Well, welcome everyone. We are so excited to have you here today. Welcome to the 2025 Utah AI Summit. It's a pretty momentous day to have you all here. I just want to start by obviously thanking you, but also kind of mentioning what an inflection point we're at right now when we think about artificial intelligence. A couple years ago we were hearing about some things and people started to get a little excited, but as we know things have fundamentally shifted. And we look at that not just from an economic perspective but even the way it's changing society. We're seeing a dramatic shift in terms of the investments. Just to give you kind of a better indication of what's happening, just the level of investments that are happening in artificial intelligence, I just wanted to read a couple statistics for you. So, just in next year, we're expected to spend $490 billion on artificial intelligence. In 2029, two years away, we expect to have $3 trillion that will be spent on artificial intelligence. Hundreds of billions of dollars right now are going into from businesses going into AI. When you think about what we're doing on energy, data storage, all of those things, clearly it's going to have a big impact on our world. In addition, we think that the estimates are it'll be about a 7% increase in GDP. So thinking through that, that is going to have an impact on the world of course. So what's the purpose of today? Today's purpose is to bring together all of you. We wanted to bring together industry, government, education, to help solve big problems. It is this group that can do what we need to do and there's no better place than Utah to be able to make that happen. We do things in Utah that are unique. We actually work well together. We like to help support education. We like to help support industry, bringing those different groups together. So, what I would like to do today, I'm going to actually kick us off by turning us over to Margaret Bussey, who is going to help kick off the event, and then she will be welcoming on the governor. So, I will have to turn the time over to Margaret Bussey.
Please welcome to the stage Margaret Willie Bussey, executive director of the Utah Department of Commerce.
Hi everyone. I'm so excited to be here. I am Margaret Willie Bussey, the executive director of the Utah Department of Commerce. Welcome. Welcome today. I really think that you are in the right place right now because I don't think it's an overstatement to say as Jeff said, we are at an inflection point in history. Truly, never before has humanity been faced with a technology that is so profound in its potential to radically change life as we know it. Is this an overstatement? I don't know. But Google CEO Sundar Pichai said AI is probably the most important thing that humanity has ever worked on. I think of it as something more profound than electricity or fire. Okay, fire. That's where we are right now potentially. Now, we've been getting a lot of these what we might think of as being sort of hyperbolic. But who knows, maybe we're actually underestimating this technology. But overestimating or underestimating, the question really is right now the world over is, will AI change life for the better or for the worse? Or maybe even more precisely, will AI change my life for the better or for the worse? This question is reflected in the tremendous excitement and the tremendous anxiety that both seem to be really a kind of a fever pitch right now with eye-popping sums of money being invested in AI and AI infrastructure as Jeff already told us and also there's an intense political fight going on right now about how and how much we should regulate AI. Actually, what I found recently was interesting. Some polls suggest that over half of the US population is more nervous about AI than they are excited about it. That's remarkable. People are worried about their jobs being automated away. People worry about their kids. They worry that they have seen already how social media algorithms which are powered by AI have ravaged their families, have caused their kids to be addicted, socially isolated, and now they're looking at AI companion and thinking, well, this seems oddly familiar. So, they're worried. They're worried about their own free agency being potentially manipulated by data-hungry all-knowing companies and their algorithms. But people are also so excited about the incredible potential AI has to make them better at their jobs and maybe make their jobs more fun, more meaningful. To make breakthrough discoveries that can unlock cures to cancer, radical new ways to power our planet, and solutions to end world hunger. And maybe to help our kids learn faster and more effectively with