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Connect the World

Safety Concerns Intensify Over AI Warnings from Top Developers; Anthropic to Introduce Independent Evaluators to Monitor AI; Top AI Companies Have Discussed Creating Own Standards Body; AI Risks in Sharp Focus as U.S. Congress Returns to Work; Saudi Crown Prince Meets CENTCOM Chief Amid Houthi Advance. Aired 9-9:45a ET

Aired September 14, 2026 - 09:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[09:00:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BECKY ANDERSON, CNN HOST, CONNECT THE WORLD: It is 09:00 a.m. on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers may finally be waking up to the risks and challenges

of AI, as CEOs of that industry call for a slowdown in development. But President Trump seems still to be dismissing the risks.

And on Wall Street, stock futures are all lower as investors ask themselves what this means for the boom in spending on this advanced tech. It is 05:00

p.m. in Abu Dhabi, I'm Becky Anderson from our Middle East programming headquarters watching "Connect the World".

Also coming up, President Trump calling on Ukraine to halt attacks on Russian diesel fuel infrastructure amid a shortage and jump in prices. And

in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia closes its east-west pipeline as tensions escalate in the Strait of Hormuz. Well, an existential threat, catastrophic

risks, and now let's pump the brakes on artificial intelligence.

That is what top AI developers are saying in a rare show of unity. Big tech's top rivals calling for a slowdown of the advanced technology. To be

clear, these are three men with incredible power, frequently in direct competition with one another. They don't often publicly agree. Well right

now that's sending AI-linked stocks tumbling in U.S. pre-market trade.

OpenAI investor SoftBank closed over 10 percent down, leading a sell-off of AI investors and chip makers, and dragging Asian markets lower. Well, this

downward move coming mainly after comments from the Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, a leader in the AI race, in an exclusive interview with my

colleague Anderson Cooper, Amodei says widespread AI regulation is doable.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DARIO AMODEI, CEO OF ANTHROPIC: There is precedent for this. If you look at how banks are regulated, right, there's all kinds of you know there's all

kinds of rules about you know how banks are allowed to do their business, right? Because you know we don't want to have financial crises.

And one of the things that are done in some cases is I think they're called supervisors in the financial industry, but they're folks who are

independent of a company, who are embedded in the company day to day to check their practices. And I think we can do the same thing in -- I think

we can do the same thing in AI.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON: Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI have all discussed creating an AI industry standards body. That is what CNN's Hadas Gold is hearing from

people familiar with the situation, and she joins us now from New York. Hadas, cutting through all the noise, what is the latest on what is your

new reporting?

HADAS GOLD, CNN AI CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. So, what I learned is that you know, despite all of the action over the last few days, the last week or

so, is that some of the biggest companies in this space, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, had all already been having regular discussions about settings

up some sort of industry standards body that they could all agree on to set some sort of safety standards.

And I was told this was partly prompted by Google DeepMind Founder Demis Hassabis. He posted a very long -- proposal back in July, essentially

suggesting what we know as FINRA right now, the Financial Regulatory Authority, and as a sort of a private-public partnership that would be

partly overseen by the federal government, funded by the industry, and staffed by independent technical experts.

Now, there haven't been, you know, concrete plans yet for what this industry body would look like, who would be part of it. I spoke to some

sources in the open-source environment, for example, who said they are not part of those conversations, but it just goes to show you that these

conversations have been happening for some time.

It's just in the last, you know, couple of weeks, especially in the wake of the Hugging Face incident, that we are seeing it really explode into the

public consciousness. And we're seeing so much of the conversation, you know, people realizing that the action is probably not going to come from

Washington, especially now this administration.

We all know how long Congress takes to do anything, and so likely, if we're going to have any sort of action on AI safety and standards, it's going to

have to first come from the companies themselves.

