Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stenovik on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: Well, there was a story on the Bloomberg Today was
Speaker 2: an analyst at with a note saying nothing is AI proof,
Speaker 2: but live sports may come close. And basically they're saying
Speaker 2: maybe sports as an asset and sports rights or something
Speaker 2: that maybe's protected from Ah.
Speaker 3: Well, absolutely, I mean continuing to appreciate. One of the
Speaker 3: most read stories was about a Sydney, Australia based fund
Speaker 3: manager who said, I'm not going to buy you know,
Speaker 3: nvideo and the chip makers of the data center operators,
Speaker 3: but I'm going to buy stuff that can't be broken
Speaker 3: by AI right. And he said it's a very small field.
Speaker 3: There's there's few things, you know, but there are things
Speaker 3: out there, all right.
Speaker 2: So we are so obsessed with AI right and how
Speaker 2: it's going to impact our world. So joining us to
Speaker 2: talk a little bit about it. From Menlo Park on
Speaker 2: Zoom is Bob Muglia. He's former CEO of Snowflake, the
Speaker 2: global infrastructure software company. He was there from twenty fourteen
Speaker 2: to twelve nine. Before that at Juniper Networks and then
Speaker 2: a Microsoft divisional president back in nine. He is a
Speaker 2: board director for a lot of companies, board memberships on Microsoft, Snowflake, Relation,
Speaker 2: AI and a few more. He's got a new book out.
Speaker 2: It's called The Data Datapreneurs, The Promise of AI and
Speaker 2: the Creators building our Future. And I apologize, Bob, I've
Speaker 2: had a hard time getting out. It's basically a play
Speaker 2: on data entrepreneurs. And I love the title. Welcome, Welcome,
Speaker 2: How are you good?
Speaker 1: I'm good. It's glad to be here down the Bayer
Speaker 1: this week, so it's fun. I'm normally up in Seattle,
Speaker 1: but I'm down the Beyer this week, so that's great.
Speaker 2: Are they talking a lot about AI in.
Speaker 1: The Bay Area? That's all they talk about down here?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: Rightfully?
Speaker 2: So from your vantage point, should we all be talking
Speaker 2: about AI? And how should we be talking about it?
Speaker 2: And of course I'm talking about machine learning, generative AI,
Speaker 2: kind of the next level, if you will.
Speaker 1: Well, I think it really has hit the vernacular of
Speaker 1: common people and it's become part of everyday lives with
Speaker 1: tools like jack GPT, and it's really just the beginning.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is going to affect us in a
Speaker 1: very deep way. I think we're going to see all
Speaker 1: sorts of wondrous things coming in the next couple of years.
Speaker 1: These assistants are copilots that are going to help us
Speaker 1: in a whole bunch of ways. Just about every application
Speaker 1: is going to be updated big, big time, lots of
Speaker 1: change in technology. It's the biggest thing I've ever seen
Speaker 1: in my career, actually.
Speaker 3: So, I mean, it's absolutely huge, and the co pilots
Speaker 3: are one of the things I'm most excited about for Microsoft.
Speaker 3: Do you think there's a killer app that we haven't
Speaker 3: seen yet or are there just so many uses that
Speaker 3: it will be hard to pin one down.
Speaker 1: Well, honestly, one of the killer apps is going to
Speaker 1: be searched, for sure, and you know we have an
Speaker 1: opportunity to see search truly reinvented with these answer bots
Speaker 1: that are being created. Bing was one of the first ones.
Speaker 1: There's a number of others out I have an investment
Speaker 1: in a small company called Perplexity that's in that space.
Speaker 1: But it's really the first time you've been able to
Speaker 1: take on Google, I'll say that for sure. I think
Speaker 1: the office is going to be tremendously updated. Really, just
Speaker 1: about every application is going to up be updated. I
Speaker 1: saw Salesforce made some major announcements a week or two ago.
