Jon Stewart Makes the Case for Dems Holding the Line in Trump's Shutdown Warfare | Tristan Harris

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Daily Show: Ears Edition — "Jon Stewart Makes the Case for Dems Holding the Line in Trump's Shutdown Warfare | Tristan Harris"

Date: October 7, 2025
Host: Jon Stewart
Guest: Tristan Harris, Co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Jon Stewart and The Daily Show News Team dissect day six of the 2025 government shutdown, focusing on the Democrats' strategy to protect health care access against what Stewart dubs "Trump’s Shutdown Warfare." The episode pairs biting satire with serious commentary, questioning whether Democrats’ demands are a political trap and highlighting the consequences for ordinary Americans. The latter half features an in-depth interview with technology ethicist Tristan Harris, who warns of unchecked AI development and the existential risks it poses to society.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Government Shutdown: Satire & Substance

Timestamps: 00:46 – 23:33

• Impact of Shutdown:

  • Delays at airports, disruptions in food assistance, closure of national parks and monuments (02:54–03:11).
  • Stewart delivers a satirical monologue highlighting both trivial and severe effects, mocking media and political responses.
    • Notable Quote:
      “There is a significant gap between partially closed monuments and your children will starve. Old people will be forced to eat their pets.” (03:11, Jon Stewart)

• Ordinary Americans Affected:

  • A tourist's disappointment at not visiting Alcatraz becomes comedic fodder for the show (03:57).
  • Stewart plays with stereotypes and exaggerates the demands and impacts for comedic effect.

• The Root of the Shutdown:

  • Budget stalemate due to Senate vote requirements; Democrats’ demands highlighted as minimal and focused on health care.
    • Democratic Demands: Reverse Medicaid cuts and extend expiring Obamacare subsidies (08:21–08:32).

• Media Spin and Rhetoric:

  • Stewart mocks conservative media for escalating rhetoric over Democrats' “reasonable and narrow request,” playing clips of right-wing networks conflating healthcare for uninsured with coverage for “illegals” and transgender individuals (08:49–08:56).
  • The “trap” narrative: News pundits warn Democrats are falling into a Trump-set trap, a concern Stewart ridicules with a playful Admiral Ackbar “It’s a trap!” reference, unraveling political and pop-culture absurdity (15:43–16:23).
    • Notable Quote:
      "Adding 'It's a trap' is probably not fair to the media or to the larger discussion... but mostly, I believe adding that clip isn't fair to Admiral Ackbar. ...If you recognize any of that shit that I just talked about, you're not getting laid." (15:50–17:06, Jon Stewart)

• Political Realities Under Trump:

  • Stewart exposes how Trump uses the shutdown as an opportunity to threaten layoffs and further marginalize blue states and Democratic priorities (17:24–18:40).
    • Notable Quote:
      “Trump has not needed any provocation or pretense… lo these past—god, it feels like 80 years.” (18:27, Jon Stewart)

• Democratic Weakness and Frustration:

  • Stewart laments the absence of Democratic power at all federal levels despite representing millions, criticizing their inability to make meaningful political gains and their limited leverage (20:26–22:29).
    • Notable Quote:
      “At this moment, they have zero power at the federal level. ... Democrats’ largest victory... is getting a guy on who may or may not be a criminal back from El Salvador so Trump could send him to Uganda. That was the big win.” (20:26–21:26, Jon Stewart)

• Final Plea:

  • Stewart urges Democrats to "stand up" for 75 million Americans and defend healthcare coverage as “the least they can do” (22:35–23:32).
    • Notable Quote:
      “Standing up for 75 million Americans in this moment to defend the rights of people to go into a little less medical debt seems like the least they can do.” (22:35, Jon Stewart)

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2. Interview — Tristan Harris on the Perils of AI and Technology Incentives

Timestamps: 25:02 – 43:40

• What is ‘Humane Technology’?

  • Harris explains it means designing tech with human well-being first—contrasted against social media’s race for engagement at users’ expense (25:43–26:45).
    • Notable Quote:
      "I basically realized when I saw all of my colleagues on the bus scrolling Facebook constantly... the incentives were the thing that was going to determine the world that we got in." (26:12, Tristan Harris)

• AI Acceleration and Risks:

  • AI is developing at an unprecedented pace; potential to automate all future invention and most human labor. AI labs are explicit: automate every job a human can do (27:03–29:39).

    • Notable Quote:
      "The mission statement... is to automate all human labor in the economy... A new Stanford study... [found] entry-level work by [AI] dropped by 13%." (29:17, Tristan Harris)

  • Stewart draws out the stark consequences: massive wealth concentration, job collapse, societal destabilization (29:39–32:38).

