Casey Newton (12:05)

Hey, Tim. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Tim Miller (12:08)

Thank you for doing this. I've been wanting to do it for a while. There are two main issues I really want to focus on, which is the TikTok deal and whether society is going to continue to exist. Yep. Maybe we'll do the TikTok tech deal first, because it's a little bit easier to get our hands around, and then we'll go into AI and all the ancillary issues, cultural and political, related to that. You wrote this. And the deal was not quite finalized when you wrote this, so maybe we've learned a little more since then. But for Platform, which is a great newsletter for folks who are trying to get their tech news outside the corporate media, you wrote this. What we do know about the deal currently taking shape with TikTok is that it is very strange. The deal is very different from many previous cases where the US Government has forced a Chinese company to divest, such as when they did so with Grindr in 2020, something you're very familiar with. There are a lot of ways in which it's very strange, which you laid out. But I'm wondering if it looks as strange now, here, October 7th, as it did September 22nd to you.

Casey Newton (13:03)

Oh, sure. I mean, we've just never seen anything like this.

Tim Miller (13:07)

Right.

Casey Newton (13:08)

You have to remember that Congress passes a law in the Biden administration that says, hey, you gotta get rid of this thing, and we're sort of in the window for it to be forced to either shut down in the United States or be spun out. And it actually goes dark, right, for like a day. And then Trump becomes the president, and on his first day, he says, I'm going to ignore this law that was passed by Congress and uphold by the Supreme Court. And I'm just going to issue a series of extra constitutional delays until I get what I want. And it was, in my view, sort of like the first sign that this presidency was going to look very different than his first one.

Tim Miller (13:41)

Extremely lawless. Among the other things that are different. We can kind of go through that are strange. The main one, the one that I was like, I have to get Casey or somebody on to talk about this is just the actual details of the deal itself. So as you wrote in the newsletter, it's a giveaway to allies. Larry Ellison. I want to talk more about Andreessen Horowitz. I'm going to talk a little bit more about Mark Andreessen. The Murdochs are involved. Apparently the valuation of TikTok ended up being 14 billion. Yeah. In that article you wrote, the valuation of ByteDance, the Chinese parent company, is 400 billion. And so it sure seems like Larry Ellison and Marc Andreessen and Lachlan Murdoch and whoever else is in on this deal got like the deal of the century here.

Casey Newton (14:26)

Absolutely. And we should say that detail has still not been confirmed. We're sort of still waiting for the final details of the deal to be released. But certainly if the sale were to happen at that price, and it would be an absolutely ridiculous discount. Now you can imagine Trump on the other end saying, well, look, if you don't take this deal, I'm just making the app shut down and then everyone loses all of their money. So, you know, Trump here is able to use his authoritarian impulses to get everything he wants, and no one else really has that much leverage over him.

Tim Miller (14:54)

That's a fake bluff, though. Did market. Was Anderson Horowitz and Larry Ellison really worried about that with all the back channels they've got with Donald Trump?

Casey Newton (15:03)

Well, I think what I'm saying is, I think that it was ByteDance that could be made to worry. And Trump is sort of saying, look, I want to. I want this for these people and you're going to give it to them at a really great price.

Tim Miller (15:14)

Yeah, the really great price, almost. Let's just explain to people how much of a really great price it is. And that's about what the evaluation of Snapchat is equivalent, essentially, if ByteDance is worth 400 billion in theory. And again, we don't know what all the rules of the deal making are going to be, et cetera. But in theory, Andreessen Horowitz, whatever percentage of that 14 billion they get, they could resell a percentage of that in a year at like 500%, 600%. I mean, like, it's an unimaginable. It's theft. It's just. I mean, it's just cold theft out in the open.

Casey Newton (15:51)

Absolutely. I mean, I really have very little to add beyond it, because it really is just exactly what it looks like.

Tim Miller (15:57)

You wrote in the piece, what do we think China is getting out of this?

Casey Newton (16:01)

Yeah.

Tim Miller (16:01)

And that question still kind of remains unclear. Right. Have we learned anything in the last three weeks about what we think China is? Why?

Casey Newton (16:11)

The speculation that I hear is that China basically just feels like it has bigger fish to fry, that it wants a comprehensive trade deal and that ultimately, believe it or not, it doesn't care that much about a social media app where people do funny little dances, which is sort of counterintuitive for some Americans because of course in America what we've been told by Congress is, is that TikTok is a Chinese superweapon and sort of their most important strategic asset to undermine the United States. And so how could they ever give it away? I think it turns out that China is probably more concerned about maintaining some sort of trade balance and not having massive tariffs on their goods.

Tim Miller (16:48)

What is that? Do we know what the actual algorithm deal is at this point? Like control of the algorithm? And maybe that might inform China's lack of concern somewhat.

Casey Newton (16:59)

Yes. So the idea is that the recommendation algorithm is essentially going to be kind of cloned and then given to the US based entity. Oracle is going to kind of drive the technical implementation of this. And then we believe that they're essentially going to kind of like start from scratch using Americans data. Maybe they have some American data that they can already use in this regard. But we'll sort of create a new Super Patriotic USA USA TikTok recommendation algorithm without any corrupting Chinese influence. But importantly, the new entity will lease that algorithm from ByteDance. So ByteDance will get ongoing payments. What's not clear to me is are they going to sort of give it regular updates as they find ever more sinister ways to capture all of our time and attention? That part I don't know.

