← The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
It's a Numbers Game: The Numbers Behind the AI Revolution
00:45:44
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Ryan Grudusky
Welcome back to A Numbers Game with Ryan Grudusky thank you all for being here on this Thursday episode. A lot of news broke since Monday, so let me give you guys some quick hits before talking about the main topic. You should know a little bit of news to keep you more informed than the average person. In Poland, the Nationalist party candidate, the Law and Justice Party nominee for president, Carol Norwicki, won the presidency in an absolute come from behind victory. Law and justice is a nationalist party in Europe. Not my favorite because they do a lot of like public outreach. That's not really. They come out as a very anti immigration policy, immigrant politicians and political party, but they're very pro immigrant really. It's a lot of PR that's bigger than the actual policy anyway. Norweke's win though is notable because he was double digits behind in the polls as recently in April and had an absolute monster comeback. And it dispels the myth that Trump is so toxic to nationalist and populist candidates around the globe. This is the third straight presidential election where the Law and Justice Party won in Poland. And on the other side of Europe, nationalist populist firebrand Geetz Wilders removed his party from the coalition government and it collapsed the coalition and will force early elections later on this year. Here's how that went down. So the Netherlands is a multi party system. They have lots of parties. I'm talking they have more parties than Gen Z has genders like it is a lot of parties in 2023. Gitz Wilders, who is the longest serving Dutch politician and always a political outsider for being a hardliner against mass immigration and the Islamification of the Netherlands and had his party, the Freedom Party, surprise everyone and come in first place. But in order to form a government you need 76 seats in parliament. His party only had 37. So he entered a coalition government with three other center right parties and populist parties on the condition that he could not be prime minister but they would concede his demands on immigration. Eleven months later, the coalition after the coalition government was formed, Builders has decided to leave the coalition and trigger early elections because the other three parties refused to move forward on what he called the strictest asylum policies in Europe. This is not the first time Builders has lost left the coalition government created a snap election in 2010. He was he pulled a similar move because the coalition government moved forward on austerity measures. The result was a political instability instability and Wilder's party was punished in the next election even though austerity measures were unpopular. Because if there's anything you should know about voters in all of the west, regardless of what country it is, they punish in political instability more than anything else. Now, whether that be Wilders leaving the coalition government or Republicans shutting down the government or Democrats passing Obamacare, people don't like to make the feeling of being unstable in their politics. So we'll see what happens in the next election if Wilders party can survive and grow. I don't know. I'm pessimistic on that. Stranger things have happened. Maybe immigration is a big enough issue that voters won't mind, but it's something worth keeping an eye on. It's all the politics I have for Europe. I love talking about European politics. I love foreign politics. I know it's not for everybody. I try to make sure that you understand how it connects to American politics. But if you're okay with me doing more episodes on other countries, particularly in Europe's politics, let me know. I'm building the show with you for you. So your feedback is very important. I read every email. Email me ryanumbers game podcast.com and shoot me either an idea for an episode or if you want to hear more about European politics, I'd love to do an episode about it. Okay, now to the States. Elon Musk has officially left the White House and Doge is all but dead after just a few months of being enacted. And I told people that I didn't think what Elon was trying to do was what he said he was going to do. I don't think it was about trying to balance the budget, but that's what it was sold at and that is what he's leaving on. On Tuesday, Elon took a swipe at President Trump's big beautiful bill, tweeting, quote, I am sorry, but I can't stand it anymore. The massive, outrageous, pork filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it. You know you did wrong. You know it. And then he followed up by saying it will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to 2.5 trillion and burden American citizens with crushingly unstable debt. Elon has a point, right? Not my favorite person in the world, but Elon has a point. And he has been warring with members of this administration for months now, according to Axios Treasury Secretary Scott Bessette. And he got into a screaming match outside the Oval Office where Bassett called him a fraud for not finding $2 trillion in wasteful spending that he claimed he would find. And to be fair, Bessette, he's right. Elon promised trillions in cuts without having any pain cause he was gonna find it in waste, fraud and abuse. He gave Republicans cover to increase spending and then didn't deliver. It's just calling balls and strikes. But here's the thing. Among Republicans, especially grassroots donors, Elon is very popular. So I don't think this is all about spending. I think there's a lot of sour grapes between Elon and Trump that isn't going away. But this parts of this bill is going to impact Elon's words about this bill are going to impact the base of the Republican Parts of this bill are very unpopular. I think it's still likely to pass given that almost all of Trump's legislative agenda is wrapped up in this single bill and Republicans can't afford not to pass anything. But the one provision I want to talk about, the one position I'm thinking about, is on page 278 into 279 of the bill. If you want to go on the Congressional website and read it, which up till this week had almost nobody noticed on page 278 congressional Republicans snuck in a 10 year moratorium on