‘Hard Fork’ Live, Part 1: Satya Nadella and Cindy Cohn

Summary

Podcast Summary: Hard Fork Live, Part 1 – Satya Nadella and Cindy Cohn

Podcast: Hard Fork by The New York Times
Episode Date: June 12, 2026
Hosts: Kevin Roose & Casey Newton
Special Guests: Satya Nadella (Microsoft CEO), Phil Mohan (Node Palo Alto), Cindy Cohn (outgoing Executive Director, EFF)

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Episode Overview

This special live edition of Hard Fork features dynamic conversations with influential voices in technology and digital rights. In Part 1, Kevin Roose and Casey Newton are joined by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella for a wide-ranging discussion on AI’s present and future, the political economy of technology, and Microsoft's strategy in a rapidly changing world. Artist and technologist Phil Mohan briefly discusses the cultural impact of Beeple’s “regular animals”—robot dogs sporting the faces of tech and art leaders. The episode closes with Cindy Cohn, outgoing EFF director, detailing the ongoing struggle for privacy, encryption, and user rights in an era of mass surveillance and platform power.

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Key Segments & Highlights

1. Microsoft & the Future of AI: Satya Nadella

[05:09–34:06]

Microsoft’s AI Platform Strategy

• Ecosystem, Not Monopoly: Satya envisions AI’s future as broad economic diffusion, emphasizing an ecosystem approach, not platform lock-in.
  • “If we are ever going to transition to an economy that is driven by AI, it can't be about one model, it can't be about three firms … the economy is at the frontier, not a firm.” (Satya Nadella, 06:13)
• Goal: Tools and platforms so that "every enterprise in every country can operate at the frontier."
• Form Factors & Agents: Project Solara projects “agent-first hardware”—devices that feature persistent AI agents for hands-free, context-rich work.
  • “Think about what I describe as unmetered intelligence. So … a Windows computer that can run a trillion parameter model locally is going to be very needed if you're going to ever have agents running 24 by seven.” (Satya Nadella, 07:57)
  • Examples: Wearable AI "badge" for nurses, context-aware devices beyond phones.

Xbox’s Business Model Reset

• Addressing price pressures in hardware and a shift to economic sustainability.
  • “We have to turn this into a sustainable business that delivers … one of the best sources of entertainment. Still, the challenge we have is we are not been monetizing that entertainment. There’s more monetization of Xbox games happening on YouTube than at Microsoft.” (Satya Nadella, 10:12)
• Observes industry-wide component price hikes due to AI and cloud demands; affirms commitment to innovation but hints at new business approaches.

OpenAI: Reflections and Renegotiations

• Reflects on the 2023 OpenAI crisis and “what if” scenarios.
  • On the wild weekend during OpenAI’s leadership tumult:
    “All I remember, quite frankly of the weekend is India getting thrashed by Australia in cricket. That was the more tragic thing.” (Satya Nadella, 14:12)
• Explains value of Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI—critical for both model and infrastructure development; recent renegotiation gives both sides flexibility.
  • "We have now the ability to keep going and our infrastructure ... but for that close partnership with OpenAI [Azure wouldn't have advanced as it has]." (Satya Nadella, 15:54)

Building Models, Agents, and Real-World Impact

• Microsoft’s Differentiation:
  • Not just to build “the best model” but to get "everyone across the ecosystem to the frontier."
  • "Our model should be the best model that they [companies] can use as a base ... and they can replace our model with anything else. That ... is a more sustainable way to go at it.” (Satya Nadella, 17:05)
• On AI Backlash:
  • Recognizes anxiety about jobs, water, energy, impact on communities.
  • Cites positive impact in places like Quincy, Washington; highlights need for transparency, local economic benefits, environmental responsibility.
  • “You can't go out there and say, I have this unbelievable technology, except you're not going to have a job …that cannot be.” (Satya Nadella, 18:51)

On Disruption, Work, and Human Value

• Believes new jobs and workflows will emerge around AI, similar to the transformation of “typist” to “information worker.”
  • “We will discover the new glue work that happens with all this automation and that ... is the process of change.” (Satya Nadella, 23:49)
• Cites the value of "cognitive coverage"—managing and understanding what AI agents have created.
• Discusses the cyclical reinvention of work—people adapt, jobs reshape, new work arises.

Ownership, Policy, and Political Economy

• On government investment in AI companies: open to novel approaches, but with caveats.
  • “There may be the United States, whether it has a sovereign fund... and that somehow is part of what is considered the wealth of the citizens … I’m not opposed to innovative ideas like this.” (Satya Nadella, 25:21)
• AGI Benchmarks: Reiterates that systemic economic growth—like 10% GDP growth—remains distant, pending genuine productivity improvements from AI.
  • “The hard truth is that the marginal cost of productivity improvement has to match the marginal cost of the token. That's a management discipline.” (Satya Nadella, 26:32)
• Admits “token maxing” (overuse of advanced models) is rampant but not always economically rational.
  • “Please, let's kind of match these things such that you get the outputs, you get the economics and it can't be a race to just doing things that just don't add value.” (Satya Nadella, 27:51)

Philosophical Perspective on the Future

• Skeptical of a runaway “jagged frontier”—highly advanced automation replacing full jobs quickly.
  • "This is, in the pantheon of all technologies, a big step up. But … there will be more to come." (Satya Nadella, 32:04)

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2. Art, Robots, and the Digital Future: Phil Mohan

[36:20–43:02]

• Beeple’s “Regular Animals”: Six robot dogs with the faces of Musk, Zuckerberg, Picasso, Warhol, Bezos, and Beeple, part of a digital art exhibit at Node, Palo Alto.
  • Explores media, identity, and the intertwining of tech and culture.
  • “So much of what we think about and our imagination of things comes from creatives … increasingly, the way that we see the world is coming through media, and specifically digital media.” (Phil Mohan, 38:09)
• Audience Reactions & Cultural Reflection:
  • Public amazed (and amused) by the dogs; children love them, adults find them uncanny—“feels like the future.”
• “Poop Mode”:
  • Dogs “poop out” photos of their environment, each reflecting the style of the face they wear (e.g., the Picasso dog produces cubist images).
  • “It's just a reminder that, you know, the reality that you see is not always exactly the way that it is.” (Phil Mohan, 40:55)
• On Preservation & Digital Art:
  • Artwork’s memory stored “on chain”; reflects need for digital art to survive beyond ephemeral tech cycles.
  • “Art can't be … discarded. It has to exist for generations. And so that's part of what we're trying to do.” (Phil Mohan, 42:21)

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3. Privacy, Power, and Digital Rights: Cindy Cohn (EFF)

[45:04–67:36]

The Encryption Wars, Then & Now

• Enduring Fights:
  • The battle for strong encryption—originating in the 1990s—continues as governments seek new ways to limit or weaken user privacy online.
  • “Law enforcement's interest in making sure nobody can ever have a private conversation just never goes away. But our need to have a private conversation online doesn't go away either.” (Cindy Cohn, 46:20)
• Recent threats and government efforts remain persistent from US to UK, Australia, and Canada.

Tech, Surveillance, and the Platform Shift

• EFF’s Stance:
  • Once tech companies stood with user rights; the rise of surveillance capitalism created a wedge.
  • “We don't make common cause with the tech giants anymore...they used to stand up for their users, and increasingly they're adversarial to their users.” (Cindy Cohn, 48:01)
  • Companies collaborate less with groups like EFF unless they're directly aligned with users’ interests.

Platform Power and Politics

• Tech industry shift further accelerated by politicization (notably since Trump’s reelection).
  • “They're in their own echo chamber now in a way that wasn't true before…” (Cindy Cohn, 51:07)
• Split between top corporate leaders and regular technologists; everyday workers often still believe in the open web and user empowerment.

