That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks

24:08And our business is trust. And so I fervently believe that we have to continue, you know, kind of this long term view of I use the phrase growth and relevance. Grow as far as, you know, our influence and our ability to advise our customers and support them, but remain relevant. And the only way you remain relevant is if you maintain that trust.

24:34Nilay Patel:When you say customers, you don't mean consumers, right? You don't mean the end user. You mean big companies, governments. How do those customers express their preferences to you in the market? Yeah, our customers, you know, we have three segments to our business. So industrial, which customers tend to be selling their product in the B2B space. Consumer, where our customers tend to be selling their products in the B2C space. And then our risk and compliance software segment, where those tend to be our largest, you know, multinational, global, and strategic accounts. So our teams are out there working with the new product development teams, the quality and compliance teams in all of our customers.

25:18And our customers express their needs as they're going through their innovation cycles. We frequently have a line of sight into their product roadmaps, a line of sight into how they intend to use technology differently in innovation. And I say frequently, innovation without safety is failure. And I think our customers feel that same weight. They don't want to fail. They don't want to have a product launch that's going to harm somebody, either in that industrial environment or that consumer environment. And so it's a really open, honest dialogue because we're there to help them. And sometimes helping them is giving them news that they don't want to hear.

25:57But it's incumbent upon us to tell them, you know, these are the facts. This is what happened in the test. And now you have to go back and do something about it. And we can't advise them on how to redesign their product. That would be a breach of that trust. We have to stay agnostic and test when that product sample comes in.

26:20Nilay Patel:So I'm very curious about that, right? You said customers don't want to make products that hurt people. The tech industry says that to us a lot, right? And in particular in AI, they say this to us. They talk about alignment and safety all the time. And then we can all see the reporting about what chatbots are doing to consumers. Where is that balance? Is it all just industrial applications? We don't want the AI to run the elevators wrong. Or are you looking all the way to what are the model capabilities? You know, for us, we focus on products. We focus on product safety and, you know, functional safety of products would be, you know, when you embed software, let's say, you know, an electric vehicle, you don't want to turn the radio on and have the brakes slam, you know, because the latest software download, you know, changed the if-then-else statements and you find yourself in a safety problem.

27:11So similarly with AI, you want to make sure that AI is not creating, you know, functional safety challenges, but you also want to ensure, and what we're hearing from our customers, is that they can portray, profess that there's trust in the models. So our UL 3115 came from customers coming to us and saying, you know, and it's a great example, you know, a child's toy. How do you know that the data that was used to train that AI that's embedded in a child's toy, that that data was fair, that it remains private, that it's transparent, that there's, you know, lack of bias in the algorithm. them. And because all of that determines how that product actually performs.

27:59And so that's the perspective that we have. But back to your first comment about, you know, the technology industry being very resistant to others, you know, setting standards or, you know, guidelines or regulations. We fervently believe that third party independent testing inspection certification leads to better outcomes for society.

28:21Nilay Patel:I mean, I can point you right now to AI-powered children's toys that are completely off the rails. And I would just bring that back to what is the enforcement mechanism? What is the choke point? There's no New York City that's going to say you can't sell teddy bears in our town unless the AI has a certification. I don't think that exists in some of these markets. Where are you finding the enforcement or the incentive structure that makes them participate? You know, it's early days and I completely agree with you that we've got to get our arms around this. There are a number of standards development organizations around the world, you know, not just UL, but, you know, IEC, ISO, others that are coming together and saying that this is necessary, this is important.

29:07We will continue to advocate various governments, authorities having jurisdiction, tech industry associations, others to continue to pursue this. But it is, you know, indeed, you know, a I'm going to call it an uphill battle where, you know, the tech industry likes to have their own, you know, their own approach and will cloak themselves in intellectual property and proprietary standards. And I get that. I started my career at IBM. I understand the value of tech and IP, but I'm a lifelong safety freak. And I really believe that some of this stuff could turn products into being inherently unsafe.

29:56And we need to do our best to prevent that from happening.

