Swisher: AI Could Kill Us. So, Why Give the Tech Oligarchs a Pass?

No, I don't know Umar. I try to stay away from Russian oligarchs who are friends with Vladimir Putin. So, but the Trump family does not. They're there. This is a good friend. He's a former member of the Night Wolves biker gang. He recently traveled to China with Putin. He has been sanctioned by Ukraine for his role in abducting children, and he regularly praises Stalin on social media. So what's not to like?

Well, I'm just thinking they made so much money. The first thing I thought is, aren't they rich enough with their grift, their other grifts around the UAE and their crypto grifts and their pardon grifts and all different grifts that they can't pay for their own wedding? I mean, say what you will about Jeff Bezos, he bought Venice fair and square with his own money. Um, you know, it was—it's really strange, like it's astonishing. And I hate to do the comparison, but you're like Hunter Biden wasn't creative enough or something like—or—or I think it's small ball. And I think one of the things Scott talks about on our podcast, I think it's true, is they run the country like they're Fredo and they run their grift like they're Michael Corleone. And that's how they're good at it. They're really good at it. And they're also shameless in that way. They're close dear friend—a close dear friend. That's how they tend to put it. But why do you think those people are dear friends with the Trumps? Because they know it's a grift. The entire thing is some sort of coin-operated family essentially, and then you put money in and you get whatever you need to get out.

It's certainly playing into the idea that he is bought and paid for by Putin, right? I mean, I think that's just the general idea. And I think, you know, decades and decades hence, we will know that those documents will come out. There will be some confirmation or not confirmation of the relationship. That often happens many decades after people die or history moves on and things are revealed. But it's certainly—I mean, he's certainly in the tank for him, whether he likes him or he likes Stalin. And you know, you love to have it—used to be Russian oligarchs, you didn't know who they were, right? They sort of hid in the shadows. Now they're on Twitter praising Stalin. They don't even hide their grift, which is really interesting. In this case, they, you know, they all pretend they're international citizens of the world, which of course is against the populist image that the Trumps try to put out. But they're sort of hanging around with the oligarchs and the sheikhs and the, you know, the wealthy people from all over, the elite from the world. And then they're also trading favors with each other. And what they're doing is in plain sight. I mean, you saw that wedding was all over social media. There was, you know, this guy tweets, and they're not even slightly ashamed of it, I think. And that's because we live in this performative digital society that, you know, it's—if you're going to grift, grift big and then show it off to everybody.

I've always thought Russian oligarchs sort of won that war. I mean, they just—they are the top level of grift. We're just importing their version of it over here and certainly emulating it.

Oh my god.

Made it up. Okay. AI wins. Whoever wins AI wins.

God, I think blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. That's what I think. Um, you know, he doesn't know what he's talking about. He's absolutely ignorant about these issues, and he's just being, again, coin-operated by the tech industry, as you've noticed. They've spent a lot of time, have dinners there. They showed up at the inauguration in the very front row, in front of the cabinet, in front of elected officials. They stood in the front row, all the major leaders. So he has bet the farm on AI here for his administration. And when the bubble pops, he's going to be in a—it's a very fragile situation with these companies. And so there's a lot of things going on here at once. One, we've been telling you this for a while. Like, it's not just me. It's many—Geoffrey Hinton, the godfather of AI, Timnit Gebru from Google many years ago has been warning of this. Sci-fi has warned us of this. But actually really significant academics, Yann LeCun, many others have been warning and warning and warning. And now this one researcher who works there—and there have been others that have left those companies that have said that—said it. And it sort of was the moment where it sort of stuck in people's brains because this is not a new thing people have talked about. And, you know, Dario himself has always been relatively negative, like worried about the negative effects. That said, and he of course wrote about this, and then of course Elon agrees with him and Sam agrees with him—Sam Altman from OpenAI and Elon obviously from the Musks, the Elon of the Musks—and, you know, they all agree together. And you have to wonder why now are they so concerned when they were never concerned. Two reasons. One, they've all been in a race for—in a way that's not economically feasible for all of them. So they've all had to participate in this arms race, and it's unaffordable and it is actually unsustainable because there's only going to be one or two of these things, or maybe three at the outside, but there's not going to be 10 of them and they're not going to be worse. All of them aren't. So there's going to be a crash here no matter how you slice it. This happens again and again in technology history. That's one. It's unsustainable and they don't want to be in this arms race, but they have to be, if that makes sense. So they can't not buy weapons, but they don't want to buy them anymore. So they're asking the government to regulate. The question is what kind of regulation? And of course what a lot of people feel, and I would agree with them, is they're trying to shut down innovation by solidifying their leadership by putting rules into place that are impossible for small companies to keep up with. These other companies have plenty of money to do all whatever the government has to say about it. The error we made is at the very beginning. When I was—I wrote a piece 10, 15 years ago that we needed a digital bill of rights for citizens around privacy, around transparency of algorithms, around any manner—there's a number of things that need to happen. What is in these things? Should it be looked at by the government? And now I think we're at that moment where it's like nuclear proliferation. The government needs to be involved. Can you imagine if Oppenheimer was able to sell like the bomb to some companies like Kodak or what at the time? I don't know. This just, you know, essentially Truman nationalized nuclear proliferation. And that's, you know, I don't believe in nationalization of these things, but if it's oh so scary, I kind of do. And so you don't know where their economic interests intersect with their actual care for humanity, of which I think is very small, and I think their interest in their economic survival is very large. So the last thing I'd say is the—I mean the most moronic thing came from Speaker Johnson, who's like, 'I'm going to get them around the table and talk about it.' Why are we letting them decide? Would you let the car makers decide about car safety? Or perhaps we might want to have a little bit of distance from these people? Bring in experts. Bring in scientists. Bring in people, include them by the way. But why do they get to drive this train that they're already driving society into a wall, and we've already shown examples of it through social media? We already know how they behave when they're not regulated.