The Privacy Crisis and AI Risks

• New AI capabilities amplify concerns about mass surveillance, data collection, and loss of user sovereignty.
  • “Power and mass surveillance supercharged by AI tends to make us a lot less powerful compared to the people who are going to know a lot about us.” (Cindy Cohn, 54:34)
• Warns these tools erode democracy, civil liberties, and community protections; privacy now existential.

Fighting Surveillance, User Nihilism, and Industry Apathy

• Explains why privacy is still worth fighting for—data is continuously produced and always valuable.
  • “It's never game over...as long as you're living, your data is valuable…The minute we stop this business model, the better.” (Cindy Cohn, 60:50)
• Lambastes industry’s silence over government demands, especially on issues affecting immigrants and marginalized groups.
  • Fear or complicity (“cowed or in cahoots”) seen as causes (59:37).

On Chatbot Privacy and Accountability

• Skeptical of relying on company promises; favors architectural products that don’t store or reveal sensitive user information.
  • “I'm more interested in people who are developing ways that you can have a, you know, anonymity in your use of these things so that they don't have anything that they can reveal about you.” (Cindy Cohn, 63:12)

Social Platforms, Speech, and Choosing to Walk Away

• EFF’s exit from X (formerly Twitter)—due to harassment, declining reach, hostile platform dynamics.
  • “Freedom of speech has to mean the right to leave. Like, the idea that we should be forced to speak in a place is fundamentally inconsistent…” (Cindy Cohn, 65:37)

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Notable Quotes

• “To me, we had our developer conference last week. It was all about, hey, can we build the platform and the tools where every enterprise in every country can operate at the frontier?”
  — Satya Nadella (06:13)
• “You can't go out there and say, I have this unbelievable technology, except you're not going to have a job. And in fact, we're going to take all your water and all your energy … that cannot be.”
  — Satya Nadella (18:51)
• "We also were seeing...abusive things going to my staff and people who we talked about in our posts who were standing up for LGBTQ, and we would post something about that, those people would get abuse. And at some point, we just decided it wasn’t worth the candle anymore.”
  — Cindy Cohn (65:37)
• "Art can't be … discarded. It has to exist for generations.”
  — Phil Mohan (42:21)
• “The minute we stop this business model, the better.”
  — Cindy Cohn (60:50)

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Timestamps: Key Segments

• Satya Nadella / Microsoft’s AI Direction: 05:09–34:06

  • Philosophy of AI platforms: 06:13
  • Agent-first devices & Project Solara: 07:57–09:44
  • Xbox business model: 10:12–13:01
  • OpenAI drama & partnership: 13:01–15:54
  • Government ownership and AGI benchmarks: 25:13–26:32
  • On “token maxing” and productivity: 27:45–29:49
  • AI’s impact on work: 22:04, 23:49, 32:04

• Phil Mohan / Beeple’s Robot Dogs: 36:20–43:02

  • Exhibit, digital art, pop culture: 37:35–40:55
  • “Poop mode” and RoboDogs as social commentary: 40:25–41:16
  • Digital art preservation: 41:38–42:53

• Cindy Cohn / Privacy & User Rights: 45:04–67:36

  • Encryption & platform power: 46:20, 48:01
  • Politics and big tech: 51:07–54:34
  • AI & surveillance dangers: 54:34–58:58
  • Privacy nihilism & counterarguments: 60:22–62:56
  • On platform exit and freedom of speech: 64:54–67:28

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Tone and Style

The episode is lively, witty, and briskly conversational, balancing deep technical insight with humor ("A chill fell through the crowd" at the mention of more robot dogs). Satya Nadella exudes pragmatic optimism. Cindy Cohn’s tone is simultaneously urgent and dryly witty, especially when addressing surveillance and corporate practice. The hosts maintain a playful, probing style, often self-aware of the podcast format and live show dynamic. Phil Mohan injects levity and philosophical reflection on digital art's intersection with everyday tech culture.

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Summary

Part One of Hard Fork Live offers a rare, candid look at the year’s most pressing questions in technology—from the future of AI ecosystems and hardware, to the uneasy intersection of economic policy, data governance, and societal trust. Satya Nadella presents Microsoft as both a principal and steward of the AI future, measured and careful, aiming not for monopolistic dominance but broad innovation. Cindy Cohn details the evolving battle between user privacy and institutional surveillance, urging both vigilance and activism as tools for digital empowerment. In between, Beeple’s robot dogs and their wry, unsettling presence serve as a symbol of our times—a reminder that the future is as strange and unpredictable as ever.

Transcript

[IBM AI Representative]

So there's a lot of noise about AI, but time's too tight for more promises. So let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need. Now a global workforce of 300,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions, resolving 94% of common questions, not noise. Proof of how we can help companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business IBM.

[Kevin Roose]

Well, Casey, we got a special treat on the show this week. We are going to be playing some excerpt and snippets and featured conversations from Hard Fork Live.

[Casey Newton]

That's right, Kevin. We just had the second installment of our annual live show. It was an incredible time and we're so excited to share highlights of it with our listeners.

[Kevin Roose]

Yes, it was so great to hang out with listeners and also welcome some very special guests. We'll be bringing those conversations to our listeners and viewers in this feed over the next two weeks. Today we're going to share three conversations with you. The first is with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. The second is with Phil Mohan, who is the wrangler of these sort of robot dogs that you may have heard about. These are a project conceived of by the artist Beeple. They have these robot dogs with Elon Musk's face and Mark Zuckerberg's face on them. They're very funny and entertaining. We brought them out onto stage during Hard Fork Live for the Open and we'll talk with him about that project and what he's trying to accomplish there. And then we're going to talk with Cindy Cohn, the outgoing executive director of the Electronic Frontier foundation and a longtime activist on Internet privacy related issues.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah, absolutely. Great lineup, some fascinating conversations and we hope you enjoy them.

[Kevin Roose]

I'm Kevin Roos, a tech columnist from the New York Times.

[Casey Newton]

I'm Casey Newton from Platformer and this

[Kevin Roose]

is Hard Fork Live.

[Casey Newton]

Kevin, what a fine looking bunch of humans this is.

[Kevin Roose]

Truly, we are so happy to be here. This is one of the highlights of our year. We love meeting our friends and our family and our listeners and viewers all here. It is so much fun.

[Casey Newton]

These are the few and the proud who got tickets within hours of them going on sale and who crucially made it through the security line. So thanks for that. We haven't seen a security response like that since the time I tried to use Claude to make a bioweapon.

[Kevin Roose]

Now if you are used to listening to us or watching us on YouTube, you'll notice there are a few differences that you're going to experience tonight. For starters, there's no button you can press to speed us up to 1.5x.

[Casey Newton]

Sorry.

[Kevin Roose]

You also can't skip the ads.

[Casey Newton]

And you're about to find out just how heavily each week's show is edited.

[Kevin Roose]

Now, before we start tonight, because I imagine we will be doing some talking about AI, should we make our disclosures?

[Casey Newton]

Let's do that. And in fact, we thought we would do something really special this time because we actually had Alyssa make us disclosure hats, which I thought we could show off. I think this is yours. Oh, thank you. Yeah.

[Kevin Roose]

So these are our disclosure hats. We'll put them on. So official here. I work for the New York Times, which is doing OpenAI, Microsoft and perplexity,

[Casey Newton]

and my fiance works at Anthropic.

[Kevin Roose]

Now, Casey, it has been such a big week in tech. So much has been going on. We were down in Cupertino on Monday for Apple's big developer conference where they showed off the new Siri AI.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah, it's really interesting. You can use Siri AI to set an alarm that will trigger every time Apple falls further behind an AI. So that's kind of interesting.