personalized learning. So much potential. So, the key is to figure out how we can harness this incredible new technology for good. And Utah has the chance to do just that. And in so many ways, Utah is already doing this. So, here are some examples. Right now, state employees are empowered with a whole suite of AI tools under the leadership of Alan Fuller within appropriate guardrails. They are empowered to explore how to make their jobs more efficient and how to better deliver customer service. We're far ahead of other states, by the way, in this. We have scholars at our research universities, many of whom are here today, who are leading out in researching how AI can be used to improve health care, pollution, traffic congestion, our democracy. And this is embodied nowhere better than in the hundred million dollar investment that the University of Utah is making in its groundbreaking responsible AI initiative. We also have incredible thinkers and doers at our state board of education, at our system of higher education who are really engaging on how best to integrate AI in learning and how to prepare our workforce for it. Amazing work there. We've also led out an innovative tech policy from the first having the first laws protecting kids from the harms of social media to the most stringent government data privacy laws to also creating the internationally recognized office of AI policy which both promotes innovation by granting regulatory relief as well as ensures that our public is protected through a regulatory learning lab. We also have some of the coolest AI companies anywhere which are mobilizing the technology to dramatically improve access to critical medical treatment, to accelerate learning for falling behind students, to assist in times of mental health challenges, to organize our electric grid, and the list goes on. And you get to hear from some of these companies today. Utah indeed has led out. So, what is it going to take for Utah to continue to lead out at this critical crucial moment in time? First, it's going to take all of us together. Over the last couple months, Jeff Moss and I under the governor's leadership have convened leaders across several different areas where AI innovation is happening in academic research, in workforce planning and education, in state government, in public protection laws, and in industry to determine how best Utah can in fact lead out in all of its efforts in AI in a coordinated connective way under the banner of pro-human. And you're going to hear more about that from the governor in just a moment. It's also going to take all of us individually to do this. And I recommend a couple things. First, jump into the technology. Everyone is learning it right now. You're not behind. Everyone is new to this technology. So, jump in. Don't be intimidated. Figure out how you can master it and leverage it and not the other way around. Jump into the conversation. Nobody knows what the future is going to be or what even the right future looks like. Everyone's voice needs to be in this space as we determine how we can make this optimal for humankind. And finally, this may sound kind of strange, but I believe this new technology demands that we be our best selves. This technology can give us tremendous new powers. We must ensure that we use it responsibly to empower and not manipulate, to enhance and not exploit, and for us to act and not be acted upon. So as you listen to this conference, ask yourself, will it change life? Will it change my life or your life for the better or for the worse? I submit to you it will be better because we will choose to make it so right here in Utah by being proactive, by being pro-Utah, by being pro-human. With that, I join Jeff Moss in welcoming you to the second annual Utah AI Summit where we get to explore all of the good things Utah is doing to make AI truly pro-human. We'll hear about amazing Utah startups, some trailblazers in this space, the innovative policy approach that Utah is taking, our approach to workforce and learning. Plus, we'll hear from luminaries in this space, including Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, Nvidia co-founder Chris Malachowsky, and actor and advocate Joseph Gordon-Levitt. But first, it is now my great privilege to introduce our great Governor Spencer J. Cox. In his five years as governor, he has been a champion for Utah's incredible startup ecosystem, a tireless advocate for protecting kids from the harms of social media, and a passionate promoter of Utah's groundbreaking balanced approach to AI regulation and innovation. Now, he will introduce Utah's pro-human AI initiative. Please join me in welcoming to the stage Governor Spencer J. Cox.
