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00:00A suggestion that jumped out to me is that there could be more cooperation between companies and the government,
00:04cooperation within the democracy, as Dario Amadei put it.
00:08I'm curious from where you sit in the U.S. Senate, how much of an appetite there is in light
00:12of this essay,
00:14the reports that we've seen, the social media posts, to take a new tack when it comes to this conversation.
00:20David, the essay by Dario Amadei says out loud what many of us have known for months, if not years,
00:26especially after the huggy face hack that happened recently.
00:31These models are doing things that their designers didn't expect, can't predict, and aren't able to fully control.
00:39And the level of risk for us as a species, as a nation, is gradually accelerating.
00:46I have a bill in the Judiciary Committee with Senator Grassley that we are going to try and get passed
00:52soon
00:52that would protect AI whistleblowers. Because, frankly, the main reason we know about these steadily increasing risks
00:59is because of whistleblowers. They're taking career risks, even personal risks, by stepping out and saying this.
01:06Now that we've got agreement from Elon Musk and Sam Altman and Dario Amadei,
01:11we need agreement from Republicans and Democrats in Congress to put aside our partisan pre-election bickering
01:18and put in place some real guardrails before AI goes off the rails.
01:22Well, that's what I was going to ask you about, is if you think that consensus, that agreement, can exist.
01:27I want to play you some sound from Ted Cruz.
01:30So I know you co-sponsor a bill with, we're going to talk about that a little bit later,
01:33about what he said about the competition coming from China,
01:36which seems to be the real wild card in regulating some of these American companies.
01:40That is an impossible endeavor, because you know who's not pausing? China.
01:44China. They are not going to stop. If you look at where the U.S. is—
01:48So if AI is going to kill us, it should be U.S. AI, not Chinese AI?
01:51Listen, I've actually joked that if—and this is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but it's not entirely—
01:56if they're going to be killer robots, I'd rather they be American killer robots and not Chinese killer robots.
02:03When you look at concerns about China outrunning U.S. in the AI competition,
02:09is it harder to have that conversation about slowing down AI in the U.S.
02:14if people, including probably some fellow Democrats and Republicans,
02:18are concerned about losing the competitive edge with China?
02:22Yes. Look, I think all of us are concerned about our competition with China, or we should be,
02:27and the ways in which AI is accelerating developments in everything,
02:32not just positive developments in, for example, finding new treatments and cures for diseases,
02:38but developments in the possibility of AI engineering a deadly bioweapon,
02:43AI being used for hypersonic missiles, for cracking codes, for taking down GPS.
02:50There are lots of malign applications for AI in warfare.
02:55The drones that are being fired at Ukrainian civilians every night by Russia
03:01are becoming faster and stronger because Russia and Iran are using AI to improve their targeting.
03:07So, yes, there is a real concern on my part and many of my colleagues.
03:12I understand the point there that Senator Cruz is making.
03:16The reason his opinion here is particularly relevant is he's the chair of the Commerce Committee.
03:21But he and his ranking member, Maria Cantwell of Washington,
03:25are also working closely together on trying to protect college sports.
03:30If they can come together against some of the biggest divisions we have in politics
03:35to try and save something that brings together tens of millions of Americans cheering on college sports,
03:41I have some hope that we can come together to address this urgent threat.
03:46I also frankly think that this is something that has to be on the agenda when President Trump meets with
03:52Xi Jinping.
03:53This is as much a threat to China as it is to the United States.
03:57And so even though our competition is fierce, even though our political systems are fundamentally different,
04:03I'll remind you in the height of the Cold War,
04:05when the Soviet Union and the United States were locked in a decades-long conflict,
04:10where we threatened each other's existence with nuclear weapons,
04:13we were able to negotiate arms control agreements to reduce the risk we would destroy humanity.
04:19This moment requires us to do the same,
04:22to look up from our domestic concerns or our partisan concerns
04:27and work to find a way that we can come up with some minimal, reasonable guardrails
04:32to slow the rapidly accelerating pace of AI development and deployment.
04:37I hear you echoing another senator.