Yes, he's been there. I mean, one good point David Sacks did make is that these companies could slow down at any time, right? They could, and he's correct. They shouldn't get antitrust protections. This is where I agree with him. Nobody should get antitrust—because, you know, open source is really important for the development as it has been in technology. And so there I do agree with him. Otherwise he's created a wild west situation where all the interests—you know, there's an expression in Silicon Valley: if you don't have a—without a conflict of interest, there's no interest. His conflicts of interest are so massive in so many ways in terms of who he favors. And all these meetings never have anybody but the business people. Like, you think they could just stand a critic there at all? Are they that much—are they that delicate flowers that they can't sustain a criticism? No, they can't. They want to all pat each other on the back, you know, smoke a stogie and then say how smart they are and then overvalue their companies. Let me just make one point. One of the things that they're doing here in a very clever way is AI will kill 10% of humanity—or no, is a 10% chance. AI is doing this. Guess what? It's not AI. It's people who make AI. And so criminal—speaking of criminal liability and product liability—should lie with these companies. If they create a bot that ends up killing people, they need to go to jail. That's pretty much—that's what the pharmaceutical companies... Can you imagine like plane companies? 'Well, the plane crashed and we are not responsible.' Can you—the drug was badly made and it made itself bad and it killed—the drug killed someone? Like, no. Well, the people who make the drugs kill people. The people who make the planes that crash kill people. And that's where the liability should lay.

There's a little bit of a contradiction—like 10% of human—you know, 10% chance we're going to kill everyone, but buy my stock. Yeah, sure.

Oh, thank you. The government needs—oh, thanks for that. First of all, number one, no discussion of liability. Like, what about if you make shitty products? Should you not be arrested? Why is the—why isn't the—why are we being led by them? That I do not understand. That doesn't happen. I mean, look, lobbyists do have their ways to get and influence government. That's been the bane of our country since the beginning. But to start with them deciding, when they have financial and economic every interest in the world to favor—they're creating their own homework. It's like, why do we want them? And third-party evaluators—well, do those third-party evaluators have subpoena power and ability to put people in jail? That would—I'll take that job. Sure. If you're going to let me have third-party evaluators that have some power and teeth, that would be great. Otherwise, oh, that's great. You're all going to decide what you're going to do with humanity. And let me just tell you, as problematic as they are, and I always say this, I'd rather have Ted Cruz deciding these things than any of these people because he was elected. I get it. But he was duly elected by the people of Texas. He is their representative. And by the way, if he pisses them off around data centers or whatever, he should be voted out. But at least they're elect—I respect officials.

The anger about data centers is a proxy for all of this, and it's real and it's not made up by China. It is not—China has more regulation around its AI. First of all, it's very heavily regulated there. They have all manner of safety stuff, and 70% of the people in China like AI. Do you know why? Because the government has done its responsibility and it controls this very strong technology. Instead here we let the—you know, let the inmates run the asylum, and that's just not the way our government has run. They can, you know, they can influence the view of ridiculous lobbying money, etc. But it should be in the hands of our public officials as they are.

Because we have to—like as we do with—I don't know if you've noticed, we still haven't blown ourselves up with nuclear weapons so far. Why is that? Global agreements about nuclear non-proliferation. Now, look, lots of rogue states are getting a hold of this stuff. It's easier than ever to have it. That's a new problem we face. But it's 80 years now and we still haven't. And we have the ability to murder ourselves or suicide ourselves over and over and over again. It's because of global—we should have a global agreement with China. We should be hand in glove with them on a lot of these things. Do you think they want a bioweapon made? What are they—how are they going to stop that? A US bioweapon made by some AI, it's going to kill them too. And so we have to—like, Ted Cruz, what a—like seriously. Oh, if we have to have global, you know, killer robots, it might as well be ours. Why do we not—why don't we have a global agreement not to have them? We managed to do it on cloning. We managed to do it on bioweapons. It doesn't mean it doesn't get out. It doesn't. Like, look, it's a tough world out there. But maybe we all agree we should—nobody should have killer robots. Nobody should have drones that target the DNA of an individual person. This could go in so many directions. Maybe we say, 'Hey, this stuff is so powerful. Why don't we all group together to solve cancer as a world?' Like, this is an opportunity in the positive ways that AI can affect everyone to bring a little bit more harmony. Instead, he's such a—I'm sorry. He's such a—

Like, I don't like either choice. I'm not—I mean, I guess you, but honestly, why is that our choice? Why don't we—we have for years and years on so many other topics we have had global cooperation. This—if there's any topic we should have global cooperation on, it is AI. And it will not be perfect and there will be cheaters and we will have to monitor each other. But if China wins—like that's how Donald Trump thinks someone's going to win and someone's going to lose. That is not how this is going to go. We will have a robust AI environment. There's not going to be losing. There's going to—it's just not—that's not how it's going to spin out. It's not.

Incredible.