Bring in show music, please.
Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod, Walter Isaacson — he wrote the book on Elon Musk, and now he's looking at the leaders of artificial or super intelligence.
We've never had a technology that's seemed this dangerous since maybe the atomic bomb.
Big existential questions, but this student of history says it's all about the people. Elon Musk really doesn't like Sam Altman. So, a lot of these things are personal, but that's the way history is.
Then, an extended interview with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, who says, "Silicon Valley has an AI rhetoric problem."
We use words like super intelligence. Super intelligence sounds like an alien species. The average person does not want an alien species smarter than them. I think the average person feels like AI is happening to them, not for them.
And how AI leaders can get on the same page, maybe outside of Washington.
I think the real work is not happening in front of a bunch of photographers at the White House.
Those big conversations, plus the latest moves at Google's Gemini, the new co-CEO of the Paramount Warner Brothers combo, and weight loss drugs and earworms.
I just hope they don't buy that song.
They will. They will. Foundo.
It's Thursday, October 1st, 2026. Squawk Pod begins right now.
Stand back by in three, two, one. Cure, please.
Good morning everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We are live from the Nasdaq MarketSite in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick, along with Joe Kernen and Andrew Ross Sorkin. And here's a look at where the major indices year-to-date stand, with everything you've been watching right now. Year-to-date, pretty good year for the markets still. S&P is up by 11 and three-quarters percent. The Nasdaq is the huge winner — it's up by 15 and a half percent. But even the Dow is up by 6 percent. But if you were looking at what happened over the last month, not so great. Over the last quarter, not so great either. Treasuries — the 10-year and the 30-year yields hitting their highest levels since 2002. This morning, we saw a big pickup. In fact, the 10-year was all the way up to 5.34 at one point this morning. We'll keep an eye on that. Right now, it's sitting at 5.31. The 30-year is at 5.65. There have been people speculating that we could hit 6 percent before the end of the year, and that'll be something to watch. The 2-year right now sitting right at 4.9 percent, but that 30-year mortgage hitting 7.6 percent. That is its highest level since November of 2023. And that's the issue that people watch so closely for the housing market, too.
For the quarter, the S&P was up.
Yes. For the quarter the S&P was, the Dow was down.
Was up 2 percent, but after it just doesn't feel like it was up.
No, it doesn't. I mean, for the quarter, the Dow was off by about 2.7 percent.
But the S&P actually was up, and I think the Nasdaq was too for the quarter.
Meanwhile, take a look at energy prices because that's been the issue we thought was weighing on the market. The White House now telling Germany and France to release their emergency diesel inventories to help ease global fuel prices, or face a potential U.S. diesel export ban. That's according to Reuters. A separate report saying that Chinese refiners have suspended exports of oil products until further notice. That follows comments from President Trump at the White House yesterday as his administration continues to consider an export ban.
I think it's something that we think about and we talk about every day, but it just seems that it would have a negative impact on gasoline. So that would go up a little bit and diesel would come down a little bit, and we think we're in a very good place. It's going to start to come in. According to AAA, the national average price of diesel this morning is $6.39 a gallon. That compared to just $3.71 a year ago.
All right, let's take a look at Google parent Alphabet unveiling its latest AI model yesterday. It's called Gemini for Argon. The company said that the new model sets a new record in real-world software engineering, ties for first in cybersecurity, and leads other performance benchmarks in professional tasks including finance and legal. Google says that it's already using Argon in its data centers to optimize memory, freeing up hundreds of terabytes without buying additional hardware. The company will begin releasing that model to trusted cybersecurity partners and work with the U.S. government on pre-release safety evaluations. But Bloomberg is reporting that some company insiders say that the model struggles with day-to-day tasks, including coding.
It's an interesting one. It's going to be very interesting because it does, on so many of the different baselines, it seems to be ahead.
And yet then you're hearing this news that maybe on a practical basis, it doesn't work the same way. So, we're all going to have to see what happens.
Whoever wins AI wins. I think that's very important. But I think the technology has very real risks, and you know the mechanism how we address those risks is still under discussion. But we all need to work together to make sure that we can win, and we can win safely if we do this right. If we work with the president and everyone here, we can win safely.
Tech executives questioned Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei at the White House on Tuesday about why he was being so extreme and public about the risks of AI. That's according to a Wall Street Journal report that said Nvidia's Jensen Huang was one of the leaders who questioned Amodei. It said that Amodei told the executives that it's important to be honest with the public about model capabilities and not play down risks. When Amodei brought up safety concerns during the White House lunch, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg responded the best way to address them was following through on the principles of the tech leaders' signed document on Tuesday.
Which he had a lot to do with, apparently.
