In a YouTube interview, former OpenAI executive Zack Kass discusses the United States’ drive to maintain AI supremacy, referencing a Trump quote about America’s destiny to dominate technology. Kass critiques overly broad EU-style regulation and proposes three focused government priorities: explainability (models must articulate decision pathways), alignment (models should respect human values and anticipate consequences), and mitigation of bad actors, especially low‑resource malicious users empowered by AI. He notes a forthcoming moratorium aimed at organized regulation. Kass then shifts to investment outlooks, highlighting chipmakers like AMD (praising its open‑source strategy), data‑center and energy infrastructure, and downstream sectors that benefit from advanced AI—life sciences, molecular and particle sciences. Finally, he raises social concerns about teens forming relationships with AI companions, describing the shift toward virtual over physical community as disconcerting, and suggests a counter‑trend: investing in the outdoor experiential economy (retail, dining, recreation) to encourage offline social interaction.
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America's destiny is to dominate every industry and be the first in every technology. And that includes being the world's number one superpower in artificial intelligence. China and other countries are racing to catch up to America, and we're not going to let them do it. We have the great chips, we have the great everything, and we're going to be fighting them in a very friendly fashion.
President Trump this week praising the new $92 billion in infrastructure investments coming from Google, Blackstone and others pushing to keep America's edge over China. What's the US Strategy to stay on top, and how should investors play it? Here to weigh in is former Open Air executive Zach Kass. Zach, great to see you again. Thanks for coming to join us.
Great to see you. Good to be here.
So there are so many things to talk about with AI. Let's start in Pennsylvania. Huge need for energy, of course, but what about regulations? You serve on Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin's AI TAS force. What should the government be doing to guard against the dangers of AI?
Well, so I think we should first talk about what can the government do, right? Because in Europe, what we've seen is the EU act sort of try to do a lot of things that frankly, the government can't actually effectively inform. And it's led to confusion at the best case scenario and sort of a lack of progress technologically. In the worst case scenario. What the government can and should weigh in on are probably, in my estimation, three things. Explainability, alignment, and bad acting. Explainability is what it sounds like. Can the model effectively explain how it arrived at a decision? Alignment, in layman's terms, is, does the model appreciate the consequences of its actions? Is it aligned to human values, and does it appreciate if it does something, what might go wrong? And the third is bad acting, and this is actually a big one. And I think the crusade that I'm on from a policy standpoint is that we start acknowledging the risk that low resource bad actors in particular stand to present to the world as we start to supercharge them with AI. And if we attack those three issues very carefully, very specifically, I think there will be a lot of really positive outcomes. Part of the moratorium that the current administration wants to pass is not to keep regulation out, but actually to manage it and make sure it's organized. I think it's a good idea. And I think what we're going to see from David Sacks is basically a focus on. On those three things.
Thanks a lot. And that's a really important point about the bad Actors. I mean a bad guy with a stick is very different from a bad guy with a howitzer, so. So thanks. I do want to jump to what a lot of investment minded viewers are thinking about, which is what to buy in the stock world in the space. So many of these companies have shot to the moon. Where do you see some interesting plays for investors?
Well, you know I'm not an investment expert and I don't offer investment advice. But as long as you're asking solicited my play for a while has been in sort of what have been considered also ran air stocks, chip manufacturers like amd. I'm very excited about AMD has taken an open source approach to basically everything they've done except for a little bit of their sort of proprietary hardware. And it's playing out pretty well for them right now. I also obviously really, really like anyone building data centers and large infrastructure and then energy stocks. I think that this is like a huge opportunity, obviously anyone in novel sciences. So if you are downstream of the consequences of unmetered intelligence, meaning if you are a beneficiary in a major way of unlocking brilliance, you're going to do well. And basically that means life sciences, molecular sciences, particle sciences. Anyone who's betting big on discovering something big.
Yeah, there's wonderful promise in health care. Let's talk about sort of the mental health. However, one thing we've been hearing a lot about recently that concerns me as a father. You're here hearing about kids, teenagers especially, making friends, if that's the right word, with these AI companions. I feel like that could become a dystopian novel down the road. How do you think about that?
Well, okay, so I think that there are probably two things that we need to acknowledge here. The first, and frankly I think the one that I am most anxious about is the reality that we are seeing a generation find more interest in, in many cases in a virtual reality than a physical one. I cannot stress enough how disconcerting it is to see a generation start to gradually and then suddenly care more about their online presence than their physical one and their online community than their physical one. But also we are seeing a trend among gen alpha actually against this curve. And so what we're observing is there are sort of this measure and countermeasure thing that happens in society where we introduce a vice, people become addicted to that thing and then we recognize that we need to fix for it and do so. And so one of the things that I will say and one of the other stock picks that I will that I will recommend in this is actually outside an outdoor experiential economy on running and actually potbelly sandwiches and portillos, these fast, casual places that are going to inspire more community, that make it easier for people to gather. I know it sounds crazy, but I am very, very sure that the currency of the future is actually going to become outdoor economy. More and more, I think we're going to start to see investments made in experiential retail and outdoor because people are trying to find ways to get their family offline.
An AI expert telling us to get out there and hang out with real people in nature. I love that advice. Zach Kass, thanks so much for coming on.