[Kevin Roose]

We also saw the release of Claude Fable, the new powerful model from Anthropic.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah, this one is really big. They're already starting to use it in the government. In fact, Pete Hegseth just said it makes the best martini recipe he's ever seen.

[Kevin Roose]

And then we have also been gearing up for Hot IPO Summer and the IPO of Anthropic and SpaceX and OpenAI.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah, and you know, unfortunately, the OpenAI S1 filing isn't yet available, but if you want, you can just use ChatGPT to make one up for you. So something to think about.

[Kevin Roose]

Well, with that, let's get started with the show. Our first guest tonight is someone we've been very excited. We've been trying to get him on the show for many years. He finally agreed and he's here tonight. Everyone, please give a warm welcome to Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. Hello. Now, Satya, I have to start by making a confession, which is that I have not been a regular user of a Microsoft AI product since 2023 when one of them tried to break up my marriage. Unsuccessfully, I should add. My wife is right there.

[Satya Nadella]

Those were the days when we didn't have think about a world without guardrails.

[Kevin Roose]

But so much has been happening at Microsoft with AI since then. So just catch us up like What? What for people who may not have tuned in a little while, what have you guys been up to in AI?

[Satya Nadella]

Yeah, I mean, look, the fundamental thing that I feel we're about to move from is not talking about AI as a one thing, to sort of having even a mental picture of what is an ecosystem that is sort of driven by AI, right? So today, if you think about it, even since when you first used Sydney to now, it has been about frontier model. You sort of talked about Fable, what have you. But if we are ever going to transition to an economy that is driven by AI, it can't be about one model, it can't be about three firms. It has to be something that's broadly felt where the economy is at the frontier, not a firm or a model is at the frontier. So Microsoft as a platform company, to me, that's what we are up to, right? So to me, we had our developer conference last week. It was all about, hey, can we build the platform and the tools where every enterprise in every country can operate at the frontier? To me, that's the question. To be saying, hey, my model does this, but the economy is growing at 2% means this is not going to end well unless we sort of really get to a place where the economy is inflecting in terms of its economic growth and it's broad spread because the front, that's what happened in electricity and every other technology, which was a general purpose technology.

[Casey Newton]

Let me ask about one of the platform shifts that you signaled at build last week when you announced Project Solara. You said it would be agent first hardware, kind of next generation set of devices that would have agents running them. Tell us a little bit more about that, what that looks like. Can you give us an example of maybe what a project works? Yeah.

[Satya Nadella]

Two things, Casey, we did at build, which were interesting, right? One was we took the PC itself. In fact, Jensen had done it the previous night at Computex where he talked about the picture. One of my favorite pictures was Jensen with the desktops, the laptops, and he obviously had the RTX chip, which is a new SOC with essentially a petaflop of compute right on their PC. So that was about new functionality coming to the old form factor. So think about what I describe as unmetered intelligence. So the fact that you can have a Windows computer that can run a 1 billion, you know, trillion parameter model locally I think is going to be very needed if you're going to ever have agents running 24 by seven. But then the question it sets up is in a World where we have these models and these agents that are long running. Can I have like a badge? Right. If I'm a nurse in a hospital and I'm walking from station to station, can I just take out this device which can scan, which can input, which can take my speech output and turn it into a prompt? That is what I think an agent first device looks like. Right. So it's sort of really a new. The centrality of the phone, I think, is still going to be there for a lot of apps that we use. But in agent world, you kind of have that ambient intelligence that is like a sense of field that then works with your models. And so that's what goal is to invent the new form factors that are not beholden to the old form factors for this functionality.

[Casey Newton]

It's super interesting and I want to hear a lot more about it. We have many more questions about AI, but I wanted to ask about one more device that has been in the news today, which is the Xbox. The leaders of the Xbox division put out a memo today saying that we should expect a hard reset of Xbox coming soon. They said that there are massive increases in the prices of components and that Xbox might need a new business model. So, as a big gamer who's enjoyed many happy hours on Xbox, Sacha, I have to ask, what is your strategy for Xbox?

[Satya Nadella]

Yeah, so look, in fact, this is the 25th year of Xbox, and we're very thrilled about the progress we have made. I mean, gaming in an interesting way at Microsoft is older than even Windows and Office. The first app we built was the flight simulator, and so it's got a long heritage. Xbox itself has been there for 25 years. The challenge now for us is to think about how do you innovate both in hardware as well as in the games going forward in a world in an economically viable way. Right. I think one of the things that Asha, who's just taken over Xbox, put out is that we've invested a lot. No one can accuse Microsoft of not having invested for the last 25 years. And now we have to turn this into a sustainable business that delivers what is fundamentally one of the best sources of entertainment. Still, the challenge we have is we are not been monetizing that entertainment. In fact, if anything, we have been subsidizing that entertainment. In fact, there's more monetization of Xbox games happening on YouTube than at Microsoft. And so that doesn't mean we go do things that are unnatural. We want us to do what is really our job, which is to build Great games build great hardware, but we've got to do it in an economically sustainable way. So I think asha is really 100 days in and she put out a post saying in the next hundred days she's going to take a fresh look and make sure we deliver on what our fans expect of us, both on the hardware side or on the publishing side.

[Casey Newton]

Can you give us just any more detail? When I hear that, I think, okay, so maybe the Xbox gets way more expensive, the games get way more expensive. Is there any sort of carrot you can can offer the gamers?

[Satya Nadella]

I think we have to find ways to deliver the games at which it's economically relevant for the customer and for us. So today there's a issue, in fact, unfortunately, because of what's happening with the cloud and AI, the prices have gone up, right? It's happening with PCs, it's happening with phones. Xbox is impacted as well. So the scarcity of the semiconductor supply and memory in particular, having a massive impact on consumer electronics all up, that's a temporal thing that I think we'll get through. It is not going to be a permanent, but there is a permanent thing, which is what's the Xbox model going forward? And that's where, if you think about it, PCs and consoles both have their place. Obviously, mobile has people play and elsewhere. And so we have to now bring it all together while staying true to what we've always done.

[Kevin Roose]

Satya, I want to take you back in a Time Machine. The year is 2023. The board of OpenAI has just fired Sam Altman, one of Microsoft's biggest partners. You and your team spend a harried weekend trying to pull together an entirely new division of Microsoft, Microsoft Advanced AI Research, to sort of catch the employees that are making a mass exodus from OpenAI. You're ordering laptops, you're opening up an office in San Francisco so that all these people have a place to go work. The company looks like it's on the verge of collapse, and then nothing happens. Then Sam gets rehired and OpenAI stands back up on its feet. And I want to present you, as part of this time machine experiment with a piece of rare merchandise which I recently acquired from an OpenAI employee, which is a Microsoft Advanced AI Research sweatshirt.

[Satya Nadella]

That is awesome.

[Kevin Roose]

To be clear, this division never existed. And I was told by the person who made this that that they had to sort of fudge a little bit on the sort of copying and printing shop application which made them prove that they were a Microsoft employee to get this. But this is for you if you ever want to.

[Satya Nadella]

Thank you. Thank you.

[Kevin Roose]

Take that walk down memory lane.

[Satya Nadella]

Oh man, that weekend, I remember that forever. And thank you for this. But all I remember, quite frankly of the weekend is India getting thrashed by Australia and cricket. That was the more tragic thing.

[Kevin Roose]

So. So if that had happened in the world where all of these OpenAI employees end up working at Microsoft in a new advanced AI research division run by Sam Altman and Greg Brogman, in that world, is Microsoft better or worse off with AI than it is today in this world?