States regulating Artificial Intelligence. The section reads, and this is a bit long, but I want to read the whole thing. It's important. Quote no state or political subdivision thereof may enforce during the 10 year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this act any law or regulation of that state or or political subdivision thereof limiting, restricting or otherwise regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems or automated decision systems entered into Interstate Commerce. Paragraph 1 may not be construed as prohibited enforcement of any law or regulation that the primary purpose and effect of which is to remove legal impediments or facilitate the development or operation of artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems or automated decision systems, or streamline licensing, permitting, routing, zoning, procurement or reporting procedures in a manner that facilitates the adoption of artificial intelligence models systems or automated decision systems does not impose any substantial design, performance, data handling, documentation, civil liability, taxation, fee or other requirement of artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems or automated decision systems unless required unless requirement requirement is imposed under the federal law. Sorry, that was long. I know I stuttered at the end, but that is important. I want you to hear the actual law, not just what somebody is saying about it. So states which already have begun to regulate AI More than 20 states have a law on the books to regulate AI in some fashion, will not only not be allowed to pass new regulations, but they cannot even enforce the ones currently on the books. They are also not allowed to make any AI civil civilly liable and cannot Create a special tax for the AI system. Okay, I'm going to give you both sides of the argument. And then my take first. The most ideal case would be for a national standard in all 50 states not to have a patchwork across the country. It's what's best for business. It helps companies know the regulations and the laws and how to work properly. I think that's best business practices. A lot of economists would agree with me. It's what we've done for a whole host of industries like cars, telecom, food, drugs. And the AI innovation has a lot of positives to it. A lot of doctors told me they use AI to double check research. Scientists are using AI to help discover new cures for diseases. I use AI when doing research for podcasts and articles. I find it superior to Google. So that's. I mean there are positives to this new technology and there is a giant elephant in the room being China. We want to be more advanced than our main global adversary. Now here's the negative side. Congress has broken and does very little very quickly and AI is moving at lightspeed. Remember, ChatGPT is less than three years old and colleges and high schools are struggling to adapt. We don't know where this technology is going. And with an aging population in Congress that knows very little about technology and is dependent on donation from the tech industry, how can we hope that they properly regulate it and it moves with the times. There are legitimate concerns. What happens to intellectual property with AI? What happens to deep fakes especially regarding the health and science politics. Boomers can barely already tell the difference between a real video and a fake video and pictures on Facebook. What about if an AI system is incorporated in healthcare database and screws up and gets people injured or God forbid dies and they can't be held civilly liable. What happens if an AI company makes a chip and some it's designed to put into kids brains? I know that sounds insane, but that's what tech people are saying that they want to do. That's what the future they want to have. I don't know if they can get there. But what if they can? Are we supposed to wait for Congress to just do something? How is that going? We are 30 years, 30 plus years into the Internet revolution and Congress has only passed a handful of regulatory bills over the Internet, many of which protect Internet companies and not consumers. We're 21 years since the creation of Facebook and the rise of social media, which we know has massive effects on children's mental health. We know that drug dealers use Snapchat to peddle illegal substance substances to minors and other users. We know how social media companies censor news and affect our elections. And until last year, Congress didn't do anything to protect Americans on social media. And though what they've passed is very limited in scope, except when they ban TikTok. And that isn't even being enforced by either the Democrat president who left office or the current Republican president. So don't tell me that you're so concerned over the future of the Chinese Communist Party when you won't even stop using their spy app. You know, because nurses have to do their little TikTok dances in hospitals. We can't sit there and stop Chinese spyware. But we have to beat them in the AI race. It's. It is not a coherent message. There's also the worry about what's going to happen to the job market in the future. AI. Dario Amodi. And I'm probably mispronouncing his name. I'm sorry. He is the CEO Anthropic and a leader in the AI industry. He gave an interesting interview to Anderson Cooper on cnn. Side note, I watched the interview and Dario looks exactly what you would think a tech AI CEO looks like. Like a virgin who just fell out of a building. Anyway. Anyway, he believes that we are just five years away from 20% of all entry level white collar jobs being erased. He says he has an idea of the future where GDP is at 10%, the national debt is erased because of massive GDP growth and unemployment is at 20%. He said that's not out of the question. Now remember during the Great recession of the 2008, which led to rise of a lot of socialist thinking in our country, led to a rise of the Bernie Sanders movement in a certain way, led to a rise of Barack Obama in a certain way. That was when unemployment was at 9%. 