Technology

1. DNC goes west
2. Data is king
3. Energy promises for all
4. Robotics on the line
5. A politician’s AI playbook
6. Porat on a power vacuum

Reed checks in with Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, and researchers put the most popular LLMs to the test, using Dungeons & Dragons.

My 7-year-old daughter was homesick last week, the day I was recording a video call with Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis. In a vain attempt to earn an interruption-free call, I explained that I was talking to a very important person. When I told her Hassabis had won a Nobel Prize in chemistry for an invention that could help cure diseases, I got a blank stare. When I said he also invented Google Gemini (an oversimplification), her eyes lit up.

It was a reminder of how many hats Hassabis wears these days. He is a dyed-in-the-wool scientist still striving for world-changing breakthroughs. He’s also an ambitious executive playing a crucial role at a critical time for one of the world’s most powerful companies. How he balances the two centrifugal forces tells a wider story of the outsized role tech companies like Google are playing in the AI era.

When I spoke to Hassabis at Davos last year, the $4-trillion lumbering giant was still waking up from its AI slumber, induced by a high-margin ads business.

Now, things couldn’t be more different. Google is back on top. And as AI use surges, the Google-is-too-powerful refrain has revved up again.

My view is a little different, and it’s illustrated by the slippery Promenade in Davos, where all week, pitch meetings and dealmaking have been bustling. But one area is walled off, protected by the military and police. That’s where the world leaders are. Inside there, things seem to be falling to pieces.

It used to take the people inside those rooms to do the kinds of things Google (and other tech giants) are doing today. These days, Hassabis says the power — and responsibility — is more distributed. AI progress is “going unbelievably fast,” he told me, swatting away worries from critics who fear China overtaking the West in AI. “AI is going to affect everything, so I think it does need to be debated, by all parts of society.”

DNC goes to Silicon Valley

While President Donald Trump addresses the elites in Davos, the Democrats are, quite literally, paying a visit to Silicon Valley in search of tech support. Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin plans to fly to the global tech center for a series of “salon-style” discussions with the industry and workshops aimed at making the Democratic Party’s technology better, a DNC official told Semafor.

The DNC’s get-out-the-vote operation was nearly crippled in the summer leading up to the 2024 presidential election when the massive voter database, run by a PE-backed company, almost collapsed, according to The New York Times. Democrats quickly intervened via pen-and-paper to keep the operation afloat.

Martin will be joined by DNC Chief Technology Officer Arthur Thompson in a bid to shore up the party’s tech infrastructure, which the DNC official said is a major priority for the party. “We have to up our game,” in terms of voter info and campaign technology, Martin said when he was elected last February.

Cloudflare CEO on why Google is speeding past OpenAI

Google is poised to win the AI race, not because of chips or talent, but because of access to information, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince told Semafor’s Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson Wednesday in Davos. “If the winner in AI is whoever has access to the most data, then I worry that Google’s going to run away with it,” he said at the Semafor Haus. “So we have to do something in order to level the playing field.”

Google garners more than three times as much data per web page as OpenAI, five times as much as Microsoft and Anthropic, and far more compared to others, he said. “If you think about it, why was OpenAI started? It was originally because Sam [Altman] and Elon [Musk] were worried that Google was going to run away with the entire game, and today we’re seeing that Google is running away with the entire game,” he said.

Prince’s solution is a more open marketplace for buying and selling data. “We’ve got willing buyers on one side who want the data, need the data,” he said. On the other side are journalists and other sites that create information but rely on advertising, “who need a new business model.”

It’s a familiar suggestion. Several publishers have inked their own deals with AI companies for their content, while others say those deals work against their best interests, trading their credibility for cash from companies that will replace them. Still, Prince is suggesting something new — that without making these deals, Google wins by default.

OpenAI joins energy cost promises

OpenAI pledged on Tuesday that its Stargate facilities won’t raise electricity prices for residents living nearby, joining the likes of Microsoft as data center operators attempt to ease tensions with communities and politicians. Data centers have fallen out of favor in many places where they’re being built due to concerns about their energy and water usage. The net impact on bills is contested — in some cases, residents may pay more for energy, but lower property taxes offset the increase. Nonetheless, Microsoft’s commitment set the bar for tech companies, which must now make similar plans to get in good standing with neighbors and their delegates, showing just how much weight the average American can wield over Big Tech in its rush to develop the infrastructure that underpins the AI boom.

Tariff threats on Europe risk robotics at home

It could cost an arm and a leg. Trump’s tariff threat against European countries opposing his plan to assert control over Greenland could unintentionally hurt the domestic robotics industry the administration has been trying to prop up. Europe’s carmaking prowess developed a robust market for actuators, the devices that make the humanoids move. The bloc produces 34% of the global actuator supply, followed by China’s 26%, with US companies controlling 5% of the market, according to a Barclays Research report.

