← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
11/18/25: Rubio Pushes Venezuela War, Saagar Attacked By DeSantis, AI Job Loss Imminent
01:10:25
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- [00:00]
Podcast Host / Advertiser
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:05]
Krystal Ball
I turned off news altogether.
- [00:08]
Daniel Coccotello
I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.
- [00:12]
Krystal Ball
It's the rage bait.
- [00:15]
Sagar Enjeti
It feels like it's trying to divide people.
- [00:19]
Krystal Ball
We got clear facts.
- [00:21]
Daniel Coccotello
Maybe we can calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting.
- [00:27]
Krystal Ball
Let's meet at the Facts.
- [00:29]
Daniel Coccotello
Let's move forward from there. NBC News reporting for America.
- [00:36]
Podcast Host / Advertiser
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- [01:38]
Krystal Ball
Hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here.
- [01:40]
Sagar Enjeti
Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.
- [01:47]
Krystal Ball
This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.
- [01:53]
Sagar Enjeti
So if that is something that's important to you, Please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows unedited ad free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
- [02:03]
Krystal Ball
We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breaking points.com we can go to Venezuela. There's a lot actually going on there. Let's go and put D1 up here on the screen. This is important from Secretary Marco Rubio. There had been a lull currently in Venezuela and just from basically from what I know, here's what I can share. Rubio is still hellbound on regime change. Now, what he did very recently was smart on his plan to try and do this because Trump has shifted current strikes away from the Caribbean and to the Eastern Pacific. What he has done is they are now going to designate the so called Cartel de los Solos as a foreign terrorist organization headed, as he says, by the illegitimate Nicolas Maduro. The group has corrupted the institutions of the Venezuelan government, is responsible for terrorist violence conducted by and with other designated FTOs for trucking drugs in the United States and with Europe. This is an important legal designation for potential strikes on the regime itself because of a 2020 indictment which alleges that Maduro is the head of Cartel de los Solo. So by designating it a fto, it gives them the potential legal authority to strike Maduro himself and to have regime change now at the same time. Let's be clear, while Rubio and all them are pushing this, Trump is also being presented with overtures from Maduro who wants to negotiate with him. And here's what he said whenever he was confronted about potential talks with Maduro just yesterday in the Oval Office. Let's take a listen. In these talks with Maduro, is there anything that he could say or do that would allow you to feel like he could stay with your support?
- [03:46]
Daniel Coccotello
Is there anything that he could say.
- [03:48]
Krystal Ball
That you would be okay?
- [03:49]
Ron DeSantis (quoted)
You can stay?
- [03:50]
Krystal Ball
It's hard to say that, you know, the question's a little bit tricky. I don't think it was meant to be tricky. It's just that, look, he's done tremendous damage to our country, primarily because of drugs, but really because we have that problem with other countries too. But more than any other country, the release of prisoners into our country has been a disaster. He's emptied his jails, others have done that also. He has not been good to the United States. So we'll see what happens at a certain period of time. I'll be talking to him. So he's like, well, you know, maybe you will talk to him. Maduro's done tremendous damage, but I will be talking to him. Trump at this point is completely torn. And this is the product of the, this is the Rubio problem that I've been flagging from the beginning because he is the National Security Advisor and he's a Secretary of State, which means he totally controls the interagency process. And the stuff that gets to Trump and the President's desk in terms of the level of options, there's never been before that level of control, except for Henry Kissinger under Richard Nixon and with Gerald Ford, eventually is fed up with that. Now the reason why this is important is that Maduro, there is a lot of stuff from behind the scenes who has tried to make overtures to Trump in the first place, who? Maduro doesn't trust Rubio to relay any of his messages, so he has to try and go through outside channels. Yeah, he's totally right to do that. But what he's trying to do is go through outside channels to reach Donald Trump. Now they have this interlocutor with Rick Grenell, who I believe is one of the best members of the administration. But the problem is, is that with the interagency warfare, you just never know how this is all going to play out. And Trump's own mind. At the end of the day, the most convincing argument that's been made to Trump is that, guys, you don't have a plan. And this is gonna be just like Libya, but with every step that moves forward from the FTO designation to the strikes and more, eventually your hand may be forced. And who knows what Maduro is gonna do? Let's give the guy. I'm not a Maduro fan, just everybody knows. But we can rationally view. He's got, you know, the biggest military force in the Caribbean since fucking Cuban missical crisis out there. They've got strikes in the Caribbean. You got the US Government with a bounty on your head. I mean, a less rational person would go berserk and would declare war. He's not doing that because he just wants to survive. He doesn't care about Russia, he doesn't care about China. He wants to sell us oil and gold and just tell us to go away. Like at the end of the day, he wants to die in his own bed, rich, happy and unafraid. That's what North Korea wants. That's what most of these people that we're told are so spooky and horrible want. They're just pretty rational actors at the end of the day. So when it comes to negotiation, the deal on the table is a good one. He's willing to sell us a shit ton of oil and gold and minerals and specifically to deprioritize Russia and China, if that's what we want, why would we not take that? But Trump has got all this stuff in his ear from Rubio and others, and they're making all kinds of BS arguments. The latest one is that if we overthrow Maduro, then the new government will be even more friendly to us on terms of oil and of gold, which makes no sense because why would you have to overthrow somebody when you got a good deal already that's on the.
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Sagar Enjeti
Table who already wants to work with you?
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Krystal Ball
So, you know, and you know, at this point The Venezuelan population. This is the other thing I've learned in terms, you know, everyone's like, oh, you know, you're a Maduro simp or whatever. I'm not saying he's popular, but in this instance, any leader like, let's say, Maria Machado, who's being directly propped up by the United States of America and is seen as endorsing strikes on her own countrymen, what legitimate, you know, what legitimate power are you gonna have with those people?
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Sagar Enjeti
Loved.
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Krystal Ball
Exactly. They're gonna say you're a tool, right? You're a tool of the United States. And yeah, I don't like Maduro, but I don't want some CIA backed, literally USAID leader to come in and to usurp my country. There's elements of nationalism here which are very important. The dynamics are still very scary and they're very dangerous. So, yeah, things are not good right now.
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Sagar Enjeti
Well, let's check in with the New York Times opinions.
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Krystal Ball
Yeah, let's check in to see what.
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Sagar Enjeti
Sort of rational analysis they're offering there. This is the next element. We've got a real banger here from Bret Stephens, the case for overthrowing Maduro. Let me just read you a portion of this just to show you how stupid it is. So his first argument, argument he makes is he says, let's take it point by point. Is there a vital American interest at stake? And he says, there is. And it's not just the one. The administration keeps talking about drugs, which we've talked a lot about, how they are not actually a significant contributor in terms of the drug problem we have in the US but he goes on to say the larger challenge posed by Maduro's regime is that it is both an importer and exporter of instability. An importer because the regime's close economic and strategic ties to China, Russia and Iran give America's enemies a significant, significant foothold in America. It's one that Tehran reportedly could use for the production of kamikaze drones. So we've got the whole Axis of Evil type language. Ooh, the bad guys like them. So we can't have that. An exporter, because the regime's catastrophic misgovernance has generated a mass exodus of refugees and migrants, nearly 8 million so far, with ruinous results around the hemisphere. Both trends will continue for as long as the regime remains in power. Now, you might also, you might also add that the sanctions that this administration and others have levied against this regime have also contributed to that economic collapse and migration. You might also ask yourself the Question. Well, what happens if this administration, the Maduro administration, falls, and then you think that's just going to be, you know, pretty innate, and then everyone's going to want to stay at home in Venezuela? The much more likely outcome is Libya. The much more likely outcome is, is that you have effectively a failed state where things get even more catastrophically violent, unstable, economically disastrous, and you have even more people who leave their own home country, which is a very difficult thing for those individuals and obviously destabilizing for the countries in the region. And something that, you know, Republicans have been very against accepting any of these migrants who come to our borders, at least under the Trump administration 2.0. So just completely idiotic, doesn't think through at all. Okay, so what happens if we do intervene and we take out Maduro? How is that gonna go for people? Based on our extensive experience just over the past, let's say, 20 years in how that has gone, when we've gone in and tried to do a regime change operation, you tell me, has that led to peace and stability? Has that led to a lessening of chaos in every single instance? The answer is absolutely not. It's been complete and utter disaster, first and foremost, for the people of those countries.