[09:05:00]

ANDERSON: Senior researchers are sounding the alarm about what's known as slow alignment in AI, and I caveat this next question by saying, look,

let's be quite clear. There's a lot of language around AI, which is really difficult for sort of general sort of man on the street, woman on the

street, to get their arms around.

But critics worrying that computerized agents could become so powerful that they could conspire to destroy the world. Skeptics dismissing this as sort

of doom-laden caution. They accuse tech moguls of hyping their own products, a sort of paradox, as it were, in their argument. What's the big

picture from all of this?

GOLD: Yeah. So just quickly, alignment means essentially making sure that the AI agent will do what you actually intend for it to do. So, if you say,

hey, solve this cybersecurity exam, you want them to take the cybersecurity exam, not break out of their test environment, hack another company to

steal the answer key, and so that's what alignment means.

But this fear that AI could, you know, conspire and work against us is an actual real fear. I've been speaking to AI researchers and engineers. They

tell me this literally keeps them up at night. That they are actually very concerned. I mean, it's not so much that they believe that there's going to

be some sort of AI robot who's going to be marching around the streets shooting at everybody.

What they're more concerned about is that AI will, you know, very kind of slowly take over things like start running companies, start running parts

of our government, and in ways that can, in some ways, slow and in some way fast, really harm humanity. Now there are some of those who believe that AI

could not only plan biological weapons, but especially once robotics catch up, that they'd be able to control the robotics to create those biological

weapons.

But for a lot of those that I speak to, those are a bit farther out, you know, feelings. There is obviously difference in opinion within the AI

industry about how you know exactly AI could kill us, but there is a huge consensus in Silicon Valley, that they all agree that something must be

done, and that's why it's so unusual to see Elon Musk hates Sam Altman.

Sam Altman and Dario Amodei definitely don't get along. And here you have all of them agreeing on something ahead of two of their companies having

these giant IPOs. This is not the type of talk, you normally hear companies discussing about how their technology could kill everyone before they're

hoping to have these record-breaking IPOs.

ANDERSON: Good to have you, Hadas. Thank you. The calls then for AI guardrails growing louder, just as U.S. lawmakers return from a break,

members of both Houses of Congress are now back on Capitol Hill today. Some already have been working behind the scenes on potential AI legislation.

President Trump says now is not the time to pump the brakes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you have any concerns about AI leading to human extinction?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: No, I don't have any. I have concerns that if we don't win AI, we're going to be put in a

very bad position.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON: CNN's Annie Grayer is on Capitol Hill for us. Annie, today, day one, back at work for the House and the Senate, AI concerns pushed to the

fore over the past week, particularly over the weekend. We at CNN, of course, spoke to the CEO of Anthropic.

He's talking about pacing the frontier, slowing things down, he's got, he says, a plan to do that. What do you expect to happen as far as Congress is

concerned with AI regulation? I mean, these are lawmakers who are imminently going to be out facing voters, of course, because the midterms

are just weeks away.

ANNIE GRAYER, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, Becky, there's real pressure here for lawmakers to act, but as we know, Congress typically doesn't do

anything slowly, and we're already seeing divisions emerge from each party and how they want to handle this issue.

So, Democrats want to stay in session and work on this issue. Right now, Congress is set to be in session for this week, and then Republican leaders

canceled the House session days for the rest of the time between now and the November midterm elections. Democrats want that time back so they can

continue to focus and work on this issue.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called for an all Senate classified briefing between the senators and Trump Administration officials to learn

more about this issue and talk about ways that Congress can get involved. And Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democrat in the House, who is in line to be

Speaker if Democrats take the majority, say this would be a top issue for Democrats if they reclaim the majority in November wants to see legislative

issues on how to address this.

[09:10:00]

But meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson says this is something that lawmakers have been working on for years. He stood up a task force on AI

three years ago, right after he became speaker. But we haven't seen those legislative solutions really suggested or even put into place.

And Johnson says this is not the time for Congress to overreact to try and regulate an industry that really, where he believes that action should

happen from the leaders themselves, that they should propose the ideas initially, and that Congress should work with them and meet with them.

