Revolution: A Recode and MSNBC series on tech and the future of work

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has faced criticism about his company’s contract to sell software to the U.S. federal immigration agency, Customs and Border Protection.

Earlier this year, hundreds of Salesforce employees signed a letter urging Benioff to cancel the contract because of the agency’s role in enforcing President Trump’s controversial family separation border policy; Salesforce has denied that its software is involved in separating families at the border.

Billionaire tech CEOs are used to appearing on the covers of glossy magazines. They’re much less familiar with actually running and operating those magazines.

So what in the heck is Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff going to do with Time, the nearly 100-year-old magazine he bought for $190 million cash back in September?

A few weeks ago, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff was the lone tech billionaire supporting San Francisco’s Prop C measure to increase taxes on large corporations in order to help the homeless.

“I had the priests and I had the rabbis and the imams and all that helping me. But there were no CEOs on my side. I was the only CEO,” said Benioff, speaking with Recode Editor at Large Kara Swisher during an interview with MSNBC for the third episode of the television special “Revolution,” airing this Sunday at 10 pm ET on the network.

Update: Thanks for tuning in! Our MSNBC special has aired but you can watch all of Kara Swisher’s interviews from Code 2018 online here.

Have plans this weekend? Cancel them. MSNBC and Recode’s ongoing “Revolution” series is back this Sunday, June 10 at 6 pm ET / 3 pm PT. In this third episode, we’re presenting a one-hour special called “Revolution: Tech Titans Shaping the Future,” featuring five of the biggest interviews onstage at our 2018 Code Conference with Recode Editor at Large and MSNBC contributor Kara Swisher.

Recode and MSNBC are teaming up again for the next episode in our “Revolution” series on tech and the future of work. Recode’s Kara Swisher and MSNBC’s Chris Hayes will interview Apple CEO Tim Cook for the special, “Revolution: Apple Changing the World,” in Chicago. The show is scheduled to premiere on Friday, April 6 at 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT on MSNBC.

Will you be in Chicago on Wednesday, March 28? That’s when we are taping this event and you can register here to be in the audience.

Tech companies bear responsibility for addressing homelessness, especially in wealthy regions such as San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles, said Tipping Point Community CEO and founder Daniel Lurie.

“What we’re seeing around the homeless situation here in San Francisco is unacceptable. We have 7,000 people that are homeless every night here in this city,” said Lurie, whose nonprofit organization pledged $100 million last May to reduce homelessness in that city over the next five years. “We can no longer just rely on government. We actually need the leadership of the Googles and the Amazons and the Apples.”

“I will say very, very emphatically, today our technology is nowhere near being able to understand what it is that you’re going to want [or] to deal with the difficulty and complexity of social relationships,” said Maran Nelson, CEO and cofounder of Clara Labs, a startup that makes virtual personal assistants. “I think there is very much a place for people in that problem.”

Nelson was speaking as a special guest at Recode and MSNBC’s first town hall event for the series “Revolution,” the first episode of which which aired on the cable network Sunday night. It’s focused on examining tech’s impact on the future of work in events over the next year. The first one with Google CEO Sundar Pichai and YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki was taped recently in San Francisco, but not everyone made the television broadcast cut.

If you think school is done when you graduate, Jeff Maggioncalda has another view: People will have to learn for the rest of their lives to keep up with changing technology that will displace workers.

“The bad news is there will be a lot of jobs that go away. Traditional skills will be less valuable and people will be dislocated,” said Maggioncalda, the CEO of online learning company Coursera.

The only thing people have to fear about tech is fear itself, said Patrick Collison, who was a special guest at Recode and MSNBC’s first town hall event for the series “Revolution,” which aired on the cable network last night.

The CEO of the $9.2 billion dollar payments startup acknowledged that while it’s easy to “fall into the depths of despair,” the data proves otherwise.

Skip that Grammy party tonight and turn on Recode’s town hall with MSNBC instead.

We partnered with MSNBC to produce a town hall event series that looks at how technology is impacting every aspect of our lives. While technology has brought much good to the world in the form of opportunity, innovation and jobs, it has also impacted our elections and democracy. And as technology moves forward, there is a fear that some will be left behind. Our first program airs tonight with Recode’s Kara Swisher and MSNBC’s Ari Melber interviewing Google CEO Sundar Pichai and YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki.

Google’s top executives say they don’t want employees, particularly women, to be forcibly silenced when it comes to speaking out about workplace issues like sexual harassment.

In a conversation with Recode’s Kara Swisher and MSNBC’s Ari Melber today, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that he would have “no issues” with releasing women from contracts known as nondisclosure agreements, which some companies use to keep women from talking publicly about workplace issues once they’ve reached a settlement with a company.

Make no mistake about how seriously Google is taking artificial intelligence.

“AI is one of the most important things that humanity is working on. It’s more profound than, I don’t know, electricity or fire,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said on Friday as part of a new show hosted by MSNBC’s Ari Melber and Recode’s Kara Swisher.

This is a contributed article by Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google. A version of the essay was originally published on NBCNews.com.

Tune in to MSNBC Friday, January 19, at 7 pm PT/10 pm ET to see Pichai and YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki onstage in San Francisco with Recode executive editor and co-founder Kara Swisher and MSNBC’s Ari Melber in a special town hall, “Revolution: Google and YouTube Changing the World.”

Yes, I am about to become an anchor monster.

No, really. Because this year, Recode is partnering with MSNBC to produce a town hall event series — name to come! — starting Jan. 26. It will broadcast on television and on the web and look at how technology is impacting every aspect of our lives from business to politics to science to health to jobs to climate to culture to education.