Ruth Porat, President and Chief Investment Officer at Alphabet and Google

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0:54I think it's so important to start with, what's the state of the world today? and can we fix it and make sure we're focusing on what's the upside because it's so easy to be to be scared about change I think that it's exciting to see the art of the possible

1:14Ruth Porat and I have shared some fantastic times together over the years in December when I told Ruth I was coming to San Francisco she said Ruthie I'm going to give you the ride of your life. It turned out to be in the back of a Waymo, the revolutionary driverless car, a project she's been deeply involved with as president and chief investment officer of Google and Alphabet. Life and her extraordinary schedule has often kept us thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of miles apart, as she moves across continents, connecting people, connecting ideas, and connecting communities. Being here today with Ruth is really special to me.

1:58A Ruth and a Ruthie, back together at last. What could be better? Thank you so much. That was so beautiful. We have not done a podcast on a Sunday morning at 8.30 in six years. I will, thank you, thank you. It was the way to finally get our planes to land. By this morning as I was getting dressed, feeling quite hungover from Saturday Night Live, I thought maybe this is not a good thing to do. This is a good idea. Having done it, I think it's a great idea. You are now team, team, team four. We are doing. Sorry, team four. Yeah, we have discovered the Sunday morning podcast. I think it's really nice because the recipe is really nice.

2:36I was so interested that you chose the recipe that I love most, well, particularly in the summer. Do you love this recipe? I do love this recipe. Papa Pomodoro. Yeah. Do you want to read it? Absolutely. And then we'll discuss why. Papa al Pomodoro. Four kilograms of ripe, sweet plum tomatoes peeled and chopped. Four garlic cloves chopped. 175 milliliters of olive oil. I did have to Google all of this to get that converted for Americans, but that's okay. Oh, okay. We took it from the... But that's good. I like it. I like... No, Google works. It converts. One stale sourdough loaf, crust cut into large chunks, two bunches basil leaves torn into pieces.

3:18Fry the garlic in olive oil and cook gently until soft. Just before the garlic turns brown, then add the tomato's tomatoes. Simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Season. Add 600 milliliters water, bring it to the boil, put the bread into the tomato mixture and stir until the bread absorbs the liquid, adding more boiling water if the soup is too thick. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly. Stir the basil into the soup with 120 to 175 milliliters of extra virgin olive oil. Then let sit to allow the bread to absorb the flavor of the basil and oil. Drizzle with olive oil and serve and enjoy.

3:58Of all the River Cafe recipes you could have chosen, what made you choose this recipe? Well, it's just, it's lovely. It's one of, I think, a soup, a beautiful, simple soup is just soothing. and I was so intrigued picking it learning that it's what actually convinced you to cook only Italian like the beauty and simplicity of it to me is just wonderful and as somebody who doesn't really know how to cook I can actually do this. It can it's very simple it's very it's I think it's four ingredients I was once you were reading it I remembered that I was staying in Italy with Richard and his cousins and it was my first trip to Italy and I didn't understand Italian very well I didn't know the family and I woke up and I heard this argument going on in the kitchen downstairs these two sisters were fighting there was quite a heated argument and I thought are they discussing feminism Mussolini you know where they were going to go the next day and the argument when I came in the kitchen one of them was almost in tears where they were making Papa Pomodoro and one having added the bread and the tomato together one wanted to pour in water and the other one didn't want to add any water.

5:09And this was a family crisis. Sounds like a crisis. And I thought that told you a lot about family, food, and maybe sisters. With Google, it's not just something we feed the people who work here. It's a very definite policy. It's a very definite value that you have. And I think that if we're talking about, and want to talk more about the values of the work that you're doing, there is also a value in the way we approach food so I think Google really pioneered a lot of the notion of food within the office the way we do it and for Google it's a really important part of the culture our view is that bringing people together is built community and it's also for an innovation company serendipity is really valuable and so having people come for meals is one way you get people from all around the company working on different things all of a sudden comparing ideas.

6:12We then created something that we call MKs or micro kitchens. So our view at Google is you shouldn't have to walk very far before you can have a place to come together where there will be snacks and drinks and other things. and there was a term for a long time people would talk about casual collisions so at an mk at the micro kitchen what you would want is somebody working on search and somebody working on chrome just happened to be coming to get a snack at one time and then strike up a conversation and it sparks ideas so it's a notion of community but also serendipity and innovation and so it's very very core to who we are.

