Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / AT&T Reports Greater-than-Expected Mobile Subscriber Gains
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- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. You're listening to the
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- 0:21Speaker 1: or watch us live on YouTube.
- 0:24Speaker 2: Staying with earnings at and T adding more wireless subscribers
- 0:28Speaker 2: and forecast by roughly one hundred thousand customers. The CEO
- 0:31Speaker 2: John Stankey joined Bloomberg Surveillance to discuss the rise in subscribers.
- 0:36Speaker 2: Take a listen.
- 0:37Speaker 3: We can provide world class networks in both wireless and
- 0:40Speaker 3: fix that tackle ninety eight percent of what a customer
- 0:45Speaker 3: needs to do on the Internet. Occasionally they walk off
- 0:48Speaker 3: one of our networks, and as you look at our
- 0:50Speaker 3: partnerships that we're working with the satellite industry, by this
- 0:53Speaker 3: time next year we'll be able to solve that problem.
- 0:56Speaker 3: And so we're the natural place for people to come
- 0:58Speaker 3: and meet their needs on the Internet and do it
- 1:00Speaker 3: easily on one bill, with one set of services and
- 1:04Speaker 3: one support infrastructure. We think we're in a great position
- 1:07Speaker 3: as a result of that.
- 1:09Speaker 2: Kelsey Griffiths is the Bloomberg Telecoms reporter she has been
- 1:13Speaker 2: tracking the earnings today and she joins us right now
- 1:15Speaker 2: from Washington. Ke The mobile phone industry is extremely competitive.
- 1:21Speaker 2: We are bombarded by ads constantly from AT and T, Verizon,
- 1:24Speaker 2: and Team Mobile trying to undercut each other and offer
- 1:27Speaker 2: better terms, better deals. How is AT and T able
- 1:30Speaker 2: to add more monthly wireless subscribers than expected in this
- 1:33Speaker 2: kind of environment.
- 1:35Speaker 4: This is a strategy AT and T has put into
- 1:38Speaker 4: place since about last quarter. So back in March, they
- 1:42Speaker 4: debuted this new plan that is kind of like an
- 1:46Speaker 4: all in approach. They were modeling it after Peloton or
- 1:51Speaker 4: Netflix or one of these sort of like tech lifestyle
- 1:53Speaker 4: subscriptions where you pay one price and you have access
- 1:56Speaker 4: to everything that you hope to get out of it.
- 1:58Speaker 4: So AT and t's version of that is one price,
- 2:03Speaker 4: you get home internet, you get mobile service, and you
- 2:06Speaker 4: get a few connected devices like iPads or Apple watches
- 2:10Speaker 4: thrown in. So that seems like it's been pretty successful.
- 2:14Speaker 4: They have introduced some price increases on I believe with
- 2:17Speaker 4: some of the more legacy plans that was about ten
- 2:20Speaker 4: to twenty dollars per line. But even with those increases,
- 2:23Speaker 4: it seems like customers are responding to some of these
- 2:26Speaker 4: newer offers.
- 2:28Speaker 5: Kelsey talk to us about their return of capital plans
- 2:32Speaker 5: going forward, because I know that's a big part of
- 2:33Speaker 5: the investment story.
- 2:36Speaker 4: Right AT and T has said for a while that
- 2:39Speaker 4: they are heavily invested in returning back to their shareholders,
- 2:43Speaker 4: and today they announce that they're pulling that forward a
- 2:46Speaker 4: little bit. I think they said they're going to buy
- 2:48Speaker 4: back ten billion instead of just eight billion in shares
- 2:53Speaker 4: this year. So that's a modest uptick that kind of
- 2:58Speaker 4: contributes to that optimism that they're expressing in their long
- 3:03Speaker 4: term strategy and growth.
- 3:06Speaker 2: I want to just go back to the competitive market
- 3:09Speaker 2: landscape for AT and T and the other mobile operators
- 3:11Speaker 2: for a moment here, because there's been taught that SpaceX
- 3:14Speaker 2: might enter this space. So what's already hyper competitive, we'll
- 3:18Speaker 2: get even more so what is the latest on that front?