Tim Miller (17:50)

Yeah, I mean, this is the thing that is a little unsatisfying about all of that, about the Chinese not feeling like it's a weapon that was useful to them because we have the Prime Minister of Israel. I'm sure you saw this Bibi Netanyahu the other week. I want to play this clip. This is like one of those I can't believe you said it out loud things. And I was like, I had to double check. I was like, this is not an. This is not a deep, we'll get into AI deep fakes in a second. I was like, this is not a deep fake. Right? Like an anti Semitic deep fake trying to claim that the Jews are behind everything. But no, this is the Actual prime minister of Israel. And I would like to play it. You can't fight today with swords. That doesn't work very well. But we have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefields in which we're engaged. And the most important ones are on social media. The most important purchase that is going on right now is class. TikTok. TikTok number one. Number one. And I hope it goes through because it's, it can be consequential. TikTok is going to be the most important weapon. He wants the deal to go through and he seems to think that if the deal goes through, the people in charge of the algorithm will be favorable to him. I mean, I don't know how else to interpret that. Right.

Casey Newton (19:09)

Well, it's important to remember that when Congress passed the law that forced the spin out, a lot of members of Congress were concerned that there was too much pro Palestinian speech on the app. That was one reason that they gave while debating the bill, that, which was also something that made the First Amendment scholars say, hey, wait a minute, are we like, like publishing a speech based restriction? You know, but anyway, that turned out not to matter.

Tim Miller (19:34)

Mitt Romney said that, I remember actually just out loud, like it was one of the things. It was one of his stated reasons.

Casey Newton (19:38)

But there, you know, there is a sense and you know, I mean I do believe that social media helps to shape perception and I'm sure there has been a lot of pro Palestine content on TikTok. The idea that it's the most important weapon in a war seems strange to me.

Tim Miller (19:52)

I mean, it seems strange to me too. But Benjamin Netanyahu thinks it is.

Casey Newton (19:56)

Yeah, yeah.

Tim Miller (19:57)

I mean that is where like all of the mystery part of the deal just. And I hate, I'm like, I'm like the always sunny in Philadelphia guy right now with my, with you know, my string and the pictures. But it's like, so these billionaires that are really close to Donald Trump get the deal of a lifetime with the TikTok algorithm. Bibi Netanyahu and Israel is extremely excited about that. Trump's donors are extremely excited about it. They see it as a political, a useful political weapon. And it seems to me they intend to use it as such. Maybe they'll be bad at it. Right? Like, maybe they won't successfully manipulate the algorithm and it's not as easy as it seems. And what, like, you know, the world is complicated, but like they think that they are going to use this to manipulate the country. Yeah.

Casey Newton (20:44)

And I mean, I think you can slot it in to the broader right wing takeover of big media. Right. Like, I think you can draw a through line here from what's going on with, you know, Jimmy Kimmel and CBS News and everything else. The idea is let's put Trump allies in charge of all of the big institutions. TikTok is a big institution now, as it so happens. I think it's much easier to manipulate like a broadcast network newsroom where you have to like answer to Brendan Carr when he, you know, emails you 10 times a day than it is to change a social media algorithm such that one piece of content gets higher reach than another. But it's not impossible and we should absolutely keep an eye on it.

Tim Miller (21:25)

Yeah, it's kind of interesting. I was like, what do you make? Have you even been covering Larry Ellison? The Larry Ellison thing is so strange because Oracle was obviously an influential. They made a ton of money and influential tech. It's kind of like an old tech company. Right. And as you and I have been coming up and you've been covering this stuff, it's not like you've been on the Oracle beat, really. There's not been a lot of Oracle news. And Larry Ellison seemed happy to like sail and be in America's cup and all of a sudden he's like taking over a broadcast network, taking over the most important, like what social media app, like what, what do you think is happening there?

Casey Newton (21:58)

It's so true. The last time that I was covering Larry Ellison, it was when he cheated to win the America's cup race. And that sort of like cemented a certain vision of him in my mind of like, you know, but he is kind of.

Tim Miller (22:09)

I don't remember that story. How, how did he cheat?

Casey Newton (22:11)

Oh, there's a whole book about it. You know, I can't remember the exact ways, but it's kind of like cheating in baseball. You know, you like, you sand down var or something and people are always like cheating at these races and it's like sort of how the billionaires entertain themselves.

Tim Miller (22:23)

But so he was like this Lance Armstrong of sailing. Yeah, he was doping.

Casey Newton (22:28)

Yeah, he was boat doping.

Tim Miller (22:30)

Okay.

Casey Newton (22:31)

But you know, all along he has had Oracle, which as you point out, is this like extremely boring company. It's like made him enough money that he was able to buy up like huge parts of Hawaii just to sort of chill at. But then the AI boom comes along and all of a sudden there's so much value that is inside this what, what turns out to be AI infrastructure. Right. And so he now has tens and hundreds of millions of dollars at his disposal. And he also happens to be a Trump donor. And so this just puts him in a position of great power.

Tim Miller (22:59)

So this is just. He's got liquid, basically.

Casey Newton (23:01)

Yes, he's. He is extremely liquid. Although, as we pointed out, he's not going to need to be that liquid to buy TikTok.

Tim Miller (23:07)

It feels like they obviously have an ideological agenda. Like, what exactly that is, you know what I mean? Like, I genuinely don't know. Like, this is one of those things. I kind of feel myself sounding like Tucker Carlson just asking questions like, I'm not doing that. Like, I don't know, is it a pro Israel agenda? Is it pro AI regulation that they're worried about? Is it just, I want to keep the woke libs out of power? Is it, like, is it something else? Do you have any sense for that?

Casey Newton (23:30)

Well, we know that the TikTok has gotten Trump's attention a couple of times. One was during the 2020 election when there was something involving, like, of a rally of his being, like, poorly attended that seemed to make him, like, really, really mad. And, you know, I believe there was some speculation at the time maybe this is one reason why he wants to yank this app out of China's hands. Then when he wins the 2024 election, he sees TikTok as something that was, like, very useful to him. And so I think this makes him interested in, like, okay, like, how can I sort of, you know, press my advantage there and ensure that it continues to be, you know, really helpful to me in that regard.

