Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. You're listening to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: All right, there's something we really want to get to
Speaker 2: and we've been looking forward to it, and this has
Speaker 2: to do with nuclear power, energy demand meeting the increased demand.
Speaker 2: Let me throw out some statistics.
Speaker 3: Let's hear.
Speaker 2: I'm Carol us. Demand for electricity will surge almost sixteen
Speaker 2: percent over the next five years, more than triple the
Speaker 2: estimate from one year ago, driven by new data centers
Speaker 2: and factories that are going to sec up power. This
Speaker 2: is according to the energy consulting group Grid Strategies.
Speaker 3: Tim.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this has been on top of your mind because
Speaker 4: you moderated this panel at the Nuclear Energy Institute's Financing
Speaker 4: Institute to talk all about that power demand and where
Speaker 4: the supply will come from and the role that nuclear
Speaker 4: energy is helping to meet that demand. You've kind of
Speaker 4: been like, not stop talking about nuclear power. It was
Speaker 4: really where were you ten years ago?
Speaker 5: It was a really fun conversation. All Right, all right,
Speaker 5: I'm a little slow to the party.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: What I'm saying is the tone has shifted so much
Speaker 4: just in the last decade.
Speaker 2: It's remarkable, and really I would say a lot of
Speaker 2: momentum in the last year or year and a half,
Speaker 2: especially because of the AI demands with us from Washington, DC.
Speaker 5: Is the president and CEO of ANYI.
Speaker 2: It's the Nuclear Energy Institute is Maria korsnik Anyi by
Speaker 2: the way, the lobbying arm of the nuclear power industry.
Speaker 5: Maria, thanks for your patience.
Speaker 2: Newsflow does not stop, as you well know, including in
Speaker 2: your industry. What is the nuclear energy industry preparing for
Speaker 2: over the next few years and be as specific as
Speaker 2: you can, because I think time frame is important here.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Well, thank you Carol for having me, and again thank
Speaker 6: you for participating in our finance conference.
Speaker 7: We just saw each other a few days ago in
Speaker 7: New York City. Let me just get right to your point.
Speaker 6: Right in the next two years, we're expecting at least
Speaker 6: four grid scale applications for four different sites, a handful
Speaker 6: of microreactor applications, life sites with construction activities in flight,
Speaker 6: and two microreactor startups.
Speaker 7: So when I say that.
Speaker 6: Nuclear is moving, I just want you to feel that
Speaker 6: not only is the R and D which we were
Speaker 6: going to be very thankful to our national labs have
Speaker 6: brought a lot of different ideas to the marketplace, but
Speaker 6: you're actually now seeing it go into site applications and
Speaker 6: construction applications to get things moving.
Speaker 4: What do you say, what would you say is the
Speaker 4: difference between the Biden administration's approach to nuclear energy versus
Speaker 4: the Trump administration's approach nuclear energy? How did things change
Speaker 4: in January?
Speaker 7: So that's interesting.
Speaker 6: You know, this is maybe one of the only things,
Speaker 6: but one of the very few things that gets bipartisan support.
Speaker 6: And interesting if you think about nuclear right and you say, hey,
Speaker 6: well it's very reliable. You know, it's clean, it's carbon free,
Speaker 6: it has jobs. You know, like there's enough in there
Speaker 6: to love on both sides of the aisle. On the
Speaker 6: Democrat side, you're going to get it more for the
Speaker 6: carbon free aspect of it. On the Republican side, you're
Speaker 6: going to get it more for the energy security, national security,
Speaker 6: high reliability of the energy source.
Speaker 7: And both sides love the jobs.
Speaker 2: So talk to a little bit more about the build out,
Speaker 2: you know, you kick things off with, you know, things
Speaker 2: that are happening now. I feel like from the conversation
Speaker 2: and listening at the event last week that realistically, a
Speaker 2: lot of folks said, when we really think about nuclear energy,
Speaker 2: while the US is active, that it's still a very
Speaker 2: small portion of our electricity generation, right in terms of
Speaker 2: a power provider, that that build out might be eight
Speaker 2: to ten years away. You're in it, you're talking to
Speaker 2: the players that are in it. What is the realistic
Speaker 2: timeframe that it is a substantial or more substantial part
Speaker 2: of a generation of power here in the United States.
