Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Quick Takes. Tim Stinovic from Bloomberg Radio. So our next guest.
Speaker 1: We caught up with him last in May. A lot
Speaker 1: really has happened since then. Great to add back with us.
Speaker 1: Tom Siebel, founder chairman CEO at C three AI, ticker
Speaker 1: of the company's AI, founder of Cebel Systems, which was
Speaker 1: sold to Oracle back in oh six. Tom also author
Speaker 1: of the book Digital Transformation, Survive and Thrive in an
Speaker 1: Era of Mass Extinction. He joins us on the phone
Speaker 1: from California. Hey, Tom, Good to have you back with us.
Speaker 1: How are you hi. Great, nice to hear from you. Well,
Speaker 1: it's nice to have you here and hear your voice. Um,
Speaker 1: I gotta ask you. I want to get into a
Speaker 1: lot of things about what your company is doing. Talk
Speaker 1: to you about AI. But I gotta ask you about
Speaker 1: this headline that just crossed about hackers saying, um that
Speaker 1: they exposed Tesla and some jails in a breach of
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty thousand security cameras. They said they
Speaker 1: wanted to show prevalence of surveillance. We are definitely living
Speaker 1: in different times. I think the threat associated with US
Speaker 1: cyber threat okay from bad actors in nation states including Russia, China,
Speaker 1: North Korea, Iran is existential. I mean, these people have
Speaker 1: the ability to shut down the United States great power,
Speaker 1: great infrastructure, the financial system, the healthcare system, you know,
Speaker 1: with a cell from from the other side of the planet,
Speaker 1: and they can do it tomorrow. This has been very
Speaker 1: very well documented in books that have been recently published,
Speaker 1: such as The Perfect Weapon and this is how they
Speaker 1: tell me the world ends. Uh, And this is very
Speaker 1: various here stuff that last week the National Security Commission
Speaker 1: for Artificial Intelligence published its report for years in the making,
Speaker 1: then concludes that today the United States government is not
Speaker 1: organized or investing to when the technology come competition against
Speaker 1: the committed competitor, nourish it prepared to defend against AI
Speaker 1: enabled threats and rapidly adopt AI applications for national security purposes.
Speaker 1: That we are exposed. So there are bad actors out there,
Speaker 1: and this is very scary. Well, you know, it just
Speaker 1: reminds me of It's like I've seen this movie before.
Speaker 1: We saw it in the form of the health pandemic.
Speaker 1: Lots of warnings for years, and yet we weren't prepared,
Speaker 1: and I feel like we're setting setting up for something
Speaker 1: like that again. And I have to say, I'm reading
Speaker 1: this story and they say, um, they breached massive trove
Speaker 1: of security camera data collected by a Silicon Valley startup, Ricata.
Speaker 1: They gained access to live feeds of a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty security cameras inside hospitals, companies, police departments, prisons, and schools,
Speaker 1: able to view video from inside women's health clinics, psychiatric hospitals,
Speaker 1: and the offices of this company of Ricata itself. Um.
Speaker 1: And they were using in some cases, some of these cameras,
Speaker 1: including in hospitals, were using facial recognition and technology to
Speaker 1: identify and categorize people captured on the footage. UM. I
Speaker 1: think about this. You are so in on the AI world.
Speaker 1: You talk about us not being prepared for Listen, there's
Speaker 1: great things to be had by it, but there's also
Speaker 1: a downside. We're not ready for it or not prepared
Speaker 1: for it. When you get into cyber security and infosect,
Speaker 1: this is just very scary stuff. I mean, the Chinese
Speaker 1: went into the Office of Personal Management in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: And it walked off of like twenty million records of
Speaker 1: everybody it's ever been considered for a security clearance. I
Speaker 1: mean the you know, the Russians, gay, we were in
Speaker 1: there within the last month and no telling. Nobody's him
Speaker 1: in telling the story of how thoroughly they penetrated the
Speaker 1: United States government. I mean, the emperor has no clothes either.
Speaker 1: This is not on the national agenda. And this is existential.
Speaker 1: If these people to turn off the US power created,
Speaker 1: which they do in a second, right now, I not
Speaker 1: a tend people in the United States die. So this
Speaker 1: makes the whole COVID pandemic look like a common cold,
Speaker 1: you know, compared to I mean, this is very very
Speaker 1: serious stuff. This is existential stuff, and it's not on
Speaker 1: the national agenda. Yeah, it says another video shot inside
Speaker 1: the Tesla warehouse in Shanghai, so as workers on an
Speaker 1: assembly line, Hacker said they obtain access to two two
Speaker 1: cameras and Tesla factories and warehouses. Well, this is your world.