04:39That's Bernie Sanders, who tweeted out at their upcoming AI summit,
04:41Trump and Xi must negotiate a treaty to pause AI and ban superintelligence before it's too late.
04:47I want to read something else to you here, and that's from David Sachs,
04:50who continues to play a kind of quasi-official role within the administration,
04:53advisory role to the president.
04:55And he said, in response to what we've seen from Anthropic and the response from these other companies,
04:59quote, stop pretending you need anyone else's permission.
05:01Stop pretending antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel.
05:06This is something that Dory Amede brought up in this essay,
05:09that for these companies to work together,
05:11there needs to be some assurance here from the government
05:13that they won't be in violation of antitrust laws.
05:15Are you sympathetic to that case that he's making in this essay?
05:20Well, am I sympathetic to the argument Dario Amede is making,
05:24that in order for the leaders of frontier AI development to genuinely cooperate,
05:29they need to know they won't be prosecuted or pursued, would be the right term,
05:34under antitrust law?
05:35Yes.
05:35Look, I was in-house counsel to a global company.
05:39Any lawyer advising any CEO would make that point.
05:42And David Sachs, look, I have disagreed with him on his view about AI and chips and China
05:47and competition, because his view has been that we should be willing to sell
05:52the most advanced NVIDIA chips to China, something I've disagreed with.
05:57But the urgency of this moment calls on these incredibly powerful, successful companies
06:03to put the common good above their competitive interests for at least the current moment.
06:10Look, Bernie Sanders, Senator Sanders of Vermont, has been calling out,
06:15raising the alarm about AI now for months.
06:18And I respect that.
06:19He at least is a strong voice on the left end of my party.
06:23But his calling for a moratorium is frankly not practical.
06:27What we need is to come up with guardrails that are enforceable and that we then work
06:32with our allies, partners, and adversaries to try and get in place globally.
06:36But when it comes to trying to legislate this technology, my co-anchor accused me of being
06:43ageist earlier in the week, but Congress does not have the best track record at understanding
06:48new technology.
06:49And I think about social media, because when it first came out, there were efforts to try
06:53to regulate it, and it didn't really work.
06:54And now 20 years later, we're seeing that kind of play out in the courts.
06:58It's being legislated through lawsuits because that infrastructure, those guardrails, especially
07:03for kids' safety, weren't there.
07:05Do you think Congress understands AI well enough to successfully regulate it?
07:11No.
07:12And that's one of our real challenges, is that we've got folks in the Senate and the House
07:17who are not as engaged, as curious, as current on this rapidly evolving technology as we need.
07:25Let me give credit to Senator Schumer and Senator Young, Senator Rounds and Senator Heinrich, who
07:30in the last Congress, as a bipartisan group, convened seven different summits on AI.
07:37There was session after session where they pulled into the Senate all the most important
07:43leaders from these companies that are developing this technology and from the different organizations,
07:49hospitals and unions, health care companies, car manufacturing companies, to talk about
07:56AI and its development.
07:58I've got the only bipartisan bill ready for enactment that came out of that process.
08:04And it's in the Judiciary Committee.
08:06It has to do with folks in the creative community having control of their image and likeness.
08:12It's called the No Fakes Act.
08:14Senator Tillis and I have worked very hard on it.
08:16But after those seven convened conversations in the last Congress, there just hasn't been
08:23enough work and enough progress on the obvious areas where we need to be doing regulation.
08:29In no small part, that's because there's a new administration.
08:32The Trump administration has had a light-touch view about regulating AI.
08:38We need an administration that wakes up to this threat, is more engaged, and doesn't just
08:43say, oh, we can handle it all through executive order.
08:46You can't.
08:46It requires court action, as you just observed about social media regulation, and it requires
08:52Congress to be engaged and effective.
08:55This is a moment we have to stand up and do our jobs.
08:59For the record, Christina, the senior senator here, 63 years old, spry by senatorial standards.
09:03Just want to make that point here.
09:04Listen, I've seen some late nights in Washington, and the senator often lasts longer than I do
09:09at some of these events.
09:10So no ageism here.