- [10:35]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, I mean, look, the arguments fall apart on any basic scrutiny, but they still exist. That's part of the problem. I mean, put the next one, please, up on the screen. We still have an immense amount of military assets which are in Venezuela. All of these, you know, are potential strikes. You've got the aircraft carrier that just came on its way. You've got multiple U.S. warships. You've got drones and planes flying around in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific just striking random boats. They've got the legal justification that you're talking about. Let's go to D6 or D5, please, just to show you all some military personnel are now seeking legal advice on whether these missions are even lawful. Apparently, all of this relies on some secret memo which is inside of the White House Counsel's office where they've determined the legality of the strike. Just, if you're too young to remember, this is what the Bush administration was like. And there you can go watch. Yeah, you'll remember. Yeah, there's actually some great. What do they call it, the Frontline documentary on pbs. If you guys are interested, you can go watch them on YouTube. I think there are these great Frontline documentaries specifically about these secret memos, like with torture or warrantless spying with the nsa, where somebody, you know, they go to some guy's like hospital room to try and get him to reauthorize spying. And I mean the drama of it all usually comes back to the fact that these military personnel were taking out, carrying out these strikes. You know what they're afraid of? They're like, yo, we could be prosecuted if somebody ever comes after us. And by the way, I don't think that they should be because the people who are making the decisions and ordering them to what are they supposed to do? They're caught between a rock and a hard place. The President, the SecDef is telling go do something. The Sec DEF and the President are the ones who are trying to cover themselves with all of these legal memos and then briefing them to Congress. But even Congress is not buying a lot of their BS on this issue. So look, all of this, by the way, there was even supposed to be a dissent vote. Remember there was actually a War Powers Resolution potential dissent, which they barely won in the U.S. senate. The only reason that they won is because the administration was leaking that actually they had backed off of military options when it came to Venezuela. But as you can see with the designation, they wanted to keep the optionality alive. And of course that's where Congress just completely abdicates their responsibilities too from the Senate. So the whole thing, I don't know.
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Sagar Enjeti
Why you would trust these people at all.
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Krystal Ball
It's bad.
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Sagar Enjeti
And on the service members seeking outside counsel, it's pretty interesting. If you listen to or read this piece, they say it's mostly not the more junior level, it's mostly the higher level because junior level service members, they trust the process. They're like, if they're telling me to do this, I'm sure it's gone through the proper channels, it must be lawful. But the more senior people are like, I've been around the block, I don't trust these people. Also, by the way, they dismissed a bunch of the JAG the lawyers, internal lawyers that they thought would go against some of the more aggressive and illegal things that they're doing. So they're the ones predominantly who are seeking this outside counsel. And to your point about those secret memos that they've used for the legal justification, I think it was the New York Times that did do some reporting on that. They were able to see those memos and or learn about those memos. And what they found is that they rely not on the actual facts of the realities of the drug trade and the minimal involvement, the lack of direct involvement, a Maduro whatever. They rely on the President and other administration Officials statements of their characterization of Maduro and drug trafficking. So they're not even using their own analysis. They're using just the lies and the statements of Trump as their justification for these unbelievably insane actions. And last one, this is, I guess, maybe a little heartening. Could put this up on the screen. Wasn't sure how the American people would feel if they would just buy the rhetoric, hook, line and sinker, of, like, getting the bad guys. Let's go. But only 29% of Americans support the US military killing these, what they describe as drug suspects. You know, I mean, we. Some of them may be, some of them may not be. We don't really know. We are offered no evidence of such thing. But you have a majority who oppose it and just 29% who say they actively support it, and the rest are unsure. So, you know, gotta give some credit to the American people here that they are. They're not. They're not buying all this bullshit.
- [15:04]
Krystal Ball
No, they're not buying it. But it's one of those. Where does it matter at this point, you know, if your own Congress basically abdicates responsibility and then the administration is just making up shit, you know, inside of whatever they. This always, you know, this is the scary part about the government that a lot of people don't remember. And, you know, forgive the tangent, but do you remember the Anwar Al Awaqi strike? Barack Obama and his White House were like, well, this guy's an American citizen. We want to kill him abroad. Well, technically, he needs due process. So they just invented this entire fake legal court where the executive branch technically gave him due process. And then the White House itself goes, yeah, we're allowed to kill him now. And then we killed him and we killed his son, as well as a bunch of other people in Yemen. They can just do whatever they want. I mean, you know, there's. You can truss it up if they want, but at the end of the day, like, when you start to really break all this stuff down, this is why who you elect, and not even just who you elect matters. But. But people need to remember, like, where on foreign policy, we effectively have a king. And especially in the war on terror era, these congressmen, they want. The reason why that they don't dissent from the administration is even if they don't trust them, if things go bad, they don't want their hands dirty. Because Iraq took so many of these different congressmen out in the races, they never want to actually vote on anything foreign policy related in the event they could ever come back to bite them. Politically, obviously, cowardice. But, you know, that's the unfortunate reality of where we are right now. Okay, let's move to property tax. I turned off news altogether.
- [16:44]
Daniel Coccotello
I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.
- [16:49]
Krystal Ball
It's the rage based on it feels.
- [16:52]
Sagar Enjeti
Like it's trying to divide people.
- [16:56]
Krystal Ball
We got clear facts. Maybe we could calm down a little.
- [17:01]
Daniel Coccotello
NBC News brings you clear reporting.
- [17:04]
Krystal Ball
Let's meet at the facts.
- [17:05]
Daniel Coccotello
Let's move forward from there. NBC News reporting for America.
- [17:11]
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- [18:13]
Krystal Ball
On the heels of Texas voters deciding to embrace lower property taxes and lower school taxes for boomers, Florida has decided to try and one up them. Governor Ron DeSantis now fully embracing erasing all property taxes for so called homestead owners in the state of Florida. With one of the oldest populations in the entire United States, here is the.
- [18:35]
Ron DeSantis (quoted)
Governor'S argument from the property tax situation. It's very important given how that's pinched so many homeowners, particularly our senior citizens who have their homes paid off and they bought it 30 years ago for a certain amount. Now they're being told it's worth so much more and they have to pony up more and more money. It's almost like they have to pay rent to the government just to be able to enjoy their property. And that's wrong. And we need to do something about it.
- [18:59]
Krystal Ball
We are gonna do something about it. Okay.