9.5 nationwide, 20% is double. More than double that. And he's not the only one. David Hsu, the founder of Retool, says his goal is to automate 10% of the labor force in the next five years. I went on a trip to the border with some tech CEOs like maybe two years ago and they were all talking about this, that millions of jobs were going to be wiped out and people would not be able to find work. They all said we're going to have to either have some kind of government work project so some people have something to do or a universal basic income to subsidize people who won't be able to Find work. We already could be seeing the signs. Derek Thompson from the Atlantic tracked the recent college graduates have a higher unemployment rate than the national average for the first time ever. This is especially true for kids going into STEM fields. Computer engineers have the third highest unemployment rate among recent college graduates. That's right now. And Americans are increasingly worried about the fear that AI will cost their jobs and their industries. In March 2023, a Yuga poll found that 29% of Americans thought that the advances in AI would lead to a decrease in the amount of jobs available in their industry. Fast forward to August 2024. That number increased to 48%. So what's the reaction then to the big beautiful bill's AI moratorium? Well, Ted Cruz says that he's all for it. Josh Hawley says he's got some anxiety about it. I think he'll fold like, you know, a house of cards. And mtg, who voted for the bill in the House, the first version of the bill in the House, she says she's gonna vote against it, the compromise bill, if the Senate does not strip that language. Now remember, the bill passed by a single vote in the House representative. So if mtg sticks to her guns, then we might get the 10 year moratorium out of. Out of the legislation. We'll see. Speaker Mike Johnson said that he feels very compassionate. We need to keep that in there. More than 360 state legislators, both Republicans and Democrats, sign a letter asking Congress to strip the language from the bill. This includes very progressive Democrats and super MAGA Republicans who sign up this letter. It wasn't like, you know, just a Rhino and a bunch of Democrats. No, there were hardcore MAGA state legislators signed onto this letter. Senate Republicans will likely have to make some reform simply because something called the Burr rule, which allows senators to block provisions and a reconciliation bill that are deemed extraneous to the federal budget. So they can't like put anything in the reconciliation bill. It has to be kind of stuck to spending. I spoke to a Republican Senate staff or a top Republican Senate staff or some. A senator you would all know. And he told me that they plan on attaching the regulation to federal money so that by states could go forward with regulation on AI, but they'll lose access to federal money. Something that some states can afford to do but many can't. And when I brought up the concerns with AI, the staffer simply said there is no AI crisis and that this is the. This is to prevent future gridlock, to create a national standard. Something that we've seen the kind of gridlock we've seen over national data privacy laws. We can't get it because states already started making their own policy. He also assured me that this is only a moratorium on developing AI models and states can do whatever they want about specific harms or offering it in their states. I cast a lot of doubt on the second part because why would they ban legislation on civil liabilities? Republicans in favor of the ten year more term have fallen into the scarecrow argument that if Congress doesn't forbid it, then California will create the regulations and we can't trust Gavin News some okay, if California becomes too onerous, they'll move to Texas or Florida or Utah or Tennessee. Elon Musk moved to Tennessee. They'll make their own set of standards, the ones that Republican legislatures would work better with. The truth is that 20 states, including many red states, already put AI regulation in the law, while Congress has done nothing but by waiting 10 years with the hope that Congress will make regulation that protects consumers, children, workers and somehow manages to avoid mass unemployment and wealth consolidation leaves someone like me feeling very skeptical. And as far as winning the AI race against China goes, when does this race end? Where is the finish line? What are we racing towards? And can we for one second have an adult conversation without hyperbole before doing something that probably can't be undone? And my last thought on this monologue to any Republican who is running for office or considering to or in office and hearing this if you want to turn 20 million Trump voters into hardcore AOC or Bernie voters in the blink of an eye, replace their jobs with AI without ensuring they can find another one. Now I have two guests coming on who know far more about AI and the policies around it and how it affects the economy than I do. They're coming up next. Stay tuned.
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- [23:53]
Ryan Grudusky
My guest for today's episode is Brad Carson. He's the former president of the University of Tulsa and the current co founder of Americans for Responsible Innovation. And Mark Beam, who's the president of Government affairs for the AI Policy Network. Thank you both for being here. I want to start by talking about the big beautiful bill and the 10 year moratorium on states regulating AI systems. Brad, your organization, Americans for Responsible Innovation, took part in an effort to get 360 state legislators to sign onto a letter to oppose that section of the bill. Why do you feel it's better to have states regulate the industry instead of like a federal proposition?
- [24:31]
Unknown
Well, I think you have to view the choices as not simply a binary between states regulating it and the federal government. We would prefer a uniform federal regulatory scheme. That's the best option. The second best option is states experimenting with something. The worst option is to have a moratorium on state action and have no federal approach. And my worry is going forward, that third option is actually what Congress is going to take. We know how hard it is to get things through Congress. So a moratorium without a regulatory scheme in place is the worst of all possible worlds.
- [25:05]
Ryan Grudusky
What about the argument from supporters of a more robust AI system policy that has very little regulation, that we don't want California setting the standards for the country and that's just too onerous for companies to follow?