Yes. Well, this goes back to why I was trying to ask Brad about this yesterday. That document was not something that came up at the lunch. That document had been worked on for days prior, as it was being passed around by all of these.
So, this was kind of a pressure campaign. You will sign this. It's only 308 words. All right.
I think it's — I just think it's fascinating, as you know, the undercurrent is, you know, you got Jensen and others, and you got Amodei and others, and they're both sort of saying, okay, we're trying to judge who's promoting their self-interest more. Both of them are. Is one more than the other? Is it really sincere safety concerns that Amodei is talking about? Is it really that Jensen thinks it is safe and it's not about selling chips?
It could be both. I mean, a little bit of both. This could be a situation where they both are speaking their own truth as they see it, where, you know, one thinks we could be hurtling down a road, thinks if you slow us down you are going to keep us from reaching our full potential.
But in life, if you don't at least consider the cynical side of anything you're talking about, you're just... Right. Follow the money, so you're not a dupe. Right.
Right. But I think there's a consistency issue that's just worth noting over and over again.
With both of them, or with...?
Not actually with both of them. First of all, I don't think that Jensen historically has talked about safety. Safety was not like part of that conversation. If you go back in time, he didn't think it was necessary. He may not have thought it was necessary. All I'm suggesting is Amodei has always... Sam Altman, Greg, Musk.
Well, that's scary because they know more than we know then.
And when you say Musk, then again, my ears perk up. But I'm saying that's what they've always been saying. This is not like some decades... This is not like a new phenomenon. And so... Science fiction writers have been saying it since 1950, right? But what I'm saying is this idea that they had some kind of financial incentive in 2015 when OpenAI didn't exist to say these things, right? To me suggests that you have to take it a little bit more seriously and not constantly sort of this move. There's this constant idea that it's in everyone's best interest. They were saying it before it was in their interests ever.
Well, I'm back to the doomer side of it. If it really is as great as everything is, then no one's going to have a job. So, we could all die, but we won't have a job before.
They were saying it before any of these companies existed, and yet they still pushed the boundaries, and they're the ones who have unleashed these things, these agents that have now had, you know, more than 10,000 incursions into other places. But that's — but I'm only saying that the people who are doing this were always worried about this, always knew that if you're going to go down this path, if you're going to build this type of technology, that there was always these risks involved, and at least... Sure. But I would also suggest that I'm so much happier that we actually have people who are working on this who are talking about it honestly. I appreciate the question, and the truth is, had the individuals who are running these institutions not been doing that, there are lots of other individuals, by the way, in the technology community, some of whom signed that document, who would not have made these issues public at all.
But it's not just those CEOs who are saying it. It's guys like Demis and others who have raised these concerns from the get-go, not running... And it's not like the other people are plotting and know full well we're heading towards Armageddon and they're doing it anyway for money. I mean, they probably genuinely disagree that it's such a — you know, there's panicans and there's non-panicans. And in everything we ever talk about — markets, pandemics, whatever — there's a way of looking at things where you're always scared, excrementless, and then there's... you don't need to. I don't know, but we don't know at this point.
Most of the public would have been much happier had some of the internal studies at Meta, Facebook, over the years around social media, where they knew the issues and they didn't bring those forward. They never spoke about them. And why didn't they speak about them? Because it was not in their financial interest at all. I'm suggesting you can go look at the leaders who signed that document or what they're saying and ask whether you believe that they were publicly honest with people in the past about what it's done to our children in terms of... Okay, that's connecting the dots to where, you know, you could see bullying and shaming and fat and all the things that have come from social media. I guess we should have understood because it's human nature, but this is the end of humanity. They had internal studies that it was going to do that to children, that it was doing this to children, and they never made it public. The point is, these people — you can say what you want about these people having some other incentive. All I'm suggesting is that they are having problems. They know they're having problems, and they're telling you about them.
That's very different than what's happened in the past. Some are, and some are less, and we should have a diversity.
Although the latest things that we've heard from OpenAI all came about because there was a whistleblower that left Anthropic that had worked at OpenAI before. All of the last three weeks that we've talked about it was because there was an internal whistleblower.
But could a whistleblower... No, no, no. The Hugging Face... The Hugging Face wasn't found — was not released by OpenAI. That was found by Hugging Face. They're the ones who... You're talking about Coxin or...? Yeah, I'm talking about Coxin. The reason all of this came out — Dario's open letter that he wrote was in response to a whistleblower, but a whistleblower that's blowing a whistle and saying that we could all be dead by 2030, I don't even take that seriously. So, I mean, whistleblowers that know factually that something's going on is one thing, but saying in his opinion what he's looking at could be the end of humanity in a couple of years — I mean, you take that with a... I'm not even sure what we're arguing about.