Thank you so much, Margaret, for that kind introduction and for your wise stewardship of all things related to AI in our state. Ladies and gentlemen, it's great to be with you today. It's great to see so many of you, old friends and new who are here with us who care deeply about our state and about technology, about the economy and about the future of our country. Before I kind of jump into my notes I need to start with just a little background. I served as a telecom executive and my job was to help deliver the internet to homes and businesses across the state of Utah. That's what I did for a living before I had an opportunity to serve in government. And if you go back more than a decade in 2011-2012 time frame, you could have found me on college campuses giving speeches about technological optimism. I was a true tech optimist in every sense of the term. I was talking to young people about the Arab Spring, about how the rise of social media was going to solve all of our problems and bring us together as a nation, as a world. It turns out I was incredibly wrong. Maybe more wrong about that than anything I've ever been wrong about. And most of you think that's most things. So, it was truly truly not a great mark as I look back. In fact, it's been the exact opposite. Those very tools that I believed would lead to human flourishing and human connection have done the exact opposite. Those tools have been used to manipulate us, to divide us and to do significant harm. Instead of human flourishing, it's led to a significant decline in the very things that make us human. I think it's fair to say that I'm much less of a tech optimist today and more of a tech pessimist. What we ended up with was just a handful of the most powerful, wealthiest companies in the history of the world. And what have they been doing? Well, they've been basically strip-mining our souls. And even worse, they've been employing our children in their effort to strip-mine our souls. It's not a pretty picture. I have to say, I know many of you in this room, again, I know that the tech is your background. But however much you hate social media, you do not hate it enough. You do not hate these companies enough and what they've done to us intentionally, knowingly understanding the devastation that they were wreaking on our kids. They gave your daughter an eating disorder and they gave your son a pornography addiction and they gave our grandkids anxiety and depression and many of them took their own lives and they did it knowingly. They had studied the results. We're finding this out now through lawsuits that they knew what they were doing. And they did it anyway. And maybe worst of all, they did it under the guise of doing good for humankind. And so we're at this moment, this moment of reckoning where hopefully our eyes are wide open about the good things that can come from technology, but also the downsides of technology. It took us a decade to really come to grips with what they were doing to our kids and to our families and to our society. And now we're dealing with the consequences of that. The good news is that it's not too late. And the best news of all is that we stand on the precipice of a new technological revolution. It is here. It is before us. We have used human ingenuity, all of the knowledge that we have gathered over time to build machines and connect them together and take again all of human knowledge and employ it in whatever way we want, whatever way we decide. But here's the thing, we have to decide. We get to make the future instead of letting the future happen to us. We have to decide what that future is going to be. Now, I do not believe that government is the answer to all of our problems. I do not believe that government should be telling companies how to develop technologies. That is not our role. I believe in markets. I believe that we have to have markets that actually function and work. I believe that we've made a mistake in allowing for anti-competitive behaviors to keep out market entrants. I think we've made a mistake. In fact, Utah first passed the first of its kind law in this country to reestablish that we own our data that it is ours. It is not Meta's. It is not Google's. It is not TikTok. It is ours and we should be able to take that anywhere we want with us at any time. Those are the type of competitive regulations that we should be interested in. It is and always has been the purview of government to protect our kids and we must be involved there. I think that the government should not be regulating the development of AI. But the minute you decide to use those tools to give my kid a sexualized chatbot, then it's my business and it's the government's business and we are going to get involved and we are going to tell you what you can and can't do. And Congress should not be stopping us from being able to do that. Congress should be doing this, setting those guardrails. I would much prefer that we had a Congress that could actually pass a bill that could actually do something that could function the way it was designed to function. But if it is not going to function, then the states must act and we must have the ability to do that. And we will fight for that ability to do that. Now, I have some things I'm supposed to tell you, and then we're going to get into something far more important with someone far smarter than I am. Look, we have these tools now that can solve all of the biggest problems we've been facing as a society throughout human history. We can use these tools to cure cancer. We can use these tools to help us live longer and more prosperous lives. We can use these tools to clean up our environment and our atmosphere. We can use these tools to make us smarter than we've ever been before. But these tools, as Margaret said, they have to work for us, not the other way around. And we can't just use them to park us on a couch to do everything for us to make us dumber than we've ever been and we're on that decline right now. We can't have kids using AI to write these papers and professors using AI to grade these papers. That's not a thing that will make us better as