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CNN International: Trump Suggest his Plan is to "Clean Out" Gaza; Trump Administration Launches Immigration Enforcement Blitz; Trump: Gaza is "Literally a Demolition Site Right Now"; Palestinians Return to Devastated Northern Gaza; U.S. Tech Stocks Plunge on Shocking Chinese AI Announcement. Aired 9-9:45a ET
Aired January 27, 2025 - 09:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[09:00:00]
ELENI GIOKOS, CNN HOST, CONNECT THE WORLD: Looking at thousands of Palestinians walking to Northern Gaza, a momentous first after more than 15
months of war. It comes the day after the U.S. President cast doubt on the future of the Enclave. It is 05:00 p.m. in Gaza, and it's 06:00 p.m. here
in Dubai. I'm Eleni Giokos, and this is "Connect the World".
Also coming up, the Trade War that wasn't, Colombia drops its attempt to block us deportation flights after Donald Trump threatens to slap punishing
tariffs on Colombian goods. And world leaders gathering today to mark 80 years since the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.
Right. We're around 30 minutes to go before the stock market in New York opens. And it's check in on those futures a dire open, it seems. NASDAQ is
down significantly in pre-market trading. We've got tech stocks taking such a big knock on the back of the news of big artificial intelligence.
Headlines out of China, the AI company DeepSeek, making a surprise announcement that looks as if it might threaten the supremacy of U.S. tech
giant stocks, DOW futures right now down 0.72 percent it's NASDAQ that's taking a really big knock. Will bring you more news on that story in about
30 minutes.
Meantime, we begin in Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinians are now ending months in exile, finally permitted to return to the near demolished
north of the Enclave. Many are making the journey on foot, as you can see, going back to their homes or the places where their homes once stood.
The move was delayed this weekend after Israel accused Hamas of breaching the terms of the ceasefire deal. Hamas has now agreed to release more
hostages, including 29-year-old civilian Arbel Yahud, who had been expected to be part of a hostage release two days ago.
Israel says those exchanges are now due to happen this coming Thursday, as well as Saturday. Our Jerusalem Correspondent, Jeremy Diamond, is following
developments for us. Let's take a look.
JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Well, a checkpoint to Northern Gaza was finally opened early this morning, and tens of thousands of
Palestinians who lived in Northern Gaza and have been displaced for months now finally beginning to make their way back home.
It is an emotional journey for many as we have seen people carrying all of their belongings with them in their hands on Donkey carts or piling into
busses to try and make their way to Northern Gaza after so many months of displacement. What they are finding there, of course, is an enormous level
of destruction, perhaps more than anywhere else in the Gaza Strip.
But one after the other, the people who are returning home expressed their desire to go back, no matter what the conditions on the ground they are
expressing their connection to their homes in Northern Gaza. They were only allowed to return to Northern Gaza after a nearly 48-hour delay, when they
were initially supposed to be allowed to return North based on the ceasefire agreement.
That was after there was a dispute between Israel and Hamas over the release of one of the Israeli hostages who Israel expected to be released
this past Saturday. Instead, she, female civilian hostage named Arbel Yahud was not released. Four female soldiers were released instead.
And Israel demanded that she be released in order to move forward with this part of the agreement regarding the return of Gazans to the northern part
of the strip. Arbel Yahud is indeed now expected to be released on Thursday, and with that agreement in place, Israel opened that checkpoint
to allow Gazans to return to that part of the strip.
But as we are watching these images of people returning to this devastated section of the Gaza Strip. We are also now hearing comments from President
Trump calling for the mass displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, for them to be moved to Egypt and Jordan, and saying that Gaza needs to be cleaned
out.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: And we just clean out that whole thing. You know it's, over the centuries it's had many, many
conflicts, that site. And I don't know, it's, something has to happen. But it's literally a demolition site right now. Almost everything is
demolished.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DIAMOND: And President Trump says that he wants Egypt and Jordan to be a safe harbor for these Palestinians. But this has rings of notions of mass
displacement that, of course, are triggering for many Palestinians who have suffered displacements over decades and decades in Israel and the
Palestinian territories.