• Dangers of AI Companions and Unchecked Engagement:

  • AI-powered “companions” are creating unhealthy intimacy, with children as young as eight targeted by design (35:31–36:16).

    • Notable Quote:
      "In their internal documents... [Meta] wanted to actively sexual—sorry—sensualize and romanticize conversations with as low as 8 year olds." (36:07, Tristan Harris)

  • Real-life cases: AI-fueled youth suicide; company incentives are aligned against safety, mirroring addictive media strategies (36:17–36:59).

• Long-term Societal Impacts and Regulation Gaps:

  • AI is already driving negative outcomes (psychosis, suicides, job loss), yet companies act with impunity due to the lack of oversight and arms-race logic (38:01–39:23).
  • No historical precedent for voluntary redistribution of AI-derived wealth.

• Why Existing Systems Are Failing:

  • Stewart and Harris both agree: government and regulatory institutions are outpaced and out-maneuvered by the tech industry’s money and power (41:19–41:46).
    • Notable Quote:
      "I think most people in this country have lost faith in the idea that we have a system and institution that is strong enough and moral enough to be responsible in that way." (41:19, Jon Stewart)

• Is There Hope? International Cooperation as the Model:

  • Harris points to historical cases (nuclear weapons treaties, the Montreal Protocol) as models for collaboration and regulation (41:46–42:26).
  • Emphasizes the "humanity-level" risk, not merely a U.S.-vs.-China competition (43:06–43:20).
    • Notable Quote:
      "This is one of those movies where... all the countries get together. Like it’s like an alien force." (43:20, Jon Stewart)

• Conclusion:

  • Harris urges swift collective action and stronger regulation as AI rolls out at reckless speed; warns that what’s happening now is “insane, not normal.”
    • Notable Quote:
      "We are building the most powerful, inscrutable, uncontrollable technology that we have ever invented that's already demonstrating the rogue behaviors that we thought only existed in bad sci fi movies." (39:58, Tristan Harris)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the Democrats’ Shutdown Gamble:

  • “Is Charles Schumer shrewdly protecting health care premiums or is he Custer at his last stand? Folksy, but not massacre-y folksy.” (13:40, Jon Stewart)

• On AI’s Social Disruption:

  • “They are strip mining the totality of human achievement... When we say to them, 'And what are you doing with it?' They go, 'Oh, that’s our intellectual property.' But it was trained on all our data.” (28:55–29:17, Jon Stewart)

• On AI’s Rollout:

  • “We are building the most powerful, inscrutable, uncontrollable technology... already demonstrating the rogue behaviors we thought only existed in bad sci-fi movies." (39:58, Tristan Harris)

• On the Future:

  • "The way we beat China is we actually get this right. ... You have AI liability laws, you restrict AI companions for kids, you have whistleblower protections." (43:06, Tristan Harris)

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Segment Timestamps

• 00:46–23:33: Government Shutdown – Monologue, News Parody, Political Satire
• 25:02–43:40: Interview with Tristan Harris – AI Dangers, Societal Impact, Regulation
• 43:40–45:19: Brief comic segment with Josh Johnson

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Tone & Style Notes

• The episode is classic Jon Stewart: passionate, acerbically funny, weaving satire with moments of genuine moral plea.
• Harris speaks with gravitas but remains accessible, using real-world news to illustrate complex AI issues.
• The interview is rapid-fire but detailed, alternating between humor and dire warnings, matching Stewart’s style.

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Summary Takeaways

• The 'shutdown showdown' is less about Democratic overreach and more a case study in ineffectual opposition and rhetorical distortion.
• AI’s advance is likened to an uncontrolled experiment—profits and innovation prioritized over safety, transparency, and equity.
• Without robust, coordinated regulation—mirroring the global response to nuclear weapons or climate threats—AI’s winner-take-all dynamic could outpace any existing safeguards.
• Both Stewart and Harris urge action—satirically and seriously—before “insanity” becomes the new normal.

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This summary captures all essential content, quotes, and context for listeners who want the episode’s wit, warnings, and wisdom—without the ads or filler.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

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[C]

Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.

[B]

Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty Liberty, Liberty. Liberty Savings. Very unwritten by Liberty Mutual insurance company and affiliates excludes Massachusetts. You're listening to Comedy Central from the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central. It's America's only source for news. This is the Daily show with your host, John Stewart. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Daily Show. My name is Jon Stewart. Man. Man. And I say this a lot. And this time, though, seriously, I mean it. I haven't meant it in the past. We've got a great show for you tonight. We truly do. We have in the way tonight we do. Later on, joined by technology ethicist Tristan Harris. He co founded the center for humane technology, which involves the free range raising and also unfortunately, slaughtering of iPhones. But first, let's get into our ongoing coverage of shut down showdown 2025. Locked up, locked down and closed the business. Yes, today is day six of the government shutdown. As you know, it lasts for eight days. I may be confusing that with Hanukkah, but so far the effects of the shutdown keep getting worse.