Tim Miller (24:08)

Yeah, but for Alison, you think it's just. That's just it. It's trumpy partisan stuff. Well, you know, old man, relevant. I.

Casey Newton (24:15)

My sense is that late in life, Ellison has seen an opportunity for himself to become a kind of other Murdoch. Right. With his son, David Ellison has taken over Paramount, Warner Brothers. Right. Like vast swaths of the U.S. media and entertainment infrastructure are, like, consolidating within the Ellison family. And I assume that they're doing it for the reasons that everyone else would, which is money and power.

Tim Miller (24:38)

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Casey Newton (26:33)

Yeah, I mean this is like one of my favorite subjects. Could talk about it for a long time. I think there are several things, you know, one is that and he has said like he just didn't get what he wanted out of Democrats. Like he wanted this to be a transactional relationship where he would make donations, they would do what he wanted, and that he would say thank you and they would move on. But that's not what happened. Even though they continued to donate to Democrats throughout the Biden presidency, Biden continued to hate big Tech. In particular, he hated crypto, where Andreessen had made billions and billions of dollars worth of investments.

Tim Miller (27:01)

I mean, Joe Biden didn't know what crypto was. His administration, absolutely administration had a couple.

Casey Newton (27:05)

Of people don't tell him he's been through enough. He's been through enough.

Tim Miller (27:08)

Gensler hated crypto. There's one person that hated crypto in the administration, basically.

Casey Newton (27:13)

But it had a huge effect, right, which is that all of these crypto startups can't get off the ground. So now, you know, Mark is on the hook for billions of dollars. And he, like, did a podcast with Ben Horowitz, his partner, where he said that, you know, basically their feeling was like, Biden has suspended the rule of law when it comes to crypto. And so in order to, like, defend American values, like, we have to elect this Republican. So that I think that is, like, kind of the bulk of it. I also think he emerged, like, very different from the pandemic. Like, he seemed quite unhinged after the pandemic. I think that also radicalized him. But, yeah, those are some of the factors.

Tim Miller (27:43)

Do we know what he wants now? I guess it's just kind of an important question what these people want now. And Larry Ellison, Mark Andreessen, Murdochs, and I think the Murdochs ration the Murdochs. It's a little bit more straight and clear because we have 30 years of evidence about what the Murdochs are interested in. But if these guys are going to control TikTok, I don't know. What do we think, Andreessen Horowitz? Maybe it's just money for them. Like, honestly, it's just a good deal. I don't know.

Casey Newton (28:05)

I think crony capitalism is very appealing to them. These are rich people who are used to just paying for what they want. And if Donald Trump says, pay this price and you can get this thing, that's the kind of person they want to deal with.

Tim Miller (28:15)

So take us to actual policy. And one thing it seems like they want, policy wise, is essentially complete deregulation of crypto. And I, I don't know if you would agree with that, but AI is. I want to talk about AI more broadly. But what, like, from just a regulatory policy structure, they basically just want to let the animal spirits of the free market become unleashed and they want the government off their back. Maybe they want to fund some energy resources for them that they can use. Right?

Casey Newton (28:45)

Yeah, yeah. Andreessen has written this essay where he writes about what he calls the enemy of progress. And it includes basically anyone who has ever advocated for content, moderation, trust and safety. Just being careful. In general. He views all of this as a sort of like, namby, pamby, bedwetter way to run the government. And what we actually need to do is to build, build, build and let the chips fall where they may.

Tim Miller (29:06)

I have a question to those guys. Do you think, like, if you had a panel of them. You talked to all of them more than me. If you had a panel of them and you were just like, okay, here we are in 2025. Do you think we did a good job with social media regulation? What do you think they would say? Do you think they would say the government was too involved or not involved enough?

Casey Newton (29:27)

I mean, the thing is, there has not been that much social media regulation.

Tim Miller (29:32)

Right.

Casey Newton (29:32)

Like, there was. There was some jawboning which made some conservatives really, really upset. And in some cases, for justified reasons.

Rush Song Vocalist (29:38)

Right.

Casey Newton (29:38)

But it wasn't as if there was this, you know, huge, like, sweeping set of regulations that all the social media companies now have to pay attention to. And I think that thrilled, for example, Marc Andreessen, who sits on the board of Meta and which, you know, profited handsomely from the fact that there was no real reg.

Tim Miller (29:52)

And social media has been. I guess this is my point. I feel like these are objective sentences. They're opinions, but they're objective. Social media has been completely and shittified over the last 20 years. It did not achieve the stated goals that the founders of these companies said achieve some of them, but it did not achieve the cultural goals that they set out. There was no meaningful regulation of them. And so maybe we should look back at that and do things differently next time. But that doesn't seem to be a vote. They don't. I guess they don't think that. Or do they? I don't know. Are they happy? Is Mark. Are they happy with the Meta product suites right now, Killing it with the Facebook?

Casey Newton (30:35)

I don't know. I mean, I don't see Marc Andreessen posting a lot on Facebook or Instagram. Those. Maybe that's just sort of not his medium. He's like more of a YouTube guy, I guess. But, you know, I don't know how happy they are. I mean, to me, it seems very clear that the right in particular has benefited massively from social media because it took a lot of what used to be fringe views and just allowed them to accelerate into the mainstream and to make some of the people who held those extreme views some of the biggest stars of the party and sort of, you know, reorient everything around them. So to that extent, it's been a huge success. But of course, they've spent the entire time complaining that they're being censored and, you know, no one is being given them a fair shake.