[Satya Nadella]

Look, we are thrilled that Greg and Sam made it back to OpenAI and they are where they are and they're now, as you said, are filed under S1 or what have you. And look, it's fascinating, right when we initially took the bet on OpenAI, it was a research lab, a nonprofit entity that had created a for profit unit and said, hey, they went and shopped around and said, who can back our crazy idea that intelligence is log of compute? And quite frankly, there were lots of people that or at Microsoft at that time who thought this is nuts. But we said, I think this is a worthwhile thing to back. And quite frankly, we changed, I think, and they changed through their work and the OpenAI, through their work, the world. And here we are in 2026 and we're thrilled about it.

[Kevin Roose]

You guys recently renegotiated your deal between OpenAI and Microsoft. And I understand what OpenAI got out of that deal. They got the ability to work with multiple cloud providers to be a little bit more open about how they commercialize their. What did Microsoft get out of the revision of that deal?

[Satya Nadella]

I mean, we have a lot of interests in OpenAI. We are obviously on their cap table and they're a customer of ours, a large one. They're a source of IP for us all the way to 32. And at the same time we have the ability and the flexibility to reuse the ip, build our own ip. We just last week launched mai models which have hill climbed from the ground up. We published in fact the paper which I think should help people even get the capability we have, especially if you take those two thoughts, which is here is intelligence is log of compute, and here is a pure lineage model from Microsoft that climbed all the way means that we now have the ability to keep going and our infrastructure, I must mention that we wouldn't have been where we are with even Azure but for that close partnership with OpenAI. So we have the compute, we have now the model, and we have still

[Casey Newton]

the partnership let's talk about those models. Is your goal to make a frontier best model in the world, and if so, what's the strategy for overtaking a ChatGPT, a Gemini Cloud?

[Satya Nadella]

Yeah, so I think the way I would say is our real goal is to get everyone across the ecosystem to the frontier. So we are going to take a slightly different take in saying, for example, if you think about how does one build a frontier model, you hill climb, you rl, and then you need data. So at this point, we have saturated the data, and so that means you're basically hoovering the data from every place. Right. So the question is, what if you turn that around and say, no, there's a base model that has reasoning, that has the agent loop, but you can bring it into your rle every company. Right. If the future of the firm is human capital and token capital, I want every balance sheet, every income statement in every company to have both. And that's our goal with our frontier model. Our model should be the best model that they can use as a base and keep even the weights, definitely the harness and the context which is theirs. And they can replace our model with anything else. So that to me is more of a vision that I think is what I always ask the question, why does Microsoft or why does the world need Microsoft? And if we are successful, can the world around us be successful? This, I believe, is a more sustainable way to go at it.

[Kevin Roose]

We have to ask a question about the AI backlash that we're seeing around the country. Graduation speakers are getting booed. AI is polling terribly. Lots of people upset about data centers. What role does Microsoft have in that image or helping to solve that? And how do you think the industry can and find a path forward that involves, I don't know, being a little more popular?

[Satya Nadella]

Yeah. I think we can start, quite frankly, by painting a picture and delivering the results on why there are more than, you know, everyone is a stakeholder.

[Casey Newton]

Right.

[Satya Nadella]

You can't go out there and say, I have this unbelievable technology, except you're not going to have a job. And in fact, we're going to take all your water and all your energy. And, you know, I mean, that cannot be. And then no wonder there is so much anxiety. Right? You talked about the students or you can talk about a community. And so therefore you gotta do the hard work at this point. It is what it is. Right. So you can't deny that the perception is terrible. And so I feel at Microsoft we want to, whether it's like, take the data centers. It's fascinating We've been operating in quincy, Washington for 20 plus years. And I just, you know, we celebrated our 20th year. You know, if I look at what all has happened in quincy in the 20 years, their tax base has gone up, their taxes locally have gone down, they have more employment locally.

[Kevin Roose]

Because of the data center.

[Satya Nadella]

Because of the data center. In fact, the data center, it's kind of like, basically it's become a data center town. And we did this cookout and people came and they celebrate the rejuvenation of Quincy, Washington because of our presence for the last 20 years. That's the first longitudinal thing of 20 years that I've seen. And that's what the communities where data centers are. They definitely can't increase price on energy. They have to be very, in fact, they should replenish all the water they use and create economic opportunity. So that's on the data center side. But across the economy, if there are small businesses feeling like, wow, AI is making me more productive, if every large multinational is able to say, oh, I'm building that token cap and the human capital, right, because the big question is employment, everybody thinks that all jobs are going away, but if you sort of, and I'm not saying there won't be real displacement, the workflow doesn't change. But take software development. Of course, software development is now all agentic, except if you think about even the evolution of the GitHub app, right? When I had 100 CLIs, what did I need? I need a new IDE. It's called an ADE, right? A backend, again, some piece of software that helped me manage all of this complexity. So I think we have to think about new work that gets done which will be meta, cognition, meta work that is going to have wages and we have to be concrete about that.

[Casey Newton]

But help us understand what your own view is of the potential disruption. Right? Because I've been talking to so many economists, tech leaders like yourself about this over the past couple of months and truly opinion is all over the place. And I talked to some folks who say, yes, you better believe I'm hiring fewer people next year because of AI. And then I talk to other people that say, I can't get enough engineers, I want more than I have. So where are you on that? In two years you're going to have more engineers or fewer.

[Satya Nadella]

Yeah. So I think if in the early 80s, if someone had come to us and said, hey, we're going to have three and a half billion people in the world who are all going to be typists, we would have said, why does the world need three and a half billion typists? Except we do. We all get up in the morning and type, but we're doing quote unquote information work, knowledge work, and so on. So that type of change is going to have to happen. And each of them will have a name and it'll have a wage support that reinvention, right? So a software developer of the past to the software developer of the future may have the similar sort of skills, but the work they do is different because they're managing a group of hundred agents, 1,000 agents in fact. There's a beautiful term one of my colleagues has which is just like in software development, we already had this concept of test coverage. One of the new things that we are learning is what I'll call cognitive coverage, right? So what does a software developer do? I have a repo full of code that was written by agents. I am cognitively understanding what happened and I now need tools for cognitive coverage on what that is built. That's the job, I think, of a software developer. And in order to do that, you got to go to school, you got to learn computer science and have cognitive coverage. And so this reinvention of work, the work artifact, the workflow, right? Because software went from input to output, that's a format change, an artifact change. The workflow has changed and the work changes with.

[Casey Newton]

I feel like what people really want to hear is some combination of like your job isn't going to change that much or if it does change, you're going to get paid more. Do you think that either of those things will be true for most people?

[Satya Nadella]

I think that that's the thing the wages have always been about. What is it that we as a society value, right? I mean, we have grown the last 200 years, 250 years was about a particular form of expertise and accrual of knowledge. So when you have abundance of some form of expertise, what is that human ability to now build that new expertise that is not trainable, Right. In fact, there was a nice blog I read this morning from Sarah Goh, which was, I thought it was an interesting one where she sort of mentions, hey, what is the untrainable part? And that applies to organizations and I think us as well. And we as humans have agency ambitious that should not be counted out. And if you look at even what is human capital today, the human capital, in spite of all the digital systems we have at our disposal, we do the glue work. We will discover the new glue work that happens with all this automation and that I think is the process of change.

[Kevin Roose]

One idea that's been floated recently, including by reportedly Sam Altman and President Trump has also weighed in on it, is the idea of having the US Government take, take direct investment stakes in frontier AI companies. Do you think that's a good idea? What percent of Microsoft would you like the US Government to own?

[Satya Nadella]

Msft? You can trade.

[Kevin Roose]

Do you think that is a way for the gains of AI to be more broadly felt?

[Satya Nadella]

Look, this is all very new, right? I mean, the idea that there may be the United States, whether it has a sovereign fund and the sovereign fund has equity stakes, and that somehow is part of what is considered the wealth of the citizens of this country, I think it's a novel idea. Other countries have done it. I think Alaska has some form of it in the state because of the oil wealth. So I'm not sort of opposed to innovative ideas like this, but at the end of the day, I mean, there's this entire movement of if only we had invested some portion of our Social Security in S&P 500, we would have a surplus or what have you. And so to the degree to which some of these ideas can be played out and they succeed, I think we'll all benefit from it.

