During a Senate Commerce Committee hearing last week, Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE) questioned Dr. Lisa Su, the Chair & CEO of Advanced Micro Devices Inc., about artificial intelligence supply chain constraints.
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00:00Thank you. Senator Blunt Rochester. Thank you Chairman Cruz and thank you so
00:05much to the witnesses. This is such an important hearing. Five minutes will not
00:09suffice for me. I'll be submitting some questions for the record. I noticed that
00:14for Mr. Altman and Mr. Smith when the question of paint me a picture of the
00:18future came up there was you actually leaned up in your chair. There was a level
00:22of excitement and that's how I am about the future. When I came into the House
00:28of Representatives in 2017 I started a future of work bipartisan caucus because
00:34I had a concern that number one there were certain groups of people that were
00:39going to be left behind but they're also as a country that we could be left behind
00:44and I started I had one an event where we had everyone walk into the room and use
00:50a word cloud and tell me what you think of when you hear the future of work. The
00:54biggest word coming in the door was fear. The biggest word walking out the door
01:00was opportunity and so to me this conversation is so vital to think about
01:05the opportunities but also making sure that we are watching out for ethics
01:10watching out for scams watching out for that technology does not take over the
01:15human and so I am just grateful for the conversation and Mr. Altman I listened to
01:22an interview about that you gave with Lester Holt maybe a year or so ago and you
01:28talked in that interview about how open AI it wasn't initially even about making a
01:34product it wasn't about the money and so I know you are incorporated in Delaware and
01:40I understand you've been working with our Attorney General during the previously
01:45proposed legislation to transition to a for-profit not legislation but to
01:50transition to for-profit and this Monday open AI decided to apply to become a
01:55public benefit corporation instead and to have the PBC govern your nonprofit arm.
02:02What went into this decision and what considerations influence the timing of the
02:08organizational change? So we never thank you for the question Senator the chance to
02:14explain this it's a complicated thing that I think has gotten misrepresented so this is a
02:18wonderful forum to talk about it. We never planned to have the nonprofit convert into
02:24anything the nonprofit was always going to be the nonprofit and we also planned for a
02:28PBC from the very beginning there were a bunch of other considerations about is it
02:33the PBC board that would control the nonprofit somehow or you know how our
02:38capital structure was going to work that there was a lot of speculation on most of
02:42it inaccurate in the press but our plan has always been to have a robust
02:45nonprofit we hope our nonprofit will be one of the best maybe someday the best
02:49resourced nonprofit in the world and a PBC with the same mission that would make
02:55make it possible for us to raise the capital needed to deliver these tools and
03:01services at the quality level and availability level that people want to use
03:04them at but still stick to our mission which we've been proud over the last
03:08almost decade of our progress towards. So we had a lot of productive
03:13conversations with a lot of stakeholders and a lot of lawyers and a lot of
03:16regulators about the best way to do this. It took longer than we thought it was
03:20going to you know I would have guessed that we would have been talking about
03:24this last year but now we have a proposal that people seem pretty excited about
03:28and we're trying to now advance. And Dr. Hsu, your company primarily operates in the
03:35physical hardware portion of the AI stack. I have a bill with Senators Cantwell and
03:41Blackburn called the Promoting Resilient Supply Chains Act which authorizes the
03:45Department of Commerce to strengthen American supply chains for critical
03:48industries and emerging technologies. Dr. Hsu and others a semiconductor and
03:55chips manufacturing is critical to advancing the advancement of AI but we're
04:00facing these global supply chain constraints. What specific policies and I
04:04know you mentioned policies as well for a supply chains would we need to adopt to
04:11help American companies overcome the supply chain issues and compete in
04:17international with our rivals? Thank you Senator for the question. There's no
04:21question the semiconductor supply chain and overall supply chains are really
04:25critical for us to win the AI race. I think from a semiconductor standpoint the
04:29efforts that have been made to move manufacturing back to the United States
04:33have been positive. I think they are a start. There's a lot more that we can do
04:37and one of the most important aspects of it is really to think about it end to
04:42end. There's so many steps to go from beginning to end in a semiconductor
04:47supply chain including advanced wafers, including packaging, including the
04:50back ends and system tests. All of those avenues need to have a footprint in the
04:55United States and then we have many allies around the world which are you know
04:59very excellent partners as part of the global resiliency in the supply chain and we
05:03would like to see you know those partnerships continue to flourish.
05:07And last question if I can, Mr. Smith, how do you see the interdependence
05:12between the AI stack sections creating either vulnerabilities or opportunities in the AI supply
05:18chain? I think they create more opportunities than vulnerabilities because it enables companies to
05:28do what they do best and that we can work together and you know the world today has an integrated supply
05:35chain for anything that you buy. We just don't think about it when we go to the grocery store.
05:40I think one of the strengths of the tech sector is that we have I'll call it a string of pearls.
05:47Great companies in very in every layer of the stack and we're going to need frankly more great companies
05:54especially at the applications layer and that it is how we work together.
05:58Thank you so much. I am out of time but we will be following up with questions for the record
06:04as well as individually. Thank you and I yield back.
06:06thank you and
06:07thank you for joining me. Thank you. Mr. Moran.
06:08Mr. Moran.
06:13Mr. Moran.
06:17Maran.
06:20Mr. Moran.
06:25Mr. Moran.
06:30Ms. Moran.