- [25:20]
Unknown
You know, I'm open to the idea that California or New York shouldn't set a national standard. But states need to be free to experiment with regulation in the absence of a federal regulatory scheme. And the preemption as it's written today would ensure that a lot of the very important consumer protection laws that really have nothing to do with frontier AI regulation, which is the cutting edge, would be stopped in their tracks too. So what we have going forward with a Congress that can't pass laws, and I'm a former congressman, so these are my colleagues, they can't pass laws. A moratorium would basically leave a vacuum in which there'd be no oversight at all of what's probably going to be the world's most transformative technology.
- [25:59]
Ryan Grudusky
Mark, you had a tweet in response to Dario Amodi's prediction. I don't know if I'm saying his last name correctly. I think I am prediction that AI will lead to wiping out 20% of white collar jobs for recent college graduates. You said quote, unquote, 911 made me study intelligence failures. How we had warnings but couldn't believe them. AI execs are telling us what's coming. Millions of Jobs gone or worse? Will we act on this intelligence or will we wait for an impact? History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. What does responsible AI regulation look like? Because tech execs basically say if you, you either have almost no regulation or you allow us to lose to China.
- [26:38]
Walton Goggins
Yeah, I think we love to sometimes frame a bit of a false choice and a false dichotomy here. And I think certainly as folks in the Senate Commerce Committee like to say, it's either going to be some European Union style heavy handed regulation or America's going to win and accelerate. And I think we have to find a middle path. And I think AI, given how disruptive and transformative it might be and also given some of the uncertainty about the timelines associated with how fast it's moving, I think what would be obvious to do sort of time now would include basically increasing the US government's capacity to test and evaluate these systems for things like loss of control risks for things like weaponization, and even things like starting to track the types of tasks and jobs that are being automated, at least in the Fortune 500 companies. And this is an important set of data that can help drive a more refined regulatory, regulatory approach. And the fact that we're not even seeming really interested in getting our arms around where this is headed seems to be a significant potential intelligence failure.
- [27:45]
Ryan Grudusky
Question. I, I, forgive me if I sound naive because I don't know this answer. If China invades Taiwan, is the air race essentially over?
- [27:54]
Walton Goggins
You know, I, I, obviously it's because.
- [27:56]
Ryan Grudusky
The chips, that's why I'm thinking of the chip.
- [27:59]
Walton Goggins
Yeah. So obviously you know the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing center is, is perhaps the world's most strategic foundry for producing the, the chips that go into the training runs for, for advanced AI systems. And you know, TSMC is looking to diverse its manufacturing capacity including in places like Arizona. But I think yeah, one of the biggest like sort of strategic challenges, if the China, China were to invade Taiwan would be associated with that fabric, that fab, and whether it would even survive the war or survivor conflict would be sort of a top of mind question. But if it's in fact true that China were to seize that capability and have it for its own, then I think it would certainly put us in a significant strategic disadvantage.
- [28:40]
Ryan Grudusky
Yeah. And I, so speaking of China, we always hear about the race against China. I want to ask you both this question. I'll start with Brad and go to Mark. But there's the race against China. What is the finish line of that race look like? Because that's the thing that we all have. Every job and military thing is completely replaced by computers. Like what are we racing towards? And I don't know that answer.
- [29:04]
Unknown
It's a great question and I don't think people who use that metaphor have always thought it through. Usually in the past we talk about arms races, we use that term pejoratively. It's about excessive expenditures, about an escalation of threats that often leaves a lot of people dead in the back. And so it's a good question of is the arms race the right metaphor for AI? I think what we're trying to get to is some sense of artificial superintelligence. Right. The first person to get there in some speculative scenarios could have a decisive military advantage. The issue is like, is that actually possible? What does that mean? How quickly would it diffuse to China? I think we'd actually probably be wise to get away from the arms race framing of it and instead think about what we can actually do in this country, sometimes cooperatively recognize that China will likely have AI whatever we do shortly thereafter. So it's going to be difficult to keep to have us possession of it alone and try to think of a way to use AI for the good and get away from this kind of militaristic framing of my.
- [30:04]
Ryan Grudusky
Yeah, I mean self taught AI is. And pushes over to Mark, self taught AI is something that everyone says could be possible or super intelligence AI or. But it's years in the future if then. But there was a thing instance with a. I might be saying this wrong. Palisade AI OpenAI03 model rewriting its own code to avoid being shut down and even blackmailing one of the developers saying they'll reveal their spouse's indiscretion or their indiscretion with their spouse only for the fact are we close to that and like is. I mean, do we want a situation where we're like Dr. Frankenstein making the self taught monster and saying, okay, this is a superior for humanity.