But he's really concerned about the U.S. race between the U.S. and China on AI, and doesn't want to sacrifice progress on that front, on the national

security front, to create more regulation. So, take a listen to what Johnson told our Jake Tapper yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE JOHNSON, U.S. HOUSE SPEAKER: If they want to slow that down, that's fine. But we also, at the same time, have to resist Congress jumping in and

imposing some sort of emergency moratorium. It's got to be done right, safely, wisely. But we, in order to solve that equation, you need a lot of

bright minds around the table.

We cannot put a moratorium on this because China will overlap us, and that's the challenge, its national security balanced with the immediate

security of making sure the models are safe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRAYER: And just to show you the strange alliances that have formed on this issue, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a leading progressive, and Steve

Bannon, a right-wing or Trump ally, are going to be both participating in this conference in Washington D.C. tomorrow to discuss AI and how to

regulate it.

So, lots of different ideas being floated around, but there's really the big debate is what role does Congress have to play, Becky.

ANDERSON: Well, the midterm elections just weeks away, of course, both main parties in a fierce fight for control of Congress, both in the House and

the Senate. We heard Jon Ossoff talk about this. I mean, he's a U.S. Senator from Georgia. He will be looking at re-election in the midterms,

and he's a Democratic presidential hopeful, of course, for 2028. Have a listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JON OSSOFF (D-GA): An ancient establishment, barely capable of email, sleepwalks into a technological revolution, while the president dismantles

precautions and calls us fools for worrying. Just listen to this, on day one, Donald Trump rescinded the AI safety order meant to guard against

catastrophic risks, including the engineering of bio weapons.

Meanwhile, Don Jr. 1789 capital bought big money stakes in data centers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON: Do you think this is an issue that could really move the needle in these U.S. midterms?

GRAYER: Absolutely, this is going to be front and center, and we're seeing candidates on both sides of the part, of both sides of the aisle, really

talk about this issue. And it's not a black and white issue. We're seeing candidates on in both parties having different views on what data center

should look like, on whether there should be a moratorium and where data centers should be built, on what AI regulation should look like.

And for example, former President Barack Obama was at a fundraiser last week where he was talking about how anyone who's looking to run for

president in 2028 needs to have a clear policy on AI. This is not something he argued that Democrats could run away from.

That this needs to be front and center, and we're just seeing more and more examples of lawmakers running up and down the ticket across the country,

coming out with their own policies, their own ideas, especially those whose communities are being directly impacted by this, specifically with the

building of data centers, where there's a lot of different opinions on where those should be built, what the resources look like for that, how

that's impacting jobs, how that's impacting natural resources and water and electricity.

This debate is all-encompassing, and it is absolutely going to be front and center in the lead up to November. And the party that can really harness

the message is, I think, going to be the one that is most successful.

ANDERSON: Yeah, it's fascinating, isn't it? The data centers read AI factories, of course. It's squarely at the heart of these states, squarely

at the heart of all of this, and an extremely polarizing argument around where they should be and how they should function. Good to have you.

Thank you very much indeed. President Trump, calling on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to halt attacks on Russia's fuel infrastructure,

claiming that that is causing a shortage of diesel. Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I've asked President Zelenskyy not to hit the diesel plants refineries.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is it potentially that Ukraine war could end? Is it potentially that --

[09:15:00]

TRUMP: -- diesel is being driven up by the fact that it's having a hard time coming out of Russia, and that's a case that hurts the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON: Well, President Trump's comments come as the Former CIA Director David Petraeus and the Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson narrowly

dodged a Russian drone attack on a Ukrainian train on Sunday. CNN's Clare Sebastian across the latest from London.

Clare, thanks for joining us. Have we heard anything from Ukrainian officials, firstly, in response to Donald Trump's comments?

CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They are staying studiously quiet on the issue of diesel and these Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries,

Becky. Because I think, look, there's inconsistencies here. It was just a week ago that Trump said that you know gas prices would go down when the

war with Iran ends.

And the other inconsistency is that it was just about a year ago after the failed Alaska summit that Trump turned around and supported Ukrainian deep

strikes on Russian target. So, look, it is worth the Ukrainians staying silent on this. They have a lot to lose at this moment with the U.S.

kickstarting the diplomatic process again, with the whole issue of patriot missile interceptors very acute going into winter.

But I think, look, it is unnerving for the Ukrainians because it smacks of a wider existential issue, which is that Trump tends to default back to

pressuring Ukraine, and he seems unwilling, and perhaps this will offer economic cover for this to fundamentally get tough on Russia.

So, I think this will be worrying for the Ukrainians, but in practical terms, they have far too much to lose to risk this relationship with the

U.S. at this point.

ANDERSON: Good to have you, Clare. Thank you. All right, you're watching "Connect the World" with me, Becky Anderson from our Middle East

programming headquarters here in Abu Dhabi. Still to come, Saudi Arabia under pressure after Houthi gains in Yemen and attacks on Saudi oil

infrastructure will break down what all of that means --

SEBASTIAN: -- that question about --

ANDERSON: -- for you up next. And it is the start the trading day in 15 minutes' time.

So, we'll be back with more from the U.S. markets at the bottom of the hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANDERSON: Well, it's been five days since we started getting reports of Houthi rebels making a rapid advance along Yemen's Red Sea coast. They have

now taken control of the strategic Perim Island in the Bab al-Mandab Strait today. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has met the Head of U.S.

Central Command, Admiral Brad Cooper, in Jeddah.

Now, the pressure hitting Saudi oil infrastructure sat light images show damage to the kingdom's critical east-west pipeline after drone attacks

forced a temporary shut down over the weekend. The escalation rattling energy markets Brent crude above $109.

[09:20:00]

As we speak, up more than 4.5 percent, or around about 4.5 percent. Richard Meade, Editor-in-Chief at Lloyd's List Intelligence, joining us live from

London. So, first, in we've got the images up, the satellite images of that east-west pipeline damage. Just how bad is it, as you understand it.

And let's just remind our viewers how critical that east-west pipeline is for the transport of oil from what is effectively, you know, the Strait of

Hormuz across to the Red Sea.

RICHARD MEADE, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF AT LLOYD'S LIST INTELLIGENCE: Well, it's significantly more important than it was prior to the beginning of the

year. It has been carrying around 4 million barrels a day. So, you have to put that in context. That was a lot of the oil that was being diverted away

from the Strait of Hormuz that was going through to the Red Sea out of the port of Yanbu.

Now that was initially heading south. Problem that we now have is that the resurgent Houthi threat is rerouting a lot of that oil north up to Egypt,

where it's then going to Egypt. Very long way around, huge amount of disruption and inefficiency within the market, and that's now continuing.

Now, you take out that 4 million barrels a day, as we now have to for the moment at least. And then you're looking back into the Strait of Hormuz,

where of course we still have almost daily attacks. There is a hugely inefficient system there, shuttling oil in and out of the Strait of Hormuz

under the protection of the U.S. in most cases, some with the task approval of Iran, but nowhere near the normal volume.

So, you have disruption on disruption on disruption. So, the key question really is going to be how long is that Saudi East-West pipeline going to be

offline? I've seen U.S. Secretary of Energy Wright saying soon earlier today, quite how soon is soon we don't know. Initial estimates were

floating around the market last night at around three to five weeks.

I don't know if that correlates to soon in the eyes of the U.S. Administration, but we're yet to see any real numbers in terms of how

significant the damage is and how long that pipeline is going to be offline for.

ANDERSON: Meantime, what's going on in the Strait of Hormuz? How much oil is moving out of the Persian Gulf?

