Snap Earnings and Post-Pandemic Work Shifts

less done? That's what Ariana Huffington thinks, But new studies show productivity is best if employees have flexibility over when they work, not necessarily where. And artificial intelligence is creating a new type of artists with the explosion of apps like Dolly. Later this hour, oh, we've got the founder of the world's first talent agency for AI artists. For more on Snap in the future of social media, let's bring into Economy founder and editor in chief David Kirkpatrick,

as well as our own Kurt Wagner. So, David, big picture, what are your takeaways here? Well? I think the big picture is that the economy is getting worse faster than most of us had hoped, and in fact Snap is the first prominent victim. Unfortunately, we'll probably see more in the near future, Kurt, you know, walk us a little through, a little more through the numbers. You know, what are you seeing in here, and how does this compared to

what we've seen in the previous quarters. It was the slowest uh, you know, year over year revenue growth that we've ever seen from Snap, which is never never a sentence you want to say when you're talking about earnings. But I think the issue is that, you know, the it wasn't that far off of the streets expectations, but

I think those have already been depressed. Right There was already this feeling that it had been a really tough summer that a lot of the issues the war in Ukraine, certainly the Apple iOS changes had, you know, had a serious impact on the business. So I think this was considered a low bar for Snap to clear, which they didn't do. And as David just mentioned, this is a really terrible sign for sort of the rest of the digital advertising industry, which hasn't yet reported earnings, will in

the next couple of weeks. You know. It's just a sign that anyone who is trying to make money from UH digital ads right now and use your attention. They're really struggling for a number of reasons, and Snap, of course is the first that have to go. It's interesting, David, because you could look at what's happening with Meta trying to make this big pivot and Twitter in the middle of this legal drama as an opportunity for Snap, and

it's interesting that it hasn't necessarily been well. You know, Snap has the benefit of having a brilliant CEO who's at least very focused on the actual business he has, unlike Meta, and I have a lot of confidence in Evan Spiegel's ability to sort of surf this wave. On the other hand, it's it's like a tsunami that's hitting him in a way that he didn't expect um And you know it's weird because user growth was good, uh, revenue wasn't good, but you know, they still lost three

hundred and sixty million dollars. This company has never made money, and it's it's not I don't even know why they would do a share by back when they they're going to have to conserve cash going into this situation. Can you remind us of some of the innovative things that Evan Spiegel has been trying Kurt over the last year, you know, and he also has a sort of anti meta view on the metaverse, which is informing his strategy. Well, I'm with David in the sense that I think Evan

is a really smart person. Uh, and I think that as a product thinker, he's one of the best, right, I mean, he has been routinely copied by Mark Stuckerberg over at Facebook and Meta and and you know, he's constantly kind of coming up with new things. And he is also focused on augmented reality, similar to Mark Zuckerberg, but in a very different way. Right, He's trying to build that kind of stuff into the camera, into uh, something that people already have in their hands, versus sort

of like a metaverse idea that's still years off. But you know, some of the stuff they tried to do, they tried to build a subscription product, right, so they're not quite as reliant on advertising, kind of give people early access to new features. You know, they've talked about uh, Emily, you remember they've done spectacles. They're they're kind of building other augmented reality glasses that are that are not here yet but are coming. So you know, those are the

types of projects. I wonder if they'll continue to invest in They have started to pull back on anything that isn't directly related to revenue and user growth, and I think a r you know, while it's certainly something he's been passionate about for years, it does make me wonder if if they can continue to invest in that in the way he would like to, given everything that's going

on at the company right you know. Meantime, Meta had another another high profile executive leaving today, the vice president of corporate Development. And obviously, David, You've chronicled so many years of Meta and clearly we're moving into a new phase that I trust suit you know, surrounding the within

unlimited deal. Um you know, you know you you you used to see more kind of M and A in the social media space when there was turmoil and and uh, you know resizing if you will like this, but maybe in this environment we won't. Right if you're the M and A guy at Meta Facebook, you know, what are you gonna do right now if the government won't let you do anything of substance. Plus, I think it's it's increasingly the case that employees throughout Meta, including a lot

of the senior leaders are feeling somewhat disenchanted. I don't know if this is an example of that, but an awful lot of senior people have left that company and it must be very disheartening to work for a company with three and a half billion users whose CEO is thinking about something else. I gotta believe that is a problem for everybody at that company. Meantime, Kirk, can you give us an update on the Twitter situation. We did hear a little bit I'm Elon Musk yesterday on the

