Historical Context and Final Thoughts

Sam Altman, you know well, and you kind of liked them and you kind of don't. Well, I don't not like him. I don't really care about these people whatsoever. I have a family and friends. Like , I'm sorry. Hi everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is on with Kara Swisher and I,'m Kara Swisher. We've got a special episode for you today. It's an interview I did with journalist and biographer Walter Isaacson, and technically I'm the guest. Walter interviewed me a few weeks ago in front of a live audience at the New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University. The last time I spoke with Walter, I chewed him out over his hagi ography of Elon Musk. This time we had a lot more fun. We talked about a bunch of things, including AI, how power is shifting here in the United States, who has it, who's losing it, and how those shifts are reshaping American life. I'm still right about Elon Musk and he asked me if I was going to give him a hard time with it on stage, and I said, I think we know who's right and who's wrong about what happened to here. Anyway, I really like talking to Walter. He's a really interesting person. He's a great journalist. Uh even if I don't agree with him about some things. He's working on a really cool book about Marie Curie. Anyway, I like talking to him. He's really fun. He's done a lot of stuff. And he was very early to digital, as I was, and he's always thinking big thoughts, which is always a good thing. All right, let's get to my conversation with Walter Isaacs andson' special thanks to the New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University for hosting the event. It's one of my favorite events of the year. It's really well done. And of course, I love New Orleans. So it's round three with Walter Isaacson. Stick around . Great news. The federal EV rebate is back. 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And save your favorite spots, share lists, follow editors, and book right in the app. Download the eater app at eaterapp.com. It's free for iOS users. Thank you. Hi everybody. Here, pull it up closer. Oh, you got it. Yeah. Yeah. So let's start with AI. Sure. Anthropic. You've been doing a lot of reporting on it. What's happening with all the companies doing AI, and who should we fear the most and least? Wow, that's a rather broad question. Let's talk about oxygen. Um what do you want to hear about what's going on with the Pentagon? Yeah, let's start with the Well, okay you explain what it is. Dan McChrystal said that last night, but he's much longer more diplomatic than the. Well, I I don't want to p pursue that person because he's a waste of our time, but although he's in charge of things that are very serious. Anthropic is an offshoot of open AI, as everybody knows. A group of people left uh led by Dario um because they felt the safety issues around AI were so significant they didn't like where it was going under Sam . And so they created Anthropic. It was funded by, among others, Amazon and many, many others. They're all sort of doing cross investments in each other, NVIDIA, Amazon, Microsoft. Everybody's doing it's sort of like a a rondolet. Some might call it a Ponzi scheme, some do. And so they're doing it. Is it a Ponzi scheme the way they're in the United States? I don't know was the early Internet a Ponzi scheme? In some cases, yes, in others no. So is there a really big bubble that's about to burst? I have no idea. I mean it happened in the Internet. There's certainly a lot of spending and no revenue, so that's always an issue. But it didn't hurt the internet. If you could say, you know, all these internet companies that died in the two in the 2000 crash, well they were all a Ponzi scheme, but Google. But Meta came later, actually many years later. So it's a Ponzi ski in that one of them is going to survive, one or two, and they're going to be enormous companies, or maybe several. In any case, it's an important business and also a Ponzi scheme, if that makes sense. And so Anthropic is backed by big people in Silicon Valley and the money they need is so enormous because of the cost of compute and data and energy and no revenue I mean there's revenue, but not compared to the costs. And so they got lucky because the Trump administration, you know, the coin operated Trump administration, never to miss an opportunity for corruption, understood that this is going to be an enormous spend and you know whether it's data centers, whatever, because it's both physical and not. And so anthropic is sort of the dark horse of this group, and actually the best. And that's why the Pentagon was using a lot of their technology. They used it in Venezuela and elsewhere. And I think most people who use it understand it's the best, it's the Apple of this group, essentially. And compared to OpenAI was more like the Microsoft, and Microsoft actually I think has an investment and Microsoft's CEO, Sachin Adela, just backed anthropic in this ridiculous fight, which is great for him. When they're deploying these things, they want to be able to do whatever they want. And Pete Heggs said, because he never met a metaphor, he didn't , was like, we buy a plane and we can do whatever we want with it. It's not quite the same thing with this technology. And so Anthropic says, okay you can use our technology but if you're gonna surveil Americans we don't want to be part of it or if you're going to do drone attacks which is going to be more and more prevalent in warfare going forward they cannot be autonomous. They need to have a human interaction, which seems perfectly reasonable, and they should be allowed to s to use their products the way they want to use them. And it it seemed to a you know chapped Heg says ass and and he has declared them a supply chain risk. Now, we have never done that in the history of the United States with an American company. Let's be clear. It's usually a foreign company. And so it's un precedented to try to make an example of this company. Um, to do so now into the breach, as always, Sam Altman unctuously flowed himself into and said, We'll do it and we'll agree, you know, we'll get that, but it's not clear what he has agreed to, and of course there's a huge backlash. They are under enormous pressure given the they're gonna go public this year, they need more money, etc. etc. And so there's this sort of all the beefs of Silicon Valley are all being played out with the government. And so Anthropic has sued the government, will win, but it will hurt its business in the meantime. Sam Altman, you know well , and you kind of like them and you kind of don't go ahead. Well, I don't not like him. I don't really care about these people whatsoever. I have a family and friends. Like I'm sorry. Um I like them. I don't think about them once I stop talking about them. But you know, I think I met him when he was 19, when he had a company called Looped L-O-O-P-T. They always have these stupidly clever uh names for companies. And it failed. And then he went on to do a number of things. And uh he's he's a really interesting character and I I there's part of I mean compared to a lot of people I cover, he's well educated, he has a sense