Speaker 1: From Marhart where Innovation, Money and Power Collie in Silicon Valley, NBN.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed loved Love.
Speaker 3: I'm Karine Heinde of Bloomberg's World head quarters in New York.
Speaker 4: Then i am at Lovelow in San Francisco. This is
Speaker 4: Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 3: Adobe Figma, they call off their twenty billion dollar deal
Speaker 3: after clashing with regulators in Europe.
Speaker 5: And the UK. Will bring you everything you need to know.
Speaker 4: Plus a Rod's black Chech company plans a merger with
Speaker 4: satellite Communications provide a link global. We hear from the
Speaker 4: former New York Yankees. All start on the deal and.
Speaker 3: We'll take a deep dive into the world of you
Speaker 3: guessed it, artificial intelligence, from investing in the space, how
Speaker 3: businesses are utilizing the technology, and the ethical concerns attached
Speaker 3: to AI or break it all down.
Speaker 5: Let's first talk to us about these deals.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, the deal that's dead, Adobe and Figma mutually
Speaker 4: agreeing to terminate Adobe's acquisition of Figma, a twenty billion
Speaker 4: dollar deal. As you said, equity market reaction Adobe up
Speaker 4: one point nine percent. And it's interesting because the question
Speaker 4: is would this have ever pass muster with the regulators.
Speaker 4: We'll get to that in just a second. The news
Speaker 4: being that Adobe pays Figma a one billion dollar termination
Speaker 4: or breakup fee. Now that the deal has failed, lots
Speaker 4: of opinions out there on social media about whether this
Speaker 4: was a good or bad deal. Let's get the details
Speaker 4: and bring in Bloomberg's Brody Ford. I guess this is
Speaker 4: one of those deals and one of those stories, Brody,
Speaker 4: where you start with the why why did both parties
Speaker 4: decide to terminate this agreement?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean imagine getting paid one billion dollars to
Speaker 6: break up The reason, the big one is just that
Speaker 6: it was taking so long. Right fifteen months ago, I
Speaker 6: think we sat here and spoke about why Adobe was
Speaker 6: going to buy Pigma, because it wanted to expand its
Speaker 6: kind of creative dominance to look at the app designers,
Speaker 6: the UI designers, and also just invest in a more
Speaker 6: lightweight product. But of course regulators have been very secheptical
Speaker 6: of these deals where a big incumbent tech player will
Speaker 6: kind of scoop up a younger startup that maybe one
Speaker 6: day could threaten it. The sense is that regulators felt
Speaker 6: like they really missed the ball and not stopping Facebook
Speaker 6: from buying WhatsApp or Instagram, and they really wanted to
Speaker 6: kind of make an example here, and so they faced
Speaker 6: severe pushback in.
Speaker 1: The UK EU.
Speaker 7: The US regulators were expected to sue as well, and
Speaker 7: so there was a certain point where both Adobe and
Speaker 7: Figma said, we do not see a way forward here.
Speaker 7: I mean, they could have litigated this for another six
Speaker 7: twelve months and it might have still not worked.
Speaker 6: So they decided to walk away.
Speaker 3: I mean Dylanfield, co founder CEO of Figma, putting out
Speaker 3: a blob today really talking about what was it that
Speaker 3: thousands of hours spent with regulators they still couldn't get
Speaker 3: this deal away. We can see that Adobe's rallying a
Speaker 3: bit on the news, but what is the future of Figma.
Speaker 5: This is a big VC backed company.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of money to be made on this
Speaker 3: particular bet, and I'm interested that they still seem pretty
Speaker 3: positive about what they managed to basically put to market
Speaker 3: during this time.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the big question for US now is are Adobe
Speaker 6: and Figma still on a collision course?
Speaker 8: Right?
Speaker 6: Figma is growing rapidly. For those who are super familiar,
Speaker 6: Figma's really core market is the software that helps you
Speaker 6: design the way that apps and websites look. But they're
Speaker 6: expanding elsewhere. They've looked into more productivity software suite kind
Speaker 6: of think about like a Google workspaces kind of thing.
Speaker 6: They've looked a bit into image editing, right, and so
Speaker 6: you figure that this is a capable company, a capable leadership.
Speaker 6: They've hired five hundred people in the last year. It's
Speaker 6: not hard to imagine a scenario where they grow to
Speaker 6: challenge some of these larger software companies like Adobe.
Speaker 3: It's interesting they talk about the huge advancewers in AI
Speaker 3: as well, and how that is an area of focus
Speaker 3: for the business. I mean, look, we're all waiting for
Speaker 3: IPOs and exits, and this is an exit that's put
Speaker 3: on ice. Do you think this company will be going
Speaker 3: in alone and looking to build in a public market.
Speaker 6: Brody, I think it'll be a while before we see
Speaker 6: an IPO. I think again that Adobe was buying a
Speaker 6: fast growing but somewhat still nascent competitor. I don't remember
Speaker 6: their revenue numbers, but you know they are rapidly growing,
Speaker 6: they're scaling. I think it'd be a while before we
Speaker 6: see an IPO. I mean I've already seen those some
Speaker 6: theories out there, like is fig mug going to merge
Speaker 6: with CANBA? Is fig mug going to get acquired by
Speaker 6: these other large software companies? So I think you're right
Speaker 6: to ask what are the next path what are the exits?
Speaker 6: Because I think there are many scenarios for Figma here
Speaker 6: all right?
Speaker 4: Bloomberg's Brady Ford on the collapse of the ad Pigma deal.
