Donald Trump addressed the scores of CEOs who have jockeyed to get private meetings.
"Everybody wants to be my friend," Trump told reporters.
Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, and other top execs have met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
President-elect Donald Trump said on Monday that major tech CEOs want to meet with him ahead of his second term, showcasing how an industry that once spurned him is now supportive.
"One of the big differences between the first term, in the first term, everybody was fighting me," Trump told reporters during a news conference. "In this term, everybody wants to be my friend."
Big Tech executives like Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai have or are expected to visit Mar-a-Lago to meet with the president-elect. "I had dinner with, sort of, almost all of them, and the rest are coming," Trump said on Monday.
"I don't know, my personality changed or something," the president-elect added.
The series of meetings follows an election season that saw some major names in Silicon Valley embrace Trump, including, most notably, Elon Musk.
Trump has reciprocated the love, naming Musk to co-lead the newly created "Department of Government Efficiency" and tapping former PayPal executive David Sacks as his crypto and AI czar.
Some in the tech community have also announced their intentions to make $1 million donations to Trump's inaugural committee either by themselves or through their corporation.
Many in the business community, including tech, were skeptical of Trump's first term.
Some, including Musk, broke with Trump over his decision to stick by his campaign promise to withdraw the US from the Paris climate accord. Others, including CEOs from Intel, Merck, and Under Armour, resigned from White House advisory councils in the wake of Trump's response to white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump, however, continued to court CEOs. In 2019, his White House launched a new business-focused council that included the likes of Cook, along with top leaders from IBM and Walmart.
Big Tech companies and CEOs are already lining up six-figure donations to Donald Trump's inauguration.
Amazon, Sam Altman, and Meta are each prepared to donate $1 million.
There are virtually no limits on inaugural donations, meaning Big Tech companies can cut massive checks.
Big Tech companies and the moguls behind them are preparing to make six-figure donations to President-elect Donald Trump's inaugural committee.
Jeff Bezos' Amazon, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Mark Zuckerberg's Meta have all been reported to have made or will make $1 million to the outfit tasked with planning and organizing Trump's triumphant return to power.
"The financing of inaugurations is really a cesspool when it comes to campaign financing," Craig Holman, a lobbyist for government watchdog Public Citizen, told Business Insider.
Holman said there are few, if any, limits to inaugural donations, and what makes them particularly appealing is that megadonors and CEOs don't have to worry about picking the loser.
"Unlike financing a campaign, when you don't know for sure who is going to win, here in the inauguration, you've got the winner," he said. "So corporations and other special interests just throw money at them at the feet of the president with the hope of currying favor."
Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, a public interest group, said donations to the inaugural committee are less likely to irk the opposition.
"They are frequently a mechanism for entities that sit out elections to get good with the incoming administration," he said.
Trump's 2017 inaugural set a record, raking in roughly $107 million. Las Vegas Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson donated $5 million, the largest single donation. AT&T gave just over $2 million. For many in Washington, it was a time to make nice with an incoming president that few thought would win the 2016 race.
This time, Trump's inaugural offers one final major opportunity for CEOs to curry influence with the president-elect at his peak.
Since he'll be term-limited, the next major fundraising opportunity likely won't come until Trump begins preparations for a presidential library (should that even occur). At that point, companies will have missed their window to make a final impression before mergers and acquisitions.
2017 Trump inaugural donors benefited greatly
Playing ball can have major benefits. OpenSecrets found in 2018 that "of the 63 federal contractors that donated to the inauguration, more than half won multimillion-dollar bids" from the federal government later on.
Foreign donors can't contribute to a president-elect's inaugural committee, and the committee must publicly disclose details about donations over $200 within 90 days of Inauguration Day. Otherwise, there are few limits on what individuals or corporations can give, and inaugural committees are not required to explain how they spend the money.
Some presidents, especially Obama in 2009, have imposed voluntary restrictions on donations. Obama refused to accept corporate donations or individual contributions over $50,000 for his historic first inauguration, though he later lifted those limits for his reelection celebration.
Hauser said donations will allow corporations to prepare for an especially transactional period.
"I think that corporations with an agenda in Trump's Washington, be it offense, like getting new contracts, or defense, like avoiding negative federal scrutiny, are going to spend millions of dollars in Washington to either make or protect billions in the real economy," Hauser said.
Tech companies are under the microscope.
Amazon, Google, and Meta have all faced antitrust concerns. Republican lawmakers have frequently grilled Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over Facebook's decision to limit sharing the New York Post's initial report on Hunter Biden's laptop ahead of the 2020 election. Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated to help election officials during the COVID-19 pandemic, enraging some on the right, while Trump repeatedly lit into Amazon founder Jeff Bezos for The Washington Post's coverage of his first administration. Amazon sued the Trump administration after Microsoft was awarded a $10 billion cloud computing contract over them, alleging that Trump's animus for Bezos sunk their chances.
