Emerging Trends in AI with David Wennergren & Gary Shapiro

Welcome to Management Matters, an award-winning National Academy of Public Administration podcast. Over the next few weeks, we will host GovExec's AI in the Public Sector series featuring multiple Academy fellows. This series will focus on the rapidly evolving world of digital innovation and artificial intelligence. We hope you enjoy the programs.

Hello and welcome to Artificial Intelligence in the Public Sector: Emerging Trends in AI, the third episode. For our third season, produced by GovExec TV in partnership with the National Academy of Public Administration and ACT-IAC, the American Council for Technology Industry Advisory Council. I'm your host, Frank Konkel, editor-in-chief, Government Executive. AI took center stage at the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show, featuring groundbreaking innovation, keynote insights, and global perspectives. Leading this annual tech extravaganza is Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Technology Association. Today, he'll share key takeaways from CES, AI's implications for government, and strategies for thriving in a world of constant change. I will also be joined by Dave Wernegrand of ACT-IAC and fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, our partners for this series. With me today, I have Gary Shapiro. He is the CEO and Vice Chair of the Consumer Technology Association and author of the bestselling book Pivot or Die: How Leaders Thrive When Everything Changes. And my co-host today is Dave Wenegren. He is the CEO of ACT-IAC and former government and industry IT executive. So Gary, starting with you, thanks for joining us today.

Thanks for having me, Frank. I am so honored to be here in this beautiful studio.

You just wrapped up the Consumer Electronics Show, a global event that celebrates innovation. So I've heard you say that CES isn't just about the cool tech, but it's about highlighting how technology empowers people. And improves human lives. Can you elaborate a little on that?

Absolutely. So we're a nonprofit trade association. We represent over 1,000 American companies where we produce this global event where the world focused on innovation comes to one place, Las Vegas, over 140,000 people, not open to the public, including 6,000 media. And 40% of the people that come are outside the US. We have 4,400 exhibits. Every exhibitor thinks they have something unique and innovative. And indeed, just last year, the United Nations recognized that not only do we work with them at CES to solve some of the world's most fundamental problems, or they call them human securities or human rights, the right to clean air and clean water, the right to food, the right to healthcare, the right to community involvement, all these different rights that technology enables. And technology, we are in the midst of this revolution where it's changing the world and will solve fundamental problems primarily through artificial intelligence. And if you look at it, whether it's in mobility or agriculture or health or so many other areas. We are going increasingly to a world where technology is filling in the gaps. We don't have, we don't have enough healthcare workers anywhere in the world and technology's empowering us. We saw that during COVID and there's so many solutions that companies are coming up with and it is the most inspiring, wonderful, fun, important event. And it, it's what gets us to work every day 'cause we know we're helping make the world better through innovation.

And Gary, it also brings a lot of people from the DC area and especially the federal government. Can you talk a little bit about that involvement, the partnership and involvement of the government coming out to CES every year?

Sure. Many of the government agencies see different opportunities there, whether it's the Postal Service to talk about their technologies and how they can enable them and get more customers, or it's others, Customs, about how you follow trademarks and what you do. And there's so many different— every government agency has a mission, and that mission can often be served most efficiently and effectively by reaching the people that attend CES. They also— the Department of Commerce has been extraordinarily helpful in getting people from around the world to come to the US to spend money in the US to the US and to buy products from American companies so the American companies don't necessarily have to go abroad to sell their, their, their wares there. So it's great for exports, it's great for a lot of things. And it's very rare actually that the US has a world dominant event in the United States. If you think about it, most of the world dominant events like the Paris Air Show and things like that are elsewhere in the world. In part because honestly, the other governments in the world are much more supportive. Usually the CEO of the government is there pulling in people. The US, it's a little different. Approach business and sometimes the leaders of our country keep a little bit more separation from the major events that we try to have in Las Vegas, Orlando, Chicago, and elsewhere, major cities around the country.

But because of the number of journalists there, it's also, I mean, for govies, it's a great place to tell your story if you are doing good work. So maybe for next year we can try to get some more of those government folks telling their stories.

Absolutely. 6,000 media, 6,000 journalists. There isn't anything in the United States, including the Super Bowl or anything else, or political conventions that attracts that level of journalism.

So beyond the show floor, right? We always talk about technology, but CES also features huge lineups every year of keynote speakers. This year you had NVIDIA, you had Delta Airlines, Accenture, and many others. What stood out to you in their remarks? Were some themes that you pick up on this year coming into 2025?

