Chief Executive Officers

"India has a rule of law and this decision should have been taken when Supreme Court had first upheld the death sentence. It is unfortunate that such decisions become subject to electoral politics."

"There are several kind of wastes,such as waiting, repeatedly motions,since you learn new inventors every other day."

"You choose what hat to wear, I can be in a leadership hat, father hat, a mother hat and all the others, all at the same time."

"It's not our site's goal to be a completely free-speech platform. We want to be a safe platform and we want to be a platform that also protects privacy at the same time."

"Harris not charismatic"

"We’re all not warriors from Black Panther, we’re all not the Milaje. We cry, we bleed, we experience everything."

"Your birth is my birth; your death is my death."

"I think there are different ways to show solidarity. If you feel like you're able to go and do that, by all means do that to speak out."

"Everything from pre-election, the Hunter Biden laptop story in the New York Post that then Twitter made difficult for people to share and to read, COVID, the Jay Bhattacharyas of the world, questioning the government's response, questioning long-term lockdowns, questioning keeping kids out of school, questions about masks, about vaccines, which are still not definitively answered."

"So investing is about putting out money today in the hope or promise of getting back more in the future. And so it's about predicting the future."

"After DeepMind I never had to work again. I certainly didn’t have to write a book or anything like that. Money has never ever been the motivation. It’s always, you know, just been a side effect. For me, the goal has never been anything but how to do good in the world and how to move the world forward in a healthy, satisfying way. Even back in 2009, when I started looking at getting into technology, I could see that AI represented a fair and accurate way to deliver services in the world."

"I think in the long-term — over many decades — we have to think very hard about how we integrate these tools, because left completely to the market and to their own devices, these are fundamentally labor-replacing tools. They will augment us and make us smarter and more productive, for the next couple decades, but in the longer term that's an open question. They allow us to do new things that software has never been able to do before. These tools are creative, they're empathetic, and they actually act much more like humans than a traditional relational database where you only get out what you put in."

"I think this idea that we need to dismantle the state, we need to have maximum freedom – that’s really dangerous. On the other hand, I’m obviously very aware of the danger of centralised authoritarianism and, you know, even in its minuscule forms like nimbyism. That’s why, in the book, we talk about a narrow corridor between the danger of dystopian authoritarianism and this catastrophe caused by openness. That is the big governance challenge of the next century: how to strike that balance."

"What I’ve always tried to do is attach the idea of ethics and safety to AGI. I wrote our business plan in 2010, and the front page had the mission ‘to build artificial general intelligence, safely and ethically for the benefit of everyone’. I think it has really shaped how a lot of the other AI labs formed. OpenAI [the creator of ChatGPT] started as a nonprofit largely because of a reaction to us having set that standard."

"I’ve always been interested in the nature of the universe, nature of reality, consciousness, the meaning of life, all of these big questions. That’s what I wanted to spend my life working on."

"Organisms will soon be designed and produced with the precision and scale of today’s computer chips."

"I think we’re at a moment with the development of AI where we have ways to provide support, encouragement, affirmation, coaching and advice. We’ve basically taken emotional intelligence and distilled it. And I think that is going to unlock the creativity of millions and millions of people for whom that wasn’t available."

"I think that we are obsessed with whether you’re an optimist or whether you’re a pessimist. This is a completely biased way of looking at things. I don’t want to be either. I want to coldly stare in the face of the benefits and the threats. And from where I stand, we can very clearly see that with every step up in the scale of these large language models, they get more controllable."

"You know that feeling when you haven’t been back in Singapore for a while? You touch down at our beautiful airport and then are hit by the humidity the minute you step out onto the street. That’s home."

"The beauty of TikTok is that it is designed for everyone to be heard. If you have good content that resonates with people, they will see your video. It’s not only the users who are already famous who can grow their platform here—TikTok gives everyone a voice."

"About 10 years ago, I met these founders who were building a very cool app. The idea behind it was interesting. Let’s recommend content to people based not on who they knew, but on their genuine interests. They were small then—a team of 30. But I became a user of TikTok and really connected with what it was trying to do. It brought joy to a lot of people, and that was something I was drawn to."

"But as a company that is growing, it is important to be a little bit more visible so that people can understand us better—and we can earn the trust that we need to."

"Every time I meet a user, I feel like the level of understanding and the conversations that we have are significantly different than with someone who’s never used it before. People who use it really understand."

"I think the biggest gap in understanding is between users and nonusers. This is the biggest gap."

"Clearly we prioritize safety very seriously, as you can imagine. And some of it could be us being overly protective, a mis-moderation leaning on the side of being careful. Sometimes we have taken something down as an abundance of caution. The position of moderation is very important. It’s not only getting the violation rates down, it’s reducing overmoderation, which happens. It’s a price you have to pay, and you have to find the right balance."

"I think as long as there have been rules, there have been people trying to bypass the rules. I think what is really important is to make sure that the spirit of what we’re trying to do is well understood, and the spirit is, “Look, we’re trying to create a platform for creativity and for joy.”"

