Listen, David, Silicon Valley came into Trump's second term wanting two things. Fewer restrictions on AI and a massive data center buildout. You had the president behind you. It seemed like all systems go. But now we see, according to our new political poll and a whole lot of other metrics that even the president's voters, Trump voters are deeply worried about where AI is headed. How did this become a political liability so quickly?
Well, first of all, I'm not sure this is the right question. We have an AI journey going on. First of all, the tech industry was not looking for those things. It was looking for the ability to innovate and invest and we have an absolute AI boom going on in this country. Something like a million new jobs have been created in AI. That's not my number, that came from The Economist just a couple weeks ago. We have billions of dollars being invested now across the country in capex. We have a re-industrialization going on in the United States and that's not funded and paid for by this AI movement. So, you know, first of all, I would say that we've largely been successful and what's happened over the last few weeks is basically a media op to make the American public afraid of AI. To be sure, that was happening before, but it's really a new level to the point where I think that, you know, again, you have people trying to induce a panic on the part of the public. I don't think it's leading to a very
In case you were wondering, we are recording this.
Yeah. But I would say that if we're going to cite polls, I noticed today in the New York Times there's a poll on which party is trusted more on AI and Republicans actually had an edge despite all of this scoffing that's going on.
But it's not just the media. You have folks like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who I know you know well, saying that even the possibility that AI could elude human control should alarm us. I mean, is he wrong?
Well, here's what I say is that obviously there are risks associated with the technology and we should have an intelligent conversation about how to manage those risks. And first and foremost, we should, you know, place responsibility on the companies developing the technology to make sure that it's safe. What I don't want to do is have a conversation that deflects responsibility and accountability away from those companies. Moreover, we should just realize that we're several weeks away from an election. And so what's happening is a fairly technical conversation about, you know, alignment is now being seized on and is being politicized by, you know, by basically political actors who want to use it. I mean, look, even President Obama just came out and said Democrats should use this issue in the election. So we should just realize that that's happening at the same time that there is a conversation, like a needed technical conversation, happening about how do we give users what they want from AI as opposed to getting, let's say, an unexpected result.
But again, it's not just Democrats. It's not just Ron DeSantis. It's also Ted Cruz that says Congress needs guardrails, needs to create guardrails for catastrophic AI risk. I mean, does he have a point that more action is needed on the Hill?
Well, I think the starting point for talking about AI regulation is to realize the regulations that we already have. I think that's really important. And, you know, I hear Democrats saying that the administration favors conservative policy. The reality is we don't have a laissez-faire government. We have a highly regulated administrative state and we already have a lot of laws and regulations that pertain to AI and we have a lot of administrative agencies that promulgate regulations related to AI. So for example, harms like cyber attacks or privacy violations or child safety or fraud, they are all already regulated. And I'd say the most important area of existing regulation is product liability. So Lina Khan, the former Democrat FTC chair, just came out with a statement saying that unsafe AI products are subject to product liability. And she went into some depth on that. And I agree with that. I mean, this is something I've been saying for a while is that if an AI company puts out a product that's harmful, they are liable for that. And I do think that creates an incentive, that creates an incentive on their part to be responsible. But look, I think that we can have an intelligent conversation about, you know, do we need something else on top of that. But it's hard to have that conversation when you have this fear-mongering going on.
But when it is people like DeSantis and Ted Cruz and Chip Roy and a bunch of people on both sides of the aisle saying that they are really worried about this. I mean, are those folks also falling into the propaganda and into the panic or what's going on there?
Well, I mean, there's a couple of things going on. I mean, one is that there has been, you could say, an animosity towards the tech industry on the part of the right. It's not just the left. And it goes back, I think, to censorship, to the big tech censorship of conservatives. That's been going on for a decade. So, you know, there is a strain on the conservative side of the aisle of skepticism towards tech. And by the way, there should be. I mean, I don't think that big tech behaved completely appropriately in those cases. There's a skepticism towards the behavior of just, you know, monopolies in general. Again, I share that. And I think part of what we should be talking about here is making sure that these companies do not evade responsibility for basically bad behavior or for releasing unsafe products. One of the things you saw in that essay that, for example, Dario Amodei just put out is he said he needed antitrust waivers to make his product safe or to basically promote this AI safety agenda that he has. I think that's completely wrong. I mean, I don't think we should be allowing, and I think Josh Hawley just agreed with me on this, and he's very anti-tech. I don't think we should be giving these companies antitrust waivers in order to do the right thing. There's a lot of companies in America that would love to be free from competition. But we don't, you know, we don't give them that. And so, look, I think there's a couple things going on here. One is you've got different views or different diagnoses of what's happening and then you've got different ideas of what to do about it and I think there's a spectrum of views on both sides and I think that's healthy.
You have the president though who is very bullish on AI and he's been pushing back at the skeptics saying that anything bad about AI is a hoax. Do you think these safety concerns are a hoax?
I think the hoax is promoting this idea that humanity is going to be extinct.
