AI Takes Center Stage From Washington to Wall Street

Bloomberg Tech

This episode of Bloomberg Tech explores the massive integration of AI into both government operations and corporate strategy. It covers Pres

Key takeaways

• President Trump launched America.gov, an AI-enabled 'one-stop shop' to streamline interactions with federal agencies.
• AMD is acquiring Fei-Fei Li's World Labs in an $8.2 billion all-stock deal to enhance physical AI and robotics capabilities.

Main topics

• AI in Government Policy
• Semiconductor M&A

Notable quotes

I will never stifle the growth of technology... we do not surrender to fears of what technologies will do to us.

Conclusion

The episode highlights that AI has moved from a niche technological fr

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:00) Here are five reasons to subscribe to Bloomberg News Now. Number five, you get the latest news from around the world instantly. Number four, it saves you time. Your day's busy. Catching up takes just a few minutes. Three, it's available 24 hours a day whenever you need it. Two, it's convenient. Listen on your smartphone or smart speaker. And number one, it's easy to find. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you listen. Five reasons, one simple way to stay on top of the news. Bloomberg News Now. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news. Bloomberg Tech is live from the heart of Silicon Valley with Ed Ludlow in San Francisco. Speaker 2 (0:53) This is Bloomberg Tech. Coming up, President Trump puts AI at the center of his agenda today with a new AI-powered website called America.gov. Plus, Anthropic warns of, quote, existential risks to humanity in its prospectus ahead of its IPO, according to reports. We've got the details. And AMD makes a big AI bet on the frontier by acquiring Feifei World Labs in an all-stock deal valued at $8.2 billion. Welcome to the program. We will also hear from Ford CEO Jim Farley, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer later this hour. Stick around for that conversation. Speaker 2 (1:36) President Trump is putting AI at the center of his agenda today, launching America.gov, a new AI-powered website designed to make it easier for Americans to navigate federal services. Separately, President Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson are sitting down with some of the biggest names in tech, including NVIDIA's Jensen Wang, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Google's Sundar Pichai. and Anthropix, Dario Amodei, as the debate over AI safety and regulation intensifies. We've heard from the president already this morning. Blue Most Tyler Kendall joins us from Washington, D.C. Before we get to the big lunch, the president's been speaking about AI. He's discussed it with Xi Jinping, just not that much. What do we need to know? Speaker 1 (2:20) Well, Ed, at this point, President Trump is really using today to highlight his embrace of the technology. He had this event really touting this AI-enabled tool. I was there actually earlier this morning where a White House official told me that this is designed to be a, quote, one-stop shop where essentially Americans can go online and ask any question about any federal agency and get a prompt answer about whether that is federal assistance or applying for a national park permit, for example. But it really goes to underscore how the administration wants to utilize AI and make the American public comfortable with it amid what is this growing concern from the industry. And take a listen to some of what he said. In part, quote, I will never stifle the growth of technology, adding, quote, we do not surrender to fears of what technologies will do to us. It will no doubt be a top topic of discussion today. President Trump just moments ago arriving back here to the White House for this big lunch with these tech leaders. You named some of them, including Elon Musk. and NVIDIA's Jensen Wong. But importantly, from a D.C. perspective, House Speaker Mike Johnson is going to be in that room, too, as Washington tries to figure out what should happen here next, including what has been a flurry of legislative efforts on Capitol Hill in recent weeks. Though, Ed, we should say there's an expectation that none of that's actually going to pass by the midterms, let alone after it, amid what is the administration bolstering its embrace of the technology. Though I will quickly say that Anthropix Dario Amadei was spotted on Capitol Hill. Hill earlier today speaking with Senate Majority Leader John Thune. We'll have to see if we get any update on what they discussed behind closed doors. Speaker 2 (3:56) The headlines that come out later in the day, that's probably for tomorrow's show. But something here and now that our audience is talking about is America.gov. Could you just explain the basics? I'm seeing a lot of traffic on social media across venture capital, founders, leaders in industry who are saying this is a really big thing. Speaker 1 (4:18) And it's being touted by the administration as one as well as a bipartisan initiative that's supposed to last beyond just this administration. You heard President Trump say that this could be part of the administration's legacy, that they are trying to help the American public in terms of interfacing with the government. In fact, at the beginning of the event, they played what I think is a pretty common thread for most Americans. If you call up the government and you're given a busy signal or you're told you have to wait three hours to get online. There are questions about how it will handle the influx of users. We're going to have to see sort of the trial and error that this goes through. But it is something that the administration has been working on for months, and they say will impact every agency. In fact, President Trump signed an executive order while he was on stage mandating every agency to interface with this AI-enabled tool. Whether you have questions for the Department of Energy or the Interior Department, it shouldn't matter. It should all be in one defined space. As I mentioned, a White House official was really touting this as a way to streamline communication with the American public, especially amid growing skepticism around AI. As we look at some of the data and the polling, as we get closer to the midterm elections, it's very clear that the White House wants to put it front and center and get the American public comfortable. Speaker 2 (5:37) The work of Joe Kabir, co-founder of Airbnb, active in Doge in the early days, but the first chief design officer to lead the National Design Studio. He's getting a lot of credit for this. Bluebeard, Tyler Kendall, thank you very much indeed. As Washington leans further into AI, the warnings about where the technology is headed are also getting louder. Joining us now is Sebastian Malaby, Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow, also the author of The Infinity Machine. Demis Hassabis, deep mind and the quest for super intelligence, a term the president's adopted. America.gov, more than symbolic, something real from this