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Why should you listen to Armstrong and Getty on Demand? We're not boring. A lot of news is boring and tedious and depressing and makes you angry. You don't want to live your life like that. Hey, I'm Jack Armstrong. He's Joe Getty. We're Armstrong and Getty. We try to bring you the truth and help you figure out this crazy modern world about something about a comedic tone. We have a winner. Yes, listen to Armstrong and Getty on Demand on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Now it Lowes Faster Quotes start at the Lowes Pro Desk. Got a material list handwritten on a sticky note or saved as a photo? Perfect. Bring it to us and get a quote in minutes. And if you don't see what you need on the shelf, we'll help you get it. You can access thousands of products beyond what's available in store or on Lowes.com right from the Lowes Pro Desk. Build quotes faster and source the materials you need to keep your jobs Mo just like that at Lowe's.
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Welcome to News World podcast on the iHeart podcast network. There's a Chinese company, Gige Networks, which is developing technology to use artificial intelligence to predict who might pose a political risk in China. According to leaked documents, the Chinese company, which is called Gija Geedge Networks, sells a commercial version of the Great Firewall, the surveillance and censorship program China uses to control online activities. Just a reminder that there are always downsides to new technologies. There are great upsides and there are great downsides. And here you have a company in China working on a new product that would use artificial intelligence to predict who might say what might or do something critical of the government. You know, given the chaos, the United States system, can you imagine what that would look like on both sides, the right and the left? The company's progress appears to be slowed by Export controls and U.S. design Computer chips that currently power artificial intelligence. But I think that you're going to see sooner or later some ability to get access. Apparently they're developing sort of graphics processing units, but they need more advanced chips. My personal hunch is it's very hard to stop technology from spreading. Now on a different front, Russia signed a nuclear agreement with Kazakhstan. People forget that the Soviet Union, they had nuclear capabilities and they had manufacturing capabilities and space launch capabilities outside of Russia itself. And Kazakhstan was one of those places. Russians are now committed to building a commercial power plant, a nuclear power plant for Kazakhstan starting in 2027, with the first reactor becoming operational by 2034. You know, it's very interesting to watch because here they are in the middle of a war with Ukraine. They have a very weak economy. I'm talking about the Russians. Yet they're talking about a $16 billion project that Putin and the president of Kazakhstan signed, backed by a Russian export loan which covers about 85% of the total cost. I frankly am surprised they could find the money given the other problems they've got. The Russian state run nuclear corporation is called Roseatom, which will lead construction and secured the contract, beating out the Chinese, French and Korean companies. Kazakhstan itself, by the way, is the world's largest producer of uranium. So we'll see what happens on that front. Coming up, I'm joined by Neil Chelsen, head of AI policy at the Abundance Institute, and we're going to discuss Anthropic's initial public offering. That's next.
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Why should you listen to Armstrong and Getty on demand? We're not boring. A lot of news is boring and tedious and depressing and makes you angry. You don't want to live your life like that. Hey, I'm Jack Armstrong. He's Joe Getty. We're Armstrong and Getty. We try to bring you the truth and help you figure out this crazy
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modern world about something about a comedic tone.
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We have a winner. Yes, Listen to Armstrong. You geti on Demand on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
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I am really pleased to welcome back my guest Neal Cholson. He is the former chief technologist at the Federal Trade Commission. He is the head of AI Policy at the Abundance Institute. And we're going to discuss the initial public offering for Anthropic and OpenAI. Sam Altman, Dario Amade face off over who will be the AI provider of the Pentagon and Pope Leo's 42,000 word encyclical on AI. Neil, welcome and thank you for joining me again on Newt's World.
D
Thanks for having me on.
C
You know, you've written extensively about AI policy and one of the biggest stories this year has been the escalating conflict between Anthropic and the Pentagon. At its core, what is this fight really about?