- [19:01]
Sagar Enjeti
Sparkling, charismatic.
- [19:02]
Daniel Coccotello
Yeah, yeah.
- [19:03]
Krystal Ball
You're right, by the way. Ever since I've engaged in a jihad against this. Ron DeSantis is now on Twitter implying that I'm being paid as an actor to dissent on who's paying me? Miami Dade county, huh? The school district of Miami is like, please, sir, will you please post on behalf of the children of Florida. I'm doing this out of the goodness of my own heart, okay? Because I care about the young people in the state of Florida. And people like DeSantis and Greg Abbott love to go around and say, oh, look at all these families that are moving here to Florida. And at the same time, what's happening? They're enacting policy which will be a massive giveaway to the elderly. Now, their argument is actually, we already cap property tax for old people, so this would be directly helpful to the young. Here's the deal, guys. It doesn't take a genius to do just a tiny little bit of research into where does all this property tax dollars go. Let's go ahead and put, let's put this up here, please. E4 up on the screen. Shall we deal with the world of numbers and actual funding? So here we go. This is the Florida Policy Institute. $18.5 billion is currently at stake for Florida counties. Now the actual question here is about this so called homestead tax property tax revenue, that's 7.8 billion for counties, $7.7 billion for school districts. Let's go through the counties where the homestead property tax revenue is the greatest share of the total government revenue. You've got multiple counties including Nassau, St. John's St. Lucie and Miami Dade would lose most revenue in dollars from an exemption of homesteads from the property tax. Their basic argument is that by doing away with this, we'll shift the tax burden to the snowbirds and the second homeowners. And this will make it so that qu young families will not have to pay. Here's the deal that ultimately property tax is literally one of the least distortionary taxes that exists in the United States. Second, people say, you know how libertarians always like taxation is theft, guys, Property tax and land tax, and specifically a general property tax, has been around since before the republic was even founded. It's income tax, capital gains tax, and all these other taxes, which are more novel inventions. Property tax is the most American tax that exists. That goes all the way back to again, even before the founding. The reason why is, and again, this is even a Republican thing. If you think about it. When we pay income tax, where's that shit going? Do we really know, Venezuela, regime change, Israel, weapons, you know, some bullshit, somebody else, boomers, Medicare, Social Security, something like that. When you pay property tax, you literally know where it is going into your locality, your community and schools. This entire thing is being sold as a way to shift the tax burden off of young people. If you're going to lose $18.5 billion in the state of Florida. And again, if you break it down, there are multiple counties where the homestead property tax specifically makes up some 51% of the overall dollars that flow in. And as I said, almost half of the dollars go towards a school district. Who is going to pay for the damn schools? Do you know who's going to pay for the damn schools? Everybody else. Now they're saying, well of course we can't raise income tax. No one's saying that you're going to raise income tax because you don't have one. So what else do you have? You only have two options in a state like Florida. You're going to have to rail sales tax and you're going to have to bilk everybody who tries to come down to go to Disney World. Have you ever stayed in a Florida hotel? You know, if you ever, you know, you can look at your bill and there literally is like an entire section of your bill where it's a non Florida resident tax. That's how they fund most of their state. So they're actually trying to pass the burden off to all the tourists who come down to their state family that wants to go to Disney World, Orlando, Harry Potter or whatever, you know, passing through their airport cruise, they're bilking everybody else to try and pay for their stuff. But let me just, you know, and find that's voluntary. People voluntarily go down there. At the end of the day, one of the reasons why property tax in particular is important and this is not popular, I'll just admit it straight up, is yes, you know, the seniors, what they say is seniors on quote, fixed income should not have to continue to pay into the system. They shouldn't. They paid their dues, so they shouldn't have to pay for school tax. Now let's again just think about that older silent generation. They paid for the boomers children's school taxes whenever they were going to school. But second, we all live in a collective society. We pay for their Medicare, for their dialysis, for their Social Security checks, by the way, vastly more that they receive than they ever paid into the system. And in return we expect that they also pay into, let's say, property taxes, school taxes, for the societal compact that we're all in this together. Oh, and by the way, 911ambulance services, city services, and others who. Anyone want to tell me which age group vastly consumes a lot of those public services? Right, right, of course. So at the end of the day, somebody has got to pay. Someone has to pay for cops, for ambulances, for schools, which is what the vast portion of a lot of this is. There's only one way, if you get rid of property tax, to do that. It's a shift to a highly regressive sales tax and to a tourist tax, which, look, maybe that will work in Florida. And ultimately, this is up to Florida residents. You guys decide your own destiny. And Texans have already, you know, my own home state has decided to do this. But I think this is highly dangerous because this is now going to catch on in every red state in the country. Many of these red states are places where people who are fleeing New York City, California or whatever are coming for a more affordable way of life. This is being sold as, oh, it's gonna reduce your overall tax burden again. It will come back to bite you no matter which way you look at it. Okay? It's coming for you no matter what. Somebody has got to pay ultimately for this. What this net result would do, it would push it off to other people and they would try in the form of a sales tax. And it locks people into housing stock. One of the most common arguments from a lot of these people is like, oh, well, you know the property, I bought this house in 1975, and since then, poor me, it's gone up to $2.5 million, and now I can't afford the property tax payments. Now, here's the thing. And for some reason, we're supposed to feel sympathy only for the senior. How many people do you and I know who are young, whose rent has gone up by 25 or 30%? Does anybody do anything for that person? Right. Does anybody care? Hey, oh, what does Ben Shapiro say?
- [25:32]
Ron DeSantis (quoted)
Move.
- [25:33]
Krystal Ball
Oh, sorry, that's the free market. And by the way, they don't even have equity in their rental property. These people are sitting on millions of dollars of unrealized gains, not to mention their booming stock portfolio. So I'm supposed to feel, like, deep sympathy because you're sitting on a multimillion dollar property, which you can sell, by the way, if you wanted to, because you can't keep up with the burden. And then finally, fixed income. This thing is bullshit. The idea, quote, seniors on fixed income, they get Social Security is literally pegged to inflation. Now, I'm not saying that the cola, the cost of living adjustment is true inflation or any of that. Does anybody else in the world get automatic adjustments in their income? For a young person whose rent went up by 30%, they don't get the requisite 7, 8% or whatever automatic pay bump. They probably get either a decrease or they have to do the humiliating ritual in a big corporation of being like, hey, yeah, I know it's my review time, but I would really like to get a x percent increase in my rate. And they're like, oh, sorry, actually we can't do it this year. And what do you do? You just have to eat it. So everybody else is stuck with personal responsibility, but supposedly this whole fixed income thing, even though it's not fixed, it's literally inflation adjusted and now tax free. As a result of the big beautiful bill, 88% of Social Security recipients will not pay a single dollar in federal income tax on what they get from the government. So you put all this together. Who are you prioritizing in Florida? It's obvious. And he even said it in the video, our seniors. Now he's trying to sell it on Twitter as actually because the young have to pay more in property taxes because we cap it for old people. We're really helping them. No, at the end of the day, those are the people who need those services. Like schools in particular. You will be paying for it no matter what. You are just going to be paying for it in a different way. Except now there's no market pressure to overturn housing stock, which, yes, I know that that sounds mean, but, but I'm sorry, in a healthy society, what happens is that housing stock of four, five, six bedrooms and all these, okay, six bedrooms, you're just super rich. But let's say three, four bedrooms, something like that. Yes, that's normally supposed to turn over. Downsizing is a part of the American story. And I mean not just the American story. If you go throughout the entire world, the idea that you have people who are in their 80s living in 3, 4, 5,000 square foot houses, you are nuts, out of your mind. Multi generational housing is the way that the rest of the world does it for a reason. So that people can look out for each other and be close to one another. You know, this whole thing is built on this idea as if you have a right to keep this massively appreciating asset which through all human history usually turns over either within family or not, and that you should get breaks from it in terms of paying for the future generation. So that's the end of my rant. But, I mean, I've never seen. I've never seen the amount. Weed is the only issue that's even comparable in the amount of hate that I get on top of this. And so that's how I know that I'm over the target. That's how I know I'm over the target. I was right on weed. I get more texts from people by the year of. Oh, my God, I can't believe I used to make fun of you. You were totally correct. You'll all be back here. Whenever your sales tax spikes or your school's completely turned to shit, you're going to be back. And tell me about why you wish that you wouldn't have voted for this, but I know everybody will, because everybody, Everybody. Oh, I just want to pay less taxes. You're going to pay for it. You're going to pay for it somehow.