of history. He reads, which is always a plus. And so he's very complex guy. And some of it, as many people have chronicled, he can be very manipulative. He can be uh very uncuous he can be very tricky and uh mendacious to but maybe not and so there's a lot of like angling that he does all the time and so I think that's the issue here with a lot of people and Sam. And you know, you've read stories about people who've left. You know, and Dario's no perfection. He's got the arrogance of a technologist, as you can see from his typing. He writ-he writes a lot of like manifestos every five minutes, um, which are pretty good actually. And so, you know, you have all these personal things playing out in this very serious theater of of war . Um, and it's not in an excursion , by the way, which is Trump's latest word for this. I think he meant incursion. Excursion, yeah . No, he did. No no he said excursion, I know. Yes, but he meant incursion. But he meant war. So uh so so anyway, uh so you have this happening. And so it's really there's just what's happening is all these these massive aggressive companies are fighting each other using the federal government as their latest battles. Let me take the core issue on anthropic one of the core issues. Leave aside surveillance the other core which is you can't use our AI to do autonomous warfare and drones without having a human in the loop. Seems reasonable. But but leave aside whether they have the right to say that 'cause they're a private company and clearly you can say, here's how you use the project. Tell me why it seems reasonable to you if you were to see that 19-year-old jockeys doing fighter plan es get it much worse than AI drones. Because it's a person who takes responsibility for it. That's why. We can't look at right now. We're in the midst of another thing that's related, which is all these chatbots, which I think is a very sweet term for synthetic beings. We have to stop calling them chatbots like they're adorable little plush toys, right? They are they can be malicious and malevolent and they create these things. And I've been spending a lot of time over the past couple of years interviewing all the parents of kids who have died using these chatbots and getting into these synthetic relationships. These people have started to become uh analysts, lawyers, doctors, these technologists. Without the guardrails, the rest of us are, you know, as Scott says, they are not bound by the law, but they're protected by it, and we're bound by the law and not protected by it. And so one of the things that's really terrifying is like these if you read these text exchanges between kids and these chatbots, you are gonna want to find a tech person and strangle them. Yeah for putting this stuff out. I mean as a parent I have four kids even with the stuff with adults is even terrible like this this psychosis that happens. And so it's the same thing. It's like we are relying on these this AI. And it's fine if you're making a decision how to complete an email of an event of another conference event I don't want to go to. Like, thank you so much. Like, they do a beautiful job declining for me. Um, but it's not not this one. I love I love you, Walter. Um, but but it this is your life and death decisions, and they may be better at say f inding cancer or that those are the good things. And we should try to find what we should take things that they do well and supersize them and find a way to mitigate against the dangers. But when there's a person involved, there's someone accountable. There's no one accountable. Right now, all these companies, whether it's uh Character AI, which is a Google affiliated thing, Gemini, Chat GPT, nobody's home when you go to say well this person died. Couldn't it be pretty easily solved if we make the real world laws we have apply to the virtual and you could sue somebody for something happen to the money? Lawsuit going on right now in California around the impact of social media. But they've been largely protected by Section 230s. Right. And so you can't you can't displace them or fire them because they have full control they have monarchical control of their companies. Should we just get rid of two thirty and explain? I don't know. It's too complicated. It has to be reformed in an intelligent way, but they have captive of our Congress. They used to hate Washington as you know. Like I don't care about Washington, you know, Bill Gates, that was his famous thing. I don't care about lobbyists. They are running the government right now, and they are they they were standing front and center of Trump's inaugur ation. And so they have complete control over our elected officials. They absolutely do. Someone like Amy Klobuchar has not been able to pass a privacy bill, an antitrust bill, uh, you know, uh a transparent algorithm bill. They don't let you. They're doing it right now in California. They've created this super PAC that's going to try California's been the most aggressive about regulation. These rich people have just created another PAC. And because they figured out. They hated the government. Oh, we're so smart. We don't need the government. Except the problem is the government is full of ex-student body vice presidents with subpoena power, so that's a problem. And so they've decided to buy it and they went, oh, we can buy it. Oh, that's easy. And then they plant their people in these positions of power, like someone like Emile Michael, who's the one fighting with anthropic. Or David Sachs. David Sachs. I have a lot of experience and and of course the reporters who cover this actually don't I have experience with Emile Michael. I and other people at my website wrote the story that got him fired, which was there was a rape of a woman in India and one of his minions took the medical files trying to prove she was lying. It was all illegal. And he got bounced out of there. And I I know these people. Oh, wait, explain who he is now to the He's the one who's the deputy director of whatever the fuck at the Pentagon, you know, but essentially he's been writing tweets. This is a government official writing tweets about a company. They start sax started it because they have beefs that have nothing to do with our safety. These are Silicon Valley beefs that they have decided to move to Washington and they're pretending they're here to protect us. They're here to protect themselves and their interests. Same thing with Jeff Bezos. Same thing. All of them. All of them. And and of course, your good friend Elon Musk, who is the original OG of the President. We had an over and under on how many minutes it would take before you would pretty good knowing Elon Musk might be acknowledged. Lightly acknowledge I was right. Everybody was right . I'm not gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna officially the moratorium on giving Walter a hard time for Elon Musk. I am it's done too. How long does it last? Another 44 and a half. Unless you write another book where you G. I'm writing on Marie Curie. Oh yay, a dead person. Uh going back to the fact that you have And I like which I like her work. Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited for that part. Radioactivity is one of your favorite. I will have you on my podcast. We will only talk about radioactivity. Yes. Uh going back to you you have kids. Yes. Four of them. One of them almost went to Tulane, so it's that old and one of them's about a year old, right? Uh no, no, no, Walter, you're not keeping up with the Swisher family. Um no, one is four. Okay. Uh one is twenty-three. Uh so I have a twenty-three-year-old, a twenty-year-old, a six-year-old, and a girl. And how has your allowing them or their use of social media and dealing with that. How has that been and how has it changed? Oh I love the word allowing. Um , doing a lot of work there. Um I my son's actually kind of missed a little bit of the social media age. They're a little older, 20 and 23, but they both of my sons have taken social media it's a real trend among young people I think off their um off their phones. They use because they find it, my son took like the dating stuff. He's a they both have girlfriends. My son's living in San Francisco now with his girlfriend. But he's a great kid. He took it off and I remember him telling me, I was like, why'd you take it off? And he goes, it makes me feel bad. I was like, excellent reason. You know, just what Salman Rushdie just said. Um, you feel so much better when you remove it. Um, my other son, I mean, I think he they both use YouTube as television. I think that's YouTube is television now. But they're not that engaged in social media and not that engaged in their phones. They're very they're not. My son just went ice climbing. The other was hiking in Berkeley yesterday. So they find it very debilitating to use that stuff. And they'll use it for work and and YouTube for definitely for television. They stream. So and the little kids all they do is watch K-pop demon hunters on repeat. I just interviewed the creators. They just got season two in case for the parents in the room. Yay. Um but uh when the next movie, the sequel, and actually Netflix sent me a box with two backpacks in them, and I'm gonna accept them. Um I don't care if it seems corrupt. In the age of Trump, if you're not sure I became the best parent in America the other day when they arrived. Along with Did you see Hillary Clinton's merch move? No, what? Oh, she has a thing. Uh uh you can hold me in contempt till the cows come home t-shirts. Oh, okay. Helen Clinton. I love that Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton has run out of fucks. So y you uh uh you've created a media empire and we 're an empire, yes. Totally an empire. You have you know both two podcasts, a series, longevity. Yeah. There's the audacity, which is not yours, but you're a character in it's coming out . Um I was talking uh we were talking about uh Simon Schuster, your publisher in Peyton is nice to meet the and we that book is sure coming, I bet I'll do it. She owed you a book, she said. in Butstead of owing them a book, we were talking last night about how publishing companies could try to get into this space where Vox is and you are, and I don't even know what the word is for it, because podcasts minimalizes it too much. What type of media will be the next thing that you're on to? You know, I think about a lot, because Walt Walt Mossberg, who is actually I'm I I try to do a lot of different things and I I don't usually take people's word for like media is dying. I don't believe it. It's just not true. I just think what the way it was was dying and then something else always takes its place. That's historical, right? As as you know with most, you've written about innovation so many times, things supplant each other. And there's nothing new under the sun, which is an old phrase, but 2002, we started the All Things D conference. And the only reason we started the conference first was because the Wall Street Journal wouldn't let us invest in what they called a blog at the time. I said, you know, kids are using the internet. I was a young person then. And I was like, you know, the youngs kind of like the internet. So you might want to stop printing public, you know, they wanted to do a Saturday journal. And I was like, fine, but give me a million dollars to do this. And they wouldn't. And so we we did the conference, which was instantly profitable, which was the famous conference where you had gates and jobs and stuff like that. And they didn't give me money for doing the site, the all things D site, for five years. Um, and it was just one of these struggles with these old media institutions. And so Walt and I spun off, you know, even after making millions. And one of the things that happened there is they didn't give us any money initially for making the millions of dollars in profit and but then they gave us a percentage of the of the business which was stupid on their behalf. One executive came up to me and was like, I wish we had given that salary raise to you. And I'm like, I'm thrilled that you didn't. But We moved on to get our own money. We got our not just the business model, but to a new type of media. Yes, which everybody is doing. Yes, you know, Martha Stewart called it omnimedia and they made fun of her many years ago. That's exactly what it is. It's a it's I don't know if you want to use the word omni, but you know, one of the things I think about, like when I did my last book, Burn Book, which worked did very well as a book, but what I did on the book tour was I instead of doing the regular book tour, I had people in the book interviewing me at every single venue. And we sold out. They were crazy popular. And I thought I missed an opportunity to get a sponsor for this, but I didn' I should have thought strongly about that it was more than that, and I should have done more in the video space on that at the time. And so when you're making a book or I just announced a series called Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever on CNN, everyone's like, why are you doing cable? I'm like, I'm not doing cable, I'm doing something else. You don't understand that it's it's gonna live online. It's gonna be a podcast. There's gonna be a podcast. I may do an event. There's gonna be a book. I sh I'm sure I'll deliver it soon, Simon and Schuster. But there's gonna be it's I think about everything and not necessarily all of them, but just depending on what the the product happens to be. Like it may be a podcast, it may be this. Well let's take the lawn. Maybe merch. I haven't gone into merch yet. No, you know, yeah. We don't need insurance with the mess. Yes, you kinda do. I'm gonna make a lot of money at it. Yeah. If I have Scott saying, you know, it's good, it'll work. We'll we have fans . We'll be back in a minute . Comes from Samsara. Companies have to get product from point A to point B, and that means hiring drivers, which in turn means vehicle insurance, dash cams, and accepting the fact that accidents happen. That's exactly where samsara can help. It brings AI dash cams, vehicle tracking, and asset visibility together in one simple platform. Samsara can help you protect your drivers, cut costs, and operate smarter. Their AI dash cams capture real-time video that prove when your drivers aren't at fault, protecting them from false claims. Their data shows companies have reduced fuel costs and improved driver retention thanks to better visibility and coaching. Here's a case study for that. DHLs focus on safety and more effective According to Sams ara's data, their AI helps reduce crash rates by nearly 75%. 