Dick Costolo, former CEO of Twitter, recounts his early career pursuing improv comedy in Chicago before transitioning into technology leadership.
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Costolo: AI will replace human-only medical diagnosis within ten years
“Healthcare, we're going to look back 10 years from now and go, oh my god, we let humans who had only seen four cases of this decide what to do next instead of running it through, you know, here are the symptoms and evaluating against terabytes of historical da…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Costolo: AI recommendations will outperform human judgment when they disagree
“There are going to be lots of cases of, in specific domains of, it did this thing a human would never do, and there will be lots of machine learning examples of, well, the machine thinks we should do X, and the people think we should do Y, but the machines wil…”
Opinion
Costolo: Veterans understand team alignment better than 95% of Valley managers
“If I had to summarize Ben's management course, it's make sure everybody understands what you understand, and people coming in from the military have that perspective much more deeply ingrained in them than 95% of people who are in management roles in Silicon V…”
Assertion Partly supported
Costolo: Twitter partnered with Google to bypass Egypt's Arab Spring shutdown
“Egypt, you know, during the Arab Spring, we sort of started in Tunisia with people organizing protests on Twitter, and they were able to organize protests on Twitter because they were writing under pseudonyms and not, you know, their actual names, so people we…”
Disclosure
Costolo told Twitter's board he would leave peacefully without severance if asked
“I mean, I had the exact same conversation with my board many times, you know, long before the IPO. Like, hey, listen, when it comes time for, don't ever have any conversation behind my back about it. Just come tell me you're not the guy anymore, and I'll, like…”
Insight
Costolo: Leaders must correct mistakes quickly rather than try preventing them
“It's not your job as a leader to prevent mistakes from happening. It's your job as leader to correct mistakes as quickly as you can when they happen. If you try to lead by preventing mistakes from happening, nobody's going to friggin' take any chances, and the…”