Well, it was an extraordinary year. We had 1,200 speakers, several hundred panel sessions, literally tens of thousands of people attending different things. The NVIDIA keynote alone reached 2 million people around the world live. And Jensen, when he spoke, he And he talked about artificial intelligence, solving problems, moving quickly. It's nice to have a country like NVIDIA. It's an American company out there. And he was on stage for 90 minutes by himself. It was an incredible—

He's a bit of a rock star. Yeah.

He is a rock star. There's no question about it. But he was so like, afterwards I spoke to him for 20 minutes backstage and he was still like excited and passionate about it. You know, usually people will go and they go celebrate. He was just still fired because all he cares about is his mission and his company and being first out there. And then we say, and basically what But a lot of the keynote speakers and other speakers are talking about generative AI, making the world better, solving these problems, making— on the work side, it makes work much more efficient, productivity, reports, things like that that humans spend a lot of time on. They could actually do other stuff as well and be more creative. And then for consumers, consumers see a lot of personalization with AI. And then for big societal problems like healthcare, for example, think about what you could do. Like now in China, You know, they're surging forward as we continue to hear. But it's not just the technology. They have no concern about privacy. They have all their healthcare records in one government agency, 1.4 billion records, and they can analyze every correlation. I was just this past weekend at a dinner with literally a whole bunch of doctors from around North America that are super specialists. And that was the number one discussion was generative AI, how things could be better. And once if we could get this data and by the way, HIPAA was not viewed as a friend. You know, Europe has all privacy and no innovation. They have very few unicorns. China has— all they have is no privacy and they have— and they're doing well with their focus. I mean, their most creative people sometimes want to come to the United States. But the US, we got to get it right. And we have to basically be like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We want that porridge just right and balance our fundamental human rights and privacy with the absolute need to share information so we can learn not only about healthcare, but how to avoid car accidents. If the car in front of you stops, that's not private information that the car in front of you stops and there's a chain reaction collision that you should know about several hundred yards ahead that you can't see in the fog. We have to be reasonable and smart about how we treat all these things and concerns about privacy because innovation's gonna save lives, it's gonna save healthcare costs, it's gonna save taxpayer dollars and all these things. And we saw that in so many different ways of the show, from self-driving vehicles to healthcare, to robotics, artificial intelligence in different ways.

Yeah, we'll come back to AI before we conclude because it's such a huge topic right now. And I think the incoming administration has sort of changed the way it's viewing AI toward a more competitive, less regulatory burdensome role for the technology. I do want to touch on Eureka Park, though, because that's a big thing at CES every year. You've got close to 1,500 startups that come in there and showcase that technology. How is AI driving innovation in other parts of the world from what you've been seeing?

Well, Eureka Park is our startup area, and we, as a fundamental cultural value and part of our mission, we favor startups. Even though all the big companies are members of ours, they recognize that innovation can come from anywhere. And that's why it's so important that we foster in the United States entrepreneurship, innovation, and startups, and we make it easy for someone to start a business. And that's one of the things where we've been good at in our history compared to other countries. And it's also the, I'll say the diversity word because we have a diversity of people coming and we're an immigrant nation. People come with ideas, they, they wanna change the status quo and this is the country to do it. The reason we have such border issues and we're talking about this so much is 'cause people want to come here. You know, it's not like some of these other countries are putting borders up so much 'cause people don't want to go there. They want to come to the US and that's a good thing. And a lot of the people that come here, especially if you look up our most successful companies, are started by immigrants. And that's important that we remember that. And Eureka Park is something we actually subsidize. We encourage startups from around the world around the world. A lot of nations bring their startups. They have competitions, they have awards, and they get startups from so many different countries around the world. But of course, the US companies still dominate because we are in the US and we do have that entrepreneurial spirit. And we see it in not just in AI, but in so many other areas as well, whether it's environmental issues. Sustainability is always a theme at the show, energy efficiency as well. And we see it, we see increasingly universities are showing their best things because they are allowed now to license their products. That's what attracts some of the best professors there, that they can also create businesses. And we're seeing it all over. But innovation can come from anywhere. And what's great about the Trump administration, and I will say it, is that they changed the Biden administration's approach on this. The Biden administration was anti-big companies buying small companies, investing in them, doing anything. And they did not like tech companies. And that was, it was horrible, frankly. It hurt investment as did high interest rates. Because if you are investing in someone, you expect a return unless they're your relative. And so startups need money. And where's that money gonna come from? We see 4 years of hell, frankly, where startups struggled to get money because they couldn't get that X exit from big companies, and investors knew that. And that is now fundamentally changed. And I think that's a good thing for our country.