Tim Miller (31:13)

So that's so frustrating. I think that it's important to update your priors when you see things that happen. And so this is why I kind of asked this same question to all the tech people that come on. Because it just seems so obvious to me. I was very tech optimist. I was south by southwest tech nerd, moved to the Bay. It's not like you and part of being a product junkie, but I liked getting my new toys and trying them out and was an early adopter of all the social medias. And I just think that objectively we fucked it up. And now I look to this AI situation where all these new products are coming. I listen to the same Altman interviews and I feel like a person taking crazy pills. I'm just like, we've learned nothing. We fucked all these apps up and we're starting this new thing and people are like, let's just do the same. Let's just do the same thing again, basically, but with even more powerful tools. Is that, is that wrong to you?

Casey Newton (32:08)

I share that concern. I suspect these things will play out somewhat differently. In my view. The trouble with social media is that recommendation algorithms tend to push people toward the most divisive or sort of like borderline inoffensive or wrong stuff imaginable or that can be permitted on the platform. Because that is what is going to get you to keep coming back and looking at more. The platforms deny this, by the way, but like open up an app, you're going to see stuff that feels pretty weird and sort of unlike the border of propriety. Right. AI isn't really going to work like that. ChatGPT isn't going to try to titillate you every time you go to the homepage. What AI can do though, is to get to know you really, really well and to create a sort of ever more personalized feed for you. And the whole way it is going to tell you a genius almost no matter what you tell it. Right? And these are some of the factors that really worry me about AI. I think it has a sort of similarly worrisome effect on our collective mental health. But I do think it's going to be different than the sort of like rage bait social media phenomenon.

Tim Miller (33:07)

I'm glad you mentioned that. Something I saw this week that I want to pull up. There's the new again, talking about my change in behavior. 20 year old Tim, 25 year old Tim would have been really excited to try out all the new AI wearables. Oh yeah, I'm now seeing the AI wearables and they make me deeply fearful for the future of the human race. I want to play this. This is a Guy, I think he's 22. He's created a wearable. It's like a medallion you wear around your neck and it's your AI friend. I think it's called friend. And here he is explaining it.

AI Wearable Creator (33:40)

I think the closest relationship that I would describe talking to an AI like this to is honestly like God in a way. Like, I'm not particularly religious, but I think it is similarly an omnipresent entity that you talk to with no judgment. That's this, like, super intelligent, you know, being that's always there with you, yada, yada, yada.

Tim Miller (33:58)

Right.

AI Wearable Creator (33:59)

And that's, I think, the most impactful thing of Talking to these AIs is that you don't have these feelings of judgment. Even if you have a therapist, you talk to them, you still hold your words back a little bit. You just do.

Tim Miller (34:12)

So you're going to have a wearable God that knows everything about you and doesn't judge you, that you're going to get to keep with you at all times. That seems like that might create some pitfalls for me. I don't know.

Casey Newton (34:24)

It does. I'm glad you played that clip, though, because I do think it is fair to characterize the AI building labs of Silicon Valley as religious movements. Like, they really do think that they are building something akin to a machine God. And they're doing it kind of because they want to just sort of see what happens after. Right. They'll tell you we think this can be massively beneficial to people. I still hold out the possibility that it can, but it also just seems obvious it's going to accelerate a lot of harm, such as, you know, by driving people into delusions and other terrible.

Tim Miller (34:53)

Outcomes and removing them from society. Why be in society if you have an AI God friend like Medallion? You know, it increases isolation. Also, do you want somebody to know every single thing about you? Do you? I don't. I don't know. I don't know if we want to have the microphone on at all times. I think having some private thoughts are okay, actually. Your point on the religious thing with. I want to talk about Sam Altman a bit. I've been consuming an unhealthy amount of Sam Altman interviews. He's doing a lot of. Why is he doing so many interviews?

Casey Newton (35:22)

Do you think it's a good question. I think he sees himself right now as AI's diplomat in chief, and that serves him in a number of ways. Among other things, it's helping him build up this massive supply chain of data centers and Energy that he needs to realize all of his vision. So he's sort of on this globetrotting tour to gin up support for his project.

Tim Miller (35:43)

This is going to sound really rude, and I know that you need to have sources at OpenAI, so feel free to object to this. But if a person believes that they are the messiah or that they are ushering a God into existence, something that will save humanity or advance humanity to its next stage, then you don't really need to question the intermediate steps that you're making to get there. Right? You don't need to reflect on whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, that there's some people out there that are made suicidal by OpenAI or that there are this problem or that problem, because the greater good, the resurrection, is coming in the future. When I listen to all these interviews, that's kind of what I sense, that that is his view. Maybe he wouldn't put it that way, but what do you think about that?

Casey Newton (36:35)

He wouldn't put it that way. I think his approach has been to sort of put some tool out there, see what the reaction is, and then like, calibrate accordingly. So it's kind of this like, ready, fire, aim approach. So, for example, with Sora, their new AI video generating app, people download it, they realize, wow, there's a lot of copyright violations in this thing. I can put Tim in spongebob. That's hilarious. And after a bunch of people are like, hey, what about copyright? Sam puts up a blog post. It's like, after hearing from our valued users, we have decided to implement controls.

Tim Miller (37:07)

Okay, so that's better than doing nothing.

Casey Newton (37:09)

I guess it's better than doing nothing. And for now, it's fine. I think the question becomes, well, if AI systems become really powerful, do we still want to use this ready, fire, aim approach to releasing the into the world?

Tim Miller (37:20)

Here's maybe a more specific example of why I'm getting the messiah concerns. He was talking to Tucker. I would never recommend a Tucker interview just because you hate to give him the clicks. But it's a truly fascinating interview, at least among them, because Tucker accused him of murder halfway through. And they do 20 minutes on that. I don't want to get into all that. But the end, the very end, which I haven't actually seen clipped that much, is a thing that gave me the most alarm. And I want to play. It's a little bit long, but it's worth listening to. All of it. Tucker asking Altman about the protections that people are going to have to put in place about not knowing what's real and fake.

