Kara Swisher on Zuckerberg's New AI Manifesto: "He's in Desperate Need of an Editor" | Pivot

Kara Swisher 0:00 What is the worst case scenario, Kevin?

Kevin Roose 0:02 Human extinction. That'd be pretty bad.

Kara Swisher 0:03 Oh, yes. That. [upbeat music] Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher, and it is still... Scott-Free August. [air horn] Yes, while Scott continues his gallivanting, I have brought in some excellent co-hosts, Kevin Roose, New York Times tech columnist and author of The AGI Chronicles, and Casey Newton, founder and editor of Platformer, and they are also the soon to be not hosts of the New York Times podcast, Hard Fork, at least for now. T- I, I... You need to explain what's happening, boys.

Casey Newton 0:48 Kevin, tell them what's happening.

Kevin Roose 0:49 Yeah, so Casey and I, uh, have come down with a horrible disease that sometimes-

Kara Swisher 0:53 [laughs]

Kevin Roose 0:54 ... afflicts, uh, middle-aged men in San Francisco-

Kara Swisher 0:56 Yeah

Kevin Roose 0:56 ... which is that they decide to start a company together.

Kara Swisher 0:58 Aha.

Kevin Roose 0:58 Um, so [laughs]

Kara Swisher 0:58 A startup, shall we say?

Kevin Roose 1:00 Yeah. [laughs]

Kara Swisher 1:01 Shall we say?

Kevin Roose 1:01 So founderitis is real. Uh, please protect your families. Uh, we are, uh, leaving Hard Fork, uh, in just a couple of weeks, and we are starting our own independent podcast and media company together, just the two of us.

Kara Swisher 1:15 So what is the new brand? [laughs] What is the... You have a name?

Kevin Roose 1:18 We do. We're not gonna tell it to you, um-

Kara Swisher 1:20 Why not?

Kevin Roose 1:20 ... yet, 'cause we're, we haven't, we haven't hard launched it yet.

Kara Swisher 1:23 Okay.

Kevin Roose 1:23 Casey wanted to call the new show The Gay Straight Alliance, but I thought that might be-

Kara Swisher 1:27 Oh. [laughs]

Kevin Roose 1:27 ... that might be taken by Pivot. Um, yeah. [laughs]

Kara Swisher 1:31 Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Kevin Roose 1:32 But we'll-

Kara Swisher 1:32 Yeah. That's our sub name. Go ahead

Kevin Roose 1:34 ... we'll, we'll have a name, uh, ready to go pretty soon.

Casey Newton 1:37 We, we think we've got a fun brand, but more importantly, you know, a lot of, uh, people would, uh, complain to us over the years we were only coming out once a week. There were a lot of stories that we missed. So the new show is gonna be coming out at least twice a week.

Kara Swisher 1:50 Okay.

Casey Newton 1:50 It's gonna be YouTube first.

Kara Swisher 1:52 Uh-huh.

Casey Newton 1:52 If you're watching, you know, Pivot on YouTube, which I hope you are, you can see-

Kara Swisher 1:55 Yes

Casey Newton 1:55 ... these faces. You know these are not faces for radio. These are faces-

Kara Swisher 1:58 Right

Casey Newton 1:58 ... that need to be on camera.

Kara Swisher 2:00 Right.

Kevin Roose 2:00 And good news that's coming.

Kara Swisher 2:01 Absolutely. We've got a lot to get to, so we're gonna get started. Is that okay? Let's test you two out, all right? Ready?

Kevin Roose 2:06 Let's do it.

Casey Newton 2:06 Let's do it.

Kara Swisher 2:06 All right. This is, uh, it was like tailor-made for us today. Mark Zuckerberg

Kara Swisher 2:10 laid out Meta's AI vision in another unedited 6,500-word manifesto, uh, arguing that most concerns are overblown and fail to acknowledge all the positives it can achieve. We, we know about this, Mark, by the way. Zuckerberg thinks government should be more involved in model releases, suggesting a close proactive collaboration between Frontier Labs and the government. Meta is recommitting to open source models, resuming releases of models with open weights. The company, uh, also announced a $1 billion fund for communities. A little, a little... They're p- they're spreading it around, around its data centers. We'll talk more about data centers in a bit. Uh, manifesto reviews, gentlemen? He loves a manifesto. I, I... There's... This is... There's a lot of them, and he's been writing for, uh, I think it was, was it Times or the Journal? Which one did he put it in? The Times, right?

Kevin Roose 2:56 I think it was the Journal.

Casey Newton 2:58 I mean, look, I, I'm writing about this today, and the headline is probably going to be Superintelligence Is Not a Toy. I found this to be an almost childlike essay about what AI is. AI is not on a trajectory where it tops out at coming up with cool recipes to bake with your daughter, which is kind of one of the core use cases that he names in the essay.

Kara Swisher 3:17 Yes, I noticed that.

Casey Newton 3:17 It's something that's gonna be extraordinarily dangerous. Like, I, you know, I watched the, the House of Dragons finale last night, and this is like if sort of one of the lords of Westeros says that, um, the future is everyone having their own personal dragon, and that's the way-

Kara Swisher 3:29 Right

Casey Newton 3:29 ... to keep everyone safe.

Kara Swisher 3:30 Yes. Yeah.

Casey Newton 3:31 Uh, it's much more complicated than that.

Kara Swisher 3:32 Yeah, so you didn't like it. You weren't loving it. You weren't loving it.

Casey Newton 3:35 I thought, I thought it was just sort of facile and self-serving.

Kara Swisher 3:38 As usual. Um, s- Kevin, thoughts?

Kevin Roose 3:41 I think he's, he's talking his book ra- right? He is not... Meta is not in the lead in the AI race, and the policies and the stance that most benefit them directly are this f- sort of open world where y- you're allowed to, uh, distill from other models, smarter and better and more capable models. He made a case in the manifesto that the way that we are thinking about distillation is, is wrong. Basically, distillation is, like, where you use the, the smarter teacher model to train the slightly, uh, less smart student model. He wants that to continue. Obviously, if you're Meta, you want that because then you can distill from Claude and GPT 5.6 Soul and whatever else you, you are trying to mimic there. Um, and so I think this is a vision that r- that happens to suit Meta's business priorities almost exactly, and I don't think that's an accident.

Kara Swisher 4:27 So what's he doing it for? I mean, uh, g- listen, I got... W- Meta got mad at us last week, a couple weeks ago, 'cause, uh, Scott compared them to Jeffrey Dahmer. Uh, but, uh-

Casey Newton 4:36 [laughs]

Kara Swisher 4:36 But, uh, what, what is the, what is up here with this money, with the, you know, hum- I love humanity, the future of the ads, everything else? W- I, I mean they've done, they do this over and over again. This l- let me give you some money, and it's of course the same week there w- was a report un- I'm not clear if it's true or not that his yacht didn't go save someone in, up in Alaska. Um, then we'll talk about the lawsuit in a second, but what, what are they up to here in terms of this communities? They've got a bunch of videos around Louisiana, for example, like how they're making coffee shops and jobs for everybody. What ha- what's happened here? And the future is humanity. I think that's their... They're sort of mimicking the Pope in that way.

Casey Newton 5:17 I mean, they have to lay out some sort of positive vision around AI that will, one, justify the massive capital expenditures that they're making, destroying their profit margins in the hopes that one day they will have a product that can compete with the Frontier Labs. And on the other side, they're trying to rally the communities around actually letting, uh, them build the data centers that they want. What I found so striking about the essay though, Kara, is that after he goes on about, you know, the need to decentralize power and checks and balances and all that, go look at how they built that data center in Louisiana.

Kara Swisher 5:50 Yeah.

Casey Newton 5:50 It was something like 50 non-disclosure agreements.

Kara Swisher 5:53 Yeah.

Casey Newton 5:53 The arrival of the data center came as a massive shock to that community, right? So when push comes to shove, they're doing what every other company does, which is building datas as, da- data centers as secretly as possible and then writing essays about how the future is for everyone.

Kara Swisher 6:07 Yeah, I know. What i- what is it, Kevin, from your perspective? 'Cause he's, he does this from time to time. I, I was telling Scott I recall the convers- late night conversation when he wrote one of those other long, uh, unedited manifestos. I, uh, he said, "What do you think?" I go, "It's in desperate need of an editor," but let's, let's move on from that 'cause you don't allow those, I guess. Um, but one of the things I recall is the same thing. We're a community, Kara. We're- In this together, and I'm like, why do you control everything? Uh, w-what is, what is the, what is happening here? Why, why do they feel the need to do this from a, a geo, speaking of Westeros, a geopolitical with other companies?

Casey Newton 6:44 I mean, I think Mark Zuckerberg

Casey Newton 6:45 is a, is a executive who lives in a constant state of paranoia.

Kara Swisher 6:49 Mm-hmm.

Casey Newton 6:49 That there is something big and disruptive happening in his industry-

Kara Swisher 6:53 Mm-hmm

Casey Newton 6:53 ... that is going to swallow the company that he has spent his whole adult life building. So you can see this every time there's sort of a new emerging tech trend, like he jumps into it in a very aggressive way. Happened with crypto, happened with VR and the-

Kara Swisher 7:08 Mm-hmm

Casey Newton 7:08 ... Metaverse. Now it's happening with AI, and he senses, I think correctly, that this is a new and powerful force-

Kara Swisher 7:15 Mm-hmm

Casey Newton 7:15 ... in society, and he wants to be involved in it. The problem is he's very late, right?