6:51Just in the last night where you were here with your son, I was here last night, which I saw some people who had seen the television show about the River Cafe sitting, you know, all the way down there. And so I just moved their table so that they could sit closer to the kitchen because they were so interested. And they were sitting beside, behind somebody, they'd seen on an airplane, you know, and they were here. And the interaction, and as you say, the collisions you know sometimes it's a bit hard for a waiter to get through or to bring food to a table but i i think that does happen in restaurants i think that more than anything what we're seeing is people want human connection they want to be around the energy of people work you know it's humanity the liveliness of it what is your food day before we when we get to the food at google so you wake up in the morning what do you have for breakfast i'm a pretty regimented person I'll have coffee when I get up in the morning, but when I get to Google, I'll have plain yogurt and berries.

7:53And we'll be in your office, or will you collide into somebody else having yogurt and berries? Well, usually we'll collide into somebody when I'm picking something up, and then we all have these wonderful baristas, which is lovely because then you're waiting for the cappuccino or whatever to be made, and then there are more casual collisions. So it's fun running into people. That's a really interesting point that you actually, I like that idea that next time we keep somebody waiting for their coffee, we can say we did it on purpose so you could have a collision exactly it's a great way for your coffee you created a opportunity for serendipity and innovation exactly do you realize what kind of oh yeah you think this is just a slow coffee maker no it's very deliberate uh we like to pretend it's deliberate and then uh at lunch it's same thing i'll go back and to the same micro kitchen or do you walk further the micro kitchens are for snacks we want to make sure that we're being as smart as possible.

8:45And it sounds like you have a very similar system here, actually, where every day after lunch, they'll see what was left over, in particular vegetables and greens. And then they'll create a bit of a friendly competition amongst the chefs in the various restaurants to come up with some way to reuse that. But it has to be a completely new dish, so it's not a reheating. It's how can you do something super creative. and we've meaningfully reduced food waste as a result. I think the best ideas come when you have people around the table. I do too. And so very much to this day, it's about let's get people around a table and then you build on one another and it's different when you're together.

9:27We were talking to the chefs here about how Google and the work you're doing in AI is gonna make more communication. I think that people fear with technologies that will take us away and I think that what you were talking about is how it can bring us together. And I'd like to know, because I know that food and AI and restaurants, we're all going to be working together and without the fear and without, you know, with the idea of how we can do it. So I think that technology has to be a tool that benefits us. For me, the way I use it in my daily life is I have this, I use AI to help ingest content and respond to things I need to send out.

10:13That's not the magic of it. The magic of it is that it then gives me time to spend where I want to spend time. Yeah. So what I think, exactly. Here. Exactly. And so, you know, when I think about it, about half of small businesses are using AI now. And the ones that are using it are seeing an uplift in revenues and profitability because it's letting them do things that they need to have done, like reaching customers or planning what's in their inventory in ways that help the business. So to me, the most interesting part about technology is to try and understand what are pain points that I have in my life or in my business or in anything and using it to be an assist partner to getting it done faster.

11:06It's sort of like a simplistic way of stating it, but my dad actually used a slide rule and then we used a calculator. Like just the ease of it still requires me to do the thinking that I need to do, but it's an assist to what I'm doing. So small businesses are seeing a lot of different ways of using it, whether it's creating the marketing materials or reaching customers or, as I said, some of the operational elements of it so that you can then spend time where you want to spend time. The most relevant fact about what we're all doing in food is how to feed people, how to feed people through food banks, how to feed people through technology.

11:45What do you feel about the responsibility of corporations or people who have the knowledge and the technical ability to feed people who have no food? You know, I think you're making a really important point. It's so often, and I'm thinking of it in the context of what's the role of technology? And I think there is a role of technology. And I think too often when people are assessing technology, in particular today, they're focusing on what are some of the downside risks. They're not starting with the realization that things aren't as good as they should be in society. And I'm going to answer your question on food, but you're hitting something that's really important to me and broadening it out.