MEADE: More than was moving is the slightly short answer. It's very difficult to give you accurate daily numbers because while the U.S.

government seems intent on taking, you know, occasional good days and using that as the baseline, the reality is you have to take an average over

multiple days, ideally weeks, in order to actually get a sense of how much oil is coming out.

So, I think you know perhaps less than the higher estimates, but it's only more than we were seeing, and that's happening through a combination of

pipeline, you know, going through initially through the east west, but also through the UAE pipeline as well. Through the vessels, we've got now a core

group of risk takers.

Largely ships that are owned by the Gulf states, the national oil companies, the likes of Abu Dhabi, national oil company, the Kuwaitis, some

Iraq, and they're shuttling on tankers, in and out, and then you have this system of ship-to-ship transfers in the Gulf of Oman. Now, that's

happening, but it's happening sporadically.

So, you have a huge amount of disruption in that system where oil is coming out, but it then has to be transferred into other tankers. That's taking

time. It's causing essentially traffic jams in the global supply chain. So that on top of the pipeline problems, the Houthis and the long detours that

we're seeing, all is adding up to a massive disruption, which is why you're seeing the oil price spiking at the moment.

ANDERSON: Yeah, 108 spot 89 on Brent, 103 spot 78 on WTI. So, no real surprise that we are, as you say, seeing what we are seeing in the oil

market. So, I mean, I guess that begs the question, you know, how long is a piece of string? But how long do these prices stay as high as they are, and

could they go higher?

And I wonder if you, because you know, when we consider what you know the sort of medium to long term forecasts on these prices, we have to consider

how the oil market as a whole is changing, how the dynamics have changed. So, how do you read the market, the global market, at this point and going

forward?

[09:25:00]

MEADE: I think if you look at the forward curve of tanker freight, that's a pretty good indicator of where the shipping market at least sees the risk,

and that's only going up. We have time charter rates for tankers approaching nearly a million dollars a day right now.

Now that is at the extreme end for the Gulf, but I think that is certainly indicative of a market that does not see any quick resolution to this. I

think on top of that, you're seeing a number of these oil tankers that are taking the risk, changing hands at hugely inflated prices.

You're essentially spending what you would spend on a new ship or a 14- year-old tanker, and they're doing that because they want to take on the risk, because it's only the national oil companies within the Gulf that are

prepared to take that risk. Now, if you play that out long term, that seems to me to be a geopoliticisation of the market, geopolitically conditioned

ownership and operation of oil tankers.

You play that out mid-term, and I think you're looking at you know some different dynamics in the market from here on, where there's only a certain

amount of people is prepared to operate in certain places. Trade is becoming increasingly geopolitically conditioned, effectively.

ANDERSON: It's good to have you on. Thank you very much indeed. I'm going to have to leave it there. I need to make the bell on Wall Street at the

bottom of this hour. I've got a couple of other stories that I want our viewers to get their arms around before we do that.

But always good to have you. Thank you very much indeed. Let's just get your up speed, folks, on some of the other stories that we are following.

The search for 140 people still missing after an Indonesian passenger ship capsized in bad weather has intensified.

A search and rescue agency official told Reuters that 103 people have been rescued so far, one of whom died. Well, The Kennedy Center has warned of

bankruptcy unless President Trump's name is added back to the building, according to documents obtained by "The New York Times" and "The Washington

Post".

A board member and longtime Trump ally has said, Trump attracts money. The president has offered to raise the money, but only with quote, appropriate

recognition. And tonight's television event is, well, the biggest stars and shows vying for the highest honor at the prime-time Emmy awards.

Up next on "Connect the World", the start of Wall Street trading. We'll be back with that and more on the Emmys, after this.

[09:30:00]

ANDERSON: All right. We are watching what will be the opening bell on Wall Street. President and CEO of First Bank today, doing the honors. It is the

company's 10th anniversary of listing. All right. Well, it's Monday. Welcome back to what is the first day of the trading week.

I'm Becky Anderson. You are watching "Connect the World". And I have to say that the futures markets were certainly indicating a very much weaker open.