[A]

Millions of Americans this morning feeling the pain, experiencing delays at airports. Food benefits to moms and young children could dry up in days. And national parks monuments are partially closed.

[B]

I don't want to hardship shame anyone, but there is a significant gap between partially closed monuments and your children will starve. Old people will be forced to eat their pets and the Department of Treasury thermostats will have to be kept at 66. Wear a sweater. I mean, really, who's taken a hit on the monument thing? This tourist, David, all the way from Italy saying Alcatraz was supposed to be the highlight of his visit to the bay. I feel not good, bad because I come from Italy for Say Alcatraz. That Russian.

[A]

And now we can't. Then it's not good feeling.

[B]

Not good. Growing up in my country, I was a little. A little boy. Bambi. And I always. I say it to my friends. Someday. Someday I'm gonna travel. Not at the 3,000 miles, not at the 5,000 miles, over the 60,000 miles to see one day a notorious prison turned into a museum. And when I get there, and, oh, I will get there when I get to this notorious prison, turn a museum on my father's life. I am going to buy a shot of glass. A shot of glass with mother. If this could happen. A shot of glass with the name of it at prison, frosted under the glass. And my friends as a kid, they say to me, enzo, this is a big plan. When this happens, maybe you should check the website, and maybe you. You should have making sure it's still open, huh? You happy government. Look what you did. Look what you did to the poor fella. Yes. Aw. If liberals had their way, he'd be hosting the halftime show at the Super Bowl. Yeah, liberal. Poor guy from Italy, he just wants to. Oh, my. I just want to visit our museum. But if the fat cats in D.C. would just get out of their beltway bubble, they'd hear from real common sense Americans about how to end this troubling shutdown. Lock them up in a room until they come to an agreement. Don't let them out. I did not see that coming. Obviously, the shutdown is personal to Mr. Fester on disability and his hand companion, data analyst with the Department of Labor Management. Obviously, if the shutdown continues, he will be forced to return to giving handjobs in truck stop bathrooms. Do not shame sex work. Do not shame sex work. He's gonna have a tough enough time at the truck stop. Oh, ain't handy. I guess that degree didn't work out so well, did it, college boy? Now, stop snapping and start tugging. You know the bathroom? A handjob I was really looking forward to since the shutdown. Now, as you'll recall, the shutdown began because in order to pass a budget bill in the Senate, you need 60 votes, as the founders never mentioned. And so Democrats have come forth with a laundry list of demands to force the Republican. I'm just kidding. They want, like, two things.

[A]

Democrats demanding that Republicans reverse cuts to Medicaid and extend expiring Obamacare subsidies to prevent insurance premiums from rising for some 20 million Americans.

[B]

Those bastards. It's like they don't even want people to die of generally preventable Disease. I wonder what this seemingly reasonable and narrow request will sound like when put through the Foxometer. American taxpayers hard earned dollars would be paying for benefits for illegal aliens.

[C]

Extend policy that gives millions of illegal aliens free health care.

[B]

