Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. You're listening to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: BusinessWeek with Carol Masser and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: As more and more companies adopt AI and more consumers
Speaker 2: use it, the more we learn about the potential flaws
Speaker 2: of the technology. For example, Carol, maybe you remember last
Speaker 2: year when Google's AI suggested that everybody should just beat
Speaker 2: a rock every day.
Speaker 3: Not a good idea.
Speaker 2: Well, they said, rocks have minerals and vitamins that are
Speaker 2: quote important for digestive health.
Speaker 1: Got it.
Speaker 3: I understand that logic, but still not a good idea.
Speaker 2: Or just a few weeks ago, in the Fable app,
Speaker 2: which calls itself the social app for bookworms and binge watchers,
Speaker 2: found itself having to apologize after some of its AI
Speaker 2: generated reader summaries contained what the company ended up calling
Speaker 2: quote very bigoted, racist language. Fable then remove these features
Speaker 2: from the app. It's an evolving world, Yeah absolutely. Padma
Speaker 2: Warrior is founder, president and a CEO of Fable. She's
Speaker 2: also the former CTO of Motorola and Cisco, also the
Speaker 2: former CEO of the US arm of the Chinese ev
Speaker 2: maker Neo. She was on the board of Microsoft until
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three. She's on the board of Spotify as well.
Speaker 2: She joins us this afternoon from Palo Alto Padma. Good
Speaker 2: to have you with us. How are you?
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me. I'm doing well.
Speaker 2: So I'm curious about Fable. A lot of people are
Speaker 2: familiar with it because people use it for rating books,
Speaker 2: finding books, same with stuff we watch on the bigger screen.
Speaker 2: You're the lesson though. The takeaway from AI you guys
Speaker 2: were so quick to come out and apologize for it.
Speaker 2: Take action, be public about it. What were the What
Speaker 2: did you learn from that incident?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I know. Fable is a community platform.
Speaker 5: We focus on helping people find, by track, and share
Speaker 5: all their entertainment interests in one personalized space. We have
Speaker 5: users from all over the world onward and ninety five countries,
Speaker 5: and our mission is to celebrate human creative tea in
Speaker 5: the form of stories. So the incidents you are referring to,
Speaker 5: we were using generative AI to create a summary for
Speaker 5: readers based on their reading lists, and regrettably it served
Speaker 5: a few readers with hurtful, unacceptable commentary related to race.
Speaker 4: We apologized, as you mentioned.
Speaker 5: Very quickly removed these gen ai features from our platform.
Speaker 5: To me, they were very A couple of key lessons
Speaker 5: that we learned. One is it's really important to have
Speaker 5: a human in the loop. In these early days of
Speaker 5: Generator Ai. It is essential to carry out really extensive
Speaker 5: beta testing, and we did a lot of testing, by
Speaker 5: the way, for our feature, but even with all the testing,
Speaker 5: you're bound to have an issue. So I think it's
Speaker 5: really really important to have human in the loop approach.
Speaker 5: The second is transparency and listening to community feedback when
Speaker 5: someone I think our mission, our philosophy at our company
Speaker 5: is even when we do something with our product, which
Speaker 5: generator wai, even if it hurts one person, we take
Speaker 5: it very seriously. So I think that level of transparency
Speaker 5: and being close to listening to the community and users
Speaker 5: and having the ability to react quickly, those are two
Speaker 5: big lessons that we learned and I hope other entrepreneurs
Speaker 5: follow this.
Speaker 3: How much is it that just we're kind of early
Speaker 3: in on this process. I'm not excusing any of it
Speaker 3: that goes, you know, it goes like it did for
Speaker 3: you guys. But is it a case of it's only
Speaker 3: as good as its input, and that is it a
Speaker 3: fair assumption. How do you see you understand the tech world,
Speaker 3: and I'm sure you're looking closely, you know at AI
Speaker 3: right now that the more we put in better, cleaner information,
Speaker 3: the better it gets.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, And I think there is a lot of confusion.