Speaker 6: So today nuclear is about twenty percent, just under twenty
Speaker 6: percent of the general and so I would say, you know,
Speaker 6: that's a significant portion. But to your point, let's talk
Speaker 6: about all of that demand. And you mentioned earlier the
Speaker 6: AI demand that's really getting into the marketplace.
Speaker 7: But you know, it's not just AI, it's.
Speaker 6: Also ensuring, manufacturing, it's also you know, the fact that
Speaker 6: you want to build out the clean energy supply that
Speaker 6: we have today. And so all of that together is
Speaker 6: really driving this demand much higher than what we had
Speaker 6: imagined even just a few years ago. The next few years,
Speaker 6: you're going to see ones and twos of things built,
Speaker 6: think pilot projects over.
Speaker 7: The next few years.
Speaker 6: And I think in the twenty thirties and the twenty forties,
Speaker 6: a very significant buildout. And I want to add it's
Speaker 6: not just a buildout in the United States. The conversation
Speaker 6: we're having about nuclear it's happening around the globe.
Speaker 5: Well, and why is it so important?
Speaker 2: Because yeah, that is something certainly that came up at
Speaker 2: your vent last week that you know, look at Europe,
Speaker 2: look at France, look at China, look at various nations
Speaker 2: in terms of their percentage of power generation being larger
Speaker 2: than what it is in the United States.
Speaker 7: If the US.
Speaker 5: Doesn't have a role in this area, what does that mean?
Speaker 7: Yeah, so let's just try that on for size.
Speaker 6: Who is interested in building a lot of commercial nuclear
Speaker 6: Russia and China, and they're not only interested in building
Speaker 6: it in their own country. Today right now Russia is
Speaker 6: building nuclear plants in ten other countries.
Speaker 7: And why is that.
Speaker 6: Well, it wasn't too long ago where we saw Russia
Speaker 6: turn off the gas supply to Europe. So I would
Speaker 6: tell you there's a geopolitical strategy on some countries that
Speaker 6: would like to control other countries energy supply, and why
Speaker 6: should we fall for that? So we have fantastic technology,
Speaker 6: we have the ability to really help our allies and
Speaker 6: in that way, we protect them from this kind of behavior.
Speaker 6: And you know, it would be sad to see this
Speaker 6: replicated in ten to twenty years we look back and say, oh,
Speaker 6: why do they have the power over commercial nuclear industry?
Speaker 6: Why do they have the power over all of these
Speaker 6: different countries. We shouldn't let ourselves get there. So from
Speaker 6: a national security perspective, from an energy security perspective, the
Speaker 6: United States needs to lead in commercial nuclear power.
Speaker 4: I think if you think about what happened over the
Speaker 4: last ten to fifteen years, there may have been some
Speaker 4: concern about nuclear stemming from the earthquake in Japan and
Speaker 4: what happened in the wake of Fukushima here in the
Speaker 4: US three Mile Island, and then of course Chernobyl back
Speaker 4: in the nineteen eighties. What would you say to somebody
Speaker 4: who's watching right now, who's listening right now, and says,
Speaker 4: you know what, I'm still not convinced this is a
Speaker 4: safe alternative.
Speaker 6: So I've been in the commercial nuclear industry for forty years.
Speaker 6: I'm a nuclear engineer. I visited Fukushima after the accident.
Speaker 6: I talked to the operators that were there. We brought
Speaker 6: all of the chief nuclear officers from Japan to the
Speaker 6: United States to meet with the chief nuclear officers here,
Speaker 6: very very intimate with exactly what went on there, and
Speaker 6: I can tell you with all assurances that the United
Speaker 6: States absolutely would.
Speaker 7: Not have a Fukushima style accident.
