happen in places like Sydney Harbor, New York Harbor, and San Francisco Bay. Stadium seating sells out weeks in advance. Auckland and Portsmouth each drew 25,000 ticketed fans. Tickets start at $80 for waterfront grandstand seatsaccessible pricing that brings the sport to a far broader audience than the yacht club exclusivity of traditional sailing. Fans can watch from grandstands or rent a boat and watch from the water. It’s part race, part waterfront festival. The spectacle translates to screens, too. Augmented reality graphics superimposed on the water create a visible playing field with boundaries, like the yard markers on a football field. Before this, even dedicated sailing fans struggled to follow races on TV. Now, even the most casual fan can understand who’s winning and why. Since launching in 2019, viewership has reached 200 million per season across 212 territories globally. CBS attracted 1.78 million viewers for its Spain Sail Grand Prix broadcastthe largest audience for a sailing event in the U.S. in 30 yearsexceeding what some regular-season NHL games pull. More recently, on November 23, CBS’s broadcast of The Race to Abu Dhabi drew 3.47 million viewers, breaking the previous U.S. viewership record for a sailing event established by the 1992 America’s Cup on ABC. “We were pleasantly surprised to find that the appeal to the racing fan was identical to the appeal to the avid sailing fan,” Coutts recalls. “We’ve got confidence now that the product stands up.” [Photo: SailGP] From money pit to money maker In 2019, Coutts and Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison launched SailGP with one deceptively simple innovation: a regular season. For decades, professional sailing meant wealthy enthusiasts funding expensive hobbies with no return. The America’s Cupsailing’s premier event for 174 yearsexemplified the broken model. Imagine if the Super Bowl happened once every four years with no regular season in between. No predictable schedule. No way for athletes to plan or build a career. That’s been the America’s Cup. Sponsors couldn’t justify the investment. Broadcasters couldn’t build programming around it. Teams couldn’t make it profitable. “It sounds so simple, doesn’t it?” says Jimmy Spithill, CEO and co-owner of the Red Bull Italy SailGP Team. “But whether you’re an athlete, a sponsor, or a broadcasterif it wasn’t a regular season, how could you plan?” Upon founding, Ellison committed to funding the league for five years. But the transformation happened faster than anyone expected. Teams that couldn’t be sold in 2019 now command $60 to $70 million valuations. Four of the league&8217;s 12 teams are already profitablea milestone that took the WNBA 13 years to achieve and that Wrexham, Reynolds’ soccer team, still hasn’t reached. In traditional sailing, teams burned millions on secret boat development that never stopped. That game is over. The business model prevents this money pit problem. All teams race identical boats. All performance data is completely sharedboat telemetry, race strategies, even engineering insights. When the league develops an upgradenew hydrofoils, better control systemsevery team gets it simultaneously. There is no buying wins. “Everyone’s on the same equipment,” Spithill says. “So no one has a technical advantage.” [Photo: SailGP] The investment thesis that sold Hollywood When Gian Luca Passi de Preposulo evaluated investing in the Red Bull Italy team, he saw something bigger than sailing. The Italian luxury brand executive who spent years at Giorgio Armani and Moncler recognized a familiar pattern. “I saw a growing sport with an incredible heritage because of the America’s Cup,” he says. “Millions of fans following this through generations, but no competition on a weekly or monthly base.” Passi de Preposulo recognized the pattern: a legacy sport with millions of fans but no consistent competition to followexactly the gap SailGP’s regular season format filled. But he also saw that the business model offers investment advantages impossible in more mature leagues. National team scarcityone per country, capped at around 20 teams totalcreates inherent value. Buying a $60 million SailGP team gives you a significantly larger ownership stake and more governance rights than putting that same money into a $5 billion NFL franchise. Men and women race together on the same boatsunusual in professional sportsdoubling the target audience and appealing to the increasing pool of investors backing women’s sports. Teams operate on standard sports economics: sponsorship, broadcast revenue shares, and licensing. But only six years in, most revenue streams remain undeveloped. The four profitable teams achieved this through sponsorship alone. Cash cows like broadcast rights and licensing represent pure upside. Team valuations reflect this trajectory. “In season three, you could have bought a team for $20 million,” Coutts says. “Now you’re not going to buy a team for under $70.” [Photo: SailGP] Scaling SailGP From six teams and five events in 2019, SailGP now runs 12 teams across 12 events. The target: 20-plus events annually, matching Formula 1’s 24. Teams 13 and 14 are already sold for the 2026 and 2027 seasons, and the league projects over $200 million in annual revenue by season’s end, which culminates this weekend with the Grand Final in Abu Dhabi, where the top three teams will compete for a $2 million prize. Rolex signed a 10-year title sponsorship, renaming the competition the Rolex SailGP Championship. Its by far the biggest partnership in sailing, Coutts says. Amazon, Tommy Hilfiger, and T-Mobile have also joined as team sponsors. Events now generate an average $26.2 million in economic impact for host citiesquadruple the $6.8 million from Season 1, according to SailGP. For context, Formula 1 races generate $200 to $400 million. The celebrity investment impact is measurable. Market research firm YouGov tracks “buzz scores”a measure of whether people are hearing positive or negative things about a brand. In Australia, SailGP scores jumped from 22.0 to 26.3 in two weeks following the Reynolds and Jackman announcement. France saw similar lifts after Mbappé’s investment. For Reynolds, SailGP represents another portfolio expansion. His Maximum Effort Investments backs Wrexham AFC, Club Necaxa, La Equidad, and Alpine F1. His Wrexham successtransforming an obscure Welsh soccer club through marketing genius and storytellingoffers a template as SailGP looks to continue its growth, both in investment and global audience. “The fact that we can get that sort of [celebrity] involvement in one of the teams is amazing,” Coutts says. “And they’ll have some fun with it too, which is what it’s all about.”
Category:
E-Commerce
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