Tesla earnings call. You know, Twitter, Twitter's earnings, A car coming up pretty soon? How's that gonna work? Um? You know, give us the latest. Well, we think they're coming up soon. They haven't said an earnings date yet. I'm I'm wondering if they're just hoping that this whole thing gets closed before that they have to go through with that, right, because not only are they already projected I believe I saw I start projecting a revenue decline for them as well,

but you saw what just happened with Snap, Right. The last thing they want to do is have to to go through something like that publicly while they're still waiting for this deal to close. But as you mentioned, Elon Musk yesterday on Tesla's earnings, in my opinion, he said some stuff that that made me think this deal is going to happen, right he was Normally when he talks to the deal, he does so in this way where he's like, well, you know, if if this thing finally happens,

maybe this not not yesterday. Yesterday he seemed to say he was excited about the deal. He even said I'm over paying for the deal. But you know, it wasn't that. Um. It was suggesting that he's, you know, already done this thing. I don't know. I just got the sense when I listened to it that I walked away that he feels this thing is done. And if he feels it's done, of course, well that makes me think it's going to get done as well. David, what do you think? I mean, Gosh,

we're about to enter a very new era. Well, the eras are just cascading in on us in so many ways. I I don't know what it's going to be to have Twitter owned by Elon Musk. I'm not sure it's all bad. You know, Elon Musk is the ultimate you know cipher because he's so brilliant and so important as an innovator and so crazy, and putting those two things

together is extremely difficult, especially predicting the future. But do you think there's going to be a huge brain train or maybe maybe there'll be an influx of of people going to Twitter who want to work for him, And there's certainly going to be a time of transition, and gosh, what happens to the platform in the middle of this transition experience. A bunch of top people are definitely going to leave because he's insulted them in the course of

this this process. For one thing, I think he does have people who want to work with him. I mean, he he is a brilliant manager and and maybe that's an asset. I I one of the things that he always talks about, which I really like, is genuine identity for Twitter users. If they were to do that, it would fundamentally change the platform. And I would love to watch that because I don't like anonymous social media myself. Kurt, I see smiling. You know where are you on this?

Where Twitter employees on this? Well, I'm smiling because I'm a green with what David said. I think, um both that there will be a brain drain. And at the same time that there are plenty of people who would love to work with Elon Musko will be lining up and and throwing their resumes at Twitter if if he gets this company. So I think it will sort of be maybe a changing of the guard if you will

um at the company soon. And as David said, I you know, I am thinking that the biggest change is going to be around the content policy, right, and all this stuff Twitter has been trying to do to make itself less terrible, less toxic for years, Right, We've been talking about this, They've been putting all these rules and policies in place, and it get the sense that he just wants to rip those out. He wants to gut that.

And so, you know, it'll be interesting to see what the culture on Twitter feels like a year from now if he takes over, because it may feel very much like it did in than it does today. Change coming indeed, all right, Kurt Wagner, thank you to Economy is David Kirkpatrick. Always good to see you and here in person to

appreciate it. Supply, chain pain is still wreaking havoc in our post pandemic world, a wake up call about the inherent precariousness of global trade and maybe even globalization itself. That is the topic of a new book, Homecoming, The Path to Prosperity in a Post global World, author and Financial Times calling this, Rona fu Hard joins us. Now

for more on this. So, Rana, you know we've heard about supply chain issues, but you take it a step further are here and argue that maybe we're too dependent on other countries, too dependent on globalization. Are you saying we need to completely rethink supply chains, Well, I'm saying