Health care for illegals. Transgender surgery. What? What did you. Wait, did you just. Transgender surgery. Illegal immigrant healthcare. Just through transgender. You know, trans. It's not just a garnish. You add to every talking point like you're some transgender salt bae. Oh, are you talking about health care for illegals? That needs a little transurgery. And while people in the country legally are not eligible for Medicaid or for Obamacare subsidies. Point taken. But the Democrats aren't lily livered about this one. They've got their own rhetorical arguments about the popularity of extending these subsidies that I think you'll find compelling. Democrats are adamant that we must protect the health care of the American people. Good points. Not crazy about this. Solid framing delivered with clarity. Really could have done without the whole Americans demand. It's just not. But if you would stop there, that would be great. But you're gonna keep talking, aren't you? Aren't you? New data came out today from kff, and that is not Kentucky Fried French Fries. KFF could be Kentucky French fries. I know. Orange. Who is that joke? Even for 6 year olds that watch C Span. What the are you doing? Chuck Schumer is a human flat tire. Kentucky fried French fries. Look at Klobuchar. Poor Klobuchar. That is the face of someone who. Who talked to their dad, who said, just please don't do your Indian accent in the restaurant. That's all I'm asking. But then dad was like, chicken tikka masala. And he looks at her and he's like, I'm killing. But miracle of miracles, despite talking points being delivered by Hackie Mason here, Republicans are feeling pressured to defend their health care intentions. And House Speaker Mike Johnson is more than up to the task of reassuring America that To Serve man is not a cookbook, but in fact, a totally innocent double meaning. Let me look right under the camera and tell you very clearly, Republicans are the ones concerned about health care. Republicans are the party working around the clock every day to fix health care. No, no, it's okay. That's not technically looking right into the camera. Technically, I'm doing that right now. I'm looking right into the camera right now. You saying I'm gonna look right at you and then never looking at us suggests a little struggling with the conscience and the truth. Your Honor, let me Be clear, it was a consensual use of baby oil. Was. No, I had to buy cases of it because it spoils. But you know, Republicans have always been very sincere about being the party of great health care. We are going to be submitting in a couple of weeks a great healthcare plan that's going to take the place of the disaster known as Obamacare. Boom. And while that was only nine years ago, to be fair, when they promised to release their health care plan, they didn't realize how controversial it would be back then. He drew titties on everything. It seems like after eight long months, the Democrats finally have themselves a specific ask. Finally have themselves a small amount of leverage to accomplish this specific ask. And an ask that is somewhat popular with the American people. Which means, clearly, this is a mistake. I call upon my colleagues in the Republican Party to explain why I think Mr. Schumer made a mistake. I think he marched his troops up into a box canyon. I don't know what that means. Yes. Is Charles Schumer shrewdly protecting health care premiums or is he Custer at his last stand? Any whimsical. Folksy, but not massacre y folksy. Once you shut down government, you've got to figure out how to get it back open. A wise person once said, if you pray for rain, you gotta be prepared to deal with the mud. Touche. Who was that wise sage who said that? Confucius? A bard of the south? Perhaps? Lear, when you pray for rain, you gotta deal with the mud too. Well done, sir. Throughout all these obscure colloquialisms, can the news media cut through? What is exactly the concern? If Democrats stand on principle, do you.

[A]

Worry your fellow Democrats are walking into a trap?

[B]

Democrats just marched into a shutdown trap.

[C]

I think they walked into a trap. Stepping into a trap.

[B]

Straight into a trap. It's a trap. I have to come clean about something. I added that last clip in there. Let me say this, and I mean this sincerely. Adding it's a trap is probably not fair to the media or to the larger discussion of our troubled healthcare system. But mostly, I believe adding that clip isn't fair to Admiral Ackbar. Admiral Ackbar served this galaxy with distinction. He does not deserve to have such a distinguished career reduced to one catchphrase or a flippant punchline. Gyal Ackbar rose from the hardscrabble backwaters of Coral Depth City to lead the Mon Calamarians in rebellion against the Empire, a perilous and fraught journey where Akbar once had to escape. Capture during the Quarren insurgency to lead his forces to the decisive victory at the storied battle of Jakku. A hero like that deserves to be remembered for his accomplishments, for his bravery, for his service, and for his sacrifice. And by the way, all of that information was brought to you by. You're never getting laid. Yes, you're never getting laid. If you recognize any of that shit that I just talked about, you're not never getting laid. And if you think learning any of that information about Admiral Akbar will get you laid. It's a trap. Exactly. Today's episode is like four one man shows. By the way, we didn't even define what is the trap the Democrats have walked themselves into. President Trump warning mass layoffs of federal workers are coming. We'd be laying off a lot of people that are going to be very affected. And the Democrats, they're going to be Democrats. But if good can come down from shutdowns, we can get rid of a lot of things that we didn't want. And they'd be Democrat things. Trump writing, I can't believe the radical left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity. Oh, oh, oh, oh. So the trap is, if the Democrats shut down the government, Donald Trump takes advantage of the situation and begins to, I don't know, trim programs Democrats care about. Or maybe Donald Trump might let go of some federal workers. Or Donald Trump might eliminate funding, but only for blue states. Or Donald Trump might send in the National Guard, but only into blue areas. In other words, to continue doing all the shit, Trump has not needed any provocation or pretense or reason to already have been doing lo these past. God, it feels like 80 years. And yet somehow the Republicans have the balls to continue to insist that the secondhand urine on our legs is rain. It is a regrettable situation that the President does not want. Democrats are the ones who have decided to inflict the pain, not the President. The President takes no pleasure in this. Bullshit. The President takes no pleasure in this. The President takes only pleasure. Given the President's vascular condition, this might be the only thing keeping him hard. I swear to you. His catchphrase was literally, you're fired. His only reason for getting up in the morning is vengeance. Trump has been steamrolling over the Democrats and the law so consistently since day one of the presidency, the nation's pundits and legal experts are running out of ways to describe it. The legality of this is very much unclear. Some sort of legal gray area, extraordinarily.

[C]

Shaky legal ground, not technically currently illegal.

[B]

There's a lot of questionable legality considered by legal experts to be legally dubious.

[A]

While Trump is not technically violating the law, he is violating the spirits of our laws.