Speaker 6: I would also tell you, and I was just in
Speaker 6: a japan roundtable conversation earlier today, that the Japanese are
Speaker 6: restarting their plants and the Japanese are talking about building
Speaker 6: new nuclear plants. So the country that was most connected
Speaker 6: to that particular situation has also reassessed and value that
Speaker 6: nuclear can bring to them and their reliable energy and
Speaker 6: clean energy supply. I have worked at our nuclear plants
Speaker 6: and I would not hesitate to live next to any
Speaker 6: of the nuclear plants in the United States.
Speaker 7: They are very very safe technology.
Speaker 5: One thing though, I do want to ask you, though,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 2: The other thing is that it's complicated, and you know
Speaker 2: it comes up, you know, Maria, anytime we talk about
Speaker 2: nuclear energy. First of all, I do think about clientlimate
Speaker 2: change and the natural disasters, and so the placement of
Speaker 2: nuclear plants, whether it makes it more trickier in terms
Speaker 2: of whether or not they'll be resilient to climate change disasters.
Speaker 2: The other thing is nuclear waste. It feels like we
Speaker 2: still have not figured out a really long term solution
Speaker 2: to that. How do we think about that, because it
Speaker 2: hasn't really evolved in figuring that one out.
Speaker 6: So I would tell you from a nuclear waste perspective,
Speaker 6: it is safely stored wherever it is today. What you're
Speaker 6: mentioning is we haven't figured out a single place for
Speaker 6: us all to put our current used fuel in. And
Speaker 6: that's true. Other countries have. I just went to Finland
Speaker 6: last year. They opened up their deep geologic repository. We
Speaker 6: are more than capable of figuring this out. It's not
Speaker 6: a scientific problem. We have to just figure out where
Speaker 6: we would like to cite this and do so and
Speaker 6: do so safely. The other thing I would add is
Speaker 6: that I think very much in our future there's likely
Speaker 6: go to be reprocessing. Today we don't reprocess. I think
Speaker 6: tomorrow we will. And the thing that we call waste
Speaker 6: today it's a future resource, and it's going to be
Speaker 6: a fantastic opportunity to take that future resource and get
Speaker 6: more use out of it and then store what ultimately
Speaker 6: we don't need, and it'll be a small fraction of
Speaker 6: what we have today.
Speaker 4: It's interesting to hear that because we've had so many
Speaker 4: years to decide on and find a solution for this.
Speaker 4: But literally nobody wants this in their backyard. They don't
Speaker 4: want it at Yucka Mountain, they don't want it in
Speaker 4: other parts where if we can't find a place to
Speaker 4: put it, where do we put it?
Speaker 6: Well, actually, I think we're really going to change the equation.
Speaker 6: You know, your grandkids and their grandkids, they're going to
Speaker 6: look at this very differently. They're going to look at
Speaker 6: it as the resource that it is. I can tell
Speaker 6: you I know because I already have members that have
Speaker 6: businesses that are interested to my words, mind this use fuel.
Speaker 7: There's things in this use fuel that they would like
Speaker 7: to get.
Speaker 6: I would like to get because they're coming up with
Speaker 6: a probe that's going to go in outer space.
Speaker 7: So they're going to put a probe.
Speaker 6: And it's going to go deep down into the ocean,
Speaker 6: and there's things in this fuel that would be helpful
Speaker 6: to them. And if you think about space and us
Speaker 6: going other places, whether going to the Moon or we're
Speaker 6: going to Mars again, there's things in this that that
Speaker 6: can be helpful. There's companies that have already formed around
Speaker 6: trying to do the reprocessing equation, if you will, coming
Speaker 6: up with new ways to do that. We have a
Speaker 6: company that's part of any I today that is interested
Speaker 6: in inventing a new reactor.
Speaker 7: They're well on their way.