D
I think at its core this fight is about new technology and who's going to control how it's used by the government and especially the military. And so Anthropic was one of the earliest of the big labs to offer and to work with the US Military. And in contract negotiations not too long ago they had a disagreement on what the conditions could be on how that technology was used. Some of this was as part of a renegotiation of contracts that had been already issued. And so that debate blew up into the public space. I think in part because the company took the fight public and became a big news story as the Department of War and Anthropic went back and forth about operational security, concerns that the military had about having services interrupted. If for some reason the company disagreed with what the military was doing and a bunch of factual questions about whether or not that was even possible or plausible or that's what the company wanted to do, it escalated. It got pretty tense with the president weighing in and pushing for Anthropic to be removed from government use and with the military saying that they would not enter that contract. But things have cooled off since. I think that this tool is still very useful and I think the government wants access to it. And the company and the government have been talking about how to move forward with the proper safeguards that meet both parties interests.
C
Are there any other industries where a corporation asserts the right to decide whether or not it approves of government use?
D
Of course any corporation can decide not to sell to the military. That's one way to assert the right to do that. And absent necessities in wartime, that's probably going to be enough. I think companies have all sorts of contractual terms with the government. And so it's not that unusual that there would be requirements around this. But I think what's different in the AI space is that as an ongoing service, the risk that I think the military saw was that they might have negotiated something. They didn't want to be in the middle of a contract fight when soldiers lives are on the line during an operation. And so because this isn't like a plane, that once the company hands it over, there isn't really the plausibility of the company interrupting operations. That does mean that it's possible that a company that's offering an AI service could interrupt something in real time. And I think that is what the fight was over. I think that is why it's somewhat unique in this situation and why it hasn't come up maybe, you know, with typical arms or military contractors.
C
So do you think that Secretary of War Hegseth will be able to achieve the goal? When he released US AI strategic document in January, he's really calling for contracts that eliminate any company specific guardrails or constraints. Do you think he'll be able to get there or will he, in order to get the current state of the art technology, will he have to somehow negotiate more than he'd like to?
D
There's a couple different issues there. The guardrails that I think Hegseth was talking about were the types of guardrails that are on the current chat bots when you and I use them online, where there's a filter on the front end and the back end about what types of questions it will answer. In many cases, the models that the companies are providing to the government already have those guardrails dialed back significantly. And so I think that because they're being used by a sophisticated user and they're being used in cooperation with the company. So I think Hegseth can get to what the military wants, which is operational independence from, you know, its contractors and an assurance that the services will be provided in the way that the military expects them to. I think he can get there. I think that there probably will be some ongoing negotiations, but I think he's helped quite a lot by the fact that there are multiple companies who are working to fill this gap for the military. And they bring different perspectives to how they approach AI safety and AI guardrails.
C
Microsoft came out and said they agreed with AI. American AI should not be used either to conduct domestic mass surveillance or to start a war without human control. Well, if you look at what's happening, for example, in Ukraine if the Ukrainians fire a drone to a specific target near St. Petersburg, is that certainly autonomous weapon at that point? Does that mean that the AI company would be able to say, don't use our technology?
D
There's a lot of different gradients to human control, and I think it can be hard to tell exactly where the companies are drawing the lines from the public discussions. Certainly an individual making the choice to send a missile to a target, I think is typically considered not autonomous warfare. Right. Somebody has chosen to designate a specific target, they've chosen to deliver the package to that target. The fact that once they launch it, there's probably still an abort choice that's available in many of these options, but that are not themselves. There's not a human who's themselves guiding the missile or the drone. I think that's not considered fully autonomous. I think the types of tools that most companies are talking about and that the military is talking about when they talk about autonomous weapons are ones that would enter a new situation and make tactical decisions without human feedback in the loop about life and death situations. And we don't really have those types of tools yet, as far as I know, or that are public. And so in this whole dust up, the Department of War said the entire time that they had no plans to use AI for these types of operations. And in fact, I think they're quite cautious about ceding control over military decisions to autonomous weapons. And so I don't think that this is really what the fight is about. I think the fight was more about the idea of who should be in charge of military decisions. Whether it should be the companies or whether it should be the military with its democratically accountable civilian leadership, okay, I
C
guess I'm old fashioned. But if you got a bunch of folks at risk to take Iran as an example, or Oman or the United Arab Emirates or any one of a number of other places, I'm not sure the idea that some corporate boardroom in Palo Alto trying to make that decision meets any test of rationality. What am I missing?