12:35You know, today, the disparities, depending on what your postal code are, I think are unconscionable when we can address it. And you're getting at that with food. But an area that I focus on quite a bit is how can technology help address health issues? and what I find to be really distressing is there are treatable cancers and the survival rate, depending on your postal code, can be 50 % lower than what you or I would have. In America, more than half of the adults don't read at the sixth grade level. Your point about... Did you say half? More than half? 50 % of adults. 54 % of adults in America read at sixth grade level or below.

13:27When you talk about food, when you talk about there are floods and fires, and why aren't we getting people out of harm's way faster? Why don't we give them days notice, not minutes notice? These are all problems that exist. And these are problems that can be addressed with technology and are being addressed with technology. And I think it's so important to start with, what's the state of the world today and can we fix it? and make sure we're focusing on what's the upside because it's so easy to be to be scared about change and that's what I get excited about so you and I've talked about this I was in Asia and a prime minister said to me how can technology help with the lowest economic strata in my country with farmers can farmers yeah and the answer is yes and in fact it was a joy last year I was with Ajay Banga, the head of the World Bank, during World Bank Week, and we announced a platform that farmers can use that enables them on their Android phone, which is more ubiquitous in developing markets, to get pre-crop information.

14:39So how can you see when you have an infestation risk? You can use your phone and you can get information. Like AI can help you see when there's a problem to intervene or and all the way through to the back end. How can you understand post crop issues? What about markets? Where should you send it so that you don't see actually this diminution of the ability to sell it all profitably? We can help farmers. And we've done a pilot with thousands of farmers in India. and you see an uplift in their earnings because they're having access to information that can make a difference in their life. So I get excited when you say, in health, we've got to close that gap.

15:22In early detection of disease is what's going to make a difference. In food, food scarcity, food security, we've got to do better. And if you can use information to actually increase crop yield and increase the ability to get to market, we should be doing it. Those are areas where I think it's exciting to see the art of the possible.

15:47Game night rush, or any night of the week really, Genius keeps every order moving. From online ordering to your kitchen to the front counter. Big league reliability for any business. That's Genius. What did you have growing up? Tell me about the family. So I was born in England. I was born in the north of England. right outside of Manchester and Sale. And the way we arrived to England is my father had grown up in Vienna, and his father was taken on Kristallnacht, and that's when he realized he needed to get out of Austria. How old was he, Matt? He was 15, and so he was able to escape on a youth boat.

16:29The rest of his family could not get out. They all perished in the camps. And as soon as he was of age, he enlisted in the British Army. and he ended up fighting in the two battles of El Aleman. His high school had been closed down in Vienna, so he never completed high school. And as he was fighting in the British Army, he concluded that if he were to survive, education would be his passport to freedom. That was the phrase I heard over and over again as a child. And so he actually started to teach himself engineering while fighting in the north of Africa. And he used to tell us that his fellow soldiers would tease him that he would die before he could ever use this education.

17:12And his answer was, I would rather die an educated man. And he survived and then went to what was then Palestine, fought in the War of Independence, and eventually was invited to Manchester, to the University of Manchester, to get a master's in physics. So then I was born there, and he eventually was invited to first Harvard and then Stanford, where he designed the Atom Smasher. But he always taught us education is a passport to freedom. Do you have memories of the houses and what they looked like, where your kitchen was? So I've gone back to my home in Sale. And my best memory from Sale is whenever it was a rainy, misty day, my father would say, let's go run in the rugby field.

18:05We lived in a tiny little apartment building, and we'd run in the rugby field. I went back there recently and saw that rugby field. It was beautiful. And then I lived in a little home in Palo Alto. What about your mother? My mother was a psychologist, an extraordinary psychologist and entrepreneur. She ended up creating something called the Center for Creativity and Growth in Palo Alto when I was a kid. She was a complete free spirit. She was an artist and a dancer. Just as sort of regimented as my father was as an engineer and physicist, creative in his own way, my mother was an artist and painter and psychologist.

18:44She was amazing. You have a sister? I have a younger sister and an older brother. He was really active in the Vietnam War movement, moved out when I was five. My little sister and I, she was a year and a half younger, called ourselves co-conspirators, my best friend. Yeah. So you would have your meals, but how did your parents, both working, how would they have organized that? My parents both worked. My mother was actually a truly horrendous cook and would just whip something together for dinner. So we would always come to dinner. that was a lovely part yeah her food was not what you would want to eat my father used to always joke that the food was better in the british army than it was oh that bad it was pretty bad yeah i actually i was reminiscing about that as i was coming over here and i realized that not until my 20s did i realize that a beautiful piece of salmon shouldn't taste like a hockey puck because she just put everything in the oven and cooked it and cooked it yeah She was a wonderful mom, but not a...

