As you look ahead over the next 10 years, what hope do you have, if any, for our relationship with this technology?

Think about how dumb it is that the AI industry today is the only industry that's less regulated than a sandwich shop on 8th Avenue.

If I want to open that sandwich shop and the health inspector comes in and says, you know, I found 57 rats in your kitchen, buddy, I could turn around to him and say, shh, don't tell anyone, but I'm not going to sell any sandwiches, actually.

I'm just going to sell an AI girlfriend product for 5-year-olds and a new AI that can make bioweapons for terrorists and these super intelligent robots that I don't know how to control.

And the poor person from the government would have to say, that's all fine, it's legal.

Just don't sell any sandwiches.

We're not going to have a relationship with tech.

This is about people and leadership and us all understanding that this needs to serve the public good, right?

So the tech answers to the people.

It needs to be focused on the public good.

And I think the operating assumption has to actually be verify, then trust.

We've been hearing from the big companies, Silicon Valley, telling us for a while now how dangerous this technology is.

It's going to take all our jobs.

It's going to do all these terrible things.

They're actually coming out and saying, please make us pause.

They have the ability to pause themselves.

There's no one stopping them from putting the brakes on and to pivoting their research away from what they're doing today, which is building incredible coding tools that they can sell to enterprise to make a lot of money.

Instead, they could focus all their work on cancer research.

So... I'm not sure cancer research is their goal.

You know, like, I feel like we're assuming a good faith.

We're assuming altruism from people who have not earned it.

And so I think, like, for me personally, this is pretty hopeless.

You're not hopeful?

I'm not hopeful at all.

There's a consensus around the need for AI regulation.

That is not a marginal opinion.

That is a popular opinion.

The reason it is not happening is an unwillingness to lead.

Washington won't do it.

They won't do it.

So like, it ain't secret.

The core question to me is, do people matter?

Is that a priority?

Is that a goal?

Is that a value we still hold?

And I don't know if that's universally true.

Yeah, listen, we need to see applications that benefit humans, period.

And I think they're coming.

I do.

I actually think we also need to talk about the AI dividend, right?

If you think about what AI is built on, it is our data.

It is the collection of human knowledge.

And so if AI is built on all of our input, intuitively, we all should get some dividend from it.

And I think, quite frankly, most of the people in the industry understand that's coming, want to be part of the solution, because if it doesn't, you're going to have riots in the streets.

The Industrial Revolution led to mass strikes that led to an uprising of labor.

The New Deal didn't come out of thin air.

It came out of labor struggle.

It came out of people saying they were not going to participate in the system as it was.

And that led to regulation and rules and a redistribution of wealth that created the greatest shared prosperity this country has ever seen.

The fact that the people actually could come together in this moment, just like they did in the 1930s and '40s, and demand better.

better of ourselves?

I'm optimistic for 2 reasons.

The first is that through my writing and reporting, I have seen people working with AI to make meaningful change in things that I care about.

But I'm also kind of optimistic because of how furious everybody is.

And so when I see that level of anger and I hear some things from politicians that sound unbelievably out of step, I think we may be on the verge of consequences for people who are not listening to the American public about what they want.

And that would really be refreshing.