Sam Altman (37:59)

Let me ask you one last question, and maybe you can allay this fear that the power of the technology will make it difficult, impossible for anyone to discern the difference between reality and fantasy. This is a famous concern. A few thoughts there. One, I think we are rapidly heading to a world where people understand that if you get a phone call from someone that sounds like your kid or your parent, or if you see an image that looks real, you have to really have some way to verify that you're not being scammed. And this is not like, this is no longer theoretical concern. You know, you hear all these reports at all.

Tim Miller (38:34)

Yeah.

Sam Altman (38:35)

People are smart. Society is resilient. I think people are quickly understanding that this is now a thing that bad actors are using and people are understanding that you got to verify in different ways. I suspect that in addition to things like family members having code words they use in crisis situations, we'll see things like when a president of a country has to issue an urgent message, they cryptographically sign it or otherwise somehow guarantee its authenticity.

Tim Miller (39:03)

Families are going to need a code word. People are smart. Societies are resilient. Again, it's like, has he lived in our society for the last 20 years? I look on Twitter and the worst AI slump imaginable has 20,000 retweets and people replying to it, mad about it, or saying how cool it is. The idea that people are just going to adapt to this like this, and your 80 year old great aunt is going to have a code word that she knows that you say it's like dingo before you call her to ask for a check. Like, that's fucking insane. Like, that is an insane thing to believe that like Trump would put a watermark, a cryptographic watermark on his proclamations. Like, are you watching what he's doing now? Does that not. Did you not listen to that and think this sounds like an insane person?

Casey Newton (39:54)

I mean, I think he's right.

Tim Miller (39:56)

You do?

Casey Newton (39:57)

I do. I think you think families are gonna.

Tim Miller (39:59)

Have a code word so that when somebody calls their phone and gives them the Nigerian prince thing, they're gonna know. It's, they're going to know it's, it's, it's not real.

Casey Newton (40:10)

I think, I think it's a good practice. Like, I think that. And this is, you know, long.

Tim Miller (40:14)

It's going to actually be like the top 10% of society is capable of doing this. Like, this was my fight with Mark Cuban over where he was talking about like, oh, it's going to be so cool. People can be entrepreneurial on their own. I was like, yeah, the top 10% of most capable people in society will use this for really cool things. But like average people, you know, like my neighbor Ms. Shirley, she's a 90 year old woman, she's lived here since the 1940s. You're telling me that she's going to be able to know the difference between a phone call, whether it's really her son or not? There's no way.

Casey Newton (40:44)

What I am saying is that the risks created by products made by people, including Sam, require this sort of response. And to your point, yes, many people are not going to do this and they're going to fall prey to scams. And I think that is really bad. But do I think it's silly to have a code word at your house?

Tim Miller (40:59)

No, I also don't think it's silly. I think it's silly for the creator of the product to be like, my product is gonna create all these problems. Like as a result of my product, you are gonna get the scammed. People are going to steal your money, they're going to steal your identity. You're not going to know what's true and what is fiction. And my suggestion to you is that you have a family code word dingo that you use every time you answer the phone now. And it's kind of like what that is your suggestion. You don't, shouldn't, you, shouldn't your fucking supercomputer come up with a solution that's better than this?

Casey Newton (41:31)

It's not like an adequate response to the magnitude of a heart attack.

Tim Miller (41:36)

I'm alarmed, I'm alarmed. I don't like. Do you think that people are gonna be able to tell what's real and what's not in the news?

Casey Newton (41:43)

I think that we're in for a messy period where we have to figure that out. I'll tell you what an optimist would say is like, Photoshop exists, bro. You know, and we had a moment where we were like, is that real or fake? And like, we mostly figured out the cases in which it was really important to know what was real or fake. And it turns out in the vast majority of cases it doesn't matter if someone use Photoshop now. Maybe the advent of AI generated video will just sort of make all the problems exponentially worse. And I think we should be on guard for that. But like, we do have previous instances of society adapting to a new technology.

Tim Miller (42:17)

I hear that and I've heard that argument. Let me give you, the pessimist pushback. And again, this is. You're just representing the optimist view. I know you're. You're just following this stuff closer than me, so I'm hoping for you to allay some of my concerns. My pessimist view is that at the same time, these people, Sam and all these others are saying that this supercomputer is going to end disease, it's going to solve all these problems, it's going to become so smart that you're going to be able to ask it for advice, and it will give you advice, and you should listen to it, even if it doesn't seem logical, because it's going to be able to see around corners that you can't see. So simultaneously, the supercomputer is that smart and that good. Okay. Also, this is really just the same as, like, when the printing press was invented, and people back then thought that, you know, that it was going to be bad, that they were going to read fake stories and not know whether they were true or false. And I'm just like, it can't be both. Like, it can't be the same as these other societal advancements, you know, and so easily easy for humans to process and adjust to over a period of time. And also a brilliant supercomputer that can solve the mysteries of the universe that no human's ever been able to solve before. Right. Like, isn't there a tension there?

Casey Newton (43:36)

You don't think both things can be true?

Tim Miller (43:37)

I do not. I don't think that the supercomputer can be so smart and brilliant that it's going to solve diseases and be able to give you advice and look around corners and know things that humans can't know. And also the human ability for adaptability is going to be so strong that we're not going to be tricked by. Seems like we're going to be tricked by it. It seems like pret. Everybody's gonna. Except for maybe Sam Altman and a few. A few people, you know, at the very high end of the Stanford graduating class are gonna be tricked by this really smart computer to me. Is that wrong?

Casey Newton (44:12)

Yeah, I mean, that's. That's one way of looking at it.

Tim Miller (44:14)

That.