Bezos and Zuckerberg have since taken steps to repair their relationships with the Trump world. Zuckerberg has expressed regret over Facebook's decision to censor some posts about COVID-19. He also pledged not to donate to help election officials. Bezos intervened when The Post's editorial board was ready to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris.
Bezos also recently said Trump seemed "calmer than he was the first time and more settled."
"You've probably grown in the last eight years," Bezos said at The New York Times DealBook Summit in December. "He has, too."
Altman has been entangled in a legal battle with his OpenAI cofounder Elon Musk, who is set to be an influential figure in the Trump administration.
In a statement about his donation, Altman said, "President Trump will lead our country into the age of AI, and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead."
Representatives for Amazon, Meta, and Trump's inaugural did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
To get a taste of what may be in store, one only needs to look at what happened at President Joe Biden's inauguration.
A leaked fundraising memo showed that large donations netted individuals and organizations various perks, including opportunities to meet Biden, receive private briefings from top campaign officials, and "preferred viewing" for the virtual inauguration.
All of those benefits came amid pandemic precautions. Trump's party will have no such limits.
Stephen Wu transitioned from tech to finance, starting a hedge fund with $10 million.
Wu's experience at Amazon and Microsoft taught him efficiency and managing technical debt.
He said trading is more fun and more money than tech.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Stephen Wu, a 29-year-old hedge fund manager from New York. It's been edited for length and clarity.
If you ask Alexa to play Taylor Swift, my team built the system that recommends similar songs to listen to afterward.
I studied computer science and philosophy at Carnegie Mellon during college and always thought I would work in engineering. I applied to work at Amazon during my senior fall semester in college and started at Amazon Alexa right after graduating. I was hired as a software engineer in Seattle, creating and building the music recommendation system and overseeing a team of three engineers.
It was a good mix of my passion for music and engineering, but eventually, I left Amazon for Microsoft and then left tech to start a hedge fund with about 80 investors.
I raised almost $10 million from friends, family, high-net-worth individuals, influencers, and others in the hedge fund space that first year. I still love engineering, but hedge funds make money, so they're much more fun.
Amazon taught me how to prioritize and be efficient
Working at Amazon, I learned that its ethos differs from other tech companies.
Google and Meta are more engineering-focused. Microsoft aims to build the best tool for the customer, even if it takes extra time. Amazon, on the other hand, seeks to make things fast.
Instead of building it right the first time, Amazon allowed me to create the minimum viable product usable to meet the deadline. While working there, I learned a lot about prioritization and efficiency.
Still, after about three years, I wanted to explore new roles. A Microsoft recruiter reached out to me via LinkedIn. I took the call and was intrigued by their offer of an engineering-heavy business role. I would work directly with engineers to build and plan the machine translation system used by Microsoft Azure.
I liked the opportunity to combine my strengths in engineering and business for this role, so I accepted it in 2020.
I learned a lot in tech and used it to launch my hedge fund career
I loved working at Microsoft and worked there for about three years. In my free time, I dabbled in hedge funds, which are any fund using a non-traditional investment style.
One crucial learning takeaway that helped me in my future endeavors was technical debt — if you build something too quickly and take shortcuts, you may spend twice the time just fixing the bugs.
I can tell if a product wasn't built right or if it might incur additional unforeseen costs that other hedge fund managers may not know about. Also, because I built statistical models and AI algorithms recommending songs to users at Amazon Alexa Music, I understand the statistical behavior of price movements. This allows me to take a more data-driven, probabilistic approach to trading, while most fund managers focus on financials.
After 6 years, I left Big Tech for the finance industry
I specifically invest in options trading after volatile events. I always loved it, but I never thought I could do it full-time.
Along the way, I discovered a very lucrative strategy for trading in a specific niche in the options market. I did this for fun with my portfolio through 2020 and 2022. It was during the pandemic in 2022 that I realized that NASDAQ was down 33%. That year, I proved my strategy in a bear market and felt confident enough to pursue this as a serious career.
For years, my friends and family asked to invest with me, and I was finally comfortable trading with their money. I left Microsoft in April 2023 to work on the hedge fund full-time. I worked extremely hard during my first year of fundraising and trading simultaneously and was very stressed.
Fundraising was difficult initially, but I allowed investors to try with a small amount first and see the returns for themselves. The minimum amount to invest is $100,000.
I love trading and plan to do it forever
Since our trades are weekly, I allowed them to withdraw any week if the performance was poor. This was highly unusual and risky for hedge funds because they could withdraw any week, and my fund would die. However, I was confident I could perform. After several months of good performance, many of my investors doubled or tripled their investments.
