Yesterday, Warren Buffet and his trading partner Charlie Munger spent the day addressing attendees at his company’s annual shareholder meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. Unless you’re someone who is very heavily into the investment game, this would normally be about as exciting as watching paint dry. Much of the news revolved around how Berkshire Hathaway performed over the past year and there weren’t too many surprises. Billionaires are still getting richer, despite ongoing inflation and fears of a protracted recession. But Buffet took all sorts of questions on other subjects and it turns out that he has plenty of opinions on many topics outside of the financial world. For one thing, he’s really optimistic about China and doesn’t understand why everyone wants to fight with them. For another, he thinks Artificial Intelligence is the cat’s pajamas and it’s all going to work out wonderfully in the end. (AP)

Billionaire Warren Buffett said artificial intelligence may change the world but new technology won’t take away opportunities for investors and he’s confident America will continue to prosper despite its bitter political divisions.

Buffett and his partner Charlie Munger spent all day Saturday answering questions at the annual shareholders meeting for his Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate inside a packed arena in Omaha.

“New things coming along doesn’t take away the opportunities. What gives you the opportunities is other people doing dumb things,” said Buffett, who had a chance to try out ChatGPT with his friend Bill Gates a few months back.

Regarding AI, Buffet was actually talking about how it could provide opportunities for investors. He wasn’t discussing all of the jobs for “the little people” that will almost certainly disappear or whether robots with rocket launchers are on the way to herd us all into reeducation camps. As long as AI doesn’t crash the stock market, he and his friends will be just fine.

His take on China was equally outside of the mainstream. He said that the United States “will benefit” from having an open trading relationship with China. He cautioned against anything that would increase tensions between our two countries and described any such words or actions as being “stupid, stupid, stupid.”

What he’s far more worried about is political divisiveness back home in America. He said there is nothing particularly wrong with people having partisan differences, but he fears that partisanship has now turned into tribalism. And “in tribalism, you don’t even hear the other side.” (At least in some sectors I can’t really argue with him on that point.)

As far as AI goes, Warren Buffet may be a genius when it comes to investing, but I don’t recall hearing anything about him being an expert in advanced computing models. His entire experience with AI seems to have been getting a chance to “try out ChatGPT” a couple of months ago “with his friend Bill Gates.”

In terms of foreign policy, does Warren Buffet honestly believe that a few more trade deals will smooth things over with the Chinese Communist Party? Does he not believe that China might be preparing to invade Taiwan or even some of its other neighbors? Or does he simply not see it as that big of a deal as long as they don’t blow up Omaha or Wall Street? Perhaps he just feels he doesn’t need to worry about any of this very much. The guy is already in his 90s. How much longer will he have to deal with the fallout?

At any rate, I found some of his perspectives to at least be interesting. But he should probably stick to the investment game and not wind up in any foreign policy think tanks or AI oversight groups. (I probably shouldn’t be giving Joe Biden any ideas at this point.)