Casey Newton (44:14)

That could totally be true. You know, I. I feel like what you're describing, though, is a dynamic that you often just see in cybersecurity where, like, everything is a cat and mouse game, and defenders build walls and attackers build ladders, and then defenders build higher walls, and the cycle just kind of goes on forever.

Tim Miller (44:30)

Who Are though of the truth, I guess, us.

Casey Newton (44:32)

It's literally you and me. And that's the scary part.

Tim Miller (44:35)

We went to a lunch. It is scary. I was at a lunch with you probably. I think the last time I saw you, it was like one of these media literacy things in San Francisco. And I just kind of like think back on that, I don't know, say three years ago, and it feels like it could have been a hundred, you know, like the types of concerns that we were talking about. It was in the lead up to the 24 election, I think, and like how media companies can combat fake news and misinformation. And I don't remember exactly what suggestions we had, you and I, and our brilliance had for the assembled at that lunch, but I know that they are not nearly up for the task of what's happening right now. And it's changing really fast, right?

Casey Newton (45:15)

Yeah.

Tim Miller (45:17)

To me, that's the thing that worries me. I'm open to the fact that AI is going to be really great for the sciences and for all these other areas that I don't know much about. But in my area that I know a lot about, I'm looking at this and I'm like, I think it's going to be a catastrophe of unimagined proportions. I don't think that anyone's going to know what's real anymore.

Casey Newton (45:33)

This is the risk, and it is a real risk. I mean, I'm glad you're talking about in those terms because I think there is a strain of skepticism out there which hates AI for a different reason, which is that it thinks it's all just a bunch of stupid hype and it's fake and none of it works and it hallucinates.

Tim Miller (45:46)

What do you think about that?

Casey Newton (45:47)

I think it's desperate cope from people who don't want to reckon with the fact that we might actually be heading into catastrophe.

Tim Miller (45:52)

You do think it's cope because, I don't know, there's like a 10% of me that, like, I've read that. Who's the guy? Gary is the guy. Twitter is the. Yeah, Gary's the point man for. If Sam is the diplomat for AI, Gary's the, you know, arguing for the fact that this is all fake and these guys are false snake oil salesmen and it's barely anything. I'm open to that, I guess. I don't know. I think that seems less likely than my catastrophizing it's too good situation. But what do you think? Is that possible? Do you think it's like, does he have any merit to his point, do you think?

Casey Newton (46:23)

I mean, what, what Gary will point out is that the technology that is used to build current AI systems, large language models, have limitations that would have to be overcome for people like Sam Altman to achieve their dreams. And Gary points out that so far they have not managed to overcome these limitations. Now this is a case, though, where Gary has had to move the goalposts over time because the truth is that models have become much more powerful from GPT2 to GPT5 today. And so among the sort of AI accelerationist circles, Gary has become a kind of joke. Because no matter how impressive anything an AI system can do, Gary is on X saying, aha, but I found it.

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Tim Miller (48:34)

What do the smarties think about like the economic side of this? I'm going to stop catastrophizing for a minute. This is kind of a different type of catastrophiz, but are we in the 90s again? Are we on a bubble trajectory? I mean it's powering a lot of the kind of a weak economy otherwise right now. Really?

Casey Newton (48:52)

Yeah. I mean Sam Altman says we're in a bubble. Jeff Bezos says we're in a bubble. So it's agreed upon by the people who are constructing the bubble that were in A bubble. Of course, in each of those cases, those people think they're on the right side of the bubble and they're creating the true value. And it's the sort of other companies that are going to get caught with their pants down once the tide rolls out, to mix metaphors. So that's what they think.

Tim Miller (49:13)

When I listen to Sam, it seems to me like if you asked him, I can't imagine that he says this to investors or whatever. I don't even need investors tell their rich guys. Maybe he does. But when I listen to him, it's kind of like when the answer is, how are you going to monetize this? The answer is kind of like the AI will figure it out.

Casey Newton (49:29)

No, no, no, that's not right. No, that's wrong. No. How it's going to monetize is if you're a person and your job is computer, pretty soon computer will be able to do your job and instead of paying you 100k, 120k, whatever it is, they're going to pay Altman 20k and they're going to, you know, pass along the savings to shareholders. So that's where the value is, is that.

Tim Miller (49:51)

I mean, what's the level of panic out there in the bay about? Just like, like programmer displacement, salaries, job loss.

Casey Newton (49:59)

When you look at the data, there is some evidence that junior programmers are having a harder time getting hired than they used to because AI is better at coding tasks than it is basically anything else. There are other people will say, no, no, no, there are too many confounding variables. Like we don't know that that is true just yet because. But I talk to a lot of software engineers and what they will say is that it used to be that we would write code and then it moved to we write half the code and then it gets auto completed and now we just sort of supervise the code and we type in the box what kind of code we want the machine to write. And now it does that. So there are a lot of caveats and asterisks along the way, but like that is the trajectory and I can't imagine it coming to other professions.

Tim Miller (50:36)

That doesn't sound like a fake innovation to me. If that's like really already happening to people in real life.

Casey Newton (50:41)

Look at the revenue growth of these companies. I mean, this is like my other answer to the people. It's like in order for all of this stuff to truly be fake in the way that some people think that it is, then there are a lot of companies that have to Be paying tens of billions of dollars to these labs in exchange for literally nothing. I don't think that's happening.

Tim Miller (50:57)

All right, I want to try to be positive for a second.

Casey Newton (51:00)

Thank God. Jesus Christ.

Tim Miller (51:01)

No, I don't have a question. I don't have anything. So I'm hoping you do. You're out there, you're seeing the cool stuff. What is some cool shit you're seeing that isn't getting the attention? Like, oh man, this is going to be neat.

Casey Newton (51:10)

I mean, let's see.

