Meet the Politician the AI Industry Is Trying to Stop

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

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Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:22)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:24)

Obviously, we've been talking about, I think, 2028, it's gonna be a big election for AI. Really 2026, actually now. Right now. It's not really even a prediction. This is just a description of fact, AI is going to be very big for politics.

Tracy Alloway (0:36)

Yeah, I think it's inescapable at this point. AI is sort of dominating the news cycle as well. I know it's a running joke on the podcast, but every time we record an AI-related episode, another headline hits the terminal about some new billion dollar billions.

Joe Weisenthal (0:53)

What's the one that we just got?

Tracy Alloway (0:55)

Disney to make $1 billion equity investment in OpenAI.

Joe Weisenthal (1:00)

Literally every time we do an episode, especially about AI, but even though there's some headline about a new investment, which just goes to show. But the fact that it's going to dominate politics is the least surprising thing ever because it touches on everything. Anything that's politically sensitive, the labor market, right? That's the obvious big one. Electricity costs, water consumption, wealth and inequality. And who has the power and who's accumulating more and more money in the tech industry and who's not and all this thing. Like there is hardly a political topic that in some way, I feel like AI does not exacerbate in some way.

Tracy Alloway (1:36)

Absolutely. Meanwhile, the other big news politically when it comes to AI this week is that Trump issued an executive order for a national rule on AI. Which a lot of people who are trying to safeguard the system and protect data, privacy rights, that sort of thing, do not want.

Joe Weisenthal (1:55)

Well, this is the other thing. So there's all this anxiety for various reasons. Pick your poison, whether it's going to displace the jobs, whether AI is going to be too woke and come up with versions of history that people don't like, whether it's going to just rot our minds with slop, or whether it's going to turn us all into paper clips. So you say, okay, we should regulate. But what does that even look like? What is the productive regulation look like such that, okay, hopefully we could maintain positive aspects of the technological development while capping the downsides? That would be nice. I love that. But how exactly do you do that?

Tracy Alloway (2:34)

The argument that you hear from AI proponents is that any regulation needs to balance safety with innovation because there's also the question of China, which that's another hot button political topic, right? This idea that the US is in an existential battle with China over AI, and we have to win at all costs. Therefore, the industry must not be tightly regulated.

Joe Weisenthal (2:58)

Yeah, right. So it's also a geopolitical element. Anyway, so we mentioned AI is going to be big in politics. We really do have the perfect guest because we're going to be speaking to someone that the AI industry is actually targeting, someone that the AI industry is actively trying to stop. There's this new super PAC, and I think it has some entries and money and maybe a little, some executives from OpenAI, et cetera. Anyway, they want to make sure that sort of AI-sympathetic politicians do well, but they're also targeting politicians that they perceive to be too negative, and they've even named names, which I think is super interesting, and we have them. So we are going to be speaking with Alex Bores. He's a state assembly member here in New York. He's also a candidate in the primary for the 12th district, which is here in Manhattan, which I feel like 1,000 people are going to be running for this open seat. I feel like if you were targeted by the AI industry, that is probably some of the best advertising you could get in a very crowded field, where it's just like there's going to be a million choices.

Tracy Alloway (3:58)

Well, I was going to say what you're going to say next, I think, but he used to work at Palantir as a data scientist, and Palantir is one of the companies backing that super pack.

Joe Weisenthal (4:08)

So you know what I think we should do? Can we talk about AI for like five minutes and then make this a 50-minute episode about what Palantir does for someone who used to work? That's my goal for this episode.

Tracy Alloway (4:17)

Why don't we just make it a series?