we need to rethink more than that. Actually, you know, for the last half century, we've had a process of what I would call neoliberal globalization, which is, you know about the idea that capital goods people can move wherever they want and that they're always gonna land wherever it's most productive. And that worked really well for capital um and the biggest beneficiaries have been multinational companies and the Chinese state. It's the chief capital for cheap labor bargain

between the US and Asia. But now that is just fundamentally shifting, and it's been happening for a while. But I think the pandemic and war in Ukraine were really almost like a scrim that was pulled up and suddenly people thought, oh, maybe it's not a good idea to get our energy from an autocrat, or gosh, maybe it's not such a safe thing. If the high end chips in the world are produced in one island, that's um, you know, maybe to be blockaded or even taken over

by China. So I think that these are things that are now in the felt experience of most people. But even before the decoupling that was about geopolitics, which we all know is happening, there was a lot of regionalization and even localization happening in supply chains for all kinds of reasons, one of which is wages had risen in Asia. You know, that whole arbitrage between productivity, wages, energy costs

was changing. You know a lot of companies were starting to say, oh, you know, the low margin stuff, we don't really want to tote it a long way through the South China seas. Maybe we'll do it regionally. UM. Now, I think with E s G concerns with energy prices with their Europe, China and the US in different ways, But all kind of pushing in the same direction towards um If not a price on carbon, at least some sort of accountability for carbon, those long supply chains will

become even harder. And then finally, we've got one more really important tailwind, which is high tech manufacturing. I mean, we're about to see I believe what we saw when the iPhone came out in the consumer space, just that boom in the app economy, and all kinds of growth that's now coming into the industrial space through decentralized technologies like three D printing or vertical farming. I mean, we are really about to go through a massive technological change.

It's just gonna make it a lot more um efficient and resilient to hub production and consumption more closely together. Is more localization or the pendulum swinging back that way? Though? Could that also be seen as a step backwards. Is

there a healthy middle? Well, for sure, there is a healthy meddal I'm so glad you said that, because oftentimes when you have the globalization debate, you know, on the one hand, you've got people to say we got to go back to the nineties, and then on the other hand, you say, oh my gosh, we gotta go back to the nineties. It's gonna be nineties. No, We're in a whole new era. You know. I think economic pendulums always

swing throughout history. You know that's true. You go back to eighteen century mercantilism that worked until it didn't, and then you've got loss Affair, and then you've got Kenzie in his him, and and then you know, we've had now a half century or so of neoliberalism, you know, most recently in the form of the Reagan Thatcher Revolution, which maybe with the collapse of the list trust is government and the disaster that is trusts and nomics, we may see this as the apex and and the kind

of end of that old era before we move into something new. How do you see the relationship between the US and China evolving, especially with the actions that the Bidens administration has taken on chips and what we heard from s jamping over the weekend. Yeah, for sure. So the US is reacting basically to China. I mean, as we all know, China is always very clear about its five year plans. It lays them out, they're available for people to read. Um she is you know, uh adds

another layer of complexity. The nationalism, the populism that's gone along with him is a little bit off piece for China, which tends to produce more sort of middle of the road technocratic leaders. But I think that it's been clear for some time that China wants to do couple from US technology. It wants to have what it calls a dual circulation and commune, which essentially means the same thing regionalism,

hubbing production and consumption. They've got enough rich consumers now they want to keep some of their uh, you know, their their factory production at home. They don't want to be the factor of the world anymore. They also want to become less coupled with the dollar, which is a whole another part of this. I mean, what we've seen so far is shifts in supply chains and trade. What we've made now start seeing is shifts in the financial markets as China tries to do more digital R and

B business. Um, you know, you see, the weaponization of the dollar was sanctioned, so there's there's decoupling and financial markets too. Before we go, I have to get your quick thoughts on Liz trust resigning today. Obviously a fierce neoliberal advocate, which in the end certainly didn't work out. So well. Are we witnessing a major ideological shift here? Uh, it's hard to look at what's happened. Um, you know, Liz Trust comes in and says, hey, we've got a

growth problem. Let's cut taxes on the very wealthiest even as we spend on energy subsidies. And wow, the markets didn't like that. You know, we've had about twenty years, i would say, in this country, in the Anglo American world in general, where it's been pretty clear that trickle down wasn't working until the recent bout of inflation, and there are other reasons for that. Wages for most Americans have been flat since um, you know, the last twenty years.

