There are several different pieces of legislation going through the U.S. Congress that focus on AI-related areas. But there is still no official regulation that focuses specifically on AI.
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BARCELONA — A top executive at Salesforce says she is “optimistic” that U.S. Congress will make new laws to regulate artificial intelligence soon.
Speaking with CNBC at the Mobile World Congress tech trade show in Barcelona, Spain, Paula Goldman, Salesforce’s chief ethical and humane use officer, said she’s seeing momentum toward concrete AI laws in the United States and that federal legislation is not far off.
She noted that the need to consider guardrails has become a “bipartisan” issue for U.S. lawmakers and highlighted efforts among individual states to devise their own AI laws.
“It’s very important to ensure U.S. lawmakers can agree on AI laws and work to pass them soon,” Goldman told CNBC. “It’s great, for example, to see the EU AI Act. It’s great to see everything going on in the U.K.”
“We’ve been actively involved in that as well. And you want to make sure … these international frameworks are relatively interoperable, as well,” she added.
“In the United States context, what will happen is, if we don’t have federal legislation, you’ll start to see state by state legislation, and we’re definitely starting to see that. And that’s also very suboptimal,” Goldman said.
But, she added, “I remain optimistic, because I think if you saw a number of the hearings that happened in the Senate, they were largely bipartisan.”
“And I will also say, I think there are a number of sub issues that I think are largely bipartisan, that certainly I’m optimistic about it. And I think it’s very important that we have a set of guardrails around the technology,” Goldman added.
Goldman sits on the U.S. National AI Advisory Committee, which advises the Biden administration on topics related to AI. She is Salesforce’s top leader focusing on the responsible use of the technology.
Her work involves developing product policies to inform the ethical use of technologies — particularly AI-powered tools like facial recognition — and discussing with policymakers how technology should be regulated.
Salesforce has its own stake in the ground with respect to generative AI, having launched its Einstein product — an integrated set of AI tools developed for Salesforce’s Customer Relationship Management platform — in September.
Einstein is a conversational AI bot, similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but built for enterprise use cases.
Legislation in the works
There are several different pieces of legislation going through the U.S. Congress that focus on AI-related areas. One is the REAL Political Advertisements Act, which would require a disclaimer on political ads that use images or videos generated by AI. It was introduced in May 2023.
Another is the National AI Commission Act, introduced in June, which would create a bipartisan blue-ribbon commission to recommend steps toward AI regulation.
Then there’s the AI Labeling Act, which would require developers to include “clear and conspicuous” notices on AI-generated content. It was proposed in October 2023.
However, there is still no official regulation that focuses specifically on AI. Calls for governments to impose laws regulating AI have increased in the advent of advanced generative AI tools like OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s Gemini, which can create humanlike responses to text-based prompts.
In October, President Joe Biden signed an executive order on AI in an effort to establish a “coordinated, Federal Government-wide approach” to the responsible development and implementation of the technology.
Illustration of the SK Hynix company logo seen displayed on a smartphone screen.
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South Korea’s SK Hynix on Thursday topped quarterly revenue and operating profit estimates, with demand for its high bandwidth memory offerings used in generative artificial intelligence chipsets remaining robust.
Here are SK Hynix’s first-quarter results versus LSEG SmartEstimates:
Revenue: 17.64 trillion won ($12.36 billion) vs. 17.26 trillion won
Operating profit: 7.44 trillion won vs. 6.62 trillion won
Revenue rose about 42% in the March quarter compared with the same period a year earlier, while operating profit surged 158%, year on year.
On a quarter-on-quarter basis, revenue dropped 11%, while operating profit fell 8% from a record high in the December quarter.
The company warned that macroeconomic uncertainties including tariff policy have created demand volatility that will impact the second half of the year.
SK Hynix is a leading supplier of dynamic random access memory — a type of semiconductor memory found in PCs, workstations and servers that is used to store data and program code.
In its earnings release, SK Hynix said that its first-quarter profits demonstrated AI’s impact in the memory market as well as company’s leading position.
The memory chipmaker expects Big Tech’s spending on AI to continue, with the ecosystem’s expansion to be driven by open-source AI model offerings, and “sovereign AI projects” that will stoke memory demand.
SK Hynix has benefitted from a boom in artificial intelligence servers as a key supplier of high bandwidth memory, or HBM — a type of DRAM used in artificial intelligence servers — to clients such as the U.S. AI darling Nvidia. Micron Technology and Samsung Electronics are the other players in the space.
A report from Counterpoint Research earlier this month said that SK Hynix had captured 70% of the HBM market by revenue share in the first quarter.