[Casey Newton]

You told Dwarkesh Patel in February 2025 that your benchmark for achieving AGI was 10% GDP growth. Seems like we're not super close to hitting 10% yet. I'm curious how you view that statement that you made a year ago now. And do you see any sort of recent acceleration that makes you think it's more possible?

[Satya Nadella]

In fact, it's one of the things that I think a lot about is the difficulty of even a very powerful general purpose technology and its diffusion and the amount of change management that is required. Right? I mean, the systems. For example, one of the challenges right now that we are going to face in the next year, two years, is this. You know, the economics of tokens. For example, the hard truth is that the marginal cost of productivity improvement has to match the marginal cost of the token. That's a management discipline. So you can't just say, hey, I love token maxing because it's money in my bank, the business has to benefit from it. And that is what is going to really drive it. In fact, it's fascinating. The equation for the 10% growth would be when you have a perfect match between the marginal cost of the token to the marginal value and it's priced right. So that means it's the best way to get at it. If that happens, 10% is definitely going to happen. But definitely what's happening right now where everybody goes in wipe codes and token maxes. That's not a way to achieve 10% growth.

[Casey Newton]

How much sort of token maxing has been going on at Microsoft? A lot. Yeah, yeah.

[Satya Nadella]

And I'm out of it. And what I mean by that is, look, I want people to obviously and myself, I'm like a token maxer too. So it is addictive. It's kind of like, hey, I love this thing. So then you have to step back when the novelty wears off to say what is it that I'm trying to create? In fact, the thing that I love now in copilot now is our automation. And so we now have a very good, we have an economic model that's feeding it as well. Basically I say don't use frontier models for non frontier problems. Right? Please, let's kind of match these things such that you get the outputs, you get the economics and it can't be a race to just doing things that just don't add value.

[Casey Newton]

Give us a flavor of Satya's token maxing. What are some of your big token projects lately?

[Satya Nadella]

Yeah, I mean like the one thing that I recently built was, you know, I've always sort of felt that I want a repo that is in sync all the time with discussions that are happening out of band that I am not in. Right. Think about even that concept. I like that thing because it sort of is sort of not possible today. Right. So you have essentially the ability now to have an agent that literally is looking at all the work discussions that may be related to your repo and creating the plan and executing the plan. And it's just. In fact all I did was I put work IQ, which is the database underneath all of Microsoft 365 and as an MCP server and to my coding agent and I said keep watching that. And every time people discuss this repo, please change my repo. And it keeps working. And so this is like the best way to keep your basically a model in sync with all requirements that ever come up.

[Kevin Roose]

You've been thinking a lot about the political economy of AI. Obviously the things you're talking about, about diffusion and adoption and GDP growth are all part of that. What do you think the people in San Francisco leading the AI companies here get wrong about the political economy of AI?

[Satya Nadella]

I mean, I wouldn't say they're wrong about the political economy of AI, but I do think, I think when I look back at the, you know, there's a very cool book I read, I think in December. I may have the name wrong, but it's written by Joel Marchiar and a couple of co authors on, I think it's called Parallel Paths to Prosperity. They describe a little bit of how the last thousand years the west grew and what was happening in China. So it was a thousand year history. But the fundamental thing when I take from that book, and in general when I read history, is the west in particular got three things into a virtuous cycle, right? They got technological revolutions and markets and democracy, all both acting as a check on the other. That's why there is no such thing as an economy. It's a political economy. A democracy controls ultimately what happens in a market. And then technology sort of tries to disrupt the two. Then you keep sort of the checks and balances. That's magical. It's one of the most unbelievable social constructs ever to emerge in the world, right? Think about sort of it became the model and we now need that same model to be redefined for this age. But it'll work because it worked the last time. And so therefore, I think us reminding ourselves that the balance, the checks that each one has on the other is what I think we have to aspire for, whether it's in San Francisco, whether it's in Washington D.C. or quite frankly, anywhere else.

[Casey Newton]

Maybe just as a last question, I'm still trying to hone in on what I think Kevin might call how AGI pilled you are. There's a sense in Silicon Valley that it really is different this time and that the jagged frontier is going to keep advancing forever. And all of a sudden the little town tasks that AI can automate today are going to convert into full jobs. How much do you buy that story?

[Satya Nadella]

Look, I buy that anything where the loops can be closed, like coding, in fact, AI research is sort of possible to close. I think we have now got sufficient, I would say, evidence of that. But is that enough? I don't think so. And when I think about people talk about how verifiable is this task and in the messy real world of even knowledge work, just saying I'm going to look at the traces of human activity is enough to close the loop? I don't think so. That, I think, is the challenge, which is when I am in a meeting, I say things, I note things, I may observe things, but what I do with it is not a trace today that I can rle my way in, right? And that to me is where we're selling short what is, I would say unverifiable part of the human capital. And so to me, that's where so I believe the advances keep happening. I still am more in the world of, hey, this is platform's tools, very powerful, very disruptive. I have a lot of sort of, I'd say humility to say a lot of things will change. But at the end of the day, so was electricity, so were a lot of other steam when it first came out and what have you. And so I'm not sort of sitting there and thinking this is the last technology we ever would invent. I don't buy that. I kind of feel like, yeah, this is, is in the pantheon of all technologies, a big step up. But I do think that, you know, there will be more to come.

[Casey Newton]

Very good.

[Kevin Roose]

Well, Satya Nadella, thanks so much for joining us. Please, Santiago, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

[Satya Nadella]

Thank you.

[Casey Newton]

All right, that was like sort of our big question for the show is like, you know, how, how AGI pulled us off.

[Kevin Roose]

I thought it was what is the unverifiable part of our human capital? What do you think yours is?

[Casey Newton]

I'm still working on that. We've got a lot of show to prepare for, so we'll get to the bottom of it. We'll be back with more hard folk live after these messages.

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[IBM AI Representative]

a lot of noise about AI, but time's too tight for more promises. So let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need. Now a Global workforce of 300,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions, resolving 94% of common questions. Questions, not noise. Proof of how we can help companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off. Deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business. IBM.

[Kevin Roose]

I'm sure everyone in here is still thinking about those robot dogs like I am.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah, I was having trouble focusing on the interview because I had so many questions about the dogs.

[Kevin Roose]

And we wanted to actually bring on someone who has been responsible for training and walking and taking care of these dogs to take tell us why the hell they built such a terrifying thing. So our next guest is Phil Mohan. He's the executive director of Node, a digital art center in Palo Alto that is showing off these robot dogs as part of an art exhibit that runs through the end of the month. Please welcome to the stage our dog handler, Phil Moen.

[Phil Mohan]

Thanks, guys.

[Casey Newton]

Hey, Phil.

[Kevin Roose]

Thank you.

[Satya Nadella]

Thank you.

[Casey Newton]

Hey, Phil. Oh, God, they're coming back.

[Kevin Roose]

Oh, boy.

[Casey Newton]

Hey, that's heel. They're very lifelike in that they don't seem to respond well to instructions. Yeah.

[Kevin Roose]

Okay. Please go. Please leave.

[Phil Mohan]

See you guys. Yeah.

[Casey Newton]

Well, shall we have a seat?

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah, let's have a seat. Now, I want to just describe these dogs a little bit for people who are going to be listening to this later. These are two unitary. Go to Robo dogs with the faces of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. And as I understand it, they are part of a whole pack. So, Phil, tell us about these dogs. How many are there? And how can we protect our families from them?

[Phil Mohan]

Yeah.