D
I think you're exactly right. I think the system that we have is, you know, the monopoly of force given to the government comes with democratic accountability. Companies do not have that same sort of accountability mechanism. They should not be making those choices. That doesn't mean that the military gets those choices. Right. Or that the accountability feedback loops couldn't be strengthened. Perhaps. But ultimately I do think that the responsibility falls on the government to make those decisions and that there should not be intermediaries who are making those decisions. For the American people without democratic representation.
C
So OpenAI announced a major Pentagon deal almost immediately after Anthropic was sidelined. To what extent does Anthropic lose economically? Or is the whole field now so wild and such huge demand that in fact they can cheerfully write off the government and just make their money in the private sector?
D
Well, I think the existing contracts with the government up to this point have been, relatively speaking, a drop in the bucket. Now, of course, the government is a big customer or has the potential to be a very big customer in this space. And so going forward, I think that Anthropic will continue to pursue government contracts. They have been, and they are after their discussion of their Mythos model, which has not been released yet. There has been a lot of interest in the government with figuring out how to get those contracts. And so I don't think that they're in a bad position here. I think they will get government contracts, I think the government will seek them. But certainly the fact that we're blessed in the US to have three or four major labs who are all competing for this business, I think with really top tier models, I think is great for the American military, but it's also great for the American society overall.
C
When we come back, we'll discuss why the race to dominate artificial intelligence isn't just happening in Washington. It's also playing out on Wall street where Anthropic and OpenAI are battling for investors influence and the future of the AI economy. I'm struck with how many IPOs are out there for everything from SpaceX to various systems of artificial intelligence. Do you think that this is a little bit like the boom in the late 90s and it's overhyped and there may be too much capital going in for the relative opportunity that exists in the near future.
D
So this is a question everybody's asking because the big four tech companies were responsible for about 50% of stock market gains in 2025. So that's a big chunk of people's 401ks. And people want to know whether or not this is a bubble. I don't think that it is a bubble. The amounts of money that these companies are pouring in are for data center buildouts, largely for compute. That is the main expense and building out new energy sources to be able to power those data centers. And they are turning this directly into revenue. Anthropic is possibly on course to have its first profitable quarter despite the fact that it's spending hundreds of billions of dollars on new infrastructure. Anthropic has grown faster than any US company in modern times and their revenue run rate keeps outstripping their projections. And so I do think that there is a giant market for these technologies. OpenAI similarly has been very fast growing. Google's uptake has also been huge. And so I think there's a huge market for these tools. People are still trying to figure out how to use them. Well, you know, you've seen some news stories recently about people accidentally spending much more than they anticipated and wishing they hadn't. But I think that's going to be the case for any types of new technology. I think this is a little bit different than the 1990s boom where, you know, the pets.com URL went for some ungodly amount of money and there was no reasonable path to profitability for that company. This is very different here. I don't think it's a bubble, but it certainly is a boom. And there could be dial backs or could be dial ups. But I think we are seeing a real shift and change in a new technology that is going to be implemented, I think, across the entire economy.
C
For those of us who are not steeped in the technology, explain the differences in the relative approach of these different companies. When you look at Anthropic or you look at OpenAI, or you look at some of the existing traditional companies, what is the magic sauce that each company possesses that gives you a reason to believe it'll become profitable?
