This year has been one where developments on the artificial intelligence front have cranked up into warp overdrive. And IBM (IBM) sits right in the center of all things AI. In an interview with Yahoo Finance Anchor Seana Smith at the Yahoo Finance Invest conference, IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna discussed its investments in AI, regulation, and how he is evolving the computing giant for the future. In Krishna's view, the future is incredibly bright, especially under a new administration that may cut red tape.

"I think the AI spending from our clients is going to go up, I think the automation spending is going to go up, the labor demographics are going to get even worse, there's some policy statements that have implied that. Well, technology is a way to replace labor, so that means more technology will get deployed by our clients, and so those are the kinds of vectors that we are looking at to help accelerate our business."

Krishna also took issue with criticism that IBM's AI spending was not yet profitable, pointing to its generative AI book of business, which now stands at more than $3 billion, saying: "I think in the past you might've been able to ding us that we were not able to monetize or convert our research into actual dollars. I think the last three years have been quite different."

As for offering up more compelling use cases for AI, Krishna said that just because they haven't all presented themselves yet, doesn't mean they won't be showing up later.

"This is one of those where if five years from now you're not using it (AI) in every part of your business, you're going to be fundamentally disadvantaged."

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This post was written by Conor White.