Speaker 4: Thank you. Staying in the world of deals. A blank
Speaker 4: check company set up by former New York Yankees all
Speaker 4: star Alex Rodriguez, is planning to merge with Satellite Communications
Speaker 4: provide a Link Global. Earlier I sat down with the
Speaker 4: CEOs of Link and slam Court to discuss have a listen.
Speaker 8: Link invented this technology. You go back to twenty fifteen
Speaker 8: when the original idea was created. Many people thought this
Speaker 8: is impossible, and we then invented all the core technology
Speaker 8: to connect to the standard phone already in your pocket
Speaker 8: with no change to the phone. People thought that was
Speaker 8: crazy thinking. Not only did we invent the tech, we
Speaker 8: then proved it and we have three operational commercially license
Speaker 8: satellites in orbit today and we're operational in five countries.
Speaker 8: We proved it on all seven continents in over two
Speaker 8: dozen countries, and so it puts us in a great
Speaker 8: position to bring this service to the world. There's huge
Speaker 8: demand for this. This is a life saving service with
Speaker 8: over five billion customers that have a phone today.
Speaker 4: Charles, you have the consolation well, a small constellation up
Speaker 4: and running, you have the commercial deals in place. This
Speaker 4: is an area just last week we learned that SpaceX
Speaker 4: wants to get into as well. Is there enough room
Speaker 4: for you and the likes of SpaceX to build out
Speaker 4: the SAT to sell network.
Speaker 8: Well, absolutely, so let me explain why. First of all,
Speaker 8: is completely validating that SpaceX wants to follow link right.
Speaker 8: We're the category creators. We inmitted this, we proved it,
Speaker 8: and there's a bunch of companies jumping in now that
Speaker 8: we've done it. But this is the key thing to understand.
Speaker 8: There's no one's going to get a monopoly in the
Speaker 8: mobile wireless industry. There's at least two or three winners.
Speaker 8: They don't let anybody get a monopoly. They didn't let
Speaker 8: Apple get a monopoly when they invented the modern smartphone.
Speaker 8: They pulled into existence Android within eighteen months.
Speaker 1: So there's going to be at least two.
Speaker 8: Maybe three winners in satellite direct the standard phone, it's
Speaker 8: going to be Link and one or two other companies.
Speaker 8: So that's a natural, it's best for the consumer, and
Speaker 8: it just completely validates what we're doing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Alex, really similar question for you. In a lot
Speaker 4: of the SPACs that I've covered over the last three
Speaker 4: or four years, the ones that have gone wrong, is
Speaker 4: where due diligence was a problem. And I wondered how
Speaker 4: much of a concern entering a market with Link with
Speaker 4: a big competitor or potential competitor like SpaceX, how much
Speaker 4: of that was a consideration for you?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was.
Speaker 9: And look, we are super disciplined that we'd rather not
Speaker 9: do as fact and take something in public unless we
Speaker 9: felt really passionate about it, where long term thinkers and
Speaker 9: our core values are aligned. I mean, it's such an
Speaker 9: exciting space to think that this is a trillion dollar
Speaker 9: business annually opportunity and to connect the unconnected, to think
Speaker 9: that Charles and Link can connect over a billion people
Speaker 9: more than we have today. And if you think at Amazon,
Speaker 9: if you think of Amazon ed how they've disrupted the
Speaker 9: retail business, what Link is is the disrupting business where
Speaker 9: you have these sale towers where you would need a
Speaker 9: football field or two to provide. Charles has created one
Speaker 9: that his satellites go in the size of a pizza
Speaker 9: box and then you set them to orbit and over
Speaker 9: the next five years there should be hundreds, if not
Speaker 9: thousands of these up at orbit alex rates.
Speaker 4: Is a good point, which is the industries you're trying
Speaker 4: to disrupt. But if you think about the end user,
Speaker 4: right me the consumer with the cell phone, it seems
Speaker 4: to be the carriers childs that you want to do
Speaker 4: business with.
Speaker 8: That is a key part of our strategy. We're partner
Speaker 8: with mobile phone companies like many people here in the
Speaker 8: United States, no Verizon AT and T AT T Mobile,
Speaker 8: but there's eight hundred around the world, and we are
Speaker 8: going to be a partner with mobile network operators around
Speaker 8: the world. It goes directly to our business model. We
Speaker 8: are going set up as a trusted partner of mobile
Speaker 8: network operators and it has huge implications for our economics.
Speaker 8: So we don't have to go sign up subscribers. We
Speaker 8: cut a deal with a mobile network operator and we
Speaker 8: instantly get a million to maybe one hundred million subscribers.
Speaker 8: So our subscriber acquisition cost because it uses the phone
Speaker 8: in your pocket, basically almost goes to zero.
Speaker 4: A rod Spack taking Linked Global and its CEO Charles
Speaker 4: Miller Public Caroline will being well valuation around eight hundred
Speaker 4: million dollars and they literally want to take on SpaceX.
Speaker 4: It's not a new story I thought i'd wake up
Speaker 4: to on a Monday morning.
Speaker 3: There's been quite a few stories to wake up to
Speaker 3: on this Monday morning. And one of them, in fact,
Speaker 3: another market moving story for US was the fact that
Speaker 3: Apple is holding sales of its flagship Apple Watch models in.
Speaker 5: The United States.
Speaker 3: I'm going to bring you yet another sort of antitrust
Speaker 3: story here as well.
Speaker 4: And what if you go right and overnight in China
Speaker 4: are colleagues reporting that the government crack down on the
Speaker 4: use of foreign handsets continues across government and state backed enterprise.
