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.
00:13:55 · Erin Griffith, Max Read
[00:13:55] S4: Well, I think there's two groups, though. There's, like, the there's, like, the kind of employees that that are very worried, like, you're talking about, especially at places like in... At the labs. And then there's the the the investors who I spend a little bit more time with, and they're not so worried about the existential risk kind of piece of it, and they're more... They think that... They don't think it's inevitable because they worry about regulation. And so that's like... And they worry about not having the data centers and the and the compute. And, like, so they're kind of on the on the flip side of that a little bit. [00:14:26] S1: Yeah. Let's talk about data centers for a second. So Tuesday night, near total route for data centers on basically every level. Nearly every local referendum went against them, but also a bunch of the states that have been building the most intensely. Democrats took control often on anti data center platforms. But I'm still sort of trying to figure out how big a deal it is because there's a certain amount of, like, it's not necessarily as salient as tariffs, affordability, as Iran, as immigration, but it also clearly animated voters all year. So I'm wondering how big a driver do you think the data center issue was of these results?
00:14:26 · Max Read, Erin Griffith
[00:14:26] S1: Yeah. Let's talk about data centers for a second. So Tuesday night, near total route for data centers on basically every level. Nearly every local referendum went against them, but also a bunch of the states that have been building the most intensely. Democrats took control often on anti data center platforms. But I'm still sort of trying to figure out how big a deal it is because there's a certain amount of, like, it's not necessarily as salient as tariffs, affordability, as Iran, as immigration, but it also clearly animated voters all year. So I'm wondering how big a driver do you think the data center issue was of these results? [00:15:03] S4: I mean, it was interesting because last week, we talked about how it was, like, you know, ranked in the bottom maybe five out of, like, 30 some issues when you're asking voters, like, what they care most about. But it's clear as you're as you're describing that when asked on a binary yes or no question, the answer is absolutely not. And so whether or not that drove people to the polls, Ezra, you probably have a lot more info on that, but it's obvious that it's, like, going to be continuing to be an issue.