- 3:22Speaker 4: That's right. We've seen the all three of the big
- 3:24Speaker 4: telecom carriers stocks take a pretty substantial hit over the
- 3:27Speaker 4: last several weeks as speculation about what SpaceX might be
- 3:31Speaker 4: up to has sort of taken off. The telecom carriers
- 3:34Speaker 4: have all so far made it pretty clear that they
- 3:37Speaker 4: don't want to do any deals that would offer SpaceX
- 3:41Speaker 4: access to the market as a peer. But at least
- 3:44Speaker 4: T Mobile is working with SpaceX to fill in some
- 3:47Speaker 4: of the gaps in T Mobile's terrestrial network. That was
- 3:51Speaker 4: kind of what John Stankey suggested today. He didn't say
- 3:54Speaker 4: specifically that he wants to do a deal with SpaceX,
- 3:56Speaker 4: but he did say that he sees satellite generally as
- 3:59Speaker 4: being very compli mentory to the ground based network that
- 4:02Speaker 4: AT and T has, and it can actually potentially help them,
- 4:08Speaker 4: you know, make their revenue better because they can fill
- 4:12Speaker 4: some gaps in their network with satellite and potentially retire
- 4:15Speaker 4: some parts of the network that are very expensive to maintain.
- 4:19Speaker 5: CAPEX Kelsey, it's a capital intensive business, is telecom business?
- 4:23Speaker 5: Did the company mention kind of what they're thinking in
- 4:26Speaker 5: terms of CAPEX going forward?
- 4:29Speaker 4: Well, I can tell you that John Sankey is very
- 4:31Speaker 4: bullish on or at least very aware of how agentic
- 4:36Speaker 4: ai is changing the network traffic patterns, and so I
- 4:41Speaker 4: think he said he expects to see nine times enterprise
- 4:46Speaker 4: growth and agentic AI in by twenty thirty five and
- 4:50Speaker 4: seven times the volume of aic AI on the consumer side.
- 4:54Speaker 4: So those massive increases in essentially AI driven traffic are
- 5:00Speaker 4: things that he's planning for, and they do have a
- 5:03Speaker 4: strategy right now, and they're not adjusting that strategy necessarily
- 5:07Speaker 4: to account for in.
- 5:10Speaker 6: Yeah, in their cap Thanks got it. Stay with us.
- 5:14Speaker 2: More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 5:21Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
- 5:24Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Easterned on Apple, Cocklay and Android
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- 5:31Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
- 5:35Speaker 6: Stay on the earnings front.
- 5:36Speaker 5: Super Micro jumps after early results show rising backlog.
- 5:41Speaker 6: Stock is up twenty four percent today. Just extraorining us.
- 5:45Speaker 6: It's talk to the analyst covers super Micro. That'd be
- 5:47Speaker 6: Wu Jinho.
- 5:48Speaker 5: He's in our Princeton office, which talked to us about
- 5:50Speaker 5: super Micro. What did they say with the results and
- 5:52Speaker 5: why is the stock up so much today?
- 5:55Speaker 7: Yeah, Hey, hey Paul. So essentially it was that stunning
- 5:59Speaker 7: backlock figure that they posted, right, So, if we think
- 6:02Speaker 7: about a month ago when they did an equity raise,
- 6:05Speaker 7: they announced that they had thirty nine billion dollars in
- 6:07Speaker 7: backlog at the month of At the start of June,
- 6:11Speaker 7: that increased to about sixty billion as part of the
- 6:14Speaker 7: pre announcement. So what happens now is that the setup
- 6:18Speaker 7: for her fiscal twenty twenty seven guidance is going to
- 6:21Speaker 7: be really, really good. Consensus prior to the backlog guidance
- 6:27Speaker 7: was at fifty three billion dollars for twenty seven. I'd
- 6:31Speaker 7: be shocked if they don't exceed that.