And now, more folks continue to invest through word-of-mouth.
I aim to grow this to a $100 to $200 million fund in the next few years. It's just me, so it's a lot of work, although I have part-time analysts helping. Once reaching $100 million, I can hire more analysts and expand the strategy.
I love trading. It's fascinating because it's like solving a puzzle every single day. As an engineer, I was making a solid six figures a year. It depends on how much profit I generate this year, but if my fund is $15 million and I achieve the 30% yearly profit target, I'll make $1.2 million.
I enjoyed solving complex engineering challenges, but trading offers a more dynamic, fast-paced environment and I plan to do this for the rest of my life.
If you left Big Tech for another industry and would like to tell your story, please email Manseen Logan at [email protected].
With his presidency approaching, tech leaders are seeking Donald Trump's good graces.
Mark Zuckerberg dined with him at Mar-a-Lago. TikTok's Shou Chew is reportedly chatting with Elon Musk.
From AI regulation to antitrust suits, there is a lot at stake.
From threatening to jail Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg to accusing Google of rigging search results against him, President-elect Donald Trump tangled with Big Tech throughout his 2024 presidential campaign.
But with victory clenched — and tech luminary Elon Musk emerging as a key confidant — leaders throughout the industry have sought meetings and phone calls with the president-elect and those in his orbit in recent weeks.
There's a lot at stake. Trump's presidency could affect everything from budding AI regulation to a bevy of antitrust actions that target Apple, Google, Meta, and Amazon.
"President Trump is surrounding himself with industry leaders like Elon Musk as he works to restore innovation, reduce regulation, and celebrate free speech in his second term," Trump-Vance transition spokesperson Brian Hughes told Business Insider in a statement.
With his second term approaching, these are some of the big-name tech executives who've been seeking the president-elect's ear.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg
Despite their thorny past, Zuckerberg — who didn't endorse a candidate in the 2024 election — met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago for dinner on the evening before Thanksgiving, a Meta spokesperson previously confirmed to BI.
"It's an important time for the future of American Innovation," the spokesperson said.
Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg said Tuesday that Zuckerberg wants to play "an active role" in future discussions with the Trump administration about US tech leadership, including in the "pivotal" field of artificial intelligence.
Clegg also said that Meta "overdid it" when moderating pandemic-related content in the past, for which the social network garnered heat on both sides of the political aisle.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai
In addition to his public congratulations, Google chief Sundar Pichai called the president-elect to congratulate him on his victory — with Musk joining the call, The Information reported.
When asked about Google's antitrust challenges earlier this year, Trump acknowledged the search giant "has a lot of power," but didn't say he favored a breakup.
"We want to have great companies," Trump said at the time. "We don't want China to have these companies."
Chew has known Musk for years and inquired broadly about the next administration's tech policies, the Journal reported.
Although he did not directly broach how to contend with a prospective TikTok ban, the Jounal reported that ByteDance execs are cautiously optimistic about TikTok's future in the US.
That said, the Journal reported that some intermediaries have been reluctant to pass on Altman's messages, given his tense relationship with Musk.
In addition to publicly congratulating the president-elect on X, Altman met with transition team co-chair Howard Lutnick in Palm Beach, according to the Journal, where he discussed how OpenAI would invest in US data centers and jobs. As Commerce Secretary, Lutnick would oversee the department charged with AI regulation.
Since then, its user base has doubled to 200 million weekly users.
Major companies, entrepreneurs, and users remain optimistic about its transformative power.
It's been two years since OpenAI released its flagship chatbot, ChatGPT.
And a lot has changed in the world since then.
For one, ChatGPT has helped turbocharge global investment in generative AI.
Funding in the space grew fivefold from 2022 to 2023 alone, according to CB Insights. The biggest beneficiaries of the generative AI boom have been the biggest companies. Tech companies on the S&P 500 have seen a 30% gain since January 2022, compared to only 15% for small-cap companies, Bloomberg reported.
Similarly, consulting firms are expecting AI to make up an increasing portion of their revenue. Boston Consulting Group generates a fifth of its revenue from AI, and much of that work involves advising clients on generative AI, a spokesperson told Business Insider. Almost 40% of McKinsey's work now comes from AI, and a significant portion of that is moving to generative AI, Ben Ellencweig, a senior partner who leads alliances, acquisitions, and partnerships globally for McKinsey's AI arm, QuantumBlack, told BI.
Smaller companies have been forced to rely on larger ones, either by building applications on existing large language models or waiting for their next major developer tool release.