So Gary, pun intended, let's pivot to a different topic. Your newest book is Pivot or Die. It's an outstanding read and I highly recommend it to everyone listening, watching the show today. And it is really spot on in terms of timely for the times we find ourselves in. So I wanted to ask you, what pivots should government executives be thinking about making in the year ahead to accelerate the adoption of AI in the federal market?

Well, thanks, Dave, and thanks for reading the book and holding it up. Everyone who's heard all 4 of my books tell me that's the best. And I have to admit, there's a lot of me in there. There's a lot of importance, and it's taken a special importance for our country, I think, especially with a, let's be honest, a surprising change and a rapidity of change with the administration. And when things change in our lives as human beings, it's difficult. I mean, we all grow up and we try to preserve the status quo. That's what we do as humans. And, you know, but Things change. That's what life is about, is about change. And as Darwin never expressly said it, but he implied, it's not the fastest or the strongest. It's those who adapt the quickest to change. Now, what we're seeing is fundamental change with the new administration and quick change. And we're seeing with a Congress that's also very compliant and supportive of the president. So these changes are like things we've never seen. I think we all feel like the Exorcist girl with our heads spinning. No matter what you think, I mean, your head is spinning. I mean, I love it, hate it, or mixed. And I'm a mixed person. I think you have to adapt. And I think the opportunity here for government employees is that they, they are the smartest people in terms of what they do and what they know and what they know can be fixed. And if there's ever an opportunity to change things for the better, this is their opportunity. The DOJ or the Department of Government Efficiency, They want to know what's going on. They don't know what's going on. And the only way they'll find out is if people tell them. So this isn't— I wouldn't say it's an opportunity to be vindictive, but if you are expressing the ways of doing something better, including the use of artificial intelligence, which would save a lot of government reporting and allow, you know, freed up resources to do other things which would be more compelling and more interesting. That's an opportunity there. And I think there is going to be fundamental change, like it or not. And some of the changes will be horrible and some of them will be amazing. And our job as American citizens, and especially for government employees, is to try to make those changes better for our country because we are, this is a fundamental thing. We are a trade association, but we don't ask the government for money for our industry because we are so concerned about the federal debt destroying our country, our kids, our grandkids, because all we'll be doing is paying interest on the debt, which is now greater than what we spend for defense spending. You know, 5% on $36 trillion is well over $1 trillion just spent on interest payments and giving it to people. That's crazy. So we gotta get rid of, you know, reduce the debt And only government employees can figure out how to do that. Not some people coming in from outside, with all respect to Elon Musk and others. They're just going to take the best ideas or in a vacuum of ideas, they'll create what they think is the best, which is probably the worst because they're probably wrong.

As you pointed out, times of change are times of opportunity. And, you know, there's a great interest, a hunger, I think, on the part of government leaders to take advantage of AI. And so it seems like this is a perfect year to be pivoting to much more aggressive use for the missions that matter. And so I'm thinking about the conversation you've been having with Frank and with the audience. You know, you We see a lot going on in the market. And so I'm wondering, as you think about both AI but other technology trends and technology priorities that you're seeing across the market, what are some trends, new technologies you think government leaders should be highly focused on in the year ahead, become smarter about and start thinking about how to implement in government?

Well, certainly before I answer that question, I just want to say one thing is assume good intentions.

Yeah.