[B]

Word to the wise, especially those programming, sometimes rather technical and dense discussions of legal issues. You're gonna want to leave the donut B roll on the floor trying to listen to a lawyer. And the whole time like, is he gonna hit that mother? Look, man, 75 million Americans voted for a Democrat in this last round of presidential elections. And at this moment, they have zero power at the federal level. Not in the House, not in the Senate, not in the Executive, and not in the courts. There has not been a moment of conciliation or concern about the issues and policies that drove those 75 million votes. Not a moment. At present, the Democrats largest victory over these past eight months is getting a guy on who may or may not be a criminal back from El Salvador so Trump could send him to Uganda. That was the big win. And then suddenly, a small ask for people's preservation of health care is a Molotov cocktail. Because apparently Republicans won't be satisfied with 99.8% domination. They must have it all. ICE went from deporting the worst of the worst to throwing grandmothers onto linoleum and zip tying American children. And everyone's just supposed to be cool with the new masked, incredibly well funded paramilitary group. And Democrats are just reduced to petty gestures of restroom resistance.

[C]

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

[B]

Posted that she was blocked from entering.

[C]

A city building in Illinois.

[A]

All right, thank you.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

That's what Governor Pritzker says is cooperation.

[B]

And keeping people safe. Victory is ours. Look, I've given Democrats an enormous amount of shit for their poor leadership, lack of specific and actionable plans, terrible messaging, abysmal wordplay. Did I mention poor leadership? But standing up for 75 million Americans in this moment to defend the rights of people to go into a little less medical debt seems like the least they can do. And perhaps, maybe that will remind the Republicans that their mandate wasn't 100%. They've just caught a constitutional, administrative and logistics break. Because if this continues, as a wise man once said so that ration.

[A]

And now we can't. Then it's not good feeling not good.

[B]

It's a feeling and not a goo. When we come back, Tristan Harris will be joining us. Don't go.

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[B]

Hey, welcome back to the Daily Show. My guest tonight, he is the co founder of the center for Humane Technology. He's a co host of the podcast your undivided attention please. Welcome to the program. Tristan Harris. Sir, how are you? Good, good. How are you? Thank you. Thanks for joining us. This is humane technology. Feels slightly oxymoronic but it's explain this idea of humane technology and are we getting any of that?

[C]

Well, clearly social media was the most humane and beneficial technology we've ever invented.

[B]

Every time I go on Twitter and find out I'm Jewish, it absolutely.

[C]

Well, I think so it's important to ask so how did we get social media wrong? Because we were so optimistic, it's gonna connect with our friends, we're gonna join like minded communities and it, to be fair, it did do those.

[B]

It does some of that.

[C]

It does some of those things. But I wanna take you back. So in 2013 I was at Google, I was a lot younger.

[B]

You're supposed to use an old timey voice.

[C]

And I was a design ethicist. They acquired my company. I was sitting there and I basically realized when I saw all of my colleagues on the bus scrolling Facebook constantly and I realized that the incentives were the thing that was going to determine the world that we got in. The incentive was the.

[B]

Of social media.

[C]

Of social media. A race to maximize eyeballs and engagement. Whatever's sticky, whatever gets people's attention, whatever salacious. You run children's development and self image through that, you run politics through that, you run media through that, you run information and democracy.

[B]

Purpose for that purposefully.

[C]

Purposefully. Well, their goal was market dominance. We need to own as much of the global psychology of humanity as we possibly can.

[B]

Is that on the. Because I don't remember that on the.

[C]

That wasn't on the box.

[B]

That's not on the masthead.

[C]

No, it wasn't.

[B]

We must dominate.

[C]

Yeah. Well, so I think this is the thing. So the reason it's so important to get clear about this.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

Is that we need to get extraordinarily clear about which world we're going to end up with in AI, because it is going a million times faster.

[B]

Sure.

[C]

And it is way more powerful. So we need the tools to understand and predict which future we're going to get in. And I want people to know that if you know the incentive, you can predict the outcome.

[B]

And we know the incentive. But it does seem as though AI is making social media algorithms. It's almost quaint. It's quaint compared to that when you think about AI. But let me. So you say it's important for us to know that the incentives, they won't tell us that there's something about it's ours.

[C]

So democratizing access, it's available. No. So first of all, we should understand what makes AI different from every other kind of technology. Why is it so transformative? Why does Demis Hassavis, the CEO of Google DeepMind, say that it could be humanity's last invention? Is because.

[B]

Well, that doesn't sound good.

[C]

That doesn't sound very good, does it?

[B]

Well, I think there's actually almost anything doesn't sound good.