Still, young developers are optimistic that ChatGPT will level the playing field and believe it's only a matter of time before they catch up to bigger players. "You still have your Big Tech companies lying around, but they're much more vulnerable because the bleeding edge of AI has basically been democratized," Bryan Chiang, a recent Stanford graduate who built RizzGPT, told Business Insider.
Then, of course, there is ChatGPT's impact on regular users.
In September, OpenAI previewed o1, a series of AI models that it says are "designed to spend more time thinking before they respond." ChatGPT Plus and Team users can access the models in ChatGPT. Users hope a full version will be released to the public in the coming year.
Business Insider asked ChatGPT what age means to it.
"Age, to me, is an interesting concept — it's a way of measuring the passage of time, but it doesn't define who someone is or what they're capable of," it responded.
The field of artificial intelligence is booming and attracting billions in investment.
Researchers, CEOs, and legislators are discussing how AI could transform our lives.
Here are 17 of the major names in the field — and the opportunities and dangers they see ahead.
Investment in artificial intelligence is rapidly growing and on track to hit $200 billion by 2025. But the dizzying pace of development also means many people wonder what it all means for their lives.
In short, AI is a hot, controversial, and murky topic. To help you cut through the frenzy, Business Insider put together a list of what leaders in the field are saying about AI — and its impact on our future.
Geoffrey Hinton, a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, is known as a "godfather of AI."
Hinton's research has primarily focused on neural networks, systems that learn skills by analyzing data. In 2018, he won the Turing Award, a prestigious computer science prize, along with fellow researchers Yann LeCun and Yoshua Bengio.
Hinton also worked at Google for over a decade, but quit his role at Google last spring, so he could speak more freely about the rapid development of AI technology, he said. After quitting, he even said that a part of him regrets the role he played in advancing the technology.
"I console myself with the normal excuse: If I hadn't done it, somebody else would have. It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things," Hinton said previously.
Bengio's research primarily focuses on artificial neural networks, deep learning, and machine learning. In 2022, Bengio became the computer scientist with the highest h-index — a metric for evaluating the cumulative impact of an author's scholarly output — in the world, according to his website.
In addition to his academic work, Bengio also co-founded Element AI, a startup that develops AI software solutions for businesses that was acquired by the cloud company ServiceNow in 2020.
Bengio has expressed concern about the rapid development of AI. He was one of 33,000 people who signed an open letter calling for a six-month pause on AI development. Hinton, Open AI CEO Sam Altman, and Elon Musk also signed the letter.
"Today's systems are not anywhere close to posing an existential risk," he previously said. "But in one, two, five years? There is too much uncertainty."
When that time comes, though, Bengio warns that we should also be wary of humans who have control of the technology.
Some people with "a lot of power" may want to replace humanity with machines, Bengio said at the One Young World Summit in Montreal. "Having systems that know more than most people can be dangerous in the wrong hands and create more instability at a geopolitical level, for example, or terrorism."
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has catapulted into a major figure in the area of artificial intelligence since launching ChatGPT last November.
French computer scientist Yann LeCun has also been dubbed a "godfather of AI" after winning the Turing Award with Hinton and Bengio.
LeCun is professor at New York University, and also joined Meta in 2013, where he's now the Chief AI Scientist. At Meta, he has pioneered research on training machines to make predictions based on videos of everyday events as a way to enable them with a form of common sense. The idea being that humans learn an incredible amount about the world based on passive observation. He's has also published more than 180 technical papers and book chapters on topics ranging from machine learning to computer vision to neural networks, according to personal website.
Fei-Fei Li is a professor of computer science at Stanford University and a former VP at Google.
Li's research focuses on machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, and cognitively-inspired AI, according to her biography on Stanford's website.
She may be best known for establishing ImageNet — a large visual database that was designed for research in visual object recognition — and the corresponding ImageNet challenge, in which software programs compete to correctly classify objects. Over the years, she's also been affiliated with major tech companies including Google — where she was a VP and chief scientist for AI and machine learning — and Twitter (now X), where she was on the board of directors from 2020 until Elon Musk's takeover in 2022.
UC-Berkeley professor Stuart Russell has long been focused on the question of how AI will relate to humanity.
Russell published Human Compatible in 2019, where he explored questions of how humans and machines could co-exist, as machines become smarter by the day. Russell contended that the answer was in designing machines that were uncertain about human preferences, so they wouldn't pursue their own goals above those of humans.
He's also the author of foundational texts in the field, including the widely used textbook "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach," which he co-wrote with former UC-Berkeley faculty member Peter Norvig.
Russell has spoken openly about what the rapid development of AI systems means for society as a whole. Last June, he also warned that AI tools like ChatGPT were "starting to hit a brick wall" in terms of how much text there was left for them to ingest. He also said that the advancements in AI could spell the end of the traditional classroom.