09:12Let me put up an Instagram post by Margaret Vestager.
09:15She was the EU competition chief.
09:16She posted this on Instagram this morning.
09:18I thought it was creative.
09:19It's a photograph of her, I believe it's her dog, a beautiful golden retriever.
09:23And she writes, if you're working on something that would, with a 10% probability, erase
09:27humanity in four years, maybe you should not just pause.
09:30You should stop until you know what you're doing, and we are all safe.
09:33I heard you say a moment ago that what Senator Sanders is espousing here, something similar,
09:38let's stop this entirely, isn't reasonable.
09:42We're getting to the fact that there's a spectrum here in terms of response.
09:45And I think there will be many Americans who feel like, in light of what we've learned
09:48over the course of these last weeks, what we've seen in this essay, maybe this is a moment
09:53to stop, that the folks that we've trusted to develop and pioneer this technology might
09:58not have a grasp on what it's doing.
09:59What would you say to them, in particular, those who are worried about the direction
10:02this is going?
10:04Look, I'm worried.
10:05We should all be alarmed about the direction this is going.
10:08And I didn't mean to dismiss what Senator Sanders or the EU competition chief is calling for.
10:15I just have grave concern that when our president, who leads the executive branch, is really only
10:21using AI to make up all sorts of bizarre late-night cartoons of himself conquering Canada or retaking
10:29Greenland, that we don't have a serious partner in the executive branch.
10:33And we have competitors, globally, particularly China, who are going to keep racing ahead.
10:38I'd like to see us walk before we run in this area.
10:42There is a real chance that we will have a 9-11 moment, that we will have a mass catastrophe
10:49because of AI, and then look around for the off switch and discover we don't have one.
10:55So if Senator Sanders is asking for a very strong response, I respect that.
11:02I just think it's going to be difficult to accomplish in an environment where neither
11:06the president and the administration nor many of the senior Republicans on the relevant
11:11committees, judiciary and commerce, are following in that same direction.
11:16So finding a path towards some guardrails, like passing my bill with Senator Grassley, that
11:22at least protects the whistleblowers, would be a great first step that we could do this month.
11:28Senator, I apologize.
11:29We only have a few minutes left, but I do want to ask you about another place that's
11:32struggling to find an off switch, and that's the conflict in Iran.
11:35As this conflict continues, we have this BRICS summit happening over the weekend in India
11:39with leaders of Middle East countries, South Asian countries, and Iran present, and then
11:44possibly another meeting with some Gulf allies and Iran, maybe in Muscat tomorrow.
11:49Where is the U.S. in this?
11:51Do you think America is doing enough?
11:53Are you confident in Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff as negotiators to end this war, or
12:01do they need to be replaced?
12:03No.
12:04Look, I think the world, and in particular the Middle East, has concluded that President
12:09Trump had no idea what he was doing when he launched this war of choice against Iran.
12:14If a blockade, if tougher sanctions really are the right tools to bring the Iranians to the
12:20table, he should have used them before launching a war where our own magazine depth, the number
12:26of interceptors we had to stop Iranian ballistic missiles and drones from hitting our allies
12:32in the region, our partners, it just, it was not well thought out and well planned.
12:39President Trump offered five or six different justifications for the war, regime change,
12:44urging the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow their government, taking out, killing the Ayatollah
12:51and most of his family.
12:52That was one excuse or justification.
12:55Another was ending the nuclear weapons program, which months later he claimed was obliterated.
13:00Another was stopping the ballistic missile program.
13:03Like, none of these have been achieved.
13:05The Strait of Hormuz is not open.
13:07The Houthis, who are aligned with Iran, are more strong and more regionally capable than
13:12ever, having just taken control of much of the Red Sea.
13:16We are in a mess, and I am not confident that we have the right negotiators.
13:20Look, I may respect Steve Witkoff's capacity to do complex real estate deals in New York.
13:25That doesn't mean he's the right person to negotiate a just peace between Russia and Ukraine
13:31and between Iran and Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
13:34These are incredibly complex conflicts, and his previous experience does not make him the
13:39right person to bring a lasting deal home in these regions.
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