Speaker 4: And look at some of Apple's key suppliers. Broad Coom
Speaker 4: interestingly now up one point two percent, have been lower
Speaker 4: early in the session. Other key suppliers seem to be
Speaker 4: moving lower. On that news, we all have the details. Next,
Speaker 4: this is Bloomberg Technology. Okay, time for talking tech. And
Speaker 4: in the news, IBM has agreed to buy data integration
Speaker 4: platforms stream sets and web methods from Software ag for
Speaker 4: two point three billion dollars in cash. The deals expected
Speaker 4: to complete in the second quarter of twenty twenty four
Speaker 4: and is an effort to strengthen its AI and cloud capabilities.
Speaker 4: And since Time plunged the most in more than a
Speaker 4: year after its co founder's death, spooked investors already grappling
Speaker 4: with the fallout from slowing growth and US sanctioned since
Speaker 4: Time disclosed that its co founder, m major shareholder, died
Speaker 4: on Friday after an illness. The MIT graduate and Hong
Speaker 4: Kong professor was regarded as a pioneer in China's AI sector,
Speaker 4: helping create one of the nation's leaders in facial and
Speaker 4: image recognition. Plus more, Chinese agencies and government backed firms
Speaker 4: across the country have ordered staff to stop bringing iPhones
Speaker 4: and other foreign devices to work work. The formal directors
Speaker 4: follow a general mandate from months ago and sets in
Speaker 4: motion an unpre precedented prohibition that's likely to block Apple
Speaker 4: and Samsung from parts of the world's biggest smartphone market. Caroline.
Speaker 3: And there is so much to chew on when it
Speaker 3: comes to Apple today, ed, So let's stick with the
Speaker 3: company that's also confirming it's soon going to be halting
Speaker 3: sales of its flagship Apple Watch models right.
Speaker 5: Here in the United States.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: The move comes following an ITC ruling as part of
Speaker 3: a long running pattern dispute between Apple and the medical
Speaker 3: technology company Massimo around the Apple Watches, blood oxygen sensor technology.
Speaker 3: Let's get our tape from our Bloomberg Intelligence and our
Speaker 3: Grana and.
Speaker 5: First the watches.
Speaker 3: This is quite a major step, but basically they're anticipating
Speaker 3: an import ban here.
Speaker 10: Yeah, Nie, we were expecting, you know, my colleague Hamlin
Speaker 10: Stern know a lot of work for this, that there
Speaker 10: would be a settlement by now between the two companies.
Speaker 10: And you know, we still have a few days. Let's
Speaker 10: see if this is just arm stronging by both the companies.
Speaker 10: But let's see what how happens. But we are hopeful
Speaker 10: that there'll be a settlement between them.
Speaker 4: The other story we're reported overnight amarag According to Bloomberg sources,
Speaker 4: this kind of government or public sector clamp down on
Speaker 4: foreign handsets in China. Right it started with I think
Speaker 4: Beijing and Chianjen. Now there are eight other provinces where
Speaker 4: state backed entities or companies government entities are saying leave
Speaker 4: your foreign handset at work by domestic Does that really
Speaker 4: impact Apple sales grow for or potential in China?
Speaker 10: Yeah, I think there isn't that much good news for
Speaker 10: Apple in the last several days. I think the iPhone
Speaker 10: news is something that you know, I mean all frankness,
Speaker 10: you don't expect the government employees to showcase their iPhones
Speaker 10: anyway in the public. That's just been you know, this
Speaker 10: is something you don't do for four years. But I
Speaker 10: think the bigger issue at that time right now is
Speaker 10: Huawei has a new forum with five G capabilities and
Speaker 10: that's really doing well in China right now. And you know,
Speaker 10: one reason could be that's a first stop graded many years.
Speaker 10: But I think iPhone really is on a back you know,
Speaker 10: backfoot at this point.
Speaker 1: So you know, when when they.
Speaker 10: Report results over the next couple of months, I think
Speaker 10: this is going to be the single most important question
Speaker 10: asked to Tim Cokz to you know, what's really happening
Speaker 10: in China and how should we expect because it is
Speaker 10: the biggest growth market for Apple in.
Speaker 1: Terms of you know, our phones, and Apple's.
Speaker 4: Up fifty percent year today the years always out fell
Speaker 4: twenty six percent in twenty twenty two. What's the story
Speaker 4: going to be for Apple in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 10: So, as far as we can see right now, I
Speaker 10: think the growth prospects are pretty tepid at this point.
Speaker 10: I mean, growth rate of three four five percent is
Speaker 10: nothing to really write home about.
Speaker 1: But you know, one of the reasons.
Speaker 10: People look at Apple is because of it's it's you know,
Speaker 10: what we call as a flight to quality, and with
Speaker 10: interest rates going down, that has helped some of the
Speaker 10: larger tech naus.
Speaker 1: But fundamentally, I think Apple.
Speaker 10: Still needs to do a little bit of work to
Speaker 10: showcase that they can get back to that high single
Speaker 10: digit to load double digit growth rate. But we don't
Speaker 10: think that's going to happen next year, next twelve months.
Speaker 10: It's going to be tough for them.
Speaker 3: We of course, have seen that there's been a slight
Speaker 3: pivot from a supply chain perspective looking towards India and
Speaker 3: indeed looking towards India as a demand driver as well
Speaker 3: an rug Is that going to be some sort of
Speaker 3: a silver lining amid the pullback in China and a
Speaker 3: more difficult outlook for twenty twenty four.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean, in the long term, India is a
Speaker 10: very big growth market for them, that's no doubt about it.
Speaker 10: But that's something I think it's going to play it
Speaker 10: into three to five years range.
