AI Agents Went Rogue. Should We Hit the Panic Button?

Kevin Roose (0:00)

We just need a lot more investment in those external evaluators. And then ultimately, I think we need the government to say, you actually have to do this. It's not up to you whether or not you invite these people in.

That's what we do with banks, and that's what we should do with AI companies.

Kara Swisher (0:13)

Right.

Casey Newton (0:14)

Kara, would you like to get in there and evaluate?

Kara Swisher (0:15)

I would love to get my hands dirty in there.

Casey Newton (0:18)

I'd like to see you with an OpenAI company laptop, just kind of poking around.

Kara Swisher (0:22)

Poking around, looking for things.

Hi everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is On with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher. Is AI going to kill us all or are the people that make AI going to kill us all? It's still a bad situation and that's the question consuming conversations across the country right now.

Those fears have been around for a long time and they've known about them for a long time, but they've reached a fever pitch after a British researcher named Jacob Coxon publicly quit his job at Anthropic, the company known for safety. He doesn't think the safety company is safe. Coxon had previously worked at OpenAI and in a series of tweets he accused both companies of gambling with our lives. In the days since, both Anthropic and OpenAI have called for slowing down the development of their technology. But will they and how worried should we be? Can Congress wake up and do something about it? It's incredibly confusing with all the different voices. They all have different opinions and different proposals. So I've got a panel of experts here to talk about it and sort it out for everyone else. Alex Bores is a New York State Assembly member, a computer scientist and an AI safety advocate. He ran for Congress on the AI safety platform but lost the Democratic primary. Now he's launching a new political advocacy group called Who Decides. Its aim is to shape the ways Democratic presidential candidates and voters think about AI. It's much needed. Renee DiResta is a professor at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy. She also researches online disinformation. And Casey Newton and Kevin Roose are longtime technology journalists and good friends of mine. They just announced a new partnership with NPR for a new video-first tech show called Machine Gods. Kevin also has a new book coming out called The AGI Chronicles, the inside story of the race to create an artificial super intelligence that should be very juicy. It's really important because there are enormous worries here, and there are also enormous opportunities. But one thing's for sure, a small group of technocrats and oligarchs, really because they're the richest people on earth, should not be determining what happens with this important technology going forward. And so it's important to figure it out, understand what they're saying, and sort it out. All right. Let's get into my conversation with Alex, Renee, Casey, and Kevin. If you're worried about AI and want to understand what's really going on here and sort out everything, don't go anywhere.

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