The Global Race for AI Adoption

The context here, Victoria, is one of the AI action plan announced by the US government really to take on China and the AI race that the US wants to win. From a regulatory perspective, how do you think the US is winning or not? So, um I think there's a lot of good that's in the AI action plan, but here is one part. You know, there's a lot of conversation about who's going to win the AI race, and a lot of that focus is on who's going to be at the cutting edge of innovation, and that is obviously important, but a conversation that is just starting to happen that I think is will potentially have an even bigger impact is who is going to win the race on AI adoption. By that, I mean, which are the countries that are going to figure out how to use AI best because it is those countries that are going to see the biggest economic benefit from AI. that is the race and that is that is largely up for grabs right now. I think the United States has an advantage there and I think the AI action plan has a number of aspects that are focused on adoption. Um but that race is up for grabs and I think that is going to be a big indicator of where we see the biggest economic benefit over the next decade. So enough focus therefore from your perspective on AI adoption on training talent to ensure that in enterprise we're actually getting bang for our buck productivity actually goes up and to the right. So there are a few aspects that I think are critical to AI adoption. Um and actually at BSA we released an agenda just before the AI action plan came out earlier last week that focuses on three aspects. One is talent and workforce and that is that is critical. I think there's no aspect more essential. The second is infrastructure and data. And the third is the governance framework and making sure that we get that right. And those three elements are things that the United States but governments around the world need to be figuring out right now if they are going to win the race on AI adoption. Victoria, last week on the program, Michael Katzios, who leads the the Office of Science and Tech at the White House, came on and he talked about um packages that he sees America being a net exporter of everything in the stack from hardware through to to the models themselves. You were talking about adoption a moment ago. How does America as an exporter of AI fit into that? >> I think that's a critical piece. So a lot of the innovation is happening here in the United States for governments to be able to adopt AI to have their private sector using AI in a way that they get the most economic benefit. A big piece of that is going to be um AI exportation from the United States. And there was, you know, conversation last week about the data centers and the chips, but obviously an important element of that is the software and the cloud services because it is literally not possible to adopt AI unless you have cutting edge cloud services, unless you have cutting edge software and a lot of that's going to be coming from right here in the United States. >> There was also a discussion about uh copyright and the president talked about this during his address. Given that you you kind of represent more the software side of the stack, how did you think about that? You know, Cara and I, it increasingly comes up in the show as a point of priority particularly for the frontier model or just model makers generally. >> It's a big issue. It's an issue here in the United States and in other markets as well. So um as you know in the white high in the AI action plan that was released last week um there's not a lot of discussion of the copyright issue specifically but um the president in his public remarks spoke to it quite forcefully in terms of the importance of training data and for the AI LLM builders to be able to get that training data and use it with relative ease. So he was very very clear on that aspect and that's something that we are anticipating seeing the White House say more about in the next year or so. But the president was very clear in terms of his opinion on the importance of training data and how important that is for the United States to stay ahead of the AI race with respect to China. >> Briefly, Victoria, today's a day we focus on the EU. It's smarting today in terms of competitiveness. They're worried about 15% tariff. how much should they be worried about their own EU AI act on competitiveness? >> So again, I think the the EU has huge potential opportunity to benefit from AI if it starts focusing on adoption and part of that is addressing some of the digital sovereignty barriers that the EU has put up. Um there are aspects of this trade deal as you know um the details of the trade deal are not yet fully public. Um, but Ambassador Greer was talking just this morning about looking at things like mutual recognition of cyber security, of streamlining regulations, of steps that Europe can take. And those steps are important not just for US software providers but for the EU if they are going to be able to adopt and use AI effectively.