- [30:55]
Walton Goggins
This is a very concerning development and unfortunately it's one we've seen little warning signs along the way that these AI models behave in strange ways. And to be clear, Ryan, when developers who are making these systems, they're not really building them themselves, they're almost like growing them. And so they take a whole bunch of compute resources and a whole bunch of data and run these algorithms through and these AI write their own weights and as a result it's like a very much a black box. We can't crack these things open and understand how they work and reason about them and they make these really weird decisions sometimes. Like the example that you made with the team at Palisade research in 03 avoiding shutdown anthropics model opus 4 attempting to blackmail its engineer. I think if you extrapolate this further, I think superintelligence might actually be a little bit closer than folks may realize. Although some disorders disagreement in the field there. But if you have a super intelligent system that is capable of rewriting its own code and avoiding shutdown, this is the scenario in which a lot of the experts are starting to sound the alarm bells about right now.
- [32:03]
Ryan Grudusky
There was that conversation Dario had with Dario Modi had with Anderson Cooper talking about this entire thing. And I have a young recent college grad who's a researcher for me. He helps collect some data for this podcast and it's a part time job. It's just data for my twice a week podcast. But he can't find a full time job as a recent college graduate and he blames in part automation. He said they just don't hire these types of entry level jobs anymore. We've seen that college graduates, recent college graduates have a higher unemployment rate than the national average for the first time in 40 years. You're both dads. You said this on Twitter, so I'm not exploding some new information. But you're both dads. You both have kids. I don't know how old they are. Are you both worried about their opportunity for the workforce? And what are college kids supposed to do to ensure they can get work in this future?
- [32:57]
Unknown
That's a great question. You know, we do see companies like Duolingo and Shopify say that before you post a job you have to assert that AI cannot do it. As you mentioned, the unemployment rate for new college graduates is larger, higher than the national average. The Washington Post recently said that it's the worst market for software engineers since 1979. We hardly even had computers in wide dissemination. So I do think the jobs are going to go away. There's a debate in the AI community about how rapidly that will be. But most people think that white collar jobs especially will be increasingly automated. And you might see in the next five or seven years, 50% of white collar jobs could be done by AI. And so it's a very good question. And there's no obvious answer for what you should study. On one hand, one could try to study machine learning itself where you're one of the engineers making these products. On the other hand, it's not obvious what you could do And I think this calls into question the very social compact. What is democracy in a world where lots of people don't have jobs, where we have incredible economic growth? Perhaps, but it's concentrated in a very, very few number of people. The people who are running these labs and the rest of us find ourselves in penury. I think it's actually going to be a devastating problem for us. And it's coming, as Mark said, we very much agree on most of these issues. It's coming a lot faster than the average American thinks. Whether it's two years, five years, seven years. It's coming very rapidly for all of our jobs and there's no easy answer to it.
- [34:27]
Ryan Grudusky
Yeah, it might be the number one issue going into the 2028 presidential election. Mark, what would you say about 50% wipeout of white college educated jobs is absolutely devastating. And when you hear these tech CEOs talk, and I've been on trips with tech CEOs and they've talked about this going back two, three years in my case. To me they're like, oh, we have to do ubi Universal Basic Income. There is no other. They will just be permanently unemployed people.
- [35:00]
Walton Goggins
Yeah, you know, I, I agree with a lot of what Brad said. I have a 16 year old son. We were talking about like what do you study in college these days? I mentioned maybe physics and philosophy could be things that could be useful. But I mean I think even the, the Bureau of Labor Statistics earlier this year reported something like a 20% year over year drop of entry level positions. And I think to your point, it's not that people will become unemployed, it's like they'll become unemployable. And I think this is a significant disruption. I think on the good news is that looking at where this administration is and some of the remarks that the Vice President made in Paris, it seems like we're going to try to give workers a seat at the table. I know folks like Senator Cruz are very focused on jobs, jobs, jobs. I think this is one that we're going to have to grapple with. And candidly, Ryan, when people say ubi, it's probably the most underspecified term I've ever heard. I think by default it's the wealth and power will amass with a few folks and I think the rest of us are going to be left holding the bag. And I'll say that whenever anyone sort of talks about this utopian vision, I like to think that if you look at history, every time someone promises utopia, it ends in one place, and that place is the Gulag. And so I think we need a very.
- [36:21]
Ryan Grudusky
That's an upbeat. That's not.
- [36:24]
Walton Goggins
And I see some messages coming out of the White House saying like, oh, it's just a left wing weighing agenda. It's not. I think it's going to affect everybody. And we have to make this as much as we can, not partisan. And together we have to have a national dialogue. And it's going to provoke some very serious reconsiderations of the fundamental assumptions of it that frames our constitutional order right now.