29:59Nilay Patel:Let me ask you the other Dakota question I ask everybody, and then I want to dive into it using that framework. How do you make decisions? What's your framework of making decisions? So my personal framework is ground in data. I am a data person. And, you know, I think you need to have enough data and pressure test it to make a good decision. I believe organizationally in empowering people that, you know, if your job is to run X, then you should be grounding in data and making decisions around that. And then there's a certain level that they should, you know, potentially get bubbled up to me. But, you know, a lot of times, you know, I think the people closest to the customer, closest to the decisions need to make that.

30:47There is one set of decisions here at UL that I will never overrule. And that is the scientific decisions that our scientists, our engineers, our lab technicians make. Every once in a while, a customer is not happy with a report or a decision that we have made. and it can get raised to me. And I think my team has the confidence to know that I will never overrule a scientific or engineering decision.

31:15Nilay Patel:Yeah, that seems very important, right? That's the heart of the enterprise. It's extremely important. Is to protect the sanctity of the testing. I'm, you know, in the context of AI, but even in the context of batteries, which I want to talk about at length, actually, it feels like the market is getting farther and farther away from wanting to comply. Right. So I'll give you the example here. The Biden administration really pushed for AI safety, and they had a set of standards that they wanted to promulgate. President Obama was on the show talking about the need for AI safety, and his comparison was very explicitly, we failed to regulate social media.

31:49Nilay Patel:It hurt people. We're not going to screw that up with AI. And we at least want the labs to publish their testing, at the very least. Trump administration showed up. All that is basically gone, right? That Biden era EO is no longer in effect. It's a free for all. What is bringing the frontier labs to the table with you? What is bringing OpenAI or Anthropic or XAI to the table? Yeah. You know, I am optimistic that there are global forces around this because again, And multinational companies don't just need to follow regulation in the United States. They need to follow what's happening in the EU, what's happening across Asia.

32:30And when you look at the influence of different countries, again, different authorities having jurisdiction in some of these topics, you know, I do think it will expand. But, you know, I agree with you. There's not any, you know, kind of tops down forcing function right now to bring them to the table.

32:49Nilay Patel:Are you engaged with OpenAI or Anthropic or XAI or Meta? We're not directly engaged with OpenAI or Anthropic. We certainly have done a fair amount of work with Meta through the years and most of the hyperscalers and more on the product side. But these continue to be topics of conversation that our chief scientist and our PhD researchers in AI are out there promoting and continuing to try to, you know, push the rock up the hill. Yeah. You mentioned your new standard, UL 3.1.1.5. It's a pretty wide-ranging standard, right? It's everything from data centers to consumer applications. I think the first two products certified under it are out or the certifications were received and they're like building control applications from what I understand.

33:43Nilay Patel:That to me is, okay, we're going to certify a building control application to make sure it doesn't go haywire and like turn up the heat and all the units or whatever a building control application might be able to do. All the elevators are going to go crazy. This is just a philosophical question. These AI systems are fundamentally non-deterministic, right? They're not predictable in the way that they operate, and that actually is what makes them powerful. There's the bad side of hallucinations and them posting to their own weird internal Facebook that they built for themselves. And then there's the good side of, oh, that means they're creative.

34:16Nilay Patel:They can do software development in a way that a deterministic system really could not do before. How do you test that? What is the mechanism of testing whether an AI-powered building control software is always going to do what it says if the engine powering it is inherently unpredictable? AI models really rest upon, you know, that predictive modeling. But our focus is not on, you know, getting into the black box of the code. Our focus is on establishing, you know, I'm going to call it over 200 criteria around how internally when they're making decisions about their code development, how they should think about bias, how they should think about transparency, how they should think about fairness and privacy.

35:07And, you know, the whole range.

35:09Nilay Patel:When you say think, is it the models thinking or is it the people making the models thinking? Well, I think it has to go into how the people designing those models. So how are they building out, what is the veracity of the data source that they use to train the models? And so that's outlined in our standard of how should they make decisions about that. And so I love that you focus on how decisions are made. When I look at UL 3115, I think that it is a standard to help guide those decisions as AI is being embedded in products. The big opportunity in AI right now is software development. The cost of producing new software is dropping precipitously and may drop to zero because the tools are so good at it.

