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Inside Blackstone · 4 min · Oct 13, 2026
Schwarzman sees AI as a decades-long investment shift
Steve Schwarzman says AI could drive a 20- to 30-year run of change and argues its uses will extend beyond business. He points to healthcare, education and robots as potential sources of broad benefits.
- CA
Christine Anderson, Host · Global Head of Corporate Affairs, Blackstone
About this segment
Steve Schwarzman says AI could drive a 20- to 30-year run of change and argues its uses will extend beyond business. He points to healthcare, education and robots as potential sources of broad benefits.
From “SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son: Superintelligence, AI Investing, and the Future of Robotics”, Oct 13, 2026. Watch the full episode
Answers “What will AI look like in the next few years?” See all 39 answers
Thanks. We'll look at and fix what's off.
“I knew through some series of accidents that AI was gonna be a thing that was happening for a 20, 30-year run.”
Takeaways
- Schwarzman views AI as a long-term change, not a short-term trade.
- He expects AI to transform healthcare and education.
- He sees robots freeing people to do other things.
In this episode
Full episode- 12:30Son argues AI safety requires progress, not a slowdown2:53
- 15:11SoftBank backs the AI ecosystem and its robotics portfolio2:20
24:58Schwarzman sees AI as a decades-long investment shift3:43
- 3 more moments in the full episode
Transcript
From the transcript Inside Blackstone publishes with the episode.
- 25:05
Clearly, it's a period of tremendous disruption right now. How do you think about investing during periods like this? Well, I like change. If there wasn't change, there wouldn't be Blackstone, because everything would be in liquid securities on some kind of a 60-40 divided portfolio between debt and equity. I'm always looking for new things that are quite enduring. I'm not interested in short-term trades, you know, like what's gonna happen?
- 25:38
And I knew through some series of accidents that AI was gonna be a thing that was happening for a 20, 30-year run. Well, let's talk about that. I mean, you were so early to this. In 2019, you are making a gift to Oxford, even before that 2018 gift to MIT, to really focus on AI safety. What's your take on how we need to be addressing that? Well, now, in effect, what I knew, and other people knew back in, you know, the Middle Ages there, that the cat's out of the bag.
- 26:17
Everybody now knows, because in the front page of almost every newspaper, lead story in the media, that there are issues on AI safety that will need to be solved and addressed. And you're optimistic that we can figure that out? I'm optimistic that the population of the world is gonna make sure that that's figured out. And the journey of exactly how to get there, you know, doesn't look as neat as it might, but I'm confident that we'll be able to address this because the technology is so useful and so powerful and we'll be able, over time, to deliver enormous benefits to society.
- 27:08
Masa is obviously incredibly optimistic about what all this means for humanity. Do you share that optimism? I mean you're gonna have real changes in the whole healthcare medical area, and you'll see that. It'll be profound. It'll extend life for many, many people. You'll be able to have individualized education and that'll enable anybody with a smartphone, and those are people all over the world. People will be able to get remarkable education just tailored to them.
- 27:48
What's that gonna mean? What's it gonna mean when, some period of time, I don't know whether it's 10 years or whatever, you're gonna start seeing robots doing things that you never would imagine. And that could increase wealth around the world, free up time for people to do other types of things. So radical change, major change, won't come as fast as some people think. There is an evolution to it. But when it's all said and done, it will be part of a big step up.
- 28:28
So complicated, but ultimately good for humanity. Absolutely. So, listening to Masa, one thing you heard is that he made a comment