Speaker 6: They already want to use the used fuel as part
Speaker 6: of their fuel, so they are interested very much in
Speaker 6: taking used fuel and changing it to something that they
Speaker 6: can use. So I just want you to feel that
Speaker 6: the whole conversation around this thing that we call waste
Speaker 6: is very much changing. Is it going to change tomorrow, No,
Speaker 6: but you can see that it's evolving and that ultimately
Speaker 6: we're going to find sort of the best set for this.
Speaker 6: France reprocesses today. For example, Canada, just north of us,
Speaker 6: they've just landed on a long term repository. So again,
Speaker 6: I guess I just have confidence in US as a
Speaker 6: country that we're going to figure that out.
Speaker 5: All right, We're going to leave it on that note. Listen.
Speaker 2: So great to get some time for you with you,
Speaker 2: and it was really wonderful to be a part of
Speaker 2: your event. As Tim mentioned, I've been talking about it
Speaker 2: kind of NonStop in terms of the conversations. Maria Bwell
Speaker 2: Maria Korsenik. She's president and chief executive officer of ANYI.
Speaker 2: It's the Nuclear Energy Institute joining us on this Wednesday
Speaker 2: from DC.
Speaker 4: We're talking about the increased energy usage that we've seen
Speaker 4: a lot of that has to do with AI. Check
Speaker 4: out all the news about AI just in the last
Speaker 4: couple of days, Carol. Lots of headlines. Apple rolling out
Speaker 4: this five hundred and fifty nine dollars iPhone five hundred
Speaker 4: and ninety nine dollars excuse me, iPhone sixteen eight with
Speaker 4: an AI bid for growth. Microsoft unveiling AI tools that
Speaker 4: can create video game scenes that would normally have to
Speaker 4: be programmed and animated by a human. It's a model
Speaker 4: using data collected from Xbox gamers and their controllers.
Speaker 2: There's so much going on, and don't forget this comes
Speaker 2: after the big news earlier this week we talked about this.
Speaker 2: Mira Muradi, the former chief CTO over an Open Ai,
Speaker 2: launching a new AI startup. And then you had open
Speaker 2: ai co founder Ilias a Skiv raising more than a
Speaker 2: billion dollars for his startup at evaluation of over thirty
Speaker 2: billion dollars.
Speaker 4: Okay, lots of money going into this and g two.
Speaker 4: Patel is on top of all of it. He's Executive
Speaker 4: VP and Chief Product Officer at Cisco, where he's charged
Speaker 4: with making sure that Cisco's portfolio works in the world
Speaker 4: of AI. He joins us from Silicon Valley G two.
Speaker 4: Where do you see Silica see Cisco's place in this
Speaker 4: new world of AI?
Speaker 3: You know the way that we think about this. First
Speaker 3: LYE Carolynton, thank you for having me on the show.
Speaker 3: And you know, if you look at the way that
Speaker 3: the world is evolving right now, it's it's moving really fast.
Speaker 3: But if you look back at the gold Rush, think
Speaker 3: about Cisco's position over here is we're going to provide
Speaker 3: the infrastructure and the safety and security guard rail so
Speaker 3: that organizations can actually use AI scalably in the market.
Speaker 3: And if you think about a common sentiment that you
Speaker 3: have right now in the market, and we've done a
Speaker 3: study to actually prove this as well, there's an overwhelming
Speaker 3: majority of companies where the CEOs are very excited about
Speaker 3: the possibilities of AI, but virtually all of them feel
Speaker 3: very underprepared. In fact, the study that we did, we
Speaker 3: found that ninety seven percent of the CEOs that actually
Speaker 3: we're pushing AI projects that we're really excited about it.
Speaker 3: Only one point seven percent of them felt fully prepared,
Speaker 3: and I totally get it. I mean, this is a
Speaker 3: it's a very fast moving market. People have to kind
Speaker 3: of think differently, and so that's an area where we
Speaker 3: feel like, you know, having preparedness and infrastructure, making sure
Speaker 3: that safety and security don't become impediments for the adoption
Speaker 3: of AI, and having the skills gat get really addressed
Speaker 3: are the three big challenges that most organizations have that
Speaker 3: we at Cisco want to try to go out and
Speaker 3: help our customers.