Speaker 1: You're going to see just about every application updated. And
Speaker 1: you know company I ran for five years, Snowflake, is
Speaker 1: going to be making major announcements next week. Lots of
Speaker 1: stuff happening. So, yes, lots of apps. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's any one app. I think it's many apps
Speaker 1: that'll be that'll be will be killer apps.
Speaker 2: But Bob Bloomberg Business recovering in a story about Reddit,
Speaker 2: and basically it gets to a bigger question about who
Speaker 2: owns the data that is going to help make generative
Speaker 2: AI smarter? Right, that's crucial. What's your view on that.
Speaker 1: Well, there's an awful lot of data out there, and
Speaker 1: one of the things that that people are learning about
Speaker 1: with these generative AIS and these these machine learning programs
Speaker 1: is the quality of the data really matters. So I
Speaker 1: think you're going to see corporate data becoming very important,
Speaker 1: proprietary data becoming important assets that people are using. You know,
Speaker 1: public forms like Reddit and and lots of public forms
Speaker 1: that are out there. Those are all that's data that
Speaker 1: people are using. They may try and monetize it in
Speaker 1: some ways. I think you see you'll see people starting
Speaker 1: to do that if people have sources of public data.
Speaker 1: But in general, people are going to be using their
Speaker 1: data as a way of generating proprietary information. And what
Speaker 1: we haven't seen yet is this really break into the enterprise.
Speaker 1: And that's a tremendous opportunity over the next couple of years.
Speaker 2: Does this generative AI make different social media platforms more
Speaker 2: important than before? In other words, we were talking about
Speaker 2: kind of who's the top right place, right Matt in
Speaker 2: terms of social media? Does it kind of upend the hierarchy?
Speaker 1: If you will? It probably will over time. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's hard to say. It's hard to say. As I said,
Speaker 1: you know, I can see for the first time, you know,
Speaker 1: applications like search which have the opportunity to be disrupted,
Speaker 1: and I think social media will be different because you're
Speaker 1: going to want to have AI summarize things for you.
Speaker 1: One of the challenges with social media there's so much
Speaker 1: garbage on it. It'd be nice to have a bot
Speaker 1: be able to say what's interesting in that that happened today,
Speaker 1: And so perhaps the media company that does the best
Speaker 1: job of that may wind up in the best position.
Speaker 1: But we'll have to see to find out.
Speaker 3: I mean, Carol, how many emails do you get every day?
Speaker 2: Too many? I don't even read them literally, And.
Speaker 3: If I could have, I'm constantly typing eight nine go,
Speaker 3: eight nine go, which is spam and delete on the.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg, I don't even I don't even delete anymore because
Speaker 2: it would take so much time.
Speaker 3: It would be great if AI. That's one area in
Speaker 3: which I can't wait for AI. The one thing I
Speaker 3: bristlet a little bit, Bob, is when when Carol says
Speaker 3: make it smarter, I mean, it's not really getting smarter, right,
Speaker 3: that's a term that you use for a human and
Speaker 3: I think we.
Speaker 2: But it is becoming right, it's the use of it's different.
Speaker 1: It's the right word, the right word. Well, what do
Speaker 1: you do?
Speaker 3: You share the concerns voiced by people like Musk and
Speaker 3: uh you know open Ai, sam Altman about you know,
Speaker 3: somehow this program becoming smart enough to subjugate humanity like
Speaker 3: that seems to me to be a ridiculous and b
Speaker 3: kind of takes the responsibility away from the companies that
Speaker 3: are running these programs.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, we've as we've all grown up, we've
Speaker 1: been seen many dystopian science fiction things, Terminator being perhaps
Speaker 1: one of the most the most accomplished of all of those.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know how you can you can
Speaker 1: be much worse than Terminator was to humanity. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of there's a lot of of of literature
Speaker 1: and science fiction that goes into this. You know, in
Speaker 1: the short run, the real concerns are what people will
Speaker 1: do with AI. And people are going to do everything
Speaker 1: with AI, good, bad, and evil, and.
Speaker 2: As they do with social media, right, like they do with.