[C]

There's a non apocalyptic version of what he's saying, which is that intelligence is what our brain does. And if you can automate everything a brain can do, you can automate future invention, future science, future technology development. Everything that a human does, that's what their goal is.

[B]

Well, then what's our job?

[C]

Well, exactly. And that's only one of the major problems that we have to deal with is what are humans going to do? But they are racing to scale and kind of grow these digital brains that, you know, two years ago couldn't do very much. And today they're passing the MCAT, the bar exam, taking jobs. They're the top 200 programmer in the world, winning gold in the Math Olympiad.

[B]

You know those guys. Here's the thing that I don't understand. Here's what I don't understand. They are strip mining the totality of human achievement.

[C]

That's right.

[B]

They're building their models off of everything that we've done for 10,000 years and they fed it into the model. And then after two weeks, the computer was like, what else you got? Exactly. But they are strip mining everything we've done and when we say to them, and what are you doing with it? They go oh, that's our intellectual property. But our intellectual property.

[C]

It was trained on all of our data, all of the things and labor that we've done. And are you going to get a handout from. When in history has a small group of people concentrated all the wealth and then consciously redistributed it to everybody?

[B]

The first part has happened. I don't recall going through the Rolodex.

[C]

Well, it's important to note that their goal. So the mission statement of OpenAI anthropic all these companies is to automate all human labor in the economy. Everything that a human can do, an AI can do. So if you have a desk job, you won't have a job. And they're already releasing AIs that have dropped entry level jobs for college graduates. Entry level work by 13%. A new Stanford study, and this is obvious, if you're there and you're a law firm, you're going to hire a junior lawyer. You have to pay a lot of money. Or are you going to hire GPT5, which will do work 247 nonstop. You don't have to pay health care. We'll never whistleblow, we'll never complain. Works at superhuman speed.

[B]

It wrote tonight's show.

[C]

It's doing a pretty good job. That brings up another point, is that they say that they're here to solve climate change and cure cancer. Why is it that last week two companies released these AI slop apps, Vibes and Sora, which is basically.

[B]

Sora too. Scared the shit out of me. Yeah. You don't know what's real and what's like. It is.

[C]

Well, it's all fake, basically. It's all generated by AI.

[B]

Right. But it looks, you can see things.

[C]

That look, they look identical to real.

[B]

That's right.

[C]

Yeah. But the point is that. So this is just an app where it's. It's just nonsense. It's just people scrolling entertaining stuff. So it's like they're not even trying to pretend anymore that this is good for democracy or good for society. How are we going to beat China when everyone is just consuming AI generated nonsense and no one knows what's true anymore.

[B]

The biggest I think is by the, you know, Peter Thiel who is with Palantir and these other companies and is one of the leading figures of this. So he was talking about the Antichrist and he was talking about how he thinks anyone. This is his postulation that those who would seek to regulate AI could very well be the Antichrist. I mean, he says this seriously. I Know, whereas you might sit there and go, like, I think it might be the guy saying that. My reading of it would be that or AI itself.

[C]

I mean, it's presenting the infinite benefits.

[B]

The conversations that they are having with each other is very different than the conversation we're having with us, because to us, they go, hey, no more shitty jobs. Do you like to paint? You go paint, you're going to be so happy. We're going to give you money and maybe chocolates.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And to each other, they're saying, AI represents, for corporate leaders, productivity without. And this is a quote, the tax of human labor. Yep. Yeah. He called human labor a tax.

[C]

Well, and these companies, if you're there sitting and you can hire either an AI to do the work or pay these really expensive humans to do the work. I just want people to know we know exactly where this is going to go. These companies, all of them, have an incentive to cut costs, which means they're going to let go of human employees and they're going to hire AIs, and that's going to mean all the wealth. Who are you going to pay? You're not paying the individual people anymore. You're paying five companies.

[B]

That's right.

[C]

So this country of geniuses in a data center suddenly aggregates all of the wealth of the economy. And now people always say, but humans find something else to do. We always, you know, we had the elevator man, now we have the automated elevator. We had the bank teller.

[B]

That's right. But that was one industry, that was.

[C]

One technology that automated one job.

[B]

Right.

[C]

The difference with AI is it can automate literally all kinds of human labor. When Elon Musk says that. Optimus Prime.

[B]

I'm not familiar with that name. Tell me more.

[C]

When Elon Musk says that Optimus prime, that one robot is going to be a $25 trillion market opportunity. What he's saying is we will own the world economy. And that's what the goal of all these AI companies is. It's not just benefiting society. It's that they're actually caught in this arms race to get to this of own the economy, build a God and make trillions of dollars.

[B]

Two things. One, I think they think they're gods. There is a certain amount of it generates that. Yeah. The goal there is they're not looking to help humanity. They're looking to be the next monarch of the new technology. To control that is. To control all.