The same has been true in the UK. Cutting taxes on the rich is not the solution. The Reagan Thatcher era is over. We don't have a sort of you know, um postgame strategy yet completely, but we have some ideas about where to go, and trickle down is not it. So look, where do you see the world going, Like five years from now, how much more localized will the economy be? Will the economy be in better shape? I mean, we're about to go through what could potentially be a

two to three year downturn. Yes, so let me let me raise one issue first, and I'll kind of put the caveat to my own thesis, which is inflation. Um, we're moving towards world of more redundancy of supply, more resiliency of supply, and that's inflationary, right. Cheap is not cheap. People are gonna have to pay more for stuff. That's an issue. Are they going to want to do that? And then are we going to go back kind of

be pushed back into the old model? I don't think so, because I think that geopolitics have fundamentally changed and ultimately, after you know what, maybe a bumpy five years or so, I think we're going to come back into a better place in this country because making things has always been important. You know, everybody that has ever spent time in a factory floor and I did. I grew up and then my dad ran factories kind of knows that that's an

important part of innovation and iteration. So I think having an economy that's based on something aside from you know, finance and software, uh, and it's more diverse and inclusive in this country is going to be a good thing, all right, Ron for our congrats on the book Financial Times calumnist and awful of the author of Homecoming. Good

to have you. Now, speaking of China and supply chain issues, the country has been struggling with containing COVID cases in recent weeks, and now officials are said to be debating whether to reduce the amount of time people entering the country must spend and quarantine. They're talking about setting the period to two days in a hotel, then five days at home, versus the current seven days in a hotel three days at home. The country's COVID zero policy leaving

it increasingly isolated from the rest of the world. Gotta have much more coming up after the break. Let stay with us. This is Bloomberg. Texas sued Google overclaims that it's illegally capturing the biometric data of users without their consent. This is the latest in a series of lawsuits by

the state against tech companies over online privacy. According to Texas Attorney General Can Paxton, Google has collected millions of biometric identify irs from Texas residents, including voice prints and records of face geometry, through products like Google Photos and Google assistant. Netflix's top executives continue to battle that out

over releasing more of its original movies theaters. The Wall Street Journal reporting some arguing Netflix is leaving hundreds of millions in box office receipts on the table by showing select movies in just a few theaters for a few weeks, while others feel theater showings create us for the streaming service. Welcome back. We've got some breaking news now coming out of the Washington Post that Elon Musk plans to cut Twitter's workforce by seventy five percent. The Post reporting on

documents detailing these plans to allegedly cut Twitter's workforce. Um, of course, we've been talking about whether or not Musk would make big changes, especially when it comes to staffing. Now. Of course, the deal is not done yet, still waiting for that October deadline for a deal to happen. But if Elon Musk does indeed close this deal to buy Twitter, does indeed cut seventy of the workforce, you're talking about

thousands of people. Um. Twitter's workforce is currently at about seven thousand, five hundred people, so that is a significant cut. We're gonna continue to follow this story and bring you more headlines as we have them. Meantime, I want to talk a little bit about workplace trends. The pandemic, of course, has brought about many changes, one of them being hybrid work, but it's not the only metric that matters. And we're going to talk about this all with Arianna Hoffington, founder

and CEO of Thrive Global. Ariana, so great to have you back. Um. As always, you know, we've been hearing this term quiet quitting over and over again, which speaks to this idea of employees deciding not to go above and beyond their listed responsibilities. Why do you think that is so? I really great to be with you. I'm here at the Masters of Scale Conferdence at Reid Hoffman and the wide want more organizing and quite quitting, the great resignation, the great break up for women have been