35:57Nilay Patel:And tools like Claude Cowork and OpenClaude can just go do things for you all the time, which is really fascinating. That means the number of providers of software, the number of providers of AI-empowered software is just going to skyrocket. It might get away from you in a way that when you describe the market-making capability or the market-making function of UL, everyone is going to get this certification, so we're all on the same level playing field. Well, if the playing field is vast and it's a bunch of teenagers writing applications and erasements who don't care about you, it might just totally get away from you.

36:30Nilay Patel:How do you think about that balance of there's going to be big players who want to participate and get the logo mark, and then maybe there's going to be an entrepreneur saying, you know, I can make you this building control software much cheaper who never actually comes to you? Yeah, and I think that's where getting back to our customers and what they're looking for, where that comes in and how they're going to level the playing field of their competition. And at some point, you know, the end consumer does speak. You know, I was in manufacturing for 20 years. I don't want unsafe, you know, kilns or metal presses happening, you know, AI powered in my environment.

37:15And so there's a point at which you're going to want that verification, that validation, that endorsement that what you're installing in your industrial environment or what you're bringing into your home as a consumer is safe. And so that's where I do think the end user at some point has a voice because they're going to decide, do I want to buy this product or not? And we have plenty of tests that we do that have absolutely nothing to do with an actual regulation, but have to do with the fact that our customer has decided that this is important for their brand, for their end consumers, and that that drives the demand for what we have to offer.

37:58Nilay Patel:The other dynamic that's happening in AI specifically is that the models themselves are getting ever more capable. And the idea that you need to build a specific AI application that's a wrapper around the model that forces it to do what you want. Who knows how that's going to play out? But you can see, well, maybe actually I just need a subscription to Claude. And I don't need a subscription to some application that is powered by Claude. Because Claude can just do it for me. If those companies aren't engaged with you, how does this work? If Anthropic and OpenAI and the rest aren't engaged with you, how does this work?

38:28Yeah, it's a really great question because it comes back to, you know, one of the concerns or questions that I actually have about AI, it comes back to that veracity of the training data. And the more, you know, back in my coding days, garbage in, garbage out, the more garbage that gets in to train these models, the more difficulty you have in trusting whether those models actually have the efficacy into the future, you know, or do they just spiral upon themselves and become useless. And so I believe that that should really be appealing, you know, to these development companies around, you know, does that model have the longevity to continue to provide, you know, the answers, the intelligence, the information that is grounded in something that is actually, you know, true and correct.

39:24Nilay Patel:I'm just going to ask you straight out. Do you think they care?

39:29I hope they care because it's, you know, it should be self-preservation for them to care.

39:36Nilay Patel:I mean, they seem to be doing pretty well without caring. That's why I'm asking. Yeah. Well, there's short term and long term, but, you know, we'll see how this plays out. You mentioned that the pressure to rein in, be more safe, have more control for AI might come from other governments, other organizations. Maybe it's the States. Where do you see the most pressure on making AI safe come from right now? You know, it's interesting. And I know you've spoken with, you know, some of our large customers recently. And I think it's coming from those large multinational global customers who, you know, care deeply about how their products are used in environments and, you know, want their relevance and longevity to be out there.

40:17So they don't want to find themselves in a situation of failure.

40:20Nilay Patel:When you talk about those customers, are they coming to you and saying something like UL3105, this is what we need it to say so that when it tests, it meets our needs? Is that how that standard is developed? No, they've come to us and said, we need a standard. Help us think about it. And so as we start to develop it, we bring them into a room and then we've got our, you know, our PhD AI researchers in there with them. And it's a, you know, it's a dialogue grounded in science with then a consensus of, okay, we think that this actually will really help us. Let's make sure that that's in there. PhD AI researchers are very expensive lately.