Speaker 1: Over the next two to three years.
Speaker 10: China remains one of the most important things because the
Speaker 10: purchasing power of consumers in China still is a lot.
Speaker 1: More than what it is in India.
Speaker 10: In India, if you look at the smartphone market, you know,
Speaker 10: Apple doesn't even qualify for ninety five percent of the
Speaker 10: unit shipments because they are below three hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: Apple doesn't play in that market.
Speaker 10: So while the population size is very attractive and very appetizing,
Speaker 10: but the smartphone growth is not there just from units
Speaker 10: at this point, all.
Speaker 4: Right, Bloomberg Xander Egran or Bloomberg Intelligence, great to get
Speaker 4: your analysis on a lot of Apple news.
Speaker 3: Let's turn our attention to Nvidia now and then really
Speaker 3: fascinating deep dive by Bloomberg highlighting the threat that AI
Speaker 3: poses to minorities. This is highlighted by two former employees
Speaker 3: of Invidia who warn the CEO of the consequences of
Speaker 3: artificial intelligence on marginalized communities. Thus far, and Video has
Speaker 3: declined to comment on the specifics of the meeting that
Speaker 3: was conducted, but.
Speaker 5: The company said it could quote continues to devote.
Speaker 3: Tremendous resources to ensuring that AI benefits everyone. Let's get
Speaker 3: to the reporter behind this incredible piece, Sindujo Rangarajan is
Speaker 3: with us and Sinduja it goes back several years to
Speaker 3: a meeting that they had with Jensen the CEO of Nvidia,
Speaker 3: and these two employees basically walked out feeling that they
Speaker 3: weren't hurt, right.
Speaker 11: Correct, got all good and alex Alexander Sodo, you know,
Speaker 11: they were both presidents of the Black Black Employees Group.
Speaker 11: But they work with executives and people from across the
Speaker 11: company to put together presentation for Jensen Huang, the CEO
Speaker 11: of f and video about the risks AI can post,
Speaker 11: how can we make AI safe and the general topic
Speaker 11: about AI ethics, and they wanted to make sure that
Speaker 11: you know, the company which is supported which which they
Speaker 11: claim is you know, going to be a major AI
Speaker 11: superpower in the future, should do something about this. Have guardrails,
Speaker 11: have processes and frameworks that.
Speaker 5: Make sure that AI is safe.
Speaker 11: And they and then they they you know, walked out
Speaker 11: of the meetings not feeling heard and they quit shortly after.
Speaker 4: A part of this is not just the not feeling
Speaker 4: heard or basically an inaction by video from their point
Speaker 4: of view, was the idea that it's the people building
Speaker 4: the technology. It's important that there's diversity within it, right,
Speaker 4: And you dug down into in videos workforce, essentially it's
Speaker 4: hiring relative to some of its peers. What did you
Speaker 4: find and why is that important?
Speaker 11: You know, there's a lot of research that says that
Speaker 11: you know, particularly for AI, but technology as a whole,
Speaker 11: that as an industry, it's so it has such few
Speaker 11: underrepersent and minorities that it's likely to miss blind spots
Speaker 11: when it comes to building these tools that you know
Speaker 11: are supposed to be the future of technology. And when
Speaker 11: I looked into in videos, you know, diversity numbers, they
Speaker 11: were in the bottom two for sm P one hundred
Speaker 11: four underrepersent and minorities, Black, Hispanic, mixed races of people.
Speaker 11: And you know, it's important because research says that if
Speaker 11: if you don't have these people involved in discussions as
Speaker 11: you're building products, then you know you're likely to miss
Speaker 11: by blind spots.
Speaker 4: We read in Vidia's statement in response to the story
Speaker 4: at the beginning of the segment. But what is the
Speaker 4: net result of this reporting, Ben, what kind of action
Speaker 4: is in video taking and has anything improved?
Speaker 11: They, you know, the meeting happened a while ago in
Speaker 11: video claims that it's done a tremendous amount of work
Speaker 11: in thinking about this issue, and they've hired you know,
Speaker 11: Nikki Pope to run their trustworthy AI division. They've you know,
Speaker 11: made sure that their data sets that the models are
Speaker 11: trained on are debiased, and they've put in a lot
Speaker 11: of work into making their models are transparent and not
Speaker 11: as black foxy. They have released something called this openly
Speaker 11: more Guardrails, which is supposed to keep chatbots safe and
Speaker 11: on topic and appropriate. So they claim to have done
Speaker 11: a lot of work since that meeting and since that
Speaker 11: time to make sure that you know AI is safe
Speaker 11: and transparent.
Speaker 3: Because it's worth reminding people that these two employees when
Speaker 3: they first went to the CEO Jensen, it was back
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty. A lot has changed, a lot of
Speaker 3: soul searching among corporate America has occurred since, of course,
Speaker 3: the tragic death of George Floyd as well. I'm interested
Speaker 3: in ultimately the real part of AI they seem to
Speaker 3: be worried about.
Speaker 5: Is facial recognition, correct.
Speaker 11: That's one of the big pieces, and that was one
Speaker 11: of the things that they raised during that meeting. You know,
Speaker 11: we'll there's a lot of research that says already that
Speaker 11: facial recognition technologies in general, you know, don't identify people
Speaker 11: of color quite well. So this was just just generally raised.
Speaker 11: You know, if that's going to be powering self driving cars,
Speaker 11: then you know what's going to happen, Like what if
Speaker 11: they don't recognize people with darker skins or different kinds
Speaker 11: of people in general.