Speaker 1: Social media exactly, and and and AI can do some
Speaker 1: things faster than humans can, so there may be some
Speaker 1: new challenges, but it also can help to fight against
Speaker 1: those challenges too, And so you know, we'll see AI
Speaker 1: defending us against bad AI, good AI defending us against
Speaker 1: bad EI. In the short term, you know, the long
Speaker 1: term concerns about about existential issues about humanity are really
Speaker 1: about what will this intelligence get smarter than all of
Speaker 1: us and then become rogue and go against us. Now, honestly,
Speaker 1: I do think it's going to get smarter than all
Speaker 1: of us. It's on a path to basically be able
Speaker 1: to take the ideas and the intelligence of everybody in
Speaker 1: humanity and to put a lot of that together into
Speaker 1: a system that can be immediately trained and replicated and
Speaker 1: grow and things. So there is a lot of opportunity
Speaker 1: for this stuff to get smarter. But ultimately we will
Speaker 1: be creating whatever it is. And I've always been a
Speaker 1: believer that values will reign supreme in the end, and
Speaker 1: that while humanity does many things wrong, ultimately we come up.
Speaker 1: We never really screw it up that badly, and ultimately
Speaker 1: we'll make the right things happen. I think AI is
Speaker 1: going to do great things for all of us in
Speaker 1: the short and medium term and in the long term.
Speaker 1: Who knows what will happen. But I still have a
Speaker 1: very positive outlook. I'm definitely a techno optimist.
Speaker 3: I love your optimism, Bob. We need more of that,
Speaker 3: Let's get more.
Speaker 1: I also think it's it's important. Yeah, it's all about people.
Speaker 1: I mean, ultimately, the thing to realize is these these
Speaker 1: tools are being created by people, and we will do
Speaker 1: to it what we do with everything, And like I say,
Speaker 1: lots of great things and maybe some bad things too,
Speaker 1: but we'll we'll figure out how to control it and
Speaker 1: make it work.
Speaker 2: I think about healthcare like the ability because healthcare is
Speaker 2: far from even as we know. It's an old story unfortunately,
Speaker 2: But I think about the possibility if you've got something
Speaker 2: and there's no way the medical community can keep up
Speaker 2: with all the research that's out there, and so the
Speaker 2: ability to somehow use AI to figure out, Wait, what's
Speaker 2: your you know, ailment and your the nuances to it?
Speaker 2: And then here's the reason. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I just think it's so dangerous at first. Do you
Speaker 3: ever get a little bit sick of go on WebMD?
Speaker 3: Then like all of a sudden, you're dying.
Speaker 2: But that's not as smart as it could be, right
Speaker 2: bub Yeah, web.
Speaker 1: Md is Unfortunately, you go, you go on the web
Speaker 1: and you don't know, you know, you really know what
Speaker 1: you're looking for, and you see all sorts of nasty things.
Speaker 1: I'm dying.
Speaker 2: I'm always dying, to be quite honest.
Speaker 1: Talk about these co pilots. Think about it. Think about
Speaker 1: a physician's assistant copilot right that has access to all
Speaker 1: the latest medical research and can look at a scan,
Speaker 1: for example, and compare it to millions of other scans
Speaker 1: that have been done, and really, do you know, find
Speaker 1: things that people wouldn't be able to find? These co
Speaker 1: pilots are going to be incredibly helpful in medicine. It's
Speaker 1: one of the areas where we'll see some of the
Speaker 1: biggest advancements in the next five years.
Speaker 2: I'm going to have a co pilot here in the studio,
Speaker 2: mat Me. As much as I love you, I'm going
Speaker 2: to have a co pilot, and IM just.
Speaker 1: Going to tell you deserve one.
Speaker 2: He won't be as you know, entertaining probably or whatever.
Speaker 2: Still with us is Bob Mugley. He's former CEO of Snowflake,
Speaker 2: also at Juniper Networks Microsoft. He's got a new book
Speaker 2: ass called The Datapreneurs, The Promise of AI and the
Speaker 2: Creators Building Our Future. Still with us on Zoom from
Speaker 2: Menlo Park, California. And I promise, I bet if we
Speaker 2: have AI to revenge, they can say this titles, so
Speaker 2: forgive me. I do think it's interesting though, about the
Speaker 2: data entrepreneur that are out there kind of figuring this out.
