People by WTF

Ajay Banga, former Mastercard CEO and current World Bank president focused on development finance and job creation. He discusses the Bank’s $120B role, why jobs are the key to ending poverty, the five sectors to prioritize for employment, energy and electrification challenges, and how small, phone-based AI and targeted investments can unlock opportunity.

Ajay Banga, business leader and current World Bank President who scaled Mastercard into a global payments giant. He talks about luck and opportunity, why Indians excel abroad through adaptability, the looming youth-job mismatch for 1.2 billion new adults, and surprising low tourist numbers in India. Short, sharp conversations with wide-ranging implications.

Akshata Murty, entrepreneur and philanthropist focused on arts, education and Indian‑UK cultural ties. Rishi Sunak, former UK Prime Minister and ex‑Chancellor with a tech and policy background. They trade views on patience versus speed, storytelling as leadership, AI and education, identity and impact, and balancing failure with resilience in public life.

Rishi Sunak, former UK prime minister known for his roles in finance and politics, reflects on marriage as emotional anchor and coping with public life. He discusses identity under scrutiny and reframing purpose after loss of office. Conversations highlight personal balance, resilience, and starting anew at midlife.

A candid conversation about duty, failure and personal resilience inspired by a Gita line. A woman reflects on identity beyond family names and titles. A couple share two decades of companionship, playful arguments and everyday choices like ice cream flavors.

Chamath Palihapitiya, venture capitalist and entrepreneur who sold a company to Nvidia and rebuilt after big SPAC losses. He talks about how childhood pain fueled his drive. He reframes business as a game and describes building a “machine that makes machines.” He debates Bitcoin’s limits, conviction-driven investing, AI’s infrastructure needs, and political and social fallout from tech-driven change.

Chamath Palihapitiya, venture capitalist and entrepreneur behind early bets on Tesla and Bitcoin, and founder of social+capital. He discusses why pain fuels scale. He questions common metrics of success. He explores politics as strategic tit-for-tat and where to allocate capital between silicon and machine-building.

Dario Amodei, AI researcher and Anthropic co-founder who led development of Claude, reflects on AI’s rapid rise. He discusses withheld models, whether AI could become conscious, concentration of power in AI, risks of de-skilling, and why critical thinking may be our last human edge. Short, sharp conversations range from scaling laws to biotech as the next AI-driven frontier.

Dario Amodei, AI researcher and executive building advanced AI systems, warns about transformative risks. He discusses the huge economic and geopolitical stakes. He dives into AI safety concerns and why builders may be the most worried. The conversation explores regulation and the realities of power and incentives.

Yuval Noah Harari, historian and bestselling author of Sapiens and Homo Deus, joins from Davos. He unpacks religion as a powerful shared fiction. He explores AI becoming a new religious authority and how algorithms ruined public conversation. He warns about geopolitics reverting to force and the fragility of trust between nations.