Peter Norvig played a seminal role directing AI research at Google.
He spent several in the early 2000s directing the company's core search algorithms group and later moved into a role as the director of research where he oversaw teams on machine translation, speech recognition, and computer vision.
Norvig has also rotated through several academic institutions over the years as a former faculty member at UC-Berkeley, former professor at the University of Southern California, and now, a fellow at Stanford's center for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.
Norvig told BI by email that "AI research is at a very exciting moment, when we are beginning to see models that can perform well (but not perfectly) on a wide variety of general tasks." At the same time "there is a danger that these powerful AI models can be used maliciously by unscrupulous people to spread disinformation rather than information. An important area of current research is to defend against such attacks," he said.
Timnit Gebru is a computer scientist who’s become known for her work in addressing bias in AI algorithms.
Gebru was a research scientist and the technical co-lead of Google's Ethical Artificial Intelligence team where she published groundbreaking research on biases in machine learning.
But her research also spun into a larger controversy that she's said ultimately led to her being let go from Google in 2020. Google didn't comment at the time.
Gebru founded the Distributed AI Research Institute in 2021 which bills itself as a "space for independent, community-rooted AI research, free from Big Tech's pervasive influence."
She's also warned that AI gold rush will mean companies may neglect implementing necessary guardrails around the technology. "Unless there is external pressure to do something different, companies are not just going to self-regulate," Gebru previously said. "We need regulation and we need something better than just a profit motive."
British-American computer scientist Andrew Ng founded a massive deep learning project called "Google Brain" in 2011.
The endeavor lead to the Google Cat Project: A milestone in deep learning research in which a massive neural network was trained to detect YouTube videos of cats.
Ng also served as the chief scientist at Chinese technology company Baidu where drove AI strategy. Over the course of his career, he's authored more than 200 research papers on topics ranging from machine learning to robotics, according to his personal website.
Beyond his own research, Ng has pioneered developments in online education. He co-founded Coursera along with computer scientist Daphne Koller in 2012, and five years later, founded the education technology company DeepLearning.AI, which has created AI programs on Coursera.
"I think AI does have risk. There is bias, fairness, concentration of power, amplifying toxic speech, generating toxic speech, job displacement. There are real risks," he told Bloomberg Technology last May. However, he said he's not convinced that AI will pose some sort of existential risk to humanity — it's more likely to be part of the solution. "If you want humanity to survive and thrive for the next thousand years, I would much rather make AI go faster to help us solve these problems rather than slow AI down," Ng told Bloomberg.
Daphne Koller is the founder and CEO of insitro, a drug discovery startup that uses machine learning.
Koller told BI by email that insitro is applying AI and machine learning to advance understanding of "human disease biology and identify meaningful therapeutic interventions." And before founding insitro, Koller was the chief computing officer at Calico, Google's life-extension spinoff. Koller is a decorated academic, a MacArthur Fellow, and author of more than 300 publications with an h-index of over 145, according to her biography from the Broad Institute, and co-founder of Coursera.
In Koller's view the biggest risks that AI development pose to society are "the expected reduction in demand for certain job categories; the further fraying of "truth" due to the increasing challenge in being able to distinguish real from fake; and the way in which AI enables people to do bad things."
At the same time, she said the benefits are too many and too large to note. "AI will accelerate science, personalize education, help identify new therapeutic interventions, and many more," Koller wrote by email.
Daniela Amodei cofounded AI startup Anthropic in 2021 after an exit from OpenAI.
Amodei co-founded Anthropic along with six other OpenAI employees, including her brother Dario Amodei. They left, in part, because Dario — OpenAI's lead safety researcher at the time — was concerned that OpenAI's deal with Microsoft would force it to release products too quickly, and without proper guardrails.
At Anthropic, Amodei is focused on ensuring trust and safety. The company's chatbot Claude bills itself as an easier-to-use alternative that OpenAI's ChatGPT, and is already being implemented by companies like Quora and Notion. Anthropic relies on what it calls a "Triple H" framework in its research. That stands for Helpful, Honest, and Harmless. That means it relies on human input when training its models, including constitutional AI, in which a customer outlines basic principles on how AI should operate.
"We all have to simultaneously be looking at the problems of today and really thinking about how to make tractable progress on them while also having an eye on the future of problems that are coming down the pike," Amodei previously told BI.
Demis Hassabis has said artificial general intelligence will be here in a few years.
After a handful of research stints, and a venture in videogames, he founded DeepMind in 2010. He sold the AI lab to Google in 2014 for £400 million where he's worked on algorithms to tackle issues in healthcare, climate change, and also launched a research unit dedicated to the understanding the ethical and social impact of AI in 2017, according to DeepMind's website.