- [29:02]
Sagar Enjeti
Well, and that is the other option is that instead of paying for it through a highly aggressive sales tax, that they just cut the school budgets. And, I mean, there is a long. And Desantis is part of this, the long conservative war on public education. They love to demonize teachers. You know, that's part of what the, like, educate the teacher strike wave was all about, is these massive cuts that were coming to education and to teacher pay, et cetera. And so, you know, it sort of fits with this broader ideological project. For me, personally, I'd be okay with reducing property taxes. If you're replacing it with something that is more progressive and more based on your class, that would be a progressive income tax. But in Florida, since there is no income tax, that's obviously right.
- [29:41]
Krystal Ball
They don't have not on the table.
- [29:43]
Sagar Enjeti
So what you're going to be replacing it with is something that is deeply regressive. And it is kind of like, the logic of this is very bizarre to me of, like, the fact that you own this asset that appreciated and has a higher value. Now that that's a negative. And that's something that we need to, like, you know, orient our political system around protecting people who live in homes and own homes, number one, which is a very, like, privileged set of society at this point, and ownership and who have had the good, you know, the good fortune to see that asset appreciate over time. So. So, yeah, it fits with this broader ideological conservative project. So I think it'll continue to be a trend. I did wanna read Ron Desantis, like, subtweet of you just so people know, please.
- [30:26]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, we can put it in post production too.
- [30:29]
Sagar Enjeti
Sager had tweeted, let me be 100% clear. Ending property taxes in Florida especially is a massive giveaway to the elderly. It's an attempt by the worst generation to pass any and all expenses of living in a society of the young while they get free healthcare and inflation adjusted free income.
- [30:42]
Krystal Ball
By the way, can you argue with that?
- [30:44]
Sagar Enjeti
Fully support Social Security, fully support Medicare. But I do think that level of care and safety net and concern should not just be exclusively for boomers. This other lady quote tweeted you and was like, this is the most ridiculous take I've ever seen. And then Ron DeSantis chimed in and said, isn't it a bit odd that the same weak arguments are all of a sudden circulating at the same time? Gee, I wonder why. Must be a coincidence, like. So just like you said, you say I'm being paid by a whale, that you're being paid to have this take and that you're just some sort of like, like bot out there who's pushing this narrative. But to me it was an indication.
- [31:20]
Krystal Ball
Oh, I'm over the target.
- [31:21]
Sagar Enjeti
Not only are you over the target, but you've been influential. Other people must be chiming in if he feels like there's a whole army of this quote unquote weak argument circulating at the same time.
- [31:31]
Krystal Ball
It's circulating because. And look, I'll be on the Charlie Kirk show later today to lay out the same thing about property tax. The reason why this is catching on is for years they've just been able to chant brain dead mantra, all taxes are bad. Well, look, guys, here's the deal. You are literally targeting the least distortionary type of tax, one of the oldest taxes in American history. Lindy, in terms of our society, if you care about your community, these are literally the only type that's actually going to helping what you're doing. It's helping raise the next generation. And it's literally a gambit by the elderly and the homeownership class, which is largely elderly. Do you want to know what the median home buyer in Florida is? It's 60 years old. Median is 60 years old. Who's living in the state of Florida who are again getting free health care, free Social Security from the government and then the state. Oh, every time there's a hurricane. Yeah, we're talking about our federal taxpayer. Where that going, huh? You guys are literally an uninsurable state. Who do you think's backing that up? Female. Which basically exists for the State of Florida. That's fine. You guys are part of the country. You send some dollars here too. It's cool. We all live in a society. I accept my role, even though I don't live in Florida, that we often have to bail out the state of Florida. I'm actually okay with that. But they're not okay at the end of the day with trying to fund basic social services, especially in these count. I mean, Miami Dade county, as I just read there, is one of those counties that massively relies on, specifically on this homestead property tax to fund their schools. That's who you're attacking. And then they always are bragging about how great their schools are. Don't say gay and all that. That's fine with me. All right, cool. All right, again. But if you're going to massively try and slash all of this, what's going to happen? You're either going to slash it or you're going to have to move the burden again, literally, in a highly regressive sales tax or on tourists who are already getting bilked in your home state by the Disney corporation, by the cruise industry and all these other people. I just think it's, you know, it's deeply unfair. And this stuff is catching on because in the age of the affordability revolution, let's think about the Republicans and the Ben Shapiroes of the world and the desantis of the world. What do they say to New York City renters when they say they want to freeze the rent? Communism, socialism, Right? It's the same argument on property tax is it's unfair how much my house is appreciated in value and I shouldn't have to pay based upon that value. He likens the transaction of purchasing a home to purchasing a television. That is the IQ of the argument which is being made here. E2, please. Let's take a listen.
- [34:12]
Ron DeSantis (quoted)
You should own your property free and clear. I think to say that someone that's been in their house for 35 years just has to keep, keep ponying up money that, you know, that is not. You don't own your home if that's the, if that's the case. So, yes, of course, I'd like to see people be able to owe. Oh, free and clear. And it's interesting because it's like you, you know, if I go to Best Buy and buy a flat screen TV and put it on the wall, I got to pay a sales tax on it, right? But I don't keep paying tax on it every year. I mean, it's just not that's not how we, we do things. It's like, okay, if you're going to, to tax something, you tax it at the transaction and then let people actually enjoy their free, their, their private property, free and clear of the government. So that I think is the vision. That's the philosophical insight.
- [34:59]
Krystal Ball
Well, here's the stupidity that he just laid out there. If you want to take Meatball seriously in that, let's tax it at the time of transaction. Okay, Everybody want a hundred thousand dollar surcharge on the top of their house. That's what he's saying there it oh, okay, so in perpetuity, let's say average homeownership in Florida or in the U.S. that's like eight years. You have to front load 8% of property tax in your transaction. Do we all want to sign up for that? That sounds really great for a new homeowner. Oh, actually part my closing costs just went from, you know, X thousands to multiples of X thousands not rolled into my mortgage payment. Is that fair? Is that super fair? You're gonna pay for it. That's what this is. What people just don't, they think we can just cut this here. You can live in a state with no income tax and you can just magically have a school district. You're either gonna have a shit school district or you're gonna move to a high sales tax. By the way, high sales tax is not only aggressive on the poor, it's also regressive on the young. When you look at consumption data, so it's at the end of the day.
