BlackRock CEO says he's more fearful of losing the AI race than an AI bubble

The Nasdaq and S&P 500 both opening at record highs this morning, leading the charge. Artificial intelligence, stocks tied to AI, anything to do with AI have become major movers in global markets, but not without some concern. I spoke with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink about his thoughts on a possible AI bubble. Are you concerned at all about an AI bubble that may be brewing here? There's so much investment. I mean, the market, half of the S&P 500 right now is AI. Well, I believe that AI is going to be this transformational technology that will lift more and more parts of our economy and more and more people. What we are witnessing right now, the demand for compute is growing faster than supply. And so I don't see anything but a bubble. I see greater shortages. And if we don't, and the shortages are skilled trade, shortages of power and energy, shortages of chips, shortages of memory. So the whole supply chain from the base of people working up until the most advanced chip, computer chip, we have shortages. So I know I hear a lot of people fearful about a bubble. I'm more fearful that we're not going to be able to execute and fulfill the opportunity to make sure that America is the winner in this AI race. Where are you on the doomsday scenarios? You seem optimistic about AI and its transformational qualities, but most recently people have been talking about unchecked, unregulated, just unbridled AI as a problem. Are you concerned? I've worked my entire career in a very regulated industry, and every year they focus on more and more types of oversight. And that being said, there's still major problems in the financial community over the last number of years. I'm recommending and telling everybody the technology organizations need to first and foremost self-regulate. They need to set up the guidelines working with our government. The last thing I would like to see is our government to put pressure on it so much that we can't innovate fast enough. So there's a push and a pull. How do we make sure that we're innovating as fast as we can, making sure that we can democratize this technology, at the same time making this technology safe? That's going to be a balance. And I'm not here to suggest that we're not going to have accidents or issues like we have in the financial services area, but over time we're able to navigate this and build this out. But there has to be a balance, a balance between safety and a balance of utilization so we can democratize this. That conversation with Larry Fink was before a Detroit summit promoting investment in the skilled trades. He says we're seeing disruption, not destruction of jobs in the workforce because of artificial intelligence. I'm going to bring you more of my conversations with him as well as leaders at Ford, Google and Carhartt in the days ahead.