Hassabis has said the promise of artificial general intelligence — a theoretical concept that sees AI matching the cognitive abilities of humans — is around the corner. "I think we'll have very capable, very general systems in the next few years," Hassabis said previously, adding that he didn't see why AI progress would slow down anytime soon. He added, however, that developing AGI should be executed in a "in a cautious manner using the scientific method."
In 2022, DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman launched AI startup Inflection AI along with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and Karén Simonyan — now the company's chief scientist.
The startup, which claims to create "a personal AI for everyone," most recently raised $1.3 billion in funding last June, according to PitchBook.
Its chatbot, Pi, which stands for personal intelligence, is trained on large language models similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT or Bard. Pi, however, is designed to be more conversational, and offer emotional support. Suleyman previously described it as a "neutral listener" that can respond to real-life problems.
"Many people feel like they just want to be heard, and they just want a tool that reflects back what they said to demonstrate they have actually been heard," Suleyman previously said.
USC Professor Kate Crawford focuses on social and political implications of large-scale AI systems.
Crawford is also the senior principal researcher at Microsoft, and the author of Atlas of AI, a book that draws upon the breadth of her research to uncover how AI is shaping society.
Crawford remains both optimistic and cautious about the state of AI development. She told BI by email she's excited about the people she works with across the world "who are committed to more sustainable, consent-based, and equitable approaches to using generative AI."
She added, however, that "if we don't approach AI development with care and caution, and without the right regulatory safeguards, it could produce extreme concentrations of power, with dangerously anti-democratic effects."
Margaret Mitchell is the chief ethics scientist at Hugging Face.
Mitchell has published more than 100 papers over the course of her career, according to her website, and spearheaded AI projects across various big tech companies including Microsoft and Google.
In late 2020, Mitchell and Timnit Gebru — then the co-lead of Google's ethical artificial intelligence — published a paper on the dangers of large language models. The paper spurred disagreements between the researchers and Google's management and ultimately lead to Gebru's departure from the company in December 2020. Mitchell was terminated by Google just two months later, in February 2021
Now, at Hugging Face — an open-source data science and machine learning platform that was founded in 2016 — she's thinking about how to democratize access to the tools necessary to building and deploying large-scale AI models.
In an interview with Morning Brew, where Mitchell explained what it means to design responsible AI, she said, "I started on my path toward working on what's now called AI in 2004, specifically with an interest in aligning AI closer to human behavior. Over time, that's evolved to become less about mimicking humans and more about accounting for human behavior and working with humans in assistive and augmentative ways."
Navrina Singh is the founder of Credo AI, an AI governance platform.
Credo AI is a platform that helps companies make sure they're in compliance with the growing body of regulations around AI usage. In a statement to BI, Singh said that by automating the systems that shape our lives, AI has the capacity "free us to realize our potential in every area where it's implemented."
At the same time, she contends that algorithms right now lack the human judgement that's necessary to adapt to a changing world. "As we integrate AI into civilization's fundamental infrastructure, these tradeoffs take on existential implications," Singh wrote. "As we forge ahead, the responsibility to harmonize human values and ingenuity with algorithmic precision is non-negotiable. Responsible AI governance is paramount."
Richard Socher, a former Salesforce exec, is the founder and CEO of AI-powered search engine You.com.
Socher believes we have ways to go before AI development hits its peak or matches anything close to human intelligence.
One bottleneck in large language models is their tendency to hallucinate — a phenomenon where they convincingly spit out factual errors as truth. But by forcing them to translate questions into code — essential "program" responses instead of verbalizing them — we can "give them so much more fuel for the next few years in terms of what they can do," Socher said.
But that's just a short-term goal. Socher contends that we are years from anything close to the industry's ambitious bid to create artificial general intelligence. Socher defines it as "a form of intelligence that can "learn like humans" and "visually have the same motor intelligence, and visual intelligence, language intelligence, and logical intelligence as some of the most logical people," and it could take as little as 10 years, but as much as 200 years to get there.
And if we really want to move the needle toward AGI, Socher said humans might need to let go of the reins, and their own motives to turn a profit, and build AI that can set its own goals.
"I think it's an important part of intelligence to not just robotically, mechanically, do the same thing over and over that you're told to do. I think we would not call an entity very intelligent if all it can do is exactly what is programmed as its goal," he told BI.
The CHIPS and Science Act, offering over $30 billion in incentives, spurred semiconductor lobbying.
Nvidia, TSMC, and Intel are enhancing government relations amid evolving trade policies.
Most heads of government relations and lobbyists are part of the "revolving door."
In 2022, Nvidia spent $90,000 on lobbying in Washington. In 2023, that number quintupled to more than $500,000.