I want to get you where the Dow Jones has opened up because that is not indicative of where we saw futures for the NASDAQ, the tech-laden NASDAQ,

nor the S&P.

So, the DOW actually down by about a quarter of 1 percent That's not a bad start because our eyes are on the tech-heavy NASDAQ today. We'll get you

that momentarily. One of the reasons we're going to expect to see these markets lower today. Before I talk about the AI story is this, Brent crude

at 108, spot 97, just shy of 109 bucks on the barrel.

WTI, which is the U.S. benchmark, of course, just shy of $104 on the barrel. Both of these are high due to largely due to tensions in this

region and driving concerns of global inflation of course. Let's get you back to the U.S. markets, and these are now the live numbers.

As you can see, the DOW down by about a third of 1 percent but the NASDAQ off by one and a quarter percent. And you just might have to, you know,

hold on to your hats on this one because that could go lower today. And I'm going to explain why the S&P, the broader index, down by about three

quarters of 1 percent.

Right, these are the some of the big AI tech, AI stocks, Nvidia down three- and three-quarter percent, SpaceX newly launched off 2.5 percent, AMD the

chip maker off nearly 6 percent It's a massive debate, and I'm sure you're well aware, and it's been quite overwhelming to a degree.

What we've been hearing about AI of late, and there's a lot of talk over the weekend, not least from the CEO of Anthropic, one of the main biggest

frontier companies out there, about what not whether we should regulate the industry, but what that regulation might look at, effectively, you know,

putting the brakes on, or at least slowing down the development of AI, and that is the reason why you are seeing some of this sell-off today.

And we'll keep an eye on these Big Tech stocks, those that are particularly embedded with AI, because I think it's going to be you know a really

interesting picture today. Right, that's the markets for you here at "Connect the World". We are at the heart of CNN's Middle East coverage, of

course.

This is our Middle East programming headquarters, and it has been a turbulent few months, to say the least, with conflict disrupting travel,

aviation, and tourism across this region, and governments working hard to restore stability. Well, this week, we're going to be looking at the impact

on and resilience of one specific industry.

That's travel and tourism, as the UAE hosts the Arabian travel market this week in Dubai. We are asking some of the key questions, including how

quickly the industry can and will recover, and what the past six months has meant for businesses here in the UAE and across the Middle East.

So, let's get a sense of what the industry is seeing right now. Chris Hartley is CEO of the Global Hotel Alliance, which represents over 1000

hotel operators across 100 countries. Joining me now live. It's good to have you. Thank you very much indeed. These are privately owned operations.

CHRIS HARTLEY, CEO OF GLOBAL HOTEL ALLIANCE (GHA): That's right.

ANDERSON: You are representing as the GHA. So, let's talk about these hotels. Your latest company report finds that, and I'm going to quote some

numbers here. 90 percent of hotel CEOs see geopolitical instability and conflict as one of their biggest challenges facing their business.

Yet 67 percent your report says, remain optimistic about hospitality through 2027. Just explain that to our viewers, if you will.

HARTLEY: Well, thank you for having me today.

ANDERSON: You are more than welcome.

[09:35:00]

HARTLEY: It's a big week for the industry in this part of the world. Arabian travel market, which was delayed from May due to circumstances, and

we've now, all gathered this week to talk mostly positively about our hopes for recovery. So, quoting that statistic that two thirds of our CEO group,

representing 50 brands across 100 countries, are optimistic about next year, but at the same time, our concerns are geopolitical.

And clearly, what's happened here in the region six months ago was going to always create issues for demand into the region across all the countries

here, which have been doing so well over the last few years. But what's the positivity coming through is how quickly the industry has recovered and has

gathered together and collaborated.

We've done that across 70 hotels that we got here in the UAE, over 120 across the region to try, as this region is so good at, to be as resilient

as possible to encourage people to continue to travel. That's meant we've had to turn our attention perhaps to more local markets, encourage people

to stay within hotels who live more and more people who live in this region now, and we've been very successful with that.