Speaker 5: People sometimes confuse AI the generative AI. I think it's
Speaker 5: important to perhaps distinguish a little bit, at least broadly,
Speaker 5: the difference between the two. You know, I think as
Speaker 5: you guys probably know, and I'm not sure how much
Speaker 5: how much people realize this.
Speaker 4: Though.
Speaker 5: AI processes data to analyze it and provide us with
Speaker 5: predictions and insight, for example, performing tasks like identifying objects
Speaker 5: in images, converting speech to tests, recommendations, all of this thing,
Speaker 5: generative AI is different. It creates new content based on
Speaker 5: the data that it has learned from. So generative AI
Speaker 5: can create text, can create images, can create music videos.
Speaker 4: All of this.
Speaker 5: I find that generative AI it's developing very quickly and
Speaker 5: very fast, and it's really really important because as I said,
Speaker 5: even the best AI needs human oversight at the stage.
Speaker 5: As you pointed out, it's only as good as the input.
Speaker 5: So it's really important to train generative AI algorithms and
Speaker 5: actually even AI on data sets that are culturally literate
Speaker 5: and sensitive, because even as humans, we are evolving, right,
Speaker 5: Like language that was used years ago is not acceptable
Speaker 5: to us anymore, and it's really important to train our
Speaker 5: algorithms and artificial intelligence so that it doesn't inadvertently promote
Speaker 5: harmful stereotypes and biases.
Speaker 3: So, okay and Tim and I are just kind of
Speaker 3: like listening to So. I love first of all, your
Speaker 3: distinction between generative AI and AI, and you're right to
Speaker 3: make the distinction. AI has been around for a long
Speaker 3: time in terms of what happened on your app, and
Speaker 3: the information that certainly was not welcomed was that gen
Speaker 3: ai or regular ai, that.
Speaker 4: Was jen Ai.
Speaker 5: We were saying gen Ai in three of our features
Speaker 5: on the product, and we had issue with one of them,
Speaker 5: but we actually pulled all three features back. We launched
Speaker 5: two of them back without Genai and using human creativity,
Speaker 5: so that our community actually is actually more happy now
Speaker 5: with those features.
Speaker 2: Do you think you can relaunch the genai feature eventually?
Speaker 4: I think it'll take us.
Speaker 5: I think for us we need to be really cautious because,
Speaker 5: as I said, if you look at the statistics, right,
Speaker 5: it was like ten possible issues out of thirty million
Speaker 5: that we did. But even that small ratio, I think
Speaker 5: the interesting thing for me, at least with genai, the
Speaker 5: testing can't just be quantified and say we had a
Speaker 5: very small percentage of failure, so we should release this feature,
Speaker 5: because as I said, even one harmful comment and one
Speaker 5: hurtful comment is bad, and so how do you find
Speaker 5: that in millions and millions that you're creating. So I
Speaker 5: think at this stage we will probably not use genai
Speaker 5: for those sorts of features, and I think we will
Speaker 5: continue to work on it to train our models and
Speaker 5: algorithms in the right way.
Speaker 3: Do you think that the government should be more involved
Speaker 3: or should be very closely involved with oversight of AI.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's difficult, I think, but so much
Speaker 5: broad usage, I don't know if government should be involved,
Speaker 5: but there should certainly be guardrailed. I think it's up
Speaker 5: to technology development teams and companies to put those guardrails
Speaker 5: and safeguards because there's broad sets of use cases. They're
Speaker 5: very specific sets of use cases. But yeah, definitely there
Speaker 5: should be policy that guides us at an overarching level
Speaker 5: so that we could use that like anything we govern
Speaker 5: right with technology. I think that is the role that
Speaker 5: government should play.
Speaker 2: What about when it comes to TikTok. It's in the
Speaker 2: news right now, obviously because of that Supreme Court ruling
Speaker 2: that we got. The future of the fate of the
Speaker 2: app is uncertain. What are your thoughts on it.
Speaker 5: We actually are a welcoming community to a big part
Speaker 5: of TikTok called book talk. Book talk is one of
Speaker 5: the largest communities on TikTok, and the last report I
Speaker 5: read it said hashtag book talk is used by billions
Speaker 5: of times across the board.