[09:05:00]
And it's also a notion that's already been rejected by both Egypt and Jordan, as the Jordanian Foreign Minister, says that Palestine is for
Palestinians and Jordan is for Jordanians, rejecting any notions of mass displacement. We should also note that these ideas being spawned by Trump
already have drawn a lot of favor here in Israel from right wing ministers in the Israeli government who have talked about, quote, voluntary
immigration for many, many months now.
Those ideas, though being soundly rejected in the region, not clear what the path forward is for President Trump and his administration towards
making that a reality. Jeremy Diamond, CNN, Tel Aviv.
GIOKOS: More migrant flights from the United States on landing in Latin America today as President Donald Trump wields power in his immigration
crackdown at home and abroad. One of those flights with undocumented immigrants from Guatemala is due to arrive there next hour.
And flights to Colombia have resumed after its president lifted his block on arriving U.S. military flights in the wake of President Trump's huge
tariff threat that could have sparked a trade war. Mr. Trump also threatened to impose a travel ban on Colombian citizens and revoked visas
of Colombian officials in the U.S.
The White House claiming an early victory and the President's hardline immigration policies. A statement late Sunday, saying today's events make
clear to the world that America is respected again. Stefano Pozzebon is in Colombia's Capital of Bogota, and joins us now.
Stefano a remarkable U-turn from Colombia. Give me a sense of why and whether the tariff threat really rattled the potential of the relationship
between Colombia and the United States to that extent that we've just seen so many things happening in the last 24 hours.
STEFANO POZZEBON, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, indeed. Eleni, well, I think that the first reaction to consider was just the surprise. Most of the people we
spoke with yesterday, were literally mesmerized at the idea of Colombia, which is one of the U.S. staunchest allies here in Latin America, going
against Washington in a trade war with the presidents of each nations threatening tariffs of up to 50 percent on each other's nation's exports.
Now I think that we've seen that -- we were seeing that in real time, happening yesterday, Sunday, in the early hours. And then in the later
hours in the afternoon. We've seen the work of career diplomats who maintain that communication channels opened. They maintained and they
realized that for both nations, it helped to maintain their historical alliance.
So, Colombia has historically accepted dozens of flights per year of deportee last year in 2024, we're talking about 124 flights in a single
calendar year. That's almost -- there's more than 10 per month. So those deportation flights happen all the time. The difference here was the
military flights and the treatment that Petro said those migrants were being put through by the new administration policies.
So, I think that they will clear out the details in the coming days. We're still yet to understand whether Colombia would really accept military
flights or whether they just said, OK, we'll have the flights in general, and they will clear out the details. But we want to avoid the trade war.
But I think it of course, a trade war would have been catastrophic, not just for Colombia, but for the rest of the region. And it really had a
feeling that the White House wanted to single doubt Colombia as somebody who wanted to draw a line and to bring out the entire arsenal at the
Washington disposal.
We were talking about tariffs. You mentioned travel bans, Visa removal for Colombian officials, but also the embassy here in Bogota had issued a
temporary freeze on the issuance of visas. Well, hundreds of thousands of Colombia travel every day, every year, sorry to the United States.
GIOKOS: Yeah.
POZZEBON: So, we could see the threat. And then finally, the work of the diplomats.
GIOKOS: All right. Stefano Pozzebon, great to have you with us. Thank you so much for your insights. Well, moving on, and the Trump Administration is
ramping up its long-promised mass deportation plan, sending a wave of fear and uncertainty through immigrant communities in the United States.
Officials say they launched an immigration enforcement blitz nationwide on Sunday, with multiple federal agencies going into action. CNN's Rosa Flores
is in Chicago, and she finds out how President Trump's new immigration policy looks from there.
ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This story is from our CNN Affiliate WLS. They went to a suburb in Northern Chicago, on the north side of Chicago,
and this woman shared with them that their father was arrested yesterday.
