She ends this series. Kara Swisher wants to live forever, airing Saturdays at 9:00. Kara Swisher, he's a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, former national security adviser under Joe Biden, Jake Sullivan, and he was Obama's White House chief of staff, mayor of Chicago, ambassador to Japan, Emanuel. Wow, what a resume we have here. Okay, so you probably just watched, you're on overtime here, the show where I ended with that thing about AI. All of you said to me right after it ended, 'I'm right.' So, we all know that it's going to kill us, but we just keep going toward the cliff like the lemmings. Is that where we're about at?
You said something very powerful in your statement there. You said the very people building this technology are warning us about what's going to happen. They're saying, 'We're doing this. We're on the cutting edge of this and it's really dangerous. Do something.' And all of us are just kind of like, 'Oh, I guess we'll see what happens.'
Here's the thing. They did this a long time ago. I was at dinner parties where they're like, 'We don't know how it works constantly.' This was a decade ago. And one of the things I started warning about with social media was the same thing. This is dangerous. And what they're more interested in is the journey and the money, because all of those people — Elon Musk took billions and millions of dollars to develop it more. It's not like they're stopping. Elon Musk did not say, 'It's so dangerous. I'm terrified of it now. I want to stop.' He's suing to get control of OpenAI or paid by it or funded. So every one of those people who yell safety is also taking money from venture capitalists to grow bigger.
The warning sign here, which is, well, the federal government's going to have to finally do something. They can't kind of go the three monkeys routine — see no evil, hear no evil people.
When Dario at Anthropic says, 'I'm not putting this product out.' I'm not living in a world where one CEO's moral compass is what saves us. That is not how this is going to work. And the federal government is going to have to finally do something. You're going to get industry, academics, public policy people all around the table. And what we do in the federal government is we set a regulation and we wait 30 years to see if it worked. This is going to have to be real time, constantly updating things. But the federal government cannot just do this wild west because these guys, as you put their pictures up there, look a little bit like an FBI photo shoot, cannot be in control. They have to have adult supervision. But can we go back to — Dario is not releasing this because he's got a moral conscience. He is. He's just releasing it to 40 big companies. Kara, correct. Bill, you think it's not going to get — you think you can release something to 40 major companies and it's not going to get out to everybody at a certain point? I give it about a month. It is a low bar. That's what it is. He's the best and it's a low bar. Kara, right? And what's really interesting is that we're not going to regulate. They have so much money. You know how much money they have? Elon Musk is about — they get mowed down by lobbyists and PACs and everything else. And now there's a new AI PAC that they're funding. All of these same people are funding the AI PAC. They're funding —
Only to be outdone by the crypto PAC.
Crypto PAC, which got rid of — I mean, they can buy anything, and that's —
But you know Elon pretty well.
Okay. Well, not anymore, but yeah.
Right. Okay. Well, it's been a little —
But he knows you. Little Elon. I know Elon.
Those quotes I read from him — they're from a few years ago at least. It seems like he was the guy, because I do remember when he first said that statement, and it was the first time I'd ever really heard anybody say anything like that.
Well, he said it to me at an interview that we did, but it was a while ago, over 10 years ago. And I was like, 'Oh, this has not been on my radar. Okay, Elon says it. Maybe it is a thing.' But lately I don't hear that from him.
Of course you don't, because he wants to be part of the rush of winning. And one of the things — when he said that, and he said it at a conference, because that's when he started OpenAI with Sam Altman and with others, because they were scared of the power of the Googles and the Facebooks and the Apples, and it was to protect people and create guardrails. And instead, it's so much money, they have to go for it, I think, and now it's a dick-measuring contest.
So Kara, is there any answer to this then? I mean, because I think you've sketched out this money motive is massive, but we've got to be able to do —
So you know, I think people — because people are sick of this, like the suicides. I've interviewed all those parents whose kids have died, and these people are still trying to skate out of culpability, as if it's not accountability, legal lawsuits, and someday a perp walk. I'm sorry, it has to happen.
One thing is, first, I actually think it's one place that actually — and Trump, when they meet in about a month, actually can agree on something, because both of them are scared of this — right, not fully knowledgeable. The second thing —
You think Trump is scared of it?
No, I don't think Trump is, but he's desperate for a deal, anything with Xi, so he looks good. Desperate, and I think this could be the one place. Second, I would just say you had two trials slightly off to the side, which is on the social media and kids —
They all want to become trillionaires, and it's absolutely going to happen. And with that much money and that much influence, they can't even pass a basic privacy bill. I've been screaming about it for 20 years. They all went to jury, and the jury took like 10 seconds — boom, slapped them down. That tells you how angry and anxious people are. It's a separate issue from AI. But these media mogul/technology moguls do not understand the loathing people have for the way they are acting. AI is almost as unpopular as the Democratic Party. It's like in the polls, it's right there, Bill. And go ahead, guess who his new boss is going to be. Like, they're buying everything, whether it's Apple — it's not just Larry Ellison. And they're all buying the media properties. See, I don't think it's on Trump's radar. I can't think of anybody in that administration. And this is why I fight back so vehemently when people say, 'You shouldn't have had dinner with Trump.' I should have dinner with him again, because I'd bring this up in 2 seconds and he would listen. I think he's actually summoned —
And the Federal Reserve. They both called him in his call and said, 'Okay, wait a second here. Time out.'
This has been a wakeup call for that.
But who did they put in place? David Sacks was the AI — he's a longtime Silicon Valley investor, tight with Peter Thiel and Elon and the rest of them. They brought in Emil Michael at the Pentagon, who did that ridiculous thing around Anthropic, like calling them — never called an American —
Peter Thiel, who was asked, like, should humans keep living, and it was like not an immediate answer. It was like, 'Uh, I'm thinking,' you know.
