My Spicy Takeaways from TIME100 Summit 🌶️

Yesterday I attended the TIME100 Summit in NYC 🏙️

Click here to see the official recap, lineup and photos

Now here’s my UNOFFICIAL recap of the main things I learned:

I figured out the minimum clothing purchases that still allow me to wear my usual tank top and leggings: a jacket and boots :)

1. Everyone is ADDICTED to their phones... ppl literally cannot sit still and listen. At one point, every single person sitting around me was on their phones checking email/slack/socials instead of listening. I’m prolly one of the only people who does NOT have social/email/slack on my phone. Now I realize this is a superpower.

Sometimes I worry ppl are too obsessed with AI itself and lose sight of the bi picture. I teach AI for free so that you can build leverage and have more time to enjoy the things that matter... I view AI as a tool to achieve more time/money flexibility without big upfront costs. And I view social media as the most efficient distribution engine for education in 2026; if it wasn't, I honestly wouldn't be on it.

2. Posting/streaming to socials gets my free AI education to a much bigger and more diverse audience compared to exclusive events/conferences. Still, I do appreciate attending events like this and witnessing the resources required to pull off such a high-quality production (from a content creator perspective).

3. For me, Richard Edelman stole the show with a strong thesis that businesses should be societal leaders, i.e. consistently demonstrating the values you want to see in the world instead of relegating this responsibility to the realm of “politics” only... no surprise he went to my high school Exeter 🦁 when I noticed the lack of free high-quality AI education and the worsening AI literacy gap, I didn’t need anyone’s PERMISSION to do something about it. I embraced the vision I wanted - free education for all so that no one is left behind - as my personal responsibility. (Kierkegaard, much?)

4. Tougher AI topics like the widening class gap, widening literacy gap, culture of fear, job displacement, and lack of upskilling were only lightly touched on... the palatable answer was: “Our plan is to upskill employees so we can still fire them but they can be hired SOMEWHERE ELSE”... lol ppl wonder why I don’t care about teaching AI to big companies (answer: the gains DO NOT trickle down to you employees)

literally nobody acknowledged the massive overhiring that happened when interest rates were low, leading to multiple rounds of layoffs. Nobody talked about how the headline "we're firing ppl because of AI" is often because it's a much nicer spin than ..."we overhired when money was cheap and didn't hit revenue targets".

5. The celebrities were super cool to see, but overall discussions were shallow. The most interesting discussions came from business leaders running big orgs, navigating this insane time. But unfortunately you can tell they were holding back. I would’ve loved to hear what they REALLY think.

6. I instantly lost respect for Mr Beast when he gave a canned PR response when asked whether we should limit kids’ time watching social media. He deflected it saying he’s not an expert, he hasn’t read anything about it blah blah blah, and what if kids watch educational videos??? meanwhile making total brainrot videos. It would’ve been more credible if he just acknowledged the misaligned incentives.

Check out my Instagram Stories to see my live footage!

P.S.

no, I did not make the TIME100 list. I was just a lowly guest.

I think I can make the TIME100 AI list one day, but not sure how...

P.P.S.

boots were on sale $37 at Macy’s but I forgot to zip left one 😅