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After 10 years avoiding them, Hal and Lois demand Malcolm be at their anniversary party, pulling him straight back into their chaos. Malcolm in the Middle, Life's Still Unfair. A special four-part event. Streaming April 10th on Hulu on Disney Plus Let's take the longevity thing you're planning, which is about people in Silicon Valley and particularly want to live forever type of things. How are you going to make it? It'll be a book. Will it be a 10-part series? Will it be a couple? It's a six-part C it's already done. The CNN series is done. And the original title before all this happened was Peter Atia's a schmuck. And that was in my own. Yes, it did. That could be a good one. Once again, you need to pay attention to what I'm telling you. me on all manner of things they didn't know about, including health. And because they are godlike, they think they should live forever or they should hack death. And and I think it's just nonsensical. And they're way, you know, and what I was referencing was this amazing speech that you know about with Steve Jobs , which was Steve Jobs had a very good sense of death and understood that mortality is what creates innovation. And he gave this amazing speech, I recommended, which really inspired me about, you know, live your everyday like your it's the last. That's this is the Stanford speech. The Stanford speech . In that period, he did this amazing, astonishing speech. And so that was my inspiration, the Steve Job mentality versus say a Brian Johnson or an Elon Musk idea of like we should let we're so amazing god-like creatures, we should live forever. And so, and part and parcel to this is my obsession with the conspiracy theories all over the internet, politically and otherwise, but in the healthcare area it's really awful. Like all this nonsensical bullshit that's there. And so the charlatans bothered me, especially online, because they had weaponized health. And then at the same time, there's this astonishing blossoming of science happening right now, whether it's someone you wrote about, Jennifer Dowden at CRISPR, the cancer research, mRNA vaccines, like they're gonna have a vaccine for cancer. All this incredible use of AI to detect illnesses, that GLP1s, there's all this astonishing stuff happening, and then there's all these charlatans. And so I go and try all the charlatan stuff and try to blow it up. And then I try to focus in on people that are doing the real work, you know, so it's substantive and silly at the same time. And then I'll then I'm gonna do podcasts around it, then I might do an event. Um, you know, there's gonna be a book. I you know, I'm gonna try to like focus in on the non-shar the people that are doing the amazing work, but also slap the charlatans wherever I can slap them out of the picture. All right. And tell me about the audacity. Oh, I'm I didn't work with these people, but it's a it's a series that it's interesting. The Times wrote about this yesterday, but the shift of tech people from very silly and you kind of root for them and they end up at the at the end of Silicon Valley, they do the right thing. They have a technology that could really hurt people to today you have Mountainhead and this where the technologists are the villains and really ridiculous drug taking sex having villains essentially. How did uh the techies become both villains and right wing? Oh, I don't know if they're right wing. I don't think . Well, I guess I shouldn't say that. Go ahead. Yeah, I think they're not right wing. I think they're just people, as I I joke with you, they're people who who weren't hugged enough as children um that now are taking it out on the rest of us. I think whatever is in their financial self-interest is what they do or their, you know, even down to Tim Cook, who I happen to like, you know, bringing that golden statue to Trump. I mean, ha what an embarrassment. To me there's a level of if you have that much fuck you money and not saying fuck you seems kind of ridiculous, like on some le vel. Um now he can do damage to them, that is a hundred percent true, but for how long and not much longer, I suspect. And so I I I think some of them very much real. Very real. I think like David Sachs was conservative. He was w conservative ish. And I think they tried to libertarian teal like t I would call it libert Peter Teal honestly is the only one who was always like this and and deserves you know his ridiculo us stuff is something he has he's consistently heinous, essentially. But he's consistently and very smart person, very you know, has has consistently sort of espoused this idea that democracy doesn't work and that the Uber men should be running everything. You know, you you've read all their stuff. Is that the the unitary executive theory and oh these women are so irritating and when they got the vote that, sucked. That kind of stuff. And then you have people who have come along to it and sort of entered the picture. I would, you know, Elon was never, I never knew, Elon was somewhat liberal as I remember him called me when they were going to do this anti-trans and anti-gay thing in the first Trump administration. What can I do, Kara? And I was, and now today couldn't be worse on the topic, you know, and really terrible. Uh I don't lots of things happened with him, including ketamine . Um, but among other things, he just morphed. I think because the woke mind virus, it's actually not a woke mind virus that affected him, it's a Twitter mind, it's an X mine virus. You know, this Nazi corn bar, he's been hanging in it too much, and therefore he's become Yeah. Talk about that a little because we had Salman Rushdie sitting there a moment ago and he said his life and mind have been liberated now that he's taking social media of his phone because you're living let's call it Twitter or actually but if you're living in that world you think the world is more dystopian than it actually is and no I made the mistake of going on it the other day for a second and I was like, oh God, this place again. Um I love Twitter. I did. I did. I was one of the first people. I had one I still have one point six million followers on there and I'm not on it. Like that's would be good for my marketing. Like, but I just can't. It's like a real By the way, well you're on Blue Sky and I am on Blue Threats. How come those didn't work? They didn't get jokes. Threats is bigger than Twitter right now. And Mark Zuckerberg's run right over uh that. So never than here well means Instagram is massive. What do you think? But Instagram and threads is bigger than X right now. Okay. And growing when you post on threads do you get the same Oh absolutely. Actually you know, listen, I'm ain't no fan of Mark Zuckerberg, but it's a nice product, I have to tell you. Like it doesn't like one of the I shouldn't I'm not gonna say the word they always call me on Twitter, but uh it's starts with C and ends with T almost regularly. It's a