If you look at August, for example, August numbers only just below August 2025, which is quite remarkable. Of course, optimism still has to look

further ahead to the international markets, which are so strong typically in Q4. But at the moment, we're proving as an industry once again and as a

region to be very resilient to what's happening.

ANDERSON: So, new data from Dubai's Department of Economy and Tourism shows some of these numbers, you know, reflecting what you've just explained,

shows the city welcomed around 869,000 international overnight visitors in August. That's the highest monthly total since February.

That is a positive sign, of course. The international traveler, though, who will fly in on international airlines, is the problem, isn't it at this

point?

HARTLEY: Well, that's the struggle, and I think everyone's realistic at this point that international airlines, beyond the Gulf Airlines, Emirates

has restored 97 percent of its services. They said today, and you can see if you're flying Emirates, which I do a lot, the planes are full.

But part of that, obviously, is driven by the fact that the international airlines have temporarily, at least, stopped flights into the region.

They've announced they will be bringing flights back in October. Of course, circumstances evolving all of the time. We rely very heavily on that

international demand during the winter months, which really drives the rates up in the region.

So, we are again optimistic that we can, from October onwards, start to see that international demand starts to pick up again. Part of what we're doing

this week is reassuring the world that this part of the world is welcoming, is as always, a great part of the world to visit, especially in the winter,

we want international travelers to be reassured.

And what the government has been doing, what the airlines have been doing, what the hotel industry has been doing has been to collaborate over the

last few months to really get that message across. And Arabian travel market this week is all about getting that message of positivity about, but

we have to be realistic that at the moment there remains uncertainty.

ANDERSON: Yep, and we -- you're right. We remain in a contested region, and at this point, there is no end game. However, if you like you and I, you're

resident here in the UAE. You know, life goes on as normal, and I can understand why it's important to get that message out very briefly.

I want to talk about AI. This particular stat in your report really stood out. 90 percent of your group's hotel CEOs believe AI will either

fundamentally reshape hospitality or have a positive impact on the industry. Can you just explain how, for us?

HARTLEY: Well, I think first of all, demand is not going to change from a destination, from a location perspective, from events or experiences.

People choose their locations very much on a personal basis, on an emotional basis, and AI is not going to really change demand in that

respect.

What AI is going to do is change the way people choose and discover where they're going to stay and how they're going to get to these places.

ANDERSON: -- it is.

HARTLEY: It is. And so, I don't think it's more of an evolution that is a fundamental change for our industry at least, and it's going to change the

way people search. It's going to change the way people understand or search for content about the destination they're traveling to, and ultimately how

they may choose a hotel or an airline.

And we have to figure out, as an industry, how we are going to control the way in which customers discover our hotels and not allow too much of that

to go into the hands of third parties that they then monetize, and we have to pay for.

[09:40:00]

So, it is an important moment for the industry to try and understand how AI will influence choice, but I think fundamentally, as I say about this

region here, the Middle East, which is so popular for international travelers, people choose destinations first. They come for experiences, and

they come often for events as well, and that will continue to determine traveler choice.

ANDERSON: Well, it's good to have you. Thank you for traveling down from Dubai today.

HARTLEY: Good to be here. Thank you.

ANDERSON: Where all the action is in travel and tourism this week at the ATM. Thank you very much indeed. It's good to have you.

HARTLEY: Thank you --

ANDERSON: All right, we will be back with a lot more after this. It's always good for you.

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ANDERSON: The U.S. Open came to a conclusion in New York on Sunday night. And it saw Germany's Alexander Zverev hoists the trophy over the American

Ben Shelton to cap off what has been a very, very good year. That is on "World Sport" after this short break.

I'll be back with more "Connect the World" in 15 minutes' time. Stay with us.

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[09:45:00]

(WORLD SPORT)

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