administration? Speaker 8 (6:17) Yeah, I hope so. I mean, we've got large language models. Why not have a large bureaucracy model? I think everybody would love that. We'll see. As your correspondent said, we'll see if it works because, of course, the last big tech experiment. that the federal government undertook was the Obama healthcare portal and that crashed. So hopefully that won't happen again, but I think it's a great thing to try it. Speaker 2 (6:40) The goal of this is for the American public to have access to the federal government through something that's useful, a platform, right? You know, the president has to date surrounded himself with people of industry. You kind of get the sense that... this would work because he's entrusted it to people that know what they're doing? Speaker 8 (7:03) Yeah, I mean, I hope so. I think that in the past as well, when these things didn't work out the first time around, you know, Google people and other people from the tech sector were drafted in to try to rescue the mess and put it back on track. And that's what happened with the healthcare portal. But look, I think this is a great bipartisan thing. Everybody wants more efficient government. You know, I moved to Washington, D.C. in 1996 and spent 18 years there. And throughout that period, there was nonstop discussion of how to make the government more efficient. Not much happened. But, you know, it's good to try. And I hope that artificial intelligence really is a force multiplier for simplifying bureaucracy. Speaker 2 (7:43) Especially from the president's perspective, AI is in the context of competition with China, right? He says America is ahead. He advocates for them to continue pushing at the frontier. And it's kind of the camp of saying, don't slow down, right? How is he going to manage that group of CEOs at the lunch today who have varying views on pacing the frontier? Speaker 8 (8:10) So, look, I think the fascinating thing here is that it seems that Dario Amadei from Anthropic is going to attend. And that is fascinating because he represents the most cautious, the most sort of forthright in terms of emphasizing AI risk. I think you mentioned at the top that the leaks about the Anthropic prospectus ahead of its IPO talk quite a lot about existential risk. There was a letter yesterday, you know, a letter signed by top people from but also other labs, reemphasizing existential risk. Again, you know, Amadei's speech in the UN last week, also about existential risk. And in the past, you know, the Trump administration's attitude to that stress on existential risk was to say, look, Dario Amadei, left-wing nutjob, we don't want to talk to him, we're freezing him out. But all of a sudden, he is invited to dinner on Sunday night at the White House by Trump. And, you know, the reports are... that it went well and that he's back in the game again today and he will be attending this lunch. And so the kind of obvious interpretation of what the Trump administration is up to, which is basically, hey, let's do a nice government website. We'll use AI. We'll show how useful it is to citizens. And we won't bother with all this slowdown nonsense. Well, now they've got Mr. Slowdown coming to the lunch. And so I think we may end up with a more nuanced. picture of like the balance between accelerating with AI and making it helpful, which is good, but also going slow enough to make it safe, which is also extremely important. I hope that sticks. But of course, you never know. There are a lot of twists and turns with this administration. Speaker 2 (9:50) Sebastian Malaby, Council on Foreign Relations. We talked about your book at the top. Really grateful for your time on Bloomberg Tech this morning. A lot happening in real time. I want to very quickly talk a bit about markets, what's happening in financial markets. We'll focus on the technology sector. At a high level, the NASDAQ 100 is basically flat. There is a sort of overall rally, broad rally in chip stocks. That includes AMD. Later in the hour, We're going to get to that deal, AMD acquiring World Labs, $8.2 billion all stock transaction. And AMD's higher, but so is the rest of the field. That's kind of interesting. You still see treasury yields at high levels. That is an impact in this equity market. There's a big focus on economic data as well. Bitcoin, nothing really to write home about. No specific catalyst. $83,500 per token. In the background, there is a lot of wait and see right now. One of the big news stories, which we will get to later in the hour, is Aura, O-U-R-A, delaying its IPO because of the IPO environment. Anthropic is the canary in the coal mine. Sometimes you see those stories impact the equity market in aggregate. because everyone's waiting. We don't. We now go to Detroit, Michigan. David Westin is joined by Ford CEO Jim Farley, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer for an exclusive interview on the launch of a public-private partnership. David. Speaker 4 (11:27) Thank you so much. I am here in Detroit, Michigan. Actually, I'm in Michigan Central, joined, as you say, by the governor of the great state of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, as well as Jim Farley and Jamie Dimon of J.P. Morgan, for a big announcement here, actually. It's something called LIFT, Michigan LIFT, which is a launchpad for industrial innovation and transformation. So, Jim, those are pretty good words, innovation, transformation, industrial. What does it all mean? What is it? We're trying to fix a problem on showing things that... that we're offshored in the name of pennies on the dollar to make here in the U.S. where we needed to be independent, even defend ourselves. Ford's going to commit a billion dollars of purchasing for new companies that are going to be building advanced manufacturing, new capabilities, even magnets and rare earth that we used to buy overseas, and now we're going to buy here with the help of J.P. Morgan as well as the state of Michigan. It's Michigan lift. Do they have to be Michigan companies? Yes. So companies from Michigan. So Jamie, I ask you, markets we rely upon for an awful lot. Basically, it's served us a good stead for a lot of years in the United States. Why don't markets already take care of this? Why do we need Speaker 6 (12:35) this initiative? Yeah. So I think, first of all, I applaud the initiative. And I also think it's really important that states, governments, businesses work together to fix things like Detroit, which they did. So that's like the number one thing. But we need, we lost some of the muscle to do that. So I think markets will take care of a lot of it. But if you're an innovative company and you invented something here, you need an order. He's got to order it. It's got to actually work. They may have to build a real plant, not just an experimental plant. And so it takes that whole group of us to do this kind of thing. And hopefully this will be replicated. This needs to be done everywhere in a lot of industries to make sure the United States can defend itself. Speaker 4 (13:14) So Governor Whitmer, why Michigan? Why is