human beings. And so we are here today to announce this pro-human AI initiative. You're going to hear a lot about this, but what we want is that every decision that we make related to AI wherever it exists, is it serving humankind? Is it promoting human flourishing? Or is it making us dumber and worse? And I think if we look through things in that lens, we'll end up in a better place. Now, we're approaching AI across six different pillars. I know that's a lot of pillars. This building is going to be so solid, you guys, but trust me, these are all very important pillars. We're looking at the impacts on workforce, industry, state government, academia, public policy, and learning under this big umbrella of pro-human AI. It simply begins with this principle. AI must always be human-guided. Systems should protect dignity, preserve human agency, and ensure that individuals stay in control of the tools that shape their work and their lives. It rejects systems that mislead or obscure how they operate. The core element asks us to prioritize human leadership in the age of AI, ensuring that AI remains understandable in how it functions, accountable in its impacts and adaptable to human needs rather than the other way around. And the second core element is that AI must be human-enhancing. It should expand our capabilities, not diminish them. Open new opportunities, not close them. Pro-human AI empowers workers with better tools. It strengthens communities through accessible innovation and enables problem solving at an unprecedented scale. It deepens human interaction by connecting people and ideas in more meaningful ways, not just connecting people with robots or machines. Pro-human AI treats AI as an amplifier of human potential by focusing on creating value-based AI ecosystems that is pioneering in its vision, empowering in its outcome, and connective in how it brings people and ideas together. So in that vein, I'm pleased to announce several things that we will be working on together. The first is the pro-human AI academic consortium, a statewide network that will leverage to launch moonshot challenges that drive breakthroughs in human-centered innovation and advance human flourishing. Now, in this next session and coming up, you're going to see much more work with our state legislature. We're going to be looking at harm reduction in AI companions, transparency around deepfakes, and an upcoming study around data ownership and control more broadly, as well as the interaction with AI and healthcare. And I will tell you that Utah is going to continue to push to lead the nation to prevent anti-competitive actions by all of the big companies that are in this space right now. We need to make sure that we don't end up with five AI companies. We need thousands of AI companies in this country. And as we move forward, our goal is to lead nationally by fostering a robust iterative policy landscape that responsibly responds to the rapid evolution of AI technologies. Now, finally, when it comes to the education of our kids, I appreciate the work of the Utah State Board of Education. They recently released their portrait of an AI-infused learner and teacher to help the state with knowledge, skills, and the dispositions necessary for learners and educators to truly thrive using these tools. It's a first of its kind document. This portrait outlines the skills that are necessary for any learner at any age to master such things as creativity and critical thinking while centering AI-focused knowledge including prompt writing and data privacy security. And I would also like to just thank the Utah state higher education board who just yesterday passed a resolution that will ensure the focus of our higher education system will be to enhance learning through personalization but preserve the essential human elements of learning, mentorship, personal guidance, curiosity, and community. So ladies and gentlemen, that's a lot. There's so much happening in this space. We're excited for what the future can be, but we have to be sober. I think we have to be wide-eyed about where we are, about where we're going, and about who we are. We have to apply Utah values to this new technology. And if we do this right, Utah can continue to lead not just the country, but the entire world when it comes to the adoption of these tools in ways that make us better human beings. Thank you so much for being here. Now, it is my privilege to get to the part that you all came to listen to, which is not me. And that is I'm honored to welcome our first featured speaker for this fireside. He's a dear friend and he's a Utahn. Matthew Prince is the co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. Cloudflare is one of the most consequential companies shaping the modern internet. Their network protects millions of websites and organizations around the world. They help keep the internet open, secure, and reliable. Something every business, government, and family depends on every single day. Under Matthew's leadership, Cloudflare has become a global leader in cybersecurity and internet infrastructure. He's been recognized as a World Economic Forum technology pioneer and serves on the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also a proud Utahn with deep academic and entrepreneurial roots. He holds degrees from Trinity College, the University of Chicago, and Harvard Business School. And even before Cloudflare, he was already building tools to fight online fraud and abuse. Most importantly, he represents what's possible when innovation, service, and commitment to strengthening the digital world come together. He's one of the most brilliant people I know. Please welcome to the stage Matthew Prince.
Welcome. All right. What'd I get wrong? Matthew, let's start there.
Clearly not. You're smarter than I am. So this is not true.
Yes, definitely. And well, I think you know...
I'm still a technology optimist and I think that...
Convince me. Bring me back.
Well, I think that I mean it's a miracle right now that this is being streamed live all around the world. If you just think about 10 years ago that would have required...