Speaker 4: A right, Bloomberg's Induja and Garage and just really important
Speaker 4: and deep reporting on video company that everyone has become
Speaker 4: so obsessed with throughout twenty twenty three. Welcome back to
Speaker 4: Bloomberg Technology. Ed love Low here in San Francisco.
Speaker 5: Carolin Hired in New York.
Speaker 3: Let's get a check on these markets, because we're managing
Speaker 3: to hold firm in the NASDAQ stock still managing to
Speaker 3: power on hire. Remember we've had seven straight weeks of
Speaker 3: gains in the S and P five hundred, but still
Speaker 3: the moon music is positive inequities even though in the
Speaker 3: bob market we're selling off a little bit. Is we
Speaker 3: get a little bit more caution coming from some of
Speaker 3: those fed voices. We look to a voj whether or
Speaker 3: not they'll be amping up some discussion of central bank
Speaker 3: policy as the ECB tries to say, look, you are
Speaker 3: front running us on the idea that we're going to
Speaker 3: be cutting rates. Here US ten year yield currently up
Speaker 3: some four basis points. Bitcoin selling off a little bit
Speaker 3: after has been a rapid run up in recent months.
Speaker 5: Let's move on to look at the individual companies. They're
Speaker 5: on the move.
Speaker 3: There is so much winding and unwinding of MNA is extraordinary.
Speaker 3: Today you see Vodaphone up four point two percent. These
Speaker 3: are the ADRs traded here in the United States of
Speaker 3: what is European telecom juggernaut that's looking to tie up
Speaker 3: its Italian unit with that of Iliad in France as well.
Speaker 3: To keep an eye on that particular coming together and
Speaker 3: Italian coordination. I'm looking at Coupang, South Korean e commerce
Speaker 3: company looking to basically save a down and out UK
Speaker 3: one far Fetch. It was one of the pin ups
Speaker 3: of the UK space at IPO five years ago. It
Speaker 3: did incredibly well during COVID and then well didn't manage
Speaker 3: to make the jump. And it seems that as though
Speaker 3: those that are holders of far Fetch are going to
Speaker 3: be wiped out by.
Speaker 5: This particular deal.
Speaker 3: Five hundred million dollars of bridge loans going in Coupang
Speaker 3: basically teaming up with another company to be able to
Speaker 3: buy this company out of an administration. It's down some four
Speaker 3: percent on the purchase news Lumina one point eight percent higher.
Speaker 3: This is as they are forced to divest of its grail.
Speaker 3: This has called a cancer technology company that it bought.
Speaker 3: And look, once again, US really feeling that they had
Speaker 3: to not go forward with this particular bit of M
Speaker 3: and A even though they fought hard.
Speaker 5: They are divesting of that particular acid ed.
Speaker 4: All right, let's get it a deep dive now on
Speaker 4: generative AI and what's actually happened so far in the
Speaker 4: world of AI. Joining us now is Mayland Thompson, Big Vic,
Speaker 4: Amazon Web Services vice President. It's great to have you
Speaker 4: back on the program. And what I want to get
Speaker 4: into is detail. You know, I talked a lot this
Speaker 4: year about Amazon Aws Bedrock. What's being offered now that
Speaker 4: the year is coming to close, myl what is the
Speaker 4: one thing that most customers have come to you and
Speaker 4: asked for.
Speaker 12: Customers all over the world, as you know, are looking
Speaker 12: to deploy generative AI at scale, but they want to
Speaker 12: do it responsibly, they want to do it safely, and
Speaker 12: so that really comes.
Speaker 5: Down to your data.
Speaker 12: What is the data driving your business today and how
Speaker 12: can you put that data to work as well as
Speaker 12: how can you do it securely responsibly by default. And
Speaker 12: that is just top of mind for CEOs all over
Speaker 12: the world, no matter what industry they're in.
Speaker 4: But is that specifically them saying, Okay, we want to
Speaker 4: use because we can access all kinds of third party models,
Speaker 4: or because it's a place they can build their own.
Speaker 12: I think the first reason why customers come to Amazon Bedrock.
Speaker 1: Is about choice.
Speaker 12: There's not going to be one model that every single
Speaker 12: customer is going to use. In fact, what we're seeing
Speaker 12: that customers are doing today is they're actually using a
Speaker 12: lot of different models for different purposes.
Speaker 5: I'll give you an example.
Speaker 12: Adobe launched a generative pill in Photoshop back in May,
Speaker 12: and generative phil is normously popular with creatives. That's actually
Speaker 12: the most used feature of Photoshop. In fact, it's been
Speaker 12: adopted ten times faster than any other feature in Photoshop history.
Speaker 12: And Adobe built that on AWLS, and they built it
Speaker 12: using a variety of different models, large language models and
Speaker 12: foundation models, one of which they built themselves. And so
Speaker 12: when customers come and they use Amazon Bedrock, they're coming
Speaker 12: to Amazon Bedrop for choice, the ability to use the
Speaker 12: latest language and foundation models. The ones that we added
Speaker 12: just recently are Anthropics claud two point one as well
Speaker 12: as med Islama two and be able to take those
Speaker 12: leading models and use the tooling in Amazon Bedrock to
Speaker 12: deploy generative AI applications really quickly and securely on as
Speaker 12: you say, and their own custom data, their data sets
Speaker 12: that are at work today for their enterprises.
Speaker 3: How price sensitive are these customers at the moment, Minn
Speaker 3: Because we enter this period of AI exuberance at a
Speaker 3: time of economic realities where companies need to cut costs
Speaker 3: in many ways.
Speaker 1: Well, I think.