[Casey Newton]

By the way, when you said there was a whole pack, a chill fell through the crowd.

[Phil Mohan]

A little different from the last conversation, I think. So these are called the regular animals, and these were created by an amazing digital artist named Mike Winkelmann or Beeple. How many people know Beeple in the crowd? Yeah. Okay. For those of you who don't, I'm excited to share. Mike is an amazing artist. He has been creating a new piece of digital art art every day for 20 years. And these dogs are his latest creation. They're called regular animals, and they're part of a show we're doing at Node in Palo Alto.

[Kevin Roose]

And what made him or both of you together think of this project? What is the idea that you are trying to convey with these terrifying robot dogs.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah. What's wrong with you?

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah.

[Phil Mohan]

So I asked this question to Mike, actually. Exactly that. Why did you do this? And Mike's entire practice is about taking technology to show you something you've never seen before. I think mission accomplished with these. There's actually six dogs in total. So there's Pablo Picasso, there's Andy Warhol, there's Mike. He put his own face on a dog, which is really interesting when you see him next to it. It's kind of the strange double take. And Jeff Bezos as well. And I think with the regular animals in particular, so much of what we think about and our imagination of things comes from creatives. It comes from movies that we've seen or literature that we've read. But increasingly, the way that we see the world is coming through media, and specifically digital media. And so the fact that half of the regular Animals are media CEOs and technology executives, the other half are artists is not a coincidence.

[Casey Newton]

So you took these dogs out onto the streets of San Francisco recently. What happened once they were a set loose?

[Phil Mohan]

Yeah, it was like the best social experiment of all time. I think there's a couple common reactions. You know, it has a phone factor that's very high. So about 100% of people take out their phones and take a picture. Kids, honestly, really like it. I think that there are, of course, there's robot dogs. It's 20, 26. Why wouldn't there be? And I think most people, it feels like the future. It feels like maybe not the exact future that we're thinking about, but it feels like something you've never seen before.

[Casey Newton]

When you say this feels like the future, what do you imagine sort of like the role of robot dogs with human faces will be?

[Phil Mohan]

Yeah, so part of what we do at Node is there's an amazing group of digital artists who are using software to create art now. Now, I love Enterprise SaaS. I know you guys, too.

[Casey Newton]

Shout out to Enterprise SaaS.

[Phil Mohan]

Huge applause from the crowd here in San Francisco for Enterprise SaaS. There's gotta be more. There's gotta be more. And if software is the defining medium of our age, we think that there deserves to be a home for these artists who are defining digital culture. And I think that Mike is an excellent example of the type of artist who's working with this medium. But he's not the only one. And so we hope to give a home to these artists in Palo Alto.

[Kevin Roose]

Phil, I have to ask you about. Look at my card here and make sure I've got this right, Poop mode.

[Phil Mohan]

Yeah, poop mode.

[Kevin Roose]

What is poop mode?

[Phil Mohan]

So the dogs, they're constantly taking photos of their environment and they will poop out these images. And we have a person at Node who's hired to pick up the poop and who certifies it and gives it out to guests if anyone's looking for a job, by the way, we pay very well by the hour. Also robot dog walker. And so for each.

[Kevin Roose]

These are the only two jobs in the future.

[Phil Mohan]

That's right, yeah.

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah.

[Phil Mohan]

So if you want to escape the permanent underclass, you know where to go. And so each dog, based on the head that it's wearing, the photos come out completely different. So the Picasso dog is sort of this cubist, and the Mark Zuckerberg dog looks like it's in the metaverse. And it's just a reminder that, you know, the reality that you see is not always exactly the way that it is.

[Kevin Roose]

So have you heard from the real Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk?

[Phil Mohan]

You know, we've been trying to get them to come by. So if any anyone's got a line, please send them before June 28th.

[Casey Newton]

Let me read you the sentence on the Node website that gave me a seizure. It says, after three years or 21 dog years, each robot will die with all memories from its life preserved forever on chain. What?

[Phil Mohan]

Yeah, none of those words are in the Bible. One of the challenges with creating digital art or using technology in general to create art, there's a long tradition of this technology is sort of being gets new artistic movements. And the beginning of these movements sort of have to grapple with there not being good categories or they're not being institutions that are purpose built for them. And in many of the conversations that we had with digital artists, they were trying to go to existing institutions and explain their work or explain, hey, I can use software or computers or computation to create these amazing works of art that make people feel things or make people see a future that only I can see. And the response that they got from institutions consistently was either we don't understand it or we have an opening in five years and maybe we'll talk to you then. Or even if they were interested and it wasn't pure apathy, our IT department can. And it's like this totally out of scope of what they're built for. And so this focus on preservation and around keeping the art available is a big part of what we do at Node. And I think that so much of what we build and if you look at the history of software, it's all of these projects that get built and they're amazing at the time and then they're discarded. And art can't be like that. It has to exist for generations. And so that's part of what we're trying to do.

[Kevin Roose]

That's all the time we have. Thank you, Phil. And please do not attach weapons to those robot dogs.

[Phil Mohan]

They're scary on us. Thank you. As it is.

[Kevin Roose]

Thanks for showing us.

[Satya Nadella]

Thank you.

[Phil Mohan]

Thanks, guys.

[Kevin Roose]

We'll be right back with more from Hard Forklive.

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[IBM AI Representative]

So there's a lot of noise about AI. But time's too tight for more promises. So let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need. Need Now a Global workforce of 300,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions. Resolving 94% of common questions. Not noise. Proof of how we can help companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off. Deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business. IBM.

[EY Advertiser]

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[Casey Newton]

Please welcome to the stage Cindy Cone.

[Cindy Cohn]

Hi.

[Casey Newton]

Hi, Cindy.

[Cindy Cohn]

Thank you.

[Casey Newton]

I'm admiring your let's sue the government shirt.

[Cindy Cohn]

Yeah, we have the best merch at eff And I know they made this especially for me.

[Kevin Roose]

So, Cindy, how do we get those robot dogs banned?

[Cindy Cohn]

They're creepy, aren't they? Oh, my God.

[Kevin Roose]

Do you Have a call you could make in dc.

[Cindy Cohn]

You know the thing that's creepy about them is what he said at the end, which is they're taking photos all the time and they're gonna last forever. Right? Yeah. This kind of creepy mass surveillance in the form of a creepy dog.

[Kevin Roose]

What could go wrong?

[Cindy Cohn]

Nothing. Nothing.

[Casey Newton]

It could be a reason to sue the government, which is something that you did throughout your illustrious career at EFF. One of your first big fights back in the 90s was defending the cryptologist Daniel Bernstein against government restrictions on encrypted source code. Thirty years later we are still seeing fights between the government and private individuals over end to end encryption. How surprised are you that this battle is still going on? And how would you characterize the state of that fight today?

[Cindy Cohn]

Yeah, I mean look, we won the first round which means that we have Signal and we have HTTPs and when you lose your phone you don't lose all the data on it cause it's encrypted. So I mean that was great. But yeah, we continue to have to fight and we, you know in the meta social media case they used the fact that they offered encryption as an argument of a product defect. Right. So the fight continues. I think you know, law enforcement's interest in making sure nobody can ever have a private conversation just never goes away. But our need to have a private conversation online doesn't go away either. So you know, I think think in the United States we've managed to fend off, you know there's, there's periodically and their last bill was called Earn it but different bills to try to, you know, restrict encryption. But you know, the UK is a mess, Australia is a mess. We're going to have to. The Canada now is debating something that Signal has said. We're not going to be able to offer our product in our tool in Canada if they pass this law. So it's, the fight just goes on. And I've kind of come to the, the sad conclusion that it's just something like free speech, like privacy that we're just always going to have to stand up for.