19:46Yeah, it was quite an academic world. It was, very much. What was your father's theory about the quark? You and I have talked about the quark test. So my father was at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, a physicist, and when I was pretty young, he said to me, you know, if someone in my lab can't define a quark in less than 30 seconds, they don't know what they're talking about. Okay. And later in life, I remembered that story. because when I would be at work and I would ask somebody a question and they would give me some long rambling answer I realized they would fail my dad's quark test so I've been using the quark test for a long time which is if you can't tell me something in less than 30 seconds that's supposed to be in your technical domain yeah then you probably don't you probably haven't really scrubbed what you're doing and then what do you do I make him go back to the drawing back to the drawing board like either you understand it you understand why it's important and you can therefore explain it or you have failed the quark test somebody said that the other day scott galloway said that if you ask somebody what they're doing in life and they can't describe it quite quickly it's they don't really know maybe a problem i saw that in my prior life at morgan stanley when somebody would come in with the trade that they said was a great trade and you'd ask them to explain why was it a great trade and the answer would fail my dad's quark test and i'm like okay yeah i may not quite understand what you're doing but if you can't explain it to me you don't either Did you feel, when you tasted that first piece of salmon, that was something amazing?

21:14Because you are a good eater. I've eaten with you in many places, and I do know how important food is to you. So was there a kind of, oh, food could taste like this moment, or do you think it was just? Well, the salmon is a funny one because my mother cooked salmon all the time, but it really was a hockey puck. So I thought I didn't like it, and then when I finally had something that was properly cooked, you're right. It was like, oh, we can start expanding our horizon. That's what Paul McCartney said about wine, because when he and John Lennon, it's a story I love, it says a lot, I think, that when he and John Lennon went to Paris for the first time, John Lennon's aunt gave them 10 pounds for a week, which was okay those days, but they never could have anything but the cheapest wine.

21:58So they thought that wine was just a horrible drink. Why would anybody like this until Brian Epstein took them out to a fancy restaurant, and then they had a good glass of wine. And then, you know, because, yeah. Well, I found that over the years, now my favorite way to go out to a restaurant, maybe to make up for all of the last years, is I don't actually just like to have my dish to myself. I would rather everybody orders, and then you get to taste everything. The share, yeah. Sharing is a big thing. You know, sharing, we do it here. I mean, obviously, people order three or four pastas or three or four of that.

22:34And then there are the people, again, someone I talked to who said that they grew up with poverty. And your plate was your plate. The idea of actually taking anything off your plate as a child to give to somebody else when you knew you weren't going to get any more. Well, the joke in the family is my husband is that's gold. He's that person. I'm not going to share. And then the kids and I are all ordering and sharing. It's just fun. It makes it fun. It's an adventure.

23:00Game Night Rush, or any night of the week, really, Genius keeps every order moving. From online ordering, to your kitchen, to the front counter. Big League reliability for any business. That's Genius. Your time in Palo Alto was growing up. Tell me about Palo Alto. I only know one other person who lives there. So it was a wonderful, innovative, creative, academic environment. So my father designed the atom smasher. People around the table were physicists, went on to win Nobel Prizes. My mother, a psychologist, created this Center for Creativity and Growth and would bring in psychologists from around the country, around the world, who would then speak at her center.

23:47her. So it was always stimulus. Like we would have our dinner around the dinner table. And then we were expected to go into the living room together and we'd sit and we'd each read our books. And I remember like lying on the floor reading the book and that's what you would do. It was a sweet, it was a really sweet home. I do remember in high school, years later, one of my friends said, you know, we always thought you were sort of weird, but we thought you would make it in life, which to me is an important message for kids in high school. It's like, well, if you know, in high school, if maybe I was a bit odd and academic, that's fine.

