01 / WHY WE BUILD
What gets us out of bed.
It is not simply the idea of a more intelligent machine. It is the possibility of a more capable human life.
Ring ring. A call to listen, and an invitation to answer. For me, it is the rhythm of a human conversation, rather than an alarm. RingRing is about the judgment, care and dialogue that help us make sense of AI and shape its place in everyday life. We can take part in that change, with our own voices and our own reasons.
A young person discovering what they can learn. An employee spending less of their day on work that drains them. A scientist able to ask a question they could not ask before. A citizen finding their voice in a society that has too often overlooked it.
These are hopes, not promises. Intelligence alone will not decide who benefits. People will. The choices we make about work, education, access and power are part of the technology’s story, too.
I live in San Francisco, where this transformation is part of the everyday conversation. But its story reaches far beyond this city, across California and the United States, through Europe, across the many societies of Africa, in India and around the world. It will be lived differently in different places.
I want to hear from entrepreneurs shaping AI and from the people who will live with it: employees, students, parents and citizens, across countries and continents. What might change in their work, their communities, their opportunities? What might it mean for social change in African countries or in India? Where might capital move, and who might gain or lose influence as economic, political and technological rivalries intensify?
These are questions about the world we share. Their answers cannot come from one city, one industry or one kind of experience.
02 / WHY WE PAUSE
Every revolution changes
more than its machines.
History offers ways to think about moments like this. Kondratiev proposed long waves of economic change. Juglar studied shorter cycles of expansion and crisis. Schumpeter described creative destruction: innovation creating new possibilities while displacing established firms and ways of working. These ideas are lenses for understanding change, not a timetable for predicting AI.
Fordism reminds us that an industrial revolution reaches beyond production. The assembly line and mass production helped reshape the rhythm of work, wages and consumption. A new technology can reorganize an economy and the lives built around it.
AI raises that possibility again. What happens when the tools change faster than our institutions, our habits or our sense of security? In the middle of building and competing, I want to make room for a pause: to notice the direction we are taking, and to hear how it feels to the people taking it.
What kind of world are we building
and how does it feel to live through it?
These are questions anyone can ask, whatever their education, knowledge or familiarity with AI. You do not need to be an expert to have something worth hearing. The unknown can be exciting. It can also leave us feeling uncertain, overwhelmed or unable to move. Both experiences belong in this record.
Our first step is to collect those perspectives, date them and preserve the words as they were shared. Every year, we will return to the same questions: compare hopes with experience, understand how opinions and expectations have changed, and publish what we learn. Over time, these moments will become a record that future generations can return to. A letter to the future, written in the present.
03 / WHY A WALL
A record of who was here.
We are creating a wall for the startups building the AI of tomorrow. Names and logos gathered around a photographic notebook of San Francisco: a visible trace of a moment that will never happen quite this way again.
Not every company on this wall will still be here in ten years. We hope many will. Some will change their names. Some will change the world. Some will disappear. Their absence will be part of the story, too.
When we look back in ten, twenty or thirty years, we want to understand more than which companies survived. We want to remember what people believed was possible. What they were afraid of. What they hoped to give others. What they thought tomorrow would mean.
The Wall keeps a record of the companies building this chapter. Perspectives keeps the dated thoughts of the people living it. Together, they leave a trace of our presence, our questions and our choices. Something future generations can return to and understand.
04 / EVERY YEAR
A changing world.
A continuing conversation.
One response captures a moment. Returning to the same questions helps us see what has moved: our hopes, our concerns, the place AI takes in everyday life. We invite people to contribute again each year, keeping their earlier words intact.
The RingRing Annual Review will be our yearly moment to share the analysis: the themes emerging from contributions, the differences between experiences, and the changes we can observe over time. It begins with listening. Our first review is in preparation, and the record starts with the people who choose to take part.
You do not have to know the future
to help us think about it.
What do you hope AI will give us? What should it never take away?
Leave your mark on the Wall ↗Share your perspective ↗RingRing · San Francisco, 2026