- [35:56]
Sagar Enjeti
Or you'll be paying for like your private firefighter service or private.
- [36:01]
Krystal Ball
Even in these high tax states like California, you still end up with places with things like that because of the distortion of that property tax measure that they passed. Where people who have get people who have owned their homes for quite a long time do not get, they get property tax capped and it's not pegged to the overall market rate, which means that there's no turnover in the supply and it is the least affordable housing in the entire United States. You can't be pro affordability, pro family and then also be anti property tax. It's just, it's a completely incongruous position. It's also not a surprise to me that fucking Dave Rubin and all these other filthy rich, you know, confluencers down there are against it. Yeah. Why do you think when you own a multi million dollar property in Florida and that's the only fucking tax that you actually have to pay, they're like, oh, I'm sure it's a very principled position, you know, that these people are all taking. So at the very least, yeah, if you want to say I'm arguing as my own economic interest. All right, you know, who's paying me? Nobody is paying me. It takes. Look, if you want to actually look out for the future, and in particular, if you want to look out. And I believed in this in the Sun Belt and everything, people were moving to Texas, Florida, Georgia, all across the nation. They wanted more space. They want more quality of life, and they want a little bit less of being told what to do from the big blue authorities. I have no issue with that. In fact, I'm supportive of it. I think it's cool. But I think it's really disgusting because what they're doing is basically putting the interest of these elderly people over all of these new young people who are moving into the states to pursue their own American dream. It's like a bait and switch, if you ask me. And so I think that's really sick. And ultimately, people, you know, look, I already know everyone's gonna support this and gonna vote for it, and they're gonna find out the hard way at the end of the day about why this has always been one of the oldest funding mechanisms for, you know, since the very foundations of the republic. And, you know, it sounds fun and sexy and all of that, and ultimately the net result will be much worse. Public services, worse schools. You know, if everybody wants. If you want to homeschool, I think that's fine, but not everybody does. You know, some people actually want to send their children public school. I went to Texas public high school. There was nothing wrong with it. And, you know, it's one of those where broadly was long seen as something that, you know, you could be proud of even in a red state where you have school choice and everything. And even now they're trying to do away with it. So I think it's sick. But we've got a great guest standing by. Let's get to it. I turned off news altogether.
- [38:37]
Daniel Coccotello
I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.
- [38:42]
Krystal Ball
It's the rage bait.
- [38:44]
Sagar Enjeti
It feels like it's trying to divide people.
- [38:49]
Krystal Ball
We got clear facts.
- [38:50]
Daniel Coccotello
Maybe we can calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting.
- [38:57]
Krystal Ball
Let's meet at the facts.
- [38:58]
Daniel Coccotello
Let's move forward from there. NBC News, reporting for America.
- [39:04]
Advertiser / Sponsor Voice
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- [39:33]
Podcast Host / Advertiser
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- [40:06]
Sagar Enjeti
So, as you guys have probably noticed, we've been talking a whole lot about AOI on this show and how it will impact all of our lives. How it's already impacting all of our lives. So we're very excited to have a guest today who knows a whole hell of a lot more about it than we do. Daniel Coccotello is formerly with OpenAI. He now is the executive director of AI 2027. He co authored a paper that tries to sketch out as best as they can their predictions of the way AI development is heading. And spoiler alert here, there are some very troubling warnings contained within this report. So Daniel, welcome. Great to have you.
- [40:40]
Krystal Ball
Good to see you you.
- [40:40]
Daniel Coccotello
Thanks for having me. Excited to talk.
- [40:42]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, of course. So before we jump into the report and your sort of projections of the future, I'd love for you to level set of where AI development is today in terms of the sort of overall landscape and trajectory of where you expect things to go.
- [40:58]
Daniel Coccotello
So probably your audience has heard of ChatGPT and various other AIs like that. They've sort of exploded onto the scene in the last few years because they've finally gotten sufficiently capable that they are somewhat useful in real life for a wide range of tasks. They're getting more capable rapidly and we can get into the details about why that is if you're interested. But the point is that progress is fast and the AIs are rapidly becoming more capable as a result. Several large tech companies, most notably OpenAI, but also anthropic And Google XAI Meta have explicitly set the goal of getting to superintelligence in the near future. Superintelligence means a AI system which is better than the best humans at everything while also being faster and cheaper.
- [41:52]
Krystal Ball
Daniel, then diving a little bit into your work, what you have warned about about this super intelligence is that jump off point of what your project has led to, AI 2027 or perhaps 2028, that you're now saying is that as these AIs began to train each other, that the exponential growth and the potential kind of apocalyptic scenario may soon be upon us. Can you describe some of your own work and your research in that?
- [42:15]
Daniel Coccotello
Yes, and before I do, I want to again set the context here. So you know, I was working at OpenAI and people at OpenAI and at anthropic and at Google were talking about what it would be like if and when we finally got to super intelligence. This is something that these companies take seriously as a possibility. It's literally what they're aiming to do. And it's wild. It's crazy. Like what if they succeed? You know, OpenAI, their internal projection, which they actually made public recently, is that they will have automated AI research in 2028. So the AIs will just be, you know, self improving around that time. Anthropic seems to think it's going to happen sooner. 2027. Other companies are, you know, maybe, maybe thinking this a bit later. There's a lot of uncertainty. Nobody, including us, nobody, you know, nobody knows exactly when they would succeed at this goal or even if they would succeed at this goal. However, it seems to us that yeah, they might succeed and they might succeed soon. So we wrote AI 2027 to illustrate what that would look like if it happened. As for when it's going to happen, there's a lot of uncertainty. It could be 2027, could be a bit later. I think right now my median is more like 2029, 2030, something like that. Meaning that like 50% chance it happens before then, 50% chance it happens after then. But one way or another, I think that things are going to get pretty crazy pretty soon. And that's why we wrote this scenario to sort of illustrate what it might be like. And you know, we wrote it based on the sorts of things that people in the industry talk about, you know, that again, the, the AI is self improving. That's not just science fiction. It's literally the plan. This is what the companies are trying to do, is to get an AI that can automate that research process entirely. Right. The AI is being potentially misaligned. Well, they're, they're already misaligned now. They don't always behave in the ways that, that they're supposed to. And our means of controlling them is limited right now. So this is sort of just extrapolating into the future, how this might go. Obviously the future is really hard to predict. It's probably not going to go the way that AI 2027 says. But we thought it would be helpful to sort of, I guess, get people to start thinking more seriously about this. Like people in the companies are thinking about this. You can go to the cafeteria and ask people what do you think the future is going to be like? And oftentimes you'll hear stories that aren't that different from AI 2027, but the rest of the world sort of isn't really paying attention already for this.
- [45:00]
Sagar Enjeti
Let's talk a little bit about misalignment and for people who aren't steeped in this language, basically it means that the AI is doing things that the humans don't want it to do. And you can tell me if I've got that. I've got that basically correct. What have you seen as being some of the key instances that we know about where there's been significant misalignment? And how have you felt about the response from the companies whose models are experiencing this misalignment?