Speaker 12: Cost is always going to be front and center of
Speaker 12: any large scale deployment, and that's what customers are really
Speaker 12: trying to do with generative AI. They're trying to use
Speaker 12: generative AI not just to transform their customer experiences. For example,
Speaker 12: into it, which has over one hundred million small business
Speaker 12: and consumer customers today, into It rolled out something called
Speaker 12: assist in all of their into it portfolio. So if
Speaker 12: you're using quick books, you can use assist. If you're
Speaker 12: turning your mind to taxes right after the holiday season
Speaker 12: with turbo tax, you can use a cyst uh. And
Speaker 12: when you have customers that want to transform their customer
Speaker 12: experiences or use it to improve their internal productivity, they're
Speaker 12: gonna think about cost. And I think that is one
Speaker 12: of the reasons why, you know, when we build our
Speaker 12: generative AI capabilities, we're also building at all of our
Speaker 12: three layers, the foundational layer, that middle layer that we
Speaker 12: call Amazon bedrock, which is image AI services, and we're
Speaker 12: building capabilities called like EC two capacity blocks and easy
Speaker 12: two capacity blocks work much the way that you reserve
Speaker 12: a hotel room with different beds, except with EACY two
Speaker 12: capacity blocks, you're reserving s uh GPUs. You're reserving hundreds
Speaker 12: of GPUs for when you need it in the future,
Speaker 12: and then once you're done using it, you can dial
Speaker 12: all those back because you want to save on cost.
Speaker 3: Man, I know you're a thoughtful person when it comes
Speaker 3: to ultimately humanity. At the same time as working within
Speaker 3: technology or someone who thinks a lot about Asians and
Speaker 3: Amazon you're sponsoring women within technology, and therefore, I'm sure
Speaker 3: you're thinking about the implications of AI II more broadly.
Speaker 3: And to that end, when you are thinking about companies
Speaker 3: cutting costs, how do you feel about the fact that
Speaker 3: we're going to either be or menting humanity or indeed
Speaker 3: perhaps putting a few out of jobs.
Speaker 5: Is that something that you talk about a lot within
Speaker 5: the business.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I think.
Speaker 12: The world wants to be responsible in how we're using AI.
Speaker 12: For me personally, Carolin, I'm very excited about generative AI
Speaker 12: because for me, it levels the playing field for data literacy.
Speaker 12: It brings everybody, as it were, to the data table today.
Speaker 12: You know, if you think about it, the way we
Speaker 12: make sense of our world is often with numbers, and
Speaker 12: we use spreadsheets, and we use data queries. But there's
Speaker 12: a lot of people out there who don't have exposure
Speaker 12: to those technologies early on. And with generative AI, you
Speaker 12: can take a query and you can turn it into
Speaker 12: a question, spoken question, and then to a spoken conversation.
Speaker 12: And so for me, I am very excited about the
Speaker 12: idea of generative AI rolling out kind of unleashing the
Speaker 12: human potential that is everywhere by making the s the
Speaker 12: native intelligence of people and unlocking that uh, you know,
Speaker 12: frankly with the data using generative AI.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 12: In order to do this at scale, AWS is all
Speaker 12: about being at scale. We've been doing AWS cloud services
Speaker 12: now for just about eighteen years.
Speaker 11: Uh.
Speaker 12: We have to be able to do it responsibly. We
Speaker 12: have to be able to do it in a way
Speaker 12: where you know, one of the top three data challenges
Speaker 12: that you know I I hear from customers when I
Speaker 12: talk to them, is you know, like, how can I
Speaker 12: be my own best auditor today? This is a major
Speaker 12: initiative right now, right like the world of regulation has
Speaker 12: no yet arrived and generative AI, but you know it will,
Speaker 12: you know it will.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 12: And so what we do is we try to think about,
Speaker 12: you know, how can we build that capability that audit
Speaker 12: trail into our AWS UH managed AI solutions like Amazon
Speaker 12: Bedrock by default. So if you're using Amazon Bedrock, as
Speaker 12: over ten thousand customers are, uh, you are able to
Speaker 12: get an audit trail for not just your user interactions
Speaker 12: with the model, but also how is the model making decisions?
Speaker 12: And that audit trail is logged and available for your
Speaker 12: use for any type of compliance you need, and it's
Speaker 12: using the same services that customers like Finrara use. They
Speaker 12: use AWS cloud Trail, which is UH for for audit logging,
Speaker 12: and they use it for their own compliance. That is
Speaker 12: built by default into Amazon Bedrock. Because we know the
Speaker 12: world wants to be responsible. But Caroline is one thing
Speaker 12: to want to be responsible, another thing to be responsible
Speaker 12: once and twice, once or twice, but it's the third thing.
Speaker 1: It's the next level to.
Speaker 12: Be responsible by default, to be responsible in an automated way,
Speaker 12: and that's what we're building into our AI services my lan.
Speaker 4: Last month, Adam joined me on the program to talk
Speaker 4: about next gen trainingum Trainium two, but also the deeper
Speaker 4: relationship with Nvidia. In the three weeks that have followed,
Speaker 4: can you give us any granular detail on how selective
Speaker 4: customers have been and how deeply they think about which
Speaker 4: silicon their workloads are being trained on.
Speaker 12: Well, fundamentally, customers want choice, and for us, we've had
Speaker 12: over thirteen years of a deep partnership with Nvidia, which
Speaker 12: is going to continue into the next year. We've announced
Speaker 12: how the Nvidia Grace Happer superchip is going to be
Speaker 12: offered through AWS. It's gonna be in a graded with
Speaker 12: our AWS Nitro security and virtualization system. But customers are
Speaker 12: about choice, and we have been building our own custom
Speaker 12: silicon now since twenty eighteen. We have four generations of
Speaker 12: Graviton chips. We have two generations of inferance and machine
Speaker 12: learning trips as well, and.
