00:06:25 · Erin Griffith
[00:06:25] S4: a lot of layers to this. I mean, you could... Like, obviously, they... A lot of them just don't wanna see regulation. You can go back to Marc Andreessen's whole thing that he that he kinda went on this media tour after he came out for Trump, and and he was, you know, telling this story of the deal, the broken deal, and, you know, the elites are now under attack. And we had this meeting that, you know, may or may not have happened, and subsequent reporting has called into question that... Where all the Democrats were saying they were going to kill AI. I I do think it's also, you know, just a little bit of a cultural thing where it just, like, seemed like more fun for them to be edgelord meme kind of posters and, like, not having to care about cancel culture and wokeness and all of that. And so I think, like, on on a high level, some of the... A lot of the billionaires and the leaders of the industry kinda went to the right, and everyone said, oh, well, the rest of the tech industry is still very liberal. But, like, I think over time, that sort of, like, you know, in... Very online kind of thing attracted way more people to that side. And so I'm I'm gonna be very interested to see, like, how that plays out if people kinda just start, like, backing away from from that vibe. The one thing I wanna also just say, like, just to add on to what I was saying earlier is, like, this idea of, like, kind of ramming through the tech stuff regardless of whether people like it, regardless of sentiment, and, like, they'll like it on the other side, is, like, very prominent amongst a lot of the VCs that I talk to where they say, well, like, people don't like big tech or people are are... Don't trust big tech, but look at their revealed preferences. Like, look at look at how much they're using Facebook, and look at how much they're using Amazon. They actually... And they they love their iPhones. They're addicted. And, like, they're just sort of looking only at the data and saying, like, because people use AI a lot, because ChatGPT has a billion users around the world, ergo, people are going to like this stuff. They might just, like, you know, not have the trust or whatever, but that doesn't matter because people are using it.
00:08:23 · Erin Griffith, Max Read, Ezra Klein
And I think this election is actually showing us that that's the wrong way of looking at AI because, you know, people obviously are very, very mad about it and to the point where they don't want it. [00:08:34] S1: This felt like a decidedly anti tech election, but I think we can also separate some of the sentiments that were contributing to the votes and the the blue tsunami. I I heard somewhere that in Japan, because you don't wanna call it a blue wave or a tsunami, they're calling it the national scolding, which I think is so much better. So I'll call it the national scolding. The the factors that went into the national scolding, let me... I'm gonna separate the sort of the tech stuff into three different categories. One is the sort of broad opposition to AI that you're talking about, Erin. One is the sort of specific anti data center sentiment that really captured a lot of attention this summer that a lot of politicians, ran quite hard on. And then finally, a kind of general anti oligarchy, anti billionaire sentiment that focused in particular on Elon Musk, but I think in general on a lot of tech billionaires. I wanna take these one at a time and start with the anti AI sentiment. And I'm gonna play a little bit of Jon Ossoff's victory speech from last night. [00:09:32] S2: And at our grave peril, humanity is fast forgetting the terrible lessons of two world wars and the holocaust. Meanwhile, the titans of Silicon Valley dig bunkers for themselves and warn that the artificial intelligence they're creating risks human extinction.
00:09:32 · Ezra Klein, Max Read
[00:09:32] S2: And at our grave peril, humanity is fast forgetting the terrible lessons of two world wars and the holocaust. Meanwhile, the titans of Silicon Valley dig bunkers for themselves and warn that the artificial intelligence they're creating risks human extinction. [00:09:51] S1: That's pretty strong. I mean, that's like, you know, I mean, and I'm not talking about those new biceps he's got, folks. That is like a real... Well, he is kidding. He's a lot stronger than he used to be. I thought that would play a lot harder, but maybe we can cut it out later. It's a pretty specific, pretty aggressive... I mean, this is this is like a speech written by somebody who's on Twitter at the very least who's like, you know, sort of has a a strong understanding of a... Of AI culture, Silicon Valley culture. Ezra, what did
00:10:18 · Ezra Klein, Erin Griffith, Max Read, Abdul El Sayed, S6
[00:10:18] S2: you make of this part of Ossoff's speech? So at the beginning of the book, abundance, which Derek Thompson and wrote, we have this sort of thing about supply side politics where we say the the core question should be, what do we want more of, and how do we get it? And the the basic problem that they have on AI is they've not convinced people to want more of it. They they understand how you get it. Right? Like, push all this money to CapEx, but not why do you want it. And so first, you have all this energy going into that, And then the data centers are just big and ugly, and they don't create jobs, and people don't like the construction of industrial facilities near them even in normal times. Right? It's hard to build an apartment building. It's very hard to build, you know, these these gigantic systems. So they seem to have come up with this view that it's not going to matter because people enjoy using their chatbot, but it is going to matter. And the reason Ossoff... But not just Ossoff. I mean, El Syed had a great, you know, answer on AI pause when he was talking to our former colleague, Ross Douthat, on on sixty minutes. [00:11:21] S4: Yeah. He actually knows what distillation is. [00:11:23] S1: Yeah. It was very impressive. [00:11:25] S5: A lot of the frontier research is just spoofing our models. [00:11:28] S6: China's research.
00:11:28 · S6, Abdul El Sayed, Ezra Klein, Max Read, Erin Griffith
[00:11:28] S6: China's research. [00:11:29] S5: China's research. And it'd be like, you know, you're pulling a a skier on a boat and you speed up the boat and you're like, skier is still so close. We gotta speed up. Skier is still so close. Well, it's because you're pulling the skier. [00:11:42] S2: You know what distillation is? Right? This is a thing that I think younger politicians are really developing expertise on. I can tell you they all understand and believe it will be a central issue in politics going forward. And sort of like everybody else, they're not buying the just don't worry about it line. [00:12:02] S1: Yeah. Yeah. [00:12:03] S4: Okay. One question on that, though. What what do you make of... Their sort of, like, answer to, like, how did this happen is that AI has a messaging problem, which to me misses the point a little bit Yeah. That... Like, they're of reinforcing that, like, again, what you're saying, like, they believe that, like, this is what's best for everyone. And if they... And if everyone just lets them do it, then, like, we'll see. But, like, if they stick to that, it seems I
00:12:28 · Ezra Klein
[00:12:28] S2: don't think they do believe it's best for... I mean, some of the tech right guys do, but I think one of the most interesting things when I talk to them, and I'd be curious how much this this backs up your experience, is a lot of the people in AI say publicly and privately, oh, if I could, I would push the button. I would stop it for now. Yeah. And I just don't feel we can. There is this inevitability thesis. There's China. There are the other companies. Right? There's this kind of spirit of technology. In some ways, like, when Elon Musk talks about it in a very teleological fashion. Right? I tried to stop it. It turns out I can't, so it's more fun to be part of it. That... It is true that some of the tech right people we're talking about feel that way, and some of them also, you know, don't care or don't see it in existential terms. But what people people are hearing from a lot of them and and correctly absorbing the lesson as John Ossoff is, I mean, a lot of lab employees are going to congress and talking to people like Ossoff and explaining their concerns. That the the message I think a lot of us are getting is that what is pushing this forward is a belief that it cannot be stopped. But even the people pushing it forward believe that maybe if it could be stopped at least for a while and figured out that would be better. And, you know, so if you don't buy into inevitability, and most politicians don't buy into inevitability, then all of sudden, it's like, well, why not try to pace it, slow it down, regulate it, you know Yeah. Change public opinion on it.