- 6:34Speaker 2: So if super Micro sees this kind of backlog, what
- 6:37Speaker 2: does it mean for its peers, for its competitors, are
- 6:39Speaker 2: they getting a similar lift?
- 6:41Speaker 7: Well, I mean, you know, that's a great question, Scarlett Dell.
- 6:45Speaker 7: Dell is the market leader in AI server as I
- 6:47Speaker 7: suspect that Dell is going to see similar demand patterns
- 6:52Speaker 7: as well, right, because typically these type of mega deals
- 6:56Speaker 7: AI server deals are dual source. So super Micro is benefiting,
- 7:00Speaker 7: Della is benefiting as.
- 7:01Speaker 6: Well, and dellstock is up ten today in sympathy. So
- 7:05Speaker 6: that probably tells.
- 7:05Speaker 5: The story there, which how does the memory shortage, the
- 7:09Speaker 5: way for the chip shortage and all that kind of stuff,
- 7:11Speaker 5: How does that impact the super micros of the world,
- 7:13Speaker 5: because it doesn't seem to be Yeah.
- 7:16Speaker 7: So you know, we did some analysis on that from
- 7:19Speaker 7: from the AI server front, it's it's clear that the
- 7:23Speaker 7: given the demand for AI servers and the demand for compute,
- 7:26Speaker 7: the neo clouds are more than willing to absorb those costs. Now,
- 7:30Speaker 7: what's happening on the traditional servers right the stuff that
- 7:34Speaker 7: powers our own enterprise data centers. Customers are desperate for
- 7:38Speaker 7: comte compute because the rising memory costs. They want to
- 7:41Speaker 7: avoid the inflation of the server server inflation. So they're
- 7:48Speaker 7: actually I don't know if they're pre purchasing or pre buying,
- 7:52Speaker 7: but they are buying. It hasn't affected the server business
- 7:55Speaker 7: at all. If anything, the vendors have benefited.
- 7:58Speaker 2: Okay, as we mentioned, micro shares up about twenty four
- 8:01Speaker 2: percent today, so getting a big lift, but still, you know,
- 8:05Speaker 2: well below the highs that we saw in early June.
- 8:07Speaker 2: So Ujin this was a preliminary result. The company will
- 8:10Speaker 2: actually formally report its quarterly results in mid August. Have
- 8:15Speaker 2: we seen all the upside here or is there something
- 8:18Speaker 2: that the company might withhold until the actual results that
- 8:21Speaker 2: could give this stuck another kick.
- 8:24Speaker 7: Yeah, So the thing that we're waiting for right now
- 8:27Speaker 7: is the gross margin guidance for twenty seven Scarlet. Look,
- 8:31Speaker 7: they gave phenomenal gross more. They expect phenomenal gross margin
- 8:35Speaker 7: fifteen to seventeen percent for the fiscal fourth quarter, and
- 8:38Speaker 7: they guide it to previously eight point two to eight
- 8:40Speaker 7: point four percent. Look, I think it was one mega
- 8:44Speaker 7: deal that helped them raise that guidance. I do expect
- 8:48Speaker 7: gross margins to come down in twenty seven, but I
- 8:52Speaker 7: suspect that there is an uptick in gross margin overall
- 8:55Speaker 7: from the eight percent that they delivered in twenty six
- 8:58Speaker 7: to around nine to ten percent. If that's going to
- 9:01Speaker 7: be the case, given that the leverage of the model,
- 9:03Speaker 7: you can start seeing a substantial uptick and earnings in
- 9:08Speaker 7: twenty seven, even with the dilution from the equity raise.
- 9:12Speaker 5: Thirty second stuff, which what is the revenue visibility for
- 9:15Speaker 5: a super micro seems seems pretty pretty solid.