really good place. I have I it's a really interesting you know sometimes it's not great, but it it's sort of a version of what Twitter used to be for me. Um and actually I'm doing a lot of news discovery on it. I again I'm not one who loves to compliment Mark Zuckerberg, but it's a good product. And there's all kinds of issues with it, like a lot of things. I think Blue Sky has has reached this the founding CEO just stepped down. They need to do more, uh, that kind of stuff. But it's I have both of them. I have half a million people on each of them. That's pretty good. And they re I'll tell you the response rate is great. Um, but X is so polluted with bots and malignant figures , that it's useless. Since you talked about section two thirty, I want to make sure people know what it is, which is it's just the section of the law that says if somebody posts something on social media, the company, X or Facebook. It wasn't envisioned for social media, it was for chat groups. Right. It was way back at the beginning of the Internet. But on X you can say anything you want, including the words that are used about you. Yep. Why is it you have no recourse to even sue the person who said it? I don't even care if any one's I don't care if an incel calls me that name. Good luck. Enjoy your whatever you're doing. place online. That's really the idea. What kind of business do you want to run? And again, if Elon wants to do this, he should be able to, right? I do think it has a deleterious effect on society. I think what it creates is this sort of hateful toxicity. It's a death cult. I don't know what else to say, you know, having just done this. There's a really interesting scientific study is that people who who avoid death and try to get away from it create polarized societies of hatefulness. Those who accept it it and make part of their world, it's to me it's suicidal. Is that partly responsible for the type of politics we have now? Yes, I think I think it is. I think it's really an interesting moment. We're dunking on people, nobody's talking about like what do we want to solve? And it's sort of a basic hatred of humanity. Like, ugh, these people, like how dare they be different, how dare they be, you know, and I you can have a good argument about DEI program. Fine. Whatever. But it's really not our biggest issue, is it? I mean, I remember sitting with um someone in media where they were like, you know, you can't say what you want anymore. This was a rich white guy. Like, you can't say what you want anymore. I go, it seems like you can. All your all your direct reports are other white guys. So it seems like you do whatever you want. And he's like, yeah, but I get shit for it. I'm like, oh sorry, sweetheart. Like I think I called him sweetheart. Um I was like, so sorry, you can do it. And he goes, Well, I think it's one of the biggest issues of our time. And I go, Oh, I think poverty and child abuse would be my choices. But you know. I I don't know if you're proud of this. You actually should be, but if I remember correctly, because I've followed you forever. No, you know. You were the first person to say, you know what, Trump can win. This is way back in twenty four . It was. You remember we had that discussion? Because here's why I watched The Apprentice. I was I watched all I love that show. I thought I mean a terrible show, but it was a great show. I like that kind of thing. I also like uh anything Gerard Butler is in, so this is my taste. Greenland 2. Um everyone's like, go see one battle after another. I'm like, Greenland 2 is where I'm going. So it's really good. So I I was watching The Apprentice and I knew how popular he was with Jeff Zucker created there, even though it was sort of false. And you could see sort of what was happening online with this fake personas, these personas , but people who were genuine. And I had just done an interview with Kim Kardashian, who was enormously popular online, not just in the reality TV business, but she had numbers, and I had done an interview with her. She is genuine to who she is, right? Online, sort of erupting beyond media companies, politics, and things like that. And so I thought he was really good online. Like he was he was he's our first internet troll president, right? Really and so was O Barack Obama, but to a much more sort of hands-off, right? You know, you know like everything is like that with him. He's gotten a lot better, I can tell you that. But uh AOC is the I did a comparison in the New York Times between AOC and Trump, and they're sort of doing a s they're not the same thing, but Mom Donnie Mom Donny's friggin' like Olympic level uh online stuff. Um but and and very sweet too. He's got a very s it's a very sweet but pointed kind of thing. Everyone's different to themselves. But Trump was really good at that. And I remember Ariana Huffington's like, we're putting Trump in the entertainment section. I was like, no, no. And I was with a bunch of political people in Washington reporters. They're like, oh he's so ridiculous. I'm like no he's not he's a he's a poor person's version of a rich person at least that I can tell like you know actually in this audacity this one of the characters said you're a you're a dumb person's version of a genius which I thought was He was also self-deprecating. He used to be. Now he's sort of something's occurred in his cognitively disabled brain. But he he understood the j oke. He was using all the I studied Roy Cohen quite a lot because he was speaking of the original conspiracy theorist and a manipulator of media who was his mentor. You know, I could see that it would work on people and the Democrats had such a flaccid after post Obama did not have the same kind of idea and was very much not and I don't mean listening to people like I have this encounter when they were trying to do silicon haul remember they were doing silicon haulers, silicon beach. They were gonna make the silicon area in um in Kentucky. I traveled there. And uh we they were talking they were promising all these software jobs. They did all these tours where they would go on and Trump was promising I'm gonna bring back coal and bring back whatever. And I went there also to speak in front of these people and they got up and made all these ridiculous we're gonna make you software and digital and this and that and I got up I go listen everybody first of all coal is not coming back and when it comes back it's gonna be robotics you know why because you get black lung and a machine don't and it worked 24-7. So FYI, this guy right here, the owner, he can't wait to replace you. So they were doing that, and one of the things, and I said they are you were not this is not gonna happen to you, but one of the people came up to and I I was scared I was gonna get hit by these people, but they came up and said, Thank you for telling us the truth about this. I said, No problem. And they said, It's nice for you to come visit uh real Americans. And I looked at this guy, he's a big coal miner and I said, I'm a fucking real American. I don't know what you're talking about. Why don't you come to San Francisco and hang out with me in the Castro? Like why do you get to be the real American and I don't? Like