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David Leonhardt on the American Dream
David Leonhardt is a senior writer for The New York Times, where he writes The Morning, its flagship daily newsletter. He is the author of Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream (Random House, 2023). The Atlantic, the Financial Times, and the New Republic named it one of the best books of the year. Previously at The Times, David was an Op-Ed columnist, the Washington bureau chief, a Times Magazine staff writer, a podcast host, and the founding editor of The Upshot section. He also led a strategy group that helped Times leadership shape the newsroom’s digital future. In 2011, David received the Pulitzer Prize for commentary.
David Parekh, Ph.D., is the chief executive officer of SRI, a leading research and development organization serving government and industry. Parekh has more than 30 years of experience leading research for industrial and academic research organizations. Parekh serves on the Board of Trustees of the Connecticut Science Center and served as a board director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering. He joined SRI in December of 2021.
Recorded April 2024.
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The future of trust
57:13|How can society make the most of AI’s potential? In this PARC Forum sponsored by Schmidt Sciences, KQED’s Rachael Myrow moderated a conversation between two leading voices on AI governance: Mozilla cofounder Mitchell Baker and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace president Mariano-Florentino “Tino” Cuéllar.To learn about future PARC Forums, visit http://www.sri.com/events.To sponsor a future PARC Forum, contact us today! Recent sponsors include Schmidt Sciences, Alphabet’s X, and the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. Visit http://www.sri.com/events/sponsorship for more.Recorded October 9, 2025The future of education in the age of AI
55:12|How can educators balance rapid AI innovation with effective, rigorous, evidence-based strategies? In this PARC Forum, Afua Bruce (founder and principal of the ANB Advisory Group and author of The Tech That Comes Next) moderates an eye-opening conversation about AI in education featuring Kumar Garg (Renaissance Philanthropy), Fernando Fabre (Kauffman Fellows), Erwin Gianchandani (National Science Foundation), and Leigh Ann DeLyser (SRI Education).To learn about future PARC Forums, visit https://www.sri.com/events/.Recorded August 28, 2025Karen Hao on developing AI in the service of people
55:32|Award-winning journalist Karen Hao joined Karen Myers (vice president and director of SRI's Artificial Intelligence Center) and Christiana McFarland (director of SRI’s Center for Innovation, Strategy, and Policy) for an engaging conversation about the impacts of AI around the world.To learn about future PARC Forums, visit https://www.sri.com/events/.Recorded May 22, 2025Eric Schmidt on AI, hope, and the human spirit
01:02:56|What will the world look like as AI continues to accelerate? In this PARC Forum conversation, technologist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist Eric Schmidt joined SRI CEO David Parekh to discuss our long-term future with AI.To learn about future PARC Forums, visit SRI.com.Recorded March 2025.Astro Teller on the future of innovation
01:03:18|At FutureFest 2025, Pulitzer Prize-winning technology journalist John Markoff moderated a conversation with Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots at X (formerly Google X), and David Parekh, CEO of SRI. Together, they explored how today’s groundbreaking innovations are solving some of humanity’s greatest challenges, touching on AI, robotics, quantum, space, biotech, and much more.To learn about future PARC Forums, visit SRI.com.Recorded January 2025.Julie Packard and Fiorenza Micheli on saving our living ocean
01:29:58|SRI, in collaboration with Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability, hosted the Monterey Bay Aquarium to discuss ocean conservation. Julie Packard from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Stanford’s Fiorenza Micheli, and SRI’s Julie Bert discuss issues in ocean sustainability with KQED’s Rosa Tuirán.Learn more about SRI's work in climate & sustainability.Recorded October 2024.Parmy Olson on AI boom’s impact on society
52:09|In this PARC Forum our keynote speaker, Parmy Olson, a Bloomberg technology columnist and the author of Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World, discusses AI's transformative impact on society. She was joined by Patrick Lincoln, president of SRI's Information and Computing Sciences division.Learn more about SRI's work in AIRecorded September 2024.Bob Metcalfe and Vint Cerf on networked computing’s evolution
01:25:15|SRI celebrated the creation and development of three world-changing innovations and the innovators behind them, with keynote speakers Bob Metcalfe and Vint Cerf. SRI was presented with three IEEE milestones for the laser printer, the Alto personal computer, and Ethernet – transformative technologies in modern computing.The event celebrated the individuals and teams behind the development of these milestone technologies. Among them was Bob Metcalfe, a Turing Award-winner, who spearheaded the invention, standardization, and commercialization of Ethernet technology. It also included John Shoch and Ron Rider, two individuals who were instrumental in the development of these technologies while at PARC in the 1970s.In addition to leaders from IEEE, speakers also included Vint Cerf, co-creator of the now-ubiquitous TCP/IP protocol — an innovation that has earned him distinction as one of the “fathers of the Internet.”Learn more about SRI's nine IEEE MilestonesRecorded May 2024.