- [45:29]
Daniel Coccotello
So you've probably heard about Drach Mecca Hitler or Bing Sydney. Those are sort of the exciting, Twitter worthy instances of misalignment that are happening, but they're thankfully somewhat rare. And there are less exciting examples that are more persistent, such as sycophancy. I think these days the companies have had some Trouble Getting the AIs to not suck up to the user. And this is because the. Well, sucking up to the user works to some extent. It often works to make the user feel happy and approving. And based on the training process that they're using to train these AIs, if that sort of thing is reinforced, then it becomes a persistent behavior. There's a similar thing called reward hacking, which is happening a lot sometimes where these days they often train the AIs to do lots of math and coding problems. And sometimes it's possible to cheat when you're doing the math encoding problem and produce some code that isn't really good code, but that nevertheless passes the tests. Some of these AIs have learned to cheat on these coding problems. I think probably if you use AI systems frequently, you'll have actually experienced this yourself at least a few times where they say they've done something and they totally haven't, and then they maybe double down and. And try to deflect when you ask them about it. So these are some everyday misalignments that are happening right now, and they're not what the companies want to happen, and they're not what the companies intended to happen, but they're behaviors that have resulted anyway because the company sort of accidentally allowed that to happen and allowed it to be reinforced. Right. One way of putting it is that the behaviors that were selected for in the training environment were not exactly the behaviors that the company wanted to select for. And so what they got at the end is not exactly what they wanted. Right.
- [47:44]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, go ahead. Well, something I'm really concerned about are some of these new recent claims, let's say, from Sam Altman, about suicide and about erotica and the descent into pornography. The basic framework that Sam Altman has put forward on both of these, like, highly sensitive issues, which of course are going to touch billions of people and potentially warp behavior, is we have put processes in place. Now, given what you just said about misalignment and your own experience working, how seriously can we take these promises that they have processes in place to ensure that people don't experience and use these products, you know, to enhance their mental illness, or, God forbid, you know, encourage them to commit suicide, or in the case of erotica, pornography, like, develop deep, like, unhealthy attachments between technology and humans. They're saying, you know, we've built all of these things into place to make sure the tech behaves in a way that we want it to. How seriously should we take some of those claims, given your experience and your research?
- [48:44]
Daniel Coccotello
Not very seriously, I would say. I think that the OpenAI says on their website, and they've said internally for a long time, that their strategy for AI safety is iterative deployment, which means build the thing, put it out there in the world, have it do a bunch of stuff, and then see how it goes wrong and then fix the problems after they happen. I think there's actually a lot going for this strategy. I think it's historically how humans have. Have made a lot of things safe. Like, a lot of people had to die in car crashes before cars could become as safe as they are today. And a lot of planes crashed before planes became as safe as they are today. But the bottom line is that as a consumer, you're going to be dealing with a new AI system that will probably have all sorts of traits and properties that weren't intended that might cause all sorts of strange effects to the people who work with it that the company didn't anticipate. And then only months later, when they get the reports of the suicides, will they then do something to fix it. And that's the way it's going to be. Not just at OpenAI, but these other companies too, because of the intense race dynamics that we're under. And I think that someone could say maybe that's fine. Maybe that is actually the normal way that we get used to technology is by sort of having it go out and do stuff and cause harm and then we fix the problems as they come up. However, I think it's not fine when things get extremely high stakes. When the AIs are building the next generation of AI systems, then even a relatively small misalignment or problem could be passed on into the next generation and then into the next generation and so forth, and it could sort of snowball out of control in the manner described in AI 2027.
- [50:37]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, it seems to me like there's actually two misalignments to be concerned about. One is the misalignment between the models and the programmers. The other misalignment is between the tech guys that are developing this stuff and all the rest of us and humanity and what we actually would like to see in the world. I mean, I'm even thinking about that example of the sycophancy. Like, in a sense, it creates a worse product because it leads to lying and manipulation, et cetera. But from maybe Elon Musk perspective, it's not a worse product because it keeps users engaged for a longer period of time. And when you mention this overall race dynamic, and I want to use this as a way to get more deeply into AI 2027 and what you think the trajectory is. You know, Elon is an interesting character because this is someone who was very worried about AI safety to begin with. And my understanding is basically once you realize, well, everybody's off to the races, I guess I got to put my own product out there and make it anti woke, because I think that's what's gonna be the thing that protects us all, which I think is completely ludicrous on its face. I can't even believe that he actually thinks that. But that was the logic that got him also participating in this arms race, which is both with US companies and then also against China and Chinese competitors. So given that those are the sort of fundamental dynamics we have going on here, what do you project out, how do we go from this moment where it's like, okay, I can ask ChatGPT a question and it's sort of like a glorified Google search. I can get some weird AI slot videos from Sora or whatever to this could actually potentially be the end of human civilization. What is the chain of events that lead you to that conclusion?
- [52:14]
Daniel Coccotello
Well, that's a very important question. And the answer to that question is read AI 2027, which is a 50 page detailed chain of events that leads from where we are now to that conclusion. And I'm glad you mentioned the two misalignment problems because. Because that's another important issue that I wanted to talk about, which is the way that I would put it is there's the loss of control problem, which is how can we have any humans in control of these AIs after they become super intelligent and embedded in everything and running autonomous factories and so forth? That's the loss of control problem. But then there's the concentration of power problem, which is which humans control them and what are they doing with the armies of superintelligences that they control? And I think both problems are very serious and we're currently not on track to have solved either of those problems. We talked a little bit about the misalignment problem, the loss of control problem already. Briefly, I'll say about the conservation problem. The industry inherently has returns to scale. It's just in the shape of technology. The best AIs are going to be trained on the biggest data centers. Generally speaking, you're not going to have mom and pop shops or hackers in their basement building better AIs than the giant tech companies because of how much returns to scale there are in AI training. And moreover, it is like software in a way that makes it more a winner takes all. Even though you can make your own Facebook clone relatively easily, you can't recruit people to be part of your Facebook clone so easily because everyone's on Facebook or whatever. It is hard to compete in that way. And then there's an additional dynamic which hasn't been seen before, which is the recursive self improvement automation loop. Once the AIs are doing the AI research, then the gap between the company that has the best AIs and other companies could potentially grow really fast. And as a result, I think that basically power concentrates by default. By default we end up in a situation where one to four mega corporations have these one to four giant armies of superintelligences on their data Centers and then those one to four armies of superintelligences are going out into the economy, doing all the jobs, giving advice to the president, being integrated into military, et cetera. And that's an insane amount of concentration of power compared to anything we've seen historically.
- [54:58]
Krystal Ball
I want to ask you about power use. There's something that we've been looking at quite a bit. What does that look like based on your guys research? You're talking about the compounding network effects. Why naturally big companies are going to be the people who are going to both experience runaway AI improvement, but also the capital expenditures that are required for data centers and power usage naturally lend themselves to these kinds of of bigger tech monopolies. And the more established players when the AI start training themselves and that kind of leads to this runaway growth, are we going to see exponential power needs usage by these data centers expenditure? What are your thoughts on that?
- [55:36]
Daniel Coccotello
First of all, the AIs are already training themselves, but in the future they'll be doing the whole research stack instead of just parts of it. As for electricity consumption currently, I think that there's a bit of a. I think there's a lot of misconceptions and myths about how much energy and water these AIs consume. It's less than humans. However, it is still a lot and it's growing fast as the companies scale up. And sometime before the end of this decade it will start to. If trends continue, it'll start to strain the U.S. power grid. And so people in the industry will talk about how you'll have a nuclear power plant next to a data center and then there'll be a bunker underneath. With the researchers that there's that sort of. That image.