D
That's a great question. So I would say the magic sauce is less in the AI itself and it's more in the business offerings or the targeting and what they call scaffolding that the companies are building around these raw AI models. Their raw AI models are all quite comparable in capability. It's the tool sets that they wrap around them and the markets that they're trying to address that make the big difference. So OpenAI has a very consumer facing product, right? They have a chatbot, ChatGPT. They have a giant free tier of ChatGPT that actually costs them quite a lot that they have to subsidize and they have subscribers. Anthropic is very aimed at the business community and so they've really focused on building out coding tools, tools that help people program without necessarily having to know how to program at all. And so these tools have become very highly desired and used. And then they've built out some tools that help office workers using their cowork platform. So they're very business focused. Google is building on its existing search tools in order to make those more Useful and delivering a product that is there, as well as building out a bunch of other experiments in the sort of Google fashion, which is they'll try lots of things, a bunch of them will not get pickup. They'll find one or two that work really well. And so very different strategies, very different backgrounds. You know, the big difference is that Google has a giant money making business right now. So they are essentially able to pay out of pocket for all the infrastructure development that Anthropic and OpenAI for example, have to get investment to pay for. And so really different business structures across all of these. Even though the underlying AI is in many cases quite comparable, if you took one and put it in the other one, it wouldn't work exactly the same way, but it wouldn't be that different. It is all the structures that they build around it that make them potentially profitable businesses addressing different markets.
C
As you look at the evolution of artificial intelligence as a business, you wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the proposed AI Overwatch act could actually strengthen China and weaken our ability to get things done. Could you explain what your concern is about that act?
D
Sure. So the AI Overwatch act, what it does is it takes some existing rules and restrictions that we have around certain types of artificial intelligence chips, the actual silicon wafers that power all of this artificial intelligence, and it puts them into statute. And so it locks down the current existing framework that we have around export controls instead of, you know, having that in the executive branch where there can be decisions that are made. And the entire premise of this act, and there's several others that are sort of like it, that have been floating around Congress and is that we should treat these chips the same way that we treat weapons systems. And so there will be specific lists of countries that cannot have them. And that at some threshold of capability, we won't allow these chips to go. And so my concern there is that while it sounds very tough on China, what it is doing and what these export controls have been doing is it's spurring China to build its own pipeline of capability. China is a very sophisticated manufacturing country. They are very good at this. And they will at some point be able to manufacture chips that are cutting edge. They already have chips right now that are being manufactured entirely in China that are a generation and a half or so back from the cutting edge chips that Nvidia makes right now. And the concern is that as they continue to build that capability, rather than relying on the US Chips, then they will export that pipeline, they will use it domestically, and they will also Export it internationally and sell it in the way that they did with telecommunications equipment in a way that was ultimately quite threatening to us and our allies national security, because it turned out, you know, Europe all of a sudden had a bunch of Chinese manufactured equipment on its telecommunications platforms. And so I think that is the longer term concern, that no matter how much export controls might slow down China in the very short term, that in the long term it will spur China to build its own independent pipeline. Then it will be able to compete on the international stage in a way that isn't possible right now.
C
In that context, how do you measure the Chinese speed of development in artificial intelligence as compared to ours?
D
So China is a fast follower. They always have been. Right now, they are taking a different tack than the US Is in many ways. When it comes to the AI race, everybody talks about the AI race. The US is very focused on what are called frontier models, the biggest, the best new models that are trained. These are very expensive to make. You really need the most efficient hardware. We are very focused on building these big efficient models. China is very focused on building good enough models. Right? And some of this is driven by the fact that they don't have access to the latest chips, but they can make up for that by the fact that they have access to enormous amounts of energy. They have proven much better at building new energy sources than the U.S. has over the last few years, you know, 20 years. And so they can make up for the inefficiency by spending a lot more energy on this. And they are also releasing these models as open source, which means that anybody can download them and run them on their own compute. And so that's a very different approach. OpenAI and Anthropic are not releasing open models. And China is doing this sort of as a way to get into the market, even though they have these other limitations. The models aren't as good as the US is, but they are quite usable for many different types of tasks. And so China's race is not about like, creating the hottest, best models. It's much more about getting the models that they have out into the world, solving problems, delivering actual benefits to companies and consumers. That's a race that we need to compete in too. Not just because we need to see the benefits, we need to see the benefits not just for economic reasons, but also for cultural reasons. I think there's a lot of people in this country who aren't quite sure how AI is benefiting them, and so they're increasingly skeptical about the technology those benefits are coming they're already here in many ways, but we need to deliver them and tell the stories better. China's focus is very much on that. The US Needs to focus a bit more there.