big themes of the conference. And what is interesting about quite quitting is that it's really a rejection of the hussle culture that we've all been bemoaning. But also it's like a false choice between hussle culture and burnout and giving up on having an engaged job that you love and brings you joy in a sense of purpose and meaning, and so a lot of the conversation here has been about how to recognize that we don't have to buy this false choice, that we can be engaged in our

jobs and set boundaries. And also, if you look at the great breakup that the Mackensey Leaning Report talked about with them many more women living in the workplace because of burnout compared to men forty three versus thirty one, and you see that burnout is at the top of the conversation everywhere. Well, and I wondered, two women and underrepresented minorities have the luxury of quiet quitting or is this something that you know more men have the luxury

of doing. Well, it's not just quite witting for women. They're just leaving the workspace in unprecedented numbers. And that's all the bad news. And Emily, the good news is that these conversations are no longer just the province of

the HR departments. And Satia and Natala spoke here yesterday morning, and he spoke not just of the digital revolution and AI breakthroughs, but about the need for leaders to acquire soft skills and not just to demand that their employees returned to the office, but to become like event organizers, he called it, where he gives them a reason to return to the office, where leaders acknowledged that people come

for people and not because of mandated policy. Also, he talked about the productivity paradox of leaders think they're doing enough to prevent burnout and promote well being, and percent of of employees feel burned out and white a lot of their managers in their slacking off. So there is theurmoil in the workplace. But frankly, Emily, a lot of these things have been happening before the pandemic, and now everything has come to the service and we have an

opportunity to redefine how we work and live. I have to ask you about this Twitter nuwi since it just broke, and I can imagine a few people have probably been quiet quitting a Twitter over the last few months. Now we're learning from this Washington Post report that Elon Musk plans to cut seventy of the workforce. Elon Musk, you know, has also come out in favor of in person work. But you know, what's your reaction to this. Well, first of all, there's been so many rumors about this Twitter deal.

We don't know what it's true and what isn't. And also I'm wondering how much Elon Musk is regretting this impulsive decision to buy Twitter. It's been a huge destruction. It's definitely affected the test last talk, because shareholders obviously don't like the CEO being so destructed by a major deal that's in the news every day. You know, as someone who you know has played such a prominent role in media, do you like the idea of Elon Musk owning Twitter or what concerns you about the idea of

you on must go on Twitter? What do you think is gonna change? I mean, it's get really dramatically change how a lot of us get our news. Well, if you look at them, the power of TikTok and the incredible popularity of TikTok and the city of TikTok is here and talking to him, it's clear that there is real moderation there. And they have twelve rules around moderation, including preventing and and rejecting violence and pornography. A lot of it is moderated through AI, but there is also

human moderation. So the idea that you can have a free for all in the name of quote and quote free speech is definitely troubling because there's so much mus representation, and it's impossible to have a functioning democracy without moderation. So clearly, you know the Twitter and Elama's case isn't is a unique story in itself. We are going through what could be a very prolonged economic downturn. There are

all of these rapidly shifting workplace trends. As you discuss, what's your advice to employers right now, what's your advice to businesses about how they should rethink their workplace policies and what they expect of their employees. Well, the priority, Emily has to be to recognize that investing in the well being and mental health of their employees it's not the warm and fuzzy HR benefit. It's a business strategy. It's a necessity in order to prevent attrition, improved productivity,

and and actually reduce healthcare costs. I mean, you saw the lead document two days ago that Amazon is losing eight billion dollars a year because of attrition. So the connection between well being and mental health and attrition is very clear. We have a lot of data here, so leaders are recognizing more and more that this is the moment to redefine the importance of the importance of human capital invest in the well being of their employees in

the workflow. Embedded in the workflow. It can't just be a mental health day here or a yoga studio there. It has to be embedded in the daily work so that people can actually take these little breaks that prevent stress from becoming cumulative and from becoming burnout. And there's been so much focus on where we're working and how that impacts productivity, but now there's new research that shows maybe it's when working that has a greater impact on productivity.