Speaker 4: It's a very large community.
Speaker 5: We definitely feel we're a safe haven for book talkers
Speaker 5: on fable. Actually, people we do have quite a lot
Speaker 5: of book talk influences today on Fable and a lot of.
Speaker 4: People who use both platforms.
Speaker 5: Many people that are currently on TikTok in book talk
Speaker 5: call us the coziest, called fable as the cosiest corner
Speaker 5: of the Internet. So we hope to be that and
Speaker 5: we hope to welcome communities like that. I think the
Speaker 5: good thing about TikTok, and I think what it has
Speaker 5: shown us is that there is a power to creation
Speaker 5: and community and that is sort of like neededeople to
Speaker 5: express themselves, belong in.
Speaker 4: A community, and be with like minded people.
Speaker 5: So we definitely hope we will be the haven for
Speaker 5: people that are currently on TikTok if it gets banned
Speaker 5: or it is not allowed to.
Speaker 2: Be used in You have two million users around the world.
Speaker 2: Have you seen an uptake in the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: Have people come into the platform in anticipation of this, Yes, we've.
Speaker 5: Seen a huge uptick in the last four weeks, actually
Speaker 5: even before when you started.
Speaker 4: So we are just really hoping.
Speaker 5: That this continues and we can host and welcome these
Speaker 5: communities onto Fable.
Speaker 2: So it sounds like a ban of TikTok would be
Speaker 2: really good for Fable.
Speaker 5: I think either way, like I said, we were we
Speaker 5: had a lot of book talkers come to Fable.
Speaker 4: Even with book talk, it is.
Speaker 5: Very complimentary in the use case, so it's not like
Speaker 5: we are routing for that to be banned or anything.
Speaker 5: I think for us, TikTok continues, that's great because that
Speaker 5: community will thrive and we will thrive with it. Unfortunately
Speaker 5: that community goes away. We want to be the alternative
Speaker 5: for people who love.
Speaker 4: Books and TV shows and stories in general.
Speaker 3: What would people maybe find surprising about your app and
Speaker 3: the kind of activity that goes on. What is it
Speaker 3: that you think might be a bit surprising A.
Speaker 5: You know, I think that's a great question. I started
Speaker 5: this company because I really wanted to bring the technology
Speaker 5: world and the creative world together. At Fable, we say
Speaker 5: we want to build a tech company with the soul
Speaker 5: of an artist. So I feel we are very proud
Speaker 5: of our design. We are very proud of the UI
Speaker 5: that we create. It's beautiful. We celebrate human creation. Yet
Speaker 5: we are a tech company. We're based, you know, I'm
Speaker 5: based in Silicon Valley, our team is distributed. I think
Speaker 5: people would find us to be unique in being able
Speaker 5: to bring both of those together. The other thing that
Speaker 5: I feel we are unique is we truly are a
Speaker 5: platform if you love and every human loves stories. Right
Speaker 5: at the end of the day, human beings are all
Speaker 5: about the story we tell. If you love stories, we
Speaker 5: are the destination for you.
Speaker 3: Just got about twenty five seconds left here. How do
Speaker 3: you make money and are you profitable? Just quickly?
Speaker 4: We are very still early. We're a startup.
Speaker 5: We you know, we are not yet quite monetizing the platform.
Speaker 4: We'll begin to do that effort.
Speaker 5: Today, the platform is free, which makes it easy for
Speaker 5: people to join.
Speaker 3: Will it be the subscription based ultimately or is that
Speaker 3: the that's the revenue stream going forward quickly?
Speaker 5: Yes. Yes, we will launch a subscription here soon and
Speaker 5: hope to add traditional value added features for people to
Speaker 5: track their links, to track of their progress, you know,
Speaker 5: keep track of what interests their life, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Got it come back? We'd love to hear more over
Speaker 3: the year. Padna Warrior, founder president CEO of Fable joining
Speaker 3: us on this Friday. This is Bloomberg Business Week