- 9:20Speaker 7: I mean from a quarter to quarter basis, Yeah, Paul,
- 9:22Speaker 7: they've missed their guidance for the past three to five quarters,
- 9:28Speaker 7: so their execution has been choppy, but from a full
- 9:33Speaker 7: year basis, it's actually been up into the right given
- 9:35Speaker 7: how these data centers have been sprouting up and they've
- 9:39Speaker 7: been really wanting to get the Nvidia chips in their
- 9:43Speaker 7: buildings as quickly as possible.
- 9:46Speaker 2: Stay with US more from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 9:52Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
- 9:56Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Applecarclay, and Android Auto
- 9:59Speaker 1: with Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever you get
- 10:03Speaker 1: your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
- 10:06Speaker 6: More earnings here today.
- 10:07Speaker 5: Philip Marsh thinks Cigarettes p M is the ticker. Some
- 10:13Speaker 5: numbers out today. Stocks up about one point sixty five percent,
- 10:15Speaker 5: stocks the fifty two week high, up nineteen percent. Year
- 10:19Speaker 5: today pltus you get a three percent dividend yield. So
- 10:21Speaker 5: Philip marsharelder has been quite happy.
- 10:23Speaker 6: Let's bring Kenshay.
- 10:24Speaker 5: He's been following this company since the beginning of time
- 10:27Speaker 5: for Bloomberg Intelligence. He's seen all the iterations of Philip
- 10:30Speaker 5: Mars and Altree and all that kind of stuff. So
- 10:34Speaker 5: Ken talk to us about what we saw from Philip
- 10:36Speaker 5: Marsh today.
- 10:38Speaker 8: Yeah.
- 10:39Speaker 9: Hi, Well, if Phillip Morris's numbers today were really good,
- 10:42Speaker 9: that the headline members top line ten percent, beat five percent, expectations,
- 10:48Speaker 9: EPs up fifteen percent, expectations were for seven You know,
- 10:52Speaker 9: initially despite those strong members, initially the stock in the
- 10:56Speaker 9: pre market was down and I was scratching my head,
- 10:59Speaker 9: and I guess it was because they lowered their guidance
- 11:02Speaker 9: on a after currency basis, and this company is very international,
- 11:06Speaker 9: hence the name, and they said, look, you know, currencies
- 11:09Speaker 9: are not going to be quite as favorable as we
- 11:11Speaker 9: saw a last quarter, but are adjusted currency numbers, we're
- 11:19Speaker 9: still looking for high single digit EPs growth. I think
- 11:21Speaker 9: investors digested that they got bullish again.
- 11:25Speaker 2: Right, Philip Morris is basically the international business, right, I mean,
- 11:29Speaker 2: Autria is the domestic business. And Philip Morris I believe
- 11:32Speaker 2: sells Marlboro's cigarettes outside the US.
- 11:37Speaker 9: That's right, Squirrel. It in a late ninety I should
- 11:40Speaker 9: say two thousand and eight, I believe it was this
- 11:42Speaker 9: company split. Phillimore's International basically took the Marlborough name and
- 11:46Speaker 9: the franchise outside the US. Ultria, a holding company, owns
- 11:50Speaker 9: pm USA, which owns the Marvel name in the US.
- 11:53Speaker 9: Since that time, though, the two companies have agreed to
- 11:56Speaker 9: allow pm I to sell non suit You're at tobacco
- 12:00Speaker 9: products in the US, and that's why you're seeing them
- 12:03Speaker 9: sell zin you know, the oral, the nicketine products, and
- 12:08Speaker 9: soon they're going to launch their heat Nott burned vapor
- 12:10Speaker 9: product in the US, a big potential growth market.
- 12:14Speaker 6: What is Zin? It's all over social media. Can you
- 12:16Speaker 6: explain this to me.
- 12:19Speaker 9: Zin is an oral nicotine product, Paul. It comes in
- 12:21Speaker 9: those little round cans, maybe plastic containers, but in if
- 12:28Speaker 9: you have twenty pouches that you can get your nicotine buzz.