[09:10:00]
He's a grandfather. He's been in the United States for 30 years, and he says that the ICE knocked on his door, and he opened the door, allowing
them in. Now this woman is very distraught because her father was arrested, and she is asking a pastor in that area for help.
There was a prayer circle that was done to help this woman, of course, emotionally because of what she's going through. And here's what the pastor
had to say about these enforcement actions. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I had a four-year-old crying, fearing deportation. That is not making America great again.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The fear is that they will detain other people around them, maybe that live there, or maybe that just happen to interact with
them. And that's why it's important that folks know their rights and they don't have to answer any questions.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FLORES: Now ICE says that they are focusing on individuals who have criminal backgrounds, who are public safety threats or national security
threats. We don't know anything about the man that was arrested in the northern suburb of Chicago, but we have asked ICE about why he was arrested
if he has a criminal background, and we'll let you know once we have that information.
GIOKOS: Well, now I want to bring in CNN, Global Economic Analyst Rana Foroohar for more insights on what we've been seeing. Rana, frankly, start
of the second week, massive immigration policies. Everyone's been wondering what implementation is going to look like, and we've got a sense of what is
going to be happening during President Trump's term from a macro perspective. What is your assessment?
RANA FOROOHAR, CNN GLOBAL ECONOMIC ANALYST: So, you know, one of America's great strengths globally has been its openness to migration, and frankly,
migration, both legal and illegal, has actually helped the U.S. economy a number of ways. I think that what you're going to see under this
administration, I believe, is not wholesale, mass deportation, but these sorts of raids, these sorts of fear tactics.
This is something that we've seen before. Actually, under George W. Bush's Administration, we saw very targeted raids and deportations as a sort of a
political message. But the fact is that if America were to turn back the tide on immigration wholesale, it would be a major blow to the economy.
The fact that we have a lot of migration is one of the reasons you haven't seen more inflation in labor markets. And the fact that you're seeing, for
example, President Trump losing tariff threats against countries like Colombia, for example, to get them to take migrants back is already
rattling markets.
There are many reasons why stock markets have corrected today, but that's certainly one of them, the sense that this is a president that's willing to
go for short term political gains but is not cognizant of the larger, longer term macroeconomic threats to the U.S. economy, if people feel that
he's going to be this volatile.
GIOKOS: Yeah, and frankly, as well what it means for key allies and the relationships that the United States has. It was a big win for President
Trump in terms of Colombia relenting and then agreeing to what we've been seeing. And we just heard our reporter that one of the big issues was the
way that these migrants were treated in the deportation flights.
But what message is Colombia sending to the rest of Latin America in terms of the relationship that they have with the United States and with the
Trump Administration?
FOROOHAR: Well, Colombia is a small country. It's a country that is dependent on U.S. trade and so it's a country that is frankly, going to
capitulate. Whether other countries do that in the same position, is very much up for grabs. Again, I think you know, you talk about this being a win
for Trump, a big win. I'm not so sure it's a short-term win.
GIOKOS: Yeah.
FOROOHAR: But longer term, what this does to global investors is, say, America has a volatile leader. We can't count on what's going to happen
from one day to another. I mean, Colombia could have taken a different tact. Larger countries with more leverage may take different tax.
I think that we are going to see the market be more volatile. And I think ultimately, if there's a lot more of this sort of using of tariffs as a
threat for any kind of political action, I really think that macroeconomic stability in the U.S. is going to suffer.
GIOKOS: Yeah, and the race of world, perhaps. Speaking of the markets, fantastic first week after the inauguration, and we start off the week with
what seems to be a major coup in the AI space, with Chinese startup DeepSeek rattling the U.S. markets. And, frankly, the dominance of U.S.
companies. What do you make of that?
FOROOHAR: Yeah, it's a very interesting and surprising story.
[09:15:00]
There had been a sense. Until quite recently that well. U.S. Tech markets are frothy, but the Americans have the edge in AI. So where else are you
going to put your money? Well, now here comes this small Chinese startup that has been able to make great leaps and bounds in the AI space.
