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№ 2017.001 — Massachusetts Institute of Technology — Commencement address
Tim Cook
CEO, Apple
Apple CEO Tim Cook urged MIT's Class of 2017 to seek purpose beyond themselves and to ask how they will serve humanity. Drawing on his own search for meaning and his work with Steve Jobs, he argued that technology must be paired with human values and the humanities to do great things, and that solving the world's hardest problems requires placing people at the center of one's work.
Key moments
- 01 Recounting his search for purpose and joining Apple under Steve Jobs
- 02 Posing the central question: how will you serve humanity?
- 03 Warning that technology alone is not the solution and can be part of the problem
- 04 Citing Pope Francis and calling for technology married with the humanities and human values
Visual speech map
Tim Cook at MIT, 2017
A commencement address about purpose, service, technology with values, the humanities, empathy, and placing people at the center.
- 01 Search for purpose
- 02 Apple
- 03 Steve Jobs
- 04 Serve humanity
- 05 Technology limits
- 06 Human values
- 07 Empathy
- 08 People first
Purpose
Find work larger than yourself
Cook frames his own search for purpose as unfinished until technology became connected to service and human consequence.
Professional success alone does not answer meaning.
Joining Apple becomes a turn toward mission.
The test is how your work serves humanity.
Technology
Tools are never enough
The speech warns that technology can be part of the problem when it is detached from values, context, and moral imagination.
Powerful tools do not automatically produce wisdom.
Innovation without values can magnify harm.
Engineers need ethical and human questions nearby.
Values
Marry technology with humanity
Cook argues that great work comes from joining technical excellence with the humanities, empathy, and concern for people unlike oneself.
The human record expands what builders can see.
Products and institutions should begin with people.
Values turn capability into service.
Charge
Put people at the center
Graduates are asked to take on hard problems by measuring success through human dignity, shared benefit, and service.
Purpose is expressed through who benefits.
People are not abstractions or data points.
Technical leaders must choose humane outcomes.
Transcript
The full transcript is hosted by the original publisher. Commencement Archive links to the source rather than republishing copyrighted text.
Read the full transcript at source →Provenance
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