- 12:31Speaker 9: It's a non tobacco product, you know, it's bacco free,
- 12:33Speaker 9: and you get your nicotine buzz without the ire of
- 12:39Speaker 9: your neighbor at work or on the subway or whatever
- 12:43Speaker 9: getting in the way that you're smoking or vaping next
- 12:46Speaker 9: to them. So it's a very discrete way of getting
- 12:48Speaker 9: your nicotine and it's doing really well. A lot of
- 12:50Speaker 9: smokers are switching over.
- 12:52Speaker 2: Interesting all right, Is it like nicotine gum? Is it
- 12:55Speaker 2: meant to kind of get you off of smoking? Or
- 12:57Speaker 2: is it just a flat out replacement. I mean, it's
- 13:00Speaker 2: the idea like a smoking cessation device.
- 13:03Speaker 9: It's mostly that, yes, yes, girl, And that's what the
- 13:05Speaker 9: intent is, and that's why the FDA has granted it
- 13:09Speaker 9: recently the authorization to promote it as a less harmful
- 13:13Speaker 9: source of nicotine as opposed to cigarettes. You know, it's
- 13:16Speaker 9: the inhalation of carbons that causes the harm. The FDA
- 13:20Speaker 9: acknowledges that if you get your nicotine, you know, through
- 13:23Speaker 9: your mouth, whatever it's, it's bypassing that harm. Not to
- 13:27Speaker 9: say nicotine is completely safe, but it's a much less
- 13:30Speaker 9: harmful form of nicotine ingestion.
- 13:34Speaker 2: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 13:41Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
- 13:45Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple, Cocklay and Android
- 13:48Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever
- 13:51Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
- 13:55Speaker 2: AI very much on our minds right now, and you know,
- 13:59Speaker 2: we look ahead to some of the bigger picture issues
- 14:03Speaker 2: that we need to resolve, and regulation is and has
- 14:06Speaker 2: been coming up quite a bit. Our next guest suggests
- 14:10Speaker 2: that perhaps we think about regulating AI the way that
- 14:13Speaker 2: we regulate the airline industry. Gatamconda is lecture at Yale
- 14:17Speaker 2: School of Management and a Bloomberg Opinion contributor, and this
- 14:20Speaker 2: is exactly what he's written about. Gotam, just walk us
- 14:23Speaker 2: through your thesis here about regulating AI using an FAA
- 14:27Speaker 2: kind of approach.
- 14:29Speaker 8: Right, So let's think about this from you know what
- 14:31Speaker 8: the industry itself says is that this is a technology
- 14:34Speaker 8: that we'll have not just gigantic economic implications, but gigantic
- 14:38Speaker 8: security implications. Right that they're already finding evidence as a
- 14:41Speaker 8: technology that can help you do cybersecurity attacks, that can
- 14:44Speaker 8: help maybe even in the with development of sort of
- 14:47Speaker 8: chemical or biological weapons. That sounds like something that the
- 14:51Speaker 8: government needs to step in, right. There needs to be
- 14:52Speaker 8: some regulation of that when you talk about those kinds
- 14:54Speaker 8: of risks. So then if you look at the industries
- 14:57Speaker 8: and the areas where that risk has been successfully managed,
- 14:59Speaker 8: the aviation just stands out. It's just head and shoulders
- 15:02Speaker 8: above everyone else. I would saying that if you could,
- 15:04Speaker 8: you know, you could tell people one hundred you know,
- 15:06Speaker 8: one hundred years ago that you could go from anywhere
- 15:09Speaker 8: in the world to anywhere in the world in twenty
- 15:11Speaker 8: four hours in safety so complete that it is safer
- 15:17Speaker 8: to be on the airplane than driving to and from
- 15:19Speaker 8: the airport. And the worst thing that would happen to
- 15:21Speaker 8: you is you complain about the quality of the pretzels.
