Speaker 1: Let's say good morning to ABC's Mike Debuski, sitting in
Speaker 1: for Rich Dmiro this week. Mike, Apple's making a big
Speaker 1: investment in AI in the US.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, this five hundred billion dollar investment that
Speaker 2: they announced earlier this week. This is going to go
Speaker 2: into a couple different buckets. So there's going to be
Speaker 2: a new server factory in Texas, just outside of Houston
Speaker 2: that's going to build these AI specific servers that are
Speaker 2: designed to basically support their next generation of artificial intelligence technology.
Speaker 2: That's one bucket of spending. Another bucket is going to
Speaker 2: go to hiring a lot of new people at Apple,
Speaker 2: about twenty thousand, they say over the course of the
Speaker 2: next four years. Those people are going to be focused
Speaker 2: on research and development, silicon investing, and of course, artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1: Okay, Mike, I have a question for you about these servers,
Speaker 1: because everybody's saying that, oh, the AI gobbles up so
Speaker 1: much power and all of that stuff. So what is
Speaker 1: a server? I mean, is it like a giant ware
Speaker 1: house with a bunch of computers in it? What does
Speaker 1: it look like?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question, and it's going to be
Speaker 2: a question that people are talking about a lot going forward,
Speaker 2: because you're right, these AI systems, as they become more prominent,
Speaker 2: as they get added to more and more technologies that
Speaker 2: we use, they take up a lot of energy. They
Speaker 2: require a lot of computing power. And people might not
Speaker 2: know this, but when you run a program on your
Speaker 2: laptop or you open an app on your phone, oftentimes
Speaker 2: it's not that device that's doing the computing. It's just
Speaker 2: not powerful enough. So it offloads some of that work
Speaker 2: to what's called a data center, which is as you described,
Speaker 2: basically just a big building full of computer servers, right,
Speaker 2: computers that are dedicated to supporting these technologies. And these
Speaker 2: data centers are all across the country, all around the world,
Speaker 2: and they've been building them more frequently given that these
Speaker 2: technologies that we've been sort of focused on in recent years,
Speaker 2: everything from the metaverse to cryptocurrencies to now generative artificial
Speaker 2: and intelligence, require these huge outlays of computing power. So
Speaker 2: what this factory that Apple is building in Texas is
Speaker 2: designed to do is to build the servers that go
Speaker 2: into those data centers. So it's very behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: It's not like a computer that you or I would
Speaker 2: ever really encounter, but It is going to be very,
Speaker 2: very important for these systems to run more smoothly, run
Speaker 2: more quickly.
Speaker 1: Okay, And why is Apple doing this investment in the
Speaker 1: US now? Does it have anything to do with Trump tariffs?
Speaker 2: It certainly does, in fact overtly so. So last week
Speaker 2: we saw Apple CEO Tim Cook meet with President Trump
Speaker 2: at the White House to discuss recent tariffs. Earlier this month,
Speaker 2: the Trump administration imposed a ten percent tariff on all
Speaker 2: goods made in China that includes things like the iPhone,
Speaker 2: the iPad, and the Mac obviously hugely valuable products for Apple. Now,
Speaker 2: coming out of that meeting, the President said that Apple
Speaker 2: will be moving manufacturing to the US, quote because they
Speaker 2: don't want to pay the tax tariffs and then lo
Speaker 2: and behold. This week there's a half a trillion dollar
Speaker 2: investment announced from Apple. So this is as much a
Speaker 2: political move as it is a technological move. There's a
Speaker 2: lens through which you can view this as Apple hedging
Speaker 2: its bets on the future of artificial intelligence, kind of
Speaker 2: shoring up the tech infrastructure that's going to undergird that
Speaker 2: future technology. And there's a political lens saying, Hey, Apple,
Speaker 2: I want to extend this Olive branch to the Trump
Speaker 2: administration saying, hey, we're not quite moving iPhone production to
Speaker 2: the United States, but we are spending here and can
Speaker 2: we maybe get a break on some of the tariffs.
Speaker 2: I think that's kind of what Apple has in mind.
Speaker 2: Whether that will actually come to pass in reality, I
Speaker 2: think that remains to be seen, and.
Speaker 1: We will be watching for that. And real quick before
Speaker 1: you go, Amazon's holding an event because somebody is getting
Speaker 1: a makeover.
Speaker 2: Yes, Alexa, and apologies to everyone in California who's Alexa devices.
Speaker 2: I just activated there. But this is their this is
Speaker 2: their very popular voice assistant, baked into smarts seas and
Speaker 2: an app, and there's there's web you know, sort of
Speaker 2: integrations as well. But this is a voice assistant that,
Speaker 2: despite its name recognition, has kind of fallen behind other
Speaker 2: competitors in the voice assistant space, namely Google Assistant. And
Speaker 2: Amazon is planning to unveil an all new version of
Speaker 2: Alexa later today here in New York City, and they
Speaker 2: say that it's going to be competitive again with an
Speaker 2: infusion of artificial intelligence. This is another AI story, the
Speaker 2: same way that we talk to you know, Alexa. Now
Speaker 2: it's kind of stilted, right, you have to use these
Speaker 2: sort of very specific words and phrases. It's kind of
Speaker 2: awkward given that large language models are designed to replicate
Speaker 2: human speech. The idea is that your Alexa will be
Speaker 2: a lot easier to talk to. You can just talk
Speaker 2: to it like we are talking right now in natural language.
Speaker 2: That's the promise. Whether that actually works in reality, you know,
Speaker 2: we'll we'll have to wait and see. I certainly hope
Speaker 2: that there is a live demonstration component to this event
Speaker 2: later today that we can look at to see if
Speaker 2: it actually does work in the real world, because something
Speaker 2: that we have to talk about every time we bring
Speaker 2: up generative AI does have a tendency to go wrong.
Speaker 2: It makes things up, it gets things wrong, and that
Speaker 2: means Amazon is taking on a pretty big risk by
Speaker 2: baking it into one of their most recognizable technologies.
Speaker 1: So we'll be asking Alexa, are you lying to us now?
Speaker 2: Alexa, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again, apologies for the name. ABC's Mike Debuski.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for the information.
Speaker 2: Appreciate it, of course, Amy. Take care