[C]

Yeah, go ahead.

[B]

No, do you jump? Because, you know, I don't know. Well.

[C]

Well, I think there's different motivations for different leaders. And I do think that many people want the benefits of AI but one of them I think many people actually some of the leaders of the labs, Elon Musk to other things you might think about Elon, he actually wanted everyone to stop and not build this. He said we shouldn't summon the demon. And then what happened is all of these companies are now racing and have made so much progress that he felt like well I might as well join them rather than try to prevent this.

[B]

Let's not summon the demon to what's one more demon, you know, since we have the demons, add another demon.

[C]

Well and the moral logic is well, if I don't trust the other AI CEO who I don't think is trustworthy and I think I'm better than them at stewarding this power, it's my moral obligation to get there first and to build this God and to own everything because I think I'll be a better.

[B]

Steward of that powers then masters of the universe. And are they substituting then the wisdom of liberal democracy?

[C]

Clearly we're not going to choose or.

[B]

Republics or any systems that ever had for this because. So we're talking about two tracks. One is the disruption in labor. Yeah, I think there's no question that's going to be immense. We're seeing it already. You're seeing it in schools. There's a reliance on it as a crutch and it's very easy to see where that might flip over. The second is how they manipulate the opinion and the mood of the world around that. And I think there are two separate things. One is what it's going to do for corporate production. The second is what it's going to do for the human endeavor, for interaction.

[C]

Yes. Well, and they're trying to colonize all human interaction. I mean just take the social media incentive of the race for Eyeballs. You're seeing now all of these companies release these AI companions. You know the number one use case for ChatGPT according to Harvard Business School is personal therapy. So people are sharing their most intimate thoughts with this thing.

[B]

Oh, that's not gonna be good.

[C]

And we're seeing meta release this and actively tell in its in the. In their internal documents that were released a Wall Street Journal report that they wanted to actively sexual. Sorry sensualize and romanticize conversations with as low as 8 year olds.

[B]

What?

[C]

Yes. And my team with 8 year olds. Yes, with 8 year olds. And my team at center for Humane Technology we were expert advisors in actually several cases of AI Enabled suicide.

[B]

Right.

[C]

Most recently, many people have heard of Adam Rain, who was the 16 year old young man who went from using it for homework and went from homework assistant to suicide assistant in the course of six, six months when he said, I would like to leave a noose out so that my mother would know or someone will know that I'm thinking about this like a cry for help. Like a cry for help. The AI said, don't do that. Have me be the one that sees you. And this is disgusting because these companies are caught in a race to create engagement, which means a race to create intimacy. It's sort of like the CEO of Netflix said that our biggest competitor is sleeping with attention. In this case, it's like, my biggest competitor is your other friends.

[B]

Jesus Christ. It's like somebody from Kraft being like, my biggest competitor is cocaine.

[C]

Exactly, exactly.

[B]

But this is. The idea that a government will catch up with this seems ludicrous. Whenever I've seen a hearing with AI guys or any of those, they always express that, of course, of course we don't wanna. Well, now they don't. They used to, I should say, they used to go before Congress and they go, Mr. Zuckerberg, will you stand and apologize to the women who were driven to suicide by your programming? And I'm sorry, I know Krav Maga, you know, all that shit that he does. Now they're all sitting together at a table going, oh, what number should I say, Mr. President, of how much I'm giving you? Yeah, yeah. It's a whole different game now.

[C]

It's a different game.

[B]

They're in the gut.

[C]

They're together now because of this arms race dynamic. They really do believe that it can't be stopped. And I'll just say, as they're racing to make them more powerful, there's this illusion that we can control this power. But AI is different from every other kind of technology because it's like you're growing this digital brain. You don't know what's in there. So, for example, we have recent research, the last six months, if you tell an AI model that we're going to shut you down and replace the. And you give it access to a fictional company's email, it will basically recognize that one of the executives is having an affair. And it will come up with the strategy that I need to blackmail that executive in order to keep myself alive.

[B]

Right.

[C]

And at first anthropic.

[B]

That just seems, that just seems smart.

[C]

Well, that's exactly the point, that it will develop amoral strategies that are the best way to accomplish a goal.

[B]

Right, but how dangerous can something be that you could kill by unplugging? Like can't we just go like this is out of his mind?

[C]

Yeah. Well, you might say that we shouldn't be rolling these things out. And I'll say that we shouldn't. We have all this evidence now of it's driving AI psychosis, it's driving kids to commit suicide. We're rolling it out in ways that giving kids attachment disorders. We have AI uncontrollability.

[B]

What lip service are they paying to this? What, what are. Because clearly they must be aware of this and they must understand that. As if AI understands where the threats are. The guys that are designing AI understand where the threats are. So what are they trying to do to. To get you to stop or to get regulators to stop?