Just lost my mic. There we go.
What that would have required been satellite trucks, millions of dollars. We're doing that for free. I think you can be anti-social media but still pro-internet. And that's sort of the camp that I'm in. And I think we're at this really unique time where we get to figure out what the future looks like. And I think the most interesting question over the next 5 years is what's the future business model of the internet going to be? And if you in this room aren't thinking about what that is, frankly, I mean, I can't imagine anything that's more exciting to be working on.
Thank you. I think you're right. And I think that really describes where I am. I'm still pro-internet. I'm still pro-technology. I still believe that we can use these tools to solve our biggest problems. But I'm very much anti-social media. So, thank you.
And I think the thing to think about, and again, I mean, I was a law professor for a while, so I like history lessons. And so, if you think about the last 27 years of the internet, it's really a miracle. And it's all been the function of a business model which was really pretty simple which was you generate content, that content generates traffic and then you turn that traffic into revenue through either selling things, subscriptions or ads. And for social media that has primarily been through selling ads. And so the key was how do you generate more traffic? And unfortunately what that has led to is a world where we generate things that make people either angry, generate cortisol, or get them kind of excited, you know, generate some sort of other thing that preys on some of our biggest weaknesses. And so a lot of the business model of social media and unfortunately a lot of the business model of the internet has been driven on how do we rage bait or basically kind of seduce people into clicking on links and clicking on ads. And what I think is really one of the most exciting and interesting things about AI that I don't think people appreciate is it's another platform change. We went from the web to social to mobile. We kind of understood those were all platform changes. AI is another platform change which is going to take us somewhere else. And you and I are old enough to remember the cartoon show the Jetsons. Those of you who are students in the room, you know, go look it up. But if you think about it, George Jetson, how did he get information? The answer was he asked Rosie the robot. And Rosie the robot would say, 'Hey, here's what's going on.' And would feed that information back. And that seemed like science fiction. And yet in the last three years, OpenAI just released ChatGPT three years ago yesterday. It's amazing how much has happened in that short amount of time. That reality that seemed like science fiction of George Jetson is exactly how people are now consuming information. It is that sort of equivalent of Rosie the robot where we're going to be consuming information, where we're going to be doing commerce. That's going to be the interface effectively the screen that we're looking at. And what that's going to do is it's actually going to change the way we consume information. And what's powerful about that is it's not going to be traffic that's rewarded anymore because that's not what the robot is giving back. It's not you ask it a question, you don't get here are 10 blue links, go figure out the answer. It's like here's the answer, right? So that's a different business model and inherently that means the business model of the internet is going to fundamentally change and what again I think exactly what you said is right. We need to think about what that future looks like. And I think that future that I want to play for is not a world where there are five AI companies, it's 500,000 AI companies. It's not a world where, you know, there's this massive consolidation of media. We should make it so that media expands massively. It's not a world where we have, you know, five big conglomerates that sell us everything, but where everyone, small businesses, large businesses, everyone can compete on a level playing field. And we should be thinking about how we design the incentives and how we design the business model of the future in order to get to that world that we all really want.
So, we have a whole bunch of questions that we kind of prepared and went back and forth on and they're good questions, you guys. They're so good. This is the fun stuff that I love chatting with you about. In politics we talk a lot about incentive structures and we always get what you know you tell me what the incentive is and I will tell you what the outcome is. And so I'm curious what those incentives should be, where are we going. I had a conversation with a bunch of governors with Mark Cuban, we were talking about AI and he was talking about how excited he was that basically he said this, I got to give Mark a little credit, I don't think this is what he meant. But this is what he said. He was so excited that we wouldn't have to read our kids' books at night anymore because AI would do that for us. I don't specifically think that's exactly what he meant, but certainly there are concerns that that will be the case, right? That the things that make us most human we'll stop doing because computers will do that. What are the incentives and as policy makers, as...
Entrepreneurs, how do you think through that incentive structure to make sure it doesn't turn out kind of the way social media did 10 years from now?