I was like such bullshit. And he liked that. AI, yes, it's going to supplant all kinds of jobs and it's going to happen at a speed. We've had it happen before. Farmers were the original entrepreneurs. There were 90% of people were farmers. That's an entrepreneurial job when it in the back of the day, figuring out what to do. Now it's two percent. Something like that. It's some number that's really low. Manufacturing underwent that. Of course we had the Luddites and everything else, as you know, and then now we have But in the previous two revolutions there were more jobs after they happened than fewer jobs. There became more jobs, but there was also, which we forget because we have a deficit of memory about history, incredibly socially problematic revolutions and fights. This is happening at such a speed that people don't understand. And so companies are doing layout, they did too many hiring during COVID. Now they're doing layoffs and they're using AI as the excuse. But the fact of the matter is , you aren't gonna need like someone, here's a good example. Barry Diller and I had lunch a couple of years ago, I mean a year ago, I think, or two years ago and he said I you know I he had six thousand programmers he's like I bet I have two thousand so a lot fewer people can do a lot more using AI tools. It's just not clear but that increase in productivity could end up creating it. Yes, but will it create more jobs or less jobs? It's good, it's you know, which is what the Palantir, did you see that? Palantir see that guy needs to stop talking, like seriously. Alex Carp? He really needs to stop talking. Like he just he's soon he's gonna pontificate on Salman Rushdie, which I'm then I'm gonna tackle him . And we're gonna please stop talking about things you know nothing about. Um and so or Bill Ackman, the other one. I think I'll start talking about hedge fund investing because I know this much. I know more about hedge fund investing than he knows about almost anything except hedge fund investing. Um he has an IPO coming up by the way. Personally I wouldn't bother How do you personally use A AI? What do I know? How do you use AI? I try to use it every day, and I think everyone here should do that and understand where it fits in with your life. You know, I think it's critically important to it's back when the internet first started, Walter was around at CNN at the time, I think . Oh Time Mazagine.azine Time mag. I think you have to. I see I'm gonna give a shout out to Jim Barksdale who came in and he and Tim Berners-Lee. Is Jim? Both here. There's Jim. Wave your hand or whatever. But Jim was the one who came in 1992. He'll correct me if I'm wrong. Ethics, quality, great business, knew what he was talking about, sadly did not rein in Mark Andreessen, but you tried. I really appreciate it. He was an amazing guy. Amazing leader. And yeah, and when he came, he said, all right, nineteen ninety-two uh web browsers, they were just creating web browser. Yeah. Yeah. I mean one of the things that Jim said, and he knows this, he had a bunch of lines that and I found, Jim, I found this the other day in a box when you left They did a party for him and had all they had a book of his sayings. And one of his sayings was, it's important to keep the main thing the main thing, which I loved. It's such a great idea. But he was trying to bring financial discipline to a business that really was under siege because of Microsoft at the time and tried his best and sold it off correctly to AOL um eventually. You wrote a book about that. I did. He was it yeah, he was in it. Um but one of the things that was important was just because AOL sort of missed the boat, it doesn't mean there it wasn't important. And that's what I think about, like which of the ones coming forward are gonna be. But getting back to using AI, you've got to figure out if you're an insurance, what does it help you do better? Where does like uh there was a great book by the guy who just died, Daniel Kahneman, marvelous book about there were t tw 20 uh insurance adjusters versus ai. AI was more accurate. Something like that. It's they got 20 different decisions from 20 different people depending on if they had a bad coffee that day or something or a bad But you keep saying we have to keep humans in the loop. Yes. So what does it do? It's sort of like how did the car help us? The car doesn't run everything. The car changed this country, right? Absolutely. So did the plane. I I was just at the Air and Space Museum with three of my kids and there was a bunch of quotes, nobody ever reads what's on the wall there, about when Orville Wright and there was a sister involved that was very critical, FYI. Wright brother's sister, who's his right sister. Um, and the mother was also critically involved, um, very interesting family. Um there was a bunch of there was a bunch of quotes of the day . This is going to ruin everything, like this is going to d society is now doomed. And then others who said no, it's going to change everything. Well, it did both those things, right? And so will AI. So will AI. And so what can we do to stress the things that were that are good about it? And what can we do to mitigate the obvious dangers, the ability to do autonomous drones, the ability to make decisions. In the early days of the of AI, I was at a dinner with a bunch of very well-known people, and they were debating this, and they were truly terrified at the possibility. I mean, I hadn't seen them usually they're frequently wrong but never in doubt, but they were very much worried about where it was going . And one of them said to me, you know, if you tell it to solve world hunger, which it probably could pull from all sorts of disparate sources, the number one answer would be kill a hundred million people. As a paper. But that's the best answer if you want to solve world hunger. But it's not the best answer. It's a bad answer. But from a logical perspective, it's sort of like Spox running all over the place. The logical answer is to kill people. The same thing when they just tested nuclear, what should we do in the Mide ast? Most of these most of these things uh said nuclear bomb would work. Well yes it would, but it would be bad. Speaking of drones. But uh and then the other thing that the the the the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a group that Elon is trying to put out of business and has been unsuccessful, um, they just showed that, you know, when they were showing different uh things of building bombs, causing harm, violence, attacks , all of them recommend the worst thing to do. How would you regulate it? You could start with just based first of all, we haven't done privacy regulation around our data. You're being used, you know, you seen the matrix , that's all of you, just so you know. They're using your data. Like the yesterday, Grammarly, you ever heard of it? It's a it's another AI thing. They took all of my information and were giving advice as Kara Swisher. No, they were taking all I have said a lot of things and have done a lot of interviews. They were bringing it all together and then they were offering people advice from Kara Swisher without asking Kara Swisher or paying Kara Swisher