41:02Nilay Patel:They are. Can you pay at the top of the market for those folks? You know, we've built a small and mighty team in this, and we feel very good about their thought leadership and what they've contributed. Yeah, I'm just – I'm curious because that's the other arms race. Like, I look at this from the outside and I say no one can keep up with these labs. They're paying all the money that even the competition between them doesn't seem to be keeping them in check. The idea that they're all going to sign up for a literal checkmark from UL that says they're safe when they're all racing to an IPO. I'm just very curious where that pressure is going to come from.

41:38Nilay Patel:I don't know if it's going to come from an industrial manufacturing supplier at this point in time. I think it might have to come from a government. Yeah. And I think we've got to keep pushing this rock up the hill. It's still early days and it's important to figure it out. We're going to take another short break. We'll be back in just a minute.

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43:28Nilay Patel:Welcome back. I'm talking to UL Solutions CEO, Jennifer Scanlon, about how on earth all of these safety standards will actually apply to AI. The other piece of this, as you mentioned, the standard covers data centers. There's a lot of tension, political and otherwise, around data center build-out in this country everywhere else. There's just the electrical component of it, right? Yeah. You're going to do a lot of electricity in a room. You probably want a bunch of UL-certified components in there. Is there more than that in UL 3.1.1.5 as it relates to AI data centers? Yeah. Now UL 3.1.1.5 is just really around AI embedded in products.

44:03With AI data centers, there's 70 other standards that we test to today around the safety of the, you know, electricity, the components, the chillers, the DC current coming in, the inverters, all of that. And then there's a whole host that we're hearing from our customers that with the rapid change in the amount of power, the rapid change just in the thermal dynamics of, you know, GPUs versus CPUs, the rapid change in the way that you're going to put, you know, a megawatt of power into a rack or that you're shifting the water cooling. So there's a whole set of new standards way outside of UL 3.1.1.5.

44:45We've had two summits with customers on AI data center summits on how they're thinking about their needs for standards and data centers and how we can rapidly, you know, help them, you know, continue to develop on their innovation pace in ways that they can feel comfortable will be safe in the future.

45:07Nilay Patel:Do you think they're going to slow down their build-out goals in order for these certifications to take hold? No, I think they're expecting everybody else to pick up the pace. Fair enough. Let me ask you about the other race condition, because, again, I think it would be great if everything was certified and everything was safe. And I kind of look at the markets that we're in, and there's just an explosion of things all the time. And the one that really strikes me is everything with a battery in it. I go on Amazon. We're profiling more and more of these companies here at The Verge all the time.

45:40Nilay Patel:If you've got a lithium-ion battery and a high-efficiency motor and a dream, you can start a company that makes 500 products today. We profiled some of them. Hodo and Fantec are two that have just sprung up, and they make tools. The other day I saw one of those companies had a sawzall, like a lithium-ion handheld sawzall, which is just a lot of power. If you're going to put that much torque in a little motor, that's a lot of power you're going to draw. And I look at these companies and they're obviously all based in China. And whether or not they have UL certification is irrelevant to the consumers buying all these products.

46:13Nilay Patel:Because products are cool. They're legitimately cool products. And there's a race of innovation happening there. And it's all just on Amazon. And Amazon doesn't seem to be enforcing any of these standards at all. How do you think about that? How do you think about just the prevalence of high-powered lithium-ion batteries everywhere without the consumer demand for your certification? Yeah. You know, first of all, Amazon is a great customer of ours and you can drop down and see if something's been UL certified. So I do want to highlight that. They should make that more prominent. I think you should probably tell them to make that more prominent.

46:46They are a great customer of ours. And indeed, innovation is fast. Batteries are exciting and dangerous. And we continue to work with, you know, customs agents, various authorities having jurisdiction and our customers to help educate, you know, in particular, if you're importing into the U.S. markets, how to keep those lithium ion batteries safe. You know, a great example, this was about a decade ago when hoverboards were exploding. Why did we cover the exploding hoverboards at the version? Yes. So the Consumer Product Safety Commission came to UL Standards and Engagement, UL Solutions at the time, and said, can you very rapidly write a standard and help us get our arms around this?