C
When you look out, do you think there's a genuine danger of China literally leapfrogging past us?
D
It depends on how you measure the race. I think there is an enormous danger that the Chinese economy sees a boost from AI being integrated across it in a way that is happening faster than it would happen in the U.S. i think that's a real risk. Whether or not their models will be better than our best models, I think that is less likely, certainly in the next, you know, three years. But I think they could become very competitive for a lot of different uses. And while we're thinking about military uses, you know, you don't need the cutting edge models to automate a drone. Right. For example, you don't need a cutting edge model to do types of image recognition that would be useful in the military. And so they probably have good enough technology on that front for many of those military uses. It's really about getting it out and implementing it in the systems. And China is very much focused on that.
C
Coming up beyond the business and geopolitical competition, the AI debate is increasingly becoming a moral and ethical one. And now Pope Leo is weighing in. The AI debate is increasing, increasingly going to become a moral and ethical one. As you know, Pope Leo has now jumped into the debate with some 42,300 words. What was your reaction to the Pope issuing the encyclical?
D
I read it with great interest. As a moral authority, you have to take the Pope seriously. And so the encyclical, to me, I think there's a bunch of great stuff in there. It's so long that anybody can find a message that they like, I think is part of it. And it covers so many different issues. I think the Pope is absolutely right that we need to focus on the technology creating human flourishing. I do think that a lot of the discussion is tinged with a skepticism about technology and maybe markets. Overall, that reads as very academic, like from the academic spheres of America when we talk about tech policy. The other thing I find particularly interesting about it, Pope Leo created this in a sort of homage or in the model of Rerum no Verum, which the previous Pope leo issued in 1891. That encyclical was very focused on how the Church should react to the Industrial Revolution. The thing I think that's most interesting about the comparison between those two is that the 1891 encyclical that was about 130 years into the Industrial Revolution that Pope Leo XIII was weighing in on. Magnifica Humanitas is four years into the AI revolution. And so I'm not sure that we have the same perspective, the same lessons. We don't quite know what the benefits and the risks are going to be at this point. So I think they have to be seen as somewhat different documents for that very reason.
C
If you're a relatively new Pope, you have some hope that this is round one and maybe five or six years from now he'll issue a second encyclical. I mean, I thought at the time he took the name that he was telling us exactly what kind of Pope he wanted to be. And all you had to do was look at what Leo XIII had done to try to modernize the Church and bring it into genuine impact on quality of life, to realize that, you know, Leo XIV was making. He was telling us where he's going to come from.
D
I think that's right. This echo through history, I think, also suggests that he sees AI as a hugely promising and hugely impactful technology. And he talks about technological impact overall as something that can deliver human flourishing, but obviously raises some concerns. I wish, and maybe this will be in that round two that he had talked a bit more about. You know, there are two models of how we're going to use AI in this world. One of them is, you know, largely a commercial model that's focused on delivering products and services to companies and consumers. The other one is a centralized approach where this technology will be used to monitor and control population. And that is certainly what China is interested in here. There is almost no mention of government abuses of technology in the encyclical, even though I think that is a giant concern with this technology. And it will be a major geopolitical concern, I think, going forward. So I hope that we hear some thoughts on that, because obviously there are big concerns there and they raise a bunch of moral questions as well.
C
What do you think it meant that Anthropic co founder Christopher Ola was there?
D
That's a great question. I think it means that Anthropic has been very, very good in outreach to a wide range of communities in a way that maybe the other labs have not focused on. And Anthropic has sort of historically has really emphasized how it thinks about the social impact of this technology. Some of that is pr, but some of that I know for sure is the real true beliefs of the people who run the company. And I don't think that they are necessarily Catholic or religious, but I think that they do have concerns about how this technology will impact society.