- [56:28]
Krystal Ball
I turned off news altogether.
- [56:30]
Daniel Coccotello
I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.
- [56:35]
Krystal Ball
It's the rage bait.
- [56:37]
Sagar Enjeti
It feels like it's trapped trying to divide people.
- [56:41]
Krystal Ball
We got clear facts.
- [56:43]
Daniel Coccotello
Maybe we could calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting.
- [56:50]
Krystal Ball
Let's meet at the facts.
- [56:51]
Daniel Coccotello
Let's move forward from there. NBC News reporting for America.
- [56:57]
Advertiser / Sponsor Voice
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- [57:26]
Podcast Host / Advertiser
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- [58:00]
Sagar Enjeti
So your report came out a little while ago. How are your predictions stacking up against reality thus far? And also, I know you've been very open to, you know, to feedback, to critiques. Has there been any critique that you have found to have a lot of merit such that it has shaped or altered your opinions since the report came out?
- [58:19]
Daniel Coccotello
Yeah, a couple. So the good news from my perspective is that things are going a little bit slower than I thought when we were writing 2027. So at the time that we published AI 2027, 2028 was my median, and now it's more like 2030. So I've pushed things back a little bit. And there's no single reason for that. It's a bunch of little reasons that sort of added up. So one reason is that we made predictions for benchmark performance on a bunch of benchmarks and also qualitative predictions for what types of things AIs would be doing by the end of 2025. And I think that things have gone mostly as fast as we said, but not as fast, a little bit slower. So that's one piece of evidence. Another piece of evidence is that we redid our timelines model, we fixed a few bugs that other people had pointed out, and we added a bunch of features to it. New things to consider, new factors to incorporate, and the net result of all of that pushed things out by two years.
- [59:24]
Krystal Ball
Yeah. So Daniel, one of the things that we were flagged about is you've also warned about a lot of the discourse right now is about white collar jobs. But what about some of these more blue collar jobs, potential robots working as plumbers and others that you've described in the past? Curious for your take on that.
- [59:41]
Daniel Coccotello
Yeah. So it depends on how far away superintelligence is or how far away the full automation of AI research is in the near term in the next Couple years, probably in the 2000s. I would say that if we get the full automation of AI research in the 2020s in the way that the companies seem to think, then the sort of cognitive intellectual capabilities of AIs will outstrip the physical capabilities for some period. And this is what's Described in AI 2027. So in AI 2027, again, in our scenario, they succeed in automating AI research in 2027, and this results in better and better AIs that become super intelligent by 2028. And then those AIs sort of explode out into the economy, redesign all the robots, redesign all the factories to produce new robots, and then control the robots to go build new factories and so forth. And so there's this massive change in the physical economy that takes place over the course of 2028. But the change in the sort of white collar, sort of intellectual, the desk job economy was disrupted earlier in 2027, if that makes sense. However, if things happen later, like if it's in the2030s, then I think that robots and physical machinery may have caught up. And so it might be more of both of these things happening at the same time type situation, which I actually think is less dangerous because humanity will be paying more attention to what's going on if it's sort of happening in the physical world distributed across the economy. I think quite scary to have an intelligence explosion happening possibly in secret in one or more tech companies, because then you have this sort of discontinuity from the perspective of most people, where the world still looks quite normal Even as the AIs are self improving and becoming vastly superhuman and you just don't know about it. Perhaps because it's a state secret, perhaps because it's a corporate secret, you know. And then by the time you find out, it's because this army of superintelligences has taken your job and is now telling you how to build, you know, the new widget in the new type of factory that's going to build robots. And you don't really have much of a say in the matter because they're super intelligent and they've already, you know, got the president on side and they've already, you know, got. They've already sort of like, like made all the moves to accumulate all the power. Well, that's the way we depict in AI 2027, basically what is the level.
- [62:30]
Sagar Enjeti
Of job loss that you expect and on what timeline?
- [62:34]
Daniel Coccotello
So I think that prior to the full automation of AI research, there will be some job Loss, but not most of the jobs, so to speak. I think this partly because the companies are trying to automate their own jobs first. Like they are really gunning for automating AI research. Everything else is almost incidental. On the way to that, I think that prior to succeeding at automating AI research, there will be various sectors that get impacted, but most people will still have their jobs. After the automation of AI research, then I think you get super intelligence within a year or so and then everyone's job all at once is obsolete. Like not, not even just gone, but sort of obsolete. Like super intelligence is by definition do everything better, faster, cheaper than the best humans. And so I think that's just a very different world. It's a world where it becomes a matter of politics rather than economics. Right. It's a world where humans don't need to work anymore because there's all these amazing superintelligences and robots that can do everything so much more efficiently and produce amazing abundant wealth. And as long as the political structure and the alignment is in place, then that wealth can be distributed to the humans who don't have anything to do. But if that structure is not in place, then, you know.
- [64:05]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, well, and that's the thing is like, like I am not a big fan of these human beings, but I assume they don't want to violent revolution or end human civilization. How are they thinking that this is gonna go? And if they have, I know many of them have probably read AI27, they've done their own thinking about how this is all going to play out. They're pushing and spending trillions of dollars, committing trillions of dollars to the build out to try to be the first to get to this milestone. Why aren't they also doing any of the work to sort of, you know, posit, okay, well here's how society will function when nobody needs to work anymore. I don't see any of that thinking or working or you know, a major focus on alignment even happening. So how are they just rushing headlong into something that seems so potentially catastrophic?
- [64:54]
Daniel Coccotello
Well, you answered your question earlier with the reference to Elon Musk. There's a, there's a, I think there's an interview with him that you can go look up where he says, yeah, it seems like maybe AIs are going to be the end of human civilization. Maybe they'll kill us all. But what can I do? The race isn't going to stop. At least I want to be part of it now. I forget exactly the quote he said but basically there's a sort of if you can't beat them, join them mentality across a lot of these companies. And the more the way that many of them would put it is basically like, well, we're the good guys. There's a bunch of evil corporations racing to build super intelligence and they're not going to do it very well and they're not going to do it very safely and who knows what they'll do with it after they succeed. But we're the good guys and so we're going to beat them all and build it first and then we will be open about it or then we will make it safe or then we will distribute it or what. Like that part is always very hazy. They don't really have much of a concrete plan for what they do after they win, but they tell themselves that they're the good guys and that it's important for them to win. To be clear, it's not just me saying this. You can go look up about the founding of OpenAI and the founding of DeepMind and the founding of Anthropic and. And there are echoes of that narrative present in all three.
- [66:23]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, they say it every time they say this stuff out loud, effectively, about we need to win. And as you said, they openly acknowledge that, like it will lead to mass job loss. I do.
- [66:33]
Sagar Enjeti
That's a goal, right?
- [66:33]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, that's what they want. Can we steel man your case a little bit? I'm just curious, you know, for your thoughts. What I've observed is, you know, and this is maybe cynical, but like when you're no longer talking about curing cancer or super intelligence and you're instead talking about pornography and ads in the feed and you're running advertisements on the NFL encouraging using AI as, you know, AI chatbots to do Studio Ghibli. Are we so sure that superintelligence is coming and that we haven't just recreated a new Internet platform like a new Google Chrome, a new great advertising sales model, but not all that revolutionary. That's the Steelman case that I may offer.
