Warren Buffett had a 'resounding endorsement' for Apple's investment case: Deepwater's Gene Munster

At the weekends Berkshire shareholder meeting Warren Buffett warning that AI scams could be the next major growth industry. Comparing the technology’s potential impact impact to nuclear weapons, he mentioned an unnerving experience with an AI generated Warren Buffett. If I was interested in investing and scamming, it’s going to be the growth industry of all time and it’s enabled in a way I now maybe, you know, obviously AI has potential for good things too. But I don’t know how you based on the one I saw recently, I practically would send it to send money to myself over in some crazy country. I do think as someone who doesn’t understand a damn thing about it that it is, it has enormous potential for good and enormous potential for harm. And I just don’t know how that plays out. Joining us right now to talk about the state of AI technology as Gene Munster, he’s Deepwater Asset Management managing partner. And and Gene, there were some some real thoughtful discussion about this. Just the idea that AI is could be amazing. It could unlock all sorts of potential, but it’s definitely going to make it a lot tougher if you’re looking at scamming, if you’re looking at fraud and some other issues, he said. The genie is out of the bottle with that. Now, Becky, I’d like to take one step back. And you mentioned earlier Warren is 93 years old and he says he doesn’t understand this. I can tell you his views on AI, whether it’s scamming or its potential, the enormous potential or the enormous risks are absolutely spot on. And I think the first phase that we’re going to see that is probably going to most impact our lives in the near term. We’re seeing a lot of, of course, investment from the hyperscalers, but the scamming piece is something that we’re all going to feel. And he’s appropriate at identifying that. He’s also appropriate at giving the opportunity as being enormous and the potential risks. And I love how he staked out the parallel between nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence. And ultimately the world has done a great job at navigating that. That’s an understatement. And so I’m confident that ultimately that this will be a force of good, but just was was blown away at just how well he identified the pressure points related to AI. Gene, what did you think about Berkshires of sale of Apple sold almost 116 million shares, somewhere around $30 billion based on Apple’s price at the end of the last quarter, Absolutely caught my attention. And as I investigated, I think that it certainly misses the point. The big picture is that Warren Buffett is the world’s greatest investor, full stop. His largest position is Apple. It was years ago. It was last year, yesterday, today, based on his comments, it’s going to be that way through the end of 2024. And so my sense was that despite their tax selling that he had a resounding endorsement for the investment case. This isn’t about bits and bytes for Warren. He talks about the consumer use cases and I think we see that in the brand. We saw it in the numbers even in the March quarter, despite the fact that this business has not been growing for the past two years or if you factor in FX maybe fractional growth. Despite that reality, the company is still generating 90 plus billion dollars in cash annually. And I think that that is remarkable and I put his comments as underscoring the strength that Apple has.