Speaker 2: Bob right now, and I feel like your vantage point
Speaker 2: and having worked with some visionaries very early on, likea
Speaker 2: Bill Gates or even a Sam Altman, who is now
Speaker 2: increasingly because of Open AI become a household name. Take
Speaker 2: us back there, though, to maybe give us some insight
Speaker 2: of what that era was like, as we feel like
Speaker 2: we are embarking on a whole new kind of data era.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, the book The Datapreneurs is really about the
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs I've known that have made the data industry and
Speaker 1: today AI what it is. And the basic theory is
Speaker 1: that there's an arc of innovation that that has occurred
Speaker 1: really since the advent of digital computing, with continued new improvements,
Speaker 1: new technologies that have happened over time that have been
Speaker 1: advanced by these incredible people, and that has brought us
Speaker 1: to where we are today. And it has been this
Speaker 1: series of progressions. Back in the late eighties early nineteen
Speaker 1: nineties I worked very closely with Steve Steve Balmer and
Speaker 1: Bill Gates in the work on Windows, and back then
Speaker 1: there was a focus on something called information at your Fingertips.
Speaker 1: This was a vision Bill had come up with about
Speaker 1: how we would be able to find any information we
Speaker 1: wanted by just going to our PC and asking and
Speaker 1: running a query and asking a question if it really is.
Speaker 1: Back then, most people didn't even have email. Email was
Speaker 1: relatively new back then, the Internet had yet to be invented,
Speaker 1: and So this was a pretty novel concept. And while
Speaker 1: it didn't pan out the way Bill had anticipated it being,
Speaker 1: which was really a desktop centric, Windows centric view of
Speaker 1: the world, the Internet really changed that and really brought
Speaker 1: us information at your fingertips in every way we could
Speaker 1: have ever imagined. And now we have this incredible amount
Speaker 1: of information available to us, and in some senses, the
Speaker 1: largest problem we have is it's too much for us
Speaker 1: to digest and to really make sense of. And that's
Speaker 1: where AI can really help us, because it can go
Speaker 1: through a lot of that that data and turn it
Speaker 1: into information that is useful for us and and and
Speaker 1: and much much easier for us to consume. So it's
Speaker 1: been a it's been an ongoing trajectory. The world was
Speaker 1: very different back then. Uh, you know, I've often made
Speaker 1: the comment that I saw you know, I saw Microsoft
Speaker 1: from a from a bird's eye vantage point and got
Speaker 1: a chance to see it all. I've often said I
Speaker 1: saw the good, the bad, and the ugly at Microsoft.
Speaker 1: I was one of the twelve witnesses who was in
Speaker 1: front of Judge Jackson in the DJ case and David Boyce,
Speaker 1: and that certainly would qualify as the ugly in my opinion.
Speaker 1: But h and then I did penance on that for
Speaker 1: a couple of years afterwards, when when I kept going
Speaker 1: back to the Washington d C to clean up some
Speaker 1: of the last issues we had with protocol documentation on
Speaker 1: the DJ So I lived through all of that back then.
Speaker 2: What is there going to be a penance, if you will,
Speaker 2: or a similar tough time when it comes to AI.
Speaker 2: Is there going to have to be a very significant
Speaker 2: role by regulators in your view?
