Dr Matt Boyd of Adapt Research deals with catastrophes on a day-to-day basis. 

As one of New Zealand’s few researchers looking at the major risks that have the potential to threaten the future of humanity, he’s thought deeply about our role in the world and how we're placed to survive a major shock. 

In episode 21 of The Business of Tech, Dr Boyd takes us through some of the big risks on his radar, both natural and man-made, and suggests how we can put in place the ”resilience infrastructure” to give us a shot at coping with a major global catastrophe that could see us isolated from our trading partners and left to fend for ourselves.

Also on The Business of Tech, Dreamforce, the annual conference of customer relationship management software giant Salesforce, took place in San Francisco last week. 

It featured a keynote address from OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman, which set the tone for a conference dominated by artificial intelligence (AI).

OpenAI’s Sam Altman with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff in San Francisco last week.

Salesforce debuted Einstein Copilot, a generative AI version of its Einstein platform that allows users to instantly create sales and marketing content by entering prompts into a chatbot. Salesforce has also integrated with Duet AI, the generative AI function newly released in Google Workspace, and announced data integration improvements with Databricks and Snowflake.

I caught up with Hamish Miles, managing director of Salesforce NZ, to find out what the new developments mean for local customers like Xero and Fisher & Paykel.

Plus, my thoughts on Walter Isaacson’s new biography, Elon Musk, and the insights it gives us into one of the most innovative and polarising figures of the 21st century.

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