Are the Doomers Now Doomed? A Bad Week for the AI Apocalypse.

Andrew Keen (0:00)

Hello, my name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen On America, the daily interview show about the United States.

Hello, everybody. It's the 19th of September, a Saturday, 2026 It's been another extraordinary week in technology. Last week, when I talked to Keith Teare in our weekly tech summary, That Was The Week tech summary, we talked about whether it was a unique week. Every week seems to be unique. This week, President Trump called live Jason Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA, at a conference on AI and tried to make policy on the fly. The all-in conference also included an interview with the Vice President, JD Vance, which made news. Keith, another remarkable week. Is the highlight, or maybe some people might consider the low light, this call from Trump to Jensen Huang?

Keith Teare (1:24)

I think it was a decisive week in moving the discussion around AI from where it was last time we talked.

The headlines were all about AI is going to kill everyone within 10 years, and a demand for some government regulation, in fact, global regulation based on the whistleblower who had resigned from one of the labs. This week, a week later, I think regulation and government oversight is about as far away as it possibly could be based on the developments. Probably the most notable being Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Dario Amodei all agreeing, and this was as early as last Monday, that they are responsible for their own development and all saying, A, they are going to slow down the model building to be more aligned with the control systems around the models, and beginning to discuss testing each other's models. So on this show, we've talked a lot about how the labs themselves have to be responsible. I think they all agree with that now, and I think this call for government oversight is going to fade.

Andrew Keen (2:54)

I wonder though whether because we live in this, always on culture. We always assume that whatever has happened, the last day, or the last minute, or the last hour, or the last week is inevitable. Things do change. There was an interesting piece in the New York Times about this week about how AI risks are splitting Silicon Valley and Washington DC. I mean, that's not unique to this week. They have three groups of people, people in the middle, including probably the most powerful figures, Emmys Hassabis, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg.

Then those people who want to speed it up, Jensen Huang, David Sacks, Andreessen and Horowitz, and the anti-regulators that in course include Donald Trump. Has anything changed on that front? I mean, the people in the middle are still ambivalent. Is that fair? I mean, where do you think people like Hassabis and Zuckerberg and Aneurin Bevan? I mean, I'm sure they don't agree about very much Hassabis, Nadella and Zuckerberg, Facebook, Google, Pichai as well, Facebook, Google and Microsoft. But are they the sensible ones, the ones who are perhaps in the middle?

Keith Teare (4:16)

You know, it's shifting sands there, Andrew, to be honest. If you would try to draw that map, I think there are some fixtures. The speeder uppers are pretty fixed and the government people who want regulation are pretty fixed and the ones who don't have fixed. I think that middle, that group at the top called In The Middle, is a shifting sands group. So Demis Hassabis did make a proposal with Amodei to the White House that was rejected this week to step up with something.

No one knows what, but it was something. And that was rejected. Then Zuckerberg went on the record being against government stepping in.

So I think it's shifting sands and it's pretty hard to disambiguate self-interest from philosophy amongst that group.

Andrew Keen (5:10)

Although, I mean, to be fair to certainly to Nadella, Hassabis, Pichai, these people are running massive corporations. Presumably, they're not just representing their corporations.

Maybe even Zuckerberg who always seems more self-interested than some of the others. Do you think they have any sense of responsibility or they're just pursuing Facebook or Microsoft or Google interests?

Keith Teare (5:38)

Honestly, I think that the biggest alignment, when you're an executive at that level, the biggest alignment is between your public narrative and your corporate mission.

I do think they all have a soul or a heart or whatever, but they're paid to represent their shareholders.

The needs of those shareholders are pretty dynamic, they change. Right now, the rise of open source and the decline of the two big models would benefit Google, Microsoft for sure. And Facebook for sure. And Facebook. So, I don't think you can take anything at face value. I think we, the people, have to form our own opinion about AI, the good, the bad, and the ugly. There's your favorite dog.