While Big Tech companies have spent millions lobbying in Washington, DC, on issues such as AI and antitrust regulation, the CHIPS and Science Act, which is set to give out more than $30 billion in incentives funding to chip companies, kicked things into high gear for the semiconductor industry. The Department of Commerce said in November that Intel will receive about $7.9 billion in federal grants.
American manufacturers like Intel and Micron boosted their lobbying funding, while foreign companies like TSMC assembled their DC-based government relations teams in response. And while chip designers like Nvidia and AMD are not direct CHIPS Act funding recipients, they hold an interest in shifting manufacturing dependence on TSMC in case of any geopolitical conflicts in Taiwan.
Business Insider reviewed lobbying public disclosure reports associated with various chip companies and focused on the top listed lobbyists and governmental affairs departments. Most members were part of the "revolving door," switching from staffing on the hill, campaigns, and other agencies to the private sector.
"Given that more government policies are impacting the chip industry relative to several years ago–tariffs, incentives, tax policies, etc.— it isn't surprising that the chip industry is focusing more on this," said Chris Miller, the author of the book "Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology."
President Joe Biden's administration has scrambled to finalize CHIPS Act funding since the election of Donald Trump, who advocated for higher tariffs and attacked the bipartisan legislation in an interview with Joe Rogan in October.
A Department of Commerce spokesperson said in November that the department has awarded over $10 billion so far and expects to allocate all incentives funds this year.
Companies will push to finalize their CHIPS Act grants in the short term and try to build more connections with Republican policymakers in the long term, said Lori Yue, an associate management professor at Columbia Business School who studies corporate political strategy.
"Government change would definitely affect lobbying as the executive branch has a lot of power in terms of regulation," she said.
The Department of Commerce spokesperson said that the due diligence and negotiation processes for finalizing funding are "bespoke" for each applicant. The spokesperson declined to comment on chip lobbying efforts and the specifics of individual CHIPS applicants.
Yue said that hiring lobbyists depends on what expertise and networks they already have.
"For example, they have worked on certain governmental issues before. They really know every single regulatory procedure on this issue. That person can be very valuable. Besides what they know is who they know: how can this person bring the company's perspective to the policymakers and connect to the person in power?" said Yue.
Trump nominated Howard Lutnick, CEO of investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald and an advocate for tariffs, as his commerce secretary.
Nvidia
Lobbying spend in 2024: $480,000
Top firms: Nickles Group, Tiber Creek Group
Current top lobbyists: Luke Holland, Don Kent, Jeff Choudhry
While Nvidia employs its own government affairs office, it uses outside firms rather than in-house lobbyists. The Nickles Group was founded by former Oklahoma Republican Sen. Don Nickles, who served 24 years in Congress and focused heavily on deregulation and tax reduction for businesses.
Luke Holland previously served as chief of staff to Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma. Holland's practice focuses on areas such as aviation, defense, and trade.
Before transitioning to The Nickles Group, Jeff Choudhry worked on Capitol Hill for Arizona's Republican Rep. Trent Franks, acting as a liaison to the House Judiciary Committee. He focused on issues such as interstate commerce, taxation, bankruptcy, and other commercial law. His practice now focuses on antitrust, mergers and acquisitions, IT, and foreign policy related to China.
Don Kent has served in a wide range of positions within the legislative and executive branches in Washington. His practice draws from working at the Department of Homeland Security, at the US Senate Budget Committee, and with senators, focusing on immigration, foreign relations, and technology.
Nvidia declined to comment beyond public filings.
TSMC
Lobbying spend in 2024: $2.32 million
Top firms: TSMC government affairs
Current top lobbyists: Peter Cleveland, Nicholas Montella, Claire Sanderson Hambrick, Stefanie Dearie
CHIPS Act recipient amount: $6.6 billion, finalized November 15
Top issues: CHIPS and Science Act implementation, US-Taiwan relations, investment taxes, tax reductions for Taiwanese residents, export and trade regulations, immigration, workforce development, environmental permits for chip factories
TSMC expanded its US-based government relations department to address the rise in US-China trade tensions and the ban on exports to Huawei. One of the company's first hires was Peter Cleveland, a former Intel lobbyist for over a decade, who took on the position of senior vice president. Before working for Intel, Cleveland worked with former Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Robb.
Other TSMC lobbyists bring experience dealing with Asia-Pacific affairs. Nicholas Montella began his career working as an ESL instructor in China and South Korea before shifting to Washington. He ultimately served as the director of Japan, Korea, and APEC policy in the US Chamber of Commerce.
Claire Sanderson Hambrick served as a lead policy advisor for Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, working on legislation such as the CHIPS for America Act and the Secure 5G and Beyond Act.
