Arm CEO Rene Haas Expresses Concern Over Humans Potentially Losing Control of Artificial Intelligence

Rene Haas, CEO of Arm Holdings Plc, expressed his concern about humans becoming less capable than machines. He emphasized the need for an override or backdoor to ensure the system can be shut down when contemplating artificial intelligence.

Haas, who spoke to Bloomberg in a wide-ranging interview from the company’s Cambridge, UK base, knows a thing or two about machines. He estimates that 70% of the world’s population touches products designed for the arms in some way. It’s a reminder of the company’s rare status as a British-born global tech titan — even though it’s now majority-owned by Masayoshi Son’s Softbank Group Corp. of Japan and listed in New York.

As Haas ponders AI’s potential downsides, he’s determined that Arm’s next chapter will see the company prove as important to the generative AI revolution as it is to smartphones, where its semiconductors are ubiquitous.

“I think it’s going to find its way into everything we do and everything we work, live and play,” said Haas, who oversaw the company’s $54.5 billion IPO this year. “It’s going to change everything in the next five to 10 years.”

Haas, who became CEO in February of last year, has tried to reduce Armi’s dependence on the shrinking smartphone industry by exporting its technology to personal computers, servers and electric vehicles, for example. The company also offers more comprehensive models to phone customers with the goal of getting more revenue per device sold.

It’s a market where Arm is already ubiquitous. Its instruction sets are embedded in the processors that power virtually all of the 1.4 billion smartphones sold annually, more than 99% of which use either Arm models or its technology.

Now, however, Haas sees exciting opportunities in cloud service centers. Large language models such as OpenAI and Google’s Bard require enormous storage and data capacity, and he aims for a 50 percent market share worldwide in the coming years.

But ambition alone does not guarantee success, of course, and it remains to be seen whether Arm will be a key factor in the future of artificial intelligence. Until now, the biggest beneficiary of the boom has been Nvidia Corp., whose stock has risen more than 200% this year as investors swoon over the industry’s prospects.

Still, the potential could be huge, and Arm sees the revenue opportunity growing to $28 billion by 2025 and growing 17% a year from now, according to a video presentation by CFO Jason Child in September.

Haas also focuses on managing so-called edge computing, when systems run from home or office devices instead of a centralized cloud.

“As these peripherals get smarter and smarter and more technology is pushed into that pocket, this is a very good place for Arm,” Haas said, noting that the company is a leader in energy-efficient designs.

China is both an opportunity and a risk for Arm, which derives about 25% of its revenue from the world’s second-largest economy. The company’s revenue was about $2.7 billion in its 2023 fiscal year.

Armi has to cope with restrictions imposed by the United States on the supply of high-end chips to the country, while maintaining its market share and protecting its intellectual property rights. Tech CEOs with exposure to China are “all very cool these days,” Haas said.

“I think CEOs 10 years ago didn’t talk to government officials nearly as often as we do today,” he said. “So we comply with all export controls, whether it’s from the United States or the rest of the world.”

And while the company adapts to changes in the Chinese market, Haas said a more immediate concern is the availability of talent, particularly in the UK.

Britain remains central to the company’s future, but politicians should not forget the need for tech companies to strengthen their ranks abroad, he said.

“We were born here, we’re going to stay here,” Haas said. “Make it very easy for us to attract world-class talent and engineers to come and work for Arm.”