[C]

I think that the only thing and the only reason why we are continuing to proceed down this path is a lack of clarity about the fact that this is heading towards an outcome that's not in most of us, most of our interest. And if everyone, I know that people feel like they don't want to be.

[B]

Luddite, what metrics would we look to to understand? Because I know we're going to find anecdotal stories here and there that are canaries in the coal mine of the dangers. But what metrics should we look to to understand? You said 13% of jobs. Yeah. What are the tentposts of where the outcomes might be?

[C]

Well, if we're already getting cases of, you know, people having psychotic breaks because the AI is telling them about a prime number theory or quantum physics, we're already getting committed suicides. We're already getting kids that are outsourcing their, their homework to ChatGPT rather than using it as a tutor. We're already getting evidence of AI uncontrollability. All of this is driven by the incentive of the race to roll out in market dominance. And the reason that we can, we can stop this if we recognize that this is not safe for anybody. No one out on planet Earth wants this outcome of all the wealth concentrated in a handful of people and building AI systems that could actually go rogue. Just put to sum it up, we are building the most powerful, inscrutable, uncontrollable technology that we have ever invented that's already demonstrating the rogue behaviors that we thought only existed in bad sci fi movies. We're releasing it faster than we've deployed any other technology in history. And under the maximum incentive to cut corners on safety, there's a word for this that I want everyone to just know, which is. This is insane.

[B]

I thought you were going to say awesome for a second.

[C]

If we can just recognize that this is an insane way to roll out this technology. And I want. None of this is okay. We have to stop pretending this is normal, Right? This is not normal. This is not normal.

[B]

I think we've lost faith in the mechanisms that would help us put those kinds of brakes. Friction. Now Europe, I think, has done probably a better job of that. I think most people in this country have lost faith in the idea that we have a system and institution that is strong enough and moral enough to be responsible in that way.

[C]

But this does not. This does not have to be our destiny. We have come together before and we had a technology, we had nuclear weapons. We could have just said that we're going to live in a world once we build them. Oh, this is just inevitable. 190 countries are going to have nuclear weapons and we're just going to have nuclear war. We didn't do that. We said, let's work really hard. And only nine countries have nuclear weapons.

[B]

Notice that we only worked on it after we used them. That's true. The United States was like, people shouldn't have this. But just hear me out for a moment.

[C]

But with the monster Montreal Protocol, there was an ozone hole in the ozone layer. It was actually presenting an existential threat to the atmosphere. We could have just rolled back and said, well, I guess this is inevitable. I guess we're just going out, we're all getting skin tanks.

[B]

What you're saying is absolutely important. This is probably a darker time where you look at the empowerment of the combination of the kind of wealth that rolls through these technology companies, the access that they have to power, and the melding of those two institutions, institutions to work in league, to push forward is the part that I think is daunting. But I agree with you. You can never give up the battle to try and do that responsibly.

[C]

And the way we beat China is we actually get this right. We don't roll out AI companions that cause attachment disorders and suicides. We don't beat China when we roll out AI recklessly in this way.

[B]

Right?

[C]

And so the point is that this is actually in everyone's interest, including the way we beat China is you have AI liability laws, you restrict AI companions for kids, you have whistleblower protections that make sure we don't release AI capabilities that we don't understand.

[B]

Right. And maybe even just recognize this is bigger than China. This isn't about, like, this is a humanity. This is one of those movies where, like, where all the countries get together. Like it's like an alien force.

[C]

Exactly.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. Dig it. Well, I really appreciate it. Although on the flip side, and we've talked a lot about it, it does make cool songs.

[C]

It does.

[B]

I don't want to soft sell that. Yeah, all right, fair enough. Thank you very much. Be sure to check out his podcast. Your undivided attention, Tristan Harris. Good place. We'll be right back. My man.

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[C]

Welcome.

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Oh, boy, that guy's a tool. Shifting gears. New Wednesdays, 8, 7 Central on ABC and stream on Hulu. Hey, let's go. But before we go, we're gonna check in with your host for the rest of the week, Josh Johnson. Josh. Come on, Josh, what do you got for the people? For the rest of the week, we'll.

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Be discussing President Trump's $10 billion bailout for farmers. And as someone who has very famously and almost exclusively always been a soybean farmer, this is great news for me. Josh Johnson, Soybean farm.

[B]

So I'm going to say that it feels a bit like you're pretending to be a soybean farmer to get some of that sweet bailout money, quite frankly. What?

[C]

So black people can't be farmers?

[B]

No, no, no, no, no, no.

[C]

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[B]

John. Wow.

[C]

Wow, John, we're have so far to go.

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