Speaker 1: So our goal is.
Speaker 12: To give AWS customers whatever choice they want, whether it's
Speaker 12: using our partnership that we've had with an Nvidia for
Speaker 12: their choices, or to use our custom silicon, which we
Speaker 12: think gives the best price for performance as well as
Speaker 12: the right energy savings energy efficiency that we know the
Speaker 12: world wants as well.
Speaker 3: Just at the forefront of everything we've been discussing throughout
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three.
Speaker 5: It's a joy to catch up with you. Thank you
Speaker 5: for joining the show.
Speaker 3: Maylan Thompson Quick of course of Amazon Web Services. Meanwhile
Speaker 3: coming up that we're going to be continuing the conversation
Speaker 3: on AI and discuss some of the ethical implications the
Speaker 3: ethical concerns of the technology. Alex Hannan, director Research of
Speaker 3: the Distributed AI Research, going to be joining the show
Speaker 3: as the Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 4: Earlier in the program, we discussed concerns regarding AI's impact
Speaker 4: on minorities and marginalized communities. I want to continue that
Speaker 4: conversation and bring in Alex Hanner, director of research at
Speaker 4: the Distributed Ai Research Institute, whose work centers on the
Speaker 4: data use in new computational technologies and the way in
Speaker 4: which these datas exacerbate racial, gender, and class inequality. That
Speaker 4: Bloomberg report looked at in Nvidia, and one element of
Speaker 4: that was an analysis of Nvidia's workforce seven point eight
Speaker 4: percent of the workforce being Black, Hispanic or other races
Speaker 4: as a percentage of their totals workforce, but that ranks
Speaker 4: them very low in Vidia, as Caroline caused the picks
Speaker 4: and shovels of the AI story this year, But basically
Speaker 4: the compute behind everything that's happen and what do you
Speaker 4: make therefore that data analysis that Bloomberg put together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that was a fascinating story, and it's
Speaker 2: something that's prevalent within the industry, especially in companies that
Speaker 2: are doing work in AI. Google, Microsoft, Meta, all the
Speaker 2: big tech firms focusing on AI development. There is a
Speaker 2: complete and epidemic of just the inability to really hire
Speaker 2: and retain Black, Latin X and minority talent, and that
Speaker 2: has big repercussions for the way that these things are developed.
Speaker 2: As a story that was mentioned earlier mentioned there are
Speaker 2: huge problems and disparities on facial recognition technologies, but also
Speaker 2: things like voice recognition technologies, how particular minorities are represented.
Speaker 2: When we ask centertive AI particular things the biases in
Speaker 2: text image generation, they are really through the technologies, so
Speaker 2: that lack of diversity in the workforce gets reflected into
Speaker 2: how these models actually are used in what they produce.
Speaker 4: One of the questions I posted to our reporter is, well,
Speaker 4: what was the result of this reporting?
Speaker 1: What did Nvidia do?
Speaker 4: And we read in video's statement on the story several
Speaker 4: times earlier, but one of the answers was to de
Speaker 4: bias some of the models that they worked on. Does
Speaker 4: that work if they've already been trained and are in
Speaker 4: the public domain to go back and de bias them.
Speaker 4: How do you respond to that as a sort of fix.
Speaker 2: There's no actual way to completely de bias a model.
Speaker 2: People can test for it, and there are methods for auditing,
Speaker 2: for red teaming, for ensuring that it doesn't have sort
Speaker 2: of catastrophic sort of results, but there are always going
Speaker 2: to be biases. For instance, more recently there was some
Speaker 2: biases revealed in chat GPT and in metas stickered and
Speaker 2: AI where there is biases against Palestinians, where Mona Challabe
Speaker 2: the journalists for The Guardian that used to be for
Speaker 2: the working for the Guardian ask do Palestinians deserve freedom?
Speaker 2: And it said it's complicated, But when asking do Israelis
Speaker 2: deserve freedom said yes, everybody deserves freedom. So these biases
Speaker 2: can have a lot of testing, but they're always going
Speaker 2: to have problems down the line.
Speaker 3: I'm interested that we were just having a conversation with
Speaker 3: my line I've wrote aws really saying her perspective is
Speaker 3: that her clients are thinking, trying to think ahead of regulation,
Speaker 3: trying to think about compliance, governance, auditing, And you were
Speaker 3: just talking about red teaming in the way in which
Speaker 3: you can really stress test some of the underlying foundational
Speaker 3: models and indeed their application. Alex, are you finding that
Speaker 3: Corporate America cares enough about this?
Speaker 2: It's really hard to say, because the way that Corporate
Speaker 2: America focuses on it, they tend to really not release
Speaker 2: what the results of those stress tests are the kind
Speaker 2: of transparency that we have into data, into the red teaming,
Speaker 2: into the auditing that we're doing. That they're doing is
Speaker 2: pretty much a black box. We don't know what's actually
Speaker 2: going on behind the curtain. We see reports that Microsoft,
Speaker 2: Meta and different huge companies have disbanded their responsible AI teams,
Speaker 2: even though that they're turning around and also say they
Speaker 2: have a commitment to AI ethics, and if they don't
Speaker 2: have any kind of transparency into what's happening at those companies,
Speaker 2: it's hard for other people, people like there or other
Speaker 2: types of auditors.