Speaker 1: With see two.
Speaker 2: One thing I think about is, you know, there's the
Speaker 2: idea of move fast, break things, get it. There's also well,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, we want to see where the dust
Speaker 2: settles when it comes to AI a little bit because
Speaker 2: we're at this point two more than two years in
Speaker 2: of just the euphoria and the build and the spend,
Speaker 2: and now we want to see, Okay, what do we
Speaker 2: get for our money?
Speaker 5: Is there a little bit.
Speaker 2: Maybe of that going on that there are executives, especially
Speaker 2: if smaller mid sized companies, are saying we got to
Speaker 2: kind of hold off until we really understand how do
Speaker 2: we monetize this.
Speaker 3: Yeh. So if you take a step back and broadly,
Speaker 3: like if we like to take a look at what's
Speaker 3: happening in the market, there's only two kinds of companies
Speaker 3: that are going to exist in the market. There's a
Speaker 3: first kind, which is going to get highly dexterous with
Speaker 3: the use of AI, and the second which is going
Speaker 3: to be you know, struggling for relevance. Now, if you
Speaker 3: look at the great ones, majority of them are getting
Speaker 3: slowed down because of a few very foundational reasons. The
Speaker 3: first one is, you know, safety and security gets to
Speaker 3: be a big concern, especially for large regulated organizations. They
Speaker 3: want to make sure that they tread carefully on that front.
Speaker 3: And as you have things like deep seak and you know,
Speaker 3: the cost of models gets to be lower and lower,
Speaker 3: and the cost curve goes down precipitously, you're going to
Speaker 3: have more and more models that are out there. And
Speaker 3: these models, by definition are unpredictable, and we've found that
Speaker 3: it's pretty easy to jail break these models, and so
Speaker 3: that safety security concern is a real one. The second
Speaker 3: area is that people just aren't quite equipped for going
Speaker 3: out and making sure that the infrastructure is ready for AI.
Speaker 3: And then third one is this notion of skills, And
Speaker 3: if you think about skills, I personally believe that staying
Speaker 3: on the sidelines is not going to help you go
Speaker 3: up the learning curve. So you have to jump in.
Speaker 3: You have to jump in the frame and make sure
Speaker 3: that you're starting to take some projects and learn from
Speaker 3: those projects and have these practical experiences as a company
Speaker 3: so that you get a better feel, a better intuition
Speaker 3: of what's happening in AI and what it's going to
Speaker 3: take to succeed. But just staying on the sidelines, I
Speaker 3: think is a really bad strategy that's going to let
Speaker 3: others get ahead of you and you'll be left behind.
Speaker 4: One thing we'd love to hear from folks in your
Speaker 4: position who are interacting with customers each and every day
Speaker 4: is try to get an understanding of where demand is,
Speaker 4: who's buying, what house spend is. When it comes to it,
Speaker 4: what can you tell us about the environment right now.
Speaker 3: So there's no shortage of demand signal on AI right now.
Speaker 3: In fact, what's happening is there's a lot of money
Speaker 3: in from different parts of it that are going into AI.
Speaker 3: And then the question becomes, what are the use cases
Speaker 3: where AI is being used really well. So if you
Speaker 3: think about some of the really highly adopted use cases
Speaker 3: right now in large companies, software coding and software development,
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty five, you will actually be able to have,
Speaker 3: you know, a meaningful amount of your code for a
Speaker 3: mid level engineer that'll actually be done by AI. And
Speaker 3: so that's an area that's going to be hugely you
Speaker 3: know growing. The second area that we've seen a fair
Speaker 3: amount of movement and momentum on is this notion of
Speaker 3: a contact center agent. Each one of us, Carol and Tim,
Speaker 3: we all probably will spend about four to six weeks
Speaker 3: of our lifetimes on hold waiting for some agent when
Speaker 3: you call a company and they need to make sure
Speaker 3: that they actually solve your problem. That's an enormous waste
Speaker 3: of time for humanity at large. And I think there's
Speaker 3: going to be ninety to ninety five percent of these
Speaker 3: calls will be addressed with a voice agent that is
Speaker 3: going to be an AI agent, where you it'll sound
Speaker 3: just like waiting.