Speaker 1: You're having conversations with people who are tapping into and
Speaker 1: working with you. Guys, you provide you know, enterprise AI
Speaker 1: software UM is anybody kind of aware of how to
Speaker 1: do this in a responsible way. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: your world. We've just got about thirty seconds time, and
Speaker 1: then we'll come back and talk some more. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would chase. The organizations that are most equipped okay, and
Speaker 1: have the greatest levels of security as it relates to
Speaker 1: AI and cybersecurity are the banks. I mean, these guys
Speaker 1: have have security regiments for their information and systems are
Speaker 1: completely aero gapped, they're tested, they have security protocols that
Speaker 1: are incredibly vigorous while they're dealing with the US banks
Speaker 1: or the European banks. These people have done us a
Speaker 1: perlative job, and the people in the United States government
Speaker 1: could go to school on that. They look like, you know, candidly,
Speaker 1: they look like cub scouts compared to the way that
Speaker 1: banks handling information security. You've been kind enough to indulge
Speaker 1: us as we were breaking down these headlines on this
Speaker 1: major hack. You know, listen, Tom, you've been in the
Speaker 1: technology world for a long time. You've seen it evolved.
Speaker 1: It's gotten much more sophisticated, it's got a lot more invasive,
Speaker 1: it's gotten a lot more useful, and it's such a
Speaker 1: part of everything that we do. AI specifically talk to
Speaker 1: us about kind of what's front and center right now.
Speaker 1: In terms of where it's going, who's using it, where
Speaker 1: it's going to be the most productive. Well, leading corporations
Speaker 1: around the world are using AI and smarting, analytics, precision medicine, aerospace, ACE, manufacturing, telecommunications, banking,
Speaker 1: and they're using AI to deliver better products and services,
Speaker 1: to deliver safer, cleaner, more reliable energy. They're using AI
Speaker 1: to secure data, data assets from cybersecurity attacks. They're using
Speaker 1: AI and defense and intelligence. This is the largest this
Speaker 1: is we look at enterprise AI software. This is a
Speaker 1: third of a trillion dollars market in say so, this
Speaker 1: is the largest growing enterprise application software market in history. Okay,
Speaker 1: and we serve all segments of that industry, from banking
Speaker 1: to tell go to healthcare to government. Listen, So give
Speaker 1: me AI for dummies, because I feel like we throw
Speaker 1: around certainly not you, but we throw around the term
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence a lot, and I think people have a
Speaker 1: grasp of it, but I don't think they understand, especially
Speaker 1: as you go through that list of basically are are
Speaker 1: all to be quite fair, whether it's military, whether it's
Speaker 1: you know, medical, whether it's energy. Um, where the use
Speaker 1: of AI is making things so much better? What is
Speaker 1: the AI for dummies if you had to explain it
Speaker 1: to somebody, great question. Okay, so AI and so many
Speaker 1: to strip away all the all the mystique and all
Speaker 1: the noise. AI is an area that would call predictive
Speaker 1: analytics where we're able, due to kind of advances in
Speaker 1: information technology to solve problems that never been able to
Speaker 1: solve before, where we can predict things before they happen
Speaker 1: very accurately. Heart failure okay, diabetes okay, it's a failure
Speaker 1: of a transformer in New York City. Okay, the failure
Speaker 1: of a jet engine, so we can predict these events,
Speaker 1: or the failure of a critical piece of equipment on
Speaker 1: an offshore or rig, say for Roald dutch Shell, where
Speaker 1: we can predict these events, you know, say days or
Speaker 1: months in advance, and replace the transformer in New York
Speaker 1: City and prevent the electricity outage. Okay, intervene uh clinically
Speaker 1: and prevent the heart failure. Okay, you do some intervention
Speaker 1: on the machine and present the aircraft failure before it fails.