or anything else. So they and Matthew McConaughey has talked about this, lots of people. They they are rapacious information thieves and they will take whatever Sam Altman talked about this is we're gonna take all of intelligence and sell it back to you. Well it's our intelligence. It's not theirs. So basic data uh we should have a federal privacy law. We do not have one twenty years in to this thing. Algorithmic transparency. Why don't we have what is in there? What is in your little black box? What how does it go in? What happens? How do you decide? You know, they pretend they're like they're they think they're like Kentucky Fry fucking chicken. Like it's not a secret. You can actually, by the way, you can figure that recipe out today using AI. But we need to know what's in there. What is going in? What are the inputs? What is the data you're having? Garbage in, garbage out is one of the famous tech phrases. We need to have uh an ability to sue these people. And by the way, if they win, good for them. If they lose, great for us. Like so we should have to do it. So in other words, if an algorithm amplifies hatred and causes a problem, you should be able to sue the company that created that algorithm. Not for the m not in many ways. And by the way, let's have that debate. They don't want to have that debate with us. They don't want to like uh pr privacy. Right now, you know, we should be debating our tax system. Now I'm I'm not for that California billionaires tax, but there's a new one they're proposing that's pretty good, like makes sense, makes it much more fair. Um the idea, like rich people don't pay uh the the numbers are just there, the math is there. They're they haven't been paying as many taxes.' There theres a way to do it that doesn't create class warfare. Although maybe a little class warfare is not a bad thing sometimes, right? That these people are advantaging themselves through every single possible means and everybody else gets to pay the bill, whether it's through and they take you know who paid for the internet, everybody? You did. The American taxpayer paid for the internet. And it's a good and guess what? Our government did that. The government paid for research around these amazing mRNA vaccines around space travel. Guess who's benefiting? Not us. They are. And so to me, we should get a piece of that . We'll be back in a minute . This episode is brought to you by FedEx. These days, the power move isn't having a big metallic credit card to drop on the check at a corporate lunch. The real power move is leveling up your business with FedEx intelligence and accessing one of the biggest data networks powered by one of the biggest delivery networks. Level up your business with FedEx, the new power move. Hi everyone, it's Kara Swisher. I'm excited to put something new on your radar from the Vox Media Podcast Network. It's called Project Swagger with the one and only Robin Arzon, and it's all about helping you trust yourself, level up your mindset, and actually make the changes you've been thinking about. Robin is Peloton's vice president of fitness programming and head instructor. She's also a 27-time marathon and ultra-marathon runner, founder of Swagger Society Media Company, and a two-time New York Times best-selling author. In under 30 minutes, Robin shares the rituals, routines, and mental shifts that fuel her hustle and show you how to apply them in your own life. In the very first episode, she opens up about the moment that forced her to transform her inner voice and the strategies that helped her become what she calls a self-talk ninja. You can find Project Swagger with Robin Arzon on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every Tuesday . Hi, I'm Brene Brown. And I'm Adam Grant. And we're here to invite you to the Curiosity Shop. A podcast that's a place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling, and questioning. It's gonna be fun. We rarely agree. But we almost never disagree, and we're always learning. That's true. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday . Tell me about the politicians now. Get you out a bit out of your tech comfort zone. No, I live in Washington now. I spend a lot of time with Paul. And tell me which ones you think get it, from Talo Rico to Rokana? I just did a long interview with Mark Warner, uh, I mean, that's great about Iran and cybersecurity and election security and a number of things. I think he's re he's a former venture capitalist, really sharp, especially on cybersecurity issues. I think he's terrific. Amy Klobuchar, I've always, uh even though her legislation has not made it, I think she's trying really hard to do the right thing. And as she wrote an amazing book on antitrust that is so big. I used to joke with her you could throw it at a poodle and kill it. It's like this I read the entire thing. I know a lot about antitrust now. Um but uh should we be using the antitrust laws to break up the new ways to make tech companies? We need to we need to innovate the antitrust rules. They're written for an era of a hundred years ago, you know Although they still say if you have a dominance in a field and you leverage it in another field, then we're letting that happen. It's not the same thing. It's very it's like what is antitrust today? We need a wholesale rethinking because it doesn't work. Like correctly, I know the judge in the case that Facebook uh just won because things have changed, right? And so now Facebook has plenty of competitors. Things change really quickly and government doesn't keep up with law. So a r a redo of the antitrust bills, to me, the only way is litigation. Like, because our government is not going to respond because of the deleterious effects of uh citizens united. There's an im I did an amazing interview with Larry Lessig about this other case that is gonna possibly knock the stuffing out of super PACs, which is uh will go a long way. No, no, it it looks like it will, actually. It act looks like it might. And so we just have to stop having this this dark money stuff is really problematic because the tech people are taking advantage of it and causing all manner of of nefarious things. And years ago when the Tea Party was sort of going around, I got a call on the phone from I like to stay on the line with these callers, right? And they go, you know, our government has never, you know, done anything, it's the people, give it back to the people. And I said, Oh, how did World War Two work out for you? I was like, 'cause if not, we'd be goose stepping down, you know, Pennsylvania Avenue if we didn't have the government who fought the Nazis. I was like, that worked out pretty fucking well. How do you like the road you're on? Guess who built that? The national highway system. Get off the fucking roads if you want don't like the government. Don't like, you know, I'm not I agree there's too much regulation in certain areas, but the del i on my corner should not have more regulations than Elon Musk. It's just seems it's just like what about uh Pal antir and Alex Carr? You've been said he talks too much. Uh he seems insane to me me. Ian it's interesting because everyone who refuses to talk to me, I realize you know, they all