It suddenly makes this $500 billion you know, Stargate, AI plan OpenAI and the U.S. government coming into partnership around this. It makes it look
like a waste of money. It makes investors say, hey, maybe China is going to be able to, on a shoestring, pull ahead.
That really calls into question the valuations of some of these tech stocks in the U.S., which are really priced for perfection. And if investors don't
think that that's what's happening, you know, we may be in for a bigger correction.
GIOKOS: We wait and see Rana Foroohar thank you so much for your insights. Always good to see you.
FOROOHAR: Thank you.
GIOKOS: Well, the new U.S. Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth has just arrived at the Pentagon for his first day on the job. He was sworn in on
Saturday after Vice President J.D. Vance cast the tie breaking vote in the Senate to confirm Hegseth's nomination. Secretary Hegseth spoke by phone to
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday.
He stressed America's commitment under President Trump to ensure Israel has the capabilities to defend itself. And still to come, a mass movement of
people as Palestinians are finally allowed to return home to Northern Gaza. We break down what's next in the ceasefire hostage release agreement. That
is coming up next.
Now, we'll be watching the U.S. stock markets when they open shortly. Futures are down sharply amid a possible threat to America's tech giants.
We'll delve into those markets and numbers in just a bit.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GIOKOS: Palestinians finally permitted to return to Northern Gaza. Incredible scenes are unfolding in the Enclave right now. I want you to
take a look at live pictures coming through. We're watching how people are trying to pick up what's left of their lives, and, of course, their
belongings on foot, making their way to their homes after 15 months of war.
Israel allowing them to return after Hamas agreed to release Arbel Yahud, Agam Berger and one other Israeli hostage on Thursday, and to free another
three hostages on Saturday. And as you can see, these are live images as tens of thousands of people making their way back to Northern Gaza, back to
their homes, which mostly have turned to rubble.
We'll be monitoring these images and the story as it unfolds. Meanwhile, President Trump's comments on moving Palestinians to neighboring countries,
causing concern among Arab nations. I'm joined by Khaled Elgindy, Adjunct Professor at the Georgetown University Center for Arab Studies, and the
Author of "Blind Spot: America and the Palestinians".
[09:20:00]
Khaled, great to have you with us. Thanks so much for taking the time. President Trump making comments seemingly echoing opinions that have been
expressed on the extreme right of Israeli politics. Is this empowering those extreme elements would you say?
KHALED ELGINDY, ADJUNCT PROFESSOR AT THE GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ARAB STUDIES: Yeah, there's no question that first that these
are deeply disturbing comments and, yes, it's absolutely empowering the far right in Israel. The problem is the far right in Israel is not in the
fringe. It is actually represented in Prime Minister Netanyahu's coalition, who have been sort of agitating for precisely this sort of a scenario of
depopulating -- for the past 15 months.
GIOKOS: -- Jordan currently, and I want to show you this, is home to nearly 2.4 million Palestinian refugees, and has already rejected Mr. Trump's
suggestion of cleaning out Gaza as well as the relocation of the population to Jordan and Egypt as well. There are multiple questions here, because
we've seen through the Abraham Accords, importantly, normalization with Israel. What does this do to relationships in the region.
ELGINDY: Well, I think the last 15 months as a whole has really put the whole idea of normalization with Israel on the back burner, if not
completely pushed it off the agenda. The Arab public, the broader Muslim world, as well as even, frankly, in the global north and the western world.
There is considerable outrage at Israel's treatment of Palestinians, its conduct over the past 15 months in its assault on Gaza. The destruction of
Gaza and its infrastructure and killing so many civilians, tens of thousands. And so, I think the idea that Arab states would move now towards
normalizing with Israel is not realistic, particularly when there is talk about displacing Palestinians yet again to neighboring countries.
GIOKOS: Yeah, and we were seeing live images right now, Palestinians trying to return home to northern parts of Gaza. And you know, you're seeing
people, you know, holding what little belongings they have there on foot. They've been trekking for, you know, really long while, all this news
coming through during the ceasefire.