24:25And just be who you are. And you got to follow that path. And your parents encouraged it. So that also they weren't trying to make you into something else. Yeah. And did you travel? Did you go to Europe? Did you go back to Vienna? We didn't go to Vienna until about 2000. Was that hard for your father to go back? Yeah, so when we moved back to England in the 60s, it was the first time my father went back to Austria to try and find the records of his family. He didn't bring us as kids. And then in 2000, I was living in London. We came and worked here at the family. I was working at Morgan Stanley.

25:05and my husband actually said, you know, it's time to take the children on an oral history tour. And so we brought my father over and said, don't sugarcoat it. Take us through what it was like. And he planned a bit of a trip. But as we went through Vienna, the doors just kept opening to more and more of that memory. And sort of on the last day, my middle son said, I want to stay with grandpa in his room. And my father woke up in the middle of the night trembling. Everything came pouring back. But then he looked at his grandson, and he said, we survived. And for him, it was realizing he had survived.

25:47He lost all of his family but now had this new family, the grandchildren, the children, the grandchildren. And he said it's stabilized. Yeah, he got a sense of calm. and for us that image of being in Austria and reliving it with him but then him

26:10celebrating that as he often said to us you can take away my family you can take away my state you can't take away my mind and we can recreate it and so his joy his joy from the family I wish Yes. My mother's family was in Israel. So you had an Israeli grandmother who cooked, yes? So my mother's parents escaped from Russia in the early 20s and then ended up spending their life there. My grandmother always thought she would end up back in Russia, but stayed there. And how was that? How was that experience for you? So she never came to the States? She lived in Israel? So my grandfather ended up, he built the roads in what was then Palestine.

27:01And my grandmother was just this incredible, loving grandmother who did know how to cook. I don't know why my mother didn't inherit any of the skills, but my grandmother was amazing. Do you remember what she cooked? She cooked a lot of very traditional Russian dishes. And the main thing about my grandmother was that for her, cooking was love. And she spoke Russian, Yiddish, and Hebrew. I don't speak any of them. But the one word that was the word we shared that I did understand, there were a couple of them, was essen. It must eat. Eat. And she would always cook, cook, cook for us and then say essen, essen.

27:48And the only way, the way to express love to her was to eat. And I remember as a young kid, you get to the point where you were trying to, I was trying to express my love to her so much that it actually hurt that we ate so much. She was, she was incredible. I mean, the, the most amazing story about her was actually her final day. What was that? So she went to the green grocer, paid off her debts, and then she went home. and spent the entire day cooking and filled the freezer with food, filled the fridge with food. She was cooking for my grandpa. And then she went to her bedroom and lay down, and that was it.

28:38Had she been there before? Did she have a sense of her? She must have, because she knew. She didn't do that on every Tuesday. this was something no she went and paid her debts so she must have known and she prepared my grandpa to be there without her wow yeah so food was love i want to go back to your waymo ride because yeah well it's relevant here you were amazing when i said do you want to go in a waymo you're immediately like seriously absolutely yes seriously of course we must go in a way yeah and i've said i'll go with you and trust me after a minute it's going to seem totally normal. And after probably three minutes, you might be a bit bored and you're going to start doing something else.

29:22But it's that first jump that you're like, bring it on. Which is what you're saying with technology more broadly. But that first jump for people, it is really helpful to go through a training program or have somebody by your side. And I would say even when I did it and I brought in some engineers and said, okay, take me through everything all the magic's been done by the engineers then the question is how do I want to use it for me like you you're in the driver's seat how do I want how can it give me time back yes but it's that first jump and in fact there's some research recently that I find very distressing that women are 20 % less likely than men to engage and and yet it's really easy to address when you do a kind of just start a training program then you see this three three x increase in utilization so it's just that first step yeah and i think then you play around with it and figure out what does it mean for you a conversation about women you know your your life your your the way you've worked your father and encouraging you i would like to have done a podcast with him um and uh but there There was something I read that he would take you into the garage after you did your homework to solder, make radios, and work with tools.

30:43And so what was that like? What did that teach you? When I was quite young, I must have been 10, 11, he first taught me how to solder. You know, this super hot iron melting metal so that we could actually build things. And we built a radio. We built a binary adding machine. He would take me to the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center to do my homework. And so at the youngest age, he made it pretty clear, education's your passport to freedom for everyone, and there's no limit to what you can do. My very last question to you is, if food is sharing, as you do, you know, food is collision, as you say it is in work.