refuse now because I'll do it I won't lick them up and down anymore. Um but um I think it's fine to do that business. But let me talk about the Defense Department, which can't build anything. It can't get the fi Veteen, it can't uh get a rocket into orbit. Right. So should there be uh uh I think uh Palmer Lucky is doing Andorrell and uh Palantir, obviously Musk. Should we have these private tech billionaires be taking over our defense? I think we should have competent people in the government buying this stuff just like a good vendor might. I don't think they should be pontificating and involved in I don't think they should install their minions in positions of power. And look, I'm not naive. This has happened over the three. Of course they did, but it not you did you know what their personal politics was? Did you know they were tweeting about uh like white supremacists. Not the last time we had this problem, it was Henry Ford. And by the way, rest in not peace, Henry Ford. Even thanks for the car, but fuck you, essentially. But you know, that's And she just did one on the Japanese internment. It has so many echoes of today of misinformation, of lies, of the government manipulating things, of business getting weird billionaires. was a weird Texas billionaire wandering around doing something terrible. Um at Huey Long. All this stuff. This is something that's happened again and again in our history, but we've never had such wealth. I mean, he's gonna be a trillionaire if this SpaceX thing goes off as it's supposed to. He's gonna be a trillionaire. There's nothing is unprecedented in terms of wealth and power and the ability to overwhelm government. And when you have, again a, moron like Pete Heggseth in there, who just today said he didn't, this is incredible, this is astonishing. He's the the CNN had a Chiron, and who who reads the Chirons except this narcissistic prick said war intensifies. That's a neutral world. It is intensifying. He doesn't like the word intensif ies. He goes, the Chiron should have been on its last legs. You know, and and and then he said, swear to God, he goes, he goes, I can't wait till David Ellison gets in charge. He's arguing with the word intensifies. If this doesn't remind you of Brave New World and the rest of it, it really you really should have to do. Speaking of David Ellison and the media and stuff, you've been working with CNN on for a long time. What should happen to CNN ? I don't think he should own it. I don't I Barry Diller? I'd love Barry Diller to own it. That'd be a lot of fun. Um he's a really smart programmer. I don't agree with Barry on lots of stuff, but at least he likes journalists. Um I I just don't think he's qualified. I don't think because you're born to a rich person you should montificate on media. Wait, you're talking about Barry Diller or Ellison? No, Barry Diller is a a pro. No, David Ellison. He's a nice guy. He's a very nice guy. I've I did a podcast with him. But the fact of the matter is, he was born on third base and hit a home run. Thinks he hits a thinks he hit the home run. And that's great, but I don't know why we're this is a lot of media properties in one person.'s hand Now I think these are some of them are declining media properties, so I'm not as worried. But he has shown a proclivity to suck up to Trump. He happens I I knew him as as pretty democratic, but I don't really care. But he's shown a proclivity to suck up to Trump, and Trump is very aggressive. Why does that keep I mean what is Trump's power to get people all over? You said Tim Cook at the beginning, you got Ellison there. Tariffs. He wants to get out of tariff. Everyone has a different Everybody's just doing it for money, you think? Money, yes. They're like I say, they're so poor. All they have is money. They're so poor. They don't have a sense of civic duty and about a bigger picture . So they want shareholder. And I appreciate that. I'm a capitalist. I like making money. I make a lot of money. But you know, I also can make decisions. And so depending on what they do at CNN, if i I'll leave. I don't give a I don't make that much money from them and I can wander over to somewhere else. And so we all have to make our decisions. And I've said I'll leave and I they've I've spoken to some of their executives and they're like, W you reallyill leave? I go, I'll really leave and really loudly, and there'll be a lot of fuck you. So I don't know what to tell you. But I can I do that, right? And I can't, I have the choice to do that because I have choices. Well well none of the people we're talking about lack choices. Tim Cook does a lot of choices. But I I get I get his argument. I do get his argument. I get why they all have to do it. But again, they also have there's a like Dario said no. Yeah. You know, and then Sachina 's been that's but you know what? You know who then said no? Sachin Adela said no. Guess what? There's gonna be a lot more no's L.isa Murkowski just said no to this stupid save act. You know, there's it's a really good word, you should all use it, and we can all say it. And by the way, there's gonna be a price. You know what? I maybe I won't have season two if Kara Swisher wants to live forever. But guess what? I'm gonna do something called Kara Swisher Wants to not die. I don't know, I'll call it something else. I don't care. It's like I since we're at a book festival, talk to me just a little bit. Let's finish up with what you read . When is your book coming out? The um Marie Curie? Yeah, that one. Uh probably, I don't know, Priscilla when coming out Now tell me what you read and whether the uh I tend to read not uh fiction now. I'm doing a lot. I just reread um The Underground Railroad. I just reread that amazing book. Um yeah, Col Colson? Yes. Uh I just reread it. I don't I read it quickly and I spent a lot more time on it. I love um uh North Woods, uh which I love that I love that author. Um he's amazing. I just love it. It's such a beautiful book about time and I love time trap. It's a little bit of t it's just wonderful. I just finished the piano tuner. Uh I tend to read everybody. I'm now gonna read all of Salmon Rushdie's books, and I was just I was about to say I recommend Salmon Rushdie's. I would I it's I've always felt like I I my wife was a book editor at the at the Boston Globe and is a really it was an editor, was also an editor Amanda at a at a publisher. She's an incredible uh has incredible taste. I'm kind of dumb. Like I feel like I'm dumb around nonfiction. And so I always felt Salman Rush was too hard for me. I know it's like and I I have a lot in my head. And so I tend to I'm reading mostly fiction right now. And I I when I get recommendations I try to read it. And I actually right before this I I went online and I said what's the easiest Selman Rushdie book to start with? Apparently it would be well it gave me a good recommendation. I'll recommend uh David Edgers' books because they I have interviewed him. I've read all this book. No, I I've inter I've when the circle came out I did a great interview with him. Those are sort of in my genre, so I tend not to want to read in my genre books. Um I probably will read the book uh Hail Mary is Project Hail Mary's based on