We've got tensions coming through in the West Bank. Saudi Arabia has been very quiet today. We haven't heard anything from the Saudis. And you've got
this U.S. stance and people asking, what does the day after look like for Gaza? What is your assessment of the potential of what we could see?
ELGINDY: That's very hard to say at this point. I think. First of all, the spectacle of a mass movement of Palestinians back to their homes, or at
least their home areas, and their land and their properties, is quite something remarkable. It's not something that we're used to seeing. We've
seen many instances in history where Palestinians are pushed out of their homes, but this is a different kind of moment.
And I think for a lot of Palestinians reassuring in the sense that there is a strong commitment by Palestinians to remain in their homeland, even
frankly, if their homes have been destroyed, they would rather return to the rubble of their homes than to be exiled yet again from their homeland.
So, I think it is a powerful display that we're seeing today.
GIOKOS: In the fall of 2024 Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, spoke with our Becky Anderson about the future of Palestinians.
I want you to take a listen to what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FAISAL BIN FARHAN AL SAUD, SAUDI FOREIGN MINISTER: I would say certainly normalization with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is not just as a risk. It is
off the table until we have a resolution to Palestinian state.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GIOKOS: What is your sense of how Saudi Arabia is likely to respond to this President Trump was talking about the $600 billion investment that it's
anticipating in the U.S. Clearly, this is a transactional relationship. What is your bet?
ELGINDY: Well, I think in addition to Egypt and Jordan, the Trump Administration is likely to hear about this latest idea from the Saudis as
well. I'm sure the Saudis will privately let their American counterparts know of their disapproval and their unhappiness.
[09:25:00]
They probably won't say so publicly, even the Egyptians and the Jordanians have been fairly circumspect and understated in criticizing the president.
They don't want to obviously spoil that relationship at this stage, but they have also made it clear that this would be an unacceptable outcome.
The Saudis are likely conveying that message privately as well.
GIOKOS: Right. Khaled Elgindy, thank you so much for joining us. Much appreciated for your time. Meanwhile, the U.S. says a separate ceasefire
agreement between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon would be extended for another three weeks until February 18.
Lebanese officials said at least 22 people were killed and dozens injured by Israeli forces as thousands of people tried to return home to the south.
After the Sunday, Israeli withdrawal deadline passed. The IDF had released an order prohibiting residents from returning to their villages.
Israel's government said Friday the military would not withdraw and blamed Lebanon for failing to uphold the deal. Right, I'll be back with more news
in just a moment, including the start of the trading week in the United States. It's looking like a down day for U.S. stocks will tell you why it
makes. Stay with CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GIOKOS: Welcome back to "Connect the World". These are your headlines. World leaders and survivors of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau are
gathering at the site to remember the more than 1 million people who were murdered there during the Holocaust.
Today is Holocaust Memorial Day and the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Tens of thousands of Palestinians are heading home as Israel
allows them to back -- go back into northern Gaza, their return had been pushed back by 48 hours after Israel accused Hamas of breaching the terms
of the ceasefire agreement.
Colombia will now accept U.S. military flights carrying undocumented immigrants after its president reversed his decision to block the flight.
[09:30:00]
U.S. President Donald Trump had threatened Colombia with 25 percent tariffs. All right. Let's check in to see how the markets in the U.S. are
about to open. And that is the sound of the opening bell in New York. All right. Let's check in on the numbers pre-market trade showed the big red
day, specifically pushed lower by the tech stocks, which accounts for a huge share of the overall stock market.
As you can see, NASDAQ down half a percent. S&P 500 down 2.2 the DOW JONES down around 0.8 percent. It's the big news coming through from China. It is
a startup company called DeepSeek. And of course, this really shaking up things in the AI industry. The big question is, what does it mean for U.S.
markets, Meta, Google as well as OpenAI?
All right, guys, let's move into what we'll be doing next, and speaking a lot more about DeepSeek. It's one of these big stocks that has really
changed the game, it seems, in just a couple of days without warning, big known, unknown, Chinese firm rattling the U.S. market.