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, let me start by saying that
Speaker 1: that you know, the Microsoft case really created a lot
Speaker 1: of law and and and I think all the industry
Speaker 1: as a whole has learned a tremendous amount from the
Speaker 1: mistakes we made way back when, so they can avoid
Speaker 1: a lot of the challenges that we went through. You know,
Speaker 1: in terms of regulations for AI, there certainly will be
Speaker 1: some I think understanding what needs to be regulated is
Speaker 1: something that's still being considered. I think that there are
Speaker 1: areas where people taking AI and doing things with it
Speaker 1: that you know that are that are that that like
Speaker 1: deep fakes as an example, there may need to be
Speaker 1: some new laws associated with that, because if I understand
Speaker 1: correctly the laws that we have today don't necessarily fully
Speaker 1: cover the idea of somebody creating a complete image, a
Speaker 1: complete like image of a person and then having that
Speaker 1: image saying things that are just not true and clearly
Speaker 1: that that can't be allowed and we need to make
Speaker 1: sure that things like that are not permitted. So the
Speaker 1: laws will get updated somewhat. But actually most of the
Speaker 1: existing laws can be applied because people are behind these things.
Speaker 1: And if you can, if you can take it, look.
Speaker 2: That what happened with crypto right like it got met,
Speaker 2: it's gotten messy.
Speaker 1: Crypto is messy to begin with.
Speaker 2: Though it's true, that's true. That's but do you feel
Speaker 2: like you know what I'm saying that it feels like
Speaker 2: there was quite a lag in terms of regulatory oversight.
Speaker 1: Well, there always is going to be a lagged. There's
Speaker 1: always going to be a laged because technology will move
Speaker 1: faster than the government can ever move. And so we
Speaker 1: you know, we discover you know, the Sam Bankman freeds
Speaker 1: that happened. You know, that's that is something that that
Speaker 1: perhaps could have been caught. But now I think people
Speaker 1: have a clean, a keen eye to look for things
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 2: So I am curious. You're the kind of person that
Speaker 2: if I was going from New York to the West Coast,
Speaker 2: I'd love to be sitting on a plane with because
Speaker 2: I would pick your brain and probably drive you crazy.
Speaker 2: But having said that, what is when people know your background?
Speaker 2: What is the question that they ask you most? When
Speaker 2: it comes to our new world and our obsession. It
Speaker 2: feels like it almost euphoria when it comes to AI.
Speaker 2: What's the smart conversation too that we should be having?
Speaker 1: Well, I think the interesting question is that I keep
Speaker 1: hearing is what are the new innovations that are going
Speaker 1: to come about? What are the areas where applications are
Speaker 1: going to be transformed, and how is the technology going
Speaker 1: to transform it. One of the things we've learned in
Speaker 1: the last few months, which frankly wasn't clear in December
Speaker 1: or January, is that that this AI is going to
Speaker 1: be available to just about everyone at effectively zero cost you.
Speaker 1: It'll be advertising based in some ways, and services will
Speaker 1: come out that are available to consumers as a whole.
Speaker 1: And I think that you're going to have these services
Speaker 1: available to people really in all socioeconomic brackets. That's one
Speaker 1: area where it was not obvious a few months ago,
Speaker 1: and now it does seem to be clear. We've seen
Speaker 1: an incredible explosion of development of new open source technology,
Speaker 1: so it's not just coming from the big boys. There
Speaker 1: was an initial thought that you had to have spent
Speaker 1: tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to build these
Speaker 1: these models. That is certainly still true. But what's happening
Speaker 1: is is that open source models are appearing that have
Speaker 1: a lot of that work already done that can then
Speaker 1: be customized. So the interesting question is where are these
Speaker 1: things are going to make a difference in the next
Speaker 1: few years. And I think you know you're going to
Speaker 1: see it in just about every application, and it's not
Speaker 1: just technology coming from Google and open AI and Microsoft
Speaker 1: that'll make it happen.
Speaker 2: Love this, come back anytime and open invitation, no doubt
Speaker 2: about it. Really appreciate it and good luck with the book.
Speaker 2: Bob Muglia. He is the former CEO of Snowflake. As
Speaker 2: we said, the datapreneurs, the promise of AI and the
Speaker 2: creators building our future. It's a new book, it's out.
Speaker 2: Check it out, so relevant to what's going on right now.
Speaker 2: On zoom from Menlo Park, California. Bob again, thank you
Speaker 2: so much. You're listening to Bloomberg BusinessWeek, watching us as well.
Speaker 2: I'm Carol Masser along with Matt Miller, and this is
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: M