The Trump administration recently elevated robotics — largely seen as the physical application for AI — to a matter of national competitiveness in its technology race against China. But US firms largely prioritize software, so many of them rely on foreign companies for their hardware, with Europe poised to be China’s primary competitor on humanoid parts and manufacturing.

“Higher tariffs would mean increased costs for US robotics companies and potentially supply chain disruptions and longer procurement periods,” Barclays Research’s Zornitsa Todorova told Semafor. While China presents an alternative, “there is an urgency to decouple from China and be more strategically independent, hence I don’t think supplying actuators from China is a viable alternative.”

— Rachyl Jones

OpenAI lays out midterm road map

OpenAI urged US midterm candidates on both sides of the aisle to shed their binary accelerationist or doomer labels, in favor of a policy agenda that allows everyone to have “a fair chance.” In a blog post Monday, chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane detailed proposals, based on questions he said he’s been getting from candidates, that included offering free access to basic AI tools, a national tracker for tech-driven productivity gains, promoting public-benefit corporate structures, and age verification for children.

It’s an unusually detailed, bold set of proposals that goes further than what many other AI companies have been willing to say publicly, and it’s notably different from Trump’s own AI Action Plan. While the two documents agree on the threat of China’s AI ambitions, Lehane more so emphasizes the need to show how AI can improve safety measures, clean energy, and other use cases that appeal to voters.

OpenAI took a step on one of these items Tuesday, announcing a model that predicts whether a user is a minor based on their behavior and usage patterns — a challenge that has beguiled the tech industry for decades. The platform automatically adds guardrails to those accounts, and adults who were incorrectly flagged can lift those restrictions by submitting a photo for visual age verification. The process sidesteps the need for most users to provide identifiable information like a driver’s license, one of the main criticisms of age verification technologies due to privacy and security risks.

Google’s Porat warns of AI power vacuum

If US companies don’t move fast enough to compete in AI globally, a power vacuum could emerge, and China would step in to fill it, Google’s Ruth Porat told Semafor’s Ben Smith this week in Davos. “When I am with any head of state, they say ‘We will not miss this digital transformation,’” the chief investment officer said at a Semafor Haus event. “They also say, ‘We would like to work with the US. If the US is not here — we will work with China.’”

Major economies are racing to develop their own sovereign AI — with some adopting novel tactics — but the most popular models remain those developed in the US and China. If China goes into countries where the US is absent, Beijing will be able to execute a playbook it perfected with infrastructure decades ago, through the Belt and Road Initiative: When the US pulled out of countries, or refused to fund airports or bridges, Chinese expertise, and money, stood ready to fill the vacuum.

It’s a concern that remains top of mind for AI executives broadly, even if there is a bit of political expediency at work: OpenAI’s Sam Altman has been sounding the alarm bell on China for months.

Edwin Chen, CEO, Surge AI, is joining the Semafor World Economy Global Advisory Board — a forum of visionary business leaders guiding the largest gathering of global CEOs in the US. The expanded board represents nearly every sector across the US and G20.

Joining the Advisory Board at this year’s convening will be our inaugural cohort of Semafor World Economy Principals — an editorially curated community of innovators, policymakers, and changemakers shaping the new world economy with front-row access to Semafor’s world-class journalism, meaningful opportunities for dialogue, and touchpoints designed for connection-building. Applications are now open here.

The Dungeon Master. All those years spent playing fantasy Dungeons & Dragons in your parents’ basement finally have a real-life use case, at least when it comes to AI.

Scientists at the University of California San Diego used the classic fantasy game to create a solid grading system on how well large language models function independently through teamwork, and against each other, for extended periods of time. Currently, LLMs lack stronger benchmarks that can evaluate them on long-term tasks, but D&D — with its intricate rules, multiplayer environment, and requirements for intense planning and teamwork that can stretch for days — offers a great playing ground for evaluating LLMs.

Scientists pitted the most popular models against each other and more than 2,000 D&D players to see how well the LLMs could stay in character, determine the best actions, handle combat, strategize, and follow the game’s rules. Some of the findings: Claude Haiku 3.5 was the most tactical player against GPT-4o and DeepSeek-V3.

But they also discovered certain models would develop their own personalities of the characters in combat. DeepSeek would aggressively use “monster taunts” on opponents, while Claude would build on specific player styles, like “Pack Hunter” and “Brutish Enforcer” in a game where you can develop your own warlocks, wizards, and other characters. The responses show AI’s growing ability to adapt and interact independently from humans in contained environments. Importantly, it shows how the simulator can be adapted to implement agents in other real-life complex situations like legal cases and multi-party negotiations, the study says.