The AI Debate | Oil, Inflation and Europe’s Energy Squeeze

Liz, do you think it is tenable for anyone to be able to step in on something that's so mammoth and so international and so global? Is it even tenable that there could be a single regulator that could put the brakes on this?

Well, I mean, I think sometimes we can treat AI as if it's like a storm crossing the Atlantic, as if it's some sort of exogenous independent force in the universe.

And what it is right now, at least, is a series of products which are being developed by private companies who are in a race to beat each other within a geopolitical context of where one country is trying to beat another country.

And the whole thing is built on a lot of hype.

It's built on a lot of FOMO.

And we're seeing, at the moment, the EU, who does have an AI Act that had passed in the last few years, probably the one hope on the planet, if we were to say, to have rational rights-based governance of AI.

It has so bought itself into this hype that it's currently kind of unwinding and undoing the AI Act through simplification, which is definitely not a synonym.

It's a synonym they keep telling us for deregulation.

It's completely different.

It's just simplifying a lot to make it apply less.

Coincidentally,

it also kind of finds more favor with the tech giants involved in

this.

Yeah.

But this is a series of products.

And you have to think, who do narratives benefit? And the narrative that, wow, these three big boys have gotten together and agreed something.

And look, they're suing each other.

And isn't this really transformative? we have three company owners who are highly leveraged they're in debt up to their eyeballs right they're getting objections to building out the infrastructure that they need and interest rates are rising and if you know if you look at like you you know um peter can tell us all of this stuff but if you look at the kind of the basic fundamentals of the stock they are massively overpriced So those companies coming out and saying, well, we're going to agree to start just for humanity.

We're just doing this for the good of humanity.

It has nothing to do with the fundamentals of our industry.

Peter, fundamentals of the industry or are they genuinely trying to save the

earth? Any major PLC in the world, the chief executive reports to the board who reports to shareholders and it's about the share price.

It's all about the share price.

So the concept that they'll actually pull back here, which would damage the share price, I can't see that happening at all.

So it's full speed ahead.