- 15:24Speaker 8: They would say that sounds you know, that's a miracle,
- 15:26Speaker 8: that is an astonishing achievement, and you cannot separate out
- 15:29Speaker 8: that level of success and that level of innovation from
- 15:32Speaker 8: the success of the FAA, the you know, American regulatory agency,
- 15:36Speaker 8: which has just led the world in regulatory safety. So
- 15:39Speaker 8: if we've done so well with such an important industry,
- 15:41Speaker 8: I think we can learn from that.
- 15:43Speaker 5: Is an argument to be made Gotham, that we that
- 15:46Speaker 5: we as society it might be too late to regulate AI.
- 15:49Speaker 6: Maybe it's there are it's already kind of out there.
- 15:53Speaker 8: So it is out there, but it's not to The
- 15:57Speaker 8: question is, you know, it might be too late to
- 15:59Speaker 8: elimit all of the potential harms. But if we're looking
- 16:02Speaker 8: at the curve and the curve keeps getting steeper and
- 16:05Speaker 8: moving faster, it's not too late to obviate the worst ones, right,
- 16:08Speaker 8: So the really big risks aren't there yet. You hear
- 16:11Speaker 8: people talking about AIS used in biological weapons. That's a
- 16:14Speaker 8: place where I've published articles, and we're still quite a
- 16:17Speaker 8: few years away from that, right, So working with biological
- 16:20Speaker 8: systems still involves a lot of handwork, involves people, It
- 16:23Speaker 8: involves a lot of sort of tacit skills. That's there.
- 16:26Speaker 8: It's but it is going away. So we want to
- 16:29Speaker 8: have these regulatory barriers in place before we lose the
- 16:32Speaker 8: safety that the safety that we were sort of we
- 16:34Speaker 8: sort of inherited.
- 16:36Speaker 2: So China, Chinese company Moonshot released Kimmy K three, and
- 16:42Speaker 2: we talked about this AI model and how disruptive, potentially
- 16:44Speaker 2: disruptive it could be. Do we think that China is
- 16:47Speaker 2: going to move faster than the US on regulating AI?
- 16:51Speaker 8: So this is a fascinating question, and there's clearly a
- 16:53Speaker 8: lot of debate in China, and the Chinese regulatory state
- 16:56Speaker 8: is quite advanced, and you know they have they have
- 16:59Speaker 8: a deference to sort of technical expertise that we don't
- 17:02Speaker 8: that might allow them to do that. But when we
- 17:04Speaker 8: think about these these open weights models that are coming
- 17:07Speaker 8: out of China, however impressive they are, they are also
- 17:10Speaker 8: very clearly sort of behind what the United States has,
- 17:13Speaker 8: and in quite a few cases they seem to be
- 17:15Speaker 8: heavily based on American models, so much so that if
- 17:17Speaker 8: you take Kimmy and you ask it what is your name?
- 17:20Speaker 8: Its answer will be my name is Claude Bianthropic, which
- 17:24Speaker 8: is kind of a flag as to where they might
- 17:26Speaker 8: have gotten that data from. Right, And so what I
- 17:29Speaker 8: would say is in this do allue but what we've
- 17:31Speaker 8: learned is aviation is an incredibly cooperative space, right, It's
- 17:34Speaker 8: both competitive and cooperative. Everyone wants to have the world's
- 17:38Speaker 8: leading airplane makers, it wants to have the world's leading airlines,
- 17:42Speaker 8: but they also understand that we've all got to work
- 17:44Speaker 8: together in order to make those safe. And what the
- 17:47Speaker 8: FAA was able to do was to create international norms
- 17:49Speaker 8: of collaboration by being the best regulatory agency in the world.
- 17:54Speaker 8: So every one of the world sort of looked at
- 17:55Speaker 8: the FAA and took their lead from the FAA. That again,
- 17:58Speaker 8: is the same model we can do where we can
- 18:00Speaker 8: get the Chinese and Us to agree on a regulatory
- 18:02Speaker 8: harma regulatory harmonization that might make it safe for everybody
- 18:06Speaker 8: because we know they can because we've done it before.
- 18:09Speaker 5: What has China said on this matter, if anything, as
- 18:12Speaker 5: it relates to just broadly regulating or controlling AI.