Tim Miller (51:14)

Here.

Casey Newton (51:15)

I keep a note of what I call capabilities, which is just evidence of mostly AI tech that is helping to advance the scientific frontier in some way that is going to be positive. I just pull it up and. Over the past few weeks, researchers at Microsoft and IBM are using AI to speed up the search for new materials and chemicals for batteries, which could lead to longer lasting batteries. The UK Cabinet Office recovered £480 million that were lost to fraud. AI risk detection software. People are using AI to identify risks of cargo fires. Some of this stuff sounds super niche and boring. I mean, maybe all of it did, but people are figuring out ways to try to do positive things with this stuff.

Tim Miller (51:59)

Good things can happen. Yeah, it's hard for me to interpret the arguments around the environmental impact. And obviously something like this has environmental impact, but there are people on the deep climate concern side that make claims that are apocalyptic about it. And then you see kind of free market people being like, one search on your ChatGPT is equivalent to not even turning on a light bulb. You know what I mean? It's like nothing. And so have you tried to navigate that dispute at all?

Casey Newton (52:32)

Yes. Here's the sort of middle path that I have arrived at. I think that for most people, moderate use of chatbots, you should not sort of feel bad about it any more than you would feel bad like taking a flight across the country or like binging eight hours of Netflix. Like all that stuff has an environmental cost you're using. ChatGPT is not going to be much worse than that. Now where I do think that there is room for concern is in the construction of the massive data centers all around the country that has a legitimate environmental impact. And, and this is where I think that the AI companies are really going to piss off every American is. It seems like it is going to raise energy costs, like at some point either now, like between now and the near future, Americans, electricity bills are going to go up and AI is already deeply unpopular, by the way. Like I'm out here like trying to Tell people this is like, stuff is very dangerous. And I still somehow like get grouped in like the hype wing of the party. But like, but people truly hate this stuff. And like, if you think they hate it now, like, wait till their electricity bill goes up 20 bucks a month because then they're going to be in a lot more trouble.

Tim Miller (53:36)

Yeah, that's a good point. The other thing about the data centers, and I don't know, I was listening to one of the Derek Thompson's podcasts with somebody who's an expert on this and I can't even begin to try to translate this, but the data centers don't even have as long of a shelf life as the other ones used to because the technology is changing so fast, you have to update the capabilities so often. And so they're expressing potentially some other concerns about that. Even if you're excited about the jobs that are coming to the community at the data center, in two to three years, it might be like, oh, whoops, no, sorry. This is the old kind. This is the call.

Casey Newton (54:08)

I mean, I want to dig in on that more. Like, my understanding is like, once you build one of these things, you like, can swap components in and out.

Tim Miller (54:14)

Like that's what they're saying.

Casey Newton (54:16)

Yeah, yeah, but we'll see, I guess.

Tim Miller (54:18)

Anyway, I don't know. It's a brave new world out there.

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Tim Miller (55:52)

Can we do a couple personality questions before we leave? Can you explain to me? I want you to do a personality chart for Tim Cook. I don't. I truly like, why would he get rid of the ice block apps off of the iPhone? Why is he bringing Donald Trump trophies? Has there ever been a company in the history of the world that was more liquid, that was more able to withstand a little bit of heat? It feels like it's over the top. I'm not asking him to be on the Bulwark podcast talking about how Trump has small fingers or whatever, but it feels like he's going overboard.

Casey Newton (56:30)

It's so depressing. It's like the only instinct this company has is to make money and create shareholder value. Now, it is true that Apple is uniquely vulnerable to Chinese tariffs. And so in a way, I'm not surprised that they're bending over backwards to please the Trump administration. But, like, go listen to Jim Jordan's committee about censorship and the jawboning that they're so pissed off that happened under Biden and now they're, like, nervous because the Attorney General is like, I don't like that app. I don't want to see it in the store. Like, obviously, there's just a huge amount of hypocrisy here.

Tim Miller (57:05)

It is true. And again, I guess this is probably too much to ask. It's just worth saying though, like, yeah, they're vulnerable to the Chinese tariffs also. Trump is vulnerable to them. Like, a lot of times in these conversations, it's sort of at the TikTok deal at the top we were talking about, right, where like, people talk about how Trump has power, you know, and Trump bullies people and uses his power to get what he wants. And that happens. It is true. Like, he can threaten people, but, like, Apple has power over Trump. Do you think that. Do you think that if they decided, if they just said, they could have gone the other way, which said, okay, great, I agree, the tariffs are great idea. The iPhone costs $2,000 now. $2,000 for a new iPhone this year. People are fucking pissed about that. App store prices are going up. You know, there's a lot of non political people out there that aren't involved in all of this stuff. You know what I mean? Like me, they would be like, whoa, I'm pissed at Trump now. I thought I was for Trump. Why is Trump doing this? I want my new iPhone. It cost $1,000 more. It's Trump's fault. They can put a little this is Trump's fault tag on it. That option was available to them. They have power, too.

Casey Newton (58:08)

Absolutely. And like you, I am desperate to see more people call his bluff, because in many cases, this is a bluff.

Tim Miller (58:15)

Yeah, he might just talk about something else. He. Trump tries us, like, look, are we invading Greenland still? You know what I mean? Trump, like Sam Altman. I'm sure Sam Altman will love this comparison. Does the ready, fire, aim? Like, he throws out shit and then if it doesn't work, he moves on to something else. Yeah, right. And like, that could happen with some of these tech guys. You know, they're not like his great enemies that he's worried about. They're not like the Jim Comey or, you know, whatever, you know, I mean, like, yet if they called his bluff, he might very well just move on to some to pick an easier fight.

Casey Newton (58:47)

It's true. But in order for that to happen, they would have to have some motive other than revenue maximizing, and they just simply do not.

Tim Miller (58:56)

Okay, well, I like revenue, but, you know, you can balance in all things.

Sam Altman (59:00)

Yeah.

Tim Miller (59:01)

Do you know why Elon is back with Trump? Do you have any insight into that? What happened?

Casey Newton (59:05)

I mean, when you say back with Trump, you just sort of mean, like, tweeting nice things about him again.

Tim Miller (59:10)

Yeah, I mean, they're hanging out with me.

Casey Newton (59:11)

Here's what I would say, Tim. Here's what I would say. Ketamine is a powerful drug best used in moderate quantities. Under the care of a doctor. That would be my comment on that.

Tim Miller (59:21)

Oh, okay.

Sam Altman (59:22)

Yeah.

Tim Miller (59:23)

What about light to moderate qualities at the club?

Casey Newton (59:26)

I mean, look, Is it your 40th birthday? Are you in Ibiza? Like, it kind of depends on the details.

Tim Miller (59:31)

Okay, all right. So you just think he's like. It's just like, total. Like, it's not anything to do with, like.

Casey Newton (59:37)

Like Elon Musk is like a random number generator for opinions, you know, like, just depending on the day you're going to get 46, and then next, you know, the next day it's 71. And, like, asking me to try to, like, chart the evolution is like, you know, asking me to guess the position of an atom.

Tim Miller (59:53)

I think that's totally fair.

Casey Newton (59:54)

Yeah.

Tim Miller (59:55)

All right, last thing, I just. You're out there now, all of a sudden the Silicon Valley kind of tech bro world is being, you know, analyzed like, you know, anthropologically, like, what happened to them? I asked my colleague, I said, you're coming on. I asked him for any thoughts on what I should ask you? And one of his questions was, why did the old valley gates stay pretty Liberal and the new Valley get red pilled, like the younger Internet valley. And I think then there's also kind of a sub question to that, which is like, did the new Valley get red pilled or is it just like 12 really loud influential people who are red pilled?

Casey Newton (60:30)

That's my view.

Tim Miller (60:31)

Okay, yeah. So give us a little assessment of what's happening out there. A little anthropology of tech, bro world.

Casey Newton (60:37)

So I understand the perception that Silicon Valley just like, swung massively to the right, but, like, to me, this is an artifact of the information environment created by social media algorithms that are constantly showing you the loudest, angriest, crankiest people. Right. And our entire politics have reoriented around these cranks. And there are 12 of them in Silicon Valley who are really good at getting attention by saying kind of outrageous things all of the time. So, like, the rank and file workers at these companies, like, check the donation, they're still donating to Democrats. Like, these people are not thrilled that Trump is in power, but there is a tiny elite subclass that has realized they can get a lot more out of Trump than they got from Biden. Because unlike Biden, Trump could be bought off. And it really is that simple.

Tim Miller (61:18)

Yeah. Have people of the COVID red pill people moved back? You got a new mayor now, Keith Rabois. Is he back there? Like, you know, people got in condos again. What's happening?

Casey Newton (61:29)

I mean, I think it's hard for me to say how much San Francisco has changed. I'm such a, like, true believer in San Francisco. I didn't care when everyone left. I sort of don't care if they came back. It's always the same great city. Like, to me, that it's always been. So, you know, I don't know. That's a bad answer to your question.

Tim Miller (61:49)

But, like, that is a bad answer.

Casey Newton (61:50)

Yeah. Let me see if I could take it again. Yeah, let's see.

Tim Miller (61:55)

You're a professional podcaster.

Casey Newton (61:56)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Here's the answer to your question. If you look at the rents in San Francisco, they're skyrocketing again. This is where the AI boom is happening. And yes, it's a bubble and it's going to pop and some people are going to get left high and dry. But in the meantime, the rents are popping, the crazy parties are happening, and, you know, San Francisco is having a great time, but we always have a great time in San Francisco.

Tim Miller (62:23)

What is in at the crazy parties now? What's the new. There's always some hot new trend that's starting out there that other the rest of us haven't heard of yet. What's coming to New Orleans in five years? Designer drugs or different familial relationships or new germs.

Casey Newton (62:40)

The best one I heard of recently was a peptide party where you're familiar with sort of the GLP3s and the Ozempics and the Manjaros, but there are these sort of next generation peptides that you can buy off of shady websites. And so some people now throw parties where you can sort of go and sample them and sort of body hack yourself into transcendence. So that's our latest one out here too.

Tim Miller (63:05)

All right. It's so nice to be here in Louisiana. We've got fat people. You know, it's just whiskey and beer. It's beautiful. But every once in a while I'll come back. I'd like to see a peptide party. Invite me. I will. I'll come back and see my old friends. Casey Newton, man, I appreciate you very much. For folks who want to nerd out on this more Platformer is the is the newsletter. Hard Fork is the podcast. We'll be talking to you soon, brother.

Casey Newton (63:30)

Thank you, Tim. Have fun.

Tim Miller (63:32)

All right, guys, that was Casey Newton. The singularity couldn't come soon enough. I guess we'll be doing that every. Every six weeks or so, keeping keeping our eye on the trajectory of our society and the tech oligarchs that are trying to influence it. Back to politics tomorrow. Hope you enjoyed it and hope we'll see you all then. Peace.

Rush Song Vocalist (64:00)

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Rush Band Member (64:31)

I.

Rush Song Vocalist (64:31)

Know she can be them Oh y they don't believe me but you won't let those robots they don't look demon but you won't let those robots defeat me those evil natured robots are definitely they're programmed to destroy us. She's got to be strong to fight them so she's taking lots of vitamins Cuz she knows that it be tragic if those evil robots win.

Tim Miller (65:38)

I know.

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Tim Miller (66:18)

The Borg podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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Tim Miller (66:53)

Com.

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