AI and Hot Mics

But in some ways, AI’s impact may be more subtle. It is already changing the way people talk and act. 

What I’m going to say today is a follow-up to something I wrote almost two years ago.  Click below to read it, then come back here. I’ll wait.

The AI is Listening (Dec 18, 2023)

Welcome back. You just read about the ways AI could enable mass surveillance on a scale never before seen. After two more years of progress, it’s a good bet some of that is now reality.

As people gain awareness of what is happening, or could be happening, our behavior will change. Aside from any civil liberties concerns, these changes will have an economic effect, too. 

I briefly touched on this in the 2023 piece. Quoting:

“One economic danger here is if people respond to mass surveillance with self-censorship. Growth depends on the free flow of ideas. If you can’t speak freely in your own office, business ideas that might otherwise have been huge may never even be mentioned.

This is why authoritarian regimes can rarely sustain economic growth. The US isn’t like the Soviet Union (yet). But we’ll soon have technology the KGB never dreamed of.”

The idea that an AI system might pull yours out of the thousands it hears that day can have a restraining effect – the “self-censorship” I mentioned.

But even short of that, the AI boom is changing the way business leaders talk. A good example occurred at the White House just last month.

A group of technology executives were having dinner with President Trump. He asked Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the company’s plans to invest in US projects.

(Meta, by the way, is one of the “Magnificent 7” companies who are spending zillions to develop AI systems.) 

Zuckerberg, clearly surprised, stumbled through his answer. He said it was “probably going to be something like, I don’t know, at least $600 billion through [20]28 in the US.”

Trump thanked him and the event moved on. You can see video of the exchange here.

The more interesting part came afterward when cameras caught a “hot mic” moment between the two. Zuckerberg told Trump – he thought privately – “Sorry, I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t sure what number you wanted to go with.”

What was going on there? 

It looks like the two men had spoken earlier about Meta’s spending plans. Zuckerberg didn’t know what Trump wanted revealed to a wider audience. He was clearly concerned he might have said the wrong thing, hence his apology. 

Now, is Mark Zuckerberg really so unaware of his own company’s plans? 

Of course not. Zuck is a detail-oriented genius. I would bet he knew exactly how much Meta intends to invest, and exactly when. He stumbled not because he didn’t know the answer, but because he didn’t know which answer the president wanted to hear. 

Later, Zuckerberg explained “I wasn’t sure which number he was asking about, so I just shared the lower number through ’28 and clarified with him afterwards.” 

Fair enough. But in the hot mic exchange, Zuckerberg’s concern was that his words might not have been what Trump “wanted to go with.” Accuracy doesn’t seem to have been the priority. He was more interested in whether the president liked it. 

As CEO of a public company, Zuckerberg is first responsible to shareholders. His statements should reflect business reality. What POTUS “wants to go with” shouldn’t matter.

So now every investor should wonder about everything these AI executives say. Are they describing the company’s real intent or are they trying to please the president? We don’t know. 

The possibility that your conversations are monitored and analyzed by AI in ways that might get you in trouble is going to cause problems. The most likely result: CEOs like Zuckerberg will say as little as possible, at least in public forums. Self-censorship, in other words. 

Combine this with Trump’s idea to reduce earnings reports to every six months instead of quarterly, and it looks like small investors will increasingly be in the dark. 

That may not be all bad, but it will be different. AI is going to change investing in ways I don’t think we anticipate yet. 

See you at the top,