With AI, are We Walking the Dog or is the Dog Walking Us?

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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SPEAKER_2 (0:31)

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SPEAKER_3 (1:02)

Welcome to Siliconsciousness, the DSR Network podcast focusing on the artificial intelligence revolution, politics and policy.

David Rothkopf (1:19)

Hello and welcome to Siliconsciousness. I'm David Rothkopf, your host, and this week we're very glad to be joined by a friend of ours for two reasons. Camille Stewart Gloster is CEO of CAS Strategies and previously served as Deputy National Cyber Director for Technology and Ecosystem Security at the White House.

The other reason is she's got a new book, and the book is The Insider You Built, How Organizations Stay in Control of Autonomous AI Agents. Congratulations, Camille.

Camille Stewart Gloster (1:56)

Thank you so much, and it's good to be back.

David Rothkopf (1:58)

It's good to see you. It's good to talk to you, and lest anybody doubt your mastery of this issue, the fact that you somehow got the President of the United States, who's often asleep, but somehow got the President of the United States to say, you know what the most important issue is in the world right now? Managing autonomous systems. I'm going to put together a brain's trust of people to be in charge of it. Elon Musk, and Newt Gingrich. That's weird. What is this other dude, Lucky, who's a business partner with Don Jr. I thought, wait a minute, I know somebody that should have been on this group.

Not that you would have fit right in.

Camille Stewart Gloster (2:47)

Yeah.

David Rothkopf (2:48)

I don't know. But it does seem like this is front of mind for everybody, although I'm not sure if your focus would be how to get maximum lethality from autonomous weapons platforms without weirdos, beardos, and the other things they don't want to involve.

It's a strange time, but let's start with the news. What did you think of that development from the Pentagon?

Camille Stewart Gloster (3:21)

There's so much swirl, but not a lot of substance happening right now. We've got voluntary agreements to self-regulate, we've got committees forming.

David Rothkopf (3:32)

Hey, hey, the president said their voluntary agreement was like the Constitution.

Camille Stewart Gloster (3:38)

Yeah, I mean, it's morally binding, so.

David Rothkopf (3:40)

It's morally binding.

SPEAKER_2 (3:41)

What else could you ask for?

David Rothkopf (3:44)

Exactly right.

Camille Stewart Gloster (3:46)

I mean, it's great to see it getting a lot of attention. As far as responding to even the organization's requests for more guidance on how to operate in this moment or to coalesce around a slowdown, it has not met the mark in that way.

But I do hope by some miracle, we start to move in the right direction. I mean, unwittingly, all of these companies are at the front lines of writing policy of shaping society and democracy, and they were not made to do so. Hopefully, something changes.

David Rothkopf (4:22)

Yeah, okay. You say they're not made to do so.

I got a problem with the whole formulation. I got a few problems. But one of the problems is who's stopping them?

SPEAKER_2 (4:36)

Well, that's part of the problem. Right.

David Rothkopf (4:40)

But the point is if they want to have guardrails, they could have guardrails. If they didn't want to develop systems that would destroy the world, they don't have to do it. You got to sort of say, what's their real agenda here? Because stop me before I kill again is not super persuasive.

Camille Stewart Gloster (4:58)

Not at all. And honestly, that's where government is supposed to stand in, to shift the market towards what is right, to highlight what is in the best entrance of the citizens and the society they govern. And the job of businesses is to make money. They are doing what will help them make money. They are, I mean, fundamentally, even if as individuals, some of them care about what is happening to society and democracy, their job is to, they're beholden to their shareholders and their job is to make money. So it is not their job to self-regulate.