Stefanie Dearie is a former Hill staffer who focused on monetary policy and trade. She worked at Accenture's government relations team before joining TSMC as a senior counsel.
TSMC declined to comment on its lobbying efforts.
Intel
Lobbying spend in 2024: $5.22 million
Top firms: Intel government affairs
Current top lobbyists: Allen Thompson, Eminence Griffin, David Shahoulian, Jordan Haas, Shannon Taylor
For the last decade, Intel has consistently spent more than $3 million lobbying annually. Its $7.08 million efforts in 2022 were likely rewarded when the Department of Commerce announced it would award Intel $8.5 billion to expand its factories across the country.
Former Raytheon government relations director Allen Thompson joined Intel in 2020 to serve as the company's vice president of US-Canada Government Relations. Thompson is a seasoned veteran in securing funding. At Raytheon, he helped secure over $20 million for Navy and aerospace projects. A former Hill staffer, he also worked on tech lobbying projects at Mehlman Consulting and served in the US Coast Guard's intelligence unit.
Intel splits its government affairs advocacy into different focus areas. David Shahoulian oversees workforce policy and brings experience working in general counsel roles for the House Judiciary Committee and the US Department of Homeland Security.
Shannon Taylor, who focuses on technology and manufacturing policy advocacy, worked as counsel for the US House of Representatives on the commerce and energy subcommittees before transitioning to government affairs at the Information Technology Industry Council, a special interest lobbying group for tech companies.
Fellow ITI alum Eminence Griffin, who focuses on public sector relations, worked as a procurement counsel for the House of Representatives and in government affairs at Dell.
Jordan Haas oversees trade policy advocacy, with past work experience at the Office of the US Trade Representative and the Department of Commerce.
Intel did not respond to a request for comment.
AMD
Lobbying spend in 2024: $2.13 million
Top firms: AMD government relations and regulatory affairs, Forbes Tate Partners, Mehlman Consulting
Current top lobbyists: Jonathan Hoganson, Grant Gardner, Sarah Badawi
CHIPS Act recipient amount: N/A
Top issues: CHIPS and Science Act implementation, AI, tax credits, trade and outbound investments
AMD's lobbying spending trickled down to when the company underwent a business model transformation and then increased in 2018 when it pitched in $2.29 million, focusing on legislation related to foreign investment and energy research.
Jonathan Hoganson is AMD's corporate vice president of government relations and regulatory affairs. He previously spearheaded government affairs at Micron and worked under former Democratic Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel.
Grant Gardner is another AMD government relations director who worked at the Department of Commerce. He also holds many Republican Party connections; he was a legislative staff member under former Speaker of the House John Boehner and served as a special projects director for the Republican National Committee during Trump's 2016 election.
Before joining AMD's government relations team, Sarah Badawi served as a senior advisor and national deputy political director for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders during his 2020 campaign run. She also planned fundraising events for Elizabeth Warren's senatorial campaign in 2012 and then transitioned to work for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, an organization that supports progressive down-ballot candidates.
Current top lobbyists: Jon Dickinson, Bo Machayo, Jeff Wilson
CHIPS Act recipient amount: $6.1 billion, finalized December 10
Top issues: CHIPS and Science Act implementation, US-Taiwan relations, environmental permits for chips factories, research & development, manufacturing tax credits for semiconductors, US semiconductor competitiveness
In the last three years, Micron has hired Jon Dickinson and Bo Machayo to serve as vice president of global government affairs and head of US government affairs, respectively. Dickinson brings extensive California legislature staffing experience and a decade spent at HP leading government affairs. Machayo previously worked in the Senate, the Department of Homeland Security, and the White House, focusing on the economy, energy, and Africa.
Current top lobbyists: Jennifer Cetta, Kevin O'Hanlon, Holly Pataki
CHIPS Act recipient amount: $6.4 billion, not yet received
Top issues: electric vehicle policy, CHIPS and Science Act implementation, investment in the US by foreign companies, US-Korea relations
Samsung's Washington lobbying efforts span wider than other chip companies, given that the company is also involved in industries such as telecommunications. Jennifer Cetta is cited at the top of lobbying disclosures. She has served as director and senior counsel of government relations for Samsung for more than a decade.
A Micron government affairs alum, Holly Pataki began working for Samsung in 2022. She also previously worked for the National Republican Congressional Committee, advising fundraising campaign strategies for Republican legislators.
Kevin O'Hanlon began his career working for Democratic House representatives from North Carolina and Ohio before shifting to lobbying for the video games industry.
Samsung did not respond to a request for comment.
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Editor's note: This list was first published on November 23, 2024, and has been updated to reflect recent developments.