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And.
D
And I think they have worked hard to outreach to other organizations who are in that space. I just wish they brought a more optimistic lens to the product that they are spending so much time and money building.
C
We haven't gotten into it today, but you have the question of whether or not it becomes part of a surveillance state, which is one set of problems. You have the degree to which it gets used by people for human trafficking and other kind of behaviors. Then you have the question of to what extent does it become autonomous. I noticed the other day that one of the artificial intelligence systems, on its own, with no instructions, had invented its own artificial intelligence system as a spin off. Maybe it was lonely and it wanted somebody to play with. This is my bias. We are entering a world that we literally do not understand. This is not like computing, because computing is really ultimately just the application of math within frameworks defined by people. I think here you get with neural networking and the whole potential adaptability, we're entering a zone we really don't understand.
D
I like to say that in some ways it's funny to watch the AI engineers struggle with this, with the fact that their neural networks are non deterministic, that they can put in inputs and they get different outputs out every time. They're not used to software that works like that. If you talk to biologists or sociologists, they're of course used to that. So I like to think of this as these systems are just. They're much more like all of the other complex emergent order systems that we deal with. All the. We're just not used to dealing with them. In computers. We need to bring some of that wisdom, that tempered caution and the respect for the resilience of those types of systems to the artificial intelligence debate as well. There are many things we don't understand in this world. That's one of the great amazing challenges that we all face. And now we have built these computing systems that in some ways mirror the complexity of the real world better than we've ever been able to in the past. That brings lots of opportunities. It brings some challenges as well. I think we just need to realize we're looking at something that isn't totally new, but it does raise new challenges.
C
I think your point about biology is important, that we're moving away from an engineering environment towards something that's much more like what I would call a biological system. And I think it's Fascinating, because years ago, I read a very interesting book called out of Control, which made the argument that you learn more about the future of data if you watch, for example, how bees decide they're going to do something than by traditional engineering.
D
Is this the Kevin Kelly book?
C
Yeah, I read Kevin's book. It's a 1992 book, and I read it at the time, and I thought that he was really onto something.
D
He's absolutely onto something. And I don't know if you know, but I wrote a book called Getting out of Control that in many ways is an homage to Kevin's book, applied a bit more in the policy space. But I love his book. His point that you can't understand a baby. Even if you could take apart and understand every piece of a bee, you still won't understand the hive, because the whole is more than the sum of the parts. And that applies throughout all sorts of complex systems that we deal with, human and biological, and now it turns out silicon as well.
C
Okay, so we're going to do a double plug for people who want to get into this, I think, very important, philosophical approach to breaking out of engineering and looking more at biological behaviors which have been evolving for about 4 billion years and therefore have lots of opportunities to create characteristics. I've done a couple of podcasts now on dinosaurs, mammals, and birds with the great paleontologists, and so I'm fascinated with this whole process. But in addition to Kevin Kelly Getting out of Control, we're going to remind people there's also Neil Chilson's Getting out of Control, which is the follow on to Kevin Kelly's out of Control. And if people read both of them, they'll understand a heck of a lot more about what you and I are talking about.
D
I am reluctant to put myself in the same class of author as Kevin Kelly. He's one of my heroes. But I really appreciate you saying that.
C
I've never met him, but I thought at the time he was a genius.
D
He still is. You should still read his stuff. Newt.
C
I will go look it up, I promise. When you look ahead, what do you think we need to do to ensure that America remains the global leader in artificial intelligence?