This HBM dominance helped it overtake Samsung in the overall DRAM market for the first time ever, with a 36% global market share as compared to Samsung’s 34%, the report added.
A cartoon image of US President-elect Donald Trump with cryptocurrency tokens, depicted in front of the White House to mark his inauguration, displayed at a Coinhero store in Hong Kong, China, on Monday, Jan. 20, 2025.
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The $TRUMP meme coin jumped more than 50% on Wednesday after the top 220 holders of the token were promised dinner with the president.
“Have Dinner in Washington, D.C. With President Trump,” reads a message on the front page of the Trump coin’s website. The dinner — black tie optional — is scheduled for May 22, with a reception for the top 25 wallets. A “VIP White House Tour” will take place the following day, the site says.
The price spike gives the $TRUMP coins in circulation a total value of $2.7 billion. It had by far the biggest move of any cryptocurrency, outpacing Sui, which is up 23%, according to CoinMarketCap.
Read more about tech and crypto from CNBC Pro
The Trump coin debuted in January, just ahead of the inauguration, offering an early indication of the president’s willingness to embrace crypto and the wealth creation it offers him and his family. The project’s market cap soared to $15 billion almost instantly, fueled by Trump’s posts on Truth Social and X declaring, “It’s time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING!” Within days it had lost most of its value.
First Lady Melania Trump launched her own coin — $MELANIA — as well. It briefly topped $2 billion in market value before crashing alongside $TRUMP.
Shortly after the launch of the $TRUMP and $MELANIA coins, the SEC issued guidance stating that meme tokens don’t qualify as securities, effectively shielding the projects from immediate regulatory scrutiny.
So far, just 20% of $TRUMP’s supply has been available to trade. The remaining 80% — held by insiders — remains locked under a three-year vesting schedule. The first tranche is scheduled to unlock soon, freeing up millions of dollars worth of tokens for sale and potentially allowing President Trump and project insiders to cash in on Wednesday’s pop.
As with most meme coins, there is no underlying product or service. The project’s website claims that 80% of the token supply is held by the Trump Organization and affiliated entities.
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna speaks at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, on March 11, 2025.
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IBM reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue for the first quarter on Wednesday.
Here’s how the company performed:
Earnings per share: $1.60 adjusted vs. $1.40 expected
Revenue: $14.54 billion vs. $14.4 billion expected
Revenue increased 0.6% in the quarter from $14.5 billion a year earlier, according to a statement. Net income slid to $1.06 billion, or $1.12 per share, from $1.61 billion, or $1.72 per share, in the same quarter a year ago.
For 2025, IBM reiterated its expectation for $13.5 billion in free cash flow and 5% revenue growth at constant currency. At current exchange rates, currency will provide 150 basis points of benefit for 2025 growth, down from the company’s forecast of 200 basis points in January.
Management called for $16.4 billion to $16.75 billion in second-quarter revenue. The middle of the range, $16.58 billion, is ahead of the LSEG consensus of $16.33 billion.
“We remain bullish on the long-term growth opportunities for technology and the global economy,” IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said in the statement. “While the macroeconomic environment is fluid, based on what we know today, we are maintaining our full-year expectations for revenue growth and free cash flow.”
In the first quarter, software revenue rose 7% to $6.34 billion, in line with the consensus among analysts polled by StreetAccount. The hybrid cloud software category that includes Red Hat grew 12%, compared with 16% in the fourth quarter.
IBM’s consulting unit contributed $5.07 billion in revenue, which was down 2% and slightly above StreetAccount’s $5.05 billion consensus.
The company’s infrastructure division, which includes mainframe computers, posted a 6% decline in revenue to $2.89 billion, higher than the $2.76 billion consensus. Earlier this month, IBM introduced its z17 mainframe. Infrastructure revenue growth generally picks up as customers adopt the next generation and then drifts down late in the cycle.
IBM has been an outperformer this year as the broader market has sold off due largely to concerns around President Donald Trump’s tariffs and their potential impact on the economy. As of Wednesday’s close, IBM shares were up 11%, while the Nasdaq was down almost 14%.
The stock slipped 6% in extended trading.
No one is immune from fallout from President Trump’s tariffs on imported goods, the company’s finance chief, Jim Kavanaugh, said in an interview with CNBC’s Jon Fortt.
IBM’s customers are prioritizing efficient spending and the preservation of cash, Kavanaugh told the Wall Street Journal. The U.S. Department of Governmental Efficiency had delayed or nixed 15 federal contracts, he told Bloomberg.
Executives will discuss the results with analysts on a conference call starting at 5 p.m. ET.
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