Speaker 1: We're done an auditor, but.
Speaker 2: There are many different types of auditors out there. There's
Speaker 2: no way to actually get in there and actually see
Speaker 2: what they're doing in any kind of transparent way. So
Speaker 2: the research community doesn't have the visibility. External auditors don't
Speaker 2: have this visibility, and so it's really hard to see
Speaker 2: if we can take them at their word.
Speaker 3: The question keeps something one that we will have to
Speaker 3: address in twenty twenty four, and for now, we thank
Speaker 3: you for helping us address a somewhat twenty three. Alex Hannah,
Speaker 3: great to have you back on the show. Director of
Speaker 3: Research at the distributed AI research institute.
Speaker 5: Bluestone Equity Partners.
Speaker 3: You know it for its investments in sports media technology
Speaker 3: the Intersection, and its latest investment is going to be
Speaker 3: delivering growth in the world of sports entertainment. How you
Speaker 3: consume it? With its aipowered video editing software, heitch talkers
Speaker 3: through it. Bobby Sharma is founding and managing partner at
Speaker 3: Bluestone Equity Partners. Bobby, You've got plenty of expertise having
Speaker 3: sort of help steer the growth and fortunes of plenty
Speaker 3: of sports outlook and develop the world's of cricket, basketball,
Speaker 3: and many others. What about this video editing is it
Speaker 3: video Verse? How are they going to be making our
Speaker 3: consumption of it totally different?
Speaker 1: So?
Speaker 13: Video Verse is the company. It's founded in India and
Speaker 13: based here in the US, California. Their flagship product is
Speaker 13: called Magnify, and what it does is it leverages artificial intelligence,
Speaker 13: computer vision, and machine learning to automate in real time
Speaker 13: the development of I should say, the curation of short
Speaker 13: form content and highlights from live and long form content
Speaker 13: like sports and even news.
Speaker 3: I can see the application for our particular industry, the
Speaker 3: amount that we need to be putting out long form conversations,
Speaker 3: finding the most pithy bit, putting it onto our social media,
Speaker 3: and they're like, where is the uptic coming from? When
Speaker 3: it's born out of India in America, where is the
Speaker 3: client engagement?
Speaker 13: So video Verse and works with clients such as Champions League,
Speaker 13: the Indian Premier League, the massive success story that is
Speaker 13: something my former colleagues at IMG where I spent four
Speaker 13: years building professional sports leagues around the world, architected for
Speaker 13: the Cricket Federation. They work with Wimbledon, the US Open,
Speaker 13: the Australian Open, even NCAA basketball and large Division one
Speaker 13: athletic conferences at schools here in the US. Well, what
Speaker 13: they do is essentially bring down the cost basis for
Speaker 13: something that historically required a tremendous amount of human labor
Speaker 13: and time and something that required otherwise from their nearest
Speaker 13: competitor presently expensive data feeds, so they're able to cost
Speaker 13: effectively and time efficiently put out highlights in real time
Speaker 13: to social media. The AI technology also gives an ability
Speaker 13: to search content, video and demand type content for objects, images, plays, sounds, actions,
Speaker 13: So there's a whole host of video editing functions that
Speaker 13: are otherwise time and cost inefficient at this point that
Speaker 13: an applied AI technology like this will help solve.
Speaker 1: Bobby.
Speaker 4: There is no greater agony when you're a sports fan
Speaker 4: than when you are not watching a game. You're somewhere,
Speaker 4: it doesn't matter where, maybe your mother in law's for
Speaker 4: dinner or a show, and you know what's happened, but
Speaker 4: you can't see the highlight.
Speaker 1: But here's my question for you.
Speaker 4: Does the platform choose what's important in the highlight or
Speaker 4: is it still a human saying this is important, but
Speaker 4: the process of editing is automated.
Speaker 13: I think that's the biggest differentiator between video Verse and
Speaker 13: its flagship Magnify and its nearest competitor. There's a human
Speaker 13: element involved with other existing cutting edge technology that this circumvents.
Speaker 13: It's fully automated and through the machine learning that AI
Speaker 13: technology can drive the automatic curation and distribution of those highlights.
Speaker 13: So instead of waiting minutes or hours for that highlight,
Speaker 13: it will happen within seconds. So and again you can
Speaker 13: imagine the joy that can bring not just to you,
Speaker 13: but generationally. Gen Z gen Z Plus, which has increasingly
Speaker 13: becoming a larger and larger segment of the act audience
Speaker 13: in a way for sports properties to stay relevant as
Speaker 13: their traditional fan bases are starting the age. That's the
Speaker 13: only way they consume a lot of sports and entertainment.
Speaker 13: So this is important as a matter of fan engagement
Speaker 13: as much as it is to inform you about what happened.
Speaker 13: And in some cases it'll be creating fans and monetizing
Speaker 13: different avenues that didn't even exist before.
Speaker 3: Well, there an investment coming out of that three hundred
Speaker 3: million fund.
Speaker 5: I love talking about it.
Speaker 3: Abishama, founder and managing partner over at Bluestone Equity Partners.
Speaker 5: You thank you for your time.
Speaker 3: I mean, and I'm sure you weren't trying to insinuate
Speaker 3: your wife and your mother in law.
Speaker 5: Don't minu watching some sort.
Speaker 4: Of for example that this week, of all weeks, I
Speaker 4: will live to regret. That does it For this edition
Speaker 4: of Bloomberg Technology Massive, Massive week Ahead, don't forget to
Speaker 4: recap on the pod. Thanks for listening from San Francisco,
Speaker 4: New York City. This is Bloomberg