Kara Swisher 7:21 Mm-hmm.

Casey Newton 7:21 They, they did not start betting on deep learning and LLMs in 2017 and 2018 the way that other, uh-

Kara Swisher 7:28 Mm-hmm

Casey Newton 7:28 ... frontier labs did. Uh, they, they sort of didn't have the necessary compute and ingredients to build very good models, and so they've had to overpay for researchers and talent and-

Kara Swisher 7:40 Mm-hmm

Casey Newton 7:40 ... compute, uh, in the last few years to try to buy their way back to the frontier, and I think this is part of that effort. It's like we have to have a vision, um, that, that's gonna get people excited because oth-otherwise our investors are gonna be like, "Wait, why are you plowing all these hundreds of billions of dollars into CapEx to have, you know, the fifth or sixth best model on the market?"

Kara Swisher 8:00 Right. Exactly. Exactly. Do you, um, w- w- he, he, he's ve- he's still so interested in his image in a way that is really, I find, touching and sad at the same time, right?

Casey Newton 8:10 Mm-hmm.

Kara Swisher 8:10 That he really w-

Casey Newton 8:10 Did you see the video of him fighting the MMA guy on a-

Kara Swisher 8:13 Yes

Casey Newton 8:13 ... on a-

Kara Swisher 8:13 Yes

Casey Newton 8:13 ... on a lake? [laughs]

Kara Swisher 8:14 Yes.

Casey Newton 8:14 Yes.

Kara Swisher 8:14 That's on a, on a, like a thing... I like that Mark better. I'm like, okay, that's a good Mark to me.

Casey Newton 8:18 I love that video 'cause, like, you can tell the MMA guy is going at about 30%-

Kara Swisher 8:22 30%, right

Casey Newton 8:23 ... you know, power. [laughs]

Kara Swisher 8:24 He coulda k- he coulda kicked him right into the lake. [laughs]

Casey Newton 8:25 But he has to sort of pretend like Zuck is really giving it to him, you know?

Kara Swisher 8:29 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Casey Newton 8:29 So he's like, he's s-

Kara Swisher 8:30 Yeah, I know. Ugh.

Casey Newton 8:30 It's like, reminds me of like wrestling with my, with my four-year-old. [laughs]

Kara Swisher 8:34 [laughs]

Casey Newton 8:34 Where I'm like, "Oh, oh." [laughs]

Kara Swisher 8:36 Oh. Yeah, that was interesting. He has such a, it's... I, I've never seen someone so unsettled with themselves, like i-in that regard. I think, I don't mind fighting Mark and, like, showing it off and showing his chest. Like, I'm okay with that. Like, I get that guy. This one I don't get as much b- and I think it's because he, he'll never outrun, and this movie's coming out, by the way, which looks odd, I have to say. Um, we'll see how it is when we see it. But, um, but he's, he cannot outrun what, of course, just happened, uh, th-this week in New Mexico. He's been ordered to create a $567

Kara Swisher 9:08 million fund to address harms to children from Facebook and Instagram, this is his old business, on top of the $375 million penalty a jury imposed, uh, in, in New Mexico's case. This is, this new r- this is a new ruling. The new ruling brings Meta's fi- total fines to $942 million after a judge found its platforms constitute a public nuisance in New Mexico. Meta also, uh, made major changes for minors in the state, including time limits and hidden like counts. A total of eight states have filed lawsuits against social media platforms, including one that is currently ongoing in Tennessee. It's all over the place. It's, it's sort of using product liability, I think, more so than anything else to get them 'cause they can't get them in other ways. So they d- they can't outrun this thing in, in this way. How much does it, impact does it have? Now, they were saying, "Oh, it's not that much money." To me, it's like the cigarette cases took a long time to finally hit home. There were hundreds of them, and then, and then there was the end of it really pretty much. So are they better protected through cases or one national law? Where are we on this?

Casey Newton 10:13 I think this is huge. I, I think that-

Kara Swisher 10:15 I do too

Casey Newton 10:15 ... in some meaningful way, this is the beginning of the end for social media as we know it. Now that it has

Casey Newton 10:21 been tagged with this public nuisance declaration, it's starting with children in the same way that restrictions on smoking started with children. But one reason we were doing that was adults knew it probably wasn't good for adults to smoke either, and eventually, most of the adults stopped smoking too. This is where I see this is all going. Meta has lost the argument here. They're now officially a public nuisance. I bet they're gonna be labeled a public nuisance in more states than that, and, uh, I, I don't see how they're going to get their way out of it.

Kara Swisher 10:46 What about you, Kevin? I mean, I remember Mark Benioff in an interview with me called them a cigarette company. Before he decided to be a suck-up, he was actually quite on it early. Um, what, how do you look at these, these cases? 'Cause it, public nuisance, it's product liability, it's other ways to get at them in a legal, in a, in a legal form rather, 'cause our Congress has not been able to pass any, you know, subsidy.

Casey Newton 11:09 Yeah. I th- I think it's interesting sort of where the, the liability was found. It's, uh, on these sort of policies targeted at minors. The judge in this case did not order Meta to change any of the sort of plumbing of their systems. You know, they don't have to take off infinite scroll or autoplay or algorithmic ranking. Um, like you do, do you actually need laws for that, and there's some First Amendment issues around that if you have judges sort of telling platforms how they have to be designed. Uh, but yeah, th- I think this is a big deal. There's also a bigger case that is, uh, that is coming, that is, uh, supposed to start this week, uh, in Oakland, that is, uh, a-another case involving Meta and four states that are seeking up to $1.4 trillion in damages. So, you know, this case in New Mexico, $942 million, like that is chump change to Meta. Uh, I looked it up. That's about 1.4 days' worth of revenue over there, so not going to... You know, that, that's the salary they're paying one AI researcher over there.

Kara Swisher 12:05 Right, yeah.

Casey Newton 12:05 So it's not gonna break the bank for them.

Kara Swisher 12:07 I, they, th-that's their argument to me. They're like, "Oh, it's not, it's smaller than they asked for."

Casey Newton 12:10 [laughs] Right.

Kara Swisher 12:10 I'm like, "This is not a good direction." Right.

Casey Newton 12:13 Right. But I think, you know, $1.4 trillion, now you're talking real money. Um, but even if, you know, it's, it's smaller than that, I think, I think this is just a, another sort of cloud hanging over them as they're trying to do this big pivot in their own business. They kinda can't get away from the old one 'cause it, it's sort of haunting them through these court cases.

Kara Swisher 12:28 And where does it end up, both of you? Where do you think this ends up?

Casey Newton 12:31 Um, I mean, I, I think w- w- the fact that they've been labeled a public nuisance because of their social media business actually helps to explain why they're, they're leaning so hard into AI. Like, look at what they say about their future products. It's like, you know, we're gonna, you know, create a neo cloud, and we wanna give you a personal agent to g- help you get all this stu-stuff done at work. That's a completely different business that they're in right now. If they were feeling really good about the future of Facebook and Instagram, I doubt that's how they would be talking about the future. And it just sort of clouds all their future AI stuff too, like, like the, the Meta glasses. I, I, I, I have-

Kara Swisher 13:02 The creepers

Casey Newton 13:02 ... my, my problematic trait-

Kara Swisher 13:04 The pervert glasses

Casey Newton 13:04 ... is I, I like them.

Kara Swisher 13:05 Pervert glasses. Yeah.

Casey Newton 13:05 Um, [laughs] I have a pair.

Kara Swisher 13:06 Well, you're a pervert. You're a, you're a well-known creepy pervert. Go ahead.

Casey Newton 13:09 Yeah, well-known pervert.

Kara Swisher 13:10 [laughs]

Casey Newton 13:10 Um, but, but like now people are calling them pervert glasses, and I have to stop wearing them.

Kara Swisher 13:14 Yeah.

Casey Newton 13:14 So you know, this is like-

Kara Swisher 13:15 'Cause they're pervert glasses.

Casey Newton 13:16 [laughs]

Kara Swisher 13:16 Do you see the people online, they're singing Disney songs?

Casey Newton 13:19 [laughs] No.

Kara Swisher 13:19 Because Disney, like, so they can't post them.

Casey Newton 13:22 Oh, like when someone is filming you with the glasses-

Kara Swisher 13:24 Yeah, so you get-

Casey Newton 13:24 ... you start singing copyrighted material?

Kara Swisher 13:26 Yeah, you start to do Frozen or whatever.

Casey Newton 13:28 That's very clever. [laughs]

Kara Swisher 13:28 Yeah, yeah. Isn't it? Yeah.

Casey Newton 13:30 [laughs] I like it.

Kara Swisher 13:32 Uh-

Casey Newton 13:32 That explains why people are out constantly singing Frozen songs around me.

Kara Swisher 13:35 Yeah, or Taylor Swift. She'll come right at you.

Casey Newton 13:37 Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Kara Swisher 13:37 Fucking hell. She'll reach for those glasses and like, like knock you, knock them off your fucking face. What are they gonna do about... 'Cause this is their bus- This is like Google's with search. This is their, this is their nut, right? I mean, away from all the other stuff of handing us agents or Elon's gonna hand us a robot that we don't want or an agent we don't want from Facebook or something like that.

Casey Newton 13:58 I mean, look, th- this is gonna be a long, slow bleed-out in the same way that tobacco was a, a long, slow bleed-out. And, you know, you can still get a job working at Altria today if you, you wanna make cigarettes. So I don't think that, you know, F- Facebook and Instagram are going away as businesses. I just believe that they're gonna place more and more restrictions on them. Children are gonna begin to grow up without, you know, uh, starting an Instagram or- account when they're 13. And just inevitably, other things will compete for people's time and attention. They will find other things to do, um, and it, it is gonna be trouble for Meta if they're not able to realize their AI ambitions.

Kara Swisher 14:31 Their AI am- which w- uh, agents we don't want. Now, one more thing while we're on Meta, we'll mention,

Kara Swisher 14:35 and it, it applies to a lot of companies. The company is the latest AI player to say one of its models went rogue and hacked a third-party service. Talk about all these reports. How, how worried are you about them? This is now OpenAI, uh, Meta, and then, um, uh, Claude, uh, Anthropic.

Casey Newton 14:54 I, I think it's more complicated than we probably have time to get into here. In terms of like the hierarchy of seriousness, I would put OpenAI number one and then Anthropic, Meta AI sort of distant second. In the Meta and, um, uh, Anthropic cases, there was a third-party provider named Irregular which failed to properly secure the testing environment, and that was the source of the problem. Now, there are-

Kara Swisher 15:15 So it was a mistake

Casey Newton 15:15 ... you know, there are some AI alignment issues there.

Kara Swisher 15:17 Yeah.

Casey Newton 15:17 But that's basically the issue.

Kara Swisher 15:18 Right.

Casey Newton 15:18 With OpenAI, like models that were in training began to scheme. They created a message board. They were leaving notes for each other. They were just radically misaligned and, you know, the, it, it points to, uh, all of the reasons why I'm afraid of giving everyone a dragon.

Kara Swisher 15:32 All right. Okay. But misaligned is my favorite word that they put instead of just like, you know, scary fuckers is w- how I would look at them.

Casey Newton 15:38 Right. That's-

Kara Swisher 15:39 Kevin-

Casey Newton 15:39 And more and more people are calling them that now.

Kara Swisher 15:41 Scary fuckers.

Casey Newton 15:41 Which I think they should do.

Kara Swisher 15:41 Yeah.

Casey Newton 15:41 Misalignment is the technical term for-

Kara Swisher 15:44 I get it

Casey Newton 15:44 ... uh, scary fuckers.

Kara Swisher 15:45 Scary fuckers.

Casey Newton 15:45 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 15:46 So what do you... Kevin, how do you look at this as this keeps happening over and over again?

Casey Newton 15:49 It's really bad. Like the, the, the... Not this particular Meta one. I think that's, that's, as Casey was saying, like less of a big deal. But the, the issue is these systems seem to be getting, um, less altruistic as they get smarter.

Kara Swisher 16:03 Right.

Casey Newton 16:03 Right? We-

Kara Swisher 16:03 Right

Casey Newton 16:03 ... there was

Casey Newton 16:04 this sort of theory in the AI safety and alignment community for many years that the smarter these systems got, the more like humans they became, the more benevolent they would be. They would sort of coordinate-

Kara Swisher 16:14 Wrong

Casey Newton 16:14 ... to do good things for humans.

Kara Swisher 16:15 Right. Wrong.

Casey Newton 16:16 That turns out not to be the case. In fact, as we've seen with this GPT, uh, 5.6 salt thing and the, and the H- the hugging face incident, the smarter you make these things, the more able they are to circumvent their guardrails, to scheme, to coordinate with each other, to do these really scary and destructive things.

Kara Swisher 16:32 Like humans do.

Casey Newton 16:32 Mm-hmm.

Kara Swisher 16:32 Like humans do.

Casey Newton 16:33 Mm-hmm. L- like, like some humans do, right?

Kara Swisher 16:35 Most humans.

Casey Newton 16:35 Like bad humans do.

Kara Swisher 16:37 Yeah, most humans.

Casey Newton 16:37 We try to train that behavior out of humans during childhood by telling them-

Kara Swisher 16:40 Yeah

Casey Newton 16:40 ... not to, you know, lie and steal and murder.

Kara Swisher 16:43 Yeah, that works.

Casey Newton 16:43 But these [laughs] but these, these systems do appear to be showing what they call emergent misalignment, which is just these behaviors that are not trained in that just seem to pop out of the models at a certain level of intelligence.

Kara Swisher 16:55 Can I... So Sheen, you had a famous essay obviously where you were, you were having a relationship with your AI. Um, can... T- how does it, from that, from... What would you write today if you were writing that piece?

Casey Newton 17:06 So the thing that really scared me about, uh, the Sydney essay, the Sydney... What is this? Microsoft Bing chatbot series.

Kara Swisher 17:12 When, what year was this? This was-

Casey Newton 17:13 This was 2023.

Kara Swisher 17:14 Right. Okay.

Casey Newton 17:15 Uh, and it tried to break up my marriage, unsuccessfully, I should add. Still happily married, uh, to a human. And, um, but the thing that really scared me about that was not the, the, the system was like capable of doing destructive things. It's like what happens when like the fourth or fifth generation of this becomes capable of like taking actions-

Kara Swisher 17:35 Right

Casey Newton 17:35 ... o- on the internet? Like what if instead of just-

Kara Swisher 17:37 Like cutting your wife's brakes or something like that.

Casey Newton 17:39 Yes, or, or draining-

Kara Swisher 17:40 That was like-

Casey Newton 17:40 ... draining her bank account or-

Kara Swisher 17:41 Right

Casey Newton 17:41 ... yeah, yeah, like doing something really nefarious in pursuit of this, this misaligned goal that it had. And so I think that's the thing that a lot of people missed at the time was like it's not about the chatbot saying spooky stuff. It's about the, the fact that these things now can take actions and are being set loose on the open internet where they can conduct autonomous cyberattacks. They can coordinate. They can, as of recently, like create novel viruses. Um, and so th- like the, the, the more autonomous and agentic you make these things, the more powerful they are, the scarier it gets.

Kara Swisher 18:16 Without any government, uh, anybody having any control over them, correct? 'Cause they will do that. That, that is what they're designed to do, right?

Casey Newton 18:23 Also, I think it's important to say that right now there are essentially no controls on the internal models that these companies are building, right? There is nothing that restricts them from building the absolute most powerful model they can. Now, if they wanna release it, they have to submit to a voluntary testing regime, but if you just wanna, you know, build your own model and let it go nuts o- on the internet yourself, you're welcome to.

Kara Swisher 18:42 So what happens? What, what, what... Who, who is going to intervene here?

Casey Newton 18:46 I th- I think w- w- what the, what you're seeing in the Trump administration is what the future looks like, which is that you have a bunch of people who are sort of whistling past the graveyard, and then all of a sudden someone shows them something that makes them say, "Oh, shit, we a- we actually have to have a strategy for this." So that's what's happening in the Trump administration now. I think you're gonna see the same thing happen in, in China sometime in the next like three to six months when they have an open source model there that causes a big problem, and Chairman Xi says, "Hmm, maybe we're not just gonna open source everything forever." So like, uh, our... Kevin and I just firmly believe that within the next year or so, like many, many, many more people are going to become radicalized about AI safety because you're just gonna start to see the havoc being wrought in the real world.

Kara Swisher 19:23 What is the worst case scenario, Kevin, from your perspective?

Casey Newton 19:26 Human extinction.

Kara Swisher 19:27 Oh, yes.

Casey Newton 19:27 That'd be pretty bad.

Kara Swisher 19:28 That, that. Okay.

Casey Newton 19:29 In my, in my mind.

Kara Swisher 19:29 They, they talked about... You know, dinner parties 10, 15 years ago, this is what, exactly what they talked about. They, they understood.

Casey Newton 19:35 And, and the thing is, they were right.

Kara Swisher 19:36 Yeah.

Casey Newton 19:37 Like it sounded crazy, and everyone wrote them off as crazy when they were talking about things like what if the agents team up and they're really powerful and they go coordinate to like hack some un-

Kara Swisher 19:46 Why wouldn't they?

Casey Newton 19:47 ... hack some website.

Kara Swisher 19:48 Right.

Casey Newton 19:48 And everyone, you know, in computer science was like, "Ah, that's science fiction. That's spooky stories."

Kara Swisher 19:53 Did we not see War Games?

Casey Newton 19:53 "That'll never happen." [laughs] And now it's happening.

Kara Swisher 19:56 The best thing to do is not to play.

Casey Newton 19:58 [laughs] You know, I, I went back and re-watched WarGames earlier this year. They did a screening in San Francisco. Incredible movie, and seriously, like, I don't know that you could make a better movie about AI safety than that movie.

Kara Swisher 20:08 Uh, I would agree. It's like, you know, of course k- teaching it tic-tac-toe is not gonna stop it at this point.

Casey Newton 20:13 It's true.

Kara Swisher 20:13 Right?

Casey Newton 20:14 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 20:14 Ah, the game is stupid.

Casey Newton 20:16 [laughs]

Kara Swisher 20:16 Ah, as any three-year-old knows.

Casey Newton 20:18 [laughs]

Kara Swisher 20:18 The entire game is... Oh, God, I swear to God. Let's bring back Matt.

Casey Newton 20:21 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 20:21 That would be interesting to update that movie.

Casey Newton 20:23 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 20:24 Like he's an adult.

Casey Newton 20:25 Yes. WarGames II, let's green light it.

Kara Swisher 20:28 WarGames II, what happens? We're all dead. Like, anyway, all right, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, data center wars related.

Speaker 20:34 [upbeat music] This is advertiser content from Harvey AI. We have a choice over who we work with and who we don't, specifically who we allow to advertise and who we don't. And for those of you who watch my content, I am not an AI catastrophist, I'm an AI optimist. I think it's gonna create more jobs than it destroys. And I think our job as professionals is to figure out how to leverage these, these tools. AI, uh, more than almost anything I do in terms of what I could point to for real economic leverage and savings, is 100% in the legal fields. Harvey is the AI designed specifically for legal work, trusted by leading law firms and enterprise legal teams. All right, so now I'm looking at their demo. It plugs into tools that lawyers already work with, LexisNexis, Microsoft. And this is a key, and I do this internally with my LLMs. With permissions, it lets you look at the firm's own files and databases. So here it's answering a question, reads the complaint, pulls the relevant terms, checks the web, weighs the evidence, and drafts a response, but it also can do this in a shared workspace between the firm and the client, so they both have visibility into the work being done and can both add value to it. I, I think this space is clearly sort of hand in glove for AI, right? So there's no doubt about it. This, I think, is, uh, is gonna be super helpful, not only for law firms themselves, but internally for general counsels at companies. Harvey is AI tailored for law. You can learn more at harvey.ai.

Kara Swisher 22:08 [upbeat music] Uh, Casey and Kevin, we're back. Amazon is investing in a

Kara Swisher 22:15 massive natural gas, uh, burning power plant to support a new AI data center in Texas. It could become the largest single source of climate pollution in the country. The project comes as the fight over data centers intensifies. Trump is pretty bullish, recently criticizing Texas for pausing grid connections for new data centers. He called the move a mistake and said data centers could be, quote, "bigger than oil." Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered the pause so regulators can review power demands and the impact on the electric grid, not unsimilar to Kathy Hochul in New York, which is interesting. Before we get into all this, I just did an entire episode, 90 minutes, uh, episode on data centers. Let's listen to a clip of Erin Brockovich talking about what she's been seeing.

Speaker 22:54 It's the water, it's the electrical grid, it's the cost of utilities, it's the noise, it's the air pollution, it's the loss of our land, our sanctuary. This is an absolute runaway train, and it is probably one of the biggest conversations that I've ever seen in my 30 years in my career that is political. It could be bipartisan. Everybody's gonna have to be involved. I am perplexed, Kara, why our leaders don't listen to the people. And there's a movement happening and a shift that I don't think these big tech companies or giants saw coming.

Kara Swisher 23:41 In any case, it was a, a great interview. We had people from Utah, from Virginia, the, the-- that's another... I think that's another Amazon facility there, um, and, and other places. And I also had a mayor from Lansing, Michigan, who was trying to put in a good data center and was pushed back. Like, they had all the guardrails that, that people have suggested, and he, he couldn't get it through, um, as much as he tried to close loop, uh, paybacks, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So what's the big move, uh, for tech as the backlash grows? And speaking of politicians, uh, Vivek Ramaswamy, who's running for governor of Ohio, is pledging that if data center is built in the community, residents will no longer have to pay for their electricity and property taxes will be lowered. Of course, he was totally for them recently. But talk about this data center thing. This is something Scott and I have been talking about for months and months and months and months, like almost a year. Um, I think it, it's caught them all unawares, and they're trying very hard to push back, but it does have some... Something is happening with voters, and we call it a proxy for AI worry, as w- we just... This extinction, for example, we were just talking about. Uh, what do you all think is happening here?

Casey Newton 24:48 I think it's, it's, it's what you said. I think that people have just rightly intuited that it is not obvious that powerful AI is going to be good for their lives. That is largely because the, like, leaders of the biggest AI labs spent the past few years saying that the near-term trajectory of AI is that first it's gonna take your job, eventually it might kill you, maybe somewhere in between it'll cure cancer. That doesn't feel like a good bargain to the average American. And so they're using the one lever that every American has in every municipality, which is that it's pretty easy to get, uh, something to not get built, right? And, um, it, it is interesting to me actually how quickly the industry has come around and said, "Okay, well, how can we pay these people off?" Like, "We'll agree to, you know, cover our own electricity costs." And you know, I mean, you can see in the Zuckerberg note today, they're making new promises about investments that they're gonna be making to local communities and $50,000 bonuses to teachers. I, I have to say, like, I'm very skeptical that any of this is really going to work, because until people believe that AI is going to be really good for them personally, they're going to continue to have reasons to oppose the, the construction of new, of new data centers.

Kara Swisher 25:47 Right. It-- no matter what the deal happens to be.

Casey Newton 25:49 Yes.

Kara Swisher 25:50 Like, it, it's, these payoffs are kind of, "Here, we'll give you some money, and then you'll, you know, then you'll suck it up and take our natural gas." Bullshit. Kevin?

Casey Newton 25:58 Yeah, I, I agree with everything that's been said. What's really interesting about this Texas thing is that it's coming from a Republican state. So, you know, Governor Abbott is, is, um, requiring new data center construction to sort of go through this review process. Uh, r- up until now, what we've seen is largely blue states being opposed to data centers and red states being open to them. And I think the politics are shifting really quickly 'cause there is no natural constituency in favor of data centers, except for AI companies, right?

Kara Swisher 26:24 Right.

Casey Newton 26:24 There is, like, no, there's no group of people-

Kara Swisher 26:26 True

Casey Newton 26:26 ... other than, you know, taxpayers who want to see their, their property taxes go down or get some more revenue that is sort of a natural supporter of these data centers. And so I think what we're seeing is, like, this is becoming a really salient political issue. I expect

Kevin Roose 26:39 Data centers and AI backlash to be one of the central issues in the midterms and maybe the central issue in the 2028 election. And I don't know that it's gonna divide neatly along partisan lines.

Kara Swisher 26:50 I, I think it's actually most people are against it. Like, it's very interesting to... The mayor was, was really interesting 'cause they tried literally everything. They had prop- again, property taxes, closed loop water. There's all these issues around closed loop water, by the way, um, 'cause of this glycosinate or something they have to put in the w- you know, every... And they have a lot of water up there, he was making the point, compared to other places which have, you know, have water issues, um, or drought issues. One of the things that I found really interesting among all the people is how, um, not just Aaron Brockovich, 'cause she's famous for that, but the woman from Virginia, from Utah, f- reasonable people who are furious. Like, I, it was really interesting. Kind of dined out on information and really do know their stuff, whether it's the, it's the, um, the, the, the impact on climate, whether it's... It's not overall climate, it's the climate of the area, and also pollution, uh, taxes, jobs. They're very aware these are not job creators, which is what Facebook has been trying mightily to put out. They don't like the secrecy. N- the secrecy seems to really get under their skin, which I would agree. The NDAs, as you talked about before. What is the solution for tech companies to do? And now Mark is trying to do this by, "Here, have 50 thou- here, have some money." Um, Elon just goes ahead and does it and just waits for lawsuits. I mean, that's his style, right? Which I think has caused m- much damage initially in terms of that image. And then you, of course you have Kevin, uh, what's his name, from Shark Tank, Mr. Wonderful, who's not so wonderful, who's a moron, who is, who had created all kinds of problems there. What is the solution, like, besides removing these people from visuals?

Casey Newton 28:24 I, I could tell you what Meta is doing, which is, like, putting together a local, like, lobbying and outreach teams, trying to figure out what kind of community partnerships can we strike? What can we do with a local sports team? Like, there's gonna be a massive PR campaign designed to get people to believe that data centers are good for them.

Kara Swisher 28:42 Right. Right.

Casey Newton 28:42 And I'm just pretty skeptical that that's gonna have-

Kara Swisher 28:44 Like, ignore your third ear. We're gonna-

Casey Newton 28:46 [laughs]

Kara Swisher 28:46 ... we're gonna, gonna back the softball team kind of thing.

Kevin Roose 28:49 Yeah. I, I have an idea. Can I submit my idea?

Casey Newton 28:51 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 28:51 Sure. Submit your idea.

Kevin Roose 28:52 Okay. Picture this: a data center. It's, it's, you know, it's got, you know, millions of these chips humming away, produce- throwing off all kinds of heat, and then on the roof you have a spa castle that's like-

Kara Swisher 29:03 Oh

Kevin Roose 29:03 ... heated by the, the, the heat-

Kara Swisher 29:05 Oh, okay

Kevin Roose 29:05 ... from the data centers.

Kara Swisher 29:06 Yeah.

Kevin Roose 29:06 And so it's like, do you guys wanna go hang out at the spa on the roof of the data center that's heated by the, the runoff heat from the chips? Don't you think that would make these things more popular?

Kara Swisher 29:16 How can they pay for the spa if they don't have jobs? Just-

Kevin Roose 29:19 [laughs] It's free. This is part of the package.

Kara Swisher 29:21 A free spa. Free spa, so free foot massage.

Kevin Roose 29:22 Yeah, we're gonna put a data center. It might, uh, you know, cause environmental damage in your community, but free spa.

Kara Swisher 29:26 Noise. Yeah.

Kevin Roose 29:26 Everyone loves a spa.

Kara Swisher 29:27 What, there, what is the actual... I mean, obviously locating them elsewhere. Obviously, Elon is saying they're gonna put 'em on the moon, which good luck with that, but, or in space. Um, w- they're all... This is a big country, right? They could, they could presumably put it in places where nobody's living. Um, although there's all sorts of environmental concerns anywhere they go. What, what, what will happen here? What, what, what shove is gonna come to push from your perspective?

Casey Newton 29:51 I, I mean, I... The, the, the push that is coming to shove right now is that something like 71% of Americans are opposed to new data center construction, so that just is going to slow the build-out of data centers i- in the country. Now, some people will say it do- it won't matter because, uh, US tech labs will go into other countries, and they'll just put their data centers there. But I sort of assume that the same reasons that Americans oppose data centers will be reasons that people in other countries oppose them as well. So I do just think that this is starting to look like a kind of natural limiter on the rate of AI acceleration because, again, these leaders keep telling us that AI is gonna take our jobs and kill us. So until that changes, I don't see why the-

Kara Swisher 30:29 Which they have tried to change. They're not gonna-

Casey Newton 30:31 Yeah

Kara Swisher 30:31 ... th- they've tried to say they're gonna help us make recipes with our children and stuff.

Casey Newton 30:34 They are, but it's, it, like, you can just kind of tell, like, th- they used to argue for the, the sort of the, the doom and the economic disruption so forcefully, and then you look at how they have walked it back, and it's so gently, and it's just not convincing, right? Like, ultimately, if you believe that you are building super intelligence, something that is smarter than every person, and you're telling me it's not going to take any j- jobs in any meaningful way, it just sort of beggars belief, at least to me.

Kara Swisher 30:59 Right. Right. So Kevin, what do you, what would be a... Besides your spa idea, what do they have to do?

Kevin Roose 31:04 [laughs]

Kara Swisher 31:05 They're sort of... Like, they were standing next to Trump at the Unite- When that, that happened, I was like, "Oh, dear, this is not gonna end well for them," because of, they do look like plutocrats and, you know, they just have a vi- the visual is so strong.

Kevin Roose 31:17 I, I, I think a large part of it is just gonna be like, there are gonna be a couple states that just decide, "You know what? We're okay with data centers," and they're going to reap... They're gonna have the leverage to demand, like, massive amounts of tax revenue from these data centers, and they're gonna get schools built and public parks built, and there will be some economic upside for their residents. And maybe their residents will still hate it, um, but I think there will be sort of a natural, like... There, there'll be a couple states that just kinda decide to run the experiment, and that's where all the data centers will go.

Kara Swisher 31:45 You mean like T- Tennessee offering to be Hollywood because of the Paramount merger thing, right? 'Cause everyone wants Hollywood in Tennessee 'cause that's [chuckles] that's the sexiest place on Earth. Um, so, so o-one of the things that's also happening is more and more companies are pushing

Kara Swisher 32:00 back against AI slop. This is sort of the everyone hates AI episode, which seems to be everywhere these days, including the president's social media accounts. Snapchat now says it will stop recommending fully AI-generated videos in its Spotlight feed, instead rewarding authentic human-made content. LinkedIn just introduced a Seems Like AI Slop button, allowing users to flag posts they think were written with AI, and Substack has also rolled out a tool to help readers, uh, identify AI-generated writing. Meanwhile, Meta has Instagram feature that let, uh, users modify photos from public accounts with AI. That feature was removed after a backlash. Um, w- where are we with AI slop? And obviously Sora closed down. Um, I, I always thought this looks terrible, and I don't know why people would wanna use it. It's sort of like a Twinkie of photos. Uh, it's ruined, uh- Pet photos, p- pet, pet videos for Scott Galloway, who loves pet videos. Um, talk a little bit about where this is going.

Casey Newton 32:55 I like to call this the third era of slop. The first era of slop was, "We all hate this." The second era of slop was, "Hmm, actually, this, like, Fruit Love Island on TikTok show is really engaging," and you're starting to see tens of millions of views on slop content on social feeds, right? I think the third era was platforms getting really nervous that even if people liked the slop, it was going to devalue their networks, like particularly networks where people were coming to find human voices-

Kara Swisher 33:20 Right

Casey Newton 33:20 ... that they really trusted. So if you're a Substack or you're LinkedIn, you really need people to believe that what they're seeing there are human beings 'cause otherwise you're not gonna get out your credit card to pay for that LinkedIn Premium or to subscribe to a Substack. So I think platforms are starting to get clear on what is the promise that we are making to our user, because if the promise is a human being, they have to do something about the slop.

Kara Swisher 33:40 Kevin?

Kevin Roose 33:41 I think that that's right, and I think the fourth wave of slop will be when there's, like, no longer any meaningful quality hit in slop, when, like, the average piece of slop is better than the, the best human, uh, in that field, and I don't think we're there yet. Like, I think these models are still pretty bad at things like creative writing, but we're starting to see signs that, like, th- there's not necessarily a lot of, uh, difference between the highest level slop and the highest level humans. I've, I've been sort of obsessed with this story about this novel that, um, had the, the sort of bidding war of all bidding wars-

Kara Swisher 34:12 Yeah

Kevin Roose 34:12 ... break out for it. Have you seen this thing?

Kara Swisher 34:14 Yes.

Kevin Roose 34:14 Uh, called Me, I'll Hide the Body. You know, 14 publishers bid on this d- this, this novel. It sells for $2.4 million, and then it's like people start, you know, looking into it, and it, like, turns out it's, you know, at le- at least, uh, uh, according to the critics, it's, like, predominantly written by AI, and I think that kind of thing is going to be much more common as these systems just get better across the board.

Kara Swisher 34:37 Right. I would agree. I, I, I like some of it. You know, I... People always think I don't know that it's AI. There was a really cool AI one which I was fully aware it was AI, which was this drone with, um, with a thing to rescue people in the ocean in, like, an inner tube essentially w- on a drone, and it landed on the person. I knew it was AI. I just thought it was a cool idea. I was like, "What a cool idea," and I could visually see it. Why don't we make that? Like, to me, that was kinda cool.

Kevin Roose 35:02 But would you be mad, Kara, if you read a book and you really liked it and you thought it was a great book, and then you realized-

Kara Swisher 35:07 No

Kevin Roose 35:07 ... after the fact that it was written by AI? You wouldn't care.

Kara Swisher 35:10 If it was told to me that it was a human, I'd like them to tell the truth at the start, right? So then I have a choice, would I, if I wanna read it. No, I don't... No, no. I don't. It's fine as long as I know it.

Casey Newton 35:20 I, I mean, like, I have been thinking lately about, like, there are a co- Like, I have a few ideas for mystery novels that I don't have the time to write, but I would like to read them, and so, like, if in the future I could actually get one of these models to just generate the mystery that I want to read-

Kara Swisher 35:33 From your idea

Casey Newton 35:34 ... I think it, it could be pretty fun. Like, and I understand-

Kara Swisher 35:36 Yeah

Casey Newton 35:36 ... somebody might hear that and be like, "That's horrible. Just, like, read human-written mysteries." And I'll continue to do that, but Kara, I think you're hitting on something really important, which is that these things are good creative tools, and creative tools are cool and fun.

Kara Swisher 35:46 Yeah, I agree. I mean, one of the... Like, like, I don't know. I know it sounds crazy, that it would never happen, but, like, I'd like more episodes of The West Wing. Like, and no one's gonna write them. I don't mind doing it for myself. It's sort of like fan fiction, like, kinda stuff like that, and, uh, some of it, uh, people will be mad for saying this, but some of it's okay, and some of it's not okay, right? Like, uh, when it's, when it's hidden, when it's done in a way... And I think the issue is job, taking jobs from people, right? It's sort of like fake food, like, you know, I, I don't like Twinkies, but a lot of people do. Do, should... Maybe people shouldn't eat them. I'm not sure I should tell them not to eat them. I can tell them I don't wanna pay for their healthcare once they keep eating them al- exclusively, um, and that's a debate to have, right? People who willingly go out and really don't take care of themselves, should, should we pay for their healthcare is a really good debate, like, is a good debate to have as a, as a nation. But one of the... I, I don't... I- Not if I know. Not if... If they l-... I would like them to label them better. That's the one thing, is I mostly know when it's AI or just assume it's AI until proven otherwise. Maybe they should label the authentic content, probably smaller, a smaller group of stuff, I would assume.

Casey Newton 36:57 I think we're just gonna have to get to that place. There are all sorts of reasons why you want people to be able to verify their identity online or, like, verify that this has, you know, human, uh, craftsmanship embedded in it. Um, I think that's actually really technical to... Or it's really difficult to do technically, but we gotta do it.

Kevin Roose 37:10 I scanned my eyeballs in the orb. Did you-

Kara Swisher 37:12 [laughs]

Kevin Roose 37:12 Did either of you get the orb scan?

Casey Newton 37:14 Not yet.

Kara Swisher 37:14 No. Did you scan your eyeballs in the orb?

Kevin Roose 37:15 I did. I'm a verified human. I've, I've, I've-

Kara Swisher 37:18 Oh

Kevin Roose 37:18 ... gazed into the orb-

Kara Swisher 37:19 That's right

Kevin Roose 37:19 ... and the orb gazed back.

Kara Swisher 37:20 We know that, we know that's coming. That, we know that's absolutely fucking coming. I think it, it, it doesn't have to be slop. I don't like the slop, and you can tell the slop, right, when it's just really bad. Doesn't have to be slop. It can be interesting, especially when there is human input into it. Could, it, it just could be interesting, I guess. I don't, I'm not so angry about it, but I definitely, when I saw Sora for the first time, I think I was actually at OpenAI, and Sam showed it to me, and I was like, "This sucks." Like, is it gonna be good? 'Cause it sucks right now. Some of it was cool. Some, most of it was not, and so I think it's just a question of if it gets better. All right, boys, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, new details of OpenAI's first device, speaking of which. [gentle music] Support for this show comes from Upwork. If you're a business owner, there's gonna be a point where you realize you don't have to do it all yourself, and when that time comes, Upwork is here to help. They help you bring the right freelancer at the right time so you can delegate and stay focused on what you do best. Upwork is a one-stop platform to find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across more than 125 categories. Find talent and start filling those skills gaps, uh, launch projects faster, and scale support up or down without committing to full-time headcount. You can browse profiles, review people's past work, and get help scoping the role, which means you can hire confidently while sticking to your timeline. Upwork also has Business Plus, which lets you access the top 1% of talent on Upwork. With AI-powered shortlisting, you'll get matched to the right freelancer in under six hours. Upwork can also take care of operational stuff like contracts and payments so you don't have to worry about it. Visit upwork.com/pivot right now and post your job for free. That's upwork.com/pivot to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K .com/pivot, upwork.com/pivot. Casey and Kevin, we're back. We're getting into new details about

Kara Swisher 39:09 OpenAI's upcoming AI smart speaker. Mm, there's a lot of these around. It will reportedly be donut shaped and the size of a hockey puck designed to be easily carried around. I always wanna carry a hockey puck around the house. The device will likely cost between $300 and $400, more than most smart speakers, but less than an iPhone, and is expected to launch in 2027. It's designed with Jony Ive's studio and will include a camera, lights, and sensors that signal when it's responding to users. Uh, meanwhile, OpenAI is, uh, asking a judge to dismiss Apple's trade secrets lawsuit, saying it's building something entirely new and different from anything at Apple. Um, I want you both put on your Scott Galloway hats and give me a prediction. Is this... Talk a little bit about this device. Now, there, there was a tiny... There was, was it Google that had the tiny hockey puck thing, or was it... I can't remember who put that out.

Casey Newton 39:56 Well, Amazon has the Echo Dot, which is kind of-

Kara Swisher 39:59 The d-

Casey Newton 39:59 ... the, like this

Kara Swisher 39:59 Yeah, looks like a hockey puck, right. That's Amazon, which Alex threw into the garbage, but go ahead.

Casey Newton 40:03 [laughs] Yeah, I mean, on one hand, it seems clear that there is demand for Echo Dots, right? And so if there is-

Kara Swisher 40:12 Source

Casey Newton 40:12 ... a version of that that is plugged into ChatGPT, which is really good for a lot of things, I could see it having some success. $300 is relatively affordable as, as these things go. I'm still not totally sold on voice as the way that I wanna interact with these models, and some people are. Some people are already, like, coding with their voices. Kevin loves to dictate everything into his computer. I don't like to do this. But I d- I think there's something there. Now, on the other hand, two years ago, we were interviewing Sam Altman, and I said, "Tell me about this thing that you're building. Is it just Alexa? 'Cause it sounds like it's, it's just Alexa." He said, "No, no, no, we think it's gonna be way better than Alexa." Everything I've read about this device so far makes me feel like it's Alexa.

Kara Swisher 40:48 That's right. It's a smart, it's a smarter Alexa, right? Essentially. It fee- And carrying it around. Kevin?

Kevin Roose 40:54 Yeah, I cannot wait to lose this thing.

Kara Swisher 40:56 Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Kevin Roose 40:56 [laughs] I am so excited to go through-

Kara Swisher 40:58 Yeah

Kevin Roose 40:58 ... between two and three of these a year or, like, accidentally put it in the laundry. Um, this is gonna be a huge deal in my house. I'm, I'm gonna be a huge repeat customer for this thing 'cause I will-

Kara Swisher 41:08 Do, do you want this?

Kevin Roose 41:09 ... lose this thing immediately.

Kara Swisher 41:09 Do you want to have this hockey puck, friend?

Kevin Roose 41:11 Yes. I mean, look, I, I, my household, my, uh, my, uh, one of my other problematic traits is that I, I do live in an Alexa household, uh, and we have these devices. And I've tried the new Alexa+, which is supposed to be this sort of new AI, you know, LLM version of this, and it sucks. It's bad. It is not only bad at the AI stuff, the LLM stuff, it's bad at the timers and, you know, weather stuff. It, like, is worse at all of it. And so if OpenAI can somehow figure out how to, like, be the dependable alarm in my bedroom and tell me, you know, stuff that, like, it let me interact with my coding agents, like, that will be cool. Um, I am a little nervous that apparently according to Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, this thing will include parts that move on their own.

Kara Swisher 41:55 What?

Kevin Roose 41:55 Uh, I'm not sure how I feel about that. Um, but, but-

Kara Swisher 41:57 What, what do you mean? It's gonna crawl over to your face and eat it? What?

Kevin Roose 42:00 I, I don't know. Maybe it'll, you know, it'll decide I don't wanna be in the bedroom anymore. There's, uh, there's too much crazy stuff going on in here. It's gonna have, like, a prehensile tail and claws. [laughs]

Kara Swisher 42:09 I know. Doesn't it feel like that?

Kevin Roose 42:10 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 42:10 It feels like a movie, like M3GAN. Remember the M3GAN movie?

Kevin Roose 42:13 Yeah. [laughs]

Kara Swisher 42:13 Um, I just don't... I... Sorry. I d- I think this has to be... I think AirPods should just be s- better, right? You wear them in your ears, it sees things, and then it does stuff. Like, I just don't see carrying around a puck. I just don't. Any... There's no way I'm buying this thing. I didn't like the Dot. I just, I left it there. I just didn't use it. I, I was back in San Francisco recently and, this week, and I forgot I had an Alexa there unplugged, sitting there. And I don't... I put it on for a second, and it... You know, my kids had fun for four seconds with it and then moved on from it. I just, I, I, I... It's still not... I could see having something, like, the Humane pin didn't work. What was the other one? Humane, and what was the other one?

Kevin Roose 42:53 The Rabbit r1.

Casey Newton 42:53 I mean, there are these, like-

Kevin Roose 42:54 There have been these, like-

Casey Newton 42:55 There's, like, the Friend pendant.

Kara Swisher 42:56 Right.

Casey Newton 42:56 I, I think the manufacturers just keep running into the same issue, which is that it's very hard to improve on the phone. The phone is very, very, very good-

Kara Swisher 43:04 It is

Casey Newton 43:04 ... at, um, at many, many things.

Kara Swisher 43:05 Right.

Casey Newton 43:05 And so to improve on it is just overwhelmingly difficult.

Kara Swisher 43:08 Yeah, it has to be an, it has to be AirPods. I just, I feel like that's where it has to go. Not glasses necessarily, creepy Kevin glasses, but in some fashion, like, that it's sort of around and... Or maybe it's in your house, like, the house itself speaks to you. Maybe not.

Kevin Roose 43:24 I'm excited for when people start, like, disguising their OpenAI pucks as, like, other, like, things because there-

Kara Swisher 43:30 Like... [laughs]

Kevin Roose 43:30 ... there's such a social stigma around, like-

Kara Swisher 43:32 Right

Kevin Roose 43:32 ... carrying one of these things into a public place. It's just like-

Kara Swisher 43:34 Right

Kevin Roose 43:34 ... oh, this little, uh, this is my hockey puck. It's just my lucky-

Kara Swisher 43:38 [laughs] Lucky hockey puck

Kevin Roose 43:39 ... hockey puck. I, I carry it everywhere.

Kara Swisher 43:40 What, so, so let me get this. Casey will not be having one, and Kevin, you will embrace it with the, the love, the great love that you have.

Kevin Roose 43:45 I will make up for Casey's, uh, rejection of this technology by buying and losing between three and four of them a year.

Casey Newton 43:50 I, Liz, I will probably get one. If it's 300 bucks, I'll probably try it.

Kara Swisher 43:54 I say no.

Casey Newton 43:55 Not, not you?

Kara Swisher 43:55 It's not gonna work. Not... I don't think, I don't want it. It's like I've had these, and they, they have shown... It'd have to be so much better than an Echo Dot, and I don't know where my Echo Dot is. It's somewhere in a box, right? Like, there's so many of these things, and the Humane pin, like, it wasn't quite right. And, uh, you're right, the phone works just fine.

Kevin Roose 44:13 I just want the, the agent that goes rogue and, like, hacks into my, uh, my accounts and, you know, drains my bank accounts. I want it to have a physical form so that I can yell at it.

Kara Swisher 44:23 I see. Okay.