47:36And we did that. And again, it helped with the safety. And then one of the key areas that we have is market surveillance and anti-counterfeiting. So we are constantly working with customs agents and, you know, competitors who are putting the UL mark properly on their product, who will highlight a product that's in the market that's not meeting the codes and the standards. And we've won some significant lawsuits around these cases where there are unsafe batteries, uncertified situations, you know, when they're not in compliance with the law. Yeah.

48:13Nilay Patel:Amazon and UL together, you're suing some e-bike manufacturers or selling on that platform with fake UL certifications. Exactly. You have to catch them. So you have an enforcement team that's actually scanning Amazon for fake UL certifications? We have a team that works with anyone who wants to highlight that they think that there's an unsafe situation or a counterfeit UL mark. Our team responds. Can you scale up fast enough to meet the flood of new products? Again, a lithium ion battery, a high-efficiency motor, and a dream. You can start a company and make 500 products tomorrow. Can you scale up to meet that flood in terms of testing?

48:53You know, what we feel, I mean, we can absolutely scale. We've scaled all over the world. And we like to say, you know, we meet our customers where they are. So if you're doing innovation in China, we've got our testing labs in China ready to go. If you're doing innovation here in the United States, we've got our labs here ready to go. If you're manufacturing anywhere in the world, our field inspection team will visit your plant four times a year to ensure that you're manufacturing in accordance with the standards that we tested to. So we've been growing. We'll continue to grow.

49:26Nilay Patel:Do you make the case to Chinese manufacturers, hey, if you have this UL certification, you will make more sales? Absolutely. Absolutely. And there's data showing that the U.S. consumers actually care about this. Yes. And manufacturers in China, all across Asia, they know if they want to get their product into the U.S. market, they need to follow the safety standards and we're there to certify for them. I know you just made an acquisition to expand your testing presence in the EU. How big is your presence in China compared to the United States and the EU? Yeah. Our reported revenue last year, and we report revenue by point of customer.

50:03So if you're a U.S. customer, but we're testing your product in China because you happen to have an innovation center there, we will report that in the U.S. So last year, 42%, I believe, of our revenue was point of customer in the United States. 25 % of our point of customer is China. About 17 % is EMEA. And the rest is kind of the rest of Asia and rest of the world. So China has been very important for us. We've been in there 40 years. We've got a joint venture partnership, and we have independently wholly owned labs as well. And we work very closely with a significant number of Chinese manufacturers to help them get their products to markets all over the world.

50:52Nilay Patel:The relationship in China has been the point of contention recently with the Trump administration. During the Biden administration, the FCC launched something called the Cybertrust Mark, which was supposed to certify IoT devices specifically as being safe. I know UL was supposed to be the lead investigator, sort of writing the standard for that. Brendan Carr, who is well-known to listeners of the show and my other show, The Vergecast, is the current chair of the FCC. He has a lot of ideas, Mr. Carr. And he decided that your relationship and your work in China somehow was corrupting. Something happened, which I'm dying to know what exactly happened.

51:26Nilay Patel:UL is no longer participating there. And a Trump donor, his company is now the lead investigator. What was that conversation with the Brendan Carr FCC like around the cyber trust mark? You know, when the cyber trust mark was first announced, I mean, we're proud. We have been, you know, we're a proud American company. We've been here for 132 years. You know, if our government asks us to serve, we, of course, will step up and serve and support whatever they need. And so we were really pleased with the work that we were able to do to help set up the lead administrator, you know, as a lead administrator, kind of help set up the parameters of that and work closely with the FCC.

52:04When the FCC decided that they wanted additional requirements from the lead administrator, we realized that we weren't the best fit for that. And we, you know, very, you know, kind of easily transferred that intellectual property and that work back to the FCC and they continued down their path.

52:24Nilay Patel:What were the additional requirements? So those requirements were really around how they wanted to run the program in the future. And it was, you know, just a set of requirements that we didn't feel that we were the best, you know, participants to do that. That sounds very bureaucratic and administrative. I'm looking at Brendan Carr, he basically accused you of being beholden to the Chinese government. Did you ever respond to that directly? How would you respond to that now? You know, the way we would respond to it is we have been very transparent about our operations, our relationships all over the world, and we continue to be so.