You know, what I really believe is that the Trump administration, the Biden administration, every adminis— they're doing what they think is best for the country and they're leaders. They really want to make the country better. And if you approach it from that, you'll try to help them make the country better. And in terms of the technologies out there, we are shifting to a world of robotics. So what basically we're taking the generative AI in terms of thinking, but we're also taking these mechanical things that are getting tremendously better to not necessarily replicate humans. So there's a lot of that. But if you think about like take self-driving or autonomous vehicles, That's another thing that died under the Biden administration. Obama pushed it. Trump won, pushed it. Everything was electric. We stopped it. We don't even have a— we're the only developed country that I think doesn't have a national policy favoring autonomous vehicles. So, you know, a lot of companies shut down their efforts. GM did, others did. And now we're behind again and we got to get there. And the advantage of autonomous vehicles, if you think about it, is we have 40,000 deaths and over a million hospital admissions every year. Clogging up our healthcare system and devastating people's lives and their loved ones' lives. And it's all of, or mostly avoidable with autonomous vehicles. Why can't we do that? It would lower the cost of a car cuz you don't even need all that stuff in there for the driver. It would allow you to create an environmental car. It will also lower medical costs dramatically. It will lower your insurance costs. It'll empower the older and the disabled people and they're dying for this. They're the biggest advocates of it. And we've stopped our work. Now, the good news is in the Transportation Department, the Secretary of Transportation designate is one of the most passionate people about this 'cause he has several kids and they fight in the backseat. And he said, "This is the most distracted, this is crazy. We need this." And I think we're gonna shift back in that. But that's just one example. You know, a self-driving vehicle is basically a robot with artificial intelligence in it 'cause that's what the car does. And we have the technology to do that. It's not gonna be perfect. People will die, but there'll be a lot fewer people deaths and injuries because it's, It just takes time to get to perfection and we may never get there, but we have to stop the carnage on the roads and we have to stop listening to the carnage industry, the lawyers especially, who the number one lawsuit in the country is filed on basis of vehicle accident. And it's insanity that we would let lawyers destroy something which will save lives. You know, we do have too many lawyers in this country. We could trade them for oil or something elsewhere. That's maybe a government policy. But in terms of using other technologies, it's about robotics. New forms of mobility, generative AI, new ways of using healthcare to cut down dramatically on our healthcare costs. We have problems with Medicare and Medicaid and costs and that, you know, it's the entitlements which are killing the budget, not the government workers. Let's be honest here. It's a small fraction. So we gotta cut down on healthcare costs and we could do that with better diagnosis, with better treatment, with remote treatment, with figuring out whether people can come in hospitals, with telemedicine, with all these things that healthcare technology is quickly empowering. And frankly, there's a new set of drugs that are out there. I mean, drugs have their place, because we are the fattest country in the world. And being overweight leads to so many other things which end you up in a hospital and early death and are very costly for our system.

The robotic conversation is just so important right now because there are far too many, I'll say, labor-intensive processes still in government and a finite government workforce. And we should have the finite government workforce be focused on the government decision-making that has to be done by government employees and use all these advances in technology to rapidly automate and speed up And you'll improve service to the citizen too. I'd like to get back to something you started with a few minutes ago, and that was the subtitle to the book, which is all about, you know, how leaders thrive when everything changes. And so the change management topic has always been really important to me. And I'm just wondering, maybe you could share a few private sector lessons learned that could help government leaders as they face the substantive change that they not only have to sort of embrace, but actually lead going forward. So. Thoughts about change.

Yeah, I mean, it's especially a relevant topic now with the change in administration where there seems to be almost a hostility between the administration and government executives and people who work, you know, they're in service to the country. And that's why I was talking about assume good intentions. And I think, you know, fighting and fighting quietly and tied into that honesty is a back-to-work thing, which is extremely disruptive but may be important. I mean, I know that a lot of a lot of CEOs especially felt the sting of COVID They couldn't have those relationships, those serendipitous things that the body language and everything else. And they felt like you were leading with Saran Wrap around you essentially. And that's why even though I'm the paid cheerleader for the technology industry in the United States, I believe in the value of live face-to-face conversations like we're having or like events like CES and trade shows and meetings and conventions. And I was disappointed to see that, and this was the buzz of this dinner I was at, the other night was that the NIH immediately stopped all trans— all travel by anyone working there. I mean, that's, that's absurd. It's deadly. You need that, that interaction to do business, to learn, to grow, to figure out what other people are doing. And you could get a lot from your computer, but not everything. But I think the leadership aspect of it is a job of a leader is not to be the smartest person in the room. The job of a leader is to listen to everyone and help figure out and inspire and get the best answers out of everyone so that it's a team that's working together. And that— I have never worked in a government environment except a brief stint on Capitol Hill, so I can't pretend to know how that works. But I imagine, like a lot of things in life, it's different in every agency, it's different in every department, it's different based on the personalities involved. But one thing I think that will change, perhaps out of DOJ or elsewhere, is the concept that civil service is very important and not being subject to political sway in your job. But it is also important that competence be rewarded and incompetence be not tolerated. And you just have to move people sometime on. And that's why the private sector works better than the government sector, is that the reality, some people are not good at their jobs and in the private sector they move on. And in the government sector, I don't know if that's the case. They just get shuttled to the next person who has to deal with them. So it's not good for the person that's being moved on either. And that's, that's stuck there because they're not happy. They know they're not doing well. It doesn't help their self-confidence. There's not that many people that are actually evil out there. They just want to do a bad job. So that's one thing I think that government executives have to deal with that the private sector doesn't. But I think to the extent that, you know, there's an interaction between DOJ and others and say, here's some opportunities to change some things and make our lives better in government and make us more effective at what we do. And let's use technology. It's an enormous opportunity. This is a once in a generation opportunity now with Trump coming in and saying, I want to change things. And you could say this is the worst thing in the world. Or you could say, Opportunity here. And it depends upon your perspective in life. Do you view every change as bad or do you view a change as an opportunity? And I think if you view it as an opportunity, you'll be a happier person and it'll challenge yourself to take everything you've learned working in government and say, how can I apply that now to make this place and our mission be fulfilled?

