Speaker 1: Mike Dubuski, who is the ABC News Technology reporter, is
Speaker 1: with us and Mike, let's talk about the big, beautiful
Speaker 1: bill of what's going on in terms of the world
Speaker 1: of technology and good morning. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2: As always, Yeah, good morning to you. And this is
Speaker 2: a pretty interesting bill with regard to the technology sector.
Speaker 2: A number of provisions in this bill would or would
Speaker 2: have if they had kind of gone through, impacted both
Speaker 2: the AI sectors, the electric vehicle sectors, the energy sectors.
Speaker 2: The big one that got the most attention in recent
Speaker 2: days is known as the AI moratorium. This was a
Speaker 2: provision in the Senate bill written by Marsha Blackburn of
Speaker 2: Texas and Ted Cruz of or excuse me, marsh Blackburn
Speaker 2: of Tennessee and Ted Cruz of Texas, and they essentially
Speaker 2: this measure would have instituted a temporary pause on state
Speaker 2: level AI regulation, basically saying, hey, yes, if you're a
Speaker 2: state government and you want to pass any sort of
Speaker 2: rule or legislation related to artificial intelligence, that's going to
Speaker 2: be on hold. We're going to withhold some federal funding
Speaker 2: related to broadband access if you end up passing that law.
Speaker 2: In addition, a number of already passed laws at the
Speaker 2: state level would be preempted, would be essentially taken off
Speaker 2: the books, including a number in California, you know, more
Speaker 2: than two dozen, it appears, have already been passed. A
Speaker 2: number are you know, also sort of in the conversation
Speaker 2: waiting to be passed. So this was going to have
Speaker 2: really big implications. The argument, of course, being that the
Speaker 2: AI sector and many lawmakers wanted to prevent this patchwork
Speaker 2: of state level legislation from emerging. This is going to
Speaker 2: be really difficult for companies like open ai and Google
Speaker 2: to navigate, in addition to some of their smaller competitors
Speaker 2: that maybe don't have the legions of lawyers to figure
Speaker 2: all that out. And the advocates for this piece of legislation,
Speaker 2: we're saying that this was going to effectively hinder AI
Speaker 2: development at exactly the wrong moment. We don't want to
Speaker 2: take our foot off the gas when we're in this
Speaker 2: AI race with China. However, there were a lot of
Speaker 2: opposition to this particular measure, many Democrats but also Republicans
Speaker 2: pushing back on it. Seventeen Republican governors writing to the
Speaker 2: Majority leader and to the House Speaker calling for this
Speaker 2: AI moratorium to be stripped out of the bill even
Speaker 2: within the AI space. Dario Amidae, who is the head
Speaker 2: of Anthropic, wrote in an op ed that this was
Speaker 2: a blunt instrument that gave us the worst of both worlds,
Speaker 2: both no ability for states to act on this fast
Speaker 2: advancing technology and no federal policy to backstop it. And
Speaker 2: in recent hours bill we've seen that this has now
Speaker 2: been stripped out of the bill completely, with Marsha Blackburn,
Speaker 2: who again was one of the co authors of this
Speaker 2: piece of legislation, saying, until Congress passes federally preemptive legislation,
Speaker 2: we can't block states for making laws that protect their citizens.
Speaker 1: Okay, fair enough, And it's kind of interesting because federal
Speaker 1: government can't block AI development, and so they do it
Speaker 1: sideways and say, if you don't do what we want,
Speaker 1: we control the bandwidth and we can get in that.
Speaker 1: So it's always the federal government either regulating where it
Speaker 1: can or paying for like in the world of education,
Speaker 1: you don't do what we want, you're not going to
Speaker 1: get the federal money. Read what's going on with Harvard
Speaker 1: and the federal grants, the electric vehicle tax credit, which
Speaker 1: is going to disappear, and that seems to be more
Speaker 1: anti California than anything else. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: laws that are put up by the Trump administration that
Speaker 1: are straight at us. Is that going to disappear.
Speaker 2: As it stands right now in the text of the bill, Yes,
Speaker 2: so after a one hundred and eighty day period, the
Speaker 2: federal EV tax credit would essentially disappear. That is the
Speaker 2: tax credit that is designed to incentivize the purchase of
Speaker 2: a new electric vehicle by basically kicking you a little
Speaker 2: bit of money depending on where your car is built,
Speaker 2: where the batteries come from. On a new electric vehicle,
Speaker 2: you can get up to seventy five hundred dollars off
Speaker 2: the cost of a new car up to four thousand
Speaker 2: dollars off the cost of a used EV. And then
Speaker 2: there are various sort of leasing incentives involved there as well.
Speaker 2: Those leasing incentives would go away immediately if the bill
Speaker 2: is passed as it stands right now, and again that
Speaker 2: one hundred and eighty day period. It really sets up
Speaker 2: an interesting moment in the car space as consumers sort
Speaker 2: of are expected to rush to market to take advantage
Speaker 2: of this additional federal tax credit. While it's still in place.
Speaker 2: You mentioned California. New York as well have state incentives
Speaker 2: for buying an electric car about two thousand dollars. Here
Speaker 2: in New York, it's almost ten thousand dollars off the
Speaker 2: cost of a new car. You can expect people would
Speaker 2: want to take advantage of that before it goes away,
Speaker 2: and that's going to create a real pressure point for
Speaker 2: dealers and for manufacturers as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So there'll be a bump and a healthy one
Speaker 1: as people buy. And then as soon as the wawed disappears,
Speaker 1: as soon as the money that one is getting in
Speaker 1: rebates disappears, then the the number of evs are going
Speaker 1: to go south. Just in general the technology. One of
Speaker 1: the things about evs. I have an EV and I
Speaker 1: regret buying a pure electric car. What I should have
Speaker 1: done is bought a hybrid. Yeah, and I'm not alone,
Speaker 1: am I.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This is a really interesting thing to view in
Speaker 2: the AI, in the EV space that you know, electric
Speaker 2: vehicle adoption we saw through sort of twenty twenty twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two really took off, right. We saw this huge
Speaker 2: amount of adoption, and in the last few years or
Speaker 2: so we've seen that start to level off. The amount
Speaker 2: of evs that people are buying is still growing. More
Speaker 2: evs are sold every year than they were the year prior.
Speaker 2: But we have seen people start to move over into
Speaker 2: the hybrid space because they say it kind of splits
Speaker 2: the difference. Right in the commuting space. You can operate
Speaker 2: on pure electric power, save yourself some money, and then
Speaker 2: when it comes time to, you know, do those longer
Speaker 2: road trips that people occasionally do, you still have that
Speaker 2: gas motor to bank you up and for what it's worth,
Speaker 2: depending on the size of the battery in your hybrid,
Speaker 2: specifically plug in hybrids. There's also some federal incentives attached
Speaker 2: to those which would be going away under the text
Speaker 2: of the bill as it stands right now.
Speaker 1: All right, Mike, I know you've got plenty to do.
Speaker 1: When we have a hard out, we'll talk again. Thanks
Speaker 1: for your information.
Speaker 2: As always, of course, guys, take care,