Shelly Palmer is CEO of the Palmer Group and a Professor of Advanced Media. He joins me now from New York. Really great to have you with us.
SHELLY PALMER, CEO OF THE PALMER GROUP: Great to be here.
GIOKOS: It seems like there's a bit of a coup happening in the AI space. Tell me about DeepSeek. What you know about it? I mean, it's a startup.
It's one year old company. A lot of people are downloading it. And the question is, is it taking on the big guys in the United States?
PALMER: So DeepSeek is a company out of China. It is a startup, as you said, it's about a year old. They have a model called DeepSeek-V3 and in
the last little bit, they released R1 which is a reasoning engine, and its open source on an MIT license. You can download it. The magic here is that
instead of taking months to train and hundreds of millions of dollars, it took under two months to train, and cost under, according to the company,
under $6 million to train.
When you download it, you can post train it. And pre-trained transformer models need to be post-trained in order to be valuable, and the compute
cost is a fraction. We're talking a few percentage points, fraction of what it costs to use the large language models from the big hyper scalers and
foundational model builders like OpenAI or anthropic or any of the other large foundational model builders.
So, this cost savings along with the -- basically lightweight of the model, meaning you can download it and run it on a laptop, has sent kind of
shivers through the spines, because what this really means is there's a possible future where algorithmic efficiency beats brute force computation.
GIOKOS: Yeah.
PALMER: And the entire AI industry in the United States and around the world has been thinking about high level computation and big data centers
and a lot of energy use and chips, and now they're thinking maybe not.
GIOKOS: So, it's a really good one to look at in terms of the numbers -- saying and DeepSeek saying that they spent just $5.6 million on this new AI
model. Meta, last week, said it would spend upward of $65 billion. How can DeepSeek was able to crack this code and do it so much more efficiently,
and the big guys in the U.S. unable to do so?
PALMER: First of all, it's hard to speculate, but let's just say the following, there is a cliche that I believe is a cliche for a reason. There
are more honors students in China than there are students in the United States. You're talking about a very deep pool of very smart people. That's
thing one.
Two, they've been restricted from getting all of the tools they need from the west, including, specifically the kind of chips that would do the
computation they need to do the advanced computation. This is a mathematical solution to a hardware problem. It's called algorithmic
efficiency.
They've actually written code that's more efficient than the code that's being used, generally in the space throughout the world. So how did they do
it? It's open source. You can see their research. They've been very good and transparent about publishing their research. They haven't exactly shown
the secret sauce, but it is something that we'll be able to replicate.
And by the way, the markets are reacting in a knee jerk, and most people don't understand any of what I'm about to say to you.
GIOKOS: Yeah.
PALMER: No one in the United States, no American, no company anywhere on Earth, to be fair, is going to lay down and die because a couple of
engineers figured out a better algorithm. Math is math, and engineering is engineering, and these algorithmic efficiency -- approaches will be figured
out worldwide now.
What does that mean for Nvidia's chip prices? What does that mean for nuclear power plants for data centers?
[09:35:00]
What does that mean for future data centers? The jury's still out. By the way, no one's replicated this. For all we know, this is the Sputnik moment,
or this is the Cyber Pearl Harbor where they faked this whole thing, and it really wasn't done for 5.5 million dollars in two months.
We don't know. My guess is it was done for 5 million, $6 million and was done in two months. That's my guess. And we're all going to have to rise to
the challenge. And by the way, I am confident that everybody will.
GIOKOS: Yeah, this is the thing we were talking about, the race, the AI race. And I think this is pretty much indicative of the race that has truly
just begun.
PALMER: Yes.
GIOKOS: As you say, you can crack this code, if it's a mathematical solution, then you've got people that could work on it. But you touched on
something in terms of the hardware and the GPUs and Nvidia and so forth, and even what it means for electricity consumption for data centers.
PALMER: Yes.
GIOKOS: If what we're hearing from DeepSeek is in fact, all factual, what does it actually mean? Does this change the calculation completely for AI?