[Kevin Roose]

I remember when I started covering tech more than a decade ago, the EFF was known for taking on the government, primarily fighting government overreach. Now you also fight big tech overreach. So I'm curious, did that shift come as a surprise and where does that leave you today in terms of allies? Who are the good guys?

[Cindy Cohn]

Yeah, I would say in the 90s we didn't anticipate that spying on everybody would become the number one business model of the Internet. It's very profitable, it turns out. And it also has created this problem with the five big tech giants that control every. The vast majority of people's experience online. And these two things together have really forced us to. We don't make common cause with the tech giants anymore at the level that we used to, because they used to stand up for their users, and increasingly they're adversarial to their users. So what I tell all the tech companies is, look, if you stand with your users, we will stand with you, and if you stand against your users, we're going to be the first in line. And sadly, that second part has become bigger than I think it should. But it's dragged us into these places where we're adversarial against the tech giants because they're not standing with users.

[Casey Newton]

I mean, I remember Kevin and I started covering tech around the same time. And I remember whenever you guys would put out a statement, like Google, Facebook, Amazon were putting out statements, you guys were marching in lockstep. You just said that that united front is now broken. When did you first notice those cracks start to appear?

[Cindy Cohn]

I mean, it depends on the topic, right? You know, the early fights. EFF was involved a lot in trying to make copyright balanced in the digital age. And we worked a lot with the companies on this because they wanted to give you the ability to make your own media and rip, mix and burn those kinds of things. And we would stand with them. But I think again, as surveillance became the business model, as they became less interested in empowering their users and more interested in surveilling their users, we've separated and now we stand up for things like section 230, the idea that nobody would host anybody else's speech if they were responsible for it. So users need intermediate to be able to speak. We've seen the tech companies roll over and support all of these exceptions, fosta, sesta and other things, and they're not even standing up for their own rights anymore. So it's really topic by topic and issue by issue. But I would say that in the last 10 years, it's less and less of the time that we end up standing with them because. Because they don't stand with the users.

[Casey Newton]

It obviously seems like that has accelerated quite a bit since President Trump was reelected. There's been a major rightward shift in some of these companies. You've talked to these people for many, many years. How much do you think that is driven by something truly ideological and how much of it is just they think they can make more money this way.

[Cindy Cohn]

It's hard to tell honestly. I don't think they're being honest with themselves, much less the rest of us us about it. And certainly not me, right? I mean I'm the civil liberties lawyer who shows up to beat up on them. So, you know, I don't really have the ear of the billionaires. I never count out money and maximizing the amount of money that you can make as the driver for people who have devoted their lives to making money. But I really can't tell. And I do feel like they're in their own echo chamber now in a way that wasn't true before. And so they end up not understanding how they come off at a level that's pretty high and different than when I started out in this.

[Casey Newton]

I'm curious how you feel about it. You know, I remember in the early 2010s I found myself, you know, maybe somewhat embarrassingly carried away by some of the more grandiose pronouncements of these companies. You know, they were going to organize the world's information and make it universally useful and make the world more open and connected. And while, you know, that was always obviously self serving in some ways, I did talk to many employees who seemed sincerely moved by that mission and they did talk about it all the time. And so I took them to be at least somewhat sincere. I no longer take them to be sincere about that. And I wonder like, did you take them at the. There were back then and as the sort of truth emerged, how did you feel about it?

[Cindy Cohn]

I mean, I think it depends on who in Silicon Valley, honestly. I think when you're at the top of the companies, it's a whole different feeling than when you're in the middle. You know, EFF has 30,000 members. I would say the vast, I don't know, we, we are privacy organization. I don't know who those people are, but I think it's fair to say that must a lot of them are people who work in these companies who still want to be in the business of making cool stuff for the rest of us, connecting all the world's people. I mean we did that. The Internet connects all the world's people in a way that is still magnificent. So I think that the split isn't between, I mean you're in Silicon Valley as well, but to me it's not between tech and non tech, it's between the top of tech, which is much more like the billionaires in any other industry and disconnected from the rest of tech and we'll see, right? I mean, the AI founders have committed to a lot of things anthropic and, you know, the 80% they're going to give away and things like that. So, I mean, time will tell, right? Are they going to walk their talk or is it just talk and we'll just see? I mean, from EFF's perspective, again, again, if they walk their talk, we're there with them. And if they're not, we're the ones who are probably going to be on the other side of the V in the lawsuit.

[Kevin Roose]

Speaking of AI, there are many things to be concerned about from a privacy perspective when it comes to frontier AI systems. There's the risk of these things just becoming very charming and people entrusting them with private information and maybe the company's not being responsible safeguards of that information. There are concerns about mass domestic surveillance that could become more salient with models that are very capable of all of the risks to privacy and user sovereignty posed by AI. Which worries you the most?

[Cindy Cohn]

Oh, God, it's a race to the bottom, isn't it? But I would say it's not a surprise to us that the two hard lines that anthropic drew that got them in trouble with the Defense Department is mass domestic spying and autonomous weapons. Now, I don't know as much about autonomous weapons, but I've spent my career fighting mass domestic spying. And they're right. That will change the dynamic. It will change how democracy works. We need, I mean, this is part of the stuff I wrote about in my book, is that people with less power need privacy to have protection against people with more power. Power and mass surveillance supercharged by AI tends to make us a lot less powerful compared to the people who are going to know a lot about us. And that can really impact our ability to vote out the people who we don't think are leaders, control what policy and law affects all of us. The political economy questions will turn, I think, on whether we can stop mass surveillance. That's AI supercharged.

[Casey Newton]

Sketch out a bit. How AI? Yep. For folks who may have spent less time contemplating worst case scenarios.

[Cindy Cohn]

I know, I live there. Yeah.

[Casey Newton]

Can you sketch out for us a bit why AI makes surveillance particularly scary? Some folks might say, hey, I don't know, I'm already pretty scared of the FBI. You know, what do I care if they can read my chatgpt?

[Cindy Cohn]

Well, I mean, I think that. I think that we're living in a time where we're seeing that if you thought you weren't ever going to be a target of surveillance, that isn't a very safe bet anymore. Right. And, you know, I think the Dobbs decision, right, overturning Roe versus Wade suddenly made a lot of people who were engaged in reproductive assistance or needing reproductive help suddenly found themselves, themselves targeted by surveillance. We've got people who've gone to jail based upon their Facebook messages. So suddenly the capabilities of surveillance of people's online activities where they might have seemed completely innocuous and nothing that could ever be used against you is throwing your mom in jail. Right. That happened in Nebraska. And we are seeing the same things. You may not. You may be one of the few people who knows nobody with a green card, nobody with visa status, nobody's here on a student visa, nobody here is here with undocumented, and there's nobody who you love or care about who is impacted by the fact that the government has decided that those people are in the crosshairs or you don't want to stand with them or protest with them, which is, you know, people who were exercising their First Amendment right to, to monitor the police were the two people killed in Minnesota. So, like, even if you're none of them, I mean, you've got to start looking. These circles are getting closer and closer to all of us. And if you think that the people in power who have control of this massive surveillance stuff will just never happen upon you or anyone you love, I think you're kind of living in a dream world like. And that matters what your. No matter what your politics is, because if that, that's notif this administration isn't the one that bothers you when the administration change, it may. I mean, that's why right now Congress is debating renewing the big mass spying law, FISA section 702. And there is this combination of Ron Wyden and Jamie Raskin, people on the left and the Freedom Caucus, Andy Biggs and Rand Paul and Mike Lee, people who, who do not agree with each other very much are all saying, look, we think the FBI needs a warrant before it starts searching the mass spying databases for its targets. It's because I think those people on the far right realize that even if they're in power today, they may not be in power tomorrow. And it's better for all of us if we have due process and, and separation of powers kinds of things for mass surveillance.

[Satya Nadella]

Yeah.