Right. Right. Well, that's not a whistleblower. That's a — I don't know what that is. That's someone who... that's hyperbolic panic.
But he repeated... No one else really thinks that. Don't they? Do they...? About temporary... But you have defined humanity differently in terms of it could be... It's not... There could be many people that die from some horrible situation, but not everyone, right? That's what you were saying — shut down the grid, shut off... if you shut off the grid, right, people... you know, heating in a... in a freeze.
David Ellison has hired former Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz to be his co-CEO. The merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery closes. Ellison remains chairman of the combined company. Kreiz worked closely with Warner Bros. This is part of that partnership with Mattel to produce the Barbie movie. It's a fascinating move, and most interesting to me, the idea in terms of just title that David Ellison is effectively going to share the title of co-CEO with Ynon. If I remember, Jeff Shell was, you know, when he was in that sort of operating role, I believe he was considered the president of the company. I don't know if David Ellison was planning to share the CEO role, but maybe in terms of being able to bring... right? So, over, you needed to offer that role, but Kreiz did a pretty good job at Mattel doing some pretty interesting things.
Stock. I was going to say the stock never — I mean, it had its moments, but it never moved in the end.
But the transformation of the company in terms of becoming an IP company, probably the right way to go eventually. These toy companies have just gotten slaughtered. Tariffs have played a big role on that. The demise of toy stores like Toys R Us have played a role in that. And Kreiz was pretty good at some of the accounting stuff that was taking place behind the scenes. It's just weird that... Okay, so he helped with the Barbie movie. Okay.
Well, it's not just the Barbie movie. They have a whole slate of movies that they put through, but yes, it's probably an unexpected thing. People will say, though, about the co-CEO roles — they'll point to Netflix where you've got Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters as being there, but yeah, often co-CEO roles don't last permanently.
It's tough. It's tough. Who were those two guys at Coup? That was the original co-CEO.
Well, he has a long history. I mean, people think of him as a toy guy, but really, you know, he was in the production business for a long time. Sold a maker at one point, so he's been in this space and done pretty well.
And check out the shares of Eli Lilly. Nothing happening there, but check them out anyway, I guess. Results from a phase three trial show that its weight loss pill, orforglipron, helped patients lose weight and reduce the risk of a heart attack, stroke, or hospitalization. And I just hope they don't buy that song, because they will, they will, they will, they will.
They're going to, because they all buy those things.
And they plant them in your mind. Do you watch at night? What's... how many of these... not as much.
Every pharmaceutical company... drug has a soul. You know, if this hadn't occurred to them, you have now given them the idea. If it happens, consulting... yeah, if it happens, I want money. Will be next.
Coming up on Squawk Pod: doom and boom — the AI regulation debate with author and biographer Walter Isaacson. He's looking at the builders of the newest technology.
They all talk about p-doom, meaning the probability we'll have a total doomsday, and they say maybe it's 10 percent, 15 percent. I said, "Well, why are you doing these things then? Why don't you get together and regulate?" And of course, competition.
But wait, I want to be the first one to kill the planet.
This is Squawk Pod. Joe and Becky Q.
Welcome back, everybody. President Trump is calling on tech giants to self-regulate. Joining us right now with his thoughts on how the AI race compares to similar events in history is CNBC contributor Walter Isaacson. He's of course an advisory partner at Perella Weinberg, a professor at Tulane, and the author of Elon Musk, among many others. Walter, it's great to see you today.
Megan, you're an incredible student of history. What you must be watching this with an eye to what's happened in the past.
Well, absolutely. And we've never had a technology that's seemed this dangerous since maybe the atomic bomb. But whenever we have these things, we have new groups that get together, including industry groups, like we saw earlier this week when Trump brought them together. But we also finally figure out regulatory regimes for them. I've got this series coming out soon called The Builders, which is a podcast series. Every one of these people is in it, and everyone thinks this could be dangerous. They all talk about p-doom, meaning the probability we'll have a total doomsday. And they say maybe it's 10 percent, 15 percent. I said, well, why are you doing these things then? Why don't you get together and regulate? And of course, competition. Competition between themselves makes that impossible. Competition with China makes it...
Joe kind of said this tongue-in-cheek yesterday, but wait, I want to be the first one to kill the planet.
Yes, exactly. I mean, what is your goal here? One of the things that was interesting — I'm watching Mustafa Suleyman, who I'm interviewing for The Builders. He asked the basic questions, which is, what is the purpose of building this? Well, the obvious answer is to help humanity. Now, if you're doing something that seems so likely to cause harm in some ways to humanity, you probably ought to say, "Let's figure out how to regulate it." So I didn't say the planet. I think the planet will be fine.
Be like a neutron bomb, right? Exactly. Well, yes, exactly.
That only killed people. Left the building.