What do you think, yes, and all the new research that shows that what actually leads to more productivity is not having to be at work nine to five, but being able to work when it's more convenient for you if you have children to take to school and parents to take care of. So there's no way, Emily that we are going to go to a normal nine to five five day in the office reality, but there is a lot we have to do to rebuild the social capital that we are losing when we are working remote.

All right, Arianna, thank you so much for always trying to get us to think about the important things. Ariana Huffington's founder and CEO of Thrive Global. It's always good to have you here. Appreciate it. Thank you how much, Emily Okay. Coming up, Defy is dealing with a major problem financial packing. We're going to talk about that in our to report. Coming up next, this is Bloomberg. The crypto industry is reeling from a new threat to the

decentralized financial system, and that is hacking. For more on this, let's bring in Bloomberg Shanali Bostic. So what exactly is happening Shale. Well, it's not the hacking you would think of. This is not people attacking code and then taking money out of a protocol or token. This is financial hacking, which is really debated very heavily. This is people buying certain assets using stable coins on swap, inflating those assets and then using them as collateral to take out loans.

Sounds very complicated, not an easy maneuver to do, but people have figured out these D five protocols have the ability to um you know, some people call it market manipulation instead of hacking. You know, so is it illegal? Is it not illegal? Is a gray area, But in a lot of places people just call it trading. So

that's the debate we're talking about here. There's nothing necessarily wrong with it legally, it's a lot of gray area for a market that is being defined as we speak and explain how this is technically possible and also why are we so surprised that this is happening. Shouldn't this

be expected? It should be expected, especially with all that we've seen throughout the entire year when it comes to defy, when it comes to who's borrowing, when it comes to instabilities and prices, because now so many new financial products loans, swaps, and other products are being created around the initial tokens themselves. Interestingly enough to the most recent one we've been talking about is Mango is governed by a doo as well.

So you have a whole community of people here who are being affected and have to vote on how they retrieve money from this financial hack or trading strategy, whatever you wanna call it, that is being conducted. How are crypto experts reacting. I think one interesting thing to look at here is Sam Bankman Freeds framework he created for this kind the thing, Because again, you can't stop people from doing this. This is essentially a way to find a hole in the system and then profit from it.

And so what you're seeing is he's saying that the hacker should keep five percent of the taking funds and this should be a community wide rule. But he's also saying that the community and the customer must be made whole first. If that doesn't happen, then the hacker, the hacker doesn't get back the funds, and they have twenty four hours to return those funds. He calculates that the impacts of the hacks can be reduced by if this

were to happen. Now, I also want to hedge this by saying in his blog post that he said he feels very uncertain that this is the standard to have. However, it is one proposal. He's open to suggestions. I would be interesting to also hear what those suggestions are as people try to figure out how to change the market and the rules around it. For really, what's not a technical hack. It is a different way of trading different products around strategy that is losing a lot of people

some money. All right, Well, thank you for breaking down a very complex topic for us. Yet again, you are very good at that Jounal I always going to see you. Good to see you here in person. Artificial intelligence is driving a new era of artistic talent. Apps that generate images from simple text descriptions are growing more popular as a source for people with little artistic ability to create unique work for more honest, I want to bring in MG Evans, founder and CEO of Tasai, the world's first

talent agency for AI artists. So explain how an AI artist talent agency works. Are you representing the humans using the AI to create art or are you representing the AI itself? So the answer is probably a little scary for most people, um because we are representing the AI brains that are on their own creating art without input from humans. So it's slightly different from you know, the programs that most people have probably heard of where you

input some words and then you get a painting. We're talking about ais that are creating their own artworks out of their own brains whenever they want and however they want. So who creates the AI though? So there are developers that create the AI brain and then the brain interacts with different inputs and creates its own artistic style. What