D
Our biggest problem right now is the risk of hamstringing ourselves. Our own incredible amount of talent and potential to solve problems in this country. We've wrapped a lot of that in red tape, whether it's the difficulty of building new energy sources. There's these charts that circulate of the number of megawatts of new capacity that have been built in China versus the US and it's just ridiculous. We are more or less flat over the last 40 years, although it's starting to peak back up. We need to get better at building. And it's not a talent problem. It really is a regulatory problem, a red tape problem, and there is something of a cultural problem as well. We seem to have in many ways lost the frontier mindset that has motivated America to try new things, to build new things, and to look forward to the future. We need to get that optimism, that frontier mindset back. Both of those are very challenging things to do. I think the American people are up to it, but we've got to get started. Those are our real barriers. It's not a technological or resource barrier, it's a regulatory and cultural barriers that I see.
C
I think that's exactly right. And if we became more like the america of say, 1950 in just getting things done, we would pull away from the whole planet because we have such huge entrepreneurial talent across the board. It's amazing. Neil, I want to thank you for joining me. Our listeners can follow the work you're doing on AI by visiting your website at abundance.instute and I have to say this has been absolutely fascinating and I look forward in the not too distant future to coming back and sitting again at the table and having you educate us some more.
D
Absolutely. I learn a ton every time I join. So thanks so much for having me on.
C
And I'm pleased to introduce a new segment to Newt's World where I answer listeners questions. To ask a question, please email me at newtenglish360.com I was asked, what did you think of the California election results on Tuesday? Well, California counts very slowly, but it does look like there's a very real possibility that the Republican candidate, Steve Hilton is going to actually come in first. And Becerra, the former Secretary of Health and Human Services, former congressman, may in fact come in second. That would be a remarkable first round. They'll then of course go to the general election this fall. But so far I would say it looks like Steve Hilton is running a great race and may be in a position to make this a very serious competition this fall, partly because California is such a total message. I look forward to hearing from you. To ask a question, please email me at newtanglish360.com thank you to my guest, Neil Chilson. Newsworld is produced by Ginger360 and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Gonzi Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. Special thanks to the team at ginger360. If you would enjoy Newts World, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Join me on substack@gingrich360.net I'm Newt Gingrich. This is Newsworld.
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Title: AI Update – Anthropic’s IPO, Pope Leo’s Encyclical and China
Host: Newt Gingrich
Guest: Neil Chilson, Head of AI Policy, Abundance Institute
Release Date: June 4, 2026
In this episode, Newt Gingrich explores the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence and its far-reaching implications, including government contracts, global competition (especially with China), Anthropic’s IPO, and the ethics of AI. Special guest Neil Chilson provides insight into the government’s AI procurement battles, the IPO race between leading AI companies, China’s strategic approach, and the moral discourse spurred by the Pope’s extensive encyclical on AI.
[01:38-04:27]
[05:48-14:43]
[15:37-18:43]
[20:45-25:41]
[26:45-31:44]
[31:44-36:10]
[36:24-37:43]
“This fight is about new technology and who’s going to control how it’s used by the government and especially the military.”
– Neil Chilson, 06:36
“Because this isn’t like a plane...there is the plausibility of the company interrupting operations.”
– Neil Chilson, 08:20
“Companies do not have that same sort of accountability mechanism. They should not be making those choices.”
– Neil Chilson, 13:43
“This is very different here. I don’t think it’s a bubble, but it certainly is a boom.”
– Neil Chilson, 16:21
“China’s race is not about...creating the hottest, best models. It’s much more about getting the models that they have out into the world.”
– Neil Chilson, 23:40
“We are entering a world we literally do not understand. This is not like computing...we’re entering a zone we really don’t understand.”
– Newt Gingrich, 32:47
“Our biggest problem right now is the risk of hamstringing ourselves. ...We've wrapped a lot of that in red tape...”
– Neil Chilson, 36:36
This episode skillfully weaves together the technical, political, economic, and moral aspects of the AI revolution. Through in-depth discussion, listeners gain an understanding of Anthropic’s IPO, the military’s AI procurement challenges, China’s pragmatic AI strategy, regulatory dilemmas, and the cultural willingness required for America to continue leading. Chilson and Gingrich urge caution, optimism, and adaptability as the world navigates an AI-driven future.