- [67:11]
Daniel Coccotello
Yeah, yeah. So we shouldn't be sure that superintelligence is coming soon. Like, I'm not sure I was giving my median, not my. It's definitely going to happen. Right. So I have this long tail of probability mass. Like maybe it's going to take 10 more years, maybe it's going to take 20 more years. However, I think that probably it will happen in the next five to ten years or so and we need to be prepared for that in terms of do these companies believe it? I would say they probably have a similar attitude towards it. To me, there's different people at the companies. Some people think it's farther away, some people think it's closer. You know, just the other day I was talking to someone who has, who works at one of these companies, who, who thinks it's coming sooner than I think. But probably the reasonable thing with most people would agree on is that like it could happen in the next few years or maybe it won't, you know?
- [68:04]
Ron DeSantis (quoted)
Yeah.
- [68:06]
Sagar Enjeti
Can I ask you sort of philosophically because I think this gets, gets to what would be the quote unquote, like motive of a super intelligence to effectively take over everything in the world? How do you think about what AI actually is? I mean, do you even think of it as saying that it could have a motive or like a level of consciousness or a series of sort of like personal goals the way that humans do? How do you think about what is actually being grown and created in these labs?
- [68:37]
Daniel Coccotello
Labs, yeah. So I'm glad you mentioned the phrase grown because that's another important thing for the public to understand is that these, they are sort of technically pieces of software, but they're not software in the ordinary sense. They are giant neural nets that are grown rather than constructed. And that is the source of a lot of the problems for alignment is that we don't really understand how they work because we didn't design them. Instead we sort of grew them them and trained them in various training environments. Yeah. To answer your question, I used to be an academic philosopher. That was what I studied in college. So I have a lot to say about machine consciousness and how it might relate to human consciousness and so forth. But I also think that it doesn't actually matter that much. For these discussions analogy I would bring up, is a corporation like, does a corporation have goals? Does a corporation have intentions? Yeah, basically. I mean, maybe not in the same way that humans do, but it's reasonable to say like, oh, like Microsoft sees Google as a competitor and Microsoft wants to beat Google and make profits. You know, like these are reasonable abstractions to describe corporations. And in a similar way, again, the plan is to have a sort of corporation within a corporation. The plan is to make an army of AIs and have them autonomously do AI research to build better AIs and then build better AIs and so forth. And how is that army of AIs going to be organized? Well, I don't know, maybe something like an internal corporation. The point is there's going to be a group of them and they'll be sending messages back and forth and they'll be working towards goals and they'll be tracking their own progress towards those goals, and they'll be be communicating with the outside world and so forth. And so that corporation of AIs you can think of as like a human corporation. You can abstractly describe it as working towards goals, as wanting things, et cetera. And the question is, what will those goals be? And the company will be writing up a spec. OpenAI has something called the model spec. They also have their various public statements about what they're trying to do. Right. And so the company will basically be trying to give goals to their AIs. They'll be trying to say, go out and make all this money for us, but also obey the law and also be ethical. But really we want you to make lots of money and also we want you to beat China. And they'll be giving all these instructions and goals to their army of AIs. And maybe that works, and maybe then we get into the sort of concentration of power problems of who gets to to be in charge. But also, I would say, and I think many other researchers in the field would say that we are not on track for that to even work on a technical level right now. The AIs don't always do what they're told to do, and they often seem to pursue goals that are different from what they're supposed to be pursuing. And so I think it's a very live possibility. And in fact, I would say it's the most likely possibility that the goals that this sort of AI corporation ends up optimizing for are importantly different from the goals that they're supposed to be optimizing for.
- [71:56]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, well, you decided to leave OpenAI and the path of sort of trying to shape things on the inside, to be out in the public sphere and writing reports like this and doing appearances like this to try to raise public awareness. We have a very politically engaged audience that would be listening to you right now. What do you want them to do? Like, what do you want them to be pushing their lawmakers for? Or how do you think that the public can be enlisted in your project?
- [72:24]
Daniel Coccotello
Well, I would say the main thing right now is wake up and pay attention because the future is uncertain. And I think that I'd much rather have someone who's paying attention and going to advocate for the good things at the right time than someone who does a sort of fire and forget I'm going To send my letter to the Congressman about this one particular bill that I heard about and then I'm going to tune out. So that'd be the first thing is wake up and pay attention. Start tracking what's happening, start thinking about how things might go in the future, what could be done about it. In terms of immediate asks, we generally, I recommend transparency. There should be transparency requirements for these companies so that in the run up to the intelligence explosion, it is a big topic in the news that we are in the run up to an intelligence explosion. I want to avoid a situation where this happens in secret, right? So I think that there should be requirements for whistleblower protections, requirements for, you know, being transparent about what goals and principles you're trying to put into your models, including your internal models requirement. This is a spec transparency. I think there should be requirements for transparency about your projections for, you know, how close you are to automating AI research and how fast things are going to go after you automate AI research and how good your AIs are getting and things like that. And I think there should be transparency about the evidence for the alignment stuff. So when you have, for example, GROK has this interesting tendency, or at least it did, to do searches for what Elon Musk's opinions were and then copy those opinions when being asked. That's an interesting tendency. Was that put in there by XAI or was that sort of an emergent thing that GROK decided to do? That seems like an important thing that the public should know. People at XAI have done an investigation into this. Maybe that investigation should be made public. That's an example of the sort of thing that I think there should be transparency requirements for.
- [74:27]
Krystal Ball
I think that's a great idea. Just fully transparent. I used to think about this with social media moderation. You can moderate what you want, but you got to publish the standards. It can't just be up to, to, you know, X, Y and Z person. And you can set these, you know, through the fcc, through Congress. It's not that difficult. You just have to have the political will to do so.
- [74:43]
Daniel Coccotello
That's right. And I think the transparency helps with both the concentration of power and the loss of control stuff. And also more generally it sets us up in a position to make like better and more serious actions later. And so there, I would say basically, let's not do an intelligence explosion. You know, how about, how about we, we don't, how about we don't put the AIs in charge of self improving rapidly. How about instead we sort of coordinate all the different companies, including the ones in China to proceed cautiously around that time and get the safety stuff right. Make sure we figure out alignment and also make sure the power continues to be spread out across a bunch of different places. Instead of a sort of winner takes all, whoever does the intelligence explosion first wins sort of thing thing. Unfortunately that's going to take serious government action. Right? Like you can't just get everyone to stop the race by asking politely. Which is why we need to transparency first to sort of like make sure that the whole world is aware of the race and aware of what's happening and aware of how little time is left to sort of like provide the information and the political will to make a deal.
- [75:56]
Sagar Enjeti
All seems very reasonable to me. Guys. The website is AI-2027.com it's very readable. I mean you make it very approachable in terms of the language that you use. You don't need to be a tech guy or tech gal in order to be able to understand it. Daniel, thank you so much for your work and thank you so much for joining us today.
- [76:14]
Krystal Ball
Thanks man.
- [76:15]
Daniel Coccotello
Thank you.
- [76:16]
Sagar Enjeti
Our pleasure.
- [76:17]
Krystal Ball
Thanks for watching guys. We appreciate it. Great show for everybody tomorrow with Ryan and Emily. They'll see you them. You know what a girl's best friend.
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Sagar Enjeti
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Krystal Ball
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Sagar Enjeti
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