00:00Byung-Soo Kim is the 13th president of USC and he joins us right now with a big announcement,
00:05a big donation, $200 million from a NVIDIA board member and a big focus. And I don't know if it's
00:12a refocus or just a deeper focus on AI. So first of all, so incredibly grateful to Mark and Mary
00:18Stevens for their generosity and for their vision. And it's not a new initiative, but it is a deepening
00:24commitment to using AI to advance societal good. It's that simple. This gift is going to allow us
00:33to attract world-class AI talent who are working at the intersection of AI and the health sciences,
00:40security, business, and the arts. So we're incredibly excited. AI raises a lot of challenges
00:48and difficult problems for us to deal with as a society, but it also presents so much
00:57opportunity for societal good and for enhancing human lives. And that's what this gift is all
01:01about. Well, let's talk about those opportunities because, I mean, we're Bloomberg. So usually when
01:05we talk about the opportunities, it's like how it's going to help, you know, asset managers in
01:08the finance world. But obviously AI is much broader than that in terms of its potential applicability.
01:13So in the context of a university, where do you see that research and the potential that comes out
01:19of that research, where do you think most we should be looking? What's so amazing is that you're seeing
01:24the potential impact across the board in every field. We have 23 schools and every single one of
01:30those schools is seeing and trying to embrace the opportunity that AI has in terms of accelerating
01:37research and also assisting teaching and education. If there was one area where I'm maybe most excited,
01:45it's in the health sciences area. Thanks to developments in genomic understanding and technology,
01:52we've gotten a huge amount of data around how the human body and processes work at a cellular level.
01:59AI has been such a game changer in allowing us to process and analyze that data and take from it
02:06what we need to really completely switch the paradigm away from simply treating an illness to predicting
02:14who's going to get ill, when and how to intervene at an earlier stage. So thanks to AI, we are
02:24really
02:25hopeful that we are going to be able to solve some of the most terrible diseases, Alzheimer's, blindness,
02:31heart disease in the next decade. And it's an incredible opportunity that our researchers, not just from the
02:39medical school, but working in collaboration with engineers and with mathematicians and public policy experts and
02:45lawyers and cinematographers to attack these incredibly terrible diseases that impact so many of the people that we love.
02:54It's a great point. You know, I spent a lot of time talking to pharma executives and they say exactly
03:00that.
03:00You think about AI's potential when it comes to drug development and sort of treatment discovery.
03:05And there's a lot of big hopes there. But I want to talk a little bit more about this specific
03:10gift,
03:10because you see a package of this size and the natural question is, how did it come together?
03:16I mean, talk to us a little bit about, you know, the time it took to negotiate, if you want
03:22to call it that,
03:22or just, you know, how it all actually happened.
03:26I will share with you that this gift came together very naturally.
03:32Mark Stevens is one of the most legendary venture capitalists in Silicon Valley.
03:37He has an unsurpassed track record of seeing companies and their potential and organizations
03:45and their potential before others. And the fact that he would want to make this investment in USC
03:54is such an incredibly important sign of confidence in our future and in the future of higher education.
04:02Mark was an early investor in NVIDIA when he was at Sequoia.
04:06And he continues to be on the NVIDIA board.
04:10And when we started talking about how he could have an impact, this all came together very naturally.
04:18We're in a race for talent. Universities, the private sector.
04:22And most of this gift is going to be used to attract that world-class talent to USC.
04:28Are your students ready for this, though? For this world that they're about to enter into?
04:32Well, it's interesting.
04:35Actually, the students know more about AI than many of their professors.
04:41And at the same time, they're actually anxious and concerned about issues of academic integrity,
04:48the way that it's impacting critical thinking and classroom dynamics.
04:52So it's actually very gratifying that USC students are really leaning in
04:57and want to be part of the conversation and part of the solution.
05:00We put together a whole AI strategy committee last semester, and it just developed some recommendations.
05:08And we wanted to be sure to include student voices in that work because they understand this technology
05:15and the way it could impact their futures at a very deep level.
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