“I’m Not Trying To Start A Witch Hunt” – Jacob Coxon On AI Espionage Concerns

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Patrick Bet-David (0:30)

I wonder if it's fear porn where they're just using to scare a regular person watching this. I wrote it down. I said, I think this is how I see it. I just kind of want to share with you on how I see the fear porn side of this. So one part of the fear porn is, hey, this is so scary, AI is going to take over the world. We need the government to control.

Okay, that's one. Okay, people are using this because they want control, they want the government to control. Number two, hey, this is so big and powerful, and we need government control because I'm an anthropic and open AI, I'm eliminating my other companies to come and compete with me, so the barrier to entry becomes more difficult and I get to control. So the motive there becomes eliminating future competition. Pretty good move if you're thinking that way, right?

Jacob Coxon (1:11)

Definitely.

Patrick Bet-David (1:12)

The third level of fear porn is, well, let me tell you, this thing is so powerful, because we're about to go public. As big as we thought this was, this is so much more powerful than us.

You may want to invest some of your money in there, because when we go public, you may 10x, 20x, 30x your money. So the public IPO goes just massive, right? So those are three elements of the fear porn that I see. Then the other one is, maybe it is as scary as you say it is. The other one is, if we don't build it, China builds it. You know, and last but not least, if we all stop, how can somebody hold an independent person or China to build this? So of those, if you can one by one by one address which one you think it is.

Jacob Coxon (1:51)

Yeah. So to go to the original fear porn stuff, especially about the regulation control or Anthropic hyping up their product, I think part of the reason my tweet went so viral is many people at Anthropic said the same thing, but they didn't just quit. You know, they stayed there. So it's easier to be like, okay, he's staying at the company. He's saying this stuff, but he's just hyping the product. I left in a personal capacity because I am scared. So from my perspective, I have nothing to gain by hyping up Anthropic. That's not a...

I'm not trying to hype them up or get them like special criteria. I think what they're doing is dangerous. I think it's reckless. I think they should be curtailed. And I left to say that. So that's to address the like regulatory capture stuff. Also later, we could go into why I don't think it's actually like... It doesn't actually make sense to stoke up this level of fear. I think it's going to hurt their IPO. I think it's going to hurt their ability to stay in control. We can talk about that later. Go ahead.

What was the other point? China, yeah.

Yeah, the China point is difficult. But I think, again, if you appreciate that the tech is scary and it's going to feel scary for the people building it, I think China will also realize that. The people building the technology in China will see how destabilizing it is. And I just don't think that that regime wants to create destabilizing technology that could threaten their own power. I think, actually, our incentives are aligned. Like, we're more similar to China in this respect, so it should be quite easy to cooperate.

Patrick Bet-David (3:20)

Well, if you look at the advancement, the separation between us and China, one could say the motivation...

Hang on one second, I want to show you one data. Yeah. So motivation for China could be, US has such a massive lead in AI, we need them to slow down so we can catch up. Yeah. There's no way in the world that China is going to sit there and say, Oh, yeah, yeah, President Trump, for sure. We're going to shut it down, and we're not going to work on it. Yeah. Okay, great. Can we come and look at your place to make sure you are actually keeping your promises? No, no, just take our word for it. We are not working on super intelligence.