[Casey Newton]

You brought up how immigrants to this country who are here on various different kinds of visas might find themselves subject to mass surveillance. And in fact, we just tell people who are applying for visas. Like, we are going to scan your social media. You must submit it. We are going to review the contents of your social media and judge it based on your protected First Amendment speech. Correct.

[Cindy Cohn]

That's one of our lawsuits. We're suing over that.

[Casey Newton]

So I want to talk about this because 10 or 15 years ago, this is something where I can imagine all of Silicon Valley standing up and saying, how dare you? This is outrageous. This is a clear violation of the First Amendment. They've been absolutely silent on this. Why?

[Cindy Cohn]

I don't know. I think you're at the New York Times. Would you go ask them for me? I really. I think they're afraid. I think that the administration, because they depend on HB1 visas, like it used to be. The only thing that Silicon Valley lobbied about was visas. Right. That, you know, the workforce is heavily, you know, immigration dependent. And I agree with you, they would have been standing up for, for this, and they're not. And, you know, I, I would argue it's because they're either cowed or they're in cahoots. Those are the two reasonable options.

[Casey Newton]

Counting cahoots, two of the worst places you can find yourself.

[Kevin Roose]

I think a lot of it, too, is that I don't think that there is a sense among just users of these platforms that privacy is a winnable fight anymore. I hear so much nihilism and fatalism about this. When I talk to people and they, you know, I'm, you know, asking them about their privacy practices and they're kind of like, well, that ship has sailed. Like, the government has all my data anyway. What is the point of trying to fight? I'm sure you get this, too.

[Cindy Cohn]

Yes.

[Kevin Roose]

What is your response to the privacy nihilist?

[Cindy Cohn]

I think there's a couple of things. One is that this idea that because your information's already out there, it's all over. Like, if you talk to people in intelligence or in. Or cops, they will tell you that old information has a. It's a very short shelf life. Right, Right. So your information isn't all out there because you're continuing to live your life. And so, yes, it would have been great if 10 years ago we had passed a comprehensive privacy law that included law enforcement as well as the commercial entities. That's the first best time. The second best time is today, because if we can begin to cut the knees out from under this massive data collection, the information will get less and less important and their ability to spy on us will get smaller and smaller. Never. I mean, if it were game over, they'd stop spying on us, right? Like, they're not like, oh, we're going to unplug the spying machine because we've got everything we need. Folks like that would be a different world than the one we're living in. So one of the things is, like, it's never game over. It's not game over. I mean, it's ultimately game over when you're not alive anymore, maybe. But as long as you're living, your data is valuable to. To the government and to the companies. And the minute we stop this business model, the better. The second thing I would argue is it's easy to say it's all over, and there's nothing I can do if they're not sweeping up your grandma in an immigration raid. But I think it's a bit of a denial or entitled position to think that you could not care and nothing, because what's going on there, and the nihilism is, I don't have to. I don't care about this. It feels like too big a fight. And nothing will really happen to me or anyone I love if I don't care about this. And I think we're living in a time where that's not a safe assumption anymore. We have to fight for our privacy.

[Casey Newton]

Folks like Sam Altman have advocated for a form of privilege when you talk to a chatbot. So if you were to ask chatgpt about a medical question, for example, Sam Altman says that information should not be sort of within the reach of law enforcement. Do you. Do you agree with that? And how much help would it do, do you think, if that were true?

[Cindy Cohn]

I mean, I think conceptually there ought to be privileged places in conversations with chatbot. I'm actually a little more interested in trying to not have the companies have all that information and trackable back to you. So I'm more interested in people who are developing ways that you can have a, you know, anonymity in your use of these things so that they don't have anything that they can reveal about you. And I think that's a better way to go than expecting them to stand up and protect us.

[Casey Newton]

Did something happen that damaged your trust in these companies?

[Cindy Cohn]

I mean, you know, it's an old video of the Facebook privacy promises, right? I mean, and I'm an old lady, right? I remember when Facebook came out, they. They were the privacy protective social network because they. And then you can see their terms of service shrink over time to what they're promising you about their privacy. And if Their promises to you are up against their business model. I think you know which one is going to win. And so they're now all committed to mass surveillance as a business model. And I think that means that. But we need to take some policy and legal actions to try to cut that off at the knees.

[Casey Newton]

I'd like to end by asking about one of the longest ongoing fights in the relationship that Kevin and I have, which is whether or not you should tweet. Kevin still tweets. I do not tweet. Recently, before you left Eff, you guys made the decision you were leaving. X. Tell us about that decision. And has it cost you anything?

[Cindy Cohn]

It was a long time coming because there are, you know, there's plenty of people who are still on the platform who care about their rights, and it's always a hard decision because we always want to be able to talk to people who care about rights. And there are plenty of people on that platform who do. I mean, there's a couple of things that happened. We saw our reach just shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. Right. I mean, there was just recently the picture of who has reach on the platform, and it's nobody. Who's talking about digital rights on your side.

[Kevin Roose]

Well, that's on you guys. Have you thought about posting more beheading videos or crypto scams?

[Cindy Cohn]

Exactly.

[Kevin Roose]

These things can really increase your reach.

[Cindy Cohn]

We also were seeing a lot of. I'm also an employer. We were seeing a lot of really abusive things going to my staff and people who we talked about in our posts who, you know, were standing up for lgbtq, and we would post something about that, those people would get abuse. And at some point, we just decided it wasn't worth the candle anymore, you know, and it makes me sad because, again, I know there are plenty of people on that platform who are not hateful, but they are stuck in a place where the fundamental dynamic is really awful. And, you know, at some point, you know, it kind of. I'm a free speech activist. Like, freedom of speech has to mean the right to leave. Like, the idea that we should be forced to speak in a place is fundamentally inconsistent with the value of freedom of speech, which includes your ability to decide where you speak in the first place. And it's. It kind of. I have a hard time with people who are like, you're a free speech organization, so you must post on this private platform. And I'm like, I. I don't think you know what free speech means. It means I get to decide who my audience is, and I'm sorry if you're hanging out in the Nazi bar and I can't, I decide that that's not where I want to speak. But again, I'm sad about it because there are a lot of people there, especially a lot of politicians and other people who like were trying to up stop 702. There's a, there's a lot of audiences that it would be better if they weren't all on that platform.

[Casey Newton]

Well, fascinating conversation, Cindy. Thank you so much.

[Kevin Roose]

You're a legend. Thank you.

[Cindy Cohn]

Thank you. Thank you so much.

[Casey Newton]

Thank you. That was awesome.

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[IBM AI Representative]

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[Kevin Roose]

Hard Fork is produced by Rachel Cohn and Whitney Jones. We're edited by Veren Pavic. We're fact checked by Caitlin Love. Today's show was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Original music by Alicia Beitup, Marian Lozano, Diane Wong, Rowan Nimisto, Alyssa Moxley and Dan Powell. Video production by Sawyer Roque, Jake Nichol and Chris Shop. Special thanks to the New York Times Live Event team who helped us put on Hard Fork Live this year. Hilary Coon, Beth Weinstein, Caitlin Roper, Chantal Regnier, Melissa Tripoli, Natalie Green, Kirsten Birmingham, Marissa Farinha, Jennifer Feeney, Morgan Singer, Dana Praskowski, Haley Duffy, Yenwei Liu, Matt Kaiser, Sarah Cheever, Johnny Marola, Victoria Kim and SV Productions. Thanks also to everyone at the Yerba Buena center for the the Arts and the Blue Shield of California Theater where we held the event. They were so fantastic to work with. And a special thanks to Paula Schumann, Puing Tam and Dalia Hadad. You can email us as always@hardforky times.com or show up at one of our events and throw tomatoes at us.

[Satya Nadella]

Sam.