And we're joined now by the former CEO
of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, who is also founder of USAFacts.org an
organization you've heard us talk about before, dedicated to pushing facts
forward online to help to counter misinformation.
Mr. Ballmer, great to see you.
Welcome back to Bloomberg. Thanks.
Thanks for having me. So you, of course, started on this
project before I was. Every other line in every conversation
and in video this and super microcomputer that.
But are we framing this correctly now? Have you become the counterbalance or
the antidote to A.I. driven misinformation?
I think about it a little bit different. I think two things are true.
Number one, we had disinformation before we had A.I..
Fair enough. And at least A.I.
is not deliver it. And it's misinformation that I'm saying
anybody of any is. But some people are.
We have foreign influences, certainly trying to provide us with
misinformation. And number two, what we try to do is to
make government data government understandable by the numbers, which is
little more than just get it the data in a nonpartisan way.
We try to be comprehensive. Here's all the money government spends.
Here's what they spend it on, here's all the taxes.
How are we doing in consumer product safety?
It gets this much of your budget. This is what we pay for and, you know,
product safety recalls, etc.. So we just we want to explain, put
things in a form where humans can digest it.
We will use may I? We are starting to use may AI in how we
build our product and assemble information so we can cover more topics
than we could if we copied everything up by hand.
So what are you using? Is this chat?
Is it open? I do have a preferred provider.
Sure. Microsoft.
I give it my former former job. But remember the way the open air
Microsoft relationship works at the back end technology level, It's one platform.
The open air stuff is built on the Microsoft platform delivered off of
Microsoft Azure. So it's it's the same whether you
procure it through one company or the other.
And then on the user interface side, again, there's a full collaboration.
Whether you use the chat app or the Microsoft copilot app, you get the same
thing. But yes, they are my preferred vendor as
is by far my larger share that that's still the largest shareholder in
Microsoft. Yes,
well done, sir. Well played.
But so the information in this hard copy, this old fashioned hard copy that
I'm holding, could help to train A.I., correct?
Sure. Is it also going to help with inference
on the way out? Yeah.
The there's there's there's three things.
One, our our data is up on the Internet, so it will be.
Well, we have no unique data in here. Not one bit.
We have our synthesis, but it's all government numbers about what's
happened. We're not making up data, we're just
packaging. But yes, it'll be available.
The the yellow ants will get trained on it.
Yes. Number two.
We ourselves have done a bunch of prompt engineering to help us make sure that as
we use A.I. to build our product, we are also
ensuring the accuracy of the data through the A.I.
processes. There's still going to be some hand
intervention, but we need to do that. And the number three, a third step would
be eventually to actually do training on this specific set of data, which we
could do. Or even better yet, government could
provide its data in a format which is simpler for OEMs to process, in which
case, hey, we don't have to do that. Well, there's other things government
can provide, not just data, but say laws, regulation, especially as we began
this conversation talking about misinformation that could be propagated
as we speak in the middle of an election cycle.
How does all of this need to be regulated and can we do it quickly
enough? Yeah, I don't think regulation is our is
our savior. I think innovation, social media
companies being better cops on the beat again, the technology will have to be
really good for the people who run the platforms of all kinds to do a good job.
I have been convinced in my short day here in in Washington that probably the
right thing is to make sure the legislation is in place so that people
who have been. Violated in some way, whether it's deep
fakes or, you know, child harassed through an eye, whatever, that they are
clearly prosecutable, that I think we need legislation.
I believe in that trying to regulate. I think it's premature.
We don't know enough. And over time, government will have to
build some center of expertise because you can't just say let's regulate
without really understanding what's going on in the technology is it might
have been too late to stop the deepfake that could upset this election.
There will be nothing that happens. I mean, there will be fakes that get
taken down, but there will be nothing that I think fundamentally disrupts
where we are that you can do in June for an election that's in November.
Speaking of that election, obviously we know it's going to be Trump versus Biden
in November. What we don't know is who might be on
the ticket with Donald Trump. And one of the contenders, at least to
our understanding, is someone you know quite well, Doug Burgum.
Do you think he would make a good vice president?
I can't say I know what makes a good vice president, so I can't really
comment. But yeah, I've known Doug for 45 years
since we worked on a school project together in business school.
So I've known him a long time. Do you plan to get involved in this
campaign financially? No, I will not.
We will not. Is there a reason for that?
I run a nonpartisan organization. Obviously, I have my opinions on policy
issues and I vote. So, you know, that does happen.
But it's not my role to to do that. There are others.
I mean, you know, I have friends who will participate and there's a lot of
people who will do that. I don't choose to get involved.
My wife will get involved. Somebody will not.
This is a political show, which is why we're here talking about policy.
But we also want to share our condolences on the passing of Jerry
West. And I wonder what went through your mind
when you heard this news today about the logo.
Yeah. You know, Jerry West has been a
consultant to the Clippers. Really?
Really to to me. But to our whole staff for the last
seven years and. Getting to know Jerry has been one of
the grand joys of my life. Fun, loyal, competitive, smart and not
just about basketball. He was always reading biographies.
Young Winston Churchill said this or that.
And so I'm going to miss Jerry. I'm going to miss him a lot.