53:01Nilay Patel:Yeah. Brendan is not a subtle man. He doesn't do things in the shadows. He says, you're beholden to the Chinese government, and you're saying that is absolutely not true. And it was enough for you to walk away and say, we don't want to be a part of this. I think that where we all landed is the right answer for all of us. Similarly, the FCC right now is banning a bunch of Wi-Fi routers simply because they're made overseas. You obviously looked into this with the Cybertrust program. You have these other certifications. Do you think it's correct to say any device made in China is an inherent security risk?

53:31You know, we have long and deep relationships with customers all over the world and long and deep relationships with customers in China. Those customers see value in testing to standards and following regulations and rules, and we will continue to support them in the ways that they need.

53:49Nilay Patel:Do you think that there's a potential certification for devices made overseas that U.S. consumers or U.S. companies can say, okay, the supply chain risk that we've heard about has actually been mitigated or the appropriate controls are in place? Yeah, I think the set of standards that exist today really facilitate that trust that consumers should have with products that are made anywhere in the world. That if you're adhering to those standards, if you've got a third-party tester that has endorsed and certified that you've met that, I think that's the mechanism that does that. Yeah. I'm curious.

54:22Nilay Patel:Again, I just see the proliferation of products. And I'm wondering if maybe all the way at the end, you know, you say you have some data that says consumers prefer UL products. And I hope that's true. But then we at The Verge cover, I don't know, cameras for your house that have just gaping security holes in them, right? Where there's just like live feeds streaming to the whole Internet at large because there isn't a security apparatus or an updates apparatus. We do see that with routers. We've seen a lot of hacks with consumer grade routers. I'm just wondering where that extends to, particularly in software.

54:56Nilay Patel:You buy a power strip, you can see the logo on the back of it. Or maybe Amazon will at least show you the logo, and maybe you'll still buy the cheaper one because you don't really know what it's for. With these software products or these hardware products that are running a lot of software, it's not right in front of you. So how do you make that case? Yeah, and we do have a service that focuses back to that functional safety of that embedded software. or that efficacy of that product being connected to the internet and the cybersecurity of that. And so there are standards around that, and there are ways to approach it.

55:34But I think what you're highlighting is an opportunity to make consumers more aware of what they should be looking for and demanding as they purchase their products.

55:45Nilay Patel:Do you think that this is just a market problem? I think maybe this is what I am coming back to over and over again throughout this conversation, is I really wish the consumer market demanded more of these companies. But that's just a collective action problem. I think it's totally rational for most people to just pick the cheapest power strip that Amazon has on the first page. And I can't really blame them for it. At the same time, maybe we don't have a federal regulator who's going to step in and say, okay, to keep everybody safe, we're going to demand the certification. Maybe we don't have insurance companies who are going to go demand them of Amazon.

56:20Nilay Patel:And then when it comes to software, it seems like the tech industry in particular is utterly resistant to anyone telling them what they can do. And the idea that a UL certification for firmware updates on your cameras on a cadence is just maybe the hardest sell of all. So if it's not going to be the consumers that do it, and we have government that seems checked out of it. This is what I keep circling. It's what I was most excited to talk to you about. It's what I keep circling back to is where does the pressure come from for people to participate in a safety program? Yeah. And I think this is, to me, one of the exciting pieces of when we went public and funded the endowment for our not-for-profit.

57:03And so we've talked a lot about the Standards Development Organization, UL Standards and Engagement. We haven't talked so much about the UL Research Institutes and the areas where they're focused. And one of their institutes is focused, you know, really on AI safety and how should, you know, the world be better educated of, you know, what would be considered safe and where they should dig deeper. And so I think there's a lot more to come on not just the research around that, but also around, you know, what is that step to raise the consumer's consciousness of the fact that, you know, as I like to say, by the way, if something's free, you're the product.

57:45So if you're giving your data away free, you know, back to social media, you know, you're using it and it's free. You're the product. And so how do you protect consumers, you know, from that? And I think it's a really important concept. And I still think it's early days on this in AI.