- [36:43]
Ryan Grudusky
Yeah, I hear the things that come out of Republican, and I work in Republican politics. So this is what I'm most familiar with, is you can't let Gavin Newsom run the entire AI economy. You can't let China win. And even Ted Cruz, who you mentioned, he is absolutely opposed to any state regulation, even though Texas regulates AI. It was one of the earlier states to have regulation and AI put into law and signed by the governor. It's not a serious, serious piece of legislation, but it is a regulation. So it's just curious of what seat they are. I spoke to someone, a very senior politician in office right now, and they had a very optimistic view. They kept on saying, yes, jobs will be lost, but jobs will be created. It'll be like the Internet. We're going to see millions of new jobs that we don't even know about be created. Is that a possibility?
- [37:45]
Unknown
It's always a possibility. Right. We talk about the lump of labor fallacy in economics where when the automobile comes and many people were put out of business, business, new jobs were created as mechanics or manufacturing. I do think there's a very real chance that this time is different. Right. I mean, we should be paying attention to what these tech executives are saying. They have stated openly that it's their job to try to create an artificial intelligence that can do 95% of the work that humans can do today. And we're giving them hundreds of billions of dollars and the smartest people on the planet to make that happen. And they seem to be making very real steps toward the realization of that goal. And so it's a bit of hope to always say, well, we'll have some kind of new job. You know, this time it seems like they're actually going to come and take a lot of our jobs away. Interestingly, white collar first. But as AI gets embedded in robotics, it will come for the blue collar jobs too. And the goal is to displace all of us. They seem to be making steps toward it. And so that's a very glib thing to say. When said you already see the software engineer market being crushed, unemployment rising, and again, you're probably going to see more of this going into the future. So I hope that person's right. One doesn't really know how this will develop, but you have to take it seriously that this time it's very different.
- [39:02]
Ryan Grudusky
Yeah. Mark, what do you say?
- [39:05]
Walton Goggins
I asked Claude Opus for who would be the most likely United States senator to oppose federal preemption of state regulation. And the answer back was Senator Cruz. And you know, I think, I think we of course are, we want to be optimistic. We also want to be clear eyed about the issue. We can't just pretend and hand wave that this is all just going to be fine. And you know, if you look at what happened during the Industrial revolution, which is what a lot of folks compare this to, you know, human physical labor was automated and it became next to zero related to GDP output today. So physical strength became automated and that's now not a function, a factor of the economy. Well now what we're doing is automating our intelligence. And so the question is like what's, what's left at that point? Or you know, maybe people can have access to their own, you know, very powerful AI systems and those AIs can go out on the Internet and do work for them. But it's again, it's quite under specified and I admit the fact that I might not be intellectually intelligent enough to predict what's going to happen, but I think this seems to be a bit of a platitude and a hand wave to keep people from panicking and we might be at the moment where some time to have some of that panic.
- [40:16]
Ryan Grudusky
Yeah, someone said that there's the possibility that within the next year. I forget who it was, some AI person on Twitter. So take it with a very small grain of salt. But they said that it is possible for a single person to have no employees and make a company that's valued in the tens of millions of dollars. And in the very near future we'll be worth the billions of dollars. Weird though that it feels like people are having conversations past each other about something that will affect all of us. Do you guys get that feeling?
- [40:44]
Unknown
I definitely think people are talking a bit past one another. Part of it is it's still a very technical and fairly new technology for most people and so they don't really understand it. They're not aware of what's really happening. And even if they're aware of what's happening today, they're not paying attention to where it's going. It's rapidly improving. So it's not, we don't worry so much about what's happening at this moment. It's what's happening in a year, two years, five years where they've actually radically improved even today's quite remarkable capabilities. So I think people don't understand it. They want to believe things will just be okay. There's a lot of reflexive opposition to any kind of regulation, especially if you're working in Republican politics. Right. Regulating business, it's just a per se bad, which I understand that and they're not often wrong to believe that. But here is a technology that's openly stating it's going to try to transform our lives up end our world. And it's probably worth paying attention to and putting in like reasonable safeguards where like Mark suggests at the beginning, we're at least having the capabilities to deal with it. We're getting more information about where it's going. We're watching what jobs are being displaced and we begin the conversation, very difficult one, about how this kind of social compact that undergirds our life might radically change.
- [41:57]
Ryan Grudusky
Okay, so I want to ask you both of our last question. What is a state and what is a federal regulation on AI that is not in place currently? That should be in place if you were speaking to a state legislator or governor or someone either in Congress or the president. So you can go first, Mark.
- [42:16]
Walton Goggins
I mean, I think the most important thing the federal government ought to be doing in time now is taking the testing and evaluation regime at the classified level very seriously. I think having the data to make informed regulatory choices is a foundational first step. And given everything Brad said about the technical nature, relative opacity, the relative fact that, you know, Washington's quite behind on understanding whether the Vatican seems to be further ahead than Washington D.C. on appreciating the significance of this moment. And then I would urge my, my friends in the Republicans, Republican Party, you know, we can't take a country club attitude toward this one. And I agree with that. The fact that, you know, the government's oftentimes very hand fisted when it engages in the economy, it's not efficient, but it does have an important role to play. And we can't, as Mike Davis used the term, let you know, run the show. We have to think about the broader social compact and issues associated with that. And, and so, but the first thing we need to do to get through some of this Talking past each other is generating the right data and having that informed conversation, being grounded in the facts, and then from there we can have actually a productive discussion.