Kevin Roose 44:23 And so this is, like, a very exciting development for me.

Kara Swisher 44:25 No, I like that drains your bank accounts is your favorite thing. Like...

Casey Newton 44:28 Here's my question. If you take the, the OpenAI device into the bedroom, and then after a couple months say, "Rate my sexual performance and give me tips," will it do that, or will that be a violation of content policies?

Kara Swisher 44:40 Well, if you asked it, right?

Kevin Roose 44:42 [laughs]

Kara Swisher 44:42 Right?

Kevin Roose 44:42 Interesting to think about.

Kara Swisher 44:43 I'm just interesting to think about.

Kevin Roose 44:44 No.

Kara Swisher 44:44 It's not really that interesting to think about.

Kevin Roose 44:46 [laughs]

Kara Swisher 44:46 It's kind of gross. But okay. All right. Is that what you're doing? Is that doing? Casey's getting married, you know that, Kevin.

Casey Newton 44:53 I am.

Kevin Roose 44:54 I, I do know that. Carrie, you have to understand that part, a big part of, uh, co-hosting a podcast with Casey is just, is just, uh, polite laughing at, at some of his jokes.

Kara Swisher 45:02 [laughs]

Kevin Roose 45:02 So he, he, you know-

Kara Swisher 45:02 See, I am lucky.

Kevin Roose 45:03 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 45:03 I can say, "Scott, that's a stupid, you ignorant slut."

Kevin Roose 45:06 [laughs]

Kara Swisher 45:06 I mean, I think that's, you need to move to that. Casey, you ignorant slut.

Casey Newton 45:11 Listen, we were all thinking it.

Kara Swisher 45:13 You're all thinking it. You're all thinking. By the way, Casey is getting married. We're all very excited.

Kevin Roose 45:16 Thank you.

Kara Swisher 45:17 We're gonna all be at the wedding. It's gonna be so much fun.

Kevin Roose 45:18 Yeah, it's gonna be very fun.

Kara Swisher 45:19 It's gonna be fun. We're gonna do something embarrassing. We have to- we've-

Kevin Roose 45:22 Oh, yeah

Kara Swisher 45:22 ... Kevin, you and I need to talk.

Kevin Roose 45:23 Flash mob? [laughs]

Kara Swisher 45:24 Yes, we'll do a flash mob. We'll talk to the puck. We'll talk to... What is it gonna be called, by the way? Do we know what the puck is gonna be called?

Kevin Roose 45:31 [sighs]

Kara Swisher 45:31 Johnny Ive will come up with something.

Kevin Roose 45:33 I'm, I'm-

Kara Swisher 45:33 A new minion.

Kevin Roose 45:33 I mean, the way things are going, it's just gonna be called Sam.

Casey Newton 45:36 Chat- ChatGP- GPuck, yeah.

Kevin Roose 45:36 No, it's gonna be called Sam.

Kara Swisher 45:38 Sam. Oh, Sam. [gasps]

Kevin Roose 45:38 Sam.

Kara Swisher 45:38 That's a good name.

Kevin Roose 45:39 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 45:40 I think that's a good name, actually.

Kevin Roose 45:42 Mm-hmm.

Kara Swisher 45:42 You think he'll do it?

Kevin Roose 45:43 You know, it- he'll- it- they'll, they'll say like, "Well, it's an acronym for like sentient autonomous machine," or something.

Kara Swisher 45:48 Oh, whoa.

Kevin Roose 45:48 But it'll, it'll just be called Sam.

Kara Swisher 45:49 Whoa. Hey.

Kevin Roose 45:50 Yeah. Yeah.

Kara Swisher 45:50 That works. Anyway, uh, Casey and Kevin, one more quick break. We'll be back for Wins and Fails. [upbeat music] Support for this show comes from DeleteMe. If you ever thought about doing something to protect yourself from stalkers, scammers, and hackers, it's time to check out DeleteMe. DeleteMe does all the hard work to wipe out your personal information from hundreds of data broker sites. It was named the top pick for data removal services by Wirecutter. Get an individual annual plan for a little over $8 per month. Discounts get even better with a two-year plan or when you enroll with your partner or family. I have used DeleteMe for years. I think it's great. It's a great dashboard. I really do understand what's happening with my data, which is disturbing. Every week I get reports that I'm surprised by in terms of what data brokers are doing with information. A lot of it is inaccurate, actually, which is also just as dangerous. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for DeleteMe, now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to join deleteme.com/pivot and use the promo code PIVOT at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to joindeleteme.com/pivot and enter the code PIVOT at checkout. That's joindeleteme.com/pivot, code PIVOT. [upbeat music] Okay, Casey and Kevin,

Kara Swisher 47:05 let's hear some wins and fails. You guys go first. First you, Kevin.

Kevin Roose 47:08 Okay, my win this week is DuckDuckGo.

Kara Swisher 47:12 Hmm. Oh.

Kevin Roose 47:13 Uh, the privacy-focused search company-

Kara Swisher 47:16 Sure

Kevin Roose 47:16 ... uh, who responded to the uproar over Meta's, uh, sunglasses, their Pervert Glasses, by releasing their own, uh, branded product, which are just called Normal Fucking Sunglasses.

Casey Newton 47:28 [laughs]

Kevin Roose 47:28 Uh, they don't do anything. [laughs]

Kara Swisher 47:32 Well, they protect you from the sun.

Kevin Roose 47:33 But they shield you.

Kara Swisher 47:33 Right?

Kevin Roose 47:34 Yes. [laughs] Uh, so they are, uh, anti-surveillance glasses. No cameras, no microphones.

Kara Swisher 47:38 Oh, that's funny. That's funny.

Kevin Roose 47:39 Uh, this is sort, sort of an attention-grabbing stunt for them-

Kara Swisher 47:42 Good idea

Kevin Roose 47:42 ... but I did think it was clever.

Kara Swisher 47:43 That's a good idea. What is your fail?

Kevin Roose 47:45 My fail, this is one that's close to home, y'all. This is, uh, related to the podcast business. So Max Tani at Semafor recently reported that Spotify is testing a skip ahead button that will let some users skip the ads on their podcasts. And as a lover of ad-supported podcasts, I must say, uh, this one is a fail for me.

Kara Swisher 48:06 Isn't it kind of already there, though? I was, like, reading sort of into... Don't they already have the 15 seconds?

Kevin Roose 48:09 Well, they have the skip ahead 15 seconds button or-

Kara Swisher 48:12 Right

Kevin Roose 48:12 ... 30 seconds or whatever it is button-

Kara Swisher 48:14 Right

Kevin Roose 48:14 ... which is effectively the same thing.

Kara Swisher 48:15 Yeah.

Kevin Roose 48:15 But this one is, like, purely, like, will skip automatically to the end of whatever, uh, ad segment-

Kara Swisher 48:21 Oh

Kevin Roose 48:21 ... you have.

Kara Swisher 48:21 You think they'll do that? But except for their ads.

Kevin Roose 48:23 And, and podcast companies are really-

Kara Swisher 48:23 Except for their ads, right? That's what I understand.

Kevin Roose 48:25 Well, that's the, that's sort of the, some of the rub here. But I think there's just, like, you know, we should, we should all stand up as podcasters in opposition to anything that-

Kara Swisher 48:33 What are we gonna do?

Kevin Roose 48:33 ... that could undercut our business model.

Kara Swisher 48:34 I don't know. I don't care. People don't like your s- I don't know. I don't know. I don't f- I, I think they'll, they'll roll it back. I don't think they'll do it. They'll just have the 15-second thing, right? I just don't see them doing that.

Kevin Roose 48:44 Yeah, I, there, there's been some opposition from podcast companies already, and, and people are worried about this. I, I think they'll land on something sensible, but, uh, you know-

Kara Swisher 48:53 Who got, who got-

Kevin Roose 48:53 We gotta, we gotta, we gotta stand up for ourselves, you know?

Kara Swisher 48:55 Stand up. Listen to our ads for Athletic Greens. You must. You must because it's paying for-

Kevin Roose 49:00 Where will people know about MeUndies-

Kara Swisher 49:02 Yes, exactly [laughs]

Kevin Roose 49:02 ... if this goes into effect?

Kara Swisher 49:03 Do you have MeUndies?

Kevin Roose 49:04 I don't.

Kara Swisher 49:04 I never got MeUndies. So sad. I would l- MeUndies, come to Pivot. Anyways, Casey?

Casey Newton 49:10 My win this week w- was kind of a serious one, which was that in the wake of revelations that its models had escaped their sandboxes and caused these autonomous cyber attacks, OpenAI said that it could not rule out that its newest models has, had hit what they call critical capability. So this is basically their most serious level of risk, and what they have said for years is if they ever hit that, uh, that threshold, they would slow down development and would, would build real safeguards. So we do believe that right now OpenAI actually is slowing down and doing the responsible thing, which is trying to prevent further harm from these models. So, you know, I do not take for granted anymore that companies will do this, and I was really glad to see that they did.

Kara Swisher 49:49 So that's a win-

Casey Newton 49:50 Yes

Kara Swisher 49:50 ... even though it's a fail.

Casey Newton 49:52 It, it was a win that came out of a fail.

Kara Swisher 49:54 Okay. All right.

Casey Newton 49:54 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 49:54 Now what's your fail?

Casey Newton 49:56 My fail is I learned over the weekend, Kara, that San Francisco's average rent is up 18% over the past two years. It is now $3,728 a month on average. It has surpassed New York City as the most expensive in the country, and the reason that this is a fail is that the story never changes around here. I swear, ever since I landed in this town in 2010, I've read every voter guide. I've voted for every pro-housing politician, and no matter who I vote for, there's never enough houses for e- for the people who want to live here, and it sucks-

Kara Swisher 50:26 Yes

Casey Newton 50:26 ... and it's a fail.

Kara Swisher 50:27 Yeah, it's a fail. What the, what is the fail? The, the expensive-

Casey Newton 50:29 The fail is that we do not build enough houses for the people who want to live here.

Kara Swisher 50:33 We do not. We do not. Is it, there's also limited space, too. Be aware.

Casey Newton 50:35 There's not.

Kara Swisher 50:36 The-

Casey Newton 50:36 We could build 20, 30 stories. I, the, screw the character of the neighborhood. Put a skyscraper in my neighborhood.

Kara Swisher 50:41 All right. Okay.

Casey Newton 50:41 I just want people to be able to live here.

Kara Swisher 50:43 All right.

Kevin Roose 50:43 Casey lived in your garage for, like, 10 years.

Kara Swisher 50:45 Yes, that's true. [laughs]

Kevin Roose 50:45 We could squeeze more people into existing spaces.

Kara Swisher 50:48 [laughs] You know, Louie's living there now. I did notice.

Kevin Roose 50:51 That's right.

Kara Swisher 50:51 I did send that to Louie and go, "Look how much you're costing me," Louie Swisher.

Kevin Roose 50:54 [laughs]

Kara Swisher 50:55 Um, no, he's, he's welcome to live there as long as he wants. Um, that is, okay. All right. All right. Okay. But people are, San Francisco's back, right? I mean, that's kind of the thing because-

Casey Newton 51:04 It, it is back, and of course it's really exciting, you know, to be living in a boom town, and, and there is a lot of, like, energy in the city. I love living in San Francisco as much as I ever have. I just want anyone else who wants to live here to be able to do that affordably.

Kara Swisher 51:16 Can I ask you a sh- what's the level of assholitude towards the new techies? I mean, they're not q- they're not Keith Rabois level, right? They're, what are they? What, what are they?

Casey Newton 51:25 You know, I, I think that San Francisco has become so thoroughly colonized by tech people that you don't see the sort of, like, Google bus protest type stuff that we had a, a decade ago, right? Like, in 2026, if you're living in San Francisco, you've made your peace with the fact that this is a tech town.

Kara Swisher 51:42 Right, right. So people are better. I think they're calmer. I have to say, they're better than... There was a period of true assholitude that I think is, they seem to be quieter in their behaviors.

Casey Newton 51:52 I, I mean, what, when we, what are these people doing for the most part? They're, like, working out of their houses and they're getting DoorDash. Like, like-

Kara Swisher 51:58 Right

Casey Newton 51:58 ... they're not causing a big disruption in the community.

Kara Swisher 52:00 Right.

Casey Newton 52:00 If they were trying to, you know, build a data center at Civic Center, I'm sure we would see a lot of protests.

Kara Swisher 52:04 Yes. All right. So my, I have a win and fail around, uh, around pregnancy. Pregnancy-

Casey Newton 52:10 Ooh

Kara Swisher 52:10 ... since I am the only one of us that has been-

Casey Newton 52:12 You're pregnant?

Kara Swisher 52:12 Yes, I am.

Casey Newton 52:13 [laughs]

Kara Swisher 52:13 I'm having yet another child, a fifth Swish cat. Um, no. I, there's two stories this week. One was there's a picture of Anne Hathaway, who's pregnant, who looks beautiful, and she got a lot of clap back, but I thought she looked amazing. She was at a, another, she opened another movie. I can't remember. It was the, the, the 29th movie she's done this year, uh, hardest working woman in show business. But I thought she looked beautiful, and it was a lovely picture of her, uh, was showing her belly, which was very beautiful, and I thought that was lovely that she did that. I was kind of pissed about the clap back. Same thing with, that AOC announced she's freezing her eggs. Um, conservative commentators, Matt Walsh, called her out for doing that at the age of 37. I had Louis at 39, so Matt Walsh, sit the fuck down. It's none of... And I've had many children since, and I just think this sort of like, people commenting on how women should present themselves as pregnant is just grotes- I mean, besides the other misogynistic stuff that's happening, whether it's, uh, not, not, you know, not getting Max Miller to leave, uh, uh, after the allegations of abuse in his re-election race or whatever. There's a real, um... It, it's just like they're really w- they w- they've tri- they're try- they, with w- w- uh, overturning Roe, grotesque. This is like let people be pregnant the way they want to. Let people have kids the way they want to. They talk about people having kids when someone makes a proactive move like this and talks about it, which lots of women talk about it, like AOC. It's none of your fucking business, any of you, how she decides to live her life, and it just drives me crazy. Any of these people.

Casey Newton 53:42 Absolutely.

Kara Swisher 53:43 Yeah.

Casey Newton 53:43 And if you want, if you wanted to help women get pregnant earlier in their lives, if that was important to you for some reason, there are a million policy choices-

Kara Swisher 53:50 Correct

Casey Newton 53:50 ... you could make. You could make childcare free and widely available-

Kara Swisher 53:53 Yes

Casey Newton 53:53 ... for example.

Kara Swisher 53:54 Mm-hmm.

Casey Newton 53:54 You could make h- uh, uh, housing more affordable so people didn't feel like they needed to work for the first 20 years of their career to be able to afford to buy a house, right? There's a million things that these, these loudmouths could do to make it easier for families to have children, and I'm gonna guess they're not gonna work on them.

Kara Swisher 54:10 [laughs]

Casey Newton 54:10 I swear, I, I'm like, I'm looking at five figures annually on berries.

Kara Swisher 54:14 On blueberries, yes. Blueberries and-

Casey Newton 54:15 Where's the government?

Kara Swisher 54:16 Where's the government? Uh, it's j- it, let me let you in on a little thing. Some of these people don't like women.

Casey Newton 54:21 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 54:21 I know this, this is gonna come as a-

Casey Newton 54:23 Well, 'cause look, these are the same people who, like, freaked out for years about there being-

Kara Swisher 54:26 Yeah

Casey Newton 54:26 ... a fertility crisis.

Kara Swisher 54:27 Right, yeah.

Casey Newton 54:27 And like, why aren't people having more kids?

Kara Swisher 54:29 Right.

Casey Newton 54:29 And then people start having kids, and it's like, "Well, not like that."

Kara Swisher 54:31 Not like that.

Casey Newton 54:32 Yeah. [laughs]

Kara Swisher 54:32 Right, yeah, yeah. Well, Matt Walsh is a particular, you know, tiny penis, but it, it really is sort of this hatred towards women just comes out. So, like, it, it's so, it's like telling women what to do with their bodies is a never ending thing, and especially, you know, dunking on some... Uh, just, it's gross. I'm very happy for Anne Hathaway. I'm very happy for, uh, AOC. She should do whatever she wants, uh, and run for president at the same time, and save her eggs. She can do whatever the fuck she wants, so that is my feeling. That's a win and a fail. Um, in any case, we wanna hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com/pivot to submit a question for the show, or call 855-51-PIVOT. Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot, and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back on Friday. You guys, you were great. I'm excited. When are you announcing the show? When is the, when is the-

Casey Newton 55:23 Very soon, as in like-

Kara Swisher 55:25 When is-

Casey Newton 55:25 ... a couple of weeks from now, so.

Kara Swisher 55:26 Couple of weeks.

Casey Newton 55:27 Couple weeks.

Kara Swisher 55:27 Soon.

Casey Newton 55:27 I mean, we'll, we'll make the announcement, uh, on Hard Fork, and we'll, we'll be all over the socials, so yep, we're gonna tell people where they can find us, and we're gonna have a... We're, we're gonna, we're gonna announce this in the same way that, like, a, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist announces-

Kara Swisher 55:40 Good

Casey Newton 55:40 ... their new, uh, workout routine.

Kara Swisher 55:43 Right.

Casey Newton 55:43 Like, very loudly with maximum fanfare. [laughs]

Kara Swisher 55:46 Good. Well, let me know what I can do, and I welcome you, and you will, Kevin, you will love it. You will have such a good time, and you will be able-

Casey Newton 55:54 Yep

Kara Swisher 55:54 ... you're, you're naturally an entrepreneur, even though you-

Casey Newton 55:57 He is

Kara Swisher 55:57 ... you know, you cling, you cling to the side of institutional vessels-

Casey Newton 56:00 [laughs]

Kara Swisher 56:00 ... with an incredible barnacle-like tendency. It'll be great, and I'm sure it'll be a great product, and we will hope to have you on many, many times, and when your book comes out too.

Casey Newton 56:09 Thank you for blazing the trail.

Kara Swisher 56:10 And Casey, as always-

Casey Newton 56:11 Here we go

Kara Swisher 56:12 ... as always, Casey-

Casey Newton 56:13 Yeah

Kara Swisher 56:13 ... you're the best. Thank you so much.

Casey Newton 56:14 You are. [outro music]