Speaker 1: That in a nutshell, that's what enterprise AI is all about,
Speaker 1: is predictive antltication that is accurately predicting events before they happen,
Speaker 1: and we're able to do that today with very high
Speaker 1: levels of precision. Well, and when it comes to something
Speaker 1: like healthcare, Listen, we have all been obsessed with our
Speaker 1: health care because our lives depended on it in the
Speaker 1: last year. And understanding we all got I think it
Speaker 1: safe to say, somewhat smarter in understanding how vaccines are
Speaker 1: developed and the complications of you know, a virus and
Speaker 1: and all these things. When it comes to healthcare specifically,
Speaker 1: you talk about AI like we can predict heart failure.
Speaker 1: I mean, is this an area that we have yet
Speaker 1: to explore in a big way when it comes to
Speaker 1: a I yes, I think this is well, this is
Speaker 1: a field where we apply AI to healthcare. This is
Speaker 1: what we call precision medicine. This will be the largest
Speaker 1: commercial application of AI. And for example, we can take
Speaker 1: the genome sequences and the health care records of say
Speaker 1: the population of the United States or any population okay,
Speaker 1: and apply machine learning algorithms to these data and predict
Speaker 1: with very high levels of precision, who is going to
Speaker 1: be diagnosed with what disease? Okay, in the next five years,
Speaker 1: heart disease, lung cancer, whatever it might be. And then
Speaker 1: intervene clinically and avoid the diagnosis. Well this you combine
Speaker 1: that with telemedicine to reach previously unserved UM members of
Speaker 1: the community, and the economic and social benefit of this
Speaker 1: is staggering. Then you have genomes specifical medical protocols where
Speaker 1: where we you know, have tailored medical protocols to the
Speaker 1: individual genome, which are highly much going to be much
Speaker 1: more highly efficacious at a much lower cost. So these
Speaker 1: are examples of a I applied to medicine. This will
Speaker 1: be again the largest application of ai UH in any field.
Speaker 1: It's funny, I feel like you're tying up our show
Speaker 1: so well because earlier we talked with the CEO Pacific Biosciences,
Speaker 1: who UH is involved in that sequencing, the you know,
Speaker 1: genetic sequencing. So it was it's wonderful how you tied up.
Speaker 1: But okay, it sounds so promising. Helped me out here, though,
Speaker 1: Then why isn't the community moving maybe the health care
Speaker 1: community moving more rapidly towards embracing it. And I'm going
Speaker 1: to be fair here, I hope you'll see it that way.
Speaker 1: Your stocks down a lot, like what what is it
Speaker 1: that investors aren't getting about? The subject if it's so promising,
Speaker 1: or about your company that's so promising. Well, our company
Speaker 1: went public last December. Well we priced to stock at
Speaker 1: forty two. I think it's trading at about ninety today.
Speaker 1: It was all due respect, I think the company is
Speaker 1: doing quite well the the But why the pullback? Is
Speaker 1: it just kind of like giving you guys some space
Speaker 1: here or what? I think that you know, I don't
Speaker 1: pretend to understand capital markets, and you know that's not
Speaker 1: my business. We're just building a company and the Eccles
Speaker 1: stock price will take care of itself. But but I
Speaker 1: think that you know, if we look at the leaders
Speaker 1: in healthcare, whether it's c DC, whether it's an I age,
Speaker 1: we look at Cerner United Healthcare, these people are very
Speaker 1: very focused on precision medicine UH and applying AI to
Speaker 1: the medical process to deliver you know, more efficacious, more
Speaker 1: readily available, lower cost medicine and the result will be
Speaker 1: a healthier population that lives longer. And so there are
Speaker 1: many organizations focused on this in a big way, massive
Speaker 1: amounts of research taking place, and a lot of this
Speaker 1: is being led by as it relates to COVID, by
Speaker 1: the c TH what we call the C three A
Speaker 1: Digital Transformation Institute, which an effort that we did with
Speaker 1: micro Soft and and M I T and Berkeley and
Speaker 1: Princeton and Carnegie Mellon and others. We're doing very very
Speaker 1: advanced research into playing I to understand pandemic and coursive
Speaker 1: disease and drug discovery and what have you. So there's
Speaker 1: massive amounts of research going on in this area. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it feels like it's just such a world that just
Speaker 1: continues to open up. Hey, Tom, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I always appreciated. Tom Siebel is founder, chairman and CEO
Speaker 1: at C three AI. And to be fair, the stock
Speaker 1: did I p O at forty two and as Tom mentioned,
Speaker 1: h it has more than doubled up from that amount.
Speaker 1: So good to get that in there.