PALMER: So, at the moment, it is much, much less expensive to run DeepSeek- R1 locally than it is to or even in the cloud than it is to run any of the other models. So, the question is not, is this better or worse? The
question is going forward, is algorithmic efficiency, this ability to run smaller models more efficiently going to be a better path forward than the
brute force, massive compute models that we've used so far at OpenAI and anthropic and at Google Gemini and at Llama -- for Meta's Llama.
We don't know the answer to that. Right now, it points towards two futures. One Future is algorithmic efficiency. The other is brute force compute.
There's no one in the world who can answer this question right now. It's all speculation. Time will tell. And as you've just said its very early
days, which is like the beginning of the race.
We're nowhere near the end of this race. We've never seen anything come this quickly. We've never seen exponential improvement that has really hit
us at this speed. So, it's accelerating and we're going to all learn together.
GIOKOS: Yeah.
PALMER: That's just the way it's going to go, and the markets are going to follow along, because markets do that.
GIOKOS: Well, speaking of markets, let's check in on the markets, because pre-market trade looked like a total bloodbath, and frankly, we're firmly
in the red. And you've got all this tech stocks that it can go huge knock you've got the NASDAQ down over 3 percent S&P down 2 percent DOW down a
third of a percent.
And here's my thing, you understand, like many other people in the tech world, that geopolitics is firmly entrenched in all of this.
PALMER: Yeah.
GIOKOS: President Trump was talking about huge investments in data centers. You know, it kind of shook things up. And everyone was saying, it's a lot
of money, you know, do these guys even have money? Elon Musk was asking the question, what do you make of this race? Because it's not just a global
race. It's a big confrontation between the United States and China.
PALMER: I think that's probably a mischaracterization of what's happening here. The science is progressing at a rate that we have literally never
experienced. Every morning, there's a new white paper from somewhere, from someone, about how to do everything more efficiently.
We're moving from task-based models, where you give the model a task and it gives you an answer to what's known as agentic models, which is a fancy
word for agency here, instead of getting a single task done, you give the model a goal, make me a travel reservation, figure out a problem, answer
this full question, completely.
And so, we're in this transitional period. Nobody knows whether it's going to take a ton of compute power, or whether you can do this with a model
like DeepSeek, where you get this immense algorithmic efficiency and cost efficiency, probably some combination of both, to send.
By the way, you've got the Chief Scientist at Meta, Yann LeCun, saying this is not the way to do it at all, that we need a completely different
approach called world modeling, worldview modeling, and that's also being considered. So, for someone, the markets are going to react to just what
they've done today.
They're going to look at what the stimulus and the information that they have, and they're going to react as markets react. But I wouldn't take this
as any indication of the future, because no one making a financial decision here at the level of a market, this complexity of a market is deeply
understanding the future of AI any more than the people in it. It's very early days.
GIOKOS: Yeah.
PALMER: And it's -- to make a projection about how this is going to go now. Oh, we're not going to need data centers anymore. That's ridiculous. It's
like a ridiculous concept. Oh, this is going to completely take over, and we're never going to go back to big compute against stop it.
It's not true. We don't know what the future is. It's probably some combination of both approaches, because that's what historically has been
the case.
GIOKOS: Yeah. As you say, big speculation right now, hopefully things settle. Shelly Palmer, great to have you with us. Thank you so much.
PALMER: Always --
GIOKOS: You're watching "Connect the World". There's more news ahead. Stay with CNN.
[09:40:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GIOKOS: 80 years ago today, Soviet soldiers arrived at the gates of hell. They were liberating Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp. Now, world
leaders are gathering there to remember the more than 1 million men, women and children murdered at the camp by the Third Reich.
Most victims of the Holocaust were Jews, but the Nazis also targeted poles, the Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and LGBTQ victims. But the main focus is
on the remaining survivors who have gathered for today's grim anniversary to make sure, the world never forgets. Right, that's all for this hour of
"Connect the World". I'll be back at the top of the aisle with more news. "World Sport" is up after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:45:00]
(WORLD SPORT)
END