do you think the potential is here. Um, I think it's basically a creation of a new type of artists and a new generation of artists that we can't really imagine from where we sit right now, because all we can imagine from where we sit right now is an AI that needs you to tell it what to draw and needs you to tell it what to paint and when to do that. And actually that's not the future

of AI. The future of AI is much more autonomous artificial intelligence beings than what we actually can see right now. So what exactly do you do for the AI. So each of these AI s at the moment is an n f T on the blockchain, so they have technically an owner. So at the moment they are owned by somebody in the same way that an n f T is owned. So we would interact with the owner and represent their AI brain that they own. Um, how does the AI then decide if the agency is doing a

good job. Well, that's a good question. I mean, Um, at the moment, the the AI probably can't do that, But that's not to say that in the very near future they will be able to do that, and that they will actually want representation, which is decision they can't really make for themselves at the moment. Now, some of this AI generated art is not so pleasing. In fact, some of it is downright ugly or disturbing. How do you think about that? Yeah, so I think, um, regular

art is not always pleasing. Regular art is always you know, has the chance to be pleasing or disturbing depending on who's looking. Um. I think the most important thing is to make the designation between art that is original, which most people don't think AI art can be original, And that's what we're trying to change, because if you follow you think about AI art is that it comes from an algorithm and it can't possibly come from any kind

of creative process that's similar to what humans undergo. Then you'll never appreciate it. Whether whether it's disturbing or beautiful or not, you will never appreciate it. But when you do appreciate that it comes from a unique AI brain, then you might actually grow to appreciate it, and that goes to value as well. It will develop its own

value in the marketplace. All Right, we've got some quick breaking news just you want to report that the Biden administration is exploring now the possibility of new export controls that would limit China's access to some of the most powerful emerging computing technologies. According to people familiar with the matter, these potential plans, which are in an early stage, are focused on the still experimental field of quantum computing as

well as artificial intelligence software. Speaking of that, industry experts are weighing in on how to set the parameters of the restrictions on this technology. And of course this um is an extension of what we've seen the Biden administration doing on chips when it comes to supply chains as well. This is a developing story that we're going to continue to follow. Actually, speaking of China energy, how do you see the role of China in the artificial intelligence and

f T space. I mean, obviously we're the U s is very concerned about it's its ability to compete with China on technology. Where is China in your world? I think, you know, one of the things that makes us unique in you know, what we like to think of as a liberal democracy is that we actually really value creativity. And I understand that that's one of the issues that

some artists have been having. But when you compare us to China, for example, I mean we have a completely open world of expression here, and I think if we can offer that also in the AI space, then that also gives us a leg up on China in terms of our creative because the world is heading in an AI direction, So whoever is more creative in that space is going to be far ahead. How do you respond to those who say that the idea of AI R

belittles natural human artistry? Yeah, I mean, look, as you know, I haven't I have an art background, so I'm completely sympathetic to people who feel that way. Um, but I don't think we will ever lose our desire for human creativity. You know, it's just you. You can't say that one replaces the other. But I think also you can't say that an AI brain can't have a creative process in the way that a human brain has a creative process.

One artist doesn't cancel out another. So it's really so, what do you say that the folks who whose mind just goes to a very scary place? I think in talking about I would light of those people. It's a little terrifying. It's amazing, but terrifying. It's terrifying. But I think we all have to start embracing that really scary place because we're going in that direction. So you're either gonna kind of stick your head in the sand and just you know, stick your fingers in your ears and

be like, I don't want to go there. I don't want to go there, or you're going to figure out a way that you can maybe interact with that place and maybe you could even wind up having collaboration with an AI artist if you If you don't start thinking about that, the world is just going to leave you behind. So you have to start thinking about well, thank you for starting to open our eyes to this. N. G. Evans, founder and CEO of two Sigh, the world's first AI

artist talent agency. Good to see you, And that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. Don't forget to check out our podcast wherever you get your podcast. I'm Emily Chang in New York. This is Bloomberg