- 18:16Speaker 8: Yeah, there's been some really interesting discussions, but it hasn't
- 18:19Speaker 8: come out yet, right, So it's pretty clear that they
- 18:21Speaker 8: have some concerns about the will AI systems, and they're
- 18:24Speaker 8: willingness to sort of talk about issues like Tianneman Square.
- 18:26Speaker 8: They've cracked down on that and made it much more
- 18:28Speaker 8: difficult for these systems for their systems to do that.
- 18:31Speaker 8: There are a bunch of other areas where they've talked
- 18:33Speaker 8: about it, but so far it's been almost a surprisingly
- 18:36Speaker 8: light touch, I think, at least in part because the
- 18:39Speaker 8: Chinese attitude towards these systems is very different from ours. Right,
- 18:42Speaker 8: the Chinese AI community is not consumed with the possibility
- 18:45Speaker 8: of superintelligence or ending of the world. They're sort of like,
- 18:48Speaker 8: we're a billding these things. Then we'll be able to
- 18:49Speaker 8: apply them in factories and make our factories more efficient.
- 18:52Speaker 8: That is a lot less likely to generate fear, and
- 18:55Speaker 8: you know, might actually be more likely to generate short
- 18:57Speaker 8: term economic returns too.
- 18:59Speaker 2: Okay, is not exactly the leading edge of AI innovation.
- 19:03Speaker 2: But Europe is very good on regulation. They spend a
- 19:05Speaker 2: lot of time on that. Has europset or done anything
- 19:08Speaker 2: that kind of creates a bit of a template.
- 19:11Speaker 8: So I would say, not yet, And I want to
- 19:14Speaker 8: sort of push that on. When you say they're very
- 19:16Speaker 8: good at regulation, what they're they're often are is they
- 19:18Speaker 8: have a heavier hand.
- 19:19Speaker 2: Okay, regula, Yeah, maybe that's a better way to put it.
- 19:22Speaker 8: Yeah, But you know, like I think the American regulatory
- 19:25Speaker 8: state that we established, you know, up until pretty recently
- 19:28Speaker 8: with agencies like the FDA, was incredibly successful. We managed
- 19:31Speaker 8: to get both high levels of safety and high levels
- 19:34Speaker 8: of innovation at the same time. Those weren't those aren't right,
- 19:36Speaker 8: Those weren't in conflict. They were together. The reason that
- 19:39Speaker 8: the airline industry was able to the aviation industry was
- 19:42Speaker 8: able to progress so quickly was because people trusted that
- 19:45Speaker 8: the American government would keep it safe. And so this
- 19:48Speaker 8: is sort of a point that people in the industry
- 19:49Speaker 8: who sort of keep it weakening the you know, supporting
- 19:52Speaker 8: the weakening of the federal government or things like that,
- 19:54Speaker 8: they are fundamentally misunders misunderstanding the situation, and they should
- 19:59Speaker 8: they should be really careful. They might get what they
- 20:01Speaker 8: want for what they're asking for, because if they get
- 20:04Speaker 8: a US government that is too weak to regulate AI,
- 20:07Speaker 8: what they will get is also an American public that
- 20:09Speaker 8: rejects AI entirely in an industry that will die on
- 20:11Speaker 8: the vine.
- 20:12Speaker 6: Here thirty seconds left. What is the Trump administration set
- 20:15Speaker 6: on this matter?
- 20:15Speaker 8: If anything, They've started to talk about banning Chinese open
- 20:20Speaker 8: weights models, and that's probably gonna be my next column
- 20:22Speaker 8: because I said, I'm not sure what I think about that,
- 20:24Speaker 8: but that seems to me that that is walking down
- 20:25Speaker 8: a very slippery slope because those open weights models are
- 20:28Speaker 8: a big threat to the economics of our frontier labs,
- 20:32Speaker 8: but they're pretty great for everyone else, So you're making
- 20:34Speaker 8: a pretty striking trade there.
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