58:01Nilay Patel:You're in the business of selling safety. I think it's a fair way to describe what you all does. Do you think that the way that Dario Amadei or Sam Altman talk about AI alignment and safety is effective? Because their pitch is, if you don't let us do whatever we want, we might kill everyone in the world. Yeah, I think, you know, I think they're trying to ground, you know, in science and engineering and certainly, you know, in different ways to use AI and, you know, different models and, you know, LLMs are, you know, one approach, but there's lots of others. I think that it's probably a false choice to say, you know, let us do what we want and therefore we'll prevent this from destroying.

58:50I think you need both.

58:51Nilay Patel:Well, when you say both, you mean outside testing and validation or government regulation? What do you mean by both? All of the above. I think that the tech industry, it would be ideal if they came together and said, here's what we believe collectively will help keep the world safe. And then we'll adhere to that versus letting each one just go off and follow whatever path they think is best. If you had to pick a structure for that to happen in, again, you manage a complicated safety structure, so I'm just asking you abstractly. If you had to pick a structure for that to happen in, does that look like a government regulation?

59:27Nilay Patel:Does it look like an industry body? Does it look like a nonprofit that controls a for-profit testing center? How would you design this? Yeah, and I think where it's heading is it's more of the standards development organizations and the industry bodies coming together. and because they will be the most knowledgeable about what should work. You know, I mean, you always want that deep industry expertise when you're developing any type of safety standard that then moves into regulation. I think if you start with regulation tops down, you don't always get to the right answer and it's not always grounded in, you know, the science and the engineering that it needs to be.

1:00:09So I would advocate, you know, industry groups with standards development organizations.

1:00:15Nilay Patel:Jennifer, what's next for EUL? What should people be looking out for? You know, for us, it's going to be this continuation, as I like to say, of growth and relevance. We will continue to be on the forefront of innovation and continue to find ways to make safety relevant for whatever innovation comes next. You know, I can geek out and get excited about quantum for a second as something that's, you know, the future, you know, extension of what's post-AI or, you know, what does, you know, makes AI better. But those are areas that we continue to try to stay involved in and, you know, think about not just, you know, the electrical safety of 132 years ago, the electrical safety needed in data centers today, but what is coming next?

1:01:03Nilay Patel:I do like that even though it's been a long time since you've been at IBM, you brought it back to quantum. That's a very, it's very IBM of you. I really appreciate that. It is. I have to say, I'll give a little IBM shout out because I love Arvind, but I was walking through O 'Hare and they have their IBM quantum chandelier sitting right there next to the dinosaur. And I mean, I skidded to a halt while I was pulling my luggage. I'm like, oh my gosh, it's a quantum chandelier. And it's really exciting because I am here in Chicago and we at UL have been involved in creating the quantum ecosystem that Chicago has been promoting.

1:01:39And we're excited about what's next in that set of technology. So we can talk about that another time.

1:01:44Nilay Patel:The second someone ships a working quantum computer that does economically relevant tasks, we'll have you back to talk about it. I don't know when that's going to be. Closer than we think. All right. That's a bold prediction. Thank you so much for being on Decoder. This was great. Thanks.

1:02:02Nilay Patel:I'd like to thank Jennifer for taking the time to join Decoder and thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. If you'd like to let us know what you thought about this episode or really anything else at all, drop us a line. You can email us at decoderatheverge.com. We really do read all the emails. You can also hit me up directly on Threads or Blue Sky. We're also on YouTube. You can watch full episodes at DecoderPod. Got the same handle on TikTok and Instagram. They're a lot of fun. If you like Decoder, please share it with your friends and subscribe over to your podcast. If you really like the show, hit us with that five-star review.

1:02:29Nilay Patel:Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Stat. This episode was edited by Kabir Chopra. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. We'll see you next time. Support for Decoder comes from Adobe. Life is unpredictable, and that means you need your projects to adapt with whatever gets thrown at you. That means mastering the ability to pivot and collaborate with others to reach your goals. Adobe gets that, which is why they made a tool that's just as flexible as you are. PDF Spaces and Acrobat.

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