Yeah, absolutely.

That's a great segue to sort of my last question. It's around a study that you guys recently published at CTA. It's Innovation Agenda: Policies to Maintain U.S. Leadership in Global Technology. And we're talking about policies. And this is a great time to sort of review how the government buys technology, which has been slower than the private sector, how it adopts technologies slower, how they treat startups. Not as easy to get your foot in the door to the federal government. What are, what are some takeaways from that report that you think are worth highlighting that could be useful for this new administration as they view how technology is used in DOD and across the federal government?

Well, there's a lot of things there. We do not deal in the government procurement area, to be honest with you. We like off-the-shelf stuff because a lot A lot of the off-the-shelf does provide answers, but obviously in the IT area, not necessarily. But there are opportunities there that are big in terms of how products and especially services and software are bought. I know that there have been changes over the last 40 years in procurement. So there is more off-the-shelf, but you know, it's frustrating as a citizen when you see the government agencies and what they're dealing with and whether it's, you know, paper still, or fax machines or things like that. The computers are so ancient or the computers can't even be serviced anymore. They, some of them apparently still use vacuum tubes. Obviously there's a tremendous interest in this, probably bipartisan and it has been bipartisan at the congressional level. And I've known a lot of the players involved. In fact, Darrell Issa, who head of the Government Reform Committee, was our chairman of our board. He was a private sector person and he became familiar with Washington and ran and he's very interested in government procurement. Going back to Tom Davis, going back to Connolly and others, these are people that have served in the private sector as members of Congress, and they are interested from a legislative, let's change the rules point of view. This is an opportunity to change the rules. And I think that's something that could still be done and has been done on a bipartisan basis. So changing the rules in procurement are important. And also seeing the solutions that are out there. I would urge as many government executives as possible to look at what's out there, whether it's a trade shows in the Washington area or getting out to Las Vegas, which I know Las Vegas seems risky, but we do get thousands of government employees from around the world coming. We get Cabinet secretaries and ministers and even, you know, heads of countries to come to see how they could be technologically friendly and they could change their governments. And that's really important. In fact, there's a government-focused kind of CTO effort, CIO effort called EDGE run by Don Upson, which I think is phenomenal because it shows how CIOs can make a difference in terms of their acquisition efforts and what they could do. And it exposes them to all the cool things that are out there. And it's held in conjunction with CES. So yeah, there's a million different ways to do it. It's just be open to change and be out there. And anytime you're proposing something, I think it's important that you just say, I want to do this because it's better. You have to say how it's better, how much it will cost, save money, how much it will save time, how much it'll help serve the mission of the agency involved.

Gary, I'm going to be at CES next year.

I already told you that.

That's— I'm holding you to that.

But if you got one final pitch to a lot of our audience in the Beltway area, whether they're feds or whether they're in this contracting industry, what would you pitch them on why they should come out next year if they haven't been to CES before?

Well, I think if you're a government executive or if you're selling to government, you have an obligation to make our government more efficient and more effective and better. And you have a— as a business executive, for example, you have— you can't do business in your narrow silo anymore alone. You have to do deals with all sorts of other companies to get the expertise you need and stay current and be the best you can be when you— whether you're putting a proposal together for government or whether you're a government a leader and you want to see what's out there and how things are done and be inspired. And I think for anyone who comes in the business world or the government world, it's an inspiration event to see where the world can go with technology. And our mission is to get the people who are focused on innovation and making the world together in one room. Now it's a big room if you call Las Vegas room, 'cause it's actually several facilities, but it's, you know, we, we try to improve ourselves each year, whether our app is better or whether we matchmake or whether we do things that, that get people to the panels. And, and the earlier, if you have an idea and you want to come to us and do something, the earlier you the more likely we do it. If you come 2 weeks before the show, we can't do it because we are moving around 140,000 people. You know, the airlines, all the major airlines are adding all sorts of extra flights from around the world. And it's— we are getting leaders. But if you have a panel session, you want to do something, you want to convey it, let us know. And, you know, the odds are good that we'll listen very carefully.

I'm looking forward to it.

We're looking forward to having you.

We've been talking to Gary Shapiro, CEO and vice chair of the Consumer Technology Association and author of the book book Pivot or Die: How Leaders Thrive When Everything Changes, and my co-host today, Dave Wernegren, CEO of ActiAC. Thank you.