Speaker 4: Whatever, literally literally still waiting for that to happen.
Speaker 2: One that actually works and is I don't know, like
Speaker 2: I do feel like we've all gone through automated.
Speaker 4: Systems representative, representative, exactly representative, That's how I do.
Speaker 5: That's exactly right. So is it really going to be
Speaker 5: a very different experience.
Speaker 3: Well, I think one of the challenges that we've had
Speaker 3: if you think about, you know, calling an agent, and
Speaker 3: when you have something that's an automated agent, the reason
Speaker 3: it sounds so frustrating is it sounds like a robot
Speaker 3: and you can't interrupt it. It doesn't understand tonality, it
Speaker 3: doesn't understand expression, doesn't understand the emotion that the customer
Speaker 3: might be feeling. And so what you're now starting to
Speaker 3: see happen is these voice agents are getting so sophisticated
Speaker 3: that you can interrupt it its speed. It speaks at
Speaker 3: the speed that a human would be able to speak.
Speaker 3: You can redirect it, you can throw curveballs. It'll understand
Speaker 3: you your tone if you're frustrated. It's not going to
Speaker 3: ask you, you know, silly questions when you're frustrated about
Speaker 3: things that are like how's the weather, how are you feeling?
Speaker 3: Because that's not what the customer might might want to
Speaker 3: talk about. So those kind of dynamics will fundamentally change
Speaker 3: the take, create and adoption of this. So in the
Speaker 3: next two years, I assert that it'll probably be about
Speaker 3: eighty to eighty five percent of the inbound calls that
Speaker 3: come in will be able to be handled by an
Speaker 3: AI agent, and the ones that aren't handled by an
Speaker 3: AI agent, the AI agent will be smart enough to
Speaker 3: hand it off to a human agent with all the contexts,
Speaker 3: so you don't have to repeat your account number again,
Speaker 3: and you don't have to go out and you know,
Speaker 3: kind of restate your problem just the way that we
Speaker 3: actually feel right now. And that's what gets the frustration
Speaker 3: levels high. And I'm really hopeful about that that entire category.
Speaker 3: So that's the second category where you're seeing a fair
Speaker 3: amount of momentum, and then there's there's many more use
Speaker 3: cases and automated workflows that you'll start to just see
Speaker 3: get more and more proliferated throughout the entire corporate landscape.
Speaker 2: Well don't judge MET two, but I just started really
Speaker 2: playing with chat GPT and I came in and I
Speaker 2: was like kind of blown away.
Speaker 5: I came in one morning. I'm like, Tim, you've got
Speaker 5: to start playing what you're saying you.
Speaker 4: Soon you're gonna be paying two hundred bucks a month.
Speaker 4: For the agent future. I see it.
Speaker 5: Everything's a monthly faith.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you folks have tried out this operator.
Speaker 3: It is unbelievable what it can do.
Speaker 4: Because what's dollars a month version?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's the two hundred dollars a month version.
Speaker 3: And by the way, the interesting part is they're losing
Speaker 3: money on the two hundred dollars a month, which tells
Speaker 3: you the amount of impact and the amount of adoption rate.
Speaker 3: That is most people think it's bad. I think it's
Speaker 3: a really good sign for e because there's no shortage
Speaker 3: of people wanting to use this. They're solving a real problem.
Speaker 3: So you can, literally, Carol, tell this agent, Hey, I
Speaker 3: want to go out for a movie with my spouse
Speaker 3: tonight and I want to make sure that I can
Speaker 3: have dinner. Can you go find me a dinner reservation
Speaker 3: and I'll just do it for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, listen, come back soon. I really would like to
Speaker 2: continue this conversation with you.
Speaker 5: Really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: G Two Patel, executive vice president and chief product officer
Speaker 2: over at Cisco, joining us from Silicon Valley