Yeah, but he said on Truth Social he said anything bad about AI is a hoax.
Well, again, I think specifically what we're talking about is this idea that AI is going to end civilization within a very short amount of time. And that is specifically the fear that's being pumped through the media right now.
I mean Elon Musk said about 10 to 20% chance that AI destroys humanity. Well, he also just said that, you know, P abundance is something that we're not focusing enough on. Meaning the probability of creating a world of great abundance is something that we're not promoting enough. Instead, everyone's just focused on the quote P doom. So, you know, look, I think that we can have a more balanced conversation about this. What's happening right now is that the media is pumping out all this fear that makes the public alarmed and then they poll on that and then sure enough the polling reflects that sense of alarm. Then they take those polls to the politicians and say see the public is afraid. So then you get all these politicians saying oh we have to do something right and this is how this is basically the same game that's been played over and over again. We've seen this in the past. Hold on. This is the fear that was created with climate change. This is the fear. We had elements of this with
David. This is different because this
last year didn't need to finish the point. We've seen this playbook, this fear-mongering playbook over and over again. Just last year, okay, we were told that there'd be a jobs apocalypse with respect to AI. In fact, it was the same people promoting this new apocalypse. Dario Amodei said that we would have 10 to 20% unemployment. We'd have a knowledge worker blood bath. Okay. Has any of that come true? No, it hasn't. In fact, we've seen huge amounts of net job creation and we're at near-record lows on unemployment right now. So, none of that came to pass. And yet, we had this huge fear-mongering campaign around it, promoted by the same people. And again, the media then takes this, does polls on it, and sure enough, the public is alarmed by it. Then they run off to the politicians and say, 'What are you going to do about it?' And I think Donald Trump is unique in his ability as a leader to basically say, 'No, this is not true. This is a hoax.' And this actually creates the space to then dissect the narrative and find out all the ways in which it is flawed. We find out for example that, you know, this whole latest part of the campaign started with Jacob Coxin who supposedly was just this viral tweet. No, this is part of an orchestrated media campaign. The Wall Street Journal somehow published an article about his resignation tweet storm 18 minutes before that tweet storm was actually posted. Yet he claimed he wasn't working with anybody on this. It's like come on, we have to recognize that we're 7 weeks before an election and there's a huge incentive here to create these narratives to alarm the public and again I think the president is calling that out and
So what are you David? What are you advising the president to do on this right now?
Well, look, the president knows what to do. I mean, the president listens to a whole bunch of voices. I'm not, you know, I'm not some sort of, you know,
No, but I know you are influential. You are his chief adviser on this. He really does rely on you and I know you two speak. So, what are you advising him in the moment?
Look, the president has his own ideas on this and I think that he understands the issue very well. He listens to many different voices on this and I think he's basically figured it out. He's seen this movie before. I mean how many hoaxes have been run on the president himself going back to the whole Russia gate hoax. I mean we've seen this over and over again that especially before an election the media will take a narrative and look there can be grains of truth to the narrative right I mean like you take the climate change hoax there'll be elements of truth there'll be pseudoscience to it and then the media will blow it out of proportion and use it to further a political agenda. He's seen this so many times. We've all seen this so many times. You have to realize that there's a huge media component to what's happening right now.
But right now, it's 60% of the president's own voters that believe that AI risks destroying humanity. Are you and the president out of touch with Americans on this?
Look, I just saw a poll today that said that the American public trust Republicans more than Democrats on this issue. So you can find polls to say pretty much what you want.
Those aren't mutually exclusive things. They can trust you guys but also say that they worry that AI is going to destroy humanity.
I think the risks have to be managed. And again, why don't we talk about how we actually do that. So first of all I think we again have to put a focus on making sure that these companies are releasing safe products. They have basic product liability around that. I agree with Lina Khan about that. They have a basic corporate responsibility to make sure their products are safe. And what I don't like seeing is these companies try to deflect accountability from that, you know. So, for example, when Dario says, hold on a sec, when Dario says we have to pace the frontier, he almost makes it sound like it's somebody else. You know, if you look at the frontier right now, it's two companies. It's Anthropic and OpenAI. They have duopoly market share in this country. If you measure it based on revenue, if you look at model capabilities, the frontier is two companies. And Dario and Sam have said, 'Okay, we're going to slow down and make sure our products are safe.' So again, they are pacing the frontier. We're doing that. So you know, again, what I don't want to see is somehow this idea that it is not these companies who are primarily responsible for their own actions. And I think Mark Zuckerberg just came out with a really good statement about this. He said that their Muse product, okay, they just released this product called Muse, which is an AI agent. He said they delayed it several months in order to make sure that the product was safe, meaning that it did what users want. Why? Because that is what customers want. It is their
Great, I think we can all applaud Zuckerberg for doing that. Sure. But he's also found himself in a whole lot of trouble in the past on other issues. And I think given the history in this last decade of tech CEOs saying, 'Don't worry, we've got this.' Can't you understand why Americans would be skeptical of having sort of an honor system for these companies?