"The overarching thing that we’re trying to do here is to keep the community safe and inclusive for everybody. There’s always freedom for users to express themselves if it doesn’t violate any of our guidelines. As you can imagine, this is a very complex role, and our trust and safety team is always looking into making sure that the content on the platform is not violative."

"Fans want to know how the music is made. They want to know about the thought process, the creative process. And this is the key thing. They don’t want this to be overproduced. They want this to be super authentic. And one of the key things that you will find on TikTok is that most of the content, everything I just told you about, has to be really authentic. If you try to make it very polished or very refined, it’s not going to be that organic. People will see through this."

"I consider myself native. I remember getting my first dialup internet connection. Remember that beep? I remember getting online for the first time. I remember that very clearly."

"Oh, who am I? I grew up in Singapore. I was born there, my great-grandfather moved there many years ago. I had a typical Singaporean childhood. I wanted to see the world, because Singapore is fantastic, but it’s tiny. So I went to the UK for college. I joined Goldman Sachs, worked there for a couple of years, met an internet entrepreneur who started an investment company to invest in Facebook. So I joined him, and through that I met the guy who founded ByteDance. And in his earliest iteration, the idea was so simple, but so powerful."

"When it comes to protecting our community, we know there’s no finish line. The industry as a whole faces dynamic and ever-evolving challenges. We will always work to deploy our teams, tools, and resources to meet them and to demonstrate our hard work and transparency."

"Trust must be earned through action, not words. Building trust is above all an engineering and governance effort, not a public relations exercise."

"People come to TikTok to feel inspired, be creative, and watch uplifting content. It is not the platform of choice for individuals seeking to engage in harmful conduct. However, we also realize that threats to online platform safety are far from static. Content moderation, which is a core element of platform safety, is an exceptionally complicated, dynamic, and constantly evolving process."

"Safety and wellness—in particular for teens—is a core priority for TikTok. And as a father of two, these issues are personal for me. Today’s youth are growing up in a digital media world, and TikTok is eager to be part of the conversation about creating more robust protections."

"TikTok has empowered millions of Americans to express their voices in their own authentic way and has provided a global stage for their creativity in a way that cannot be replicated on any other platform or in any other medium."

"On TikTok, we aim to provide three things. The first is a window to discover. This window, the For You feed, opens to a stream of videos curated to your interests, making it easy to find content and creators you love. The second is a canvas to create. Whether it’s demonstrating a new science experiment or the latest cooking trend, people around the world use TikTok to unleash creativity. The third is a bridge to connect. Through TikTok, people have discovered new communities, cultures, and interests."

"Aisha Salaudeen: A series of buy-low acquisitions have turned him into a behind-the-scenes media mogul."

"You can watch the funniest, most popular meme and it has just come from an individual."

"Embrace proximity-ship"

"Soft’ skills are the new essential skills"

"Create a culture of belonging"

"Leadership is not about being in charge. It’s about taking care of those in your charge. Investing in people is the foundation for great transformation. People are our most valuable assets, yet we often don’t value them until they’re gone. Instead of holding exit interviews, which are purely reactionary, we should conduct “stay interviews” or “purpose interviews” as a proactive way to understand what our employees need. It’s important that employees feel as though someone inside the organization cares about them, routinely engages with them, and has their back. Direct managers are uniquely positioned to fulfill this role – but we must equip them with the proper training, strategies, and tools to keep their best talent engaged. People can and will leave when they feel excluded."

"The role of leadership is evolving. What was once about objective strategic planning and organizational operations has transformed into a more subjective role – one that requires greater humanity and emotional intelligence. Traditionally feminine leadership qualities – empathy, vulnerability, gratitude – are more important now than ever. Leaders need to be able to connect with their team members on a human level in order to build trust and create a supportive environment where everyone can thrive. Let’s shift the paradigm. These aren’t “soft” skills – they’re essential skills. If we want to create warm, welcoming workplaces, we should be prioritizing these skills by making them requirements and including them as part of profiles, job descriptions, and evaluations."

"“You don’t see people like us in the hotel business,” she notes. “I wanted to create a company that not only celebrated diversity, but I also wanted people to see diversity at the resorts, with everybody feeling welcome.”"

"Maybe it’s a little bit cart before the horse in the sense that we had the [climate data] disclosure requirements before we had a utility, but now we’re rapidly catching up."

"“All my life I have traveled,”“When I was a concert violinist, I traveled the world and stayed in some of the finest hotels. And that has always stuck with me. I felt because I had such a rich background in traveling that I knew exactly what I wanted to do.”"

"I'm a very powerful entrepreneur."

"I tell this to many young girls: do not get involved in a relationship until you know who you are. I didn't know who I was. You know, I was planning my life as I was going along,""

""I was young enough, and I really did believe him because I put him up on a pedestal. I really did. And I thought that everything he said was right, and I had to keep fighting through that. That's what upset me more than anything,"

"I've been through a lot," . "It's been a tough journey."