[0:00:01] I grew up in San Francisco in the Mission District. Just a few miles, yes, thank you. Just a few miles from where we're all sitting tonight. And I've been honored to build a company here alongside my brother, Dario. Like many of you here tonight, the city is part of my DNA. Some of my earliest memories include visiting the zoo in my childhood.
[0:00:31] Weekly La Taqueria visits with my family so far before it was cool, like so long ago. Lugging my overloaded backpack on the 9 San Bruno and the M Ocean View. Okay, no applause for that one, sorry. At 6.30 in the morning on my way to Little High School and running along the Great Highway on the weekends. I like to think that San Francisco and I have been through many phases of life together.
[0:01:03] Something that both growing up and working here as an adult has instilled in me is that San Francisco has always been two things at once. It is a place of enormous possibility. Dreamers, creators, scientists, and leaders are what make up San Francisco. And it is also a place where that possibility is not equally shared by all of our citizens.
[0:01:33] That tension is not new, and the desire to better understand the unequal distribution of opportunity took me to working in global development, spending time overseas in East Africa and Latin America, to working on political campaigns in Pennsylvania, and to Capitol Hill before finally coming back home. These experiences brought me
[0:02:00] To communities where the gap between possibility and reality was even wider than what I saw growing up. And it's why I can't think about what we're building at Anthropic without thinking about who it's being built for. At Anthropic, one of our cultural values is to hold light and shade. The belief that two contradictory things can be true at once. We aim to not smooth over the hard parts.
[0:02:37] To make the exciting part sound better. So let me try to do that here. I am genuinely excited about what AI could mean for the world and for San Francisco. We may be approaching a moment when diseases that have caused death or suffering for millions of people around the globe can be better understood, mitigated, and even cured. When knowledge that has always been available
[0:03:08] To the privileged few can be available to everyone. When a first generation student in this city has access to the same quality of guidance and care and the same tools as everyone sitting in this room. It's why Anthropic chose to partner with Tipping Point to bring AI tools and training to nonprofits doing this work every day. So more of their time and dollars can go directly to the people who need them the most.
[0:03:40] The light is real, but we must also hold the shade. AI is going to shake things up in ways that are hard to predict and harder to control. How we work, how we learn, how we understand our place and our value in the world. Some of that is going to be remarkable, and some of it is cause for concern. Anthropic has always aimed to be open about these facts because solutions will need to come from many places.
[0:04:12] What worries me most isn't the technology itself, but the choices we will collectively make about what we do with it. We can choose to use this moment to expand opportunity and access or to continue to widen a yawning chasm of inequality. We are working as hard as we can to choose the former, but the months and years to come are going to be a team sport.
[0:04:45] Tonight, you're going to meet three people who embody the strength, courage, and resilience needed to forge a new path. From a remarkable new leader of Tipping Point's first grantee, to a young man who made a career pivot after facing the unexpected, to an educator changing the lives of kindergartners in the East Bay. Their destinations are all different.
[0:05:16] And each of their stories threads through the Tipping Point community. So first, let's meet Elise.