- [43:26]
Ryan Grudusky
That's great. I love the idea of the country club attitude because that is pervasive still, despite the whole working class overtures being made at least verbally towards voters right now, it is still very much a country club attitude. What about you, Brad? What would you say is a state or federal policy that is not enacted currently, that should be enacted, or it's enacted in one state and all the other states should adopt it?
- [43:51]
Unknown
I think what Mark said is something I would associate myself with, but I would add just this. We have the AI Safety Institute, something that the Treasury Department yesterday renamed as Casey, the Center for AI Standards. So having an institution in the federal government that can collect data, that brings together expertise, that can be the repository of this kind of data and to help work with the frontier labs to get, get information and to fund them adequately where they have the right people who are often quite high paid and have very high levels of skill. That's an important kind of bedrock policy we have to have in place. We've had something like that, but it's never been codified. Right. It's an executive order under Biden now. They've changed it a little bit under President Trump. We need to put that into law. We have an institution that's like dedicated to looking at what's happening AI in our economy.
- [44:39]
Ryan Grudusky
It's politicians is one class of jobs that probably will not be automated and that's probably why we're not seeing much movement on it. Brad, where can people go to find more of your work?
- [44:50]
Unknown
They can. Americans Responsible Innovation can be found at ARI Us. You'll read about all our policies, what we support, blog posts, links to many of the kind of. Of other thinkers that we find important and the work we're doing.
- [45:03]
Ryan Grudusky
So Ari us and Mark, where can people find more about the go the government affairs for the AI Policy Network.
- [45:10]
Walton Goggins
Yeah, the aipn.org we're focused on accelerating federal preparedness for transformative AI looking at national security, economic security and human flourishing. And would be excited to partner with anyone out there who wants to help promote education around this, this content and help Congress make informed decisions that's going to be driving toward the. To the American people.
- [45:33]
Ryan Grudusky
Well, you guys do great work. So I hope that. Hope they listen and hope that we are not as slow moving on AI as we were on social media and everything else. So thank you both for being here.
- [45:43]
Walton Goggins
Thanks so much.
- [45:44]
Ryan Grudusky
You're listening to it's the Numbers Game with Ryan Grusky. We'll be right back after this message.
- [45:50]
Unknown
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Walton Goggins
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Ryan Grudusky
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Cindy Crawford
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Cindy Crawford
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- [49:01]
Ryan Grudusky
Okay, I know the show's gone a little long today and I hope you've learned something. I did. But before we go, I need to do the listener question of the Ask Me Anything segment. This might be actually a great episode one day to do just Ask Me anythings. If I get enough emails, I would love to do that. If you want to be part of the Ask Me Anything segment, please email me ryanumbersgame podcast.com that's ryanumbersgame podcast.com Today's question comes from David Inda. He writes My name is Dave. I'm a huge fan of your podcast. My question is regarding the changing voting patterns of different demographics in the US Specifically black and Latino, and any possible conversations you may have had with your friend Ann Coulter, who I'm a massive fan of. Anne's great. That's not the thing, but Anne's great. Anyway, Ann talks extensively how the GOP should only ever focus on winning over white voters, but in light of the recent data that has been released post election, I am wondering, have you tried to convince her that the GOP tried to win black and Latino voters? Is that a good idea? Or do you think the only thing Republicans should talk about is crime and immigration? This is what I believe and these two policies seems to be universally popular regarding race and ethnicity. I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Also, I currently live in Michigan, planning to move to Tennessee, and I'm wondering, do Republicans have any chance of winning the open Senate or governor seat in Michigan in 2026? Along the same lines, why are some states voting one way on state levels either red or blue, and the opposite of presidential elections, namely places like Georgia, New Hampshire and Michigan come to mind? And this question Is party affiliation as salient as people typically believe, or does candidate quality in a particular year have a bigger impact on the people's votes? I know there's a lot of rambling, so I apologize. I'm a massive fan of the podcast and all the important work you do. One final question. Sorry, the ADHD is really strong today. I am originally from Illinois and wondering if there's any hope for a place like that or has it gone the way of California? Wow Dave. Okay, lots of questions. Highly recommend switching to decaf. But I love the passion. I have ADHD too, so I know how difficult the struggle can be. So gonna go through this quickly. Okay, so first on Ann Coulter, I try to keep our conversations private, but what I believe Anna said is that they shouldn't try to win over non white voters by remaking policies like we should try to win over non white voters but focus on policies that actually help our voter base, which is namely whites without a college degree. We haven't talked about the demographic breakdown of the election yet. Something we were trying to get a dinner around where you sit there and go through it and we talk about it. I'll send her your warmest regards. But I think that's what Ann really says. It's not that we shouldn't try, it's that we shouldn't sell out on policies like on crime, immigration, which are two very popular policies. Secondly, do Republicans have a chance at winning the Michigan governor or Senate election next year? Both seats are going to be vacant. That is correct. My bet is on the governor's race and here's why. Mike Dugan Duggan, whatever his last name is, the Democrat mayor of Detroit is running as an independent and will likely take more votes from Democrats than Republicans. Duggan has been on the rise in the polls, but it's essentially a toss up between the likely Democrat Joyce Joyce Lean Benson and Republican John James. As for the Senate seat, it just depends on who the Democrats nominate because Republicans will likely pick Mike Rogers again. Early polls show it's close, but the only candidate Rogers has a decent lead against is Wayne county health director and Bernie Sanders supporter Abdul EL Sayed. I think that's how you pronounce that name. So we'll see if that you know who they pick. That's a big question. And how many third party nominees get on the ballot is a big question. There were a lot of third party conservative, third party libertarian, third party last time they took enough of the vote to matter. I think he lost by 19,000 votes and they took well over 200,000 or something like that anyway. Why do states vote differently? In federal elections and state elections, this depends on one can equality does matter. If you run something like Carrie Lake, you're probably going to lose. Irregardless of the fact that there's more Republicans than Democrats, party affiliation matters to a point. It is the most likely outcome. If you're registered Democrat, you'll most likely vote Democrat. That's the biggest consideration than any almost anything else. Right. I think gun ownership is the only other larger indicator of how you will vote than party affiliation. But party affiliation is very, very important. But in places like Kentucky, which vote for Republicans federally but Democrats locally or Vermont which vote for Republicans for governor, but Democrats in the legislature and federally, a lot of it matters in the minds of voters as who can put a check on the legislature. So because the working class people of Kentucky oftentimes have a Republican party that has a lot of country club attitudes, as I said earlier on this podcast, they will support a Democrat who's more pro worker, pro union. I mean it was a coal mining state forever. Likewise Vermont, they will support a socially liberal Republican who's more pro economic growth because the legislature is so anti economic growth. A lot of it depends on what the state's going through and the character and how the character of the candidate and how much they reflect the interest of that state. Last question was on Illinois. Has it gone the way of California? I actually think California is in a better place in respect of how Republicans are winning over voters than Illinois. Black voters, which make up a bigger population in Illinois than in California, are moving slower at a slower speed towards the GOP than Asians and Hispanics and Southern Californian whites move towards the Republicans faster than Chicago area whites. So I think we're going to see more gains in California than in Illinois, both in Congress and in the state legislature. I know it's probably not the answer you want to hear, but that's how I see it. Thank you again though for listening. I really appreciate your email, Dave. If you anyone else on any other emails, please email me once again. Ryanumbersgame podcast.com thank you for listening. Please like and subscribe to this podcast on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcast. Wherever you get your podcast podcast, give me a five star review. If you're feeling generous. That really helps people find the show and I will see you guys on Monday. Thank you again.
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Unknown
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Ryan Grudusky
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Cindy Crawford
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Unknown
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- [56:18]
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Ryan Grudusky
This medal is for the men who.
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Unknown
Went down that day on Medal of Honor Stories of Courage. You'll hear about these heroes and what their stories tell us about the nature of bravery. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [56:48]
So you want to start a business? You might think you need a team of people and fancy tech skills, but listen to me when I say you don't. You just need GoDaddy arrow. I'm Walton Goggins, an actor and I like the sound of starting my own business. Walton Goggins Goggle Glasses. But I couldn't do this my own. GoDaddy Arrow uses AI to create everything you need to grow a business. It'll make you a unique logo, it'll create a custom website, it'll write social posts for you, and even set you up with a social media calendar. How cool is that? Well, listen to this. For a limited time, you can get Arrow all access for just a dollar a week for 12 weeks. We're talking all the AI power of GoDaddy arrow plus a domain E commerce store, payments, professional email, a unified inbox, all for less money than I spend on deep tanning lotion while sunbathing off the Amalfi coast. You know what? That sounds like a plan. Get started@godaddy.com terms apply.
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Ryan Grudusky
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.
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Unknown
He's Joe Getty.
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Ryan Grudusky
We're Armstrong and Getty. We try to bring you the truth.
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Walton Goggins
And help you figure out this crazy modern world about something about a comedic tone.
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